Yoga is Smokin’

“Yoga is just like smoking.” That’s what Deb the waitress told me when I was a drinking, smoking confused 20-something aspiring writer who had just moved to San Francisco.

It was 1989, I finished my graduate degree a few months earlier in Washington, DC. That year was filled with books, papers, research and smoking. I sat at my friend’s word processor (remember those?) and wrote about Ophelia, post-modernism and Kristevian feminism and smoked myself into a lovely case of young adult existential angst.

Then I moved to California. And IMHO, anyone who grew up in the Northeast needs to spend a bit of time decompressing in California. So I got a job as a waitress and went to lots of Grateful Dead shows. Deb, who had recently lost her PR job, was about 35, and reminded me of an even more nervous Demi Moore. She was waitressing in between things. We worked at this upscale lunch spot downtown and spent our breaks trying to figure out what the heck to do with the rest of our lives.

So I was sucking on a cancer stick and knowing that I wanted to quit she said, “Hey, why don’t you start doing yoga?”

Blank stare.

“Look, it’s just like smoking.” And she put her fingers up to her mouth as if she was holding a cigarette and took a deep breath. “See, it’s not about the nicotine, it’s about deep breathing.” Damn if that wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever heard.

A few weeks later, on my 24th birthday I gave myself the present of tobacco-free lungs. I threw away the pack I had. I bought several bottles of guava juice (someone told me it would detoxify my body – whatever!), a bottle of Beefeater gin and half a dozen limes. For two weeks after that, anytime I craved a cigarette, I put my fingers up to my mouth and took a deep breath – then I poured myself a stiff G&T.

Then I found a yoga class – and eventually that replaced the hard liquor too. I had started doing yoga in middle school so I had the general idea – and I had taken a bunch of classes in college. It would be a few more years before I got really serious about it.

So, it’s a good New Year’s resolution – do yoga. And if you have something you have to quit, then it’ll be there to get you through it. When it came to cigarettes I had to do something about it. I had to quit. I was killing myself. I had a smoker’s cough at 23! it was pretty pathetic. That’s when the third chakra deity was necessary. His name is Rudra and he is ruthless. I like to call him the Nike God – no excuses, just do it. Sometimes you need to invoke him to help you do something that you gotta do.

Really, you need to make a choice here…

Strengthening Immunity Tip #37: Do not go to New Jersey for Thanksgiving

Well, it happened – I got sick. And not just a little sick – a full-on, whopping, if-I-move-I’ll-throw-up stomach flu sick. We went to my brother’s house in New Jersey for Thanksgiving. My sister came with her three young children, green bean casserole, and kisses laced with stomach flu – which many of the other guests enjoyed two days later, thank you very much. 

Fortunately my son didn’t get sick. Whew! Just my husband and I. So the two of us layed in bed all day at my brother’s house the Saturday after Thanksgiving and Bhaerava spent most of the day shooting his 11 year-old cousin’s nerf dart gun at the wall above our heads.

Here’s another tip: The day after you get the stomach flu, do not travel by car for 15 hours back to North Carolina. That’s how I got the head/chest cold, which, much to its amusement, is still lingering. Although it’s completely against my very nature, I am forced to do nothing (save a bit of blogging ;->). I would blame the entire senario on the life-force sucking vibration of northern New Jersey, but that would not be very nice. Let’s just say I’m happy to be home. I’d much rather be sick in the very near vicinity of several health food stores, acupuncture clinics and people who let me come over and lay on their Migun beds.

Now here’s the fun part: Once safely back in the sane village of Asheville, I got out my neti pot – filled it with slightly warmer than body temperature water, 1/4 t. of very fine sea salt, and 5 sprays of colloidal silver (that tip was from my fantastic acupuncture friend Natalie Allard.)

Wow! Nasal irrigation is awesome! It’s made me feel so much better. White flour is a good thing to stay away from, but hard when my son has been begging me to bake gingerbread friends with him. So I’m also trying to get in a few bowls of steamy miso soup – with lots of ginger broth and root veggies. Yum (but, um, not as “yum” as the gingerbread friends).

And then there’s the relaxing part. I’m so good at dishing out the advice aren’t I? So I have actually been spending a few minutes relaxing each day with my legs up the wall and meditating a bit more than usual (and if I neti first I can actually breath through my nose for a while!). Sickness is a good mirror – what are you doing? slow down! and if you don’t slow down I’ll make ya!

In Praise of Neti

My friend told me her 4 year old daughter just did her first neti pot. She was so happy, she said, “It was sort of like watching her take her first steps, I was so excited!”

I love Asheville…

Anyway, this particular child has had quite a few issues in her four short years of life. Her mom has done some amazing healing work with her with homeopathy and essential oils, and now that she can neti, she’s on her way to even better health.

