Rox Does Yoga

Yoga, Wellness, and Life

Food Update January 8, 2013

Filed under: checking in,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:45 pm
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On Christmas Day, I ate meat for the first time in a year and a half. (We’re not counting that chicken salad sandwich that I thought was egg salad – that was an accident, and I threw it out as soon as I realized – we’re talking about intentional meat consumption only). I had a slice of bacon, just one. It smelled so good and, I figured, nothing you eat really counts on Christmas anyway. My mom was standing next to me nattering about something, and I turned to her and said, “I can’t talk about that right now. I’m eating bacon for the first time in over a year. You need to give me a minute.” And I shut my eyes and savored it. I was sad to discover that bacon still tastes as good as I remembered. I’d been theorizing that after such a prolonged period without meat, my body would have adjusted and meat would taste funny to me now, but nope. It was freakin’ fantastic.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a vegetarian. (Or, rather, a lacto-ovo-pescatarian, for you purists.) I have no plans to go back to eating meat any time soon: I still believe in my reasons for not eating meat, and I still like my veg lifestyle. That hasn’t changed. But I think one should check in on things now and then, and also I really wanted some bacon. Damn.

In other news, one challenging thing at my new job has been the sheer availability of junk food. Anybody who gets a gift basket from a vendor puts it in the kitchen. Any food left over after a meeting gets put in the kitchen. People are dropping off leftover cookies and holiday candy. It’s been crazy for over a month now. I have never had willpower where junk is concerned, even less so where free food is concerned, and ever since I got pregnant I haven’t felt much need to because I needed the extra calories. And now I’m breastfeeding: I’m back down not just to my pre-baby weight but to my college weight, and my pre-baby pants are all too big. So the problem is not that I’m eating tons of snacks all day – I need the snacks, my body has plenty of use for the calories – but I do worry about the sodium, sugars, caffeine, and carbs, plus just the effect of dumping so much crap into my system. And the bad habits I’m forming. Hopefully the worst of the freebies are over and I can buy some fruit to try and fill the hole where cookies and truffles and caramel popcorn have been going. (The plus is that I have a place to drop off all the unwanted junk food from my house, which I did yesterday.)

Also a plus, F and I had lunch at a vegan cafe over the holidays! Everything was excellent, especially my falafel wrap, which was the best I think I’ve ever had. Thumbs up to Vge Cafe in Bryn Mawr; we’re looking forward to visiting again.

 

The Beauty of Imperfection December 28, 2012

Filed under: reflections,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:03 pm
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I’ve been thinking a lot about perfection lately. Now that I’m at my new job and my good friend K and I work for the same company again, we usually have lunch together several times a week. After hearing me enumerate my woes and personal shortcomings over lunch for two days in a row, K said to me, “You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and a lot of your problem is that you try so hard to be perfect all the time. And you don’t have to do that.”

K is totally right, and I’d never really thought about my actions in those terms before – that I try to be perfect. But it’s what I do. At work I want everyone to think I’m smart, competent, and efficient, and sometimes I put up fronts to make it seem as if I don’t make mistakes. In my writing I labor over my poems, stories, and book reviews for ages, rarely sending anything out to be considered for publication because I never think the work is good enough. At home and in my personal life, this tendency shows itself most strongly. I take housekeeping personally and obsess about the dusty floors; if we have people over then I run myself ragged trying to be the perfect hostess. I guilt myself over every little way I fail to be perfect: forgotten phone calls and birthday cards, wasted minutes on Facebook when I should be doing something useful, every single time I perceive myself as having said the wrong thing. And I can’t even count all the ways that I’ve failed as a mother already. I try to make my appearance perfect too, obsessing over wearing the right clothes and shoes, feeling uncomfortable all day if I didn’t have time to dry my hair in the morning. And that shit should have been over back in high school.

Sometimes striving to be perfect causes me pain on the happiest occasions. I woke up sobbing the morning after my wedding with regrets about things I’d done or failed to do on the big day. It took a long time for that guilt to go away and for me to remember our wedding day as the beautiful day it was, without those distortions. And the most painful area where I failed to be perfect was YogaBaby’s birth.

