Grama's Wisdom

This is a photo of my mom's mom.  Grama and I spent a lot of time together growing up.  She was very English and proper, drank tea, kept a stiff upper lip and believed in never, ever airing our dirty laundry.  When she died, we found an old folded paper in her bedroom side table.  In her own handwriting, she had copied the following, probably from a book as she was a voracious reader.  In fact, in her 90th year, she taught herself to use the internet so she could read biographies online.  She'd been through all the large print editions in the library.

"Just for today, try this experiment.  

Decide that you cannot possibly control everything that happens anyway, you are going to release all your worries to the force that controls the universe.

You are going to relax and let it go.  

If you relax, you will be able to handle all your problems with a small fraction of the effort.

Relax your entire body and mind, right now, and decide that as a visitor with a very small stay on this planet, you will let whatever happens, happen.  For today, you will not try to force your life.  You will stay in perfect harmony with the universe."

Around the time Grama might have copied this wisdom, across the world in India, a young man was writing about his father's teachings.  Krishnamacharya has often been referred to as the father of modern yoga.  He trained BKS Iyengar and Sri Pattabhi Jois, both founders of influential styles of yoga today.  His son, Desikachar, was writing about what is REAL yoga.  He turned to the Yoga Sutras, an ancient text outlining the complete path of yoga for liberation, and derived the truth of yoga to be a steadying of the mind.  He said his father taught that flexibility and challenging poses made one a gymnast, not a yogi.  So what defines a "steady mind"?  Desikachar said his father encouraged students to look to their relationships, with family, friends and colleagues.  Is there steadiness?  Respect?  Compassion?  This is where we really practice yoga.

Grama never practised yoga, never lived to see me become a yoga therapist.  She wasn't new age, or overtly religious, or given to leaning on emotional "crutches".  We were so surprised to discover her connection to the above writing.  This is the kind of sentiment that we share in yoga classes all the time.  As students try a new pose, or explore moving in an area that was previously painful, they are practising finding steadiness in difficult situations.  This patience and calm detachment is the foundation of most mindfulness traditions and meditation.  Who knew that Grama felt this way?

When you interact with family, friends or colleagues, what wisdom might be "hidden away in a drawer"?  How would your life change if you opened to connect on this level, seeking steadiness in relationships?  You could begin practising yoga without unrolling a mat at all if you are willing to start exploring life in this way.

Namaste.

Oh baby - You're eating what???

It's January.  I am reading all the magazines and blog posts about clean eating.  No dairy.  No meat.  No gluten.  No sugar.  Ugh!!!  So what can you eat????

Research is increasing emerging to convince us that our gut flora is deeply influential to our health.   Here are a few examples:

1.  Depression:  Research from McMaster University earlier this year determined that levels of gut bacteria in babies and younger children reflect propensity towards depression and anxiety in adulthood.  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150728110734.htm

2.  Immune Function:  A new understanding of the essential role of gut microbes in the immune system may hold the key to dealing with some of the more significant health problems facing people in the world today, researchers say in a new analysis.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23426535

3.  Obesity:  New research connects not only weight gain, but diabetes and other inflammatory conditions like cardiac disease and cancer to gut bacteria.  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-bacteria-help-make-us-fat-and-thin/

I feel compelled to work on my diet.  In the second half of my century on earth, I have joint pain, a tendency toward melancholy and hormonal craziness.  Don't we all?  But what if being a little more mindful could increase my energy and boost my concentration?  What if I could finally shed a few pounds????

With this inspiration bright in my soul, I scoured my recipe book.  I love recipes.  I copy them from facebook, pull them from magazines and share them with friends.  The treasure trove is extensive.  

Tonight's dinner is vegan, plant based and follows our clean eating guidelines.  Honestly,  it was yummy and filling.  A square of dark chocolate for dessert completed my bliss.

Chickpea & Lentil Curry

Mild and flavourful.  Easy to prepare.

Saute one chopped onion in coconut oil or ghee (clarified butter used extensively in Indian cooking).  Add two cloves minced garlic and 1 tsp chopped fresh ginger.  Stir in 1/2 tsp cinnamon, a pinch of ground cloves, 1/2 tsp cardamom and 1 tsp cumin.  Enjoy the spicy aroma as you add 1 Tablespoon curry powder.  Once well browned, add 2 cups water, 1 cup stewed tomatoes, 1/2 cup canned coconut milk and 1 cup red lentils.  Season generously with salt.  Simmer for about 30 minutes until thickened and lentils are tender.  Add one drained and rinsed can of chick peas.  

In the meantime, cook basmati rice.  I never owned a rice maker until my brother in law passed away several years ago.  With such limited storage space in my kitchen, I thought these fancy appliances were out of my reach.  I have totally reconsidered!  The secret to great basmati rice, so it tastes like the Indian restaurants, is to let it sit in the rice maker for 30 - 60 minutes post.  It is fluffy and dry then.  To make this dish really sing, add some flaked coconut as you cook the rice.

Serve with chopped cilantro and fresh lime juice squeezed on top.

Spinach Salad

The dressing here is a raw sunflower seed puree that is reminiscent of Ceasar salad.  Adds protein and fibre to your meal.

Soak 1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds in 1/2 cup almost boiled water for one hour.  Blend mixture with 2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice, 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, 1 Tablespoon raw honey, 1 tsp tamari and 1 garlic clove in a food processor until smooth.  Toss with baby spinach, chopped veggies and raw sprouts.  Awesome!

Total protein for this meal: 24 grams plus tons of iron, fibre, vitamins and minerals.  So if you would like to experiment with clean eating, this menu covers the bases and provides the nutrients you need to build gorgeous gut bacteria.

