The golden Guidelines, or what does a non-veg yogini eat, anyway?

Recently, after my one of my previous articles had been published on Elephant Journal, I was asked to write for a diet website. When I received this request, I admit that my first reaction was to giggle.  When I was asked to contribute to a website on diets, I giggled.  Me, write about diets? I hate diets!  I think they are absolutely useless, as they rely on a short-term mentality to solve a long-term problem. In my experience, the best ones force you to rely on their system that is rarely sustainable for anything outside of a regular life-pattern (and as someone who has my hand in four separate businesses, calling my lifestyle regular would be pretty far off course.)  The worst teach you to starve yourself, mess with your metabolism, loose some water-weight, and gain it all back the instant the diet has run it’s course (and often gain even more.)

When it comes to weight loss and nutrition, I am a firm believer in the “moderation in everything, even moderation” way of life.  This has worked quite well for me, as with few changes (due to illness) my weight has stayed consistent within a few pounds for the past six or more years.  I am certainly no stick figure, but I have a lovely, curvy and athletic body that looks fabulous in clothes (and I’ve had no complaints from my boyfriend, either!)

However, as a yoga teacher and a personal trainer, I constantly have people coming to me asking how to lose weight, how to have shapelier thighs, how to make their bum tighter, flatter abs, bigger boobs, smaller nose (well, not really the last one.) And on a website about diets, having the opportunity to be the voice of moderation and sensible, healthy choices for the every day yogi or yogini in all of us felt like an awesome way to put my mantra where my mouth is. 

So, I thought I’d let you know how I try to eat every day, and succeed about 80% of the time. 

All right, so how do I personally eat, if I don’t diet or restrict, but still want my tight jeans to fit?  Well, I just follow the Golden Guidelines, and all is taken care of for me.

Here they are: the Golden Guidelines I stick to (80% of the time, anyways):

-          Vegetables at every meal, including breakfast. 

-          For every meal, half a plate of veg, ¼ plate of carbs, and ¼ plate protein. Which looks something like this:

-          Small meals every 3-4 hours, preferably including a vegetable.

-          Small amount of “good” fats (olive oil, nuts, avocado) daily

-          Alcohol, cheese, processed food (including gluten free products, for wheat-free folks like me), nuts and other saturated fats in intense moderation.

While this might sound difficult, not enjoyable, or even nuts (Brussels sprouts for breakfast?!) once you get used to it, it becomes fairly simple to follow, transportable around the world, and absolutely delicious.  Plus, I really do get to eat as much as I want, whenever I want, provided it fits in the framework above. 

               

So, what does my daily food look like?

 Breakfast:  Two corn tortillas, 2 egg whites, arugula and 2 tbps mint ‘hummus’ (recipe to come next week!) extra cooked left-over veggies (if eating out, an eggwhite omelette loaded with veggies)

Snack: A rice-cake or two with almond butter, with half a sliced cucumber, a cup of tea sweetened with stevia and some almond milk,

Lunch:  Veggie-bake (more in a later post) with a small piece of protein (small can tuna (line caught if I can find it), left-over chicken breast, etc.) optional piece of gluten free bread, OR vegetable based soup with a piece of gluten-free bread.

Snack: Mary’s gone cracker’s with hummus, and/or steamed Brussels sprouts, a glass of wine (occasionally two) in the evening.

Dinner: (options:) 2 sushi rolls with brown rice and hijiki salad, OR veggie-bake with protein, OR vegetable soup with chicken sausage, OR chicken with arugula and chickpeas, or, once a fortnight, gluten free pizza or pasta. YUM!

Now, that said, this meal-plan works really well for me and for my body.  While I don’t necessarily advocate this exact food plan for everyone, as everyone has their own nutritional needs, the golden rules listed above have really helped me maintain a great figure, have plenty of energy, great skin and hair, excellent health, and a calmer, happier attitude in general. I couldn’t recommend them more highly.    In the coming weeks, I’ll write more information about all this, with recipes and research, etc.  Namaste!

Tapas: Not just Spanish munchies

I love sanskrit and philosophy so much that it borders on the weird.  Particularly for me, who has always battled with foreign languages, the fact that I just eat up whatever sanskrit (an Indo-European language that no-one actually speaks any more) I can get my hands on is just odd. But that's not the point.