We don’t clean our nose in this culture – it’s kinda bizarre, in fact when I think about it, it’s down right barbaric. We wash our faces, but there’s not the instruction to get in there with some water and clean out the old schnoz. It doesn’t deserve such blatant neglect! Your nose deserves to be washed as much as your face does.  And if you can just get a little water up in there and blow it out once a day or so it’s about all it needs.

But it can feel like drowning to some people – others don’t like the chlorine – for others it’s the pressure in the sinuses. So for the sensitive types among us, there is this incredible ancient invention – the neti pot. After Oprah did a show on neti my friend Matthew Cox’s website all about neti pots started getting all sorts of hits.

He’s a veritable neti officianado! Everything you could ever want or need to know about neti pots and more! (and by the way, he did my website and he’s a great tabla player and an all around great guy in general)

The thing that’s great about neti-ing is that it fights off the bad guy germs from the get-go. If you neti regularly you’ll improve your chances of staying healthy this winter.

Now about getting stronger on the inside, I want to talk a bit about the lympatic system and the yoga world’s take on it…

but i’ll save that for next week..

Strengthening Immunity

My son’s little nose is a bit red and chapped right now – and he’s been tired and a little cranky. It’s that time of year. For kids it’s not a bad thing to be a bit under the weather as long as it’s not too frequent. Their immune systems are still developing.

Germs are helpful in this process. But grown ups have been through that and frequent colds during the winter are avoidable if we make an effort to keep our immune systems strong.

So here are some ideas…

First, sleep.

Why do we have this bias against sleep in our culture? I saw a bumper sticker for a coffee shop the other day that said, “Sleep is for the Weak” That’s just great. Drink more coffee so you don’t have to sleep. Of course this makes your adrenaline glands go into overdrive and then konk out, so then you have to wake them up again with more coffee.

Your poor adrenaline glands – did it ever occur to you that they might have feelings too and don’t enjoy being treated like slaves? They have rights too! Free your adrenaline glands!

Let them rest for god’s sake. Drink less coffee and sleep more, take a nap on Saturday, go to bed early at least one night a week. After lunch, shut your door, turn off your phone, put on some Coyote Oldman or Shaman’s Dream Project, put your legs up the wall, slap on an eyebag and breathe for 15 minutes.

A little rest goes a long way to keeping us healthy. More tips coming soon…

I Believe in Everything

Have a listen: http://www.mofro.net/music/ (it’s no. 12 on Orange Blossoms – click on the album cover and then scroll down on the right side)

It didn’t really hit me until I saw Jesse Jackson. He was standing there with wet eyes and his index finger on his mouth, biting his lip to keep from sobbing. That’s when it came through me – this is real. This is happening. And I have been so darn cynical and fearful – and not just for the last 8 years, but for my whole adult life. And I couldn’t believe, I couldn’t believe it was really going to happen. I really thought it would be another stolen election. I really thought at the last minute there would be huge disappointment again. I didn’t want to admit that to anyone, especially not myself. But I was harboring that doubt, I was thinking about moving to New Zealand, I was not hopeful.

And then there he was, crying, because it was real. Because it really was happening. The yogis say hope is in the heart – they believe that actually it’s a petal of the heart chakra – an exquisite, tender petal. When I saw all those thousands of people gathering in Chicago, it just blew my mind. This person has inspired hope. This person has led people into their hearts. And I don’t agree with all of Barack Obama’s policies and I don’t think he’s a savior, but he has given people hope. And that has moved them, at least for the moment, into their hearts. This is a revolution of the heart. I believe that.

My neighbor’s mother voted. She is an addict, she has nothing, but she found some hope in her heart. I’m a believer.

My Heart Cries For Haiti

Haiti is a mess. The worst hurricanes in years have devastated an already devastated island. It’s not like Haiti had something and then it got trashed – Haiti never had anything to begin with.

About 3 years ago my friend Demeter, who was living here in Asheville at the time, built a couple of houses, took the money he had made and and bought an old school bus. With the help of members of Ananda Marga and Jubilee Church, he loaded it up with donated food, and medical and school supplies, drove it to Miami, put it on a boat and sailed it to Haiti. Since then he’s gotten some serious grant money from various sources and basically built most of the infrastructure (roads, wells, etc.) in one area of the island near the city of Gonaives.
Right now Gonaives, which is a major city by the way, is under 9 feet of water. People are stranded on their roofs.

All the roads and bridges leading to the city have been destroyed leaving virtually no way for aid to get to the people. The death toll is rising, and very soon food will run out and diseases will set in. So residents are expecting Demeter and his team to fix things in his area because they are already there and established. But his resources have been demolished – they’ve lost their cars and motorcyles, a lot of their computers, and a lot of his staff has evacuated also.

They need laptops badly and just about anything else. Here’s his website:
http://www.amurthaiti.org

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”
-Dalai Lama

Demeter in Haiti

Real World Liberation

One of my students from the Subtle Yoga Training Program asked me how I possibly have time to do all my practices in the morning and then get my son off to school and my husband off to work and then do all the work I do myself.

