Yoga Ego and Why Not to Ride It

"So funny. This is so not in your repertoire", or why I like getting my ass kicked

Everyone wants to be a guru these days. You want to be a guru, I want to be a guru. The woman on the second floor that went to a chakra balancing and primal scream seminar in forests of Sweden has something to say. So she fancies herself a guru too.

We live in this interesting multimedial world. The possibilities are so many that one is almost left feeling that something is wrong with him-/ herself if every wave that comes up isn't mounted and ridden like you're a pro. The world of yoga practice is no exception. There are schools, courses, festivals and seminars everywhere. There are workshops and styles and teachers of many kinds. I suppose that all roads still lead to Rome. Or was it Mysore?

I started practicing many years ago and I switch modes between feeling like a know-how egomaniac and insecurities about why I can't balance on the tip of my nose in the umpteenth series of Ashtanga vinyasa. I guess egomania and insecurities are tied in.

This is why I find that going to a teacher who deconstructs my notions and gets me to do pure "I will take whatever comes"- kind of practice extremely healthy for my path toward yoga. I try to call my practice exactly this: "a practice", instead of calling it yoga. I don't know what yoga is. Yoga is apparently a cessation of fluctuations of the mind. I haven't been there. I get small glimpses from time to time and I hope there will be more. I go to my practice. I can't go to yoga. A few more rebirths, and maybe then yoga will be a bit clearer for my simple human mind.

Back to the teacher I met in India in 2013. I went with a group of friends, all fellow practitioners on different levels. Some have practiced for many years and others for a few months. Being the one amongst them who practiced for 14+ years, I sort of felt I should have all the answers if anybody should wonder about anything. I should have this shit down. Yoga ego on the prowl.

And then we arrived to the shala. This humble, attentive teacher received us, let us do our own thing the first day, and I guess she observed.

Day two, she started adjusting and stiring our asana pots. She saw aspects of my movement patterns nobody else I have practiced with noticed or commented upon, as far as I know. I have a relatively broad range of movement, so my flexibility is often focused on. This teacher showed me that there are parts of my body where there is not much happening at all. We only had two weeks with her, so she went straight for the jugular. She led me into places where there was tightness and lack of dynamic energy that explained to me how the way I use my shoulder blades affects my udhyanabandha (it goes bye bye when I open my chest, unless I remember to do certain things). I was asked to roll my upper arms inward while doing a whole bunch of asanas, and my body didn't get it at first. "Roll them inward???", I thought. "So, funny! This is so not in your repertoire." she said once. Oh my! New stuff. New neural patterns and pathways being born. I fell, I shook, I resorted to straps and *GASP!* blocks to stabilize positions I though I was great at. Now I learned that I used my back where I though I was using my legs and so on. Pure student mode. So healthy! From arriving to the shala and thinking I was going to deliver this wonderful performance of my floaty intermediate series, I actually got to learn and to listen and to be humble. There was nothing to take pictures of to put on Facebook, as I was in training, being corrected, commented on and adjusted, so that I could be strong, healthy and calm. It was even a little bit scary going to practice every morning. I thought "what is coming today?". :-) Yoga ego. There came a point where I released myself to the teacher. Complete trust. The woman kicked my ass. Kicked it hard, in her calm, alignment conscious way. Surrendering to the teacher, there was not much room for ego to inhabit. No poetic yoga posts on Facebook. Just our tired faces and messy hair, and talk about how much we didn't know and how much there is yet to learn. I love this. That, for me is practice. Nothing to hang on the wall, nothing to filter on your Instagram. Because I am under training and it won't look especially interesting, unless the viewers see some beauty in my imperfection.

I love getting my ass kicked, because safe zones make my head swell. I start thinking that I have an answer to everything. In actuality, I have an answer to almost nothing. I might have a suggestion. I need a good beating, a teacher who leads me out of my repertoire. I have learned to float with what I am asked to do and ask for help when I am not sure where to go.

Yoga, meditation techniques, interpretations of ancient teachings and the new, the search for self-realization and freedom of mind and spirit have now become things accessible to anyone to ponder on, and express opinions about. You can enroll on a teacher training, we can buy books and the whole world is on the internet. Here's my blog, and who am I? We stumble upon websites of people who have practiced for a few years and because there is a website, they can be an authority on yoga. Perhaps some are. For most of us, it is that we crave to know the truth and it comforts us to think that we do. Attachment to that which is attained by non-attachment, if we are to trust the scriptures. Like Arjuna at the battlefield, we need to charge at our own perception of what we know to be true, blast it off and see what is there when the smoke has cleared.

In that small shala in India, a teacher shot a cannon at my practice, took apart my skills and gave me new toys to play with. I arrived, not knowing what was coming, only knowing that I didn't know anything, so I hoped to learn. My own silly Yoga-Teacher-ego was left on the stairs, together with my flip-flops. I was so tired after practice that I forgot to take it back with me. This is why a good beating is fantastic for my practice and for who I am as a person. I (as many of you reading this, maybe) make all things personal, so my mastery of what I think I am a master of becomes personal. I OWN it. Then something happens, and a quiet woman in a shala in Vagator, or a skinny man at a yoga school in Oslo, show me that I don't own anything. The practice is not mine. It is taught to us all, same for us all. I wait for the smoke to clear and I am perhaps going to see where I am at. For this to happen, I need to be taken to a place in the practice where I have no idea where I am going, and I need to be led. My head can't be up my ass. I need to trust that although I have no idea, the one leading me does. I need to be exhausted. That is when my yoga ego doesn't draw energy from anything and what I learn lands on a humble ground and actually seeps somewhat in. "Somewhat" because I am thick headed and this needs to be repeated.

I recently left an Ashtanga Yoga discussion group I was a member of, on a social networking website. I left it because ordinary people, like me, hoping to have some understanding were battling about what yoga is and what true teachings were and which teachers were worthy and which not. I left it because it gave me an urge to convince people that my opinions were the truth. I felt compelled to label people as stupid because what they thought about yoga was not what I thought it to be. This cyber home of pseudo wisdom, fanned the flames of my ego, as if I don't get enough of that from before. I learn best when I accept that I don't know much and that my teachers are my teachers and I am here to practice. The less of this attitude I have, the further from my comfort zone, I need to go. "This is so not on your repertoire" is where I need to be. More sweat and less cerebral spin-doctor-action, I hope will be my mantra for the new year.

My Love Letter to the Primary Series

Like coming home to a home cooked meal.

As I am writing this, I am in India, to practice with an exciting teacher that I am training with for the first time. A lot of new insights, and an amount of assist-attention I haven't received for many years. My fellow practicioners agree: the teacher is kick-ass. She is tweaking my intermediate series and the process is INTENSE. I am sore and actually happily nap in the middle of the day, something I usually never do. Of course, the blazing Sun of India does do its part too. The beatings I receive in the shala every morning make me hunger for that one day this week when I will be reunited, for a day, with my first love - the primary series. This is my love letter to Primary.

I honestly love the primary series of Ashtanga Yoga. It's the one we learn first and, really, for some, it is gives enough to work on your whole life. Sri K. Pattabhi Jois is sometimes quoted as saying that the primary series is for everyone, intermediate is for teachers and the series that come from then on are for demonstrations. It is also called Yoga Chikitsa, meaning yoga therapy, and this is exactly what it is: healing, soothing when the intensity subsides,and both physically and mentally detoxifying.