We’d taken a birth preparation class focused on using self-hypnosis to control pain, and saw all these videos of women calm and peaceful during labor, almost as if they were sleeping. I wanted such a beautiful, peaceful, all-natural childbirth, and with the techniques I was learning, combined with the yoga, meditation, and breathing practices I already knew, I thought that giving birth would be no problem. Of course when the time came, it was fast and intense and hurt worse than anything I’d ever experienced. Some of the relaxation techniques we’d learned in class helped a lot, but the hypnosis flew out the window. As I brought my daughter into the world, I was crying, writhing, and screaming. Her birth was an amazing, magical event, and holding her in my arms for the first time will always be the most beautiful moment of my life. But I’m carrying around all this guilt and shame about how I acted during the labor. I know that I did an awesome job – I birthed my daughter with no medicine, no epidural, and she came out healthy and strong. I know this, and I hate having these guilty feelings in my heart surrounding such a profound, meaningful experience. But it’s still there.

So what I want to say now is, Screw perfect. There is no perfect. I (and all of you out there nodding your heads as you read this) need to let go of perfect. We don’t have to do it all. I’m going to start sending out my poems again, even though I don’t think they’re ready. We hired a cleaning service to come to our house once a month, and I’m going to revel in the relief I feel about that instead of feeling guilty that I can’t do it all myself. And most of all, I’m going to strive to let go of the desire to be a perfect wife and mother. F married me, with all my faults and neuroses: I’m the perfect wife for him just as I am. My daughter’s birth was hard; I worked hard to give birth to her, and I rocked it. I need to honor that. I need to do this for myself, so that I’ll stop allowing guilt to cloud my days, and I need to do it for my baby. If I don’t, she will see it in me, learn it from me, and that’s a legacy I don’t want to give her. My baby girl is perfect just the way she is, and I have to start recognizing that maybe I am too.

 

yoga in the schools December 18, 2012

Filed under: reflections,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:22 pm
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I heard on the radio yesterday morning that parents of schoolchildren in California are preparing to sue their school district over a new program of yoga classes in the elementary schools. I looked it up and, while I’m not sure why this was showing up on my radio now, it is in fact true: ABC News and HuffPost reported on it back in October.

Considering that this is a yoga blog, my opinion on yoga in schools is probably obvious, but I’m trying to look at this issue from the perspective of the parents in question. I know how I feel about, say, including the words “Under God” in the pledge of allegiance. I think that it forces a religious question into something that’s not a religious subject, because many people are patriotic and proud of their country without identifying that country with a deity. And I think inserting those words into the pledge of allegiance could serve to make children who are in the non-Christian minority uncomfortable and uncertain, and could lead to bullying if that non-Christian child is singled out for not saying those two words. I don’t think you should force any set of religious beliefs on anyone, and I think doing so can be particularly hurtful when children are involved.

So now to apply those principles to something I do believe children should be taught. I can sympathize with parents who want to ensure that religious beliefs aren’t being taught in a public school, because teaching religion to a child is the parents’ job. I wouldn’t want my child being taught beliefs that I don’t share. And gym class and fitness are important for children, but why does it have to be religious stretching?!

You don’t have to pray to Krishna to get value out of a yoga practice. The physical benefits of yoga are myriad, and new studies are published all the time describing the benefits of yoga for, say, heart disease. For this reason alone one would expect parents to welcome a school yoga program in a nation where lack of physical activity and lack of healthy food choices are making obesity and poor health an epidemic among our children. Beyond the physical, yoga also has proven mental benefits. Yoga includes techniques that help the practitioner achieve a calm, focused mind, the advantages of which seem obvious for schoolchildren learning study skills and test taking, and that’s before you even get to the benefits of yoga for conditions like ADD, ADHD, PTSD, and depression.

