I just taught my 6th class yesterday. When is the next class? I still honestly don't know. First off, I'm sick and have no voice, and second, having no chauffeur in upper middle class Manila + über-protective parents = immobility. So here I am at home, not that I'm regretting it: I'm getting to rest. Good Lord, who ever knew it's so tiring to teach a class? I haven't gotten to that point where energy between me and my students are shared and not just supplied by me.
So I taught my 4th class last Sunday--my biggest one yet: 40 people, and of those 40, 6 being newbies. I briefed them about the yoga before class, as well: my first briefing, ohmygosh. Anyway, so I taught--on the platform: my first time to. Hoo boy, was it different--but in a good way: I could feel the energy, though it was agreeably a lot more than my usual 8 student-class. Then things started dropping in triangle, and dropping fast: students were dropping like flies. And I panicked, then my voice went down, and along with it my command of the class. Argh. After class, an attending teacher (actually, my teacher) told me my class was better than he thought it would be. [The next day, he told me my timing was good, and I had energy, but it's still trapped in all my insecurities and lack of confidence. So he had me practicing entering a class and throwing my voice across the room. Eek: the latter was particularly hard!] However, that night, my studio director called and told me he heard it was a horrible class, so I still have to do mock classes. That was a blow; I thought I was doing better: I had been working on my dialog; I guess the client just didn't think I was up to snuff. When I shared this with a friend, a newbie who had taken that class to show her support, she said the class was ok, and said not to mind that particular criticism: as a newbie, I'm allowed to make mistakes more than usual! I guess. But it left a sour taste in my mouth regardless. When I went to class the next day, I was still exhausted from that class: is that normal?!
My next (5th) class was last Wednesday. The day before, I had already been given a copy of the keys to the studio so as to open the studio early, for a 6:30 am class. Also, I practiced the full dialog the night before, which made me feel more secure. More friends came to show their support, this time fellow yoginis who'd already been practicing for a while. And this class was good: everyone said do afterwards. I was so happy. They said I smiled more, breathed more, relaxed more. Probably it's because the director isn't here, my students joked. I think that getting me to mill around the students helped a lot, too.
The most recent one was yesterday. Even before this class started, I was not feeling well. The night before, I barely practiced the dialog, I was so tired. So yesterday, my energy was off: I felt it, but I soldiered on. Afterwards, my students didn't say anything, though some said that though last Wednesday's was better, this one was still better than last week's. Another student added to review the floor postures, as my standing series is already pretty good and I'm already pretty comfortable with it. Good feedback. Will do that tomorrow. I just decided to take the rest of yesterday off, as well as today. My voice is just on and off, but my throat hurts like hell. All my joints seem to hurt, and my head feels like a huge weight on my shoulders. My director's asking for help to teach a class in his other studio on Monday, but in my condition, plus no transportation to get there, I don't think that's possible at this point. Still, as much as it's lately gotten a bit difficult for me to start the ball of teaching rolling, so to speak, though I still get a bit tongue-tied in class, and though it's been sucking the energy out of me, I love doing it. It is a beautiful, liberating, life-changing process, or experience, whatever you want to call it. Actually, can it even be named? It's so huge, to the point it's beyond explaining. And that whole...thing....I love it, am terrified, humbled, and exhilarated by it.
'Til the next class, then.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Tiptoe-Teaching
Watched Pride and Prejudice with my mom last night, the newer adaptation with Keira Knightley. OhmyGod I was swooning and squealing all over the place. Good thing we were watching it over cable television--the few moments I watch television. Nice, nice, nice. I'd like to get my own Mr. Darcy, in the future, oh pretty please.
I've taught twice now--my first class with my studio director, which really was a blur, but amidst tons and tons of cotton stuffing in my head, and then my second class, this time at 6:30 am. 6:30. six. thirty. in. the morning. 6 frickin' 30?! Ugh. Woke up at 4 to prepare (having slept at 2 trying to review as much dialog as I could), then my director came by at 5:40 to bring me to the studio. Manila is a very car-dependent metropolis, having a lousy public transport system and little to no pedestrian areas. I miss that freedom I had when I was in Hawaii. Here, I don't drive, so I have to be chauffeured around. My studio director was nice enough to do it for me to go to class this week (well, he IS attending, also to listen to my dialog and see how I conduct myself as a teacher), but he said no more for next week. Understandable.
When we got to the studio, he told me when to turn on and shut off the heaters. Then he told me to keep my dialog because none of it would enter this late in the game. Ack. I was getting so nervous. I checked the sign-up sheet, and whereas I heard the night before I was to have 20 students, turns out I had 8, plus with my director, 9. I felt better, but still, I was nervous: I don't want to keep them hanging, I want to give them a good class. But anyway, the show must go on.
Class was 1 hour and 45 minutes, abouts. My students (formerly my peers, ohmygosh!) clapped for me as I ended Kapalabhati breathing. :) I forgot to say namaste as I left the room, and my fellow classmates-now-students ribbed me about it after. They also told me to breathe! ;) More professionally now, though, my studio director told me it was a 200% improvement from my 1st class with him (yey!) However, he said my voice was still uniform: gotta texturize. And teach with authority. He said to act it, then eventually embody it, which will come in time. Then I was mixing the hands with the feet. Again, dialog, dialog, dialog. AND keep the timing: look at my watch. But huge improvement, nonetheless.
My studio director taught class afterwards, a class I took, but aside from that, I haven't been practicing much, only twice so far this week--still so tired, and so worried about dialog (that I do everything else before it, go figure)! But I think next week, I should up my practice to at least 5 times a week already.
Did the monthly household groceries, which took a while, so gotta study now. I have less than 15 hours to tomorrow's class. Gotta focus on timing now, and of course, dialog, dialog, dialog: always.
I've taught twice now--my first class with my studio director, which really was a blur, but amidst tons and tons of cotton stuffing in my head, and then my second class, this time at 6:30 am. 6:30. six. thirty. in. the morning. 6 frickin' 30?! Ugh. Woke up at 4 to prepare (having slept at 2 trying to review as much dialog as I could), then my director came by at 5:40 to bring me to the studio. Manila is a very car-dependent metropolis, having a lousy public transport system and little to no pedestrian areas. I miss that freedom I had when I was in Hawaii. Here, I don't drive, so I have to be chauffeured around. My studio director was nice enough to do it for me to go to class this week (well, he IS attending, also to listen to my dialog and see how I conduct myself as a teacher), but he said no more for next week. Understandable.
When we got to the studio, he told me when to turn on and shut off the heaters. Then he told me to keep my dialog because none of it would enter this late in the game. Ack. I was getting so nervous. I checked the sign-up sheet, and whereas I heard the night before I was to have 20 students, turns out I had 8, plus with my director, 9. I felt better, but still, I was nervous: I don't want to keep them hanging, I want to give them a good class. But anyway, the show must go on.
Class was 1 hour and 45 minutes, abouts. My students (formerly my peers, ohmygosh!) clapped for me as I ended Kapalabhati breathing. :) I forgot to say namaste as I left the room, and my fellow classmates-now-students ribbed me about it after. They also told me to breathe! ;) More professionally now, though, my studio director told me it was a 200% improvement from my 1st class with him (yey!) However, he said my voice was still uniform: gotta texturize. And teach with authority. He said to act it, then eventually embody it, which will come in time. Then I was mixing the hands with the feet. Again, dialog, dialog, dialog. AND keep the timing: look at my watch. But huge improvement, nonetheless.
My studio director taught class afterwards, a class I took, but aside from that, I haven't been practicing much, only twice so far this week--still so tired, and so worried about dialog (that I do everything else before it, go figure)! But I think next week, I should up my practice to at least 5 times a week already.
Did the monthly household groceries, which took a while, so gotta study now. I have less than 15 hours to tomorrow's class. Gotta focus on timing now, and of course, dialog, dialog, dialog: always.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Back Home
I've been home four days now, and it feels familiar but...different, like an old suit that doesn't fit quite right anymore. A lot has happened while I wasn't here, just as a lot happened to me while I was away.
So I'm back home--in tropical Manila. My books and various leftover unpacked stuff are still on the couch and other various spaces in my room. Still jetlagged, still tired, in my jammies 'til noon, that sort of thing. But even as I'm here, I wistfully recall the heat (from 105-145 ºF++ or 41-63ºC++), the sweat (all 300++ people's) and yes, even the stinky cat-piss carpet; the ubiquitous ABC stores, the delicious Hawaiian papayas, eating grapefruit like an orange--for the first time(!), Starbucks' soy chai lattés, loads of Japanese products to my heart's content--especially yomogi/kusa (mugwort) mochi/daifuku (with recipes when I get ambitious or desperate enough), and fresh bubble teas--none of those icky powdered stuff! I miss Bikram's humor and unpredictability, being able to walk almost everywhere, and the friends I made along the way.
Taught my first class yesterday, but only with my studio director, as the other teacher had backed out. But he (my studio director) said that's ok. Had a lot of spaces in between my dialog: a 1 hour 50 minute class!, but again he said that's pretty normal (?); however, he said for me to continue studying the dialog. Now I know what teachers meant when they said that the dialog is my best friend; it really should be--it's the only stable thing to rely on! I will continue to do mock classes next week, and hopefully by the week after next, I will be teaching bigger classes. Huh; then I took class with him afterward: right now, my back and thighs hurt like hell, haha.
Made a new account on FaceBook to connect to my fellow yogis, so I'm considering deleting my Friendster and/or MySpace, 'coz I believe that one can only properly manage so many accounts. Been playing with my dogs--God, how I missed that! and noticed that I'm not as physically stern with them, but even with less effort, they already follow my command. I also noticed I'm more assertive outside (whut). This is so weird. Perhaps Bikram really is right: we go home completely different people. Maybe not completely, but pretty much! Then on FaceBook, today's Horoscope read as such: "You've made quite a bit of progress toward an important goal, but you're really tempted to slip back into old patterns. Don't start backsliding now." Mustn't backslide. Must will to continue developing, continue practicing, continue teaching. As they say, the real training starts after training. Someone said, "It's called yoga practice, not yoga perfect." Indeed, the dialog is my real companion now.
So I'm back home--in tropical Manila. My books and various leftover unpacked stuff are still on the couch and other various spaces in my room. Still jetlagged, still tired, in my jammies 'til noon, that sort of thing. But even as I'm here, I wistfully recall the heat (from 105-145 ºF++ or 41-63ºC++), the sweat (all 300++ people's) and yes, even the stinky cat-piss carpet; the ubiquitous ABC stores, the delicious Hawaiian papayas, eating grapefruit like an orange--for the first time(!), Starbucks' soy chai lattés, loads of Japanese products to my heart's content--especially yomogi/kusa (mugwort) mochi/daifuku (with recipes when I get ambitious or desperate enough), and fresh bubble teas--none of those icky powdered stuff! I miss Bikram's humor and unpredictability, being able to walk almost everywhere, and the friends I made along the way.
Taught my first class yesterday, but only with my studio director, as the other teacher had backed out. But he (my studio director) said that's ok. Had a lot of spaces in between my dialog: a 1 hour 50 minute class!, but again he said that's pretty normal (?); however, he said for me to continue studying the dialog. Now I know what teachers meant when they said that the dialog is my best friend; it really should be--it's the only stable thing to rely on! I will continue to do mock classes next week, and hopefully by the week after next, I will be teaching bigger classes. Huh; then I took class with him afterward: right now, my back and thighs hurt like hell, haha.
Made a new account on FaceBook to connect to my fellow yogis, so I'm considering deleting my Friendster and/or MySpace, 'coz I believe that one can only properly manage so many accounts. Been playing with my dogs--God, how I missed that! and noticed that I'm not as physically stern with them, but even with less effort, they already follow my command. I also noticed I'm more assertive outside (whut). This is so weird. Perhaps Bikram really is right: we go home completely different people. Maybe not completely, but pretty much! Then on FaceBook, today's Horoscope read as such: "You've made quite a bit of progress toward an important goal, but you're really tempted to slip back into old patterns. Don't start backsliding now." Mustn't backslide. Must will to continue developing, continue practicing, continue teaching. As they say, the real training starts after training. Someone said, "It's called yoga practice, not yoga perfect." Indeed, the dialog is my real companion now.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Yoga Camp Starts Now
It is the Sunday before graduation. Posture Clinic finished last Friday, with one best student from each group delivering the dialog. I did mine Thursday night, because Friday was Talent Night and I felt I wouldn't be able to focus on both. So I opted to do dialog Thursday night, amidst fatigue and a splitting headache. People were going up and winging it; I was looking at the dialog while the teacher was saying, "All you have to do is look at the bodies and you'll know what to do; it doesn't matter if you don't know the dialog verbatim, what matters is the courage to go up there and deliver it and tell them what to do!" I felt I had to do it; this was it. And I did; I was the last one for the night. I was saying it from the back corner, then she [the teacher] told me to jump up and down, shake my hands then say it. I did and my voice got stronger, faster. I hardly said the whole dialog, but most of the keywords were there, and most importantly, I taught it confidently. At least that's what my friends said. Besides, the teacher said so, too. But I was shaking when it was over; but I was told that's good?! Though I'm glad I did; then I was able to focus on Talent Night! Fast forwarding to Talent Night, I sang Cynthia Alexander's Emptyhanded, and until yesterday, people were coming up to me and saying how beautiful the words were, how sweet my voice was, and how brave I was to go up there So I say thank you; I am just so glad it affected them the way it did; singing to me is to evoke emotion, to touch others. And so I hope I can do the same with teaching, but of course with more energy--soon. Had CPR training after our Saturday class with Craig, and the infamous Awkward Contest (I went as far as a minute, but that was it). So exhausted, have no idea why, but after going to the group barbecue, the group love won me over. Went dancing last night, as well--something I normally do NOT do. Surprisingly, I loved it, I think mostly because most of us fellow yogis were there, dancing even if we didn't know how to dance, but just for the pure joy of it, of life. And that made it wonderful. Sunday of Week 9 is upon us, before graduation, before going home, before we take our tentative steps into the pool of Bikram Teacherhood: the calm before the bubble breaks into reality. I'm savoring it for now.