I have always felt that the primary series, also referred to as the first series, is a little bit like a chiropractor of the Ashtanga system. In the beginning, it kind of took me apart and I felt like I was put together anew after that. Because it is the first of six series in the Ashtanga system, many of us do not appreciate Primary for the phenomenal vehicle of healing that it is. It is said to perfect the body for both your general life and for the subsequent series that might (or might not) be taught to you. When you are taught by a good teacher, you will be given an opportunity to work your entire body. Not much is left untouched and unworked once you are done practicing the sequence. Once forward-bending stretches give way to hip-openers, lifts and leaps that come to your door after Navasana, the primary series will present you with positions that will challenge you for years and years (forever?), even after you start practicing latter series. In one of her blogposts, Kino MacGregor, one of the most staggeringly advanced young certified teachers, wrote that practicing led first series with Sharath Jois, every day for almost a week, made her sore and challenged her strength. And she practices the Advanced B, the so called 4th series.

For me, Primary is what I return to when nothing else works. When I come to a new place, either because I travel, or because something has temporarily destabilised the structure of my regular life, I practice the primary series. In its sweaty, spine-elongating, hip-soothing, earthy, grounding manner, it is - and you will forgive me for resorting to a cliché, like coming home, no matter where I am. After injuries, the few I have had, a steady, careful practice of the first series is what got me back to being able to practice as if nothing had happened. It is very therapeutic, more so than any other physical training discipline I know of.

Maybe even more so than the series that follow it, Primary is such a great example of perfect sequencing. If you follow the sequence of positions with patience and trust, under the guidance of a good teacher, I believe that you can work your way back from anything. The Sun Salutation A and B alone are enough for many. If badly injured or lethargic, you may want to do only these, and they will start to fire up your flames until you one day find yourself ready for more. Then there is the standing sequence, giving strength to your legs, teaching you to pull in the thigh bone into your hip, while pushing your foot into the ground. Learn this and you will be able to transfer the technique into many other postures, and use strong legs and bandhas in order to relax your back and lengthen your spine. The standing positions will also start to gently open your hips and chest, rotate your spine and in some positions, like padahastasana and prasaritta padothanasana, even give you a sense of how to use your core and breath in order to balance while inverted. The so called sitting postures, will first lengthen your spine and backs of your legs, then start opening your chest and rotating you, before plunging into your core to strengthen it, open your hips even further, teach you how to move your weight in order to bend your body backwards in a way that heals and strengthens your body. And so on. The way I see it, it is all there. No matter what else you do in your practice, this is what we return to when other stuff stops working. The therapy series indeed.

I have always been a fan of being good at the fundamentals of what I do. That way, if something that comes later on needs to be tweaked or re-assessed, I will always have the starting point to look back to and reconsider. This is because, in my heart of hearts, I am drawn to being sloppy. So, I hammer in the basics of what I do, and that way, I am never without a good point of reference. This is a good advice for all ashtangis. You will be uncertain of things, you will feel lost and you will doubt. The primary series is so specific and its fires are soothing. If anything else in the Ashtanga method, which is seemingly designed to challenge us and whip up all the primordial crap we carry around,throws you off, knowing your first series and trusting it, will lead you to the path you need to be on. I honestly think this applies no matter which level you practice on. I have seen amazing, advanced teachers hurt, and I have seen how they apply this almost magical method to heal. One of the biggest mistakes a practitioner of Ashtanga Yoga can do is underestimate this place we all start at and look down on it. If you don't get its power, its purpose and the lessons of patience, respect, breath and alignment, you will be reminded. Sooner or later, you will need to loop back and learn the power of the first step. Many of us, perhaps all, have been there. Real practitioners of this method don't care which series you practice. We all come from the same root and when we know it, we see that the starting point sets you up for all that comes after.

So, Primary, my true love, you have been there when I couldn't tie my shoes because my body felt broken. You lifted me from the depths of physical and spiritual unfitness, and led me into the whirls of flaming discipline and an awareness of the comedies of my restless mind. When I get stupid and think all other doors are closed, I know that yours isn't. That is how I remember that the aren't any doors to be closed. First series. I love to love you. Baby.

Is Asana Madness Messing Up Your Practice?

I still remember the first Ashtanga Yoga workshop I ever went to. It was year 2000 or 2001 or so. Alexander Medin, who is now my teacher, arrived to Oslo from London. He was one of few certified teachers in Europe, and I was both in awe and nervous. This was the time when my ego was super tied up to my mastery of asana (the way I defined mastery of asana those days), and I knew the workshop was going to draw quite a few advanced practitioners. I fancied myself to be one, of course. I had practiced for about a year and I progressed pretty quickly. My teacher at that time had already pushed me through most of the intermediate series. Basically, I was like a low frequency appliance plugged into high frequency electricity. Long story short, the workshop was ferocious. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. At the time, I thought this was because Alexander was such a tough teacher. I actually didn't dare sign up for his next workshop when he came to Oslo, where I live, the year after.

Why I am writing about this, in an article about how asana can mess up one's practice? Because years after the experience I described above, I now understand that the horror of the workshop had little to do with how tough the teacher was. What it had a lot (everything!) to do with, was the fact that I hurled myself into the kind of practice I wasn't ready for. I was still struggling with aspects of the primary series that should be mastered before going further. Bandha was still a vague concept for me. Bhujapidhasana was a huge struggle. Drop-backs seemed unattainable. I hated putting my chin on my shin in utthita hasta padanghustasana (when I practiced without anyone looking, I mostly omitted this movement, as it demanded more from my strength and sense of balance than I could be bothered to exert). But most of all, there was this: deep inside, yoga was just gymnastics for me. I wanted to do all this stuff so that people would admire me more, I wanted the wow's, the oooh's and the aaaah's. So I could love myself more because others liked me more. I had a teacher who wanted the best for me and who was very ambitious on my behalf. I called this "yoga". What it really was, I don't know. It wasn't yoga.

Here's the tricky part: "Patanjali's Yoga Sutras" states that yoga is the cessation of fluctuations of the mind. We are also supposed to be cleansed through the challenge of the system and through flames of wholesome discipline. The practice is a tool we use to break out of the bonds of conditioned existence. Challenges we face through asana practice teach us that defining what's possible or not is none of our business. We're supposed to follow the method and the fruits will come. True knowledge comes, in a sense, through not taking our reality on face value, but letting the practice reveal what is real. Applied to asana practice, this might mean that difficulties and apparent impossibilities are meant to be met with the same attitude with which we would meet the things we find easy: Steady, regular practice according to the Ashtanga method. Doing this while not getting caught up into ambitiously chasing asana and not constantly spewing the pictures of ourselves balancing on an eyelash on Instagram demands a lot on our poor, overexposed egos. In Bhaghavad Gita, Krishna asks Arjuna to surge into battle and fullfill his dharma. For Arjuna, this meant a complete surrender to a reality he doesn`t yet see, masked behind a situation seemingly extremely opposite to what his sense of moral dictated.

Now, let`s pull all this esoterism back to the yoga mat: Say, I`m on my mat, with my laptop in front of it, Kino MacGregor`s Third Series - dvd on. Sthira Bhaga ftw!And I want this. I want that leg behind my head, as I recline back, my other leg straight and strong, glued to the floor. Look at me - Sthira sukham asanam incarnate!So, I do one position, because I can, then I skip three because I can`t get into them, but then I do the one after it. As fun as experimenting with asana might be, I ask myself whether yoga has left the building and circus has come to town instead. Sooner or later (but mostly sooner), every Ashtanga Yoga practitioner will face something like this.If you have practiced for a little while, you will be tempted and try to do stuff that is beyond where you really are or should be. You will attempt stuff your teacher wouldn't let you do, as it's energetically and physically beyond where your truth currently is. And these days, you will feel a pull to put this on your Facebook wall.

