Fun with Food

As a yogi, I’ve always been interested in the alchemy of eating. I’ve fasted, tried a variety of diets from carnivorous to vegetarian to raw. I’ve used food as medicine and, more recently have explored a few different approaches to what’s called an anti-inflammation diet.

For Lyme Disease, one of the few proactive actions anyone can take is to eat a diet that promotes healing and won’t aggravate the condition. But the anti-inflammation diet is touted to be good for many more things including weight loss, arthritis, allergies, joint pain and any of a plethora of inflammation disorders.

At a recent visit to a neurologist, I was given the name of a book with yet another take on the diet. The book is The Inflammation Free Diet Plan, by Monica Reinagel. The doctor told me that while he tries to be as unbiased as possible, he is completely biased about this diet. So I went out, got myself a copy and started to read.

At first it seemed daunting. It seemed there was so much to learn, so much to keep track of, and all these new values and figures to add up. As it turns out, there are actually only about 40 pages to read (an easy and interesting read) and the rest is reference charts. It’s not difficult at all. To make it even easier, I made a spreadsheet on my computer to keep track of my intake. I rather enjoy trying to keep my scores in range of my goals. It’s become sort of a game for me to see how great a rating I can come up with while still enjoying my meals and feeling full.

I love a wide variety of food. That makes any diet a lot easier because I only have to choose between something I love and something else I love. This diet is basically the opposite of the Standard American Diet. If you’re serious about your health, you’ll want to stay away from fast foods, highly processed foods and deep fried foods. That said, in all fairness I must add that there is hardly anything you can’t have on this diet - it’s just that you will want to choose with discretion and eat foods to create the anti-inflammation balance you’re after.

As I write this, I am on the road, traveling to Alaska for the summer. I am in Northeastern Montana right now and so far I have had no difficulty staying on the diet while traveling, including an occasional restaurant meal.

Like ayurveda, and yoga, it’s about living a life in balance. The more you practice it, the better you feel, and the easier it gets.

Gifts From Solitude

In Gift From the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh says that our alone times are among the most important times in our lives. She says that certain springs are tapped only when we are alone and that we need solitude in order to find again, the true essence of ourselves; “that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships.” And I just love that she adds, later in the chapter, that if we don’t take care of this one, basic and essential need, we will have less to give to our families, to our work, and to our communities. Don’t we know it!?!

See your yoga practice as a small, daily pocket of solitude; an opportunity to tap into the wellspring of your being. In my last post, I spoke of how to get back into a yoga practice you’ve lost touch with. I suggested picking a few asanas you know and like and working with them. Once you have a simple, sweet, entirely doable sequence to work with in your asana practice, then all you have to do is show up for it. The level of acceptance, awareness, openness and presence you bring to the practice is far more significant than your level of physical strength, flexibility, stamina or performance in any given asana.

“Welcome the totality of your experience.”
-Francis Lucille

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Warding Off Flu Viruses

The Yoga Sutras lists 9 hindrances or obstacles to yoga. These are hindrances to the deep, internal stillness that sets the stage for awakening. The top one on the list is illness. I saw on the news this morning, that hundreds of people are lining up for their flu shots - lining up at one in the morning to stand in the cold drizzly rain hoping to not get the flu! How crazy is that? One of the simplest, most inexpensive and practical practices I know of for preventing illness, and this one goes right along with washing your hands, is salt water.

Use it in your neti pot and gargle with it, morning and evening. If you don't have a neti pot yet, go out today and get one. I know here in Point, you can get them at the SPA Coop, and I believe they are available at Walgreens and Walmart. Since Oprah featured them on one of her shows, they've become mainstream. Neti is pouring salt water through the sinuses - in one nostril, out the other. Think of it. Illnesses like colds, flu, even bronchitis and sinusitis, begin in your nose and throat and it takes a day or two for them to incubate. Your sinuses are designed to get rid of foreign invaders. Slime (salty boogers) forms to remove the evil particle before it is absorbed into the system. In your throat, it'll be phlegm (same basic stuff). When your immune system is working overtime to beat off the assault entering your body through your face, you will feel tired. Don't you want to help it along?

In my experience, salt water is more effective than any supplements I've taken to boost my immune system. Why boost it? Why not just help it out? Give it a break. Salt water breaks up your slime balls and gets them out. Then your immune system can work on other issues - the things you can't reach. If you have a cold or sinus infection you just can't seem to get rid of, you very well may be reinfecting yourself. Salt water helps your immune system by preventing that. My neighbor lady was stuck in a sinus infection that wouldn't leave her body. I had this conversation with her and lent her one of our extra neti pots. The next day when she saw her doctor, he told her to get a neti pot! Once you get over those first two or three tries, it gets easier and you'll be adding it to your daily repertoire, right along with brushing your teeth and washing your hands. With illness being a top obstacle to yoga, its no wonder that purity is the first of the niyamas - part of a basic foundation for a rock solid yoga practice. Salt purifies.