Emptyhanded by Cynthia Alexander --Tuning: CGCGCD
Why, why do you worry? We are not born nor do we die; What is happening happens for the best, what will happen happens for the best
We have come emptyhanded, we will go emptyhanded
What have [you] lost that you are weeping; what have you found that you have lost? What have you built that has been broken? You have not anything
What you have, you got from here; what was given you, was given here; what you took, you took from here; what you gave, you gave unto here
We have come emptyhanded we will go emptyhanded, emptyhanded
Why, why toil for sorrow; and what have we to fear? What is happening happens for the best, what will happen happens for the best
We have come emptyhanded, we will go emptyhanded
What you have, you got from here; what was given you, was given here; what you took, you took from here; what you gave, you gave unto here
We have come emptyhanded we will go emptyhanded; we have come emptyhanded, we will go emptyhanded, we have come emptyhanded, we will go emptyhanded
Emptyhanded, emptyhanded
Emptyhanded by Cynthia Alexander --Tuning: CGCGCD
Why, why do you worry? We are not born nor do we die; What is happening happens for the best, what will happen happens for the best
We have come emptyhanded, we will go emptyhanded
What have [you] lost that you are weeping; what have you found that you have lost? What have you built that has been broken? You have not anything
What you have, you got from here; what was given you, was given here; what you took, you took from here; what you gave, you gave unto here
We have come emptyhanded we will go emptyhanded, emptyhanded
Why, why toil for sorrow; and what have we to fear? What is happening happens for the best, what will happen happens for the best
We have come emptyhanded, we will go emptyhanded
What you have, you got from here; what was given you, was given here; what you took, you took from here; what you gave, you gave unto here
We have come emptyhanded we will go emptyhanded; we have come emptyhanded, we will go emptyhanded, we have come emptyhanded, we will go emptyhanded
Emptyhanded, emptyhanded
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Week 8.5 and counting
It's officially Thursday but we just finished Wednesday, so-called "the hump of the week"--the hump of week 8 to week 9, ohmygosh! Still have two postures to memorize by Friday, specifically Head to Knee with Stretching later today and Spine Twist by tomorrow. Then there's Talent Night on Friday. I was only given four (4) minutes, so I can only sing one (1) song. By consensus, it's to be Cynthia Alexander's Emptyhanded. Oh Lordy Lord; give me strength to finish the dialog well and to sing the song with finesse! As Joel Pierre from Philly says, "Practice, practice, practice!" Besides, Bikram says "negative thoughts are nine times more powerful than positive thoughts," so gotta crank up all that positivity!
Also met Ren Soriano, one of the guys from HQ, who turns out to be a fellow Flip! As in he spent his first 15 years in Manila and was born there; I even know where he went to school! Coolness. Anyway, only Joani Nuñez from Houston and Kat Kelly-Chung from Columbia have responded about mentoring, though I'd prefer the former as she is one of the more senior teachers. But Ren, after listening to me during camel, said, "She's too sweet, like sampaguita." During the break, he said he has to train me to be more bitchy. (Fred's term for BITCH= Being in Total Control of Herself; niiice) Then he [Ron] said, " But how will I train you if you won't be in LA?" If there's a spot in HQ to do whatever, or even if I have to moonlight preferably in a bookstore, YES I want to go! It's LA: I have family and friends; it should be doable! Nothing's solid yet, though: gotta talk to Ren more, hopefully at a haircut session this Sunday, a bit $ of course; he's supposed to be very good, having trained with a certain Jonathan. Heck I know. But if this will help networking, then why not? As Bikram says, "You have nothing to lose; you had nothing to begin with." Indeed.
1.5 weeks to go. Breaking out, tired, but with a little care and with our happy smiling faces, we should emerge as butterflies, albeit at the bottom of the Bikram Yoga Totem Pole, but who knows, in time, slowly coming to the top. As group 1 says, "Ganbatte!" We can do it! We have no choice. Isn't that great? :)
Also met Ren Soriano, one of the guys from HQ, who turns out to be a fellow Flip! As in he spent his first 15 years in Manila and was born there; I even know where he went to school! Coolness. Anyway, only Joani Nuñez from Houston and Kat Kelly-Chung from Columbia have responded about mentoring, though I'd prefer the former as she is one of the more senior teachers. But Ren, after listening to me during camel, said, "She's too sweet, like sampaguita." During the break, he said he has to train me to be more bitchy. (Fred's term for BITCH= Being in Total Control of Herself; niiice) Then he [Ron] said, " But how will I train you if you won't be in LA?" If there's a spot in HQ to do whatever, or even if I have to moonlight preferably in a bookstore, YES I want to go! It's LA: I have family and friends; it should be doable! Nothing's solid yet, though: gotta talk to Ren more, hopefully at a haircut session this Sunday, a bit $ of course; he's supposed to be very good, having trained with a certain Jonathan. Heck I know. But if this will help networking, then why not? As Bikram says, "You have nothing to lose; you had nothing to begin with." Indeed.
1.5 weeks to go. Breaking out, tired, but with a little care and with our happy smiling faces, we should emerge as butterflies, albeit at the bottom of the Bikram Yoga Totem Pole, but who knows, in time, slowly coming to the top. As group 1 says, "Ganbatte!" We can do it! We have no choice. Isn't that great? :)
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Week 7, Represent!
So it's Week 7, soon to be Week 8: should I whoop or should I wail? But going back, I had my birthday the weekend of Week 5. It was great: I was the only one who had a birthday that day, and Rajashree read my name for everyone to sing happy birthday to--imagine 300+ people singing for you. It's a compendium of all the missed birthdays I had in school (my birthday would always be during summer vacation): so worth it. Then my parents also came over during the Thursday of Week 5, and the weekend when I was to practice Trikanasana! Of course I didn't practice it while I was with them. So I had to struggle to catch up with postures in week 6. But it was so great having them here, yet emotionally wrenching, too--seeing them arrive, and seeing them leave: it's tough. And partly because of that, or maybe mainly(!), Week 6 was THE rough week for me. The Monday of Week 6, after crying through class, losing control of my breath, then having to leave the room to use the loo FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME (I never leave the room!), I went up to discover my laundry that I had put in before class GONE. Hoo boy. So I cried some more. I told Mom and Dad, and they were so supportive, even buying me extra clothes! Plus this time away from them, I think it's made us value each other more; I actually, truly hugged my Dad for the first time, without reservation, when they visited. Plus I'm a bit more open to them now, revealing my emotions, my frantic side, that they never really see. Ok, I'm tearing again now (must be the yoga!), but Bikram's right: this teacher training will make us new persons, at the same time value our relationships especially with our families more. So Week 6 was tough: by losing that weekend intended for Triangle, etc. to time with my parents, I was constantly completely exhausted, plus lagging behind dialog to being one of the last to say it, really struggling to do it--well, of course: my inner super-critic wouldn't even let me try otherwise. So the weekend to Week 7, I decided to take it easy. Didn't go beyond errands, then went to the supermarket with a groupmate. On my way back, an odd thing happened: as I was passing our floor's laundry room, lo and behold, my missing clothes were there. Oh my God! What good fortune! Thank you, Lord! Then I had my first dinner with groupmates, and that was fun, having a first gossip session, as well! Girl power! Sunday, I took my hopefully last make-up class, then afterwards took my first nap for this entire training so far. An uncle and aunt just arrived from abroad so they took me under their wing for Sunday afternoon. Went to mass, too: Mom would be so relieved. So Week 7 rolled in better. Then Bikram started lecturing again for three nights, and those nights have been taking their toll. Dialog recitation has also been speeding up, and I've still been going up last...that is, until the climax of Cobra Pose. Everyone was required to do it and finish it by that afternoon. AND I WASN'T READY, at all. I wasn't able to do my memorization technique that day, so I was completely unprepared. Obvious or not, I hate being unprepared. I am Ms. Control Freak: I have to have at least something to hold on to. And this time, I was called to the bat. I was so scared and frantic I cried. But I had no choice. So I did it, and expectedly, my dialog was nowhere near perfect, but I did it. Our teacher-facilitator Joel from Philadelphia was especially great. He even corrected our postures hands-on and told us why it's wrong and how to correct ourselves. But after I delivered Cobra as best as I could, he told me I have good projection, so now I just have to practice the dialog and believe in myself. Ever since then, that sheer fear of ill-preparedness drove me to recite sooner, do what it takes! The next day, I went up during the middle, and Lynn Whitlow was our facilitator. She's great; I pray I can mentor with her when training is over. She told me to get loud, get crazy! But that's just hard. The night after, I delivered Dhanurasana, and I just freaked. Fred, the French facilitator told me, "Get out of your head; ask others for feedback then build on that." That inner critic which prevents me from even trying is kicking and screaming under a straitjacket. But I have to let it go, and say it with confidence. Today is now the close of Week 7. That's two weeks left to graduation (God-willing) and one week to sing in Talent Quest (of which I don't know why I signed up for)! Craig's teaching tomorrow, so gotta rest the quadriceps, yikes! Visiting teachers have especially given us better practices, and there are more coming. I still have the weekly stuff to do--groceries, laundry and whatnot, but I also finally said uncle and booked a massage: Lord knows I need it--tight hamstrings, shoulders and back. I'm also hoping to relax a bit and watch more Miyazaki. Though we've had one classmate, Denise, go home due to serious kidney disease, dialog-wise, we're at Half-Tortoise Pose, almost done! Hopefully all we can go to is up.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Week 3
It's May 6 already, the end of the 3rd week, and 13 days to my birthday! Eek! Memorizing the dialog has been über difficult, but I think I'm just really afraid, so gotta work on that triple time, aside from another Anatomy test for tomorrow. Tried talking to visiting teachers more, but so far, I guess it's too early to say: they're non-committal (on possible help for employment). It's been difficult waking up in the morning, sometimes just being on pure auto-pilot, sometimes not knowing my name (proverbially). Training's been getting harder and harder. We're now being made to memorize the dialog more intensively, but it's been tough, what with living arrangements--even if we live just a few floors on top. And I've never lived on my own and had to fend for myself from almost scratch, laundry and food especially. Food's been basically pre-cooked cold food, usually tofu salads, seaweed, and marinated vegetables, or frozen microwave-ready food, with fresh fruit on the side, and peanut butter in a pinch. On a lighter note, I can basically eat whatever I want, and just that. I've discovered ACAï, a berry from the Amazon richer in antioxidants than blueberries by at least 10 times! It's so good, I have at least one smoothie of it every week at the mall. They even have sherbets, but I still like the fresh smoothies best. And GOJI berries, another powerful antioxidant. Then there's BUBBLE TEA: I know the best place that DOESN'T USE POWDER. Also discovered KEFIR, something like yogurt. When I drink it for breakfast with cereal, ZHOOM I go to the loo. It's more effective to me than yogurt and doesn't hurt my stomach lining. There's also a blue cheese I found at the supermarket made from raw unpasteurized milk. It's the best blue cheese I've ever had, something like cambozola but rawer, sharper, and NOT SO SMELLY. But laundry. OhmyGOD laundry. Just think of a room with 320 sweaty people, and a sweaty carpet, in 100+ ºF heat, twice a day, everyday, with 1.5-2 hours max break after to eat, bathe, do laundry (otherwise the clothes will get infested with bacteria--I learned the hard way) before lectures until 1 or 1:30 am, to wake up at 6:30 am of the same day. And then we have to figure out when we can study in between. That doesn't even cover our emotional states, our hang-ups, our fears, our high potential for illness, our issues and concerns. But I'm just trying to trust the process.
Luke, one of our teacher-trainers, says it so eloquently:
blessings overflow
i had a few thoughts from my experience with you this week.
connection and attachment are definitely
not the same thing.
words with no peace mean nothing. peace with no words leave you little recourse with which to share as a teacher. please learn your dialogue. please be as willing to let go of it as you are to hold on to it. only
with that willingness comes proficiency, and ultimately mastery.
learning is like a baby kitten in this way. you cannot hold it too tight, or you will squeeze the life out of it.
asana is the same thing. you have to let it happen as much as you make it happen.
life is a really long asana.
it does not take a strong person to hold on to the roots and branches at
the edge of the river to keep from falling in. it takes a strong person
to let go and be willing to risk drowning for the sake of moving with
the flow.
please be willing to be someone you never imagined.
when you become that person, even if it took all of your blood and sweat and
tears and vomit, be ready to let go of it and become someone else.
understand that if you become something, it was always there anyways.
if you realize something, it is the same.
facts are all around you. truth is all inside of you. it is what you are made of. you just have to admit it.
you see in the world what you be in the world.
excuses keep us from doing things. inspiration gives us permission to do them anyways.
please embrace that which challenges you the most, as it is also what offers you the most.
it takes serious work to have fun sometimes.
power and force are easily attained and noticed. they are also as easily
lost. both combined are nothing compared to the immeasurable,inconceivable possibility of energy. energy is as infinite as your ability to imagine it. it is also as lasting.
energy is not a thing you have. energy is a choice you make.
it is never too late, too old, too sick, to make that choice.
every second holds the possibility of choice, and therefore the possibility of the infinite nature of energy.
the present self is the most empowered, energized version of oneself. the
present self is not dominated by the patterns of the past, nor the
fears of the future. the present self may find lessons in the past, and
embrace the potential and space the future holds, while still abiding
in the bliss that is what is happening now.
the ablest teacher of presence we have is our breathing.
at 3 am, sleep can be pretty great. almost as great as the moon i forsake the sleeping for.
namaste...
Indeed. Namaste.
Luke, one of our teacher-trainers, says it so eloquently:
blessings overflow
i had a few thoughts from my experience with you this week.
connection and attachment are definitely
not the same thing.
words with no peace mean nothing. peace with no words leave you little recourse with which to share as a teacher. please learn your dialogue. please be as willing to let go of it as you are to hold on to it. only
with that willingness comes proficiency, and ultimately mastery.
learning is like a baby kitten in this way. you cannot hold it too tight, or you will squeeze the life out of it.
asana is the same thing. you have to let it happen as much as you make it happen.
life is a really long asana.
it does not take a strong person to hold on to the roots and branches at
the edge of the river to keep from falling in. it takes a strong person
to let go and be willing to risk drowning for the sake of moving with
the flow.
please be willing to be someone you never imagined.
when you become that person, even if it took all of your blood and sweat and
tears and vomit, be ready to let go of it and become someone else.
understand that if you become something, it was always there anyways.
if you realize something, it is the same.
facts are all around you. truth is all inside of you. it is what you are made of. you just have to admit it.
you see in the world what you be in the world.
excuses keep us from doing things. inspiration gives us permission to do them anyways.
please embrace that which challenges you the most, as it is also what offers you the most.
it takes serious work to have fun sometimes.
power and force are easily attained and noticed. they are also as easily
lost. both combined are nothing compared to the immeasurable,inconceivable possibility of energy. energy is as infinite as your ability to imagine it. it is also as lasting.
energy is not a thing you have. energy is a choice you make.
it is never too late, too old, too sick, to make that choice.
every second holds the possibility of choice, and therefore the possibility of the infinite nature of energy.
the present self is the most empowered, energized version of oneself. the
present self is not dominated by the patterns of the past, nor the
fears of the future. the present self may find lessons in the past, and
embrace the potential and space the future holds, while still abiding
in the bliss that is what is happening now.
the ablest teacher of presence we have is our breathing.
at 3 am, sleep can be pretty great. almost as great as the moon i forsake the sleeping for.
namaste...