When talking about a yoga program in schools, it’s hard to state a definite opinion, because we’re talking about an entire curriculum taught across several grade levels for 30 minutes twice a week (versus the addition of two words like in my example above). Without having any direct experience of the program, I would imagine that the yogis who created it would have anticipated a negative response from some parents and proactively removed any Sanskrit and any reference to spirituality, focusing specifically on yoga for fitness. That’s what I would imagine, anyway. I’ve read only a bit about the Tudor Joneses, but I would not imagine them to be so blinded by their love of yoga and desire to share it that they would create a program that would fail on this front. The principal and school board as well would hopefully not have accepted the money if they’d had any thought of the program being contested (but then, principals and school boards have to find money wherever they can). Overall I want to believe that the program they’ve adopted has been sufficiently de-Hindued so as to be acceptable to a mainstream audience.

Yoga is a truly multifaceted system. You can use it to advance your spiritual practice, or you can do physical postures for years without ever knowing that there’s an eightfold path. There’s no true parallel within Christianity – you could say that praying the rosary calms and focuses the mind, but the rosary in essence is still a prayer and always will be, because that is its purpose. Yoga is not a prayer, although some people use it that way. It is a systematic and holistic approach to personal health and wellness, which can include spirituality, but does not have to.

I would hope that, before pressing forward in a legal battle, the the parents in this school district will learn more. Review the full program plan, attend and observe some classes. It is foolish to judge something you haven’t taken the time to understand. That’s what I hope I will do someday if an issue arises at my child’s school that worries me.

Coincidentally, a friend who lives in another state sent me a photo the other day of her five-year-old son practicing yoga. He’d learned it in school. He was doing a mean triangle pose and was obviously having a great time.

 

Anger and Patience December 11, 2012

Filed under: reflections,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:00 pm
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A week and a half ago, YogaBaby got her first bad cold with a fever. Coincidentally, it was also the first time my husband F had to travel for business since YB was born. My mom came down and stayed home with YB on Thursday, since she couldn’t go to daycare, but the two of us were on our own Thursday night. I was pretty terrified: YB hadn’t been sleeping well anyway, and now she was sick. How would we get through the night?

It was an incredibly hard night, but we did get through it. I was there with my poor sick girl every time she woke up, over and over all night, ready with comforting arms (and boobs) to soothe her. It was the best mothering I’ve done since YB came into my life – I didn’t think about it or complain, I just did. As I rocked her to sleep one more time and watched the sun rise early that Friday morning, I let myself realize that the hard night was over – in a few hours we would go to the doctor, and a few hours after that, F would be home from his trip to help share the load.

Fast forward to Sunday morning. YB’s fever was long gone, but she was still under the weather, and even with F by my side, it had been a rough weekend. We were all tired and grumpy, me most of all, and I wanted a break. No nap or quiet time in the swing was long enough for me. I felt angry and resentful at being so needed, defeated and discouraged about my independence. What happened to that supermom who’d been here just a few nights ago? I hate being angry, and it was even worse to be angry at my little sick baby who couldn’t help being miserable. I broke down and cried.

I had been hoping to go to yoga class on Sunday afternoon, but after the weekend we’d had, I thought I should stay home instead. F made me go. The baby, feeling fine, was hanging out in her stroller helping her dad rake leaves as I drove away. The yoga class at EEY was taught by a sub, one of the current YTT students about to graduate in two weeks, and meeting her gave me a chance to reflect on where I was one year ago at the end of my teacher training. Throughout the class, I focused on centering myself here, right now on my mat, letting go of all the anger and bad energy I’d been feeling, reaching towards my truest self and the patience and kindness I know live there.

After class, I felt refreshed, as if the reserves inside me had been empty and now were full again (or, if not full, at least not empty anymore!). I came home feeling like I had something to give to my family again. Of course, when the baby cried for half an hour as we tried to eat dinner, I lost my composure again, but anyone would have felt that way, and later on in the evening I reached for patience and was able to find it.

This experience made me think about a few things in yogic terms. First, it was important for me to remember that sometimes I need to take care of myself first. I want to give my best self to my daughter, and if I’m exhausted physically and emotionally, I can’t possibly do that. This is such a vital thing to remember, and such an easy thing to discount and forget.

