My Wish List

World Peace is in our Hands (image from http://sathyasaibaba.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/samastha-lokah-sukhino-bhavanthu)

All I want for Christmas is a world…

where lives are lived and never torn apart

that wars would never start

everyone would have a friend

and love would never end

but Santa doesn’t work that way

so

all I want is a spanking brand new juicer that will erase all my problems away!

Seriously, world peace begins with me and you.  Heal yourself to heal the world.  My rinky dink juiceman that I’ve had since college and just recently began to use it has been the medicine that has healed me on so many levels.  It recently cracked and is currently being held together by two of those big blue broccoli rubber bands.  It’s not the best juicer out there but it’s done its job.  It’s ready to retire and I’m ready to graduate to a more sophisticated juicer.  My eye is on the Greenstar or the Omega 8006…. oooooohhhhhhh la la

Anyone out there have any experience with juicers?

greenstarjuicers.org

omega8006 from bestjuicers.com

 

What brings you peace and healing in your body?  In your life?

 

Green Galore

It’s a super green day all around today… But first, I have to rave about my new mop.

No, the mop is not burning

Clean enough to put my face near it

Yesterday I was super excited about my new  Shark steam mop.  It uses nothing but water to steam clean the floors.   I admit I am a landfill obuser in this area as I used swifter wet mops cause I’m too lazy and don’t have the time luxury to use an old fashioned water and bucket mop (plus the water gets disgustingly disgusting).  It’s been a process to switch my cleaning products to more enviro friendly products and the mop was the last thing to be added.

No more yucky sticky film left over and what they call “lemon fresh” scent lingering in the house.  I love this mop.  The floor got squeaky clean and I used less woman power to push the mop to really get the remanents of two kiddos off the floor.  Best of all, the pad is washable and reusable.  Bed and Bath in Cupertino has it on sale for $69 and take the 20% coupon for a great deal! Love it! Love it! Love it!  Can’t wait to mop again. LOL

So this year for St. Patty’s day, I’ve taken green to the max!  Not only did I wear green, I felt green, ate green, and met a leprechaun today.  I normally don’t do that green stuff on St. Patty’s day.  Brings back images of pinch marks from grade school cause kids are mean and my parents never bought me anything green cause it didn’t look good on me.

Felt green today after hitting the pavement for a 30 minute interval run.  Having been in slippers for the last 5 days because of my allergy attack, I felt like my lungs were pulled over my head and my breakfast was going to come out of my nose.  Nevertheless, I kept it slow and steady like tortoise and eventually warmed up the at the last 5 minute interval.  Felt good afterwards and hit the kitchen to make some green juice, and green sushine salad to refuel before running to teach my noon class:

organic kale, cucumbers, lime, romaine lettuce

Bed of curly kale with lime, pink himalayan salt, and flax oil dressing, sea palm, sea kraut, daikon sprouts, and quinoa

After being so good about my greens, I had to splurge on yogurtland. Tons of fruit in there topped with a few green M&Ms and a sprinkled cookie.

My little lucky leprechauns who got to eat dessert before dinner

Leprechaun at the school crossing. The kids are so lucky to have her.

But the luckiest person is me. I am so blessed to have such an awesome hubby to share my frozen yogurt with.  I don’t talk much about him but here he is.  Always there for me even though he left me in the dust during our run this morning

Achieving Balance Thru Food Yoga

Local yogini takes her yoga off the mat and into her kitchen.  “The common everyday fruits and veggies are often forced down our children’s throats and overlooked by the parents who claim their benefits but only get half a serving a day themselves,” says Wong.  She brings these farmer’s market finds to life and rebels against the  “no playing with your food” rule.  No cuts or peanut butter are involved in holding the sculptures up… just pure presence and calm and being one with the subject.  “It’s an opportunity to observe the breath while trying to find the balance.  I found myself holding my breath a lot just as some people hold their breath in tree pose.  We try too hard to bring balance to our practice and our lives when we hold the breath.  Amazing things happen and things begin to align when we allow prana, life force, to flow through us,” says Wong.

