I think it must be a sign that I’ve been studying too much lately, but I found this new asana mentioned in the blog Samadhi & the City really, really funny. From the post New York: Beating the Heat with Bikram? by Valerie Reiss:
“I thought it could be a good way to jumpstart my practice–seeing as lately I’m most familiar with Sitonmyasana.”
This is the last weekend of the yoga teacher training, and I’m trying to work on the take-home exam as well as homework for Monday. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, there has been so many new things to learn that my head is about to explode. There are books, folders, and papers everywhere, and hopefully some of the wisdom will enter my head.
I’m supposed to write an assignment about how the kleshas and the gunas affect my yoga practice, and I have no idea how to approach the question. I have read about the kleshas and the gunas in yoga philosophy, but it still seems a little abstract and hard to apply to my own life. All this stuff makes me feel like an unevolved person for wanting to watch Sex and the City, eat chocolate, and buy Lululemon pants. So what do I do about this assignment? I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s a lesson in here somewhere. There usually is when something is difficult to write about.
I’m going to let the assignment sit until tomorrow, and hope mulling it over will bring some insights.
In yoga, complementary actions are essentially actions that do the same thing. For example, in downward-facing dog externally rotating the upper arms and aligning the wrist creases with the front of your mat have the same effect on the arms. Complementary actions work towards the same direction, or towards the same result in the body.
I’m sure you can think of times when you’ve gone to a new yoga class and the teacher described something in a different way than you are used to. Often a new approach to a pose can lead to a light-bulb moment. People are different, and different instructions resonate with different people. Complementary actions are therefore also complementary instructions, which is why it can be a good idea to attend yoga classes with different teachers once in a while.
Complementary actions can be used on a more abstract level too. B.K.S. Iyengar talks about working to extend and expand in your poses, and these two different but very similar instructions can increase your understanding of this inner action. He has a quote that I really like: “When you extend and expand, you are not only stretching to, you are also stretching from.”
Next time you’re feeling stuck in a pose or not really understanding what to do, ask the teacher if there’s a different way to teach it that might help you.
This is one of the questions kids ask at an early age, but as adults we seem to somehow have forgotten the answer. Milk comes from a carton or plastic jug at the grocery store, right?
I recently discovered the Golden Glen Creamery milk for sale in Seattle (in glass bottles!), and the milk just tastes fantastic. A few weekends ago we drove north from Seattle to go to one of the beaches along Chuckanut Drive (this was a rare warm day this spring), and on the way we stopped at the Golden Glen farm in Bow, WA. The farm sits amidst flat acres of grass swaying in the wind, happy-looking cows munching grass and hay in the open air. We bought some cheese at the farm store, then went to meet the genius behind the milk:
This is as far from industrial factory farming as you can get! We were allowed to walk up to the cows and pet them, and the cows seemed as curious as we were. Since the industrialization of food production we’ve gotten used to food being something that comes plastic wrapped at the grocery store, and it’s just nice to once in a while be reminded that food actually comes from the earth. It’s also important to educate ourselves about the food we eat, both for health and ethical reasons.
Do you know where that 2% in your fridge comes from?
I need food. I think I’ve never been this hungry in my life.
The first few days of the yoga teacher training have been really fun, but I hadn’t foreseen the need for calories to sustain three hours of practice and four hours of lecture every day. By 2 pm today I had eaten my way through all the fruit and snacks that were supposed to last me until dinner. I’m determined to prevent this from happening tomorrow.
When I came home I pulled out some of my cookbooks to see if I could find a recipe for home-made energy bars, but instead I came across the Sivananda Cookies in The Yoga Cookbook
I feel prepared for whatever may happen tomorrow!
Oatmeal Raising Cookies
Adapted from The Yoga Cookbook: Vegetarian Food for Body and Mind
3 cups rolled oats (not instant oats)
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 heaped tsp cinnamon
1 heaped tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup chopped dried apricots
1/3 cup chopped almonds
3/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup water
After months of waiting, the Yoga Works teacher training I’m signed up for finally starts tomorrow! I’m really excited, and can’t wait to get started. It’s a one-month intensive training, and hopefully I’ll have time to provide some updates here along the way.
Being an intensive course we actually have an assignment due on the first day of class. We need to answer the question “what is yoga?,” which I think is a poorly camouflaged attempt at assessing our knowledge level. Which is good, how would they otherwise know what we need to learn? I have thought about it for a few days, and I couldn’t come up with a simple definition of yoga. I could think of many part answers that described some aspect of yoga, so eventually that’s how I approached the question. Here is my assignment:
What is Yoga?
My first thought in response to this question was “well, you know it when you see it.” The sadhu covered in ashes, sitting in lotus pose in a cave in India is doing yoga. The mom working on her downward-facing dog following instructions on a DVD at home is also doing yoga. So are gym goers sweating through sun salutations. Yoga seems to have the powers of a chameleon, changing and adapting to its surroundings and practitioners. But what is it? Depending on whom you ask you might get a variety of answers:
Yoga is…
It’s open for discussion which of these are more authentic definitions of yoga, but I think it’s safe to deduce that yoga is a practice that works to unify the mind and the body, with a focus on being present in the moment and being aware of an interconnectedness between all things.
When I meet someone completely new to yoga I usually choose some version of answer seven–”yoga is the practice of physical postures and breath exercises to calm the mind and create a healthy body.” Once you have practiced yoga for a while you start craving more in-depth answers, and the more you learn the more you see how much you don’t know. When I first started doing yoga I used to take a class at my gym, and other than a few oms and an introduction to ujjayi pranayama the class focused mainly on asanas. I was happy with this class for a long time, settling into a happy comfort zone. Then I moved to a different part of the city and started going to a local yoga studio. A whole new world opened up to me, and I felt like I had been practicing in a small room, not knowing there was an entire house to explore!