Indeed. Namaste.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Coincidence or Fate?
There are 315 of us trainees. Among the multitude, I found a friend--who turned out to be Frank's student! Her name is Wancy. Then I practiced beside another of his students this morning--Natalie from White Rock? She in turn introduced me to two other students of his--Elena and Gena. OhmyGod, Frank, you brought us together.
Back from the book signing. What a circus. Waited for 4 hours. It's a good thing I had the good sense to eat beforehand--but not eat right: tomato florentine (with cheese-filled ravioli) soup, my beloved chai soy latté and a triple chocolate cookie. OhmyGoddelicious cookie, but I think it proved too much; that and 300+ people= headache. But finally got my books signed (might sell/give one away), my postcards sent, my (Aloha) sushi wish fulfilled, my chocolate & chai latté cravings fulfilled, my david+goliath fixation satisfied, and my Shirokiya curiosity appeased, which was also steps away from the Apple store, so that hit two birds with one stone! Even found the exact copy of Bhagavad Gita I was looking for! Now I am dreaming about a Tokidoki Le Sport Sac bag, but $$$$. Aiiyayay. Maybe for my birthday? Eek. But seriously, I think I should explore the mall beyond Barnes and Noble, haha, aside from a lunch with a family friend on Sunday, and the study session on Saturday for the Anatomy test on Monday.
Looking forward to the weekend!
Back from the book signing. What a circus. Waited for 4 hours. It's a good thing I had the good sense to eat beforehand--but not eat right: tomato florentine (with cheese-filled ravioli) soup, my beloved chai soy latté and a triple chocolate cookie. OhmyGoddelicious cookie, but I think it proved too much; that and 300+ people= headache. But finally got my books signed (might sell/give one away), my postcards sent, my (Aloha) sushi wish fulfilled, my chocolate & chai latté cravings fulfilled, my david+goliath fixation satisfied, and my Shirokiya curiosity appeased, which was also steps away from the Apple store, so that hit two birds with one stone! Even found the exact copy of Bhagavad Gita I was looking for! Now I am dreaming about a Tokidoki Le Sport Sac bag, but $$$$. Aiiyayay. Maybe for my birthday? Eek. But seriously, I think I should explore the mall beyond Barnes and Noble, haha, aside from a lunch with a family friend on Sunday, and the study session on Saturday for the Anatomy test on Monday.
Looking forward to the weekend!
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Training: Weeks One and Two, So Far.
I have only taken a few pictures so far, but you can check them at this site: http://therizabella.multiply.com/photos/album/4
The first 2 days, I was quite homesick, but after talking to the staff teacher Kyoko, it felt good to get it out. Now, even with laundry-both washing (machines on every floor but a bit $) AND drying, food prep/management, living with a stranger, and what-have-you, or maybe moreso because of them, I'm getting better at keeping home away from my mind. It comes every now and then of course, but at this point, I think I can handle it.
Attire in Hawaii, as an FYI, is pretty casual. Long-sleeved polos are pretty rare, if seen at all; jeans are ok (Craig wears 'em), but Bikram says he hates them besides anything green 'coz they remind him of filthy American hippies. Outside, I still see people wearing jeans, and short-sleeved polos (more or Hawaiiana floral shirts); shorts and shirts are cool, too. And Crocs are like the biggest thing here, ohmyGOD everyone's wearing them, I kid you not.
Roomie and I were off to a bit of a cold-war start. We keep to our own respective space, even while in a bed together (king-sized; pillow-wall in between), and we're both neat and conscientious (I think), but there's that feeling of awkwardness and trying-not-to-step-on-each-other's-toes, you know? But lately, things have been looking up. And I hope that trend continues--in posture clinic and with my roomie, especially.
There's also been a sale here of Bikram merchandise, care of Barbara. She's nice, and we've become a bit close, wahaha. I call her Miss Barbara (Filipino sense of propriety?), and that endeared me to her.
Let's see: We had our first 1 yoga class with Bikram on April 16 in the evening. Most of us, myself included, dropped like flies. I swear. I soon realized I have to have a little sugar/fiber/healthy carb in my system before I go to class, preferably about half a banana an hour before. The next day April 17, class with Bikram again in the afternoon (morning class with Rajashree canceled because of a maintenance issue). April 18-25 we have been having doubles. The first morning with Rajashree, I ignored a twinge in my left ankle when I did toe stand. That night, in Bikram's class, it manifested itself starting with awkward pose, then garurasana, dandayamana janushirasana, and dandayamana dhanurasana. The next day, my other ankle started hurting as well. Tiger Balm has become my best friend, plus the clove smell does make me happy, too. Asked Luke about it, and he said just to do the postures as correctly and as much as I can, and what do you know, he's right, I'm getting better, slowly.
We've had Antonia, Craig, Bikram, Rajashree, Luke and Emmy as teachers so far. Antonia I didn't get much energy from, plus it seemed she was just throwing her voice out. Craig teaches a truly tough class. Bikram is a one-man show: an awesome guy so far. Rajashree's mystic healing love personified. Luke is surfer-cool, and then without us knowing it, is already pushing us to our limits. And Emmy is...Emmy is classy, elegant, gentle, but firm, the proverbial iron will within a silk glove. She's so cool.
As for posture clinic, it helped to see others going with similar issues I've been having. I finally plucked up the courage and delivered mine last Friday. Ever since I introduced myself, Bikram has commended me on my English and for posture clinic, he said it again. "You sure you not born here?" or something like that. I've made some friends, as well. It's the 2nd week, so that may change, but I am grateful to some who were open enough to practice the dialog with me. Plus seeing people recite it and reciting it with them from the back, eventually doing so from memory, as Craig told us to do (aside from doing it with bodies in sight and mind), as well as the if-they-can-do-it-so-can-I mentality helped a lot. I think I did pretty well. But thank God that's done; now to practice Pada-Hastasana and Backward Bend. With Ardha Chandrasana over and done with yesterday, postcards done, and this post underway, then laundry, dishes, food and sleep management and dealing with all kinds of people daily issues, I think I can finally move on to daily Anatomy review and Dialog momorization. Gotta do it soon! Book signing for Bikram's new book tonight, which means earlier night for us and more time to do stuff. I have every intent to use it. So signing off for now!
The first 2 days, I was quite homesick, but after talking to the staff teacher Kyoko, it felt good to get it out. Now, even with laundry-both washing (machines on every floor but a bit $) AND drying, food prep/management, living with a stranger, and what-have-you, or maybe moreso because of them, I'm getting better at keeping home away from my mind. It comes every now and then of course, but at this point, I think I can handle it.
Attire in Hawaii, as an FYI, is pretty casual. Long-sleeved polos are pretty rare, if seen at all; jeans are ok (Craig wears 'em), but Bikram says he hates them besides anything green 'coz they remind him of filthy American hippies. Outside, I still see people wearing jeans, and short-sleeved polos (more or Hawaiiana floral shirts); shorts and shirts are cool, too. And Crocs are like the biggest thing here, ohmyGOD everyone's wearing them, I kid you not.
Roomie and I were off to a bit of a cold-war start. We keep to our own respective space, even while in a bed together (king-sized; pillow-wall in between), and we're both neat and conscientious (I think), but there's that feeling of awkwardness and trying-not-to-step-on-each-other's-toes, you know? But lately, things have been looking up. And I hope that trend continues--in posture clinic and with my roomie, especially.
There's also been a sale here of Bikram merchandise, care of Barbara. She's nice, and we've become a bit close, wahaha. I call her Miss Barbara (Filipino sense of propriety?), and that endeared me to her.
Let's see: We had our first 1 yoga class with Bikram on April 16 in the evening. Most of us, myself included, dropped like flies. I swear. I soon realized I have to have a little sugar/fiber/healthy carb in my system before I go to class, preferably about half a banana an hour before. The next day April 17, class with Bikram again in the afternoon (morning class with Rajashree canceled because of a maintenance issue). April 18-25 we have been having doubles. The first morning with Rajashree, I ignored a twinge in my left ankle when I did toe stand. That night, in Bikram's class, it manifested itself starting with awkward pose, then garurasana, dandayamana janushirasana, and dandayamana dhanurasana. The next day, my other ankle started hurting as well. Tiger Balm has become my best friend, plus the clove smell does make me happy, too. Asked Luke about it, and he said just to do the postures as correctly and as much as I can, and what do you know, he's right, I'm getting better, slowly.
We've had Antonia, Craig, Bikram, Rajashree, Luke and Emmy as teachers so far. Antonia I didn't get much energy from, plus it seemed she was just throwing her voice out. Craig teaches a truly tough class. Bikram is a one-man show: an awesome guy so far. Rajashree's mystic healing love personified. Luke is surfer-cool, and then without us knowing it, is already pushing us to our limits. And Emmy is...Emmy is classy, elegant, gentle, but firm, the proverbial iron will within a silk glove. She's so cool.
As for posture clinic, it helped to see others going with similar issues I've been having. I finally plucked up the courage and delivered mine last Friday. Ever since I introduced myself, Bikram has commended me on my English and for posture clinic, he said it again. "You sure you not born here?" or something like that. I've made some friends, as well. It's the 2nd week, so that may change, but I am grateful to some who were open enough to practice the dialog with me. Plus seeing people recite it and reciting it with them from the back, eventually doing so from memory, as Craig told us to do (aside from doing it with bodies in sight and mind), as well as the if-they-can-do-it-so-can-I mentality helped a lot. I think I did pretty well. But thank God that's done; now to practice Pada-Hastasana and Backward Bend. With Ardha Chandrasana over and done with yesterday, postcards done, and this post underway, then laundry, dishes, food and sleep management and dealing with all kinds of people daily issues, I think I can finally move on to daily Anatomy review and Dialog momorization. Gotta do it soon! Book signing for Bikram's new book tonight, which means earlier night for us and more time to do stuff. I have every intent to use it. So signing off for now!
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Hawai'i Day 4, pre-Bikram
This is my first post from Hawai'i. The past days I've just been up at crazy hours, sleeping in the wee hours of the morning and waking up at the middle of the day. Yesterday and the day before that, however, I went on tours of the island and city, and watched Cirque Hawaii. I couldn't take pictures while Cirque Hawaii was going on, but I did take pictures of the island, and of city landmarks.
Other than that, I also met new friends in a nearby bookstore, when I asked what the minimum wage is here (I'm trying to get a job working as a temp). R and L: They're a nice couple, retired (i.e. older), and multi-racial, which in Hawaii is nothing new, but refreshing to me, anyway. Seeing I'm a student, they bought me soup, tea, I felt I had to buy them food the next day, as well. But they're nice and helpful: they even took me to the grocery, let me use their discount card, showed me Sears, then brought me home via the bus, invariably teaching me how to ride it! We talk about the Asian language, more often than not--which takes up the whole afternoon, 'til evening. I might give them a call, see how they're doing, 'coz at this rate, I won't make it to the Bikram Yoga Class, which is kinda far away, anyway. Plus I still have to launder my clothes (and figure out how to do it). Indeed, it's different being alone--there's no one to take care of my needs, be it food (nutritious meals and NOT heavy snacks!), hygiene, laundry, even fixing the bed--housekeeping apparently won't come over unless I'm here, argh.
However, it's been a good experience so far. Like on my 2nd day, I was squinting against the sun on my way to the shopping center, and this [black] guy said, "Don't look so mean! Smile!" And when I did, he said, "That's better!" and smiled too. O_o Or yesterday, on my way (supposedly, but in the end, I didn't find it, eating at a -pricey!- Thai restaurant instead) to Coconut Café and Ruffage Natural Foods, these vegan-friendly, organic eateries, I helped this nearly-blind old man up to a bench ('coz nobody was helping him and he was struggling to get on his hands and knees a distance away, on the grass, even). Then I got a bit lost getting back to my hotel, but as my 1st tour guide said, "You can't get lost; it's an island!" And I guess he's right: I did find my way back, after all.
In a way, this is a test of my ability to be independent and self-reliant. Agh. It's hard, and I admit I tend to like staying in for the better part of the day, but I'm sure I'll learn. Along a similar vein, I have to believe in myself, have conviction, otherwise how will I be able to get others to listen to me, moreso as I've signed up to become a yoga (especially Bikram yoga) teacher?! As Baron (of Studio Ghibli's The Cat Returns) said, "Always believe in yourself. Do this and no matter where you are, you will have nothing to fear."
Thanks to the bookstore people (while I was looking for Spirited Away for a friend but watched it and ended up loving it!), I am now fascinated with Hayao Miyazaki's work! I've watched Spirited Away and The Cat Returns; now I want to watch/buy (but $$$!) Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle (especially this one), Nausicäa, and Princess Mononoke (Neil Gaiman is supposedly a collaborator in this). I also want to get the soundtracks of Spirited Away and possibly Princess Mononoke. I should try to get a job first, though.
But back to quotes. The first one is from another manga/anime cross-over addiction, Bleach, as recited by Abarai Renji. The second quote was sent to me by a friend at Easter. The first one I feel is one for times when I'd be low, while the second is to remind me why I chose my path.
We! are about to head to the battlefield!
Believe our blades will not shatter.
Believe our souls will not be cut!
Even if our steps separate,
our iron will remains solid!
Promise! Even if the ground may split,
We will come back alive to this place!
-Gotei 13 chant
"If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and the doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be." -Joseph Campbell
Other than that, I also met new friends in a nearby bookstore, when I asked what the minimum wage is here (I'm trying to get a job working as a temp). R and L: They're a nice couple, retired (i.e. older), and multi-racial, which in Hawaii is nothing new, but refreshing to me, anyway. Seeing I'm a student, they bought me soup, tea, I felt I had to buy them food the next day, as well. But they're nice and helpful: they even took me to the grocery, let me use their discount card, showed me Sears, then brought me home via the bus, invariably teaching me how to ride it! We talk about the Asian language, more often than not--which takes up the whole afternoon, 'til evening. I might give them a call, see how they're doing, 'coz at this rate, I won't make it to the Bikram Yoga Class, which is kinda far away, anyway. Plus I still have to launder my clothes (and figure out how to do it). Indeed, it's different being alone--there's no one to take care of my needs, be it food (nutritious meals and NOT heavy snacks!), hygiene, laundry, even fixing the bed--housekeeping apparently won't come over unless I'm here, argh.