BWAHAHAHAHA   How’s that for a Yoga Journal article, eh?  Why not.  Yoga is everywhere.  I remember an article by YJ on “Rock Solid” Stone Yoga.

Truly amazing pieces of art.  Balance is everywhere among us whether living on nonliving.  It is how the universe operates.  But in the universe balance doesn’t imply stability, equilibrium, or equal distribution.  I’ve found in my life, balance is more like a pendulum, swinging either far right or far left from success to failures. Every so often, the pendulum swings in equanimity and I’m in harmony for that split second that is.  Same goes for  my practice.  Some days I land a beautiful headstand and other days it’s like “why would we stand on our heads, isn’t that what feet are for?”

What does balance mean to you and how do you achieve it?  At this point in my life, I should feel like I have a pretty balanced life.  Onlookers would perceive I have it all worked out as I balance my life as a yogini, yoga teacher, full time mom, and budding adventurer.  Let me tell you! It’s not all strawberries and cream.  One thing that I use as my guide to being balanced is staying flexible.  My balanced life is comprised of many facets including my health, family, financial, intellectual, social, work, spiritual, recreation, personal growth, romance and more.  I don’t necessarily spend time every day in each area in equal amounts, but in the long term, I give each special attention.  Right now high on my priority is balancing my health.  Since following the metabolic type diet principles, I’ve develop a whole new relationship to food and not just to see how high I can stack my strawberries.  I’m broadening my palate to new veggies that I may have never liked before and I admit, I do try to stuff them down my kids throats.  I noticed when I’m performing at my optimum health, my personal and work life soar.  The last week has definitely been a testament to this as I suffered from seasonal allergies so did my patience with people.  My yogic prinicples out the door!  Yelling and screaming at obnoxious kids, crazy drivers on the road and my poor husband who just always tries to help but sometimes get in the way.  Sorry hun.  I love you!  My food is definitely my medicine.  It heals me.  It nourishes me.  It gives me something to splurge on knowing that it does me good.  To Lacy, go ahead and buy those $8 eggs   (BTW, I get 18 organic large brown eggs at Cupertino for $5).

Kale - my favorite greens

I heart veggie juice: kale, cukes, carrots, tomatoes. And yes, that's dancer's pose etched into the glass from lululemon

Who say's happiness can't be bottled for next time when you need it.

Bruised ego? Nah! After a failure is achieved, success is inevitable

An Amazing Ordinary Day

No running today.. just running around town from class to nutritionist to school to home to art class to home to dinner to bed…

Ahhhh just another ordinary day but what an amazing ordinary day it is!  I was reminded by a Facebook friend who posted this video about the very reason why I started this blog.. to bring life, adventure, joy, and gratitude for these ordinary days.  Check it out:

How amazing my ordinary day was to be able to share my yoga with 12 other amazing yogis this morning and then see my nutritionist Michael McEvoy to check out how my metabolic typing diet has been working for me via several tests one of which includes viewing the health of my live blood cells.  This is what my red blood cells look like:

Healthy blood is what I have!!!  All that veggie juicing paid off!.  The bubble like circles are the red blood cells.  They are touching eachother and not clumping and overlapping.  Some bubbles look like tear drops indicating some protein deficiency but nothing to worry about because I haven’t eaten a full meal all morning.  I am so happy about my results and the breakthroughs I’ve had since identifying what my metabolic type is.  I’m so happy to be the carb type that I am because all the foods I love are the foods I should eat more of and who wouldn’t be happy getting more of what you love, eh?

The practice of body awareness that yoga has provided me has helped me tremendously along with this metabolic type nutrition to zero in on my health issues.  I am in complete control of how my physical body feels from the foods I consume.  Food is thy medicine!  Check out some of my favorite dishes:

Breathe Like You’re Alive

Just because you can breathe doesn’t mean you’re alive or that you’re living your life.   By the way, how’s your breath right now?  How many times a day do you actually appreciate your inhales and empty your exhales?