I have so been here. Years before I started practicing intermediate series of Ashtanga Yoga, I performed a very back-bendy version of pincha mayurasana (I'm sure the vertebrae in my lower back were dialing the emergency room number, crying on the phone) and I took a photo of myself. I edited out the laundry drying behind me and put the picture up on the internet. It was a cute picture. Was it yoga? No. It was me doing gymnastics and selling it off as yoga. Which is fine, as long as we don't mix things up. This had nothing to do with me being present and definitely nothing to do with cessation of fluctuations of my mind. Au contraire. Look away, Patanjali. My mind was racing mad and I wanted people to admire my physical prowess.

So, if I have learned anything through my years of yogic practice, trials and tribulations, it might be this: as much as the practice shouldn't be taken so seriously that we never attempt to bite more than we can chew, relaxing into the practice is a prerequisite if I am not to turn into a conceited freak. The lesson: relax and breathe and don't think too much. Today, every time I find a position frightening or tensed up, I get my Bhaghavad Gita on; I breathe and do what I can. There's the enemy army, so Arjuna get yourself together, boy. I used to not be too crazy about back bending in the intermediate series. Until I started doing the movement with my mind in a sort of "fuck it, let's go" - mode, under caring eyes of my teachers. Kapotasana and I are BFF's today. When my hands get to my heels, my heels want to make them a coffee. My experience is that you achieve this through relaxing into a regular practice, with a good teacher. Being overly ambitious about asana is tension. Wanting to be where you're not is tension. Tension is the opposite of presence. You get where you want to be by doing what you can today and respecting it. And then you kind of flow into things. This is when we find that we genuinely come to be able to do all the cool stuff without the freakishness of grasping what's not ours to grasp.

The concept of avidya in yoga, the blind ignorance of not seeing the reality the way it is, helps us here. Avidya is beyond ignorance. It is filtering how we perceive the world and ourselves through our ego. The truth we think that we live is a lie. Ashtanga is tough and it will show you that the way you perceive asana can feed into this blind delusion. You will think that mastery is something else than being present in anything that you do. You will think that mastery is about what your kurmasana looks like. If you get there, you will be pushed and pushed and pushed until something happens - an injury, a word from someone, or just the passing of time - and the bubble will burst. Unless you decide that you trust the practice before you go bananas and before there is a bubble.

A major part of the human experience is that, more often than not, we feel inadequate, somehow not good enough, somehow lacking. A major part of what our yoga practice can do for us, is putting this humanity under a magnifying glass, so that while feeling inadequate, unloved or whatever, we might experience that doing what we can with what we have, from where we are, we are suddenly at the place we dreamed about being. Asana-wise for me, I remember that years ago, I couldn't fathom how I would ever be able to do drop backs. This is one of those things you can't fake yourself into safely. Neither my head nor my body understood how this movement was possible to execute. I did the only thing I could: I followed the sequence until the time to attempt drop backs came, and I tried. My teachers helped me. I breathed and trusted. Today, I think I could do them if I got up in the middle of the night. When this suddenly became a possibility, I have no idea. The thing is that at some point, I accepted that I didn't care if I ever got to this back bending craziness. I did what my teacher told me, when they told me to do it. I have also experienced a state where I was in such pain (not because of my practice, mind you) that sun salutations were all I could do. Asana madness ceased to be an option. I had to accept that I might never get back to where I once was, when it came to my circusy skills. For the fact that I actually regained them, I believe that I can thank those small things like sun salutations, standing postures, breath and most off all, doing what I could safely do, doing it well, not caring what it looked like.

So there. Next time you're on your mat, no matter who you are, practice like no one is looking, like you're caressing yourself with asana. Do the positions like you want to heal yourself with them, not like you want to be on the cover of "Yoga Journal". This is how your asana practice, no matter what it looks like, ceases to be madness and starts being rock star practice. This is how it is never a nuisance. Go. Try. It will work. See?

I Almost Didn´t

Don't give up
'cause you have friends
Don't give up
You're not the only one
Don't give up
No reason to be ashamed
Don't give up
You still have us
Don't give up now
We're proud of who you are
Don't give up
You know it's never been easy
Don't give up
'cause I believe there's a place
There's a place where we belong

Peter Gabriel "Don´t Give Up"
*Gasp! Not "The Bhagavad Gita" or "Patanjali´s Yoga Sutras"???* :-D


Today I started my practice with pain in my lower back. I almost didn´t. Practice that is. I lay on the floor listening to Eurythmics and thought "Nah, my back is acting up. I might skip yoga today.". And so I almost did.

Then I somehow just got up, changed, rolled out my mat and practiced. I did it pretty gently, without thinking too much. The asanas were gentle, but I had a pretty fiery pace. I wanted the heat, so I went for it in big style.

And you know what? I would have been... well.... let's call it "less than smart" if I skipped today's practice. It fascinates me how after all these years of practice, I forget how important this is. Not that it stops me from practicing, but the mere fact of having the thoughts of "maybe I'll skip it today?" are interesting. Already while doing the Sun salutations, I felt like "God, this is good, what was I thinking?.".

So, try not to skip your practice when in pain. Instead, adjust what you have to, so that it becomes soothing and therapeutical. I have no idea where my pain came from. I have had a fast paced, stressful week. A lot of meetings, A LOT of sitting. Might be that. I don't know. But all the same: My practice is a major therapeutical tool. I feel so amazing now. My thoughts have settled down, I am comfortable and calm. I think I'll do primary for a couple of days, before returning to my regular practice. Monday is a Moon day, so there's some more rest. :-)

What I am trying to say is that I almost convinced myself that the way to handle an achey lower back was not to do yoga. And when people tell me they way back pain, I recommend yoga to them! Major case of tamas-attack! :-D (just in case: Tamas is the lowest of the three gunas, or afflictions. It brings about laziness, slows you down. Like when you have major trouble getting out of bed).

Let us not forget why we practice. Ashtanga yoga is training of spirit and mind. It's about not giving up and giving in to what seems to be reality, when you know better. Yoga is citta vrtti nirodha. Cessation of the movements of mind. This particular day, I managed to raise above the rut of my restless mind.

Progress. Nice. Thanks.

Yamas of Vegetarianism

As Christmas is drawing near, all yogis are given a new opportunity to remind ourselves of and practice the first limb of Ashtanga Yoga, as presented in Master Patanjali's Yoga Sutras - yama.

As yoga practicioners, we focus daily on asana practice and postural techniques, on breathing techiques, health, different scriptures and many other aspects of the great art of yoga.

As we refine our minds, bodies and spirit, we start focusing on widening our perspectives and our compassion, so that they not only aply to other humans, but also to other animals and to nature, as we should.

I stated in an earlier post that vegetarianism is a crucial aspect of the practice of Ashtanga Yoga. For many westerners, it is also one of the most difficult ones.
When ethical and enviromental aspects of meat-eater-diet versus vegetarianism/ veganism is brought up, I have noticed that arguments often get heated.

For the yogis amongst you, here is a short presentation of yamas, applied to compassion towards non-human (and human) animals:

AHIMSA - non violence

Don't hurt them. Abstinence from violence, ALL violence is one of the corner stones of yoga practice and of many other philosophies and practices that resemble it.
As much as we humans try to rationalize it, eating animals implies that we accept that other living beings are killed. Everything and everyone strives to have a long and healty and safe life. So do animals. There is no reason to believe otherwise. The same way we used to enslave other humans, the same way we kill and butcher when we wage wars against each other and we managed to create "rational" reasons for that, we imagine that we have rational reasons for killing animals. All of us have an opportunity to widen our compassion and enrich our and others' lives by respecting all life and abstainings from eating meat and using fur. This is really real non-violence. Ahimsa doesn't mean that we are required to abstain from violence solely when it is convenient. Prime-ribs, meat balls and other meat based foods are cooked parts of animals that were held in captivity and killed.
Even a shell, what many of us consider to be but a mindless muscle has enough consciousness to hold on tighter to the surface when we try to touch it. This is because they too want to be left alone. They want to live. So, leave them alone.