However, it's been a good experience so far. Like on my 2nd day, I was squinting against the sun on my way to the shopping center, and this [black] guy said, "Don't look so mean! Smile!" And when I did, he said, "That's better!" and smiled too. O_o Or yesterday, on my way (supposedly, but in the end, I didn't find it, eating at a -pricey!- Thai restaurant instead) to Coconut Café and Ruffage Natural Foods, these vegan-friendly, organic eateries, I helped this nearly-blind old man up to a bench ('coz nobody was helping him and he was struggling to get on his hands and knees a distance away, on the grass, even). Then I got a bit lost getting back to my hotel, but as my 1st tour guide said, "You can't get lost; it's an island!" And I guess he's right: I did find my way back, after all.
In a way, this is a test of my ability to be independent and self-reliant. Agh. It's hard, and I admit I tend to like staying in for the better part of the day, but I'm sure I'll learn. Along a similar vein, I have to believe in myself, have conviction, otherwise how will I be able to get others to listen to me, moreso as I've signed up to become a yoga (especially Bikram yoga) teacher?! As Baron (of Studio Ghibli's The Cat Returns) said, "Always believe in yourself. Do this and no matter where you are, you will have nothing to fear."
Thanks to the bookstore people (while I was looking for Spirited Away for a friend but watched it and ended up loving it!), I am now fascinated with Hayao Miyazaki's work! I've watched Spirited Away and The Cat Returns; now I want to watch/buy (but $$$!) Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle (especially this one), Nausicäa, and Princess Mononoke (Neil Gaiman is supposedly a collaborator in this). I also want to get the soundtracks of Spirited Away and possibly Princess Mononoke. I should try to get a job first, though.
But back to quotes. The first one is from another manga/anime cross-over addiction, Bleach, as recited by Abarai Renji. The second quote was sent to me by a friend at Easter. The first one I feel is one for times when I'd be low, while the second is to remind me why I chose my path.
We! are about to head to the battlefield!
Believe our blades will not shatter.
Believe our souls will not be cut!
Even if our steps separate,
our iron will remains solid!
Promise! Even if the ground may split,
We will come back alive to this place!
-Gotei 13 chant
"If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and the doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be." -Joseph Campbell
Monday, April 09, 2007
This is It (Pancit)
Today's the day. I'm really leaving; no kidding. Who am I trying to convince, though: myself or the ones around me? Maybe both.
The past month, give or take, has seen me dissolve into a bundle of nerves, frayed enough this past week to have back pain, constant body cramps, loss of appetite but flatulence, nonetheless, acne, fatigue, and God knows what else--this is what I can remember. I've been so nervous, so afraid, despite being asked, "What is there to be afraid of?" and being unable to give a coherent reply. Fear's just...there, a ready companion, to warp my reasoning and judgment, to wrap its tendrils and squeeze all pleasure, all serenity out of me. I've been afraid of so many things for so long. And more often than not, I still am.
But last night, a small light of excitement has found its way, tried to beam up out of the dark knot of fear. Fear has not been quashed, but hope has found a way in. And that's always a good thing.
The past month, give or take, has seen me dissolve into a bundle of nerves, frayed enough this past week to have back pain, constant body cramps, loss of appetite but flatulence, nonetheless, acne, fatigue, and God knows what else--this is what I can remember. I've been so nervous, so afraid, despite being asked, "What is there to be afraid of?" and being unable to give a coherent reply. Fear's just...there, a ready companion, to warp my reasoning and judgment, to wrap its tendrils and squeeze all pleasure, all serenity out of me. I've been afraid of so many things for so long. And more often than not, I still am.
But last night, a small light of excitement has found its way, tried to beam up out of the dark knot of fear. Fear has not been quashed, but hope has found a way in. And that's always a good thing.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
A Good Good Read
"It was the last day of August -- an achingly beautiful, golden day when the air throbbed with cricket song and buzzed with dragonfly wings and smelled like ripening apples.
This was the sort of day you ought to be outside....To me, days like this one were holidays -- the word owes its origin to 'holy days', and I felt it a sacred duty to honour them. Even if it meant having to work till nine every night all the rest of the week, and both days of the weekend, on these brilliant, extraordinary days, we'd try to take an afternoon hike with Tess, or steal a few hours watching the birds at our favourite pond. Our friend David Carroll, a turtle expert, artist and author..., called this practice 'keeping an appointment with the season'. When the salamanders woke for their mass mating on the first warm rainy night in April, when the spotted turtles emerged from hibernation in March, on the moonlit nights when the wood turtles nest in June -- well, he just had to be there, no matter what." --pp.179-180
"Blessings, all. In each case, I hadn't found what I had hoped for or expected. Instead, I'd discovered something far more exciting or profound -- an unexpected insight, a surprise gift. And that's a pretty good working definition of a blessing. So go out into the world where your heart calls you. The blessings will come, I promise you that....I wish for you the insight to recognise the blessings as such, and sometimes this is hard. But you'll know it's a blessing if you are enriched and transformed by the experience. So be ready. There are great souls and teachers everywhere. It is your job to recognise them." --pp. 223-224
"Thank you for your great soul -- for that gaze into our hearts....Thank you for for showing us your heart -- for inviting us into such a happy heart." --p. 234
"Good, good pig. Big, good pig. Fine, fine swine. Good...good...good." --p. 183
"Christopher Hogwood knew how to relish the juicy savour of this fragrant, abundant, sweet, green world. To show us this would have been gift enough. But he showed us another truth as well. That a pig did not become bacon but lived fourteen years, pampered and adored till the day he died peacefully in his sleep -- that's proof that we need not 'be practical' all the time. We need not accept the rules that our society or species, family or fate seem to have written for us. We can choose a new way. We have the power to transform a story of sorrow into a story of healing. We can choose life over death. We can let love lead us home....one thing I know for sure: a great soul can appear among us at any time, in the form of any creature. I'm keeping my eyes open." --p. 241
All quotes are from the book "The Good Good Pig", written by Sy Montgomery. I obviously loved the book to pieces, most probably because I am an animal lover (and a fellow vegetarian!). However, for those who aren't as animal-friendly but are open to it, maybe those who like inspirational books, I highly recommend this book. As seen from the above quotes, as much as "The Good Good Pig" calls to our animal-loving compassionate hearts, it also calls to the inner child in us, never to cease being amazed, always to find something new, to be open to greatness, whether it be in an animal, a fellow human, a holy day, and so on.
To end, I leave with another quote, from p. 183:
"Some say happiness lands lightly on
you, like a butterfly. Sometimes this is so. But sometimes happiness
comes lumbering toward you, like a fat, satisfied pig -- and then
thuds, grunting, by your side."
Indeed.
This was the sort of day you ought to be outside....To me, days like this one were holidays -- the word owes its origin to 'holy days', and I felt it a sacred duty to honour them. Even if it meant having to work till nine every night all the rest of the week, and both days of the weekend, on these brilliant, extraordinary days, we'd try to take an afternoon hike with Tess, or steal a few hours watching the birds at our favourite pond. Our friend David Carroll, a turtle expert, artist and author..., called this practice 'keeping an appointment with the season'. When the salamanders woke for their mass mating on the first warm rainy night in April, when the spotted turtles emerged from hibernation in March, on the moonlit nights when the wood turtles nest in June -- well, he just had to be there, no matter what." --pp.179-180
"Blessings, all. In each case, I hadn't found what I had hoped for or expected. Instead, I'd discovered something far more exciting or profound -- an unexpected insight, a surprise gift. And that's a pretty good working definition of a blessing. So go out into the world where your heart calls you. The blessings will come, I promise you that....I wish for you the insight to recognise the blessings as such, and sometimes this is hard. But you'll know it's a blessing if you are enriched and transformed by the experience. So be ready. There are great souls and teachers everywhere. It is your job to recognise them." --pp. 223-224
"Thank you for your great soul -- for that gaze into our hearts....Thank you for for showing us your heart -- for inviting us into such a happy heart." --p. 234
"Good, good pig. Big, good pig. Fine, fine swine. Good...good...good." --p. 183
"Christopher Hogwood knew how to relish the juicy savour of this fragrant, abundant, sweet, green world. To show us this would have been gift enough. But he showed us another truth as well. That a pig did not become bacon but lived fourteen years, pampered and adored till the day he died peacefully in his sleep -- that's proof that we need not 'be practical' all the time. We need not accept the rules that our society or species, family or fate seem to have written for us. We can choose a new way. We have the power to transform a story of sorrow into a story of healing. We can choose life over death. We can let love lead us home....one thing I know for sure: a great soul can appear among us at any time, in the form of any creature. I'm keeping my eyes open." --p. 241
All quotes are from the book "The Good Good Pig", written by Sy Montgomery. I obviously loved the book to pieces, most probably because I am an animal lover (and a fellow vegetarian!). However, for those who aren't as animal-friendly but are open to it, maybe those who like inspirational books, I highly recommend this book. As seen from the above quotes, as much as "The Good Good Pig" calls to our animal-loving compassionate hearts, it also calls to the inner child in us, never to cease being amazed, always to find something new, to be open to greatness, whether it be in an animal, a fellow human, a holy day, and so on.
To end, I leave with another quote, from p. 183:
"Some say happiness lands lightly on
you, like a butterfly. Sometimes this is so. But sometimes happiness
comes lumbering toward you, like a fat, satisfied pig -- and then
thuds, grunting, by your side."
Indeed.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
On Bleach and Bikram
Lately, I have been impossibly addicted to the anime series called Bleach. I have watched 13 episodes in 1 day out of sheer addiction. I love love love it. At the currently subbed episode which I've stopped at (because there hasn't been any more yet), Episode 120, the ending is still left hanging. I've downloaded both OVAs available for download, as well as all the music. Most people start young with anime, or at least, younger than my current age. I'm not into anime per se--not yet at least--but this particular one had me hooked from the start. And it still kinda boggles my mind why I'm so into it. I mean, I really am--even the music....I love the music, when I was never into J-Pop and would scoff at my cousin when she'd watch anime. I even loved the ending credits of the Sealed Sword Frenzy OVA, where the shinigami are in Western civilian attire, and Byakuya, in particular, came up in a horse-drawn carriage! Still oh so hot! Whut. Oh well: welcome to the club, I guess. But there has to be a hook in this somewhere; I mean, how'd I just get into it so deeply, just like that? When I think about it, though, it may have to do with the main theme of the story: the neverending battle between life and death. I like that. I remember getting so caught up in the battle to save Rukia, on the edge of my seat watching every battle. I also remember getting caught in the personal battles of Kuchiki Byakuya. I was hooked. The way I see it, Bleach reminds me that life is short, and transient, so live to my fullest, do everything I want when and while I can.
Then we come to Bikram yoga. I've only been doing it for about a year, but before Bleach came, it was my end all and be all. I wanted to live and breath it. I didn't want to think of a life without it, precisely why I desired so strongly to teach it: I also wanted others to live "fuller", healthier lives. I see walking a yogi path as self-realization. Echoing what I feel is Bleach's theme, I feel that I am so blessed to be able to follow my dream already.
As my departure for training is steadily approaching, however, I am filled with dread. I think it is also through my own fault: I've been pushed to start memorizing the dialog (particularly by T), but most particularly, build up my confidence (especially by F and seconded by H). With encouragement, I was able to practice reciting one -full- posture (Half Moon!) with F. After that, even with some helpful equipment (a mike!) at home, I've resisted, instead setting it aside in lieu of preparations like medicine, toiletries, medical insurance--things that are also important. But my Dad once said, "if preparing takes you longer to do the actual thing itself, then it's useless." Indeed that it what it has seemed to become. In truth, I am merely sidestepping from the matter at hand, which is truly to prepare to teach. I am scared shitless. Truly. This manifests physically in T, whom I "empowered" against my self to make me deathly afraid of him right now, so much so I don't even want to see him or talk to him. I hem and haw and make excuses, but that's what it boils down to. Now what to do about it. I can't make excuses forever. I can't be a perennial walking excuse. Damn me (as it's not good to damn God). It's Holy Week now, which should be a perfect time to start preparing for real, start memorizing seriously, dammit. There should be no excuses, nor is there time: I'm already leaving next week, after all.
Then we come to Bikram yoga. I've only been doing it for about a year, but before Bleach came, it was my end all and be all. I wanted to live and breath it. I didn't want to think of a life without it, precisely why I desired so strongly to teach it: I also wanted others to live "fuller", healthier lives. I see walking a yogi path as self-realization. Echoing what I feel is Bleach's theme, I feel that I am so blessed to be able to follow my dream already.
As my departure for training is steadily approaching, however, I am filled with dread. I think it is also through my own fault: I've been pushed to start memorizing the dialog (particularly by T), but most particularly, build up my confidence (especially by F and seconded by H). With encouragement, I was able to practice reciting one -full- posture (Half Moon!) with F. After that, even with some helpful equipment (a mike!) at home, I've resisted, instead setting it aside in lieu of preparations like medicine, toiletries, medical insurance--things that are also important. But my Dad once said, "if preparing takes you longer to do the actual thing itself, then it's useless." Indeed that it what it has seemed to become. In truth, I am merely sidestepping from the matter at hand, which is truly to prepare to teach. I am scared shitless. Truly. This manifests physically in T, whom I "empowered" against my self to make me deathly afraid of him right now, so much so I don't even want to see him or talk to him. I hem and haw and make excuses, but that's what it boils down to. Now what to do about it. I can't make excuses forever. I can't be a perennial walking excuse. Damn me (as it's not good to damn God). It's Holy Week now, which should be a perfect time to start preparing for real, start memorizing seriously, dammit. There should be no excuses, nor is there time: I'm already leaving next week, after all.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
38 Ways
Count on Yoga: 38 Ways Yoga Keeps You Fit
By Timothy McCall, M.D.
...Western science is starting to provide some concrete clues as to how yoga works to improve health, heal aches and pains, and keep sickness at bay. Once you understand them, you'll have even more motivation to step onto your mat, and you probably won't feel so tongue-tied the next time someone wants Western proof....
Flex Time
1 Improved flexibility is one of the first and most obvious benefits of yoga. During your first class, you probably won't be able to touch your toes, never mind do a backbend. But if you stick with it, you'll notice a gradual loosening, and eventually, seemingly impossible poses will become possible. You'll also probably notice that aches and pains start to disappear. That's no coincidence. Tight hips can strain the knee joint due to improper alignment of the thigh and shinbones. Tight hamstrings can lead to a flattening of the lumbar spine, which can cause back pain. And inflexibility in muscles and connective tissue, such as fascia and ligaments, can cause poor posture.
Strength Test
2 Strong muscles do more than look good. They also protect us from conditions like arthritis and back pain, and help prevent falls in elderly people. And when you build strength through yoga, you balance it with flexibility. If you just went to the gym and lifted weights, you might build strength at the expense of flexibility.
