Preparing to Cleanse

The time has come to do another cleanse!  Henry and I had attempted to do one together at the start of fall, but it wasn't very successful.  Cleansing is personal for me I guess and I do better if I focus on just my own cleanse instead of worrying about my husband too haha!

Why cleanse?  Many great reasons to cleanse!  Everyday we are constantly around toxins.  Cleansing gives the body a chance to get rid of toxins and re-energize itself.  Cleansing helps aid in liver and kidney function.  Eliminating processed foods and certain foods that are harder for your body to break down, your system has a chance to rest and feel nourished.  The skin also benefits from a cleanse as well, becoming more radiant.  The body can return to a balanced state.  After a cleanse it is easier to maintain healthy habits.

Creating a sense of ritual & relaxation through cleansing helps soothe the soul.  This time while cleansing I will focus on a whole mind body purification.  Starting the day with seated meditation, light yoga and warm water with lemon & honey.  Treating myself to dry skin brushing to help with circulation and detoxification.  Doing self massage after the shower with body oil.  Sometimes cleansing is not just about what we drink and eat, but also looking at our lives and realizing where else can we do a little clean up.  Maybe reading more, spending less time online.  I will of course update my blog, but I plan to try my best to limit my time sitting in front of the screen.

My cleanse will begin on November 1st and will be a 2 week long cleanse.  I will be using the Whole Foods 14 day cleanse kit again (same one I did in the spring) which has a fiber pill, laxative pill and liver detox pill.  I ordered some organic roasted dandelion root tea to enjoy along with some other teas I have on hand, as I will not be drinking coffee.  No processed food, sugar, dairy, alcohol...super clean eating here I come!!! 

Holiday Feasts and What to Eat

Ah the holiday time is quickly approaching!  I love getting together with family and friends to enjoy a wonderful meal and be thankful for all we have.  The past few years I have been making some side dishes to bring along.  I like to take a twist on fresh cranberry sauce adding in another fruit to lighten up the sugar needed.  Last year I decided we need a sweet potato dish, so I added caramelized sweet potatoes alongside our standard mashed squash.  I also put my adorable corn cob cast iron molds to good use making little corn bread sticks.  This year I am planning on adding some delicious vegetarian main dishes to the table.  I have been looking at stuffed squash recipes.  Leaning towards making a squash stuffed with wild rice and cranberries & pecans!  Martha Stewart.com has some good looking recipes on her Everything Thanksgiving: Meatless Thanksgiving Recipes.  People ask me all the time how can I be a vegetarian and what do I eat....well there's so much to eat!  I love fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, grains!  After being vegetarian during high school and even dabbling in being vegan when I lived in NYC, I then fell of the wagon in my mid twenties.  I battled with my need to control my weight from my high school days of dancing into my early twenties when I always felt the pressure to look a certain way.  NYC amplified that for me and it became a bit of a problem, but that could be a whole other blog...so anyway, after I moved away from the city I sort of gave all that up and it became a free for all!  Of course I gained weight and felt more sluggish.  Then came the time to realize things and come back to the person I wanted to be.  One filled with compassion for animals and focused on healthy living.  Personally I can no longer enjoy eating meat and feel better living my life as a vegetarian.  My journey deeper into yoga and deciding to train to be a yoga teacher guided me back to my veggie self.  Something just clicked, and while it is not easy to say no to some of the things I used to enjoy, it is harder to get over the thought of eating an animal.  This blog is by no means to be taken the wrong way, it is everyone's personal choice whether or not to eat meat.  I'm just sharing with you my choice of not eating animals and some insight of why I chose not to and what I enjoy eating instead.  Thanksgiving for me will be filled with stuffed squash, green beans, corn bread, potatoes & vegetarian mushroom gravy, cranberry sauce, and maybe a piping hot serving of leek bread pudding thanks to Martha Stewart!  And don't forget apple & pumpkin pie are vegetarian too!!!  With much love and gratitude to all beings, wishing everyone a joyful holiday season!!!

Glowing Practices

Why black light yoga you ask???  Isn't everything better when you glow?!  That's what I think!

Doing yoga with the soft glow from black lights is not only fun but also opens up your practice to a new dimension.  You can let go of judgement, instead all you see is the beautiful glow from everyone's white or neon clothes!  Something magical happens when you put music, movement and the "glow" all together during a yoga practice.  You can reach a more meditative feeling by flowing through some continuous Sun Salutations.  A black light practice can also create a fun atmosphere, wearing glow bracelets and tapping into our child-like spirits.  Finding laughter as we challenge our balance in the dark.  Maybe even bouncing a little in downward dog to the music!  Get your glow on!!!