The point is a particular sanskrit word, tapas.  Tapas, as told to me by the brilliant Jenny Aurthur, is "the willingness to endure intensity for the sake of self-transformation."  


WOW.  Read that a few times, if you would.  The willingness to endure intensity for the sake of self-transformation. HOLY COW.  (Ba-dump-bump.)


When I first heard this term, I interpreted it as any former triathlete would.  I used it as a tool to kick my own ass.  When holding plank, I would mutter "tapas" under my breath, press my hands more firmly into the floor, grit my teeth and hold it. Tapas meant press my chest more firmly towards my thighs in dolphin, open my inner front thigh more fully during vira II, etc.

Me before a triathlon, doing a modified plank to warm up.

And then, like many  former (and current) triathletes do, I took it too far, and got injured.  AGAIN.  I have a history with ITB syndrome, a painful over-tightening of the illiotibial band that runs from the hip to the knee, and causes intense knee pain and often compensation of other muscles in the area.   So, all of a sudden, any pose which involved a straightening of the leg or a forward bend caused horrible pain. Which, in case you don't practice yoga, is about 60% of the asanas.  


At first, I pushed through.  Hard.  Ignoring the pain, I kept pressing, and pushing, and fighting against my own body, still attending class 5-6 days a week, jumping to chattarunga and ardha uttanasana EVERY time during every surya namaskar, and basically ignoring the nagging voice in my leg that said, "hey lady, give me a break, will ya?" 


Then, after many months of this, I had to stop.  My doctor, who is a genius who I deeply respect, told me to take two weeks off from yoga, which I interpreted to mean, "just a little." After two weeks with no improvement, he clarified that he meant, "No, really, NO yoga."


All of a sudden, the meaning of tapas became slightly more illuminated, and particularly the meaning of intensity.  If I thought my practice was intense, not practicing felt agonizing.  I felt like I was ready to crawl out of my body, I was anxious and frustrated.  And for two weeks, I sat through it.  I meditated, I reached out for support, and I sat through it.  And when I returned to Chrissy's class, while my leg was certainly far from perfect, I was able to be so much more present and aware on my mat than I'd ever been.


 For me, for today,  intensity is not pushing myself as hard as I can, come hell or high water.  If we do that, what comes to mind is another expression:  "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten."  Tapas means LISTENING to our bodies and our needs in that moment, and ignoring whatever external or internal pressures there are to push or be pushed.  So, for today, when I only come down half-way in a forward bend, or lie flat on my belly in lieu of child's pose, I just mutter "tapas" and smile.

Coming back...

After a rather intense and tapas (trans., willingness to endure intensity for the sake of self-transformation, more on this later!) filled month, which involved three major holidays, one major move, and zero yoga classes due to injury (again, more on this later)  I felt like I was going balmy.  

Yesterday was my first class back, and what a gift it was.  I walked into Chrissy's class after a month away, and it was packed.  A 12:45, level one class, there were at least 35 people in the class, and perhaps more.  I snuck in the back, as the class was about to start, and heard Chrissy say, "Kat!  So great to see you! How's the knee going?" I hope one day to be the kind of teacher that can be about to start a class filled to the brim and still take the time to check in with individual students. Amazing.

We started the class, and I admit, it was challenging to hold myself back the way I had to to protect my leg.  No jumping for me, no intense knee bends, which included no child's pose.  No child's pose?! 

However, I used the opportunity to focus on the things that I could do that challenge me.  Staying with my own body and not comparing my practice to other people. Learning how to listen to myself more fully.  Doing my own practice.

At the end, I was simply grateful. Grateful to be able to feel so at home in a class filled with laughing, joy-filled students, grateful to have such a tremendous teacher, and grateful to be exactly where I was that day.

What are you grateful for?

Just love this. Plain and simple.

Hi everybody!


I'm back after a long Thanksgiving break from the blogosphere. I had a fabulous time at my sister's for the holiday, and then spent the weekend in Saratoga.  It was fantastic and restorative and a great place to do yoga...and see the first snowfall of the season!


I have a confession.
Nine days out of ten, I feel this way, but some days, like today, I just want to yell it from the rooftops. Today is one of those days.


I LOVE MY LIFE!

On Destiny Retreat, a life changing transformational week with Jana and Miranda Saunders

Some days, I admit I feel a bit weird for feeling this way. With so many miserable people in the world, what right do I have to be so happy, to have so many people I cherish in my life, to have a job that makes me grateful each day to jump out of bed, to have such beautiful friends and such bounty of love in my life?