Also, examining my feelings and realizing I was angry made me think back to my musings on yoga and emotion last year. First, I had to acknowledge that I was angry, not just to myself but to my husband, out loud, and share my frustrations and fears, and let loose some of the intensity of the emotion by crying it out. Too often I bottle things up, which only serves to make me angrier in the long term. Then, according to Patanjali, the way to end negative emotions is to cultivate the opposite emotion instead. For me in this situation, the opposite of my anger was patience, kindness, my love for my baby, and my compassion, both for her feeling sick and for myself feeling tired and worn out. When I was able to focus on these qualities in a thoughtful way through my yoga practice, the anger dissolved.

I also needed to remember that I can’t be a supermom all the time. Sometimes I’ll do a great job, and other times I won’t, but that doesn’t make me a bad mother or a bad person. It just makes me human. We all strive for perfection (and I think I have a separate post brewing on that topic), but in an imperfect world, we have to take the good with the bad. I will never be a perfect supermom, but in all my imperfections, I’m still a super mom.

 

books: Healing Back Pain Naturally, by Art Brownstein November 14, 2012

Filed under: books,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:08 pm
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Healing Back Pain Naturally, by Art Brownstein

 

My father has had three spine surgeries to date, and as a yoga teacher, I’ve wondered what I could do to help him while at the same time fearing to damage his back further. My friend Kyle recommended this book. Dr. Brownstein’s program is one that a yoga teacher can really get behind, focusing not just on recovering from physical injury, but on the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of healthy living as well.

Dr. Brownstein begins the book by telling the story of his own struggles with debilitating back pain and his journey to recovery. His experiences give him a special understanding of what those with back pain are suffering. Because of his own search for healing, Dr. Brownstein has a unique perspective on how to heal from a back injury and prevent future problems.

Dr. Brownstein’s program for healing is based on his concept of the mind/body connection, described in chapters 2 and 3. According to Dr. Brownstein, mental and emotional stress can result in an increase in muscle tension and tightness, leading to injury. Dr. Brownstein urges the reader not to overmedicate, or to leap ahead to treating back problems with surgery and other invasive techniques; rather, he advocates spending some time with the pain, to understand what’s wrong and what the body is trying to communicate. It’s important to understand how the back works physically, and chapter 2 describes back anatomy in detail so the reader will understand the structures and terminology and know how back pain can result from weakness, imbalance, or strain elsewhere in the body. But sometimes the best and most permanent solution to a back problem is to make changes to lifestyle and behaviors that cause stress.

This book covers the full lifestyle spectrum in Dr. Brownstein’s approach to healing the back. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the physical body. Chapter 4 includes a wide variety of stretches for the back; most of these are taken from yoga asanas, and may are simple and gentle enough to be done in the midst of back pain and can lead to some relief when done properly. Dr. Brownstein outlines how to use these stretches, in the order he lists them and over time, to regain mobility and reduce pain. Once the back has been fully stretched and the pain is gone, the reader can move on to strengthening the back as described in chapter 5. Back muscles that are both flexible AND strong are less likely to be pulled or strained.

Chapters 6-10 cover stress management, healthy eating, work, play, and spirituality as they relate to back care and overall health. Dr. Brownstein takes a holistic approach based on his mind/body concept: since anxiety and stress can affect the body, causing muscle tension and contributing to injury, it’s important to heal not only the body but also the mind, heart, and spirit to truly recover from a back problem. By reducing stress, reducing caffeine intake, improving one’s outlook on work, opening the heart in personal relationships, and cultivating a sense of humor and fun, the reader can improve her overall health and happiness and remove many of the stressors that can lead to future back pain and injury.

I’ve never suffered from a chronic pain condition, so I can’t comment on the book’s usefulness for those actively in pain. However, as a yoga teacher, this book helped me to understand better the perspective of someone in that kind of pain and gave me some tools to help those future students. I plan to buy a copy of this book for my dad as well.