Finding My Way

Been home now for about 3 months, but feels like longer!  Came back to a busy schedule at the salon.  Then my husband and I moved into a new place.  Through all that it became hard to keep that yoga high going!  I came home from Costa Rica in March so pumped up and then felt like I deflated by April.  It hasn't been easy "breaking" into the yoga world here.  I started teaching Monday nights this month and am slowly trying to build that up.  I think when I got home I just assumed the transition would just happen, and I would just gracefully begin teaching yoga.  But it's funny how things happen for a reason.  A client at the salon asked me if I would be interested in teaching yoga at the high school.  Figuring that I had nothing to lose, we swapped emails and she got me emailing with the high school gym/wellness teacher.  I thought it would be fun to go in and teach the tenth grade students some yoga, and the teacher was thrilled to have me come in!  But as the end of May came around and it was time for me to teach my three days in school, I grew more and more nervous.  What were the kids going to be like?  Were they going to listen to me?  Would they ask silly questions?  The day arrived and as my husband pulled up to the high school to drop me off I had to remind myself to "just breathe" and that this would be ok!  Once I got in there and began my first class I felt energized and happy to share yoga with these young minds.  Over those three days I felt my passion being reignited and I remembered why I was doing what I was doing. Teaching these bright eyed, somewhat skeptical even, teens was such an experience for me!  They infused me with energy again.  Hopefully next year I will be invited in to teach again, and maybe even all grades too!  Finding my inner teacher with the help of these high school students will be something I will forever be grateful for.  I hope that they got as much as I got out of that time on the yoga mat! 

Springing into Change

Back home and beginning to make some changes.  I have decided to do a cleanse kit for the first time.  I have done juice fasts and a week of all raw fruits/veggies, but this is the first time doing a proper cleanse.  No sugar, caffeine, alcohol, dairy, processed foods plus a cleanse kit of supplements for 14 days.  This is something very exciting for me as weird as that might sound, I enjoy the challenge and look forward to feeling fresh for the spring!  Now that I'm home it's time to figure out my next steps with yoga teaching too.  Need to organize my thoughts, start planning out some classes and start teaching!  Have some goals to set for myself and my own yoga practice too.  I want to continue working on my inversions.  At training it was emphasized that as a teacher we should be able to do inversions at least at the wall...handstand, forearm balance and headstands.  I struggled with handstand for the first week, for some reason I felt afraid of kicking the wall even though that was what it was there for.  Then it just clicked one day.  Forearm balance is easy to get up to with the wall, but I want to start working on not needing the wall there.  Before leaving for training I was already working on my headstands, so no worries on that!  My goal for this year is to get my arm balances.  Before training I usually just bailed out and assumed I wasn't strong enough.  Training built up my strength and confidence, now I need to keep going and by the end of the year I will be strong on my hands.  This is a big year of changes for me.  Good changes, strong changes and of course healthy changes!  I will keep things posted on all these beautiful changes going on.  I always find that making changes at certain moments can make all the difference, so welcoming in the spring and new opportunities!

Airport Reflection

Sitting at San Juan International Airport reflecting on this journey in Costa Rica.  I have learned so many things over this month long adventure!  A wealth of yoga and teaching knowledge with some personal growth thrown in there too.  I now know how to pack for such a trip too, not that I did am awful job but I could have packed less of course!  My yoga practice got challenged.  Going to yoga teacher training I expected to study the history of yoga and how to properly teach classes, but I didn't think my personal practice would become so much deeper.  This experience has tied everything together for me.  It has truly joined both my physical asana practice with the spiritual practice as well.  I'm already plotting and planning my next big adventure to do my advanced training.  This trip was also the first time I have left the country by myself and stayed out of the country for such a length of time.  It was a thrilling experience that has opened the door for more travel hopefully.  For now I will head home and work my you know what off so I can save for another journey.  Advanced training in Thailand & Spain...hmmm which one first?! 

Month of Lessons in Non-Attachment

A month away from home in a foreign country is sure to be filled with lessons in non-attachment.  Packing enough but hopefully not too much as I would be carrying a travel backpack.  I originally planned on carrying on my pack, but the airport said otherwise.  Ah the stress of trying to cram it all into that pack meant no make up, just a basic face/body soap bar and a simple face lotion.  Mainly yoga clothes seeing as three weeks of my time would be at yoga teacher training.  It always feels liberating to me not to be weighed down by lots of unnecessary things.  However, standing at the airport I learned my first lesson of non-attachment as I had to release the pack into the hands of check in.  It was a disappointing feeling and then there's the thought of what if it doesn't arrive in Costa Rica?!  Then I let go and accepted that this was great, now I didn't have to lug this heavy thing around!  Arriving at the Goddess Garden I had some more lessons in non-attachment.  At home I have a soft, comfy bed and an ergonomic memory foam pillow...ah good 'ol Goddess Garden's twin bunk beds were "firm" and the pillow was maybe and inch thick.  But I adapted to this by folding my little pillow in half to make it a bit more comfortable.  I actually ended up getting some of my best sleep there in the rainforest.  There are so many things we become attached too in life.  The way we look or watching tv, wearing make up and doing out hair, the sound of people's voices.  While away for my three weeks of yoga training I didn't call home.  I wanted to live in the moment and enjoy the time away learning.  Now here at Samara beach my husband and I learn another lesson in attachment...the ocean took both of our sunglasses!  I had just said earlier today how it was no biggie that I squished them a little yesterday when playing on the beach.  There was a little crack in the lens, but eh I only needed them for a couple more days.  Then as I body surfed a wave this afternoon, the wave rode off with my super cool white shades!  All I could do was laugh, hey I had the choice of grabbing the sunglasses or my bikini top, figured the bikini top was higher on the priority list.  But nothing is forever, even my $4 shades left me before my time in Costa Rica was up.  Even funnier was that a couple waves later and my husband was also dealing with non-attachment to his shades too!  It has been a fun month here and I have learned a lot about what I really need.  There are always wants and wishes, but I made it through without a lot of those comforts of home.  Never take things for granted and never think you will always have something, cause in the end we leave this world without our "things". 

Farewell sunglasses...