I have two answers for that.  One, I work freakin' hard at it.  I wasn't born this way, nor have I always been this way.  I work with a brilliant life coach, Jana Saunders, who has taught me incredibly valuable tools to bring in the positive things I want, and release the negative or toxic things I don't.


Secondly, I've learned that, while I don't believe my mind controls my reality, (as in, I don't believe the "think positively and you'll get exactly what you want...NOW!") I believe my perception deeply influences it.  If I choose to believe something is possible, that there are no problems, only solutions waiting to be found, and I work hard to find and get it, it usually happens.  A friend of mine posted this recently, and it seems to summarize beautifully exactly how I feel about this.

Every generation has a limit to what it believes can be real. At one point we thought the world was flat, that it was impossible to fly or that putting a man on the moon was impossible.

The same thing can be said about how other people perceive you when you have a vision or a dream.

Not everyone will see it. Many will doubt it. In the beginning almost none will help make it happen.

But the magic lies in this: KNOWING, AFFIRMING and BELIEVING that your inner world creates your outer world. The thoughts and vision you are thinking about creating the life of your dreams, are the blueprints of your eventual success.
When you are inspired, don’t seek the approval of other people before you begin taking action. Just take action and produce results. You will learn from the action you take and if you take consistent and daily action eventually you will begin to show positive results.

When you show positive results, instead of other people saying, “Ah, that impossible”, they’ll start to ask you, “How’d you do that?”

  - Mastin Kipp, The Daily Love, Daily Email - Nov. 5th, 2010

What are you thoughts?  What have you brought into your life that you want, and how did you do it?

Have a great day, and keep practicing!

Kat

My Sphere of Influence

My boyfriend is absolutely brilliant. I really mean it.  Issues and problems that I struggle and wrestle with, he seems to inherently understand, and know exactly how to deal with them.  He is simple one of those people who draws in the energy and resources he needs, and puts them to good use.


One of his key tools for dealing with any problem is one that I have since borrowed and use almost every day.  When a situation comes up that seems difficult to handle or challenging to fix, he looks at it and asks a simple question:  "Is this in my sphere of influence, or is this not?"  If it is, he moves forward with finding a solution.  If not, he lets it go.

A sphere of influence. Note, this is not at ALL a plug for Anthony van der Hoorn's photography. Photo credit: Midday, by Anthony van der Hoorn, Anthonyvanderhoorn.com.

Ah, letting go.  What a subtle and complicated art form that can be.  We muse so much in yoga about vairagya (non-attachment) but then, we come to a pose that is particularly challenging for us, and we fight against our own bodies to wriggle ourselves into some semblance of the pose, often foregoing common sense or safety to do so.  Or, off the mat, we stress and worry about if we're getting a promotion at work, if the guy will call, when that purse will go on sale, or thousands of other little problems that we ooze energy dealing with instead of letting the universe take care of it.


This is what I tell my students.  (And, of course, myself.) Today, where we are, we have very little control over our level of flexibility or strength. Both of those things take a great deal of time and japa (repetition) to build.  In the context of a yoga class, you really can't get too much more flexible, or much stronger, in that moment. However, in each session, we can choose to deeply focus on the things within our personal sphere of influence.  When you are transitioning from pose to pose, are you just thinking about getting there, or on bringing mindfulness to the space between the asanas?  When you stand in poses that are familiar to you,  do you rely on your old habits to get you there, or try to learn something new?  Transitions, mindfulness, and single-pointed attention - all of these things, as yoga practitioners, are in our sphere of influence.  


An invitation:  Just for your next yoga class, let go of the need to improve at the asana itself, and focus simply on the things that you can directly control.   Center your mind on making the transitions as clean as possible, on being mindful of the subtleties held within each pose, and keeping your mind focused on your own mat.  You may be surprised by what you find.


Have a gorgeous night, and keep practicing!


Kat

Love the Present

Looks can be deceiving. Today, while it appeared that I was simply walking to my afternoon yoga class along Amsterdam avenue, I was in fact in arround twelve different venues far away from my earthly body.  I was in Sedona, Arizona with my boyfriend, trying to figure out flight schedules, while I was at my computer dealing with bills, while I was back at work dealing with a student's knee replacement and how to accommodate her, while I was in Costa Rica...just because.     So, vrittis (fluctuations of the mind, also known as, thoughts!) flying, I was stopped short by this window display at Banana Republic, and just cracked up.