Standing Orders
3 Your head is like a bowling ball—big, round, and heavy. When it’s balanced directly over an erect spine, it takes much less work for your neck and back muscles to support it. Move it several inches forward, however, and you start to strain those muscles. Hold up that forward-leaning bowling ball for eight or 12 hours a day and it’s no wonder you’re tired. And fatigue might not be your only problem. Poor posture can cause back, neck, and other muscle and joint problems. As you slump, your body may compensate by flattening the normal inward curves in your neck and lower back. This can cause pain and degenerative arthritis of the spine.
Joint Account
4 Each time you practice yoga, you take your joints through their full range of motion. This can help prevent degenerative arthritis or mitigate disability by "squeezing and soaking" areas of cartilage that normally aren't used. Joint cartilage is like a sponge; it receives fresh nutrients only when its fluid is squeezed out and a new supply can be soaked up. Without proper sustenance, neglected areas of cartilage can eventually wear out, exposing the underlying bone like worn-out brake pads.
Spinal Rap
5 Spinal disks—the shock absorbers between the vertebrae that can herniate and compress nerves—crave movement. That's the only way they get their nutrients. If you've got a well-balanced asana practice with plenty of backbends, forward bends, and twists, you'll help keep your disks supple.
Bone Zone
6 It's well documented that weight-bearing exercise strengthens bones and helps ward off osteoporosis. Many postures in yoga require that you lift your own weight. And some, like Downward- and Upward-Facing Dog, help strengthen the arm bones, which are particularly vulnerable to osteoporotic fractures. In an unpublished study conducted at California State University, Los Angeles, yoga practice increased bone density in the vertebrae. Yoga's ability to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol (see Number 11) may help keep calcium in the bones.
Flow Chart
7 Yoga gets your blood flowing. More specifically, the relaxation exercises you learn in yoga can help your circulation, especially in your hands and feet. Yoga also gets more oxygen to your cells, which function better as a result. Twisting poses are thought to wring out venous blood from internal organs and allow oxygenated blood to flow in once the twist is released. Inverted poses, such as Headstand, Handstand, and Shoulderstand, encourage venous blood from the legs and pelvis to flow back to the heart, where it can be pumped to the lungs to be freshly oxygenated. This can help if you have swelling in your legs from heart or kidney problems. Yoga also boosts levels of hemoglobin and red blood cells, which carry oxygen to the tissues. And it thins the blood by making platelets less sticky and by cutting the level of clot-promoting proteins in the blood. This can lead to a decrease in heart attacks and strokes since blood clots are often the cause of these killers.
Lymph Lesson
8 When you contract and stretch muscles, move organs around, and come in and out of yoga postures, you increase the drainage of lymph (a viscous fluid rich in immune cells). This helps the lymphatic system fight infection, destroy cancerous cells, and dispose of the toxic waste products of cellular functioning.
Heart Start
9 When you regularly get your heart rate into the aerobic range, you lower your risk of heart attack and can relieve depression. While not all yoga is aerobic, if you do it vigorously or take flow or Ashtanga classes, it can boost your heart rate into the aerobic range. But even yoga exercises that don't get your heart rate up that high can improve cardiovascular conditioning. Studies have found that yoga practice lowers the resting heart rate, increases endurance, and can improve your maximum uptake of oxygen during exercise—all reflections of improved aerobic conditioning. One study found that subjects who were taught only pranayama could do more exercise with less oxygen.
Pressure Drop
10 If you've got high blood pressure, you might benefit from yoga. Two studies of people with hypertension, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, compared the effects of Savasana (Corpse Pose) with simply lying on a couch. After three months, Savasana was associated with a 26-point drop in systolic blood pressure (the top number) and a 15-point drop in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number)—and the higher the initial blood pressure, the bigger the drop.
Worry Thwarts
11 Yoga lowers cortisol levels. If that doesn't sound like much, consider this. Normally, the adrenal glands secrete cortisol in response to an acute crisis, which temporarily boosts immune function. If your cortisol levels stay high even after the crisis, they can compromise the immune system. Temporary boosts of cortisol help with long-term memory, but chronically high levels undermine memory and may lead to permanent changes in the brain. Additionally, excessive cortisol has been linked with major depression, osteoporosis (it extracts calcium and other minerals from bones and interferes with the laying down of new bone), high blood pressure, and insulin resistance. In rats, high cortisol levels lead to what researchers call "food-seeking behavior" (the kind that drives you to eat when you're upset, angry, or stressed). The body takes those extra calories and distributes them as fat in the abdomen, contributing to weight gain and the risk of diabetes and heart attack.
Happy Hour
12 Feeling sad? Sit in Lotus. Better yet, rise up into a backbend or soar royally into King Dancer Pose. While it’s not as simple as that, one study found that a consistent yoga practice improved depression and led to a significant increase in serotonin levels and a decrease in the levels of monoamine oxidase (an enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters) and cortisol. At the University of Wisconsin, Richard Davidson, Ph.D., found that the left prefrontal cortex showed heightened activity in meditators, a finding that has been correlated with greater levels of happiness and better immune function. More dramatic left-sided activation was found in dedicated, long-term practitioners.
Weighty Matters
13 Move more, eat less—that's the adage of many a dieter. Yoga can help on both fronts. A regular practice gets you moving and burns calories, and the spiritual and emotional dimensions of your practice may encourage you to address any eating and weight problems on a deeper level. Yoga may also inspire you to become a more conscious eater.
Low Show
14 Yoga lowers blood sugar and LDL ("bad") cholesterol and boosts HDL ("good") cholesterol. In people with diabetes, yoga has been found to lower blood sugar in several ways: by lowering cortisol and adrenaline levels, encouraging weight loss, and improving sensitivity to the effects of insulin. Get your blood sugar levels down, and you decrease your risk of diabetic complications such as heart attack, kidney failure, and blindness.
Brain Waves
15 An important component of yoga is focusing on the present. Studies have found that regular yoga practice improves coordination, reaction time, memory, and even IQ scores. People who practice Transcendental Meditation demonstrate the ability to solve problems and acquire and recall information better—probably because they’re less distracted by their thoughts, which can play over and over like an endless tape loop.
Nerve Center
16 Yoga encourages you to relax, slow your breath, and focus on the present, shifting the balance from the sympathetic nervous system (or the fight-or-flight response) to the parasympathetic nervous system. The latter is calming and restorative; it lowers breathing and heart rates, decreases blood pressure, and increases blood flow to the intestines and reproductive organs—comprising what Herbert Benson, M.D., calls the relaxation response.
Space Place
17 Regularly practicing yoga increases proprioception (the ability to feel what your body is doing and where it is in space) and improves balance. People with bad posture or dysfunctional movement patterns usually have poor proprioception, which has been linked to knee problems and back pain. Better balance could mean fewer falls. For the elderly, this translates into more independence and delayed admission to a nursing home or never entering one at all. For the rest of us, postures like Tree Pose can make us feel less wobbly on and off the mat.
Control Center
18 Some advanced yogis can control their bodies in extraordinary ways, many of which are mediated by the nervous system. Scientists have monitored yogis who could induce unusual heart rhythms, generate specific brain-wave patterns, and, using a meditation technique, raise the temperature of their hands by 15 degrees Fahrenheit. If they can use yoga to do that, perhaps you could learn to improve blood flow to your pelvis if you're trying to get pregnant or induce relaxation when you're having trouble falling asleep.
Loose Limbs
19 Do you ever notice yourself holding the telephone or a steering wheel with a death grip or scrunching your face when staring at a computer screen? These unconscious habits can lead to chronic tension, muscle fatigue, and soreness in the wrists, arms, shoulders, neck, and face, which can increase stress and worsen your mood. As you practice yoga, you begin to notice where you hold tension: It might be in your tongue, your eyes, or the muscles of your face and neck. If you simply tune in, you may be able to release some tension in the tongue and eyes. With bigger muscles like the quadriceps, trapezius, and buttocks, it may take years of practice to learn how to relax them.
Chill Pill
20 Stimulation is good, but too much of it taxes the nervous system. Yoga can provide relief from the hustle and bustle of modern life. Restorative asana, yoga nidra (a form of guided relaxation), Savasana, pranayama, and meditation encourage pratyahara, a turning inward of the senses, which provides downtime for the nervous system. Another by-product of a regular yoga practice, studies suggest, is better sleep—which means you'll be less tired and stressed and less likely to have accidents.
Immune Boon
21 Asana and pranayama probably improve immune function, but, so far, meditation has the strongest scientific support in this area. It appears to have a beneficial effect on the functioning of the immune system, boosting it when needed (for example, raising antibody levels in response to a vaccine) and lowering it when needed (for instance, mitigating an inappropriately aggressive immune function in an autoimmune disease like psoriasis).
Breathing Room
22 Yogis tend to take fewer breaths of greater volume, which is both calming and more efficient. A 1998 study published in The Lancet taught a yogic technique known as "complete breathing" to people with lung problems due to congestive heart failure. After one month, their average respiratory rate decreased from 13.4 breaths per minute to 7.6. Meanwhile, their exercise capacity increased significantly, as did the oxygen saturation of their blood. In addition, yoga has been shown to improve various measures of lung function, including the maximum volume of the breath and the efficiency of the exhalation. Yoga also promotes breathing through the nose, which filters the air, warms it (cold, dry air is more likely to trigger an asthma attack in people who are sensitive), and humidifies it, removing pollen and dirt and other things you'd rather not take into your lungs.
Poop Scoop
23 Ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation—all of these can be exacerbated by stress. So if you stress less, you'll suffer less. Yoga, like any physical exercise, can ease constipation—and theoretically lower the risk of colon cancer—because moving the body facilitates more rapid transport of food and waste products through the bowels. And, although it has not been studied scientifically, yogis suspect that twisting poses may be beneficial in getting waste to move through the system.
Peace of Mind
24 Yoga quells the fluctuations of the mind, according to Patanjali's Yoga Sutra. In other words, it slows down the mental loops of frustration, regret, anger, fear, and desire that can cause stress. And since stress is implicated in so many health problems—from migraines and insomnia to lupus, MS, eczema, high blood pressure, and heart attacks—if you learn to quiet your mind, you'll be likely to live longer and healthier.
Divine Sign
25 Many of us suffer from chronic low self-esteem. If you handle this negatively—take drugs, overeat, work too hard, sleep around—you may pay the price in poorer health physically, mentally, and spiritually. If you take a positive approach and practice yoga, you'll sense, initially in brief glimpses and later in more sustained views, that you're worthwhile or, as yogic philosophy teaches, that you are a manifestation of the Divine. If you practice regularly with an intention of self-examination and betterment—not just as a substitute for an aerobics class—you can access a different side of yourself. You'll experience feelings of gratitude, empathy, and forgiveness, as well as a sense that you're part of something bigger. While better health is not the goal of spirituality, it's often a by-product, as documented by repeated scientific studies.
Pain Drain
26 Yoga can ease your pain. According to several studies, asana, meditation, or a combination of the two, reduced pain in people with arthritis, back pain, fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other chronic conditions. When you relieve your pain, your mood improves, you're more inclined to be active, and you don't need as much medication.
Heat Treatment
27 Yoga can help you make changes in your life. In fact, that might be its greatest strength. Tapas, the Sanskrit word for "heat," is the fire, the discipline that fuels yoga practice and that regular practice builds. The tapas you develop can be extended to the rest of your life to overcome inertia and change dysfunctional habits. You may find that without making a particular effort to change things, you start to eat better, exercise more, or finally quit smoking after years of failed attempts.
Guru Gifts
28 Good yoga teachers can do wonders for your health. Exceptional ones do more than guide you through the postures. They can adjust your posture, gauge when you should go deeper in poses or back off, deliver hard truths with compassion, help you relax, and enhance and personalize your practice. A respectful relationship with a teacher goes a long way toward promoting your health.
Drug Free
29 If your medicine cabinet looks like a pharmacy, maybe it's time to try yoga. Studies of people with asthma, high blood pressure, Type II diabetes (formerly called adult-onset diabetes), and obsessive-compulsive disorder have shown that yoga helped them lower their dosage of medications and sometimes get off them entirely. The benefits of taking fewer drugs? You'll spend less money, and you're less likely to suffer side effects and risk dangerous drug interactions.
Hostile Makeover
30 Yoga and meditation build awareness. And the more aware you are, the easier it is to break free of destructive emotions like anger. Studies suggest that chronic anger and hostility are as strongly linked to heart attacks as are smoking, diabetes, and elevated cholesterol. Yoga appears to reduce anger by increasing feelings of compassion and interconnection and by calming the nervous system and the mind. It also increases your ability to step back from the drama of your own life, to remain steady in the face of bad news or unsettling events. You can still react quickly when you need to—and there's evidence that yoga speeds reaction time—but you can take that split second to choose a more thoughtful approach, reducing suffering for yourself and others.
Good Relations
31 Love may not conquer all, but it certainly can aid in healing. Cultivating the emotional support of friends, family, and community has been demonstrated repeatedly to improve health and healing. A regular yoga practice helps develop friendliness, compassion, and greater equanimity. Along with yogic philosophy's emphasis on avoiding harm to others, telling the truth, and taking only what you need, this may improve many of your relationships.
Sound System
32 The basics of yoga—asana, pranayama, and meditation—all work to improve your health, but there's more in the yoga toolbox. Consider chanting. It tends to prolong exhalation, which shifts the balance toward the parasympathetic nervous system. When done in a group, chanting can be a particularly powerful physical and emotional experience. A recent study from Sweden's Karolinska Institute suggests that humming sounds—like those made while chanting Om—open the sinuses and facilitate drainage.
Vision Quest
33 If you contemplate an image in your mind's eye, as you do in yoga nidra and other practices, you can effect change in your body. Several studies have found that guided imagery reduced postoperative pain, decreased the frequency of headaches, and improved the quality of life for people with cancer and HIV.
Clean Machine
34 Kriyas, or cleansing practices, are another element of yoga. They include everything from rapid breathing exercises to elaborate internal cleansings of the intestines. Jala neti, which entails a gentle lavage of the nasal passages with salt water, removes pollen and viruses from the nose, keeps mucus from building up, and helps drains the sinuses.
Karma Concept
35 Karma yoga (service to others) is integral to yogic philosophy. And while you may not be inclined to serve others, your health might improve if you do. A study at the University of Michigan found that older people who volunteered a little less than an hour per week were three times as likely to be alive seven years later. Serving others can give meaning to your life, and your problems may not seem so daunting when you see what other people are dealing with.
Healing Hope
36 In much of conventional medicine, most patients are passive recipients of care. In yoga, it's what you do for yourself that matters. Yoga gives you the tools to help you change, and you might start to feel better the first time you try practicing. You may also notice that the more you commit to practice, the more you benefit. This results in three things: You get involved in your own care, you discover that your involvement gives you the power to effect change, and seeing that you can effect change gives you hope. And hope itself can be healing.