Let us practice ahimsa and take a real high road. When you enjoy a vegetarian Christmas dinner, don't see it as difficult. On the contrary, it is an opportunity to practice ahimsa and it will surely inspire someone else to consider a path of non-violence and compassion.


SATYA - Truth

Don't lie to them. We breed animals on farms, we feed them, we tend them only to kill them and/ or skin them in the end. This poses a problem and a conundrum, especially for those amongst us who hold the opinion that eating wild animals/ game and so called organic meat is more acceptable ethically.
Consider a possibility that allowing an animal a so called good life only to kill it afterwards is the same as lying to animals. Imagine - someone loves you, is kind to you, feeds you and then they take your life. Organic meat is most often produced only so that it will be heathier and more tasty for humans. These animals lead good healthy lives, at least by human standards, and then they're killed and hung on a hook.
To breed something, to give it food, to let it procreate and so on, only to slaughter it and turn it into food is lying. It is not the practice of satya. This is not a white lie. Lies that lead to killing are mean when applied to humans and they should be considered so when applied to animals and other aspects of nature as well.

ASTEYA - abstinence from stealing

Don's steal from them.

Taking meat, territories, skins and milk of other creatures can be seen as stealing.

Humans are one of very few animal species that keep drinking milk as adults and that drink the milk of other species.

In many western societies, young calves are taken from their mothers right after birth and the mothers are milked and the milk they produce for their offspring is used for human consumption. Consider the ethical implications of this and try to imagine the situation if the mother and child were human.

Many western societies use more than their "share" of meat and milk. In a world where millions of people suffer of starvation and malnutrition. This is not practice of satya. If USA alone reduced its consumption of meat with only 10% and the freed resources were used to feed the part of the world stricken by hunger, the picture of world hunger would be dramatically changed. If the whole world consumed 10% less meat and these resources were directed to feeding the hunger-stricken part of the planet, there would be no hunger in the world.
And consider this: If India, where close to 80% of the population is apparently vegetarian, started consuming as much meat as USA does (when we consider the ratio of meat consumption compared to the size of the US population), our planet would be stricken with a global hunger and polution catastrophy.
When you consume an animal, you consume the vegetables, fruits, wheat, earth and water it "consumed". A vegetarian diet is uncomparably gentler to the ecology of Earth.

Eating meat is stealing from both animals and from humans and the planet.

Practice non-stealing, asteya.

BRAMACHARYA - sexual continence

Don't abuse them sexually.

In order to breed animals, create new breeds of desired size, taste, shape, or with desired quality of fur, animals are genetically modified, inseminated against their will and bred with partners they wouldn't chose naturally.

Cows are often inseminated with large devices that are inserted into their vaginas.

To consider this as acceptable, you need to decide that animals are things. These animals often need to be restrained or sedated when this is done to them. This is because they don't want to be inseminated, touched and genitally penetrated by their "owners" and against their will.

Seen through a prism of loving kindness, this kind of treatment is both ignorant and can be seen as sexual abuse.

So, leave them alone. We humans are an ingenious species and for all we need to solve, we are capable of finding better solutions if the present ones are inhumane and less-than-gentle to the planet. We could when it comes to this matter. If we wanted to.

APARIGRAHA - non-grasping

Don't take more than what you need.

In the part about non-stealing, asteya, I have already written about several parts of the world taking far more than what they need. This results in an imbalance that causes hunger and suffering in other parts of the world and also an ecological imbalance. Aparigraha is about not taking more than you need. Also when it comes to milk/ dairy for the non-vegans amongst us.

Very few people in the world, especially on the western hemisphere, need meat to survive. Very many people in the world, and again, especially in the west, would be healthier to themselves and kinder to the planet if they didn't consume any meat at all. The same thing with fur.
To my great disappointment, I recently saw fur in an otherwise fabulous yoga studio, full of great and otherwise aware yogis. And then there was that fur on their floors and chairs. In a yoga studio. Such a pity. So unnecessary.

Take only what you need. You don't need meat. And you don't need fur. You probably don't need dairy either. If you do, how much milk do you need?


Yama is easy....


When we honestly do what we can. It is a start for all of us.

People imagine that going vegetarian is difficult. It is not. Educate yourself about what you need and start.

If you have an aware relationship with your yoga practice, then vegetarianism is something you need to consider. It is probably as important a part of the yogic lifestyle as your asana practice is.

Really, do consider to apply the practice of yama to more than the human world. It is all the same world and mess and cruelty at one place will resonate somewhere else, sooner or later. The practice of yama is meant to be universal, which means that it is about animals and nature too.

This Christmas might be a nice time to start a more compassionate and kinder practice and spread some awareness to your loved ones too.

The Seat

Sthira sukham asanam
Prayatna saithilyananta samapattibhyam
Tato dvandvanabhighatah

Asana is steady and joyful
Asana is effort turning into balance turning into stillness turning into revelation
Then, one is no longer disturbed by opposites

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, sutra 46, 47 and 48

All of us enter the world of yoga with all kinds of different motivation, ranging from a wish for better physical fitness, to relaxation, to peace, fascination with Indian traditions and sometimes a mixture of all of these. Also, the gates we enter through are often times more or less different, as some of us start up in different yoga traditions and then move on to others, or sometimes we stay where we started.

The three sutras cited above are the only three in the "Yoga Sutras" by master Patanjali that specifically mention asana, or yoga positions. This is very interesing as asana is, for most of us, the first thing we get to know as we start practicing yoga.

A funny thing I think I see in almost everyone who sticks with yoga practice for several years or forever is that no matter why or where they started up, even if it was just with more flexible and stronger body as the only goal, a new spark gets ignited. Some people start reading the scriptures, some get curious about Sanskrit and/ or chanting. People start going to India and spend time and money on yoga workshops.

Asana practice, also in the Ashtanga yoga tradition according to Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, consists of many aspects: In addition to the yoga positions, asana, we practice bandha (the energy locks), dristi (the gaze focus), ujjayi breathing, in addition to a specific sequence of postures. In other words, a steady yoga practice gives us quite a bit to do.

It is very usual to get very caught up in the physical asana practice at first. A good friend of mine often uses the term "to master" when he speaks about different asanas. He gets unhappy and frustrated when an asana he considers desirable seems to "resist" him. Of course, this is a tendency I recognize from my own years of practice. I still go crazy. When I have to roll out (as opposed to elegantly leaving the position) of pincha mayurasana because I lose my balance, sometimes I get very frustrated. The physical practice gets the best of me.

At such times, it is useful to remember that going through this is one part of the practice. But what does it mean to master a yoga position?
In sutras 46 to 48, Patanjali tells us that a yoga position is to be steady and joyful. Through the effort that hopefully results in steadiness and joyfulness in any yoga position, we reach balance, through which we reach stilliness and then maybe revelation. This is a road toward dissolving opposites.

Patanjali doesn't say anything about a practicioner needing to tie him- or herself into a knot. We work on mastering our body, but mastering is not the same as coersion. It might even be the opposite of it. You master an asana as you would master anything else - by doing your best, wherever you are, step by step, respecting your body in the process. Wholesome discipline, folks. And maybe one day, you find yourself in a deliberate knot. Maybe not. But in a knot or not, hopefully we are nearer to balance and peace in any position, no matter how difficult we find it physically. Through this, we start deconstructing the world of opposites. We start liking the things we didn't like before. Like a great warrior, when we see challenges,we stand, steady in our breath and focus. And we stay and we breathe. And hopefully, we realize that there's nothing to get elated about, nothing to fear. Steady and joyful. This is one of the greatest things Ashtanga Yoga has given me (so far). One of the most tangible things.