 

First Hindu Congresswoman in the US November 9, 2012

Filed under: bhagavad gita,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:00 pm
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Among the many interesting victories in this week’s election, Democrat Tulsi Gabbard’s win in Hawaii caught my attention. Gabbard will be the first Hindu-American to serve in Congress, and she’ll take her oath in January on the Bhagavad Gita. How awesome is that?

Huffington Post reported on Ms. Gabbard last week – their article describes her background more fully. HuffPo also quotes some of the senseless hate that’s been strewn against non-Christian politicians, from Gabbard’s opponent in the race, Republican Kawika Crowley, as well as the American Family Association and the ever-evil Rick Santorum, who according to HuffPo stated that equality was a uniquely Judeo-Christian concept that “doesn’t come from the East and Eastern religions.” Which is completely erroneous, by the way. I’d venture that Eastern religions are actually far more egalitarian than some forms of Christianity, many of which have that whole “I’m saved and you’re not” thing going on. Anyway, I think it’s fantastic that Gabbard is following her Hindu values (and, I’m guessing, what she perceives as her karma yoga duty) by serving her country.

Hawaii also elected Japan-born Mazie Hirono, who was previously one of the first Buddhists to serve in Congress, and will now become the first Asian-American woman in the Senate. Rock on, Hawaii.

 

New Beginnings November 7, 2012

Filed under: reflections,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 2:00 pm
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Last week I started a new job.

I wasn’t happy at my old job – I’ve always been up front about that here on the yoga blog – and I’ve written about trying to apply what I’ve learned about meditation and mindfulness to my work troubles. I reminded myself to be grateful to have a job at all, especially one that paid well, where I was liked and respected. I tried to treat my job as my karma yoga duty, the work that’s mine to do at this point in my life and the work I need to do to support my family, and so I tried to do my best and practice non-attachment. My mantra became “I am here to do my work the best I can, without attachment to the work itself or its results”. On the whole, this isn’t a bad attitude to practice, but it was always hard to let go and not get caught up in frustration, and I kept hoping I could find a job that would suit me better: work I liked better, a better work-life balance. After YogaBaby arrived, sending out resumes became my little project, something I worked on while she nursed or slept in my lap. And I got some calls, and some interviews. (And believe me, you’ve never been nervous about a job interview until you’ve worried about leaking breast milk in front of your potential employer.)

A few weeks after I started back to work, this job offer came along. It wasn’t perfect (with all due respect to my new colleagues and my division director – hi, E! – who’s already found this blog). The work will be pretty similar to what I was doing before (although with some key differences that make me think I might like it more). The pay is also very similar (although the recruiter did her best to make the offer as sweet as possible). It’s a lateral move in terms of job title (although with more potential for advancement than I felt I had at my old job). The offer was actually so similar to what I was doing and earning at my old job that I had to consider it for almost a week. I compared the cost of health insurance, the time off/vacation policy, even the 401K matching program – in some respects my old company was stronger, in other respects the new company was stronger.

Ultimately, it came down to a choice between the known and the unknown, the familiar and the new. Did I want to stay where I was and maintain the status quo, good and bad? Or did I want to take a chance that I could be happier making a change, taking a risk?

I decided to take the chance, partly because I knew that if I didn’t accept the job, I’d always wonder if I should have, and partly because I feel like you can’t wait around hoping for change to come to you. There’s no point in waiting for the perfect thing to come along because nothing in this world is going to be perfect. I felt that I had to put myself out there and take action if I wanted a change to happen, and I really did need a change. I made the best decision I could, and so far, I think I made the right choice. So here’s to change, and risk, and being brave, and crossing our fingers as we jump.

 

The Yoga of Parenthood, Part 1: Malasana October 26, 2012

Filed under: yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 3:37 pm
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Malasana, at the beach, with angry baby

This will, I think, be the start of a new series here at the yoga blog. I may not have as much time to write as I used to, but we do take a ton of pictures of our kid, and many of those pictures are tangentially related to yoga in some way. Today I bring you malasana, or the yoga squat, shown here on the beach at Cape May, on a windy September day when the water of the Atlantic Ocean was pretty darn cold and YogaBaby didn’t care who knew it.