Connective Tissue
37 As you read all the ways yoga improves your health, you probably noticed a lot of overlap. That's because they're intensely interwoven. Change your posture and you change the way you breathe. Change your breathing and you change your nervous system. This is one of the great lessons of yoga: Everything is connected—your hipbone to your anklebone, you to your community, your community to the world. This interconnection is vital to understanding yoga. This holistic system simultaneously taps into many mechanisms that have additive and even multiplicative effects. This synergy may be the most important way of all that yoga heals.
Placebo Power
38 Just believing you will get better can make you better. Unfortunately, many conventional scientists believe that if something works by eliciting the placebo effect, it doesn't count. But most patients just want to get better, so if chanting a mantra—like you might do at the beginning or end of yoga class or throughout a meditation or in the course of your day—facilitates healing, even if it's just a placebo effect, why not do it?
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Taken from http://www.yogajournal.com/health/1634_1.cfm
By Timothy McCall, M.D.
...Western science is starting to provide some concrete clues as to how yoga works to improve health, heal aches and pains, and keep sickness at bay. Once you understand them, you'll have even more motivation to step onto your mat, and you probably won't feel so tongue-tied the next time someone wants Western proof....
Flex Time
1 Improved flexibility is one of the first and most obvious benefits of yoga. During your first class, you probably won't be able to touch your toes, never mind do a backbend. But if you stick with it, you'll notice a gradual loosening, and eventually, seemingly impossible poses will become possible. You'll also probably notice that aches and pains start to disappear. That's no coincidence. Tight hips can strain the knee joint due to improper alignment of the thigh and shinbones. Tight hamstrings can lead to a flattening of the lumbar spine, which can cause back pain. And inflexibility in muscles and connective tissue, such as fascia and ligaments, can cause poor posture.
Strength Test
2 Strong muscles do more than look good. They also protect us from conditions like arthritis and back pain, and help prevent falls in elderly people. And when you build strength through yoga, you balance it with flexibility. If you just went to the gym and lifted weights, you might build strength at the expense of flexibility.
Standing Orders
3 Your head is like a bowling ball—big, round, and heavy. When it’s balanced directly over an erect spine, it takes much less work for your neck and back muscles to support it. Move it several inches forward, however, and you start to strain those muscles. Hold up that forward-leaning bowling ball for eight or 12 hours a day and it’s no wonder you’re tired. And fatigue might not be your only problem. Poor posture can cause back, neck, and other muscle and joint problems. As you slump, your body may compensate by flattening the normal inward curves in your neck and lower back. This can cause pain and degenerative arthritis of the spine.
Joint Account
4 Each time you practice yoga, you take your joints through their full range of motion. This can help prevent degenerative arthritis or mitigate disability by "squeezing and soaking" areas of cartilage that normally aren't used. Joint cartilage is like a sponge; it receives fresh nutrients only when its fluid is squeezed out and a new supply can be soaked up. Without proper sustenance, neglected areas of cartilage can eventually wear out, exposing the underlying bone like worn-out brake pads.
Spinal Rap
5 Spinal disks—the shock absorbers between the vertebrae that can herniate and compress nerves—crave movement. That's the only way they get their nutrients. If you've got a well-balanced asana practice with plenty of backbends, forward bends, and twists, you'll help keep your disks supple.
Bone Zone
6 It's well documented that weight-bearing exercise strengthens bones and helps ward off osteoporosis. Many postures in yoga require that you lift your own weight. And some, like Downward- and Upward-Facing Dog, help strengthen the arm bones, which are particularly vulnerable to osteoporotic fractures. In an unpublished study conducted at California State University, Los Angeles, yoga practice increased bone density in the vertebrae. Yoga's ability to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol (see Number 11) may help keep calcium in the bones.
Flow Chart
7 Yoga gets your blood flowing. More specifically, the relaxation exercises you learn in yoga can help your circulation, especially in your hands and feet. Yoga also gets more oxygen to your cells, which function better as a result. Twisting poses are thought to wring out venous blood from internal organs and allow oxygenated blood to flow in once the twist is released. Inverted poses, such as Headstand, Handstand, and Shoulderstand, encourage venous blood from the legs and pelvis to flow back to the heart, where it can be pumped to the lungs to be freshly oxygenated. This can help if you have swelling in your legs from heart or kidney problems. Yoga also boosts levels of hemoglobin and red blood cells, which carry oxygen to the tissues. And it thins the blood by making platelets less sticky and by cutting the level of clot-promoting proteins in the blood. This can lead to a decrease in heart attacks and strokes since blood clots are often the cause of these killers.
Lymph Lesson
8 When you contract and stretch muscles, move organs around, and come in and out of yoga postures, you increase the drainage of lymph (a viscous fluid rich in immune cells). This helps the lymphatic system fight infection, destroy cancerous cells, and dispose of the toxic waste products of cellular functioning.
Heart Start
9 When you regularly get your heart rate into the aerobic range, you lower your risk of heart attack and can relieve depression. While not all yoga is aerobic, if you do it vigorously or take flow or Ashtanga classes, it can boost your heart rate into the aerobic range. But even yoga exercises that don't get your heart rate up that high can improve cardiovascular conditioning. Studies have found that yoga practice lowers the resting heart rate, increases endurance, and can improve your maximum uptake of oxygen during exercise—all reflections of improved aerobic conditioning. One study found that subjects who were taught only pranayama could do more exercise with less oxygen.
Pressure Drop
10 If you've got high blood pressure, you might benefit from yoga. Two studies of people with hypertension, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, compared the effects of Savasana (Corpse Pose) with simply lying on a couch. After three months, Savasana was associated with a 26-point drop in systolic blood pressure (the top number) and a 15-point drop in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number)—and the higher the initial blood pressure, the bigger the drop.
Worry Thwarts
11 Yoga lowers cortisol levels. If that doesn't sound like much, consider this. Normally, the adrenal glands secrete cortisol in response to an acute crisis, which temporarily boosts immune function. If your cortisol levels stay high even after the crisis, they can compromise the immune system. Temporary boosts of cortisol help with long-term memory, but chronically high levels undermine memory and may lead to permanent changes in the brain. Additionally, excessive cortisol has been linked with major depression, osteoporosis (it extracts calcium and other minerals from bones and interferes with the laying down of new bone), high blood pressure, and insulin resistance. In rats, high cortisol levels lead to what researchers call "food-seeking behavior" (the kind that drives you to eat when you're upset, angry, or stressed). The body takes those extra calories and distributes them as fat in the abdomen, contributing to weight gain and the risk of diabetes and heart attack.
Happy Hour
12 Feeling sad? Sit in Lotus. Better yet, rise up into a backbend or soar royally into King Dancer Pose. While it’s not as simple as that, one study found that a consistent yoga practice improved depression and led to a significant increase in serotonin levels and a decrease in the levels of monoamine oxidase (an enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters) and cortisol. At the University of Wisconsin, Richard Davidson, Ph.D., found that the left prefrontal cortex showed heightened activity in meditators, a finding that has been correlated with greater levels of happiness and better immune function. More dramatic left-sided activation was found in dedicated, long-term practitioners.
Weighty Matters
13 Move more, eat less—that's the adage of many a dieter. Yoga can help on both fronts. A regular practice gets you moving and burns calories, and the spiritual and emotional dimensions of your practice may encourage you to address any eating and weight problems on a deeper level. Yoga may also inspire you to become a more conscious eater.
Low Show
14 Yoga lowers blood sugar and LDL ("bad") cholesterol and boosts HDL ("good") cholesterol. In people with diabetes, yoga has been found to lower blood sugar in several ways: by lowering cortisol and adrenaline levels, encouraging weight loss, and improving sensitivity to the effects of insulin. Get your blood sugar levels down, and you decrease your risk of diabetic complications such as heart attack, kidney failure, and blindness.
Brain Waves
15 An important component of yoga is focusing on the present. Studies have found that regular yoga practice improves coordination, reaction time, memory, and even IQ scores. People who practice Transcendental Meditation demonstrate the ability to solve problems and acquire and recall information better—probably because they’re less distracted by their thoughts, which can play over and over like an endless tape loop.
Nerve Center
16 Yoga encourages you to relax, slow your breath, and focus on the present, shifting the balance from the sympathetic nervous system (or the fight-or-flight response) to the parasympathetic nervous system. The latter is calming and restorative; it lowers breathing and heart rates, decreases blood pressure, and increases blood flow to the intestines and reproductive organs—comprising what Herbert Benson, M.D., calls the relaxation response.
Space Place
17 Regularly practicing yoga increases proprioception (the ability to feel what your body is doing and where it is in space) and improves balance. People with bad posture or dysfunctional movement patterns usually have poor proprioception, which has been linked to knee problems and back pain. Better balance could mean fewer falls. For the elderly, this translates into more independence and delayed admission to a nursing home or never entering one at all. For the rest of us, postures like Tree Pose can make us feel less wobbly on and off the mat.
Control Center
18 Some advanced yogis can control their bodies in extraordinary ways, many of which are mediated by the nervous system. Scientists have monitored yogis who could induce unusual heart rhythms, generate specific brain-wave patterns, and, using a meditation technique, raise the temperature of their hands by 15 degrees Fahrenheit. If they can use yoga to do that, perhaps you could learn to improve blood flow to your pelvis if you're trying to get pregnant or induce relaxation when you're having trouble falling asleep.
Loose Limbs
19 Do you ever notice yourself holding the telephone or a steering wheel with a death grip or scrunching your face when staring at a computer screen? These unconscious habits can lead to chronic tension, muscle fatigue, and soreness in the wrists, arms, shoulders, neck, and face, which can increase stress and worsen your mood. As you practice yoga, you begin to notice where you hold tension: It might be in your tongue, your eyes, or the muscles of your face and neck. If you simply tune in, you may be able to release some tension in the tongue and eyes. With bigger muscles like the quadriceps, trapezius, and buttocks, it may take years of practice to learn how to relax them.
Chill Pill
20 Stimulation is good, but too much of it taxes the nervous system. Yoga can provide relief from the hustle and bustle of modern life. Restorative asana, yoga nidra (a form of guided relaxation), Savasana, pranayama, and meditation encourage pratyahara, a turning inward of the senses, which provides downtime for the nervous system. Another by-product of a regular yoga practice, studies suggest, is better sleep—which means you'll be less tired and stressed and less likely to have accidents.
Immune Boon
21 Asana and pranayama probably improve immune function, but, so far, meditation has the strongest scientific support in this area. It appears to have a beneficial effect on the functioning of the immune system, boosting it when needed (for example, raising antibody levels in response to a vaccine) and lowering it when needed (for instance, mitigating an inappropriately aggressive immune function in an autoimmune disease like psoriasis).
Breathing Room
22 Yogis tend to take fewer breaths of greater volume, which is both calming and more efficient. A 1998 study published in The Lancet taught a yogic technique known as "complete breathing" to people with lung problems due to congestive heart failure. After one month, their average respiratory rate decreased from 13.4 breaths per minute to 7.6. Meanwhile, their exercise capacity increased significantly, as did the oxygen saturation of their blood. In addition, yoga has been shown to improve various measures of lung function, including the maximum volume of the breath and the efficiency of the exhalation. Yoga also promotes breathing through the nose, which filters the air, warms it (cold, dry air is more likely to trigger an asthma attack in people who are sensitive), and humidifies it, removing pollen and dirt and other things you'd rather not take into your lungs.
Poop Scoop
23 Ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation—all of these can be exacerbated by stress. So if you stress less, you'll suffer less. Yoga, like any physical exercise, can ease constipation—and theoretically lower the risk of colon cancer—because moving the body facilitates more rapid transport of food and waste products through the bowels. And, although it has not been studied scientifically, yogis suspect that twisting poses may be beneficial in getting waste to move through the system.
Peace of Mind
24 Yoga quells the fluctuations of the mind, according to Patanjali's Yoga Sutra. In other words, it slows down the mental loops of frustration, regret, anger, fear, and desire that can cause stress. And since stress is implicated in so many health problems—from migraines and insomnia to lupus, MS, eczema, high blood pressure, and heart attacks—if you learn to quiet your mind, you'll be likely to live longer and healthier.
Divine Sign
25 Many of us suffer from chronic low self-esteem. If you handle this negatively—take drugs, overeat, work too hard, sleep around—you may pay the price in poorer health physically, mentally, and spiritually. If you take a positive approach and practice yoga, you'll sense, initially in brief glimpses and later in more sustained views, that you're worthwhile or, as yogic philosophy teaches, that you are a manifestation of the Divine. If you practice regularly with an intention of self-examination and betterment—not just as a substitute for an aerobics class—you can access a different side of yourself. You'll experience feelings of gratitude, empathy, and forgiveness, as well as a sense that you're part of something bigger. While better health is not the goal of spirituality, it's often a by-product, as documented by repeated scientific studies.
Pain Drain
26 Yoga can ease your pain. According to several studies, asana, meditation, or a combination of the two, reduced pain in people with arthritis, back pain, fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other chronic conditions. When you relieve your pain, your mood improves, you're more inclined to be active, and you don't need as much medication.
Heat Treatment
27 Yoga can help you make changes in your life. In fact, that might be its greatest strength. Tapas, the Sanskrit word for "heat," is the fire, the discipline that fuels yoga practice and that regular practice builds. The tapas you develop can be extended to the rest of your life to overcome inertia and change dysfunctional habits. You may find that without making a particular effort to change things, you start to eat better, exercise more, or finally quit smoking after years of failed attempts.
Guru Gifts
28 Good yoga teachers can do wonders for your health. Exceptional ones do more than guide you through the postures. They can adjust your posture, gauge when you should go deeper in poses or back off, deliver hard truths with compassion, help you relax, and enhance and personalize your practice. A respectful relationship with a teacher goes a long way toward promoting your health.
Drug Free
29 If your medicine cabinet looks like a pharmacy, maybe it's time to try yoga. Studies of people with asthma, high blood pressure, Type II diabetes (formerly called adult-onset diabetes), and obsessive-compulsive disorder have shown that yoga helped them lower their dosage of medications and sometimes get off them entirely. The benefits of taking fewer drugs? You'll spend less money, and you're less likely to suffer side effects and risk dangerous drug interactions.
Hostile Makeover
30 Yoga and meditation build awareness. And the more aware you are, the easier it is to break free of destructive emotions like anger. Studies suggest that chronic anger and hostility are as strongly linked to heart attacks as are smoking, diabetes, and elevated cholesterol. Yoga appears to reduce anger by increasing feelings of compassion and interconnection and by calming the nervous system and the mind. It also increases your ability to step back from the drama of your own life, to remain steady in the face of bad news or unsettling events. You can still react quickly when you need to—and there's evidence that yoga speeds reaction time—but you can take that split second to choose a more thoughtful approach, reducing suffering for yourself and others.