As in an asana I might find difficult, I have started to be able to stay in challenging situations in my life off the mat and I stand and most often I am calm. Things are as they are, I need to stay, so I stay, and I don't lose my head. Mostly. This IS one of the gifts this yoga has given me. When I do get insane, it is comforting to know that I am capable of taking other choices. It actually helps remembering this.

This is how Ashtanga practice, seemingly turbulent, really is a meditation technique: You follow the sequence, your breath is strong and focused, your gaze is focused. Your thoughts might be racing but the asana sequence, the breath and the gaze bind them and you are steady and you keep doing what you need to do. This is how we work on turning the movement into meditation. After a while, there can be joy even in initially unpleasant positions and situations. You might have experienced things like this: You might be in an asana you find difficult, but you stay and you breathe and you find that you are actually quite happy. In this way, it doesn't matter how deep in a position you are on the physical level; you master it by mastering your mind while in the position. Yoga is staying present no matter what, leg behind the head or not. It does not matter. What matters is that you are doing your best and that you are present. For us westerners, our bodies are often times the most accessable tool when we start up this kind of work. Our bodies are then the gates into something far larger.

The physical progress will come with regular practice. Seen from this perspective, firmer and stronger, more flexible bodies are a bonus, but never our final goal. If physical progress is the only goal, we are still at the gates. Pre-yoga, someone called it (I don't remember who). Mental balance, joy, steadiness, stillness, peace and maybe glimpses of revelation of the fact that there is little to be concerned about is the real soul nutrition, while strength and flexibility are the toy in your cereal. The real yum-factor comes from the cereal itself. The toy is your additional gift. Strong, healthy body helps you detach from your body. You can meditate easier, you can start practising more advanced pranayama- and kriya (purification) techiques when your body is properly wired up for this. For this, you need to do your practice and find peace in your practice. This is so big! Finding peace in your practice. Gee....

The great thing is that through some effort, through realizing that an aware relationship with the tradition of our practice matters, we kind of start realizing, often cloaked in small glimpses of clarity, that very few things matter. A contradiction? I don't know. Ask me in 50 years. What I hope that I have started understanding is this: There is nothing to go crazy about.

And craziness is not to be underrated. One version is where you can get stuck up and arrogant in very athletic and advanced asana practice. This is not too constructive, considering the fact which tradition we apparently belong to. One meaning of the word "asana" is "seat", a connection to the ground. So to "take off" in ego-terms seems to be the opposite of what asana practice leads to. What it leads to is grounding and a healthier pespective on our egos.
The other side is where it is pretty easy to bliss out in a cross legged seated position, with a bolster under your ass. But go ahead and practice awareness and peace and joy in positions like lolasana (check out the picture above). Or any position that challenges you in some way. Practice not longing to get away. Practice not convincing yourself to get out after 5 breaths when your teacher asks you hold it for 15, especially if you are capable of these 15 breaths. Whether we do things like this, is what might determine if a position is a yoga position or a new party trick you can demonstrate to your friends.

I honestly try to have a pretty strong practice. I find it strong in its regularity, in my effort not to lose my mind and in knowing that the body-stuff is the tool for something larger. And this is when I started seeing it as "pretty strong": When I started getting flashes of awareness no matter whether I "liked" where I was or not. The practice is what it is, like it or not. Trancending the preferences, I think, has started to show me that I actually love what I thought that I didn't. The initial impulse is just that - an impulse; sometimes correct, sometimes less so. My job is to practice. Which I do. "Sthira sukham asanam" is serious stuff. Peace and joy in seeming adversity is radical. This is where we start tearing up the wrapping and going for the real thing.

And just to be 100% clear on this: I LOVE the toy in my cereal too. I love physical agility and strength. I love feeling healthy and flexible and strong. I don't think developing our bodies is mundane. I actually find it very important. And I especially love (what I think is) the fact that all this, as huge as it often is for me, is just a beginning of something far bigger. I trust Patanjali, you see. ;-)

A Leaf, a Flower, Fruit or Water

Ashtanga Yoga is a demanding lover. All yoga is. Take wisdom from ancient scriptures and let it take you through your Christmas (or any other holiday) with humble ease and smoothness.

In chapter nine, 26th verse of "The Bhagavad Gita", Krishna states to the mythical warrior Arjuna that if something is given out of love and reverence, it will be accepted, even if it is just a leaf, a flower, fruit or water. The essence is not in what is given as such, but within the intent that infuses the gift. The intent creates the essence. It is the essence.

This might be especially relevant, on many levels, now that Christmas is drawing near.

As I stated in my previous post (and mentioned in several of the earlier ones), simplifying our practice in less then ideal conditions is sometimes a usefool tool that helps us maintain regularity of practice. This doesn't necessarily mean that you don't do an entire practice when you know you can, but that the energy of the practice is adjusted so that you, through that energy and your intent, show respect for wherever you are at, energetically, physically, timewise or all of these.
What Krisha teaches us in the abovementioned verse is that the inner force, the intention and the energy of what is given is what's important, and not necessarily the form of the gift. Show respect for this in your practice. You might even want to dedicate it to someone or something that drives you and inspires you. It might be your teacher, your partner, a cause or anything. When you hit an especially challinging piece of your practice, go back to what or who inspires you and "give" your practice to this person or cause. It doesn't have to be much. It can just be a straighter back in navasana or more active legs in kurmasana or whatever. You do it in the best way you can, safely and with love and you give it to them. Remember: "a leaf, a flower, fruit or water.". Easy. It doesn't matter. Do it with love and reverence and it will be enough.
If you, at some point, don't quite feel like dedicating your asana or your entire practice to anyone or anything in perticular, give it to yourself. Rather than just going through the motions,let yourself be inspired by Krishna and the lovely "Gita", and make the practice a gift to yourself. It doesn't have to be more complicated than pouring yourself a glass of clear icey water when you're thirsty would be. This means that gifting yourself with your yoga practice is not the same thing as you going all Cirque-Du-Soleil-esque-crazy on your mat. If it is not quite where you are (if it is, go ahead and swing it!), let what you do on your mat be this proverbial leaf or fruit or water, a simple and beautiful thing,you do for yourself from where you are. Remember that it is the intent, the substance that counts and not the form. The form grows out from the substance.

And then there's Christmas.....

And the spirit of giving?

"However humble the offering....". "The Bhagavad Gita" teaches us that it is the way we give and not what we give that is the real gift. The physical gift is the symbol. This does not mean that you should go to your nearest and dearest and go "I present you with these bird droppings with love..". :-) They probably won't get it. I am not sure I would either. If you can easily afford lavish gifts and you want to give them to your loved ones, by all means, knock yourself out. But if you are "temporarily short on cash", why not give them a flower, a simple book (a cheap edition of the "Gita" with a good translation and commentary?) or something along those lines and give it with love. Love will make it lavish. It is like the aforementioned straight back in navasana (when your lazy mind says: "droop!" and you know better and you straighten it instead) - you do what you can with the most love and kindness you can give. And that is the gift. It will most probably be accepted with the same love and gratitude.

Go back to the scriptures for simple and powerful stuff like this short passage from "The Bhagavad Gita". Many of you, if not all, who invest your time in reading blogs and websites like this one, tend to have vast amounts of dormant knowledge that gets triggered by the simple means of being reminded you have it and that you can put it to use. That is the beginning of yoga outside of the mat. Go! :-)

My Travel Mat

I recently went to a work trip that took me from hotel room to hotel room, to friends' less-than-spacious living rooms. A possible threat to my daily practice? But this proved to be a non-issue, because, as it turns out, I have a super power. Or rather a super powered side-kick. My yoga travel mat.