Weight Loss with Yoga

It will be the same everywhere you look this month.  There will be crowds at the gym.  There will be talk at work about signing up for the next challenge or cleanse.  Your inbox will be inundated with THE secret to finding a thinner you.

Can yoga help you lose weight?  Is it safe or accessible to every body?

You would expect a hot yoga flow class would be the best to burn calories and build cardio.  The laying around breathing and stretching kind of yoga is good enough for relaxation, but it couldn't possibly help you firm up!  Could it?

There are problems with the normal approach to fitness:

1.  Weight loss has a lot more to do with diet than it does exercise.  (http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/expert-answers/weight-loss/faq-20058292)
When you ramp up your activity level, your appetite naturally comes alive.  The 300 calories that you just burned on your power walk for the last 45 minutes will be filled in with the muffin you next eat because you're hungry!  Exercise is important to build muscle (which burns more calories than fat tissue), to maintain strength and to work all body systems, such as circulatory and endocrine.  But the math just doesn't support using exercise alone as a weight loss strategy.

2.  Many self improvement programs assume that you are imperfect now and must DO something to change yourself.
Psychologically, this can create a great deal of dissonance.  The goal is always changing and is usually just beyond our reach.  The business model of the fitness industry depends on us being unhappy with the current state of affairs.  The stress of this dissonance can lead us to abandon our fitness program.  At the very least, approaching exercise with this mindset can be a form of self aggression, increasing the risk of injury and adding stress hormones to our system.

3.  Exercise feels like it is releasing stress but it is actually continuing the stress response.  
The human animal is designed to exercise when there is a survival threat.  No sabre toothed tiger chases you to the treadmill but your nervous system reacts as if there were one.  The stress hormones that give you power to sprint or haul the kettle bell are now being utilized in the manner that they were designed to be.  This is why exercise feels like it's relieving stress.  The stress hormones that built all day at your desk or when you were struggling in traffic didn't get metabolized and that stress we feel differently.  After your workout, there will probably be little time to rest so the body does not repair from the energy expended on the stressful events of your day.

4.  Many fitness activities involve repetitive movements that can create joint misalignment and subsequent injury.
Walking the same route around your neighbourhood or following the same program on your elliptical machine results in the same muscles firing in the same ways for thousands of repetitions each session.  We are encouraged to get moving, and that is vitally important, but varying the routine is even more vital.  Rather than focusing on calories burned, we would be wise to look at the degree of different ranges of motion asked of our muscles.  Cardiovascular health can be maintained in short bursts of intense activity for just a few minutes a day.  Long sessions of steady state cardio exercise, such as on a treadmill or bicycle, is often not the most effective investment of your time (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health-advisor/high-intensity-interval-training-is-it-really-the-holy-grail-of-exercise/article16891839/#dashboard/follows/)

Yoga can offer weight loss benefits by addressing some of these traditional weaknesses.

1.  A more mindful lifestyle naturally and organically includes a more careful diet.
Slow yoga is an experience that encourages us to connect with our present moment.  We sense how to move, how to breathe and what is happening internally.  After experiencing that connection with our bodies, we are less likely to feed it unhealthy foods.  And if we do choose to indulge, it is with awareness and in a greater context of healthy behaviours.

2.  Yoga encourages self compassion and self awareness.  It respects the individual experience.
Often class is conducted with dim lighting, even eyes closed, so the temptation to measure our performance is minimized.  A gentle, or therapeutic, approach to yoga is a loving way to interact with your amazing body.  Movements are routinely modified or even skipped altogether depending on what your body needed this practice.  It is a unique experience for many of us to move our bodies slowly, comfortably and lovingly with no pushing or aggression.

3.  Gentle, or therapeutic, yoga reminds our systems how to relax.
It's a high octane world we live in.  The natural balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activation is skewed toward stress response (sympathetic activation).  This is evidenced in our sleep, digestive, pain, concentration, disease and obesity issues  (for a good read about the effect of stress on the body read "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" by Robert Sapolsky).  A recent study on behalf of the American Diabetes Association showed that restorative, gentle yoga reduced belly fat two and half times more effectively than other forms of exercise in the study.  It seems counter intuitive that laying around, pretty much doing nothing, could help you lose weight.  It is the stress hormones, that are inflammatory in nature, that contribute to the fat retention.  Cortisol in particular has been cited in belly fat retention in many studies.  Slow, gentle yoga (such as a restorative class) encourages the opposite type of hormonal activation that brings repair to the inflammatory responses of stress.  (http://www.prevention.com/weight-loss/weight-loss-tips/surprising-way-gentle-yoga-can-help-you-lose-serious-weight)You could try the posture in the photo above for 20 minutes before bed or I like it as a transition from working to a relaxing evening at home.  If you were able to add a longer practice, 1 to 1.5 hours, once or twice a week, you would likely see results.

4.  Yoga builds strong joints.
A well constructed yoga class offers each joint of your body a full range of motion movement.  In gentler forms of yoga, this is accomplished without any strain on the joint so those with pain or restrictions can still participate.  If your class includes weight bearing poses, this often works the muscle eccentrically, which means the muscle is lengthening while working.  In this way, the muscles stay flexible yet strong which means more fluid movement for you.  If you are building a yogic weight loss program, including some more vigourous classes is recommended respecting your body at all times.  Many of the hybrid yoga classes offered publicly move very quickly in very crowded rooms.  The best instructor ever can only really monitor 10 - 15 students well at a time.  The more physically challenging the practice, the greater risk of losing yoga benefits.  The root of yoga is self compassion and self awareness.  Jumping into a too physically oriented class unmindfully will set back weight loss.

The bottom line....
Move more.  Move mindfully.  Rest more.  Invite love into your relationship with your body to bring healing and to ultimately live happily in the body we have now.