Love the Present.   I do find it slightly ironic to have a sign that says "Love the Present" with mannequins holding gift-wrapped boxes advertising Christmas a week before Thanksgiving even happens, but I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless.  Sometimes, it feels like the universe just sends messages when you least expect and most need them.  

And this is why we do yoga. Sutra 1.2 - 3 says, "we do yoga to calm the mind down so we can get to know our true selves."  While people come into yoga for a multitude of reasons (to get in shape, get flexible, because their girlfriends do it, etc.) if you stick around long enough, chances are you will find the amazing side effect that is the original intent: the ability to be exactly where your feet are, for however long you can be.  For me, this used to be for just a moment at a time, even during class. These days, most of my class time is spent exactly where I am, working to find the most elegant alignment in my body. (Of course, I slip out of it, and will occasionally have a teacher chortle, "Kat!  Your feet are doing ballet while your arms are doing yoga!" or the like)  And even more often, I am becoming aware of when my mind does slip away, and I am starting to be able to bring myself back to where I am. 

In reality, the present moment is all we have (as we know.) The past is gone and the future doesn't exist. The most important moment in the universe is this moment. And this moment. And this moment. 

What actions can we do today to help ourselves stay in the present?  There are so many tools, and yoga isn't the only one by a long shot. For some people, it's running, knitting, or dancing.  For some people, it's just finding a quiet corner to sit and breathe.  Today, for me, it's taking a moment to be grateful for exactly where I am and what I have at that moment. Right now, at this instant, I am sitting on a warm bed in a lovely room with everything I need and most of what I want. I have quiet, and peace, and love.  What else could I ask for?

A few tools to ground yourself in the present:

1) Stand in tadasana (mountain pose.)  Standing with your feet together or slightly apart, lift your toes up to ground your feet down.  Press back through the thighs while you rotate your buttocks towards your heels. Feel the energy from the earth coming up through your legs and spreading through your body. Spread your palms on your thighs. Breathe.

2)  Scrape a stainless steel spoon on the bottom of your feet. Sounds weird, but it works.

3) Touch something natural and connected to the earth, such as a tree trunk.  Place both hands on it and connect to that energy. 

4) Make a list of ten things you are grateful for in that moment.  

5) Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

What do you do to bring yourself back to the present? Feel free to comment below. 

Upanishads and Private yoga

There is a wealth of yoga philosophy that I find totally fascinating and highly recommend reading.  I will go into more detail in a later post of particular recommendations of editions and translations, but Patanjali's sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Upanishads all have one thing in common - they were originally passed down from master to student orally, and individually.  In fact, Upanishad is literally translated as "Sitting down near"which basically means, "sit down and I'll tell you a story about how to live your life. Or how you could live your life.  Or about cheese."(I'm actually not joking about the cheese - read Satchidananda's translation of the Sutras and you'll know what I mean.) 

Cool lookin' guy, right?

As yoga was meant to be taught intimately from teacher to student, it's interesting to see how far away we are from that in the yoga industry.  In the business side of yoga, classes ideally have 20 or more students to be lucrative to the teacher and the studio.  Don't get me wrong - I love the community aspect of a large class taught by a wonderful teacher - there is a feeling of "all for one and one for all" as well as the inspiration of seeing someone else's asana and learning from others.  However, as my teachers always say, "what do you gain, and what do you loose?"  While you gain a significant amount of excitement and strength from a group asana practice, you definitely lose the personal care and and consideration that comes from a private teacher.


While yes, I do know that I am a private yoga teacher so this may sound like a pitch to study with me (hey, what a great idea!)  I so want to recommend so many other teachers to study with, as well. For example, I study with Laurel Beversdorf, a YogaWorks teacher trainer, who has totally shifted my practice.  While I wish I could study with her regularly, whenever I can have a lesson with her, it is always amazing - she is an utterly brilliant teacher with a keen eye for and understanding of alignment and musculature, which is essential for me. Juliana Mitchell is another wonderful New York based teacher - incredibly wise, warm and knows exactly how to challenge you according to your needs.


Who are your favorite teachers, and what do you think about private yoga lessons versus public classes?


Share your thoughts below, if you would, and have a beautiful day!


Keep practicing!


Kat