Good Relations
31 Love may not conquer all, but it certainly can aid in healing. Cultivating the emotional support of friends, family, and community has been demonstrated repeatedly to improve health and healing. A regular yoga practice helps develop friendliness, compassion, and greater equanimity. Along with yogic philosophy's emphasis on avoiding harm to others, telling the truth, and taking only what you need, this may improve many of your relationships.
Sound System
32 The basics of yoga—asana, pranayama, and meditation—all work to improve your health, but there's more in the yoga toolbox. Consider chanting. It tends to prolong exhalation, which shifts the balance toward the parasympathetic nervous system. When done in a group, chanting can be a particularly powerful physical and emotional experience. A recent study from Sweden's Karolinska Institute suggests that humming sounds—like those made while chanting Om—open the sinuses and facilitate drainage.
Vision Quest
33 If you contemplate an image in your mind's eye, as you do in yoga nidra and other practices, you can effect change in your body. Several studies have found that guided imagery reduced postoperative pain, decreased the frequency of headaches, and improved the quality of life for people with cancer and HIV.
Clean Machine
34 Kriyas, or cleansing practices, are another element of yoga. They include everything from rapid breathing exercises to elaborate internal cleansings of the intestines. Jala neti, which entails a gentle lavage of the nasal passages with salt water, removes pollen and viruses from the nose, keeps mucus from building up, and helps drains the sinuses.
Karma Concept
35 Karma yoga (service to others) is integral to yogic philosophy. And while you may not be inclined to serve others, your health might improve if you do. A study at the University of Michigan found that older people who volunteered a little less than an hour per week were three times as likely to be alive seven years later. Serving others can give meaning to your life, and your problems may not seem so daunting when you see what other people are dealing with.
Healing Hope
36 In much of conventional medicine, most patients are passive recipients of care. In yoga, it's what you do for yourself that matters. Yoga gives you the tools to help you change, and you might start to feel better the first time you try practicing. You may also notice that the more you commit to practice, the more you benefit. This results in three things: You get involved in your own care, you discover that your involvement gives you the power to effect change, and seeing that you can effect change gives you hope. And hope itself can be healing.
Connective Tissue
37 As you read all the ways yoga improves your health, you probably noticed a lot of overlap. That's because they're intensely interwoven. Change your posture and you change the way you breathe. Change your breathing and you change your nervous system. This is one of the great lessons of yoga: Everything is connected—your hipbone to your anklebone, you to your community, your community to the world. This interconnection is vital to understanding yoga. This holistic system simultaneously taps into many mechanisms that have additive and even multiplicative effects. This synergy may be the most important way of all that yoga heals.
Placebo Power
38 Just believing you will get better can make you better. Unfortunately, many conventional scientists believe that if something works by eliciting the placebo effect, it doesn't count. But most patients just want to get better, so if chanting a mantra—like you might do at the beginning or end of yoga class or throughout a meditation or in the course of your day—facilitates healing, even if it's just a placebo effect, why not do it?
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Taken from http://www.yogajournal.com/health/1634_1.cfm
Sunday, April 01, 2007
April Truth for April Fool's
While I was perusing my chosen yoga's website, I came across this endearing Cathy comic. Aside from entertaining, though, it also reminds me or invites me to lead a yogi lifestyle, 24/7. What that is, I do not know. Besides, it differs for everyone, I guess--case in point in being T's and my recent spat (which had already been building up, but that's not necessary to discuss)
I've recently gotten into VMV Hypoallergenics. Being someone who has skin allergies to almost everything, VMV Hypoallergenics products are a Godsend. I can personally vouch for these two products, while these two I'm still trying out.
Recently got a book spawned by an online women traveler's journal, as well as this book which seems right up my alley. Ah, my weekend has been revealed. W-ell, not entirely, as I haven't mentioned Bleach.
But most people close to me know I'm addicted to Bleach right now. I am currently at Episode 105. I've downloaded 91-120, most of the music tracks, and both OVA's in Bleach Exile. It took many days, but I think it's worth it. Now to burn it into a DVD-R and I'll be good to go. Can they all fit into one disc, I wonder?
This doesn't mean, however, that I've completely forgotten I'm leaving for Teacher Training in 9 days (it starts in 14, but I've got to get used to the 18-hour difference!). I practiced my dialog for one pose--fully, both sides--with my teacher-mentor F. It went a whole lot better than with T, I can safely say. I know T meant well....but my spirit was crushed and I was discouraged. He's a perfectionist, one of his staff L said. Indeed he is: he was already pointing out my weak (i.e. lack of) conviction while reciting the dialog, comparing it to one talking to a plant. However, this critique also crushed my conviction, my belief in myself to be able to do this, even my desire to practice yoga. Fortunately, F brushed those aside and told me to pay T no mind, that I'll find my voice there; what's important is to believe I will. Hence my spirit has been renewed, revitalized to go on: as F pointed out, this is my dream, after all.
I've recently gotten into VMV Hypoallergenics. Being someone who has skin allergies to almost everything, VMV Hypoallergenics products are a Godsend. I can personally vouch for these two products, while these two I'm still trying out.
Recently got a book spawned by an online women traveler's journal, as well as this book which seems right up my alley. Ah, my weekend has been revealed. W-ell, not entirely, as I haven't mentioned Bleach.
But most people close to me know I'm addicted to Bleach right now. I am currently at Episode 105. I've downloaded 91-120, most of the music tracks, and both OVA's in Bleach Exile. It took many days, but I think it's worth it. Now to burn it into a DVD-R and I'll be good to go. Can they all fit into one disc, I wonder?
This doesn't mean, however, that I've completely forgotten I'm leaving for Teacher Training in 9 days (it starts in 14, but I've got to get used to the 18-hour difference!). I practiced my dialog for one pose--fully, both sides--with my teacher-mentor F. It went a whole lot better than with T, I can safely say. I know T meant well....but my spirit was crushed and I was discouraged. He's a perfectionist, one of his staff L said. Indeed he is: he was already pointing out my weak (i.e. lack of) conviction while reciting the dialog, comparing it to one talking to a plant. However, this critique also crushed my conviction, my belief in myself to be able to do this, even my desire to practice yoga. Fortunately, F brushed those aside and told me to pay T no mind, that I'll find my voice there; what's important is to believe I will. Hence my spirit has been renewed, revitalized to go on: as F pointed out, this is my dream, after all.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Wednesdays
Wednesdays are usually my "day-off" in the week, apart from Sundays. So today was, well, another lazy day.
Using my glasses on instead of my contacts today just maybe made me unconsciously feel relaxed and lazy, as I usually am on work-mode when I wear contacts. Now I have my contacts on to get more alert and do some PowerYoga, but dangit, it's almost time for Grey's Anatomy! Yes, I have become a fan. And no, I try not to watch it by DVD, as watching it on television, with all the ads and the potential to channel-jump, just makes it a better experience for me.
Got a new pair of earrings today, the stones being Mystic Topaz. Mom and I split the costs: I used some previous savings: ah well; she is paying for Teacher Training, after all. I had thought of pairing it with a necklace of Smoky Topaz my aunt had given me while we were in Hong Kong, but upon Googling it, discovered it's actually of the Quartz family. Ah well.
The same aunt gave me a bracelet with an adorable bracelet with afu dog pi yao carving made of red jade, though someone said it's amber. Eh. I didn't know he was given to guard me, but now, with that in mind, I shall wear him as much as I can, and I christen him with Neni? Nani? Yeni? Leni? LENNY. His name's Lenny.
Meanwhile, this is the woman who got on my nerves yesterday but H told me to just let go of it. I laugh about it now, but yesterday, it was pretty serious. When I think about it now, I still get pissed, but I figure, for all that she's pretty, she's down there when it comes to ethics and morals (even lower for proclaiming herself to be a yogini?!). So why should I deal with her? Then again, what gives me the right to judge her? But I think we all judge, one way or another: we are human, after all. But maybe I'll give it one more shot if I see her again: I'll smile. F told me my yoga is about STRENGTH, and apart from physical, I guess it extends to emotional, as well.
Anyway. Enough lazing about: I've got a TV show to watch, tea to make and drink, maybe do some abs if I can't do yoga, update my planner, put in some memorizing.....aii-ya.
Using my glasses on instead of my contacts today just maybe made me unconsciously feel relaxed and lazy, as I usually am on work-mode when I wear contacts. Now I have my contacts on to get more alert and do some PowerYoga, but dangit, it's almost time for Grey's Anatomy! Yes, I have become a fan. And no, I try not to watch it by DVD, as watching it on television, with all the ads and the potential to channel-jump, just makes it a better experience for me.
Got a new pair of earrings today, the stones being Mystic Topaz. Mom and I split the costs: I used some previous savings: ah well; she is paying for Teacher Training, after all. I had thought of pairing it with a necklace of Smoky Topaz my aunt had given me while we were in Hong Kong, but upon Googling it, discovered it's actually of the Quartz family. Ah well.
The same aunt gave me a bracelet with an adorable bracelet with a
Meanwhile, this is the woman who got on my nerves yesterday but H told me to just let go of it. I laugh about it now, but yesterday, it was pretty serious. When I think about it now, I still get pissed, but I figure, for all that she's pretty, she's down there when it comes to ethics and morals (even lower for proclaiming herself to be a yogini?!). So why should I deal with her? Then again, what gives me the right to judge her? But I think we all judge, one way or another: we are human, after all. But maybe I'll give it one more shot if I see her again: I'll smile. F told me my yoga is about STRENGTH, and apart from physical, I guess it extends to emotional, as well.
Anyway. Enough lazing about: I've got a TV show to watch, tea to make and drink, maybe do some abs if I can't do yoga, update my planner, put in some memorizing.....aii-ya.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Back.
The trip to Hong Kong, though sweet, was stressful, so perhaps it's better it was brief. Apart from fabulous food at the Conrad and IFC Mall, and discovering a bargain mecca, at least we were able to meet most of the things we wanted to do. I, for one, apart from finding this Indian CD set I've been looking for, finally got my new camera at Fortress, where I was told it is the best place to get digital products in Hong Kong. Following Josh's recommendations, and seeing the product physically, I chose the Canon Digital IXUS 850 IS. Soooo happy to have a Canon again. His name shall be Bagheera. I had previously seen snippets of the Disney adaptation of Kipling's work, so that might be it. Was trying Shiva instead, and a feminine character. Bagheera was only made male in the Disney adaptation, but was female in a Russian one. After all that drama, though, I'm keeping him male, and since the name Bagheera still called out to me more, Bagheera he will be.
I also went to the Bikram yoga studio in Hong Kong. There are four studio-rooms, each big enough maybe to accommodate 70-100 people. WHOA. Thing is, being carpeted, and not really aired (only vacuumed), the rooms (at least the one I was in) had a smell. Method of instruction was also not very personal, no names, just calling out the dialogue. My Mom said, "You can do better!" Perhaps. Hopefully.'Coz sometimes I worry if this is the right decision GOD, I hope so.
I've always loved cartoons, as they remind me of childhood, and innocence, and when I didn't have to worry about anything. Nowadays, however, more and more cartoons have a commercial tinge. Imagine my joy when I saw cute cartoons, namely The Unsustainables and Meet The Greens as featured on this Ecorazzi article. So the angle here is to make more ecologically-sound decisions, but hell, I think it's better than telling their audience to buy the next lunchbox or action figurine with the same theme.
While looking for the latest Yoga Journal issue, I saw two other yoga-related magazines, instead: yogalife and Spirituality & Health. Expanding my yoga magazine repertoire, is all. I also saw this site that looks like it's good yoga: Aadil Palkhivala. Hmm.
Anyway, while I missed yoga class today pleading to fatigue and ill-preparedness for dialogue practice (thereby incurring T's ire), as well as took it slow and easy (getting the pre-trip mani-pedi and waxing: gotta get rrrreadyyy), it's good to be back. Now to step up, and MEMORIZE. Ack. Then how to wake up early enough tomorrow, given that my phone (which is apparently no longer available for purchase) just decided to conk out and die? What about my contacts in there, as well? Aaaargh. And even though I ate LOADS for breakfast, I think I'll get me some more breakfast food now, even as I know I should do ab exercises, or PowerYoga . Added to the lately very violent/snappish/virago-like moods, I just might be PMS'ing. So hello, pounds. C'est la vie, c'est la vie.
I also went to the Bikram yoga studio in Hong Kong. There are four studio-rooms, each big enough maybe to accommodate 70-100 people. WHOA. Thing is, being carpeted, and not really aired (only vacuumed), the rooms (at least the one I was in) had a smell. Method of instruction was also not very personal, no names, just calling out the dialogue. My Mom said, "You can do better!" Perhaps. Hopefully.
I've always loved cartoons, as they remind me of childhood, and innocence, and when I didn't have to worry about anything. Nowadays, however, more and more cartoons have a commercial tinge. Imagine my joy when I saw cute cartoons, namely The Unsustainables and Meet The Greens as featured on this Ecorazzi article. So the angle here is to make more ecologically-sound decisions, but hell, I think it's better than telling their audience to buy the next lunchbox or action figurine with the same theme.
While looking for the latest Yoga Journal issue, I saw two other yoga-related magazines, instead: yogalife and Spirituality & Health. Expanding my yoga magazine repertoire, is all. I also saw this site that looks like it's good yoga: Aadil Palkhivala. Hmm.