Mind your business

In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna tells Arjuna: "It is better to do your own work badly than to perfectly do anothers; you are safe from harm when you do what you should be doing." It is easy to get lost in this. What is your own work? Where does your work leave off and someone else's begin? When contemplating the wisdom here, look beyond the usual interpretation of "work" meaning merely livelihood. Look closer at all your work - including but not limited to your daily tasks and jobs. Consider also, work such as self-study, personal growth and spiritual work. Observe your words, your reactivity, your critical and judgmental thoughts and your everyday deeds and conversations as well. It may surprise you to discover how quickly a conversation can turn to a commentary on someone else's business - someone who is not even present and did not ask for help or guidance. How helpful is that? How often do you feel you have an answer to someone else's problems? If they only ate this way or dressed that way or if they acted the way you think they should, relaxed more or worked harder, then we could all be happy and we wouldn't have these problems!

But that is not the teaching we find here. Each of us has enough work of our own to do without worrying about what others are up to, or what they may be thinking about what we are doing. I observe my own tendencies to want to correct something or fix it for someone else by offering unsolicited advice about what they should do or to even do things for them. How much more effective it might be simply to be present for them, and to give them the reflective room to figure out their own solutions! At those moments, I like to take a step back and ask if what I am about to say or do is welcomed, or is it really going to help? Is this something I am doing to win the approval of someone, or to make myself more comfortable with someone's difficult situation? I ask myself what I can learn from observing without interfering. I ask myself if there is a teaching in it somewhere for me. In Byron Katie's work, she has us ask "whose business is this, yours, mine or God's?" If we stay in our business, we are, as Krishna says, "safe from harm". We avoid the feeling of being taken advantage of, or feeling 'put out' because we've taken on someone else's responsibilities when we shouldn't have. We avoid speaking foolishly or hurtfully and possibly causing harm where it wasn't intended. Trust in the great unfolding of life. It is hard to know what someone else might need to learn for their greater development. We have enough to do just figuring out our own lessons! Beyond that, be simple, be beautiful, be LOVE and it'll all work out.

Emptiness

In the 17 years I’ve been teaching yoga, the most common complaint I’ve heard is that it seems impossible to develop and stick with a yoga practice. The main reason for that is that it seems people have filled their lives to capacity and perhaps a little beyond, to just shy of a breaking point – so that life is lived in a super stressed-out, high anxiety, push and shove sort of way, cramming as much as possible into every day, spreading one life very thinly over as broad an area as possible. It seems there is some kind of nobility or honor in MORE: doing more, having more, taking on more, accomplishing more, knowing more, talking more, collecting more stuff, more friends, more responsibilities, more demands, more problems, more music, more work. What most people seem to crave is more time, more peace and calm, more centering, more relaxing, more joy. But the move to fill every corner of space and time continues. Tapas (austerity, intensity) invites us to empty out. “Austerity”, in this sense, refers not to extreme austerities but of living simply. Clearing out your mind, your heart, your garage, your closets, your clutter, your calendar to make room for yoga – for a more affirming lifestyle, that is the intention behind tapas. If you’ve ever spent a day or even a few hours cleaning an over-stuffed closet or a garage full of junk, you know the wonderful feeling you get when the job is complete. All joking about the backache aside, there is normally a surge of energy that comes after emptying out a space or organizing a room or closet. Everything you have takes energy. Just sitting in a room with your stuff takes energy. You are seeing it. You have to look through it to find the stuff you are looking for. You have to clean around it. It is in your space. Start to discriminate about what you invite into your space. Just because you received it for a gift doesn’t mean you have to look at it for the next 20 years. Sometimes I use things like that (gifts) in a more seasonal way; bringing them out at certain times of the year, in memory of the giver, in celebration. That way I can rotate some of the things I have. If you want to invite yoga into your life, and you find you are struggling to keep your practice, try to clear out a place for it, and I don’t mean a small corner of a table filled with junk. I mean CLEAR OUT the riff raff. Otherwise, you are filling your life with a gesture that essentially says that what you really want to invest in is STUFF, BUSYNESS, WORLDLY PURSUITS.

You always start where you are. Look around. You can start anywhere – any little gesture of releasing, of clearing, will have its affect on you. Go ahead and try it. You will start to enjoy it so much you will want to keep going. That’s a good thing because tapas is not something you just do once and it is done. Like every aspect of yoga practice, it will become an ongoing part of your life – looking around to see what needs your attention. Shoveling STUFF out the back door as fast as you can, watching in amazement as it continues its march into your life, right through the front door! We live in the land of abundance – the land of plenty. There is no shortage of STUFF. Actually, some of the poorest people I’ve known in the USA have the largest piles of stuff. So if you want to make room for true prosperity and wealth of the most lasting kind, simplify your life. Start now and continue regularly to observe everything, including the flow of thought and feeling. What you take in, not only food and beverages, but also ideas, images, books and magazines, movies, videos, TV programs, it all becomes a part of you. And just like everything else, it can move you in the direction of peace and truth, of awareness and understanding or away from it. It can help you to understand and thrive, or it can add to the proverbial clutter of mind, emotion, and environment. Learn to discriminate. Learn to listen quietly, to watch, to see, and to say no thank you. This is not selfishness. This is managing your energy so you are not drained or distracted. It carves you out so you can be more fully alive, more fully present, much more available than ever before. It carves you out so, like a fine violin, you will resonate with beautiful vibrations.