I was at my acupuncture visit this saturday and realized how many of us breathe as if we were dying gasping for air.  The treatment rooms are like cubicles.  They’re private with doors  but the ceiling is not enclosed so conversations, or in this case the gasping for air, in the next room are heard.  It sounded like a father/son appointment.  I could imagine the horror on the son’s face as the doc told him not to worry because it’s like brushing your teeth; you don’t want to do it, but it’s good for you.  Doc proceeds to treat him and starts poking the needles.  I could hear the boy grunting and grinding his teeth.  Doc tells him to breathe.  The boy starts to breathe heavy and almost could start to hear a little ujyaii breath going on.  But before his breath could become soothing, he started to sound like a dying darth vadar.  Doc snaps at him, “Don’t breath like your dying!” Only then the boy snaps out of his panic state and realizes that he is alive.  The grunting subsides and I could finally relax into my treatment.

A couple breaths into my surrender, another patient enters another nearby room.  She’s babbling away telling the doc her aches and pains until she runs out of breath.  Doc just says, “ok, lie face down.”  I love this doc.  He sees so many people who just procrastinate and have small talk to try and avoid their treatment.  She’s asking him how many needles she’s gonna get and how bad is it gonna be compared to last time.  He tells her he’s gonna take it easy on her today and that she’s gonna get only 6 needles in her feet.  The woman is in shock, “are you freakin’ kidding me?”  (Those were her exact words.)  “Nope. Only 6 today.  It’s good for you,” says doc. I felt bad for her because the needles that go in the feet are the most painful.  But once you get past what seems like an eternity but is really only several seconds or so of pain, it’s a great release.

Be blessed today and breathe in gratitude for the opportunity to feel.  Feel the breathe.  Feel the pain.  Feel the happiness.  Feel the joy.  Feel whatever it is that comes up.  Feeling is knowing that you’re alive. So act like you are and don’t be afraid to live.

Take a big breath in and s-i-g-h-hhhhhhh.

Good Pains

Oh my hip flexors!  Oh my badonks!  I am experiencing the aftermath of a FUN filled weekend!  Started off with Yoga Day in my last post and taking the kids for a bike ride to the park afterwards.  I had no intentions of riding my bike and just wanted to stroll along Niko cause he’s been scared to ride his bike after falling pretty hard the last time.  He surprised me this time and took off, so I ended up jogging and took Niko’s advice to “fly like the wind.”  (Where does he learn all these things?!)  Here I am clunking along trying to jog in my boots and my lungs are ready to give out (I totally suck at cardio).  The kids eventually wore themselves out and didn’t want to ride their bikes back home so rather than trying to walk their bikes home, this is what I did:

It was a wild ride.  I was completely acting silly.  This lady walking her dog, was cracking up because the kids were running and I was trying to chase them on Niko’s trike.  Helloooooo hip flexors!  Yoga works this area, but a 3yr old’s bike really pushes the edge. LOL.

I woke up with some “happy” hip flexors!  It didn’t help that the next day I had to sit down for what seemed like an eternity at a cousin’s baptismal and reception.  By the time dinner was over, I rushed to acro class so anxious to move and really fly.  It was an amazing class.  The dude Shayen who subbed our class really took me to my edge and pushed me beyond my fears.  I was ready to move and he really challenged us yesterday.  He showed no hesitation to move us and push us to our limits.  I felt completely safe and trusted him as our teacher and base… until he dropped me on my badonks!  All of a sudden, plop!  drop! ouch!  Complete surprise.  Even more surprising was it didn’t bother me.  So what I fell.  I thought my confidence would be shattered and my fears would multiply.  But they didn’t.  I actually felt inspired to try more and definitely relax into my fears and eventually through them.  This is definitely something I am working on bringing this mentality off my mat and into the challenges in my life.   I’m finding that the more I am open to facing my fear, the easier it is to be fearless.  Doesn’t mean that I won’t feel the feeling but I know that being open to feeling it helps me release it.  Check out Shayen’s website:  Your Heart is a Portal Website …. more blog on him later.