~ Yiddish Proverb
"We practice (yoga) to deepen our self-awareness, establish ourselves in the present, set a direction for our future, and actualize our full potential."
Yoga as an individualized practice according to where you are and where you wish to go. According to Gary:
The practices of Yoga provide the means to bring out the best in each practitioner. This requires an understanding of a person's present condition, personal potential, appropriate goals and the means available.
I am currently reading Gary Kraftsow's Yoga For Transformation. (From which, I have used the excerpts that follow.)
Tapas: purification.
Our emotions of anger, frustration, sadness, jealousy, envy, fear, loneliness, anxiety, and depression exist within us as seeds waiting to sprout.Tapas is the purifying heat that destroys impurities and cooks our seeds to inhibit germination. So yes, Tapas can burn.*
Slaves of our habits and addictions:
While there are various types of tapas, all have one thing in common: they are the means whereby we strengthen ourselves in order to break the cycle of habitual and addictive behavior that keeps us enslaved. And this they do by challenging us to wake up out of the momentum of our daily lives, to pay attention, and to look at life in a new way.
While remembering:
When tapas remains only at the level of the body, its beneficial effects will not be lasting.
And avoiding extremism:
Buddha and the Middle Way: it is said he heard a simple fisherman playing a stringed instrument and realized that too loose a string would not sing and too tight a string would break. And at that point he renounced extreme asceticism.
*Meditation is a form of tapas. Sitting and seeing what arises may be uncomfortable. Fasting is a form of tapas, but a flexible resetting and returning to health, is a longer lasting, truer path to transformation- the middle way.
Every activity is a choice to reinforce our conditioning or serve as the ground for positive change.
J is in the habit of juicing among his favorites are golden pineapple,
bittersweet blood orange, and cooling cucumber (not necessarily together.)
J's morning blend: 3 oranges, mixed variety plus 1/2-1 pineapple. Share or sip throughout the morning.
J's afternooner: 1 cucumber, 2 apples, a few carrot sticks, and spinach or 1 cucumber, 2 apples, 1 beet and dandelion greens (or any mixture thereof...)
Has anyone gotten their paws on the book below?
The avocado chocolate pudding I posted in February is a staple at our house. We went to visit J's cousin in Escondido (north and inland of San Diego) this weekend and he sent us home with a bag full of avos from his backyard. Knowing they would be brown and overripe if we waited to slather the alligator pears on whole grain toast with a sprinkling of salt (my other favorite way to enjoy the fatty fruit) I prevented waste by making a nice big container of chocolate pudding.
The more popular version I created this afternoon does not contain bananas and is richer, smoother and creamier. It takes very little to feel satisfied. So as an addendum to my original recipe, simply make as stated, but omit the banana and double the avocado. (And no need for the almond milk thinner if amalgamated with an immersion blender.)
If the avocados (and bananas) are spoiling:
Nourishing Mask for face and hair
1 overripe banana
1 overripe avocado
1/8-1/4 cup full fat yogurt
2 tablespoons olive oil
Mash, apply, leave on 20-30 minutes, rinse, enjoy!
As with the pudding, an immersion blender is clutch here. ($40-$80)
No comments:
Post a Comment