Practicing while traveling is a challenge for most of us. If you are not a full-time yoga teacher, or a tough-as-nails yogic superhero (I'm getting there, just you wait), you will have experienced situations when doing your practice is difficult because your trip schedule leaves little time, or your hotel room is tiny or it is tiny AND the carpet is dirty and so on and so forth.

Whenever on the road, I have always taken yoga mats with me, for the last ten years or longer. Some have served me well, some not so well. For example, I love and adore my black Ashtanga-mat, but it is so heavy that dragging it around on planes and trains and to hotels around the world turned out to be a tedious chore. Plus the black mat is expensive, so if something happened to it, it would have been an unfortunate loss. PLUS I have had it for a million years, it has served me well, it still does, and I love it, so it's like endangering a pet (I know this sounded a bit overly attached :-D ).

Anyway, at a studio where I work, I recently got a travel mat. This is not a commercial site, so I am not telling which brand it was. There are probably several brands that offer them. It's light as a feather, it folds so easily that I carry it in my hand luggage, it has a superb grip and it doesn't slip on carpets (hotel rooms are a threat no more!).

So, I came back from a trip this morning. Hotels, tiny apartments, all kinds of crammed places..... For a week. And I practiced all over the place. Oh the beauty of it! I had a couple of hours between meetings (I couldn't practice in the mornings because we started early and the evenings were networking time, so it would have been socially unintelligent of me to just disappear), so I went to my room, rolled out my small, gorgeous mat and I practiced. And holy mother of Whoever, what a difference it made! Trust me on this. You have a choice to do your Ashtanga (or whatever your practice is) or not. And small adjustments like easy-to-carry-mats or improvised altars redefine your day because they make it super easy to make your practice a priority and squeeze it into your day. You realign your mind and body and (why not?) spirit in the middle of what could have been a mundane work thing and it is beyond kick-ass!

I swear that when I returned to my colleagues after my yoga sessions, I was refreshed beyond words. The practice took me to a completely different place and all that happened before it, that same day, felt like yesterday.

What IS the point of me writing this? It is this: Make it easy for yourself. If you don't practice when you travel, because your mat is heavy and big, get a travel mat. If you need an altar or whatever to meditate, put a couple of candles and a picture of your guru (or Jesus, or Shiva, Buddha, Lady Gaga, whoever) in your suitcase and make an altar. And do your practice.

My travel mat, a small, easy thing, helps me to re-create what could be ordinary, a bit uninspired, too-much-to-do-trips into a completely different thing. Find out what would make your practice easy when you are away to places that challenge the regularity of your practice and make those adjustments. Doing some yoga at a weird place does magical things to you. Sometimes there just isn't any time to visit local yoga shalas and -studios. Or there are none where you are. If you need to share a hotel room with somebody and you can practice without sticking your toes into their eyes, don't be shy and do it (practice, NOT stick your big toe in their eye). They might get inspired.

The more I do stuff like this, I honestly get Sri K. Pattabhi Jois' "Practice and all is coming" more and more. Transcending your "cannot" is practical magic.

After It All Went To The Dogs (and not the downward ones)

I haven't been writing here for ages and ages. Many reasons for that, none particularly good. :-) I'm back, not writing marathone texts, but shorter stuff. That just might be the thing to keep me on track. Baby steps. Or baby asana?

About a year and a half ago, I injured my back. I'm not quite sure what happened. I had been to an intense and energizing workshop, where I did a lot of stuff and movement patterns I hadn't done often. A couple of days after, during morning Mysore practice, my lower back felt like it was set on fire. My range of movement got very much reduced. The body was protecting itself. The day after, the pain got worse. Everything hurt. Practicing. Walking. Turning around in bed. Sitting. Tying my shoelaces Everything. I didn't know a body could hurt so much outside of a hospital.
And of course, this influenced my practice. It was painful and it got irregular. I was in pain for quite a long time. But practicing wasn't murderously painful all the time. After a while, I found that I started blaming the injury for every "irregularity" in my practice. My asana practice wasn't consistent: "Oh I injured my back a while ago". I took shortcuts: "Ah, I injured my back." I didn't feel like practicing: "Oh, there's this stuff happening in my lower back......" The wheel of excuses turned into a big "chicken-and-eg"-thing. I didn't know what came first: my laziness or the injury.

A slight shadow of recognition that I had resorted to lame excuses in order not to do my best was gnawing on some far corner of my consciousness. Now, I have always taken quite a bit of pride in my yogic athletic abilities and I have had a secret feeling of inferiority about the stuff I didn't think I was "good enough" at. Some things I did as a pro. Some I didn't. Suddenly I thought I had an excuse I could chant forth every time I wanted to avoid or explain something and anything I wasn't content with in my practice (where did my oh so deep insights on santosha go???) :-D . I even convinced myself of all this bull dung. I lost a lot of strength. I lost some flexibility. My backbends weren't what they used to be. All because of lazy excuses. Oh lord, what to do, what to do? Roll out my mat perhaps?

I don't know what happened or when. I guess God saw me and thought "Oh man, that's lame. Is that what I put you on that planet for? Let me give you a hand.". I have no idea. I kind of remembered the "something is better than nothing"-idea.
I decided to practice again, at least for a bit, no matter what. If I just did the sun salutations A and B and the finishing sequence (backbends and inversions), I was to be content. So, I got back. And it is so delicious! So incredibly delicious. And it's not about doing a lot or just a bit. It's not about feeling fitter or not. It's about not being stupid about my life and what I am doing to myself. I am free to skip practice, as are we all. Then I asked myself: "Am I an ashtangi?". Yes I am. God, I am! So, onto my mat I go. Suddenly I found myself back in the yoga-freak-world. And I love it so! :-D

Why Vegetarian?

By Vedran
Vegetarianism is tightly bound with yoga and is by many considered to be a crucial part of the yoga practice. The practice in this context is seen as bigger than just what happens on the yoga mat. It is taken far beyond – to kitchens, pantries and cupboards. But what does vegetarianism have to do with yoga?

My first steps
Many years ago, I was receiving meditation lessons from one of my first yoga teachers, a tall bearded yogic monk, originally Australian, whose many years in India left an imprint both on his external appearance, orange temple robes and all, and on his vast knowledge of yoga traditions and philosophy. This kind, soft-spoken man gave me lessons and after receiving one, I went out and practiced and after a while, I would be given a new lesson that I would then integrate with what I had learned previously. This was before I ventured into Ashtanga. I had a soft hatha practice, drenched into lots and lots of meditation and philosophy. So, one day, my lesson with my teacher ended by him saying that I couldn’t proceed further before I stopped eating meat. I don’t remember what I answered to that but it was something along the lines of ”okay, I’ll give it a serious thought”. Inside, on the other hand, I felt offended. I felt offended by him suggesting one aspect of how I was conducting my life was wrong and I suppose that I also felt somewhat hurt. His opinions meant a lot to me and knowing that he obviously not only did not approve of something I was doing but that he actually seemed to have defined it as “not good enough” definitely stung. I kind of decided that I did not need those lessons anyway. And who was he to tell me what to eat or not?
Still, after a while I picked up a book on environmental- and health benefits of vegetarian diet. The book (I don’t remember the title or the author) was a bit on the preachy side but the first seeds of the new, non-carnivorous me were cast into the soil. I slowly started educating myself on how to build up a sound meat free diet. I am not the kind of person who goes cold turkey (no pun intended) easily. Or at least I used to not be. I had to learn how to cook proper food. Living on random boiled veggies wouldn´t work for me. And so I started. I picked up tons of cookbooks and experimented with soy products and other types of meet replacements. Sometimes it worked very well, while other things were more in the yuk – department. I don’t do yuk. I love food.
After a while, I got rather good for a rookie and my diet was almost completely vegetarian. And then I visited my parents. My parents live in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a beautiful country with lots of beautifully tasting food. Unfortunately, my parents at that time, as most other people in that region, considered meat the only “real” food. Everything else is garnish. You don’t survive on garnish. They couldn’t get my new “fix”. Me a vegetarian? I am already too thin! I resisted for a while and then I broke completely. I woke up while I was in a restaurant with my close relatives and my brother said something like “Check out the vegetarian!”. The “vegetarian” was stuffing his face with minced meat of some sort, greedily devouring piles of the minced body of some animal. I felt so ashamed.
Short time after that, I came back to Norway, where someone served crabsticks at some meeting. They were disgusting. I think I had some. Then I stopped. I stopped, I went vegetarian and I never turned back. This was many many years ago.