Well, let’s see, I rise at 3 am, meditate for two hours, do one hour of asanas, grind wheat berries by hand, bake fresh bread, or muffins if I’m in the mood, wash the floor, write a few aricles or blogs and run 6 miles before anyone else even wakes up! It just makes me feel so good all day long. Oh and by the way, did I mention that I fast twice a week on nothing but fresh kale juice from my garden?

Okay, so here’s the reality check: I do what I can and I eschew guilt. I get enough sleep, I accept that my 30 (on a good day 45) minutes of morning meditation may be done with a 4 year-old pirate on my lap. I do yoga with my pirate hanging around coaching me on my cobra or crawling under me during a wheel pose – and if I don’t do as many postures as I would like – so what? Even one makes me feel better than none at all. I try not to freak out when, at the end of the day, there are pieces of old toast, several small rocks and various superhero figures where the furniture cushions should be (which by the way, are arranged as a pirate ship on the floor). My family is fed, happy, well-rested, basically clean – that’s the reward of my practice.

When I was in college, a women’s studies professor told me, “Guilt is a useless emotion. The flip side of the guilt is responsibility.” So, when it comes to my practice, my first question is what am I responsibile for? Did I gladly accept those responsibilities? My first responsibilities are my relationships. And that means my relationship to my deepest self as well my family, friends and students. So am I holding my relationships up? Am I supporting them? Am I balancing them? If I can answer yes, then guilt is a non-issue. It’s easy to be a yogi when you don’t have any relationships. But the real inner work is done with others. Samgacchadvam. Together we move towards enlightenment, not alone on isolated purple yoga mats.

Here is my little pirate jumping off the plank

Backyard Suffering

I have a 10 year old neighbor, I’ll call her Amy, who has drug addicted parents. She and Bhaerava play together a lot. The other day he gave her a peach off our tree, she said, “This is good, I never ate a peach before.” I have nothing even remotely resembling a poker face, but I managed to ask her nonchalantly enough if I had heard her correctly. “Well, I’ve only had them in cans.” We picked her a few more to take home.

Last night she came over as we were getting ready for bed – this is about the 3rd time now, for a medicine pill vile of rubbing alcohol. My mom needs some alcohol, she cut herself again on a sharp corner of her bed, she said, without looking me in the eyes. She’s speaking more softly than usually, her skin is oozing with shame. My husband and I look at each other, do people really drink this stuff? I give her a few drops, hoping it’s not my substance that will finally do her mother in. I hate that corner of the bed, she offers. I don’t know how to say no to her without blowing the cover on the drama she’s presented.

I want to hug her and tell her she can tell me anything and I will be there for her. Instead I offer her a tofu dog. She almost never says no to food, but tonight she just shakes her head and completely avoids all eye contact.
Do you want to come over tomorrow and ride bikes with us, I ask.
Okay. See ya, she sighs.

She told me her mother told her to sleep on the top bunk, that way she won’t be scared of anyone getting her. I’m not sure how literal that advice was…

The next day I give her some tomatoes from the garden and she talks to me about Jesus. That’s when I see her eyes start to sparkle. So I teach her how to meditate on Jesus. Well, actually Bhaerava does. He tells her that Jesus is just like Baba (our guru). He says, so I’ll think about Baba and you can think about Jesus, and that’s how we can meditate together, okay? Then we all meditate together for approximately 2 minutes and 17 seconds.

Please try this at home

I teach this workshop called “Day in the Life of a Yoga” which is about things like using a neti pot, yogic moon fasting, how to make kichidi (rice, veggies and dal, mmmm!), how to chant, etc. One student who came last year said, “It was interesting, but I really was hoping it was going to be about things like, how to do a forward fold while you’re doing the laundry.” 

It’s in our heads

Here’s something from Dr. Laura Berman, who specializes in helping women repair their sex lives and find relief from menopausal
symptoms.

“A recent Japanese study found that the way we feel about our physical appearance may be a case of mind over matter. Researchers have found that women are more sensitive to appearance-related words than men. When words like “obese” or “heavy” were flashed in front of female study participants, a part of the brain’s threat-signaling center — the amygdala — reacted. Men who were shown the same words processed them in an entirely different area of the brain — the prefrontal cortex, which is linked to more cognitive-emotional functioning. The study’s authors theorize that women take the words to heart emotionally, while men evaluate them more rationally.

This evidence may explain a lot of the behavioral differences between the sexes! So what can you do about it? It would seem this offers yet another reason to minimize possibly harmful “triggers,” whether they’re unrealistic standards of beauty in magazines, or friends and family who try to make you feel physically inadequate. Cutting down on celebrity worship will help, too. Feeling attractive is as much a mental game as a fight to stay physically fit, and believing you’re beautiful is most of the battle.”