What A Yogi Eats...

...when she is on the mend.

Breakfast of champs, eh? Let me explain. See I don't really eat breakfast; I get up pretty early so my body isn't ready for food but I do need a little something.  What you see here, I like to think of as a nice balance of eastern and western medicinal treatments, are the following:

Coffee with cinnamon and cardamom

Rice milk

2 crackers

Chywanprash

Uber Vitamin

Antibiotics

One Half of an antidepressant

Let’s start at the start, the Coffee (western). I love coffee, straight up, strong brewed coffee. I could drink it all day, it's a like a comfort food for me and I don't even care about the caffeine, in fact I prefer decaf because I'm jumpy enough. However this coffee here has caffeine so it also has cinnamon and cardamom in it (eastern). It's an Ayurvedic was of lessening the effects the caffeine has on your system. Also it's a nice extra cozy flavor when it is cold and snowy outside. 

Rice Milk (eastern): I don't like milk, maybe a little in my cereal or to dunk an Oreo in but other than that no thank you. Really I just have the rice milk there because I don't like taking pills with hot liquids that I need something to help wash down the Chywanprash.

Chywanprash (eastern, on a cracker) is a sort of medicinal jelly you eat in the morning. it is chock full of good things like

Amla fruit, Indian kudzu root, Long pepper fruit, sandalwood, Mysore cardamom seed, Malabar nut tree leaf, Spanish pellitory root, arjuna bark, ashwagandha root, shatavari root, bacopa leaf, holy basil leaf, chebulic myrobalan fruit, Ginger, European grape fruit, Licorice root, Sacred Lotus flower, Jatamansi root, Neem leaf, Tribulus fruit, Bael tree fruit, Indian tinospora stem, Phyllanthus herb, Zedoary rhizome, Cyperus rhizome, Indian Elecampane root, Heart-leaf sida root,  Himalayan pistachio fruit, Leptadenia leaves, Boerhavia root, fig, Clove bud, true cinnamon, Indian Cassia leaves, Mesua flower, True saffron stigma with sugarcane, Ghee (clarified butter), Honey & Sesame oil

All good things but to me the taste is a little odd and the texture is that of a very thick jelly. I tried the first few times just eating the jelly but couldn't do it so to help with the texture I added some sesame seeds to the jelly to give me something to "chew." But by and large the best things I've found is the sesame mixed jelly made into a cracker sandwich, it’s almost enjoyable.

Mmmmm, Chywanprash!

Uber Vitamin (eastern). There is so much research out there about vitamins; they are great, they are crap, they have to be vegetarian, it’s fine if they are chemically produced. This is one area where I have stopped listening to basically everyone. I take a whole food derived vitamin that turns my urine bright yellow! It doesn’t make me puke which most vitamins do and I just feel better when I take them. Placebo effect or not there are worse things I could choose to believe make me feel better.

Antibiotics: Amoxicillin (western). I am on the upswing of a wicked flu virus that is sweeping the Midwest. It was killer; it started out like any old winter cold then it morphed into a 4 day long pressure headache, which lead to an ear ache which was actually an ear infection which decided to start bleeding out all of the side of my face. If you've never walked into the bathroom to see blood seeping from your ear trust me, it's TERRIFYING! and if you have or if you have ever had an ear infection that I would like to hug you because those things hurt, a lot! So I am on a high dose of medicine to get this nasty infection out and gone! even as a yogi I know sometimes we have to lean on western medicine to help us heal, that's why it's there, because it's valid. I can't imagine what kind of pain not to mention what kind of other fluid my body would have started oozing if not for those pink little (not so little) pills my Doc prescribed me. And speaking of leaning on western medicine...

Half an antidepressant (western). You might remember this post: 5 Things I Don't Like, when I talked about going on antidepressants. Well you can see there's only half a pill there which means *sounds of trumpets* I’m dosing down. I'm back on my mat and I’ve eliminated quite a few stressors from my life so my body is back producing hormones that make me happy again.

Greetings From Rock Bottom a.k.a. Gratitudes

When everything falls apart and you have nothing to hold onto, I guess there is nothing left to do but be grateful. Counter intuitive, yes. Counterproductive, no. See here is the thing, when you struggle with depression mild or other wise, or heck even if you are just plan human, our minds have a tendency to focus on the negative. So while I'm rolling around down here in the mire of rock bottom I was trying to figure out how to get a leg up and start pulling myself out. Not easy, because my sad little brain only sees all the things I don't have around me. My sad little body only feels how tired it is from all the effort (seemingly in vain). And my sad little heart is just plain broken. Now seems like the perfect time for gratitude, I shall elaborate.