Anyway, while I missed yoga class today pleading to fatigue and ill-preparedness for dialogue practice (thereby incurring T's ire), as well as took it slow and easy (getting the pre-trip mani-pedi and waxing: gotta get rrrreadyyy), it's good to be back. Now to step up, and MEMORIZE. Ack. Then how to wake up early enough tomorrow, given that my phone (which is apparently no longer available for purchase) just decided to conk out and die? What about my contacts in there, as well? Aaaargh. And even though I ate LOADS for breakfast, I think I'll get me some more breakfast food now
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Curiouser and Curiouser
Lately, I've been feeling incredibly tired for no apparent reason. Crap. I hate this. Like after returning from the beach, despite yoga with Mo-ching, despite a spa treatment, this time around I still feel exhausted. I had my first post-trip Bikram yoga class yesterday, and I felt like I was going to just collapse halfway, around Dandayamana Janushirasana (Standing Head to Knee) and Dandayamana Dhanurasana (Standing Bow). I'm grateful the teacher was H, who doesn't push too hard; if it were F, I think I'd have really had to sit it out. T arrived after class, and was asking about whether I'd gotten my dialgues, 'coz he wanted me to start memorizing already (which is mostly the point in Teacher Training). If not, he said he can lend me his. Well, when I got home, I was overjoyed to find my welcome packet from Bikram Yoga Teacher Training! However, there was a misunderstanding wherein I was given a registration checklist for SOMEBODY ELSE! With incompletes! I was pretty upset, so I wrote S, the registrar, several times. 'Coz I AM complete! So what the hell?! Well, she wrote back this morning: it was a misunderstanding; I'm complete, and she says she doesn't need to fax back the cover letter I asked where I documented everything I sent. I'd still like her to fax back an acknowledgment, though. I'm afraid I'm being too pushy, but Mom said I can't afford NOT to be pushy. And truly, sometimes, no, oftentimes, to get things done, I find I really have to be pushy. Otherwise, I risk becoming a doormat. It's so true. And it's so hard to be a b*tch when I've been such a gentlewoman. But as a song goes, "Give [them] an inch, [they] take a mile." It's so true. It just feels like a betrayal of trust when they do it. I was brought up with the premise that "kindness begets kindness," and so on. Well, it seems not to be so in the real world. Of course there are pockets of special circumstances wherein if I'm nice they'll be nice back, and it usually pays to be nice in formal situations or "need-to-know" situations. But still: no more doormats. Fight back. And be firm.
My camera has conked out on me, so I haven't been able to photograph in a while. Argh. As we're going to HK soon, I'm thinking of (a) scoping out the Bikram yoga studio there (hello, future employment? Though the ones in Bangkok, and is this certified, too? Singapore sounds ok, too), and (b) getting a new camera. I always found Canon to be the brand that worked best for me. I don't like Sony for its over-exclusivity, and Olympus conked out on me. My specifications are:
1. with the feature that can take rapid-sequence (movement?) shots
2. the shaky hand safeguarding feature
3. over 6 megapixels. I've been told to get a 10 megapixel, but I think a 7 or 8 [megapixel] will do just fine.
4. general affordability/value-for-money
5. relatively compact and lightweight
With Canon, I've narrowed it down to
1. Digital IXUS i7, aka PowerShot SD40
2. Digital IXUS 850 IS, aka PowerShot SD800
3.Digital IXUS 900 Ti PowerShot A710 IS
I found this camera review website through Google; maybe it can can shed some light on this matter.
So life's moving, and moving fast. Gotta make sure that I crest the wave and don't go under. I can do this, and I will.
My camera has conked out on me, so I haven't been able to photograph in a while. Argh. As we're going to HK soon, I'm thinking of (a) scoping out the Bikram yoga studio there (hello, future employment? Though the ones in Bangkok, and is this certified, too? Singapore sounds ok, too), and (b) getting a new camera. I always found Canon to be the brand that worked best for me. I don't like Sony for its over-exclusivity, and Olympus conked out on me. My specifications are:
1. with the feature that can take rapid-sequence (movement?) shots
2. the shaky hand safeguarding feature
3. over 6 megapixels. I've been told to get a 10 megapixel, but I think a 7 or 8 [megapixel] will do just fine.
4. general affordability/value-for-money
5. relatively compact and lightweight
With Canon, I've narrowed it down to
1. Digital IXUS i7, aka PowerShot SD40
2. Digital IXUS 850 IS, aka PowerShot SD800
3.
I found this camera review website through Google; maybe it can can shed some light on this matter.
So life's moving, and moving fast. Gotta make sure that I crest the wave and don't go under. I can do this, and I will.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Exposing the Beast
Below is an essay done by J.M. Coetzee as seen on this site. Many thanks to Colleen Patrick-Goudreau of Compassionate Cooks for referring it. Incidentally, she also has an essay of her own here.
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Published on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 by the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Exposing the Beast: Factory Farming Must be Called to the Slaughterhouse
by J.M. Coetzee
To any thinking person, it must be obvious there is something terribly wrong with relations between human beings and the animals they rely on for food. It must also be obvious that in the past 100 or 150 years, whatever is wrong has become wrong on a huge scale, as traditional animal husbandry has been turned into an industry using industrial methods of production.
There are many other ways in which our relationship with animals is wrong (to name two: the fur trade and experimentation on animals in laboratories), but the food industry, which turns living animals into what it euphemistically calls animal products and by-products, dwarfs all others in the number of individual animal lives it affects.
The vast majority of the public has an equivocal attitude to the industrial use of animals: they make use of the products of that industry, but are nevertheless a little sickened, a little queasy, when they think of what happens on factory farms and abattoirs. Therefore they arrange their lives in such a way that they need be reminded of farms and abattoirs as little as possible, and they do their best to ensure their children are kept in the dark too, because children have tender hearts and are easily moved.
The transformation of animals into production units dates back to the late 19th century, and since that time we have already had one warning on the grandest scale that there is something deeply, cosmically wrong with regarding and treating fellow beings as mere units of any kind.
This warning came so loud and clear that one would have thought it impossible to ignore. It came when, in the 20th century, a group of powerful and bloody-minded men in Germany hit on the idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter - or what they preferred to call the processing - of human beings.
Of course we cried out in horror when we found out what they had been up to. What a terrible crime to treat human beings like cattle - if we had only known beforehand. But our cry should more accurately have been: what a terrible crime to treat human beings like units in an industrial process. And that cry should have had a postscript: what a terrible crime - come to think of it, a crime against nature - to treat any living being like a unit in an industrial process.
It would be a mistake to idealise traditional animal husbandry as the standard by which the animal products industry falls short. Traditional animal husbandry is brutal enough, just on a smaller scale. A better standard by which to judge both practices would be the simple standard of humanity: is this truly the best that humans are capable of?
The efforts of the animal rights movement - the broad movement that situates itself on the spectrum somewhere between the meliorism of the animal welfare bodies and the radicalism of animal liberation - are rightly directed at decent people who both know and don't know that there is something going on that stinks to high heaven.
These are people who will say: "Yes, it's terrible what lives brood sows live; it's terrible what lives veal calves live," but who will add, with a helpless shrug of the shoulders - "what can I do about it?"
The task of the movement is to offer such people imaginative but practical options for what to do next after they have been revolted by a glimpse of the lives factory animals live and the deaths they die. People need to see that there are alternatives to supporting the animal products industry.
These alternatives need not involve any sacrifice in health or nutrition, and there is no reason why these alternatives need be costly. Furthermore, what are commonly called sacrifices are not sacrifices at all. The only sacrifices in the whole picture, in fact, are being made by non-human animals.
In this respect, children provide the brightest hope. Children have tender hearts - that is to say children have hearts that have not yet been hardened by years of cruel and unnatural battering. Given half a chance, children see through the lies with which advertisers bombard them (the happy chooks that are transformed painlessly into succulent nuggets, the smiling moo-cow that donates to us the bounty of her milk). It takes but one glance into a slaughterhouse to turn a child into a lifelong vegetarian.
Factory farming is a new phenomenon - very new indeed in the history of animal husbandry. The good news is that after a couple of decades of what the businessmen behind it must have regarded as free and unlimited expansion, the industry has been forced onto the defensive.
The activities of animals-rights organisations have shifted the onus onto the industry to justify its practices, and because they are indefensible and unjustifiable except on the most narrow economic grounds ("Do you want to pay $1.50 more for a dozen eggs?"), the industry is battening down hatches and hoping the storm will blow itself out. Insofar as there was a public relations war, the industry has already lost that war.
A final note. The campaign of human beings for animal rights is curious in one respect: the creatures on whose behalf human beings are acting are unaware of what their benefactors are up to and, if they succeed, are unlikely to thank them. There is even a sense in which animals do not know what is wrong - they do certainly not know what is wrong in the same way that humans do.
Thus, however close the well-meaning benefactor may feel to animals, the animal rights campaign remains a human project from beginning to end.
J.M. Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003. This is an edited version of a speech to be given this evening to open the exhibition Voiceless: I feel therefore I am. It will be at the Sherman Galleries until March 10.
Copyright © 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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Published on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 by the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Exposing the Beast: Factory Farming Must be Called to the Slaughterhouse
by J.M. Coetzee
To any thinking person, it must be obvious there is something terribly wrong with relations between human beings and the animals they rely on for food. It must also be obvious that in the past 100 or 150 years, whatever is wrong has become wrong on a huge scale, as traditional animal husbandry has been turned into an industry using industrial methods of production.
There are many other ways in which our relationship with animals is wrong (to name two: the fur trade and experimentation on animals in laboratories), but the food industry, which turns living animals into what it euphemistically calls animal products and by-products, dwarfs all others in the number of individual animal lives it affects.
The vast majority of the public has an equivocal attitude to the industrial use of animals: they make use of the products of that industry, but are nevertheless a little sickened, a little queasy, when they think of what happens on factory farms and abattoirs. Therefore they arrange their lives in such a way that they need be reminded of farms and abattoirs as little as possible, and they do their best to ensure their children are kept in the dark too, because children have tender hearts and are easily moved.
The transformation of animals into production units dates back to the late 19th century, and since that time we have already had one warning on the grandest scale that there is something deeply, cosmically wrong with regarding and treating fellow beings as mere units of any kind.
This warning came so loud and clear that one would have thought it impossible to ignore. It came when, in the 20th century, a group of powerful and bloody-minded men in Germany hit on the idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter - or what they preferred to call the processing - of human beings.
Of course we cried out in horror when we found out what they had been up to. What a terrible crime to treat human beings like cattle - if we had only known beforehand. But our cry should more accurately have been: what a terrible crime to treat human beings like units in an industrial process. And that cry should have had a postscript: what a terrible crime - come to think of it, a crime against nature - to treat any living being like a unit in an industrial process.
It would be a mistake to idealise traditional animal husbandry as the standard by which the animal products industry falls short. Traditional animal husbandry is brutal enough, just on a smaller scale. A better standard by which to judge both practices would be the simple standard of humanity: is this truly the best that humans are capable of?
The efforts of the animal rights movement - the broad movement that situates itself on the spectrum somewhere between the meliorism of the animal welfare bodies and the radicalism of animal liberation - are rightly directed at decent people who both know and don't know that there is something going on that stinks to high heaven.
These are people who will say: "Yes, it's terrible what lives brood sows live; it's terrible what lives veal calves live," but who will add, with a helpless shrug of the shoulders - "what can I do about it?"
The task of the movement is to offer such people imaginative but practical options for what to do next after they have been revolted by a glimpse of the lives factory animals live and the deaths they die. People need to see that there are alternatives to supporting the animal products industry.
These alternatives need not involve any sacrifice in health or nutrition, and there is no reason why these alternatives need be costly. Furthermore, what are commonly called sacrifices are not sacrifices at all. The only sacrifices in the whole picture, in fact, are being made by non-human animals.
In this respect, children provide the brightest hope. Children have tender hearts - that is to say children have hearts that have not yet been hardened by years of cruel and unnatural battering. Given half a chance, children see through the lies with which advertisers bombard them (the happy chooks that are transformed painlessly into succulent nuggets, the smiling moo-cow that donates to us the bounty of her milk). It takes but one glance into a slaughterhouse to turn a child into a lifelong vegetarian.
Factory farming is a new phenomenon - very new indeed in the history of animal husbandry. The good news is that after a couple of decades of what the businessmen behind it must have regarded as free and unlimited expansion, the industry has been forced onto the defensive.
The activities of animals-rights organisations have shifted the onus onto the industry to justify its practices, and because they are indefensible and unjustifiable except on the most narrow economic grounds ("Do you want to pay $1.50 more for a dozen eggs?"), the industry is battening down hatches and hoping the storm will blow itself out. Insofar as there was a public relations war, the industry has already lost that war.
A final note. The campaign of human beings for animal rights is curious in one respect: the creatures on whose behalf human beings are acting are unaware of what their benefactors are up to and, if they succeed, are unlikely to thank them. There is even a sense in which animals do not know what is wrong - they do certainly not know what is wrong in the same way that humans do.
Thus, however close the well-meaning benefactor may feel to animals, the animal rights campaign remains a human project from beginning to end.
J.M. Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003. This is an edited version of a speech to be given this evening to open the exhibition Voiceless: I feel therefore I am. It will be at the Sherman Galleries until March 10.
Copyright © 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
And the journey begins.
Holy..... Ohmygod, I'm going to Hawai'i. HAWAI'I!!!!!!!!! I was emailed Tuesday, February 27, 2007, that I've been accepted for teacher training. Holy, holy, holy.....!!!!!! Is this real? *pinches self, blinks really hard* But please God, I hope this is real!!!! 'Coz if it is, I'm totally committed; I've been hoping and praying for this, well, it's coming soon, and I hope I'll succeed in it. And this is only the start; hopefully there will be more to follow. Ayurveda, Jivamukti, Iyengar, who knows? Once there, I have to attend class here to prepare myself. Hopefully it won't be so expensive. Mapquest, I truly, truly love you. Thank you, H, for introducing the wonders of Mapquest.
To adjust to the timezone, I have to arrive in Hawai'i a bit earlier, hence the need to book a place. This will be my first time to book with an agent online, so I'm a bit cautious (she said skeptical). Thinking about getting travel insurance, but $$$, so maybe not. Hopefully, it'll be ok.
Training was moved from Los Angeles, though, where it would've been cheaper, and I could've seen as well as other veganfreaks from that part of town, stayed with my aunt in San Diego while adjusting to the timezone, possibly have my childhood nanny fly in from Vancouver, but no. Ah well, I'm hoping the facilities in Hawai'i will be cleaner, the place more pedestrian-friendly and the experience totally fulfilling. Let go, let go. This early on in the game, I already worry about my overabundant hair growth, what to bring and what to leave behind, and how to memorize the dialogue (when it arrives, which it hasn't: Saint Anthony, let it come to me safe and sound!), and I know I should let go. I can try. Those are also all for the future: I should focus on what I can do now, which is to have enough strength and stamina, be relatively free from injury, and have well-aligned asanas. Also, to read the journal. Then maybe make my own, hmm?
On a slightly different tangent, in relation to ahimsa, go watch A Peaceable Kingdom, if you need that last push to go vegan, or are even considering going vegan.
Go, go, go.
To adjust to the timezone, I have to arrive in Hawai'i a bit earlier, hence the need to book a place. This will be my first time to book with an agent online, so I'm a bit cautious (she said skeptical). Thinking about getting travel insurance, but $$$, so maybe not. Hopefully, it'll be ok.
Training was moved from Los Angeles, though, where it would've been cheaper, and I could've seen
On a slightly different tangent, in relation to ahimsa, go watch A Peaceable Kingdom, if you need that last push to go vegan, or are even considering going vegan.
Go, go, go.
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