The nature of the natural
I have noticed that people often tend to resort to the argument of “the natural” when we need to explain any kind of nonsense we do. Depending on what we need to explain, we depict the natural as desirable or something we need to distance ourselves from. So, while comparing someone to an animal most often connotes that the person isn’t too pleasant to deal with, we turn the argument around when we argue that something we take for granted needs to be the way it is because it is the “nature’s way”. One of those things is that when we kill animals, cut them up and eat their dead bodies, we do it because it is natural. We are at the top of the food chain. We kill because we can and feed on the lower species. Why then do we view it as repulsive when we who live in the political west hear that in some other cultures, they eat cats and dogs? How is that different from eating a cow or a sheep or an elk? Well, it’s not. It is as (un)natural to cut up a rat or a cat or a puppy and then consume their cooked corpse, as it is to do the same to a lamb or a cow, or a horse or what have you. Of course, we could argue that while it is natural to feed on animals, culture dictates which animal species are acceptable as food in a specific region or a given culture. And as far as being an animal goes, it seems like we are not supposed to act like animals when interacting with other humans while in our interaction with the animal species that our culture views as stove-friendly, we do choose to act like a dominant animal species, at the top of the food chain.
The difference is that a lion, a wolf, a bear etc. cannot decide that he/ she will feed on fruits, vegetables and nuts from this day on. We humans have both possibility and capacity to do so. There is nothing natural about us consuming meat of other animals. It is the question of culture, habit and convenience. In addition, the animals we eat are mostly not carnivores. We don’t eat wolves and tigers. We eat mostly vegetarian species, like cows and sheep. We eat them because we chose to. We chose to because there is a whole industry built around slavery, exploitation and ill-treatment of animals. We breed, genetically modify and slaughter other living beings in order to turn them into food. We cut up forests in order to grow crops to feed billions of animals bound for butcher shops and such. How is this an act of nature? If anything, it as an act against it.
To my great disappointment, I heard a renowned American self-improvement teacher say “Vegetarianism – done that – didn’t work”. He went on to say that he used to follow a “strict vegan diet” and that he got fat because all he ate was rice, pasta, potatoes and bread. Since when did stuffing your face with pasta, rice and dough become a “strict vegan diet”?? And then he said something like: “If you’re a vegetarian listening to this, here’s something you probably haven’t thought about: If we stop eating animals, they still aren’t going to stop eating each other! Those animals are going to die anyway! As are we!”. Oh gee, now, this is a well put and revolutionary argument! So, what does this mean? That we might as well start eating each other? A wolf is physically a carnivor and humans aren’t. And a carnivorous animal can’t just change his or her mind, so that the aforementioned wolf goes and has himself a lentil soup. Humans can.
And again – what about the environment? Apparently, it takes about 8-9 cows per year to feed a regular meat eater. Not because they devour these cows in their entirety, but because when you take all the parts of the killed animal in the account that a meat eater consumes during a year, about 8-9 animals need to be slaughtered to meet that need. It takes acres and acres of land and tons and tons of vegetables, fruit, wheat and what not, to feed one cow. So, when you eat this animal, you also eat all that it has eaten. The costs are grotesque! In comparison, vegetarians come practically for free. Check out Sharon Gannon’s “Yoga & Vegetarianism” for more facts.
And here’s the thing: Anything can make you unwell if you approach it in an uneducated way. Research links (check out “The China Study “and “Skinny Bastard” for the REAL hardcore facts) use of meat and dairy to the explosion of cancer and lifestyle diseases on the planet. And this doesn’t fail: The countries with the highest rates of meat and dairy consumption are also the ones most plagued by cancer, obesity, diseases of the respiratory and coronary systems etc. And sure, there are unhealthy, overweight and underweight vegetarians and vegans, but if you do it properly and intelligently, there’s nothing like vegan/ vegetarian lifestyle to make you healthy, energetic and gorgeous. I have been a super herbivore for most of my adult life and I am not overweight – I’m actually in a great shape – I am healthy and full of energy. So, no need here to eat a carcass or two. NOBODY needs this. Nobody.
A fellow yoga student once said: “All in the world is One, so in that way, you might as well eat a chicken or a cow as you can eat a vegetable!”. Really? Go eat your mother or your granny (or both! Knock yourself out properly!) then, baby. Or at least, eat your cat. No? Why not? Oh.
You either value life or you do not. If you don’t, you should start. If you truly value life, why should it be alright or in any way natural to torture and kill an animal and then consume its dead body? No matter what your stance when it comes to differences between humans and (other) animals, these too are creatures that want to live, that try to escape when they know they are in danger, they too get hungry and thirsty and care for their children. They do not want to end up in your wonton soup. If the are there, the chances are quite slim that they volunteered.

Yoga
In asana practice, we do all kinds of postures with names inspired by the animal kingdom. There’s dog, cat, cow, snake, locust, crocodile, fish, peacock…. When the ancient yogis and rishis designed these postures, they did so by observing the animals in nature. The postures are there as a chance for all of us yoga students to embody the energy of these animals, to connect and hopefully to raise our level of empathy. On an esoteric level, asana practice too deals with your karmic patterns, stuff that is stuck in your body, your bones, muscle tissue, in your mind and in your energy circuits. Seen from this perspective, when you put the suffering, humiliation, torture and death of another creature into your body – because animal bodies are loaded with energy, as are human bodies, and things happen when you enslave, imprison and kill any being - how can this be good for you? It is not good for you, it is sure not good for whomever you have eaten, it is not good for the planet we live on. If you do yoga, if you read books on yoga, have good and knowledgeable teachers, you go to workshops and belong to a yoga community and you still eat meat, there is no other excuse but ignorance or laziness. You’re allergic to soy? Big deal. You can get your protein in gazillion different ways. If you eat a good selection of vegetables, fruits, nuts and legumes every day, you will get what you need. You don’t need to shovel in beans every single day.
The phenomenal Jivamukti yoga teacher, Sharon Gannon, writes that the fact that we feed on other animals is a reflection of our slave driver mentality. These animals are born and raised in captivity and the sole purpose of their existence is to be killed and eaten. What if we viewed these animals as nations? If it seems far fetched, well, it shouldn’t be. These are complex beings that – let’s face it – don’t want to die. They die because they get killed. And we do the killing. If not directly, then by buying products that come from the industries that are based on slavery, mutilation and slaughter of other species. We are taught otherwise in our schools and in our society, but the core of the matter is that killing another species for their meat and skin is torture and murder. You want that? No one in their right mind wants that.
And what about the “organic meat” or game, the animals that lead good lives or even live in freedom? Some say it is okay to eat such animals, because they lived well and we also need to “control the population” of this or that animal species. What if we stopped shooting elk? Wouldn’t nature fall out of balance? First of all, where nature is out of balance, it is mostly that way because we pushed it out of balance. Human species has proved ingenious enough to come up with the most creative ideas, when we really want to, so we would surely find a way to keep nature restore balance in nature without needing to kill, if we wanted to. Secondly most hunters do not hunt game because they want to keep or restore balance, but they view it as sport. And what about the “good life in freedom”-thing? Does that mean that it would be more okay to shoot, cook and devour a free, happy human being than a poor one that has lived in captivity most of his or her life? No. It boils down to us arrogantly assuming that animals are things and that we own them. Nowdays, they come packed in nice plastic bags and boxes, all cleaned up, so that we as consumers need not reflect on how that meet got there. The cow or the goat donated it to the supermarket? Perhaps not.
And finally, if you are an ashtangi, or if you practice any type of yoga where you happen to chant a bit, have you ever chanted “Lokha samastha sukhino bhavantu”? In this chant, you wish happiness, prosperity and freedom to all beings out there. Yes, animals too. If you are an ashtangi, you have chanted this in the end of your practice, thereby devoting it to all the beings on Earth (and beyond, who knows?). And then, you go and eat them and dress in their furs? It is not a good feeling being a hypocrite. When we act like this, no matter what, we always know it, on some level. And it will always reflect in your thoughts, in your mind, in your heart, in your body. You can’t be really true to yourself and support killing of others. I know a great, fantastic and globally renowned yoga teacher that eats meat because of allergies to a lot of things vegetarians eat. This teacher says “I am a hunter” and honours the animals getting killed and eaten, their earthly and spiritual roots, their souls. With all due respect (because this is a person I admire greatly), what if somebody slaughtered this teacher’s family or lover and then honoured their souls and thanked them for their meat and skins? Unacceptable. As unacceptable as it is to kill any other creature.
I also heard a global pop star say “I am not vegetarian. I have never been politically correct.” What a pillar of enlightenment this person is. Not. It is not politically correct to be a nazi either. But still most of us wouldn’t want to be one.
To cut the preach fest here, if you are a meat eater and you are contemplating going vegetarian, do it. If you think it is hard, start thinking it is easy. It is easier for you to read up on how to maintain a nutritious and tasty plant based diet than it is for the chicken on your plate to be beheaded and get its legs cut off.