This is a little practice I have done throughout my life when I was feeling overwhelmed or just plain unmotivated and sad. It's a tool to help teach our brains to stop focusing on the negative parts of a situation and be thankful for the good things in our lives. Good things don't have to be directly linked to the situation at hand because once you start finding good thing somewhere then you can start seeing them everywhere. Basically you are training your brain not to slide into depression (which for some of us we are simply genetically more susceptible to), you are actually breaking down old "negative" neural pathways and rebuilding more positive ones. It's science, it's faith, it's whatever, it's really really cool. It can also be really easy, easier than making a grocery list, just list 5 things. My 5:

1. My dog is happy and healthy and did the best happy "i thought you were dead but you came back!" dance EVER yesterday when I got back from Chicago.

2. I took a really fantastic yoga class Sunday.

3. My car is still getting almost 30mpg on the highway!

4. I got to hang out with my cousins kids yesterday morning, 16months and 4years old, both boys in my lap, coloring, and cooing, le sigh.

5. I have a pretty stunning family of friends.

So those are my 5 right now. In the past they've even be so mundane as "I could afford to make my car payment this month!" or "the homeless guy didn't harass me on the way to the train today." I think my dog is always number 1 though. Also, you don't have to write them down, at one point I had a gratitude journal and ever Sunday I would write my list down, that way I could see my progression of thought. But these days I just make a quick mental list of 5 things to remind me that no matter how dark it is out there I can see at least 5 little twinkles to keep me moving forward.

5 Things I Don't Like

As a teacher and advocate of yoga every once and a while I get this unsolicited remark when I mention being a yoga teacher or just that I do yoga, “Yeah, I don’t really like yoga.” More blunt than the flat end of a meat tenderizer. My usual response is something non-committal, feverishly dancing around and suppressing the numerous sharp tongued responses that leap to mind quicker than Jack be nimble in his fanciful display of Hanumanasana over a candlestick. So instead of getting all yogi-rific on the ignorant, I mean the INNOCENT, non yogis here is my official response:

5 things I do that I don’t really like.

1. Jog. Ok so I don’t jog daily or even weekly but I do know how good it is for me so I am adamantly working on building a running practice. Of course I do yoga as my main exercise and of course I believe that it is the best thing you can do for your body and that a vigorous vinyasa class is not only great for muscle health and tone but a super cardio workout. However, I also know that I’m not the kind of person to push myself through such a practice on my own and given my tiny town location there’s not much else to offer in the way of yoga except for, well me. So I jog. I’m working up to 3-4times a week for about 15-30mins a day which is quite a challenge but for cardio and over all keeping calories in check running is the best thing out there. So do I like running/jogging? Not really but it’s good for me and I do because I like me.

2. Eat bananas. I don’t like bananas, I never have, they are weird and they have a strange texture and the moment you put them in any dish the whole dish taste only of bananas! BUT, they are very good for you and as far as easily transported fruit, they’re hard to beat. So a few years ago I put on my big girl fruit loving pants and starting eating bananas and I’ve come to appreciate them as a healthy and more importantly a filling snack. Bananas, not just for teething babies any more.

3. NOT eat peanuts. Ok this is really something that I love but don’t do (or don’t do as much b/c it’s not as good for me). Lately I’ve been studying Ayurveda, the sister science of yoga, so of course I start using my most available if not most willing guinea pig, myself. Without getting into the whole break down of Ayruveda let me just say this that according to this ancient science I am not supposed to eat peanuts. So I have turned to other nuts for my protein packed snacks and tried other nut butters for my occasional sandwich. Le sigh.

4. My taxes. You know, I’m just going to leave this one as is because who doesn’t hate doing their taxes but on some level understand the logistics of is all. Bummer, but we do it. 

5. Take antidepressants. Yep I take antidepressants. And you know what, I’m not ashamed at all. I thought I would be I thought I’d be seen as a sham as a yoga teacher who can’t yoga herself well. But in fact that was my disease talking, that was my unhealthy brain telling me not to fix myself because I wasn’t worth fixing! Do I like being on pharmaceuticals? No, not really, I like feeling like me again, I like not having thoughts that are wildly beyond my control but of course I’d rather be able to have my body produce the hormones that cause that all on its own. Plus, it’s like my amazing doctor told me, he basically said ‘look you’re a healthy, holistic young woman, you do yoga, you know how to fix yourself but what I’m seeing is that you can’t get yourself to use the tools you have laid before you, because you are sick.’ And I was sick and I am sick but just like he said, I know that I already have all the tools I need to make myself better. And one more day doing the things I may not like but are good for me, one more day on the mat and I’m one step closer to being med free. One step closer to finding that peaceful contentedness that yoga is all about.