The discipline of yoga is vast and diverse, which explains why it is so hard to define what it is. I think it’s easy to create a too narrow definition of yoga depending on what you have seen or experienced. It’s like in the famous poem The Blindmen and the Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe, where six blind men argue about what an elephant is after having touched only a small part of the elephant. So it is when we try to describe yoga – yoga is the trunk, or ear, or leg that you have touched, but it is only when you add all the parts together you get the whole picture.
Sometimes the best things are also the simplest. I have many Indian cookbooks, but there is one dish I always come back to. Dal was the first Indian dish I learnt how to make, and it continues to be my favorite to eat.
The red masoor dal used in this recipe is mild and almost sweet and buttery, and turns yellow once it’s cooked. You can also make this dal with toor/tuvar dal and split green mung dal. It’s fun to mix them, for example half masoor and half split green mung.
You can get dal and spices at any Indian grocery store, but you can also try large grocery stores that have a good bulk section. Here in Seattle I have seen a good selection at both Madison Market and Whole Foods.
Dal is usually served with rice, one or more vegetable dishes, and plain yoghurt, but I often have it like soup with some whole wheat tortillas.
Masoor Dal
Serves 6-8 as part of an Indian meal.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup masoor dal, rinsed over three times
6 cups water
2 tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp turmeric
Pinch of red chili powder
1 tbsp canola or vegetable oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1-2 green chilies
1 tsp chopped fresh ginger
1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped
Pinch of asaefoetida (hing)
2 tsp ground coriander
Juice of one or two limes (depending on size)
Handful of fresh chopped cilantro
Salt as needed
1. Prepare the dal:
Add dal to the pot of a pressure cooker.* Rinse in cold water and drain, repeat a few more times until the water runs clear. Add water, tomatoes, salt, turmeric and chili powder. Set aside to soak.
2. Make the chaunk:
Heat the oil in a small pan until hot but not smoking. (The cumin and mustard seeds should pop, test with a couple of seeds as the oil heats up.) Add the cumin and mustard seeds, stir for 10-15 seconds, then add the chilies and ginger. Stir for another 10-15 seconds, then add the onion. Turn down the heat a bit if necessary, the onion shouldn’t get brown. Sauté for about 5 minutes until the onion starts to become translucent. Add the asaefotida and ground coriander. Remove from the heat, and scrape all of the chaunk into the pot with the dal and water.
3. Combine the dal and chaunk and cook:
Attach the pressure cooker lid and cook for 7-8 whistles. Remove from the heat and carefully release the pressure and check that the dal is cooked. The lentils should be tender, and the liquid yellow. (If the liquid still looks transparent and watery it needs to cook more.)
4. Before serving:
Add the lime juice and fresh coriander. Taste for salt, usually quite a bit is needed. It’s amazing to me how much salt you have to add to dal before it tastes right, but add it gradually so you don’t risk ruining the whole pot of dal.
* If you don’t have a pressure cooker you can simmer the dal on the stove in a thick-bottomed pot, just make sure you stir often so it doesn’t burn.
This is really cool, I found a whole network of yogis! WoYoPracMo is an inspirational and supportive yoga community that was started January 1, 2008, challenging yogis to practice every day for the month of January. (Hence the name World Yoga Practice Month.) But when January was up they all liked the community so much they decided to continue.
If you’re interested, check it out for yourself:
Earlier this week my yoga teacher read the poem Today by Hafiz at the end of class, and it made me walk home slowly, looking at trees, flowers, dogs, squirrels and people, and just feel appreciation for life.
The poem can be found in the book The Gift
Today
I
Do not
Want to step so quickly
Over a beautiful line on God’s palm
As I move through the earth’s
Marketplace
Today.
I do not want to touch any object in this world
Without my eyes testifying to the truth
That everything is
My Beloved.
Something has happened
To my understanding of existence
That now makes my heart always full of wonder
And kindness.
I do not
Want to step so quickly
Over this sacred place on God’s body
That is right beneath your
Own foot
As I
Dance with
Precious life
Today.
Today it is exactly half a year since my last migraine attack. My Excedrin Migraine bottle is past it’s expiration date, I enjoy my chai, drink red wine with dinner whenever I want to, and I eat enough chocolate to make up for lost time. How did this happen? Can yoga prevent migraines?
I used to get up to three migraine attacks a week, and it was an endless cycle of headaches and painkillers. I quit caffeine, alcohol, chocolate, cheese, bananas, everything I had read might trigger migraines. None of this helped. Then, two years ago, I started practicing yoga almost every day. I noticed the migraines came further and further apart — one week, two weeks, then one month, then three months. And now half a year.
Amazed by this experience I decided to do a little research on migraines and yoga.* I found a very interesting article on how yoga can reduce migraine attacks, describing a study done at the University of Rajasthan. Scientists are starting to understand the effects of yoga on the brain, and there are several migraine-related neurotransmitters and hormones that are affected by yoga:
Resources:
Yoga can reduce migraine attacks
Living Well: Researcher documents the benefits of yoga in lifting depression
eMedicine.com: Migraine Headache
eMedicine: Pathophysiology and Treatment of Migraine and Related Headache
Postures for Migraine Headaches
Yoga for Migraine
* Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, and my research and theories are based on news articles, online medical databases, and my own experiences.