Now What?
Just stop. Stock up on some good vegan and vegetarian books (check out Sarah Kramer’s “La Dolce Vegan” – it’s easy to follow and the food is perfect) and educate yourself. Start ordering vegetarian food in restaurants. If they don’t have anything vegetarian on their menu, tell the waiter to tell the chef to make something. Demand. It works. It’s always a good test of a restaurant, by the way. If a chef can’t improvise forth a vegetarian dish, he is NOT a real chef. Why would you want to pay for something cooked by a sucky chef?
And remember: What you eat, drink and breathe creates you. Physically, mentally and energetically, it creates you. What you consume turns into your cells. The same way you wouldn’t eat just any crap out of your toilet and let your body turn it into your future cells, why would you want a decomposing and festering body of an animal (yes, fish too), to become a part of you. Because it really does become a part of you. And if you think “it’s not decomposing and festering!”, well do you know how long it stays in your intestines and simmers at body temperature? For days! And days and days! Meat! On 37 degrees Celsius! Whereas non- animal food shoots out of you quite quickly (forgive me any mental images this might have inflicted upon you). You feed your body and it uses what you give it as building blocks for a future you. Don’t turn yourself into a dumpster. Try it for a month. Try it for two. If you stock up on some good books, so that you don’t end up living on bread and rice only, you’re probably completely safe. If you do it this way, chances are, you’ll feel too fabulous to ever turn back..
Check your bookstores for good veggie cookbooks or go online and get them, if that is easier. Don’t get the books that demand you fly to faraway places in order to get the ingredients you need. Unless it is easy for you to go get a rare spice on a faraway mountain. In that case, be my guest. There are a lot of great books with simple and phenomenal recepies that you can make in a dash. When I travel, I always carry with me “Vegan A-Go_Go”, a book for vegetarians on the road that enables me to prepare super easy nutritious vegan food no matter where you I am.
So, don’t get stupid. Go veg! ☺

Bhujapidasana - Dare To Be Different

By Vedran

Here’s a thing about the primary series in Ashtanga: after a while, you will slide through about half of the series with relative ease. You know the sequence and even if you are tired, even your muscles are tight or whatever, it will be fine. Breathe in – jump through, breathe out – land and bind, breathe in open the chest, breathe out – fold. You come to navasana , a position that many dread because it’s hard on the core, but as far as the technique goes, it is not terribly difficult. So you do it.
And then it comes: Bhujapidasana, the ”shoulder press” position. At most yoga schools, in the west anyway, it is not unusual to stop beginner classes here and go to the finishing sequences and relaxation after navasana. This is good, as it gives everyone time to work on the basics. On the downside of it, a lot of people will get stuck doing only half primary series for ages, long past the point where they could have challenged themselves further. Or some people will go on past navasana but maybe skip the bhuja pidhasana, kurmasana and even garbha pindasana/ kukkutasana sequences because they seem to be somewhat overwhelming in terms of what they seem to demand of your strength and flexibility. Yet, all of us being aspireing yogis, we know that the yummiest flavour of things comes from playing the edge and ultimately seeing it move.

Beginners: Land outside of the yellow brick road

In one of my favourite films, ”The Wizard Of Oz”, Dorothy and her companions are told to follow the yellow brick road while on their way to meet the great wizard. While their departures off the road caused them more trouble (but more sizzle to the film), the yellow brick road on your yogic path might sometimes turn out to lead into a rut and monotony. After all, the Ashtanga sequences were created to progressively lead you to new levels of body and mind awareness. So, here are a few tips that could hopefully help you to jump off the route of the known:
If you are a beginner in a relative sense – that is, if you are comfortable with the primary series up to navasana, the first thing to munch on when going into bhujapidasana is the landing.
When in your downward facing dog, finishing the vinyasa out of navasana, you jump your feet to the outsides of your hands. In the beginning, you can work first one and then the other shoulder under each respective knee. If this definitely feels like enough you might want to stay here for 5 to 10 breaths and move on to backbends and inversions, i.e. the finishing sequences.
But if the shoulders under the knees part was okay, then you press your knees slightly against your shoulders for stability (as mentioned earlier, bhujapidasana means ”shoulder press”) and try to sit down on your upper arms and lift your feet off the floor. You will probably need to transfer some weight forward, or else the weight of your thighs and bottom will tend to pull you down on your ass. Then you try to cross your ankles and have a taste of that. If this is enough, eather stregth-, balance- or flexibility-wise, you can stop here (for example if you are completely unable to cross your ankles or if you can´t keep the posture afloat) .
If you can go on, you breathe in and on the outbreath, you drop your chin to the floor/ mat, lift your hips up toward the ceiling and work your crossed feet backwards between the wrists, all the while trying to keep them (the feet) off the floor. Most people will struggle with the chin on the floor part, as this is not the easiest posture to keep your back long in. So, if you can only have your forhead or the top of your head on the floor, instead of the chin, this is completely okay. At this point, you might want to slide your hips a bit lower down from your shoulders, as this gives your shoulders a bit more room to open as you go down. This might also make it easier for you to place your chin on the mat, instead of the forhead or crown. And there you have it. You take five breaths here and then ride your vinyasa out of the position. And how do you do that? Still pressing your inner thighs against your upper arms, you breathe in and lift your head up, while your hips come a bit lower toward the mat. You straighten your legs into tittibhasana (it doesn’t have to be the strongest tittibhasana you can do – too much energy in this can drain you before you finish the vinyasa) and as you breathe out, you whip your legs and body back into chaturanga (maybe passing through a very short bakasana, but no fuss if you can’t).

Intermediate/ advanced: Leap into it!

If you have practiced the entrance into bhujapidasana described above, or any other modified version and if you are fairly comfortable with it, you might be ready to take it a bit further. And the way to take it further is to jump into the posture straight from adho mukha svanasana (the downdog). Chances are that in