Ahimsa, (non harm-doing) is the first of the yamas, or the ethical rules of yogic practice. Ahimsa is the foundation upon which the rest of the yamas and niyamas are positioned, as well as being the underlying “goal” of practice in general. To do no harm is practically impossible as every action creates affect or karma. So living with purity of intention, compassion and acting in way that benefits and uplifts other beings and our world is considered a good antidote to doing harm by default of living.

Compassion literally means to suffer with. However, there is a line between suffering with, suffering for, and being a doormat. When does empathy become enabling? Where do suffering and self-absorption meet? How do we tend to our needs, the needs of others and the needs of the world at large without being consumed by the tragedy of so much need and so much suffering? All questions that I am pondering and perhaps you are too. I don’t claim to have any answers at all, except that I think the answer lies in the question. If we can we all consistently practice asking ourselves, “What is compassion?” and how we can act with absolute compassion towards ourselves and all beings, then I think we’ll find our way into some working answers in the quite near future.

Do No Harm website is a nice offering to helping us all out with reminders to Do No Harm. I’m rocking one their wristbands and it’s bringing that essential second of contemplation into most moments of my day.

The Do No Harm Message:

We seem to be living in a world that is getting less hospitable every day. Look closely at any endeavor our species has engaged in and it appears we are unaware of the harm we do, we ignore the harm we do, we intentionally do harm for our own gain, or sadly in some cases we do harm for our own pleasure and enjoyment.

Has no one taught us to do no harm?

If we haven’t been taught to do no harm, we see no harm in doing harm. We cause harm and shrug it off. We cause harm and laugh about it. We cause harm and brag about it.

Sadder still, our children bear witness to our actions and never learn to do no harm themselves. Above all else we must teach our children, by example and instruction, this basic moral principle of life.

We must begin to make better choices and treat each other, the other creatures who share this planet with us, and this planet we call home with greater respect and compassion.

We believe that the first and most basic moral law is, “Do no harm.” Because we can feel pain and suffering, we can imagine the pain and suffering of others, and we can act accordingly to minimize the harm we cause.

What does “do no harm” mean? Ultimately it means to give thoughtful consideration to our actions. “Do no harm” simply means to consider how our actions may affect the world we all share, to be compassionate in our dealings with all creatures, and not to thoughtlessly despoil our planet.

Doctors are asked to “first do no harm,” why not lawyers, businessmen, religious leaders and politicians? Why not us? Why not now?

It sounds like a simple idea because it is a simple idea, but it may be effective over the long run. Will “do no harm” solve all the problems in our world? Perhaps not, but this is an effort to decrease the suffering in the world and to increase the kindness.

We hope that “do no harm” becomes that little voice that guides our actions.

And we hope you will join us and spread the message “Do no harm.”

Show everyone you care and use “Do no harm” to sign-off in your correspondence in place of “Best Wishes”, “Yours” or “Regards.”

If you have a web site, be proud of your support and add the words “Do No Harm” to the top of your home page where everyone will see it.

Be bold and creative in thinking of ways to expose as many as possible to the “Do No Harm” message, but please, do no harm in doing so.

It is not necessary to mention the source of the message. This is certainly a case where the message is far more important than the messengers. All we ask is that you practice do no harm and take every opportunity to share the words “do no harm” with others.

If you wish to include this essay or link to the “Do No Harm” web page, please do; or if you wish to change the wording or write your own, that’s equally OK with us. If we are to change our world for the better, we simply must share the “Do No Harm” message with family and friends, with neighbors and our community.

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RS: Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is the accessibility of yoga. It’s become an industry and pastime that has an image attached to it that tends to appeal mostly to certain demographics, yet at its heart it’s a practice that could be beneficial to everyone. Beyond all the products attached to it, which really aren’t necessary to own in order to practice, I think that most teachers and studio owners want to make classes appealing and available to everyone without veering too far away from the core principles of yoga philosophy. How do you as a studio owner and proponent of community priced yoga address that?

MS: I kind of see the yoga industry as a reflection of everything else that is going on in society. A few years ago when there was a boom in real estate and the financial industry and everything was becoming commercially marketed, yoga was one of those things. All of a sudden it just exploded and became very popular and there was a lot of money to be made. So the idea of yoga became something that was packaged and marketed and sold to the public in a way that happened to be fairly expensive…

People came to expect certain things in yoga studios; they wanted bamboo floors, a giant buddha statue, a sauna, showers, tea…  And that’s all great. It’s amazing to walk in to your yoga studio and feel like you’re on retreat or something, but then essentially the studio is pricing for a lot more than just the classes, and that price tag will exclude a lot of the community and in some ways I think the image of it all moves away from the essential purpose of the practice in the first place. I had dreamed of opening a low-cost studio for years, sans all the marketability and the stuff that came with it.

My original intention was to open a studio in Baltimore, or on the east coast in more needy, more impoverished cities and to make it accessible to people of color, transgendered people, spanish-speaking communities and the segments of the society that definitely were not being served by the popular model of yoga studios at that time. I carried around that vision for years and I asked people to participate with me and lots of people were supportive but no one really wanted to get into it. Then I did my teacher training at Yoga Pearl and when I finished I just didn’t know where I wanted to be or where I wanted to teach. I personally have felt like an outsider in many studios for whatever reason, I’ve had a pretty colorful past… And so I carried that with me and I never quite felt a sense of belonging, but I was looking for it.

One day I was walking along with a friend and I said “I’m just gonna do it, I’m just going to open a studio.” I found a space on Alberta (street) and luckily the landlord was a hippy who didn’t care if I didn’t know a thing about business, and didn’t make me pay a security deposit and just let me move in, and that’s how we came to be. I mean I knew nothing about making it work, I just knew what I wanted to charge and who I wanted to serve and I was extraordinarily idealistic, I thought everyone was going to really appreciate what I was doing, even the other yoga studios I thought would really appreciate it, and then I came to realize that was not the case, because it’s threatening. You know other studios have worked really hard to build their client base and then I came in offering yoga at half their price, and there was this fear that I would take the students. But actually that didn’t happen and my original intention did happen- the people that previously were unable to take classes came, there were artists and musicians and minorities and all these people who also hadn’t felt like they belonged in other studios and that’s not to say that’s right or wrong, but that’s just the way it was… and we’ve created our own little space and now there are lots of people who say “I feel like this is home for me, I really feel like I belong here. I can walk in here and feel like this is my place.” so I’ve done my purpose i guess.