To learn more about malasana, check out my much more detailed Pose of the Month post!

 

Balancing Acts October 18, 2012

Filed under: reflections,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 2:16 pm
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It’s been two weeks since I posted here. Um. Coincidentally, two weeks ago my husband F started back to work and YogaBaby headed to daycare. Until you have had such things happen in your life, you would not believe how complicated this gets. When I was at home on leave, F hung out with YogaBaby in the early mornings while I caught a little sleep, then got himself out the door to work; when F was at home on leave (and YB started sleeping more), he usually got up early with me and then waved goodbye as I got myself out the door to work. Point being, in both cases there was one person who wasn’t trying to get out the door to work and who could reliably have a baby placed on them while the other showered. Now I, F, and YogaBaby all need to get out the door in the mornings. Admittedly, YB is a pretty easy character in the morning – she often sleeps until or past 7 o’clock, so the grown-ups can get fed and showered in the 6 o’clock hour before she needs attending to. But it’s still a lot of stuff and humans to coordinate. And some combination of sleeping unswaddled, being at exciting daycare, and having a constant low-level daycare cold, has been affecting YB’s sleep schedule such that she was waking up 3+ times per night, so F and I were coordinating all of these morning things while barely conscious. (I think we’ve got that figured out now – the new plan involves feeding her more, and more often – but don’t quote me on that.) And don’t get me started on the craziness of the evenings, or how being a one-car household affects the new babyful commute.  Suffice to say, we are tired, and still seeking the new normal.

Besides the busyness of family life with two working parents and a small hungry hungry hippo, I think there’s been another reason why I haven’t been posting. It feels somehow wrong to write in a yoga blog when I’m not doing any yoga. Lately I’ve been thinking back nostalgically to the days of my teacher training, just last year, when I practiced my yoga every day – every day! – and even meditated on a regular basis. I felt so centered back then! I had so many good yogic things to write about, asanas to discuss and tips to share. And now, even if I found the time, what would I have to say about yoga? If I want to write about yoga postures, I ought to be actually doing them; if I’m going to write about teaching, I should be teaching some classes that I can then write about. How can I write about a yoga practice when I have no practice?

My practice, right now, is different from what it was. Instead of rolling out my mat, I lay a blanket on the floor and play with my baby. Instead of luxuriating in asanas, I remind myself to pee. I sleep when I can, and I don’t guilt myself for not getting up extra early to do yoga, because sleep is just as necessary as downward dog. Two weeks ago, a friend watched the baby so F and I could have dinner and go see my favorite band play a concert, and that was yoga. Last week I got a massage, a whole hour just to relax and not worry about getting anything done, and that was yoga. I ride my bike to the train station and that’s yoga too. There will be asanas again at some point, and even meditation, but right now my balancing act has nothing to do with tree pose and everything to do with responsibility and family and time. My yoga practice, right now, is to do the best I can with what I’ve got.

 

Reading: Yoga Journal September 2012 issue September 27, 2012

Filed under: yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:21 pm
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Now that my maternity leave is over and I’m trying to get back in the swing of my normal life, I’ve made a start on the stack of Yoga Journal issues I have saved up, in the interest of getting my yoga groove back and getting back in the spirit of teaching again at some point. The September 2012 issue of YJ has a nice photo of India.Arie on the cover – it’s always interesting to see what musicians are also yogis.

In this issue, I really enjoyed the basics article focusing on downward-facing dog. This core pose is such an integral part of almost all yoga traditions, but it seems like it’s rarely taught in detail. I’ll be tearing out this article to review more carefully later . I’ve done some reading on down dog in the past, but it’s such a crucial pose that I want to have as many tools for teaching it as possible!

I’m also tearing out the section on smoothies. F and I used to make a smoothie every morning; with the baby, we’ve gotten away from it a bit, and I’d like to get back to having some liquified fruit in my diet. This article had good tips for incorporating green ingredients like avocado and kale into our repertoire, which is exciting!