RS: How did you start to practice yoga?

MS: I had spent most of my twenties severely depressed and extraordinarily angry and I started practicing because my friend who had been struggling with an addiction for a long time had gone to a retreat and had learned some yoga. She came back and she told me about it and kept saying “You should really do this.” Finally I found this $5 drop-in studio and I started going there. I was naturally flexible and I found it really easy right away so when I began I was very competitive with myself, and for maybe the first three years I was pretty much focused on the poses and trying to perfect them.

After I began to practice I noticed that I wasn’t as reactive to things, I wasn’t as depressed or having as many severe depressive episodes and I felt like I could get some distance between my myself and what was going on for me emotionally. It just kind of lessoned what was going on at that time which was a lot of depression, anxiety… It wasn’t all better, but it was definitely more manageable than it had been before and it wasn’t consuming me anymore. For the first few years I was just there, or I thought I was just there to exercise. I really wasn’t even doing anything else at the time, I wasn’t studying philosophy or meditating. I don’t think I even understood the breathing for a few years, I was just doing the asana and I was there for exercise and to perfect poses. But the other benefits came anyway and I remember that when I started doing it all the time I started telling everyone about it. It was such a grounding influence in my life.

Three years later I moved to Portland I was exposed to a lot of different teachers and teaching styles, but even before that that I was noticing other kinds of changes. I was more capable of dealing with stress and I became calmer, less angry and less depressed. None of that happened because I was making any attempt to do any of it, it just came from practicing.

RS: How has being a teacher or a studio owner affected your practice?

MS: Simply studying so much and taking a path that requires so much self-study has really transformed the way I practice and teach. Having the opportunity to look at students bodies and to observe them… You know sometimes there are have things about ourselves that we have a hard time admitting or seeing, but when we see it in someone else then we can say, “Hey wait a second, that feels really familiar, I can relate to that.” And so we learn a lot about ourselves watching other people. I’ve learned a lot about myself and my practice from my students.
Being a studio owner has been interesting in that I have learned what I value in teachers and what I admire, and I have adopted a lot of that in my own practice.

RS: What about the aspect of karma yoga (selfless service), do you feel that there is an element of that with the studio?

MS: Oh yeah! I didn’t get paid for a year and a half! and even now we’re not really bringing that much in. But I’m thrilled every day that we’re doing it. I’m so happy to be in this space, I’m so happy to feel like I’ve found some balance between financially supporting myself and staying true to my original intention and I feel like I’ve stayed on track and it’s been amazing. I feel really lucky.

RS: What was your vision for the future of People’s Yoga?

MS: I really like what we’re doing now! I would eventually like to be able to offer a teacher training at lower cost. I would really like to have guest teachers come in and offer their time and do workshops that are also at a lower cost. But for the time being I really just like what we’re doing and I just want it be sustainable and what will come will come and I’ll know it when it meets me.

RS: What is your vision for the future of community yoga studios in general?

MS: It’s interesting because I get contacted all the time now from people starting studios. When we started, I searched the internet and I searched all over to find other studios that were doing similar things and found like, four. I mean, it was really slim pickings. I had one woman in Arizona from Tuscan Yoga who kind of mentored me through the process and since then I’ve had all these people contacting me from all over the country and asking me to mentor them, so it seems to be growing and everybody wants to know ‘how to do it’.

I don’t really know how… I mean, I think it’s got to be unique to each place. But I think we’re seeing a movement away from a mass commercialization of yoga and I think that in the future there’s going to be a seesawing where people will be trying to find their place, their financial footing, and trying to figure out how to stay alive as a business and still stay in-line with the values that yoga imparts. I think it will all wash out in a few years and we’ll find a middle ground, but I’m not really sure what that looks like yet.

I think that everyone who’s doing the community yoga right now is trying different things and eventually they’ll settle on a model that works. In the meantime there are some successes and some failures, some studios do donation or they do $6, $8 or $10 drop-ins or scholarships. Everyone is doing different things and we’ll find what works best eventually. At The Peoples Yoga our price was originally $6, then I went to sliding-scale ($6-$8), now it’s $8 to drop in, but people can become members for $55 a month and come as much as they want or we do discounted class cards if people buy 5 or 10 classes at a time, and we have scholarships available for people who can’t afford those options.

RS: Have you had that many people apply for scholarships?

MS: We have some regular students that we support every month through scholarship and trade. I probably give out five or six scholarships a month. I haven’t had to turn anybody away, which is great, and everyone that has gotten one has used it.

RS: What is entailed in a scholarship? And what do you trade?

MS: They’re awarded on basis of need. Pretty much they’ll get $40-$50 and they can choose to purchase a 10-class card with that or an unlimited monthly membership. So if they purchase an unlimited monthly then it will cost them $5. If they don’t come as often and then want a 10-class card then it’s $20. So they get that option and they’ll get that credit for every month that they apply for it.

Pretty much all the services that we need that we can trade, we trade; our construction, web design, photography… You name it, I’ll trade it! That means it takes months to get things done, but it does get done!  And since we’re doing yoga then we’re also practicing patience and contentment while we wait!

The People’s Yoga is located at 3016 NE Killingsworth St. in Portland, OR
All classes are $8. Scholarships are available.

The yoga industry is booming. In 2009 Americans spent an estimated $5.7 Billion on yoga and yoga related products like clothes, DVDs and books, that’s a figure that’s up 87% from 2004. 72% of those spending are women, 71% are college educated and 44% have household incomes of $75,000 or more. (From the “Yoga in America” Survey conducted by Harris Interactive Service Bureau on behalf of Yoga Journal)

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Prasad owner Karen Pride shares her recipe for a chilled Jamaican Avocado Soup. Yum! Avocados are a warm weather favorite and they’re rich with healthy omega fats, essential for good health, as Kathryn Bruni- Young explains in her article on Summer Nutrition . Enjoy!

Jamaican Avocado Soup

2 oz butter
1 medium onion
2 T fresh ginger
5 really small avocados, or 3 med/large sized
2 T lime juice
2 T orange juice
1 ¾ cup vegetable stock
1 tsp. black pepper
8 chives
handful fresh mint
¾ cup milk of choice
3 T sour cream
1 ½ tsp curry powder

Sauté onion and ginger in butter over medium heat until soft.  Place sautéed onion and ginger in a blender with the rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth.  Serve soup chilled with a swirl of Lime Crema (recipe follows) and a garnish of fresh chopped chives, chopped mint and fresh ground black pepper.

Lime Crema
¼ cup sour cream
2 tsp fresh lime
¼ tsp garlic
¼ tsp salt

Whisk ingredients in a bowl.

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I’m so pleased to introduce Kathryn Bruni- Young, Toronto yoga teacher, nutritionist and new columnist for Feed The Yogi. Kathryn has a lovely understanding of yoga (she’s been practicing since age 16!), as well as nutrition. I hope you enjoy her column as much as I have, and Kathryn I hope you keep them coming!

~Renee

Turn Your Nervous System on and Keep it Shining All Summer Long
by Kathryn Bruni-Young

Summer is an energetic time of the year for many reasons. Plants and parks come back to life, people come out of winter hibernation, and best of all, the sun shines strong. There are many things you can do to tune up your nervous system to get ready for this exciting and exhilarating season.

Step One: Ditch the coffee cup for a few weeks and adopt a new morning beverage.

Let’s begin with reviewing exactly what coffee does in the body by first looking at the general anatomy of a nerve. Nerves have different receptors for different chemicals in the body. Different chemicals bind to nerve receptors and deliver different messages to the nerve. Each nerve has an “on switch” and an “off switch”. These are two receptors that work at different times and by taking turns, they create balance in the nerve.

When caffeine is ingested it begins circulating and it heads straight for one key receptor in each nerve. This is the adenosine receptor, which could also be called the “off switch” receptor. Caffeine takes the place of adenosine and rather than telling the nerve to turn off because its time for a rest, it tells the nerve to keep on rockin’ because the party isn’t over! Basically, this whole process prevents the nerves from attaining balance or rest and like anything else that is overtired, eventually it falls apart. I’m not saying cut it out forever, but its nice to give the nervous system a bit of a break every now and again, even taking 3 weeks off caffeine at the beginning of the summer can be very beneficial to the system.

Taking a caffeine break in the summer might be easier to do than in the winter for a couple reasons. First of all, people tend to be naturally more motivated and more energetic in the summer. Everyone is excited to put their parkas back into the closet and take their flip flops out for a stroll. Also, many beautiful fruits and vegetables come into season, which means more raw, vibrant foods are being consumed. The more raw energy you absorb from your foods, the more raw energy you take with you throughout your day. For an outstanding spring/summer diet try to eat as many fruits, vegetables, whole grains and clean proteins as possible. Raw is great, but for the unseasoned body, it can mean potential temporary discomfort so break it in slowly, eating some raw food with each meal.

But what do I replace me delicious morning beverage with???
Try having a very large glass of water (a pint glass works well) of warm water with ½ a lemon squeezed in. Making sure the water is not freezing cold is important, either warm some up in the morning or leave your bottle out on the counter for the night. When warm water enters the body it spends very minimal time in the stomach and passes straight into the large intestine which can often stimulate a bowel movement (this is essential for proper detoxification). The lemon stimulates the liver and entire digestive system to start working because it is actually considered a “bitter” and it’s a great way to start out the day. Also, although lemon tastes sour and acidic, it actually has an alkalizing effect on the body because of its high mineral content (organic lemons tend to carry more minerals). If you hate really sour drinks, try adding a small amount of stevia or raw honey, making more of a lemonade cocktail.

Step Two: Add a couple healing herbs to the mix.

Herbs can be great for cleansing, stimulating, rebuilding and more. One specific class of herbs that are great for nervous system rebuilding are adaptogens. Adaptogenic herbs are substances that help the body deal with stress. They frequently contain steroidal saponins which mimic corticosteroids secreted by the adrenal glands. Basically, they can be used as a tonic for the adrenal glands and entire nervous system. Herbs can be taken in many different forms, some are foods and some are supplements, please consult your healthcare practitioner before commencing any herbal protocol, especially if you take prescription medications.

A few great adaptogenic herbs and/or foods are…
- Liquorice root (or) Eleutherococcus senticosus
- Borage (or) Borago officinalis
- Reishi mushroom (or) Ganoderma lucidum
- Maca (or) Lepidium meyenii

Step Three: Bring in some good fats for the duration.

Udo Eraumus once said, there are fats that heal and fats that kill!
One specific type of fat that is very important to not only the nervous system, but health in general is the omega 3 essential fatty acid. This fat is essential because the human body does not have the ability to produce it. Omega 3 fat is exceptionally important for proper brain development and function, especially important for pregnant mothers and children. A few foods that contain omega 3 in high doses are walnuts, chia seeds, flax seed and oil and cold water fish such as salmon and mackerel.

Aside from the fact that omega 3 fats are great brain food, they are also growth enhancing. When consumed in higher doses (approx. 15% of daily caloric intake) they can increase the rate of metabolic reactions in the body and increase the rate of oxidization. This means that more fat could be burned into carbon dioxide, water and heat, prompting the body to burn through excess fat stores. Omega 3 fat also has an anti-inflammatory effect on the body and it is slightly alkaline which is important because most fats are acid forming in the body.

Another nervous system promoting fat is lecithin. Lecithin is a fat found mainly in eggs, but it can also be taken in supplement form, made from non-GMO soy. Lecithin supplies the body with choline, which is essential in the production of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a great nervous system supporter because it helps build up the brain and spinal cord.

Lecithin is an emulsifier and when ingested it begins to put built up cholesterol back into solution. The natural lecithin found in eggs allows the body to properly absorb the cholesterol, both of which are contained in the yolk; cholesterol eaten in moderation and as a whole food (like an egg) is essential for the nervous system and the brain, the strength of cell membranes, and the proper function of the endocrine system and adrenal glands. Lecithin also acts as a detergent in the body and can be supplemented in higher doses to help detoxify and cleanse the liver. Lecithin is somewhat of a miracle fat that should be part of a balanced and supportive diet.

Step Four: get some serious R&R time.

Getting enough rest and relaxation is essential for good health. Yoga, meditation and breathing exercises can be great ways to calm the nervous system and give the body a chance to rebuild. There are many different yoga classes out there and sometimes finding the right one for your own personal likes and dislikes can be challenging, but at the end of the day, there is always going to be something for everyone.

(Kathryn beautifully demonstrating how to best feed a yogini)

Kathryn Bruni-Young is a certified yoga instructor and a committed student to the field of holistic nutrition. At age 16, Kathryn began to explore her passion for yoga/movement and decided to attend an alternative high school so that she could complete the Downward Dog yoga teacher training program. Upon graduation she began teaching at Downward Dog Yoga Center in Toronto under the guidance of Diane Bruni and Ron Reid. She continues to instruct yoga classes at Downward Dog with great enthusiasm and a real love for the practice. Kathryn’s teaching is a reflection of her own personal yoga practice which is best described as challenging, flowing and fun. She is naturally drawn to handstands and arm balances as areas in her practice and teaching to constantly attempt, learn and evolve. Her main yogic influences come from teachers Diane Bruni (Toronto), Richard Freeman (Colorado) and Vinnie Marino (Los Angeles).
Kathryn also has an intense interest in the world of alternative medicine and healing. She will be graduating from the Institute of Holistic Nutrition in January 2011, as a certified holistic nutritionist and hopes to pursue more learning and a career in the field of nutrition and holistic healthcare.
Kathryn can be contacted at kbyfoods@hotmail.com

Photo by Tim Bermingham

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Toronto yogahappening yogis making crow not war

Community yoga is booming! Free, by-donation and cheap classes are making the way into the schedules of most yoga studios, if not making up the entire schedule of many studios.

There’s a lot of bad news these days that we are collectively trying to come to terms with and figure out how to live with and live better so we don’t continue to cause so many disasters (oy humanity… why?), and we as a species and as residents of Planet Earth need contemplative practices more than ever.

So that’s why I’m just so pleased to see trends like community yoga (still missing a wiki entry, if any of you want to get on that… but hereby defined as yoga classes for the community at community prices, sliding scale from free to by donation to under $10) and yogahappenings growing and so quickly becoming important parts of many peoples practice.

Here in Portland I’ve started a site for a schedule of community classes around town (soon to also include free and by-donation meditation classes), and there are similar schedules for the Bay Area, and Chicago that I’ve found, and I’m sure many other places too. It’s my hope that maybe we can all link up and form a nation-wide (world-wide?) network for community yoga. That’s union!

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At some point in a yoga class you may have heard the teacher say, “Savasana is the most important pose“. Depending on your reason for practicing yoga you may have found this statement confusing. Why would sava (corpse), sometimes called mrti (death), asana (pose) be more important than dynamic standing poses like warrior one, or strength building postures like boat pose? And why would a pose that asks you to lie still on your back be useful when you came to class to learn how to move?

In most schools of Hatha yoga, the corpse pose brings us to closure by asking us to completely surrender our physical practice. We’re told to relax our muscles, to turn our gaze inwards, to quiet our minds and eventually even cease the effort in the breath. This pose isn’t for sleeping, it’s to practice being a corpse. A corpse no longer worries about things that might have felt important in life but were, in fact, temporary. A corpse ceases to resist union with the earth and gives up its weight completely to become the earth. A corpse does not effort to move towards or away from likes and dislikes, hopes and fears. A corpse gives itself to the movement of the organism that surrounds it and eventually becomes indistinguishable from the organism. A corpse is not the separation that most of us feel in most situations, a corpse has found yoga (union) with the earth and the air. A corpse is not concerned with the past or the future, it is not concerned at all.

In a standard yoga class you’ll practice standing poses first, then move to the floor and practice forward and backward bending and then lie down to finish with supine postures and end in Savasana. In some ways each yoga class takes us backward through the life cycle. In yoga asana we first  learn to stand, then we learn to sit, then we learn to withdraw our senses, and then we learn to rest in awareness. Your life cycle generally goes the other way. Interesting isn’t it? We practice yoga to come back to our inherent stillness and perception, our intimacy with what is.

Practice a few minutes of Savasana every day. Find somewhere to lie down comfortably and feel your body connect with the earth below you, your skin breathe in and communicate with the universe around you. If you are anxious try to deepen your inhales and imagine bringing in clarity. With your exhales try to feel gratitude for something, it doesn’t matter what. Scan your body and notice the places of tension, discomfort and holding on. Approach these places with love; extending appreciation to your body for its efforts, for its strengths and for the challenges you feel, remembering that if you didn’t have challenges you wouldn’t learn. Let your breath, your kindness, and attention spread through each part of your body and imagine that your are saying goodbye to a dear friend, feeling your appreciation and love as you let go. Try not to fall asleep, but stay with the sensations of your body as they become more subtle and as the breath ceases to be an effort. Let your eyes rest back into your skull, there is no need to look outside of yourself. Release your lower jaw and let the tongue fall back in the throat, there is no need to talk. Soften the sinuses, the cheekbones, the ears and turn your senses inwards.

Listen to your inner cues, you’ll know when you’ve stayed long enough. To come out of Savasana, come out with same care and attentiveness you came in with. Deepen your breath into your belly and let it spread out to subtle movements in your fingers, toes, arms, legs, and face. Reach your arms up beside your ears to take a long deep breath and welcome life back into your body. Roll over on to one side and spend a moment noticing what you see and feeling equilibrium in your limbs. Press yourself into a seat and take a few minutes with care to feel your place in the space around you. Try to take the peacefulness and equanimity of your Savasana into the rest of your day and night.

“That is the end of your practice for today, but it’s not
the end of awareness.” – Patricia Walden

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Yoga happening started happening in Toronto, and is now happening in Vancouver, New York City and Portland, OR.

Yogahappening creates yoga events in public spaces: in the park, at a gallery, in the mountains, by the sea, the forest, the lake. Yogahappening asks you to pause in your yoga routine and consider the spontaneity of practice somewhere other than where you’re used to, without knowing what style, what teacher, what format your experience will be. Yogahappenings might include an aprés-yoga moment for connection like a picnic or a bikeride, or perhaps there will be a live musician to play for your practice or a storyteller to guide you into savasana dreams.

Yogahappenings are an invitation for experienced practitioners and beginners alike to come to their practice with fresh eyes and an open mind to whatever happens to be on the yogahappening menu that day. Participants find out 24 hours in advance of an event, where and when, but the teacher and style remain a mystery until the event. So a dedicated Ashtangi might discover the joy of Yin while someone else who thought yoga was easy and boring might find that Vinyasa is just the challenge they’ve been looking for.

Yogahappenings are the chance you’ve been waiting for to talk to the person on the mat next to you and encourage positive, loving and fun interactions that strengthen the yoga community as well as the larger community.

To find out more about yogahappening you can visit their site and blog, and sign up for updates and announcements via Facebook, Twitter or RSS from the Portland, Toronto, Vancouver and New York.

See you there!

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Free Rice is an online game that helps you brush up on your vocabulary. For every word you guess correctly the World Food Programme donates 10 grains of rice to a country in need. It might not sound like a lot, but the game is quite addictive. An hour spent here instead of facebook and you’ve just donated a full bowl of rice.

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I love coffee so much. I love how it smells and how it tastes and all the different ways to prepare it… Sad for me that drinking it gives me horrible stomach aches, so I avoid it (mostly), while enjoying the smell wherever and whenever I can. At the end of this post you’ll find a recipe for a coffee grind exfoliator which is not only a great coffee smell fix  but it will also leave your skin feeling smooth, your bathtub looking nasty, and just might give you a minuscule dose of caffeine through your skin cells.

But first… All about coffee, what do you want first? The bad news or the good news? Like life, both will come at the same time.

The Coffee News:
Eighty percent of American adults drink an annual rate of 28 gallons per capita. Coffee ingestion on average is about a third of that of tap water in North America and Europe. Worldwide, 6.7 million metric tons of coffee were produced annually in 1998–2000, and the forecast is a rise to seven million metric tons annually by the end of 2010.

Brazil is the largest coffee exporting nation, but Vietnam tripled its exports between 1995 and 1999, and became a major producer of robusta beans. Indonesia is the third-largest exporter and the largest producer of washed arabica coffee. Coffee cultivation requires warm climates and is one of the largest sources of economic income for the continents of Africa and South America and for many countries in warmer parts of the globe. Coffee production and exportation (like most industrial exports) carry a slew of social and political concerns. Most standard (not part of the fair-trade agreement) coffee plantations employ unfair, unsafe and exploitative labor practices.

After petroleum, coffee is the world’s most important legally traded commodity, standing above coal, meat, wheat and sugar.

Commercial cultivation of coffee beans can lead to devastating environmental problems such as deforestation, pesticide pollution, habitat destruction, and soil and water degradation. According to New Scientist, in industrial coffee farming practices, 140 liters of water are required to yield the amount of coffee beans required to produce one cup of the beverage. Traditional shade-grown cultivation methods using sustainable agriculture can produce similar yields without the water use or environmental impact while providing important habitats for wildlife. Fair-trade, shade-grown, organic and sustainable are all things that you should look for when purchasing coffee.

“Coffee is a warming, bitter-tasting, stimulant with diuretic and purgative properties. Its caffeine, acid, and oils produce different effects. Caffeine stimulates the entire nervous system, stresses the adrenal glands, increases the pulse and blood pressure, raises blood sugar levels, suppresses the appetite, and gives a sense of high energy. Its acids corrode the villi of the small intestine and decreases nutrient absorption; heavy coffee drinkers often suffer from vitamin B shortages and have calcium and other mineral deficiencies. The oils in coffee can increase blood cholesterol.

Stressed adrenals translates in Oriental medicine as depleted kidney energy, reduced sexual vitality, and in the case of pregnancy, increased birth defects. As with any stimulant, coffee aggravates liver function (its acids break down stored fats in the liver) and therefore disturbs sleep and contributes to irritability and anxiety. Coffee, in moderation, reduces Kapha.”
(From The Whole Foods Encyclopedia)

“Coffee consumption has been shown to have minimal or no impact, positive or negative, on cancer development; however, researchers involved in an ongoing 22-year study by the Harvard School of Public Health state that “the overall balance of risks and benefits [of coffee consumption] are on the side of benefits.” Other studies suggest coffee consumption reduces the risk of being affected by Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, diabetes mellitus type 2, cirrhosis of the liver, and gout. A longitudinal study in 2009 showed that those who consumed a moderate amount of coffee or tea (3–5 cups per day) at midlife were less likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in late-life compared with those who drank little coffee or avoided it altogether.

Scientific studies have examined the relationship between coffee consumption and an array of medical conditions. Findings have been contradictory as to whether coffee has any specific health benefits, and results are similarly conflicting regarding the potentially harmful effects of coffee consumption. Variations in findings, however, can be at least partially resolved by considering the method of preparation. Coffee prepared using paper filters removes oily components called diterpenes that are present in unfiltered coffee. Two types of diterpenes are present in coffee: kahweol and cafestol, both of which have been associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease via elevation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels in blood. Metal filters, on the other hand, do not remove the oily components of coffee.”
(Health Effects of Coffee: Wikipedia)

Ok… And now for the recipe.

Ground Coffee and Olive Oil Exfoliator

1/2 cup ground organic coffee
1/8 cup either raw cane sugar or rock salt
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice and the zest of one lemon (optional)

Mix together.
Use in the shower or bath as an exfoliator for the body.

Caffeine has been shown in some studies to reduce cellulite and stagnation of the skin. Olive oil is a natural, safe and effective moisturizer, rock salt and sugar are both good, gentle exfoliators. Enjoy.

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Today marks the one-year anniversary of the passing of Pattahbi Jois, (Guruji), the founder of the school of Ashtanga Yoga. With love, respect and deep gratitude we offer thanks and remembrance to a great teacher, student, scholar, and leader.

AUM
PURNAMADAH
PURNAMIDAM
PURNAT PURNAMUDACHYATE
PURNASYA PURNAMADAYA
PURNAMEVA VASHISHYATE.
AUM

THAT IS THE WHOLE.
THIS IS THE WHOLE.
FROM WHOLENESS EMERGES WHOLENESS.
WHOLENESS COMING FROM WHOLENESS,
WHOLENESS STILL REMAINS.
(Isa Upanisad)

Guruji and Sharat

(The following text is Guruji’s Biography from KPJAYI Ashtanga Yoga Institute)
Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois was born on the full moon day of July, 1915, Guru Purnima day. His ancestral village, Kowshika, near Hassan in Karnataka State, is inhabited by maybe 500 people and has one main street. At one end of the street is a Vishnu temple, just next to Pattabhi Jois’ home. At the far end of the street, just 100 yards away, lies a small Ganapati temple, and just opposite, a Siva temple. Both are several hundreds years old, and are the focus of the village.

Pattabhi Jois’s father was an astrologer and a priest, who acted as the pujari for many of the families in the village. From an early age, as most brahmin boys, Pattabhi Jois was taught the Vedas and Hindu rituals.

When Guruji was 12 years old, he attended a yoga demonstration at his middle school in Hassan. The next day he went to meet the great yogi who had given the demonstration, a man by the name of Sri T. Krishnamacharya, who had learned yoga for nearly eight years from his Guru, Rama Mohan Brahmachari in a cave in Tibet. For the next two years, Guruji learned from his Guru every day. When Guruji turned 14, he had his brahmin thread ceremony. Krishnamacharya left Hassan to travel and teach, and Guruji left his village to go to Mysore.

Guruji wished to attend the Sanskrit University of Mysore. With two rupees in his pocket, he left with two friends. They traveled the 100 plus kilometers by bike, over dirt roads. For the first year or two, life was very difficult. With very little money, he begged for his food from some of the brahmin houses. Guruji attended classes and did his studies. Then, around 1930, he went to a yoga demonstration and saw that it was his Guru. He came forward and prostrated, and they recommenced their relationship, and Guruji his yoga studies.

The Maharaja of Mysore, Krishna Rajendra Wodeyar, had fallen ill. He learned that there was a great yogi who had come to Mysore. Krishnamacharya was called to him, and duly cured him. The Maharaja became a great patron of his and built him a yogashala (school of yoga) on the grounds of the Palace Art Gallery. Guruji was also beckoned to teach the Maharaja on occasion, and was called upon several times to give yoga demonstrations. The Maharaja, who had taken a liking for Guruji, told him, “I want you to teach yoga at the Sanskrit College. You teach. I will give you a scholarship to go to school, free food in my mess hall and a salary.” Guruji, very happy, asked permission from his Guru. Krishnamacharya approved, and the Yoga Department of the Sanskrit College began on March 1, 1937. He continued as the head until his retirement in 1973.

From 1937 until 1973, Guruji earned his professorship at the University, granting him the title of Vidvan. He married, in a love marriage, Savitramma, who came from a long line of Sanskrit scholars. Her grandfather was the Sanskrit and philosophy teacher to the last Shankaracharya of Kanchi, Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati. They had three children, Manju, Ramesh, and Saraswati. Saraswati is the mother of Sharath, born in 1971, who is now Guruji’s co-director of their school in Mysore.

In 1964, Andre Van Lysbeth bacame the first Westener to study with Guruji. Soon after that, more Europeans came. Around 1972, the first Americans came, after meeting Manju at Swami Gitananda’s ashram in Pondicherri. It was at that point that ashtanga yoga began spreading in America, starting in California, and then later emerging in Hawaii. In 1975, Guruji and Manju made their first trip to America. Over the next 25 years, the practice spread through the United States, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Israel, Chile, England, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Guruji has, for 63 years, been teaching uninterruptedly this same method that he learned from Krishnamacharya in 1927.

Here’s an excellent article about Pattahbi Jois’ life and lineage from Centered Yoga, if you’re interested in more reading.

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One of the best detoxifying poses is Mayurasana. This pose is one of the first 15 asanas ever to be written down. The first Yogis practicing asana understood its tremendous health benefits.

Here’s what Svatmarama wrote about mayurasana in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika:
“Mayurasana quickly alleviates all diseases like enlargement of the glands, dropsy (edema) and other stomach disorders. It rectifies imbalance of the humours (vata, pitta and kapha). It reduces to ashes all food taken indiscriminately, kindles the gastric fire and enables destruction of kalakuta (toxins). “– HYP 1.31

This pose is named Peacock not only because of the shape of the pose, but because its strong, tonifying effect on the digestive system. Do mayurasana and you can have a stomach like a peacock’s…

That probably doesn’t mean much to those of us in the west haven’t spent much time observing peacocks, but did you know that peacocks can eat a wide range of foods including poisonous snakes, insects and scorpions and that they are able to digest the poison of these animals without harm? I’m not suggesting practicing this pose should inspire you to partake in a peacock’s dietary habits – but it will help you improve your digestion.

Benefits of Mayurasana
•    Powerful digestive tonic
•    Promotes elimination of toxins, especially from the liver
•    Invigorates the entire body
•    Increases blood circulation throughout the abdominal organs
•    Relieves many digestive ailments
•    Massages and strengthens the stomach and spleen
•    Beneficial to those with diabetes
•    Revitalizes the pancreas
•    Relieves menstrual disorders and painful menstruation
•    Tones and supports the reproductive organs and sexual function
•    Decreases acidity in the blood, especially when performed in the morning
•    Strengthens wrists, elbows and shoulders

Contraindications
Any powerful yoga practice should be used with respect. If you have wrist, elbow or shoulder issues, be very careful about placing your entire body weight in your wrists. Some other common sense contraindications include: pregnancy, menstruation and serious intestinal problems. It also should be avoided if you are dealing with an ulcer, hernia, heart disease, high blood pressure, brain tumors and ear, eye, or nose infections. Because this pose is deeply detoxifying and can release built up toxins into the system, notice if you don’t feel well after practicing it. Reduce the amount of time and the repetitions of this pose and work on cleansing through diet before building up to longer holds.

Instructions:

Kneel on the ground with your knees spread as wide as your sticky mat.

Bring your forearms together and place your hands, palm down, on the mat with the little finger side of the hands towards each other so that the fingers turn back in the direction of your feet. (Experiment in your pose with the spacing between the hands, from the little fingers touch to the hands a few inches apart.)

Squeeze your elbows in towards each other and place your abdomen on your upper arms with your elbows situated at or just below your navel. (Women with large breasts will have some trouble adjusting for this one, some rearranging and humor is required.)

Look forwards and begin to shift your weight from your legs into your arms. At first keep your knees bending out to the sides. With time as you gain balance and strength you will be able to straighten your legs behind you and hold them above the ground. (Another variation is to fold the legs into padmasana or full lotus pose.)

Hold as long as you can maintaining a steady breath. If you are unable to breath then practice keeping your legs on the floor, gradually taking more weight into the arms and pressure into the abdomen. Once you can hold the posture calmly and breathe easily, hold for 10-30 breaths at a time.

Preparations for the Mayurasana
For the wrists:
Extend one arm forwards and with your other hand pull your fingers towards the floor so that the top side of your wrist joint opens, hold for five breaths. Then pull your hand and fingers back so that the underside of your wrist opens and the top side is compressed. Hold for five breaths and repeat on the other side.

Extend one arm forwards with the thumb side of your hand upwards, bring your thumb down into your palm and wrap your four fingers around the thumb to make a fist. Keeping the thumb side of your hand upwards, bring to tilt your hand down towards the floor. You’ll feel a stretch on the inside of your right wrist, be conservative, this connective issue shouldn’t be overstretched. Hold for five breaths and repeat on the left side.

For the arms:
Bring your palms together with your thumbs touching your forehead, squeeze your forearms and elbows together. Without tensing the shoulders or neck begin to move your forearms away from the face but keep the forearms and elbows squeezing together. Practice this movement while standing or kneeling and be mindful to keep your belly and your back organized, resist jutting the ribs forward and collapsing the mid-back.

To strengthen the back, legs and torso practice Salabhasana
To reduce abdominal discomfort and tone the digestive organs practice Nauli Kriya
Approaching the full pose of Mayurasana it can be helpful in developing the arm and wrist rotation to practice downward facing dog and upward facing dog with the hands turned backwards.

(Here’s Julian practicing Mayurasana with his legs in Padmasana. If you can fold your legs into lotus, the weight of the legs is contained and easier to lift from the ground!)

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– From The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, translation by Brian Dana Akers

Nauli is a yogic cleansing exercise, or kriya. Nauli cleanses the internal organs and tones the abdominal region via a side-to-side rolling motion of the abdominal muscles.

Although nauli is not widely taught or used today in most Western yoga classes, in some classical yoga traditions, it was among the first exercises taught to new students, even before any asana was taught.  This allowed the student to use uddiyana bandha and nauli movements within their asana practice in order to bring greater awareness and energy to the asanas.

The muscular actions necessary to accomplish nauli require four movements. Uddiyana bandha must first be attained before nauli can begin:

• uddiyana bandha: an abdominal lock accomplished by emptying your lungs and pulling the abdomen in and up under the rib cage

• madhyana nauli (central nauli): the isolated contraction of the central abdominal muscles.

• vama nauli (left side nauli): the isolated contraction of the left side of the abdominal muscles.

• daksina nauli (right side nauli):  the isolated contraction of the right side of the abdominal muscles.

Although nauli can be taught to people of any age, it is a powerful action that can cause discomfort, or possibly, minor injury. Learning from an experienced yoga teacher is recommended.

Contraindications (things that may increase the risk of injury while doing nauli) vary.  Some say that nauli should not be performed by pregnant women, or people with hernias, hypertension, heart disease, ulcers, or various gastrointestinal ailments. If in doubt, consult a professional.  In any case, nauli should not cause pain. Always practice carefully and with awareness.

Text taken from the website http://www.nauli.org

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This article is a must read please. For people who eat food.

Whether you eat animal proteins or not, this article has some essential information on preparing vegetable foods and how to get the most out of what you’re eating.

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Pressed Salad
fresh spring turnips with greens, separated
dandelion greens
mustard greens
parsley
almonds
lemon zest
1/4 red onion, diced
black olives, pitted and finely chopped

Preheat oven to 350. Place almonds on a cookie sheet and roast until done, for about 5 minutes, stir, then roast another 2-5 minutes. When the almonds are done, wait for them to cool and then using the flat edge of a knife or a jar, crush them into smaller pieces.

Wash and dry all greens, remove any thick stems and core, chop into 1-inch ribbons. Sprinkle 1/3 teaspoon salt over greens and using your hands, press the greens, massage them, squeeze them until they begin to release water and take on a marinated-like quality. Once greens are quite soft, mix in the chopped olives and set aside.

Combine lemon zest, and red onion, repeat pressing method. Set aside.

Slice turnips (or any other root or decorative vegetable) into thin slices and arrange them artfully onto your serving dish. Place greens on top, then lemon zest mixture, sprinkle with roasted almonds. Serve with fresh cilantro dressing on the side to spoon out on top.

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big bunch of fresh cilantro (coriander)
1/2 cup olive oil
1/8-1/4 rice vinegar (to taste)
1/4 cup white miso
1 tablespoon of mustard
2″ fresh ginger root grated
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Combine ingredients in food processor and blend until smooth.

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The following is taken from NPR’s story “The Great Oom: Yoga’s Wild Ride to Respectability”
You can listen to the complete story here on NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’

“Yoga, that mystical art that’s become a regimen for 15 million Americans, came to this country from the East. Eastern Nebraska, to be precise.
That’s where, back in 1889, a 13-year-old named Perry Baker met his first yogi, and American-style yoga was born.
The Iowa-born teenager soon remade himself with a new name — Pierre Bernard — and his exploits, and yoga’s sometimes-rocky journey to respectability, are chronicled in the new book The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America.
Author Robert Love tells NPR’s Guy Raz how Bernard weathered early rumors of rampant sex and drug use, and later an arrest, to lay the foundation for an empire.
“He was so far ahead of his time that it is no wonder that he was lost to history,” Love says. “People didn’t know what to do with him. We want our gurus and our holy men to be soft-spoken aesthetics — here is a true American rough-and-tumble original who happened to be a mystic as well.”
Bernard rose to fame after moving to New York — where he was soon arrested and accused of misdeeds with a young female student. The charges were eventually dropped, but Love says the case in a strange way made the young entrepreneur’s name:
“He was rechristened ‘The Omnipotent Oom, loving guru of the tantrics’ by the headline writers in the yellow press at the time. He became a kind of infamous celebrity.”
Bernard went upscale and created a yoga retreat outside the city for the chattering classes, where entertainment included drag baseball games and even some circus-like acts.
“It was a wild, weird and wonderful thing that he called the Clarkstown Country Club,” Love says, “calling it by this opaque name because yoga still had such a louche reputation.”
But Bernard did develop a loyal following, one that eventually built today’s $7 billion-a-year “yoga-industrial complex.” Yet he’s not widely know today, his biographer says.
“I think he is a missing link in the great story of how yoga moved from East to West. And Bernard was merely laughed off as a kind of a footnote. I hope my book at least puts the record straight and sets up an argument for him as a real pioneer in bringing yoga to America.”"

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Sprouts are a perfect addition to your springtime menu. They are packed with vitamins and nutrients, protein-rich and easy to digest. They are also delightfully crunchy and delicious, making them the perfect snack!

Get started:

-Organic, raw seeds (Some more common seeds to sprout are sunflower, chia, alfalfa, clover, and mung bean but there are many more possibilities. Pretty much anything that grows from a seed can be sprouted. Some seeds are difficult to find raw, or aren’t actually seeds, so ask your local organic grocer or buy online. Make sure you’re getting organic seeds though, sprouted pesticides and genetically modified organisms are gross.)

-1 glass quart jar
-Cheesecloth and rubber band

Pour some seeds into the jar, you don’t need that many, just enough to cover the bottom of the jar and up about 1/2 inch. Rinse the seeds a few times with cold water, then cover the seeds with cold, filtered water (fill the jar about halfway up), and let them soak overnight. The next day, drain the water and cover the mouth of the jar with a few layers of cheesecloth, secured with a rubber band. Rinse the seeds well with cold water and set the jar upside-down on a cup so that the water can drain out. Rinse the seeds at least three times a day. Pretty soon you’ll see them starting to sprout. Different seeds have different sprouting times, but most of them will be done within a few days. Check the seed sprouting time-guidelines.

When the seeds are sprouted to your taste, rinse them once more and then store them in a clean container with a paper towel at the bottom to absorb excess moisture. The sprouts will be good to eat for about a week. Add them to any salad, stir-fry, sandwich, or just enjoy them on their own!

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“The creator of life is inside of me and as long as I can feel that power inside of me, then I will be in good condition and I will be able to help other people. You can’t help other people if you’re negative or if you’re afraid. Never be afraid” – Tao Porchon-Lynch

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Thanks to Holly Westergen, the author of ‘Namaste, Bitches’. I have a lot of catching up to do with all of her great posts, but wanted to share this from her most recent:

“You don’t have to give up who you are or become something else. The point is to get closer to who you truly are, not escape it. I got that backwards for a while. The idea is to embrace your contradictions, all of the pieces of you that you love and hate and are baffled by suddenly resolve themselves quite beautifully in a yoga pose. I can’t explain it. But it is kinda like magic. Yoga teaches you to get better at celebrating yourself. And for most of us, especially women, we were never taught those lessons.”

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One of the places I enjoyed my time away from the computer the most was in the south island of New Zealand in Golden Bay where I stayed at an intentional community/ eco village called Tui.

The Tui Community and Land Trust began in 1984 when a group of like-minded individuals decided to buy over 100 acres of land to start an intentional community. In the last 30 odd years Tui has gone through various incarnations and approaches towards a vision of intentional community and has quite successfully blossomed into a village in which 30-40 adults and children live gently upon some of the most gorgeous land I’ve ever seen. Many of the Tui Community residents are independently employed outside of the community in neighboring towns, a fair amount are employed by the community’s cottage industry, Tui Balmes and Waxes and a few more are kept busy running young men’s and women’s rites of passage programs, respectively, Tracks and Tides.

I traveled to NZ as the guest and assistant for my dear friend and mentor Melissa Michaels who was invited to Tui (with myself, another assistant and her two daughters in tow) to share her work with the New Zealand Community. Melissa runs a rites of passage program called “Surfing The Creative” which utilizes movement, dance, music, art-making, performance, council, and a whole lot of other things to facilitate dynamic leadership and community building. Learn more about her Colorado-based workshops and classes and her international program.

In Tui we were welcomed into the fabulously imaginative home of Suzi and Jim, two long-standing residents of the village. Suzi is a leader and founder of Tides, a rites of passage program for young women, and Jim is the leader and found of Tracks, the young men’s rites of passage program. Two of my friends and other collaborators of Melissa have traveled to Tui to take part in the leadership of these programs. Are you skilled or do you want to learn more about youth leadership and rites of passage? This would be a place to come and learn about it!

Another opportunity to travel to Tui is to go and WWOOF. Willing Workers On Organic Farms is a worldwide network of willing and able people who exchange labor for room and board on organic farms. The terms are negotiated personally, there is generally no monetary exchange, and traveling and working is one of the best ways to get to know a community and land.

On the drive from Nelson to Golden Bay- overlooking the valley.

From the vantage of Suzi and Jim’s balcony

Tui community garden

Tui community dinner

Meagan Chandler, singer, artist, and sister traveler relaxing in the evening warmth

The view of Suzi and Jim’s house from the driveway

Suzi and Jim in their kitchen with grandson Koa

Koa and his dad Jay, preparing for our last supper together

Meagan on the rocks by the estuary

Suzi and Jim’s chimney stack!

More pictures from the rest of the trip (Berkeley, L.A., Sydney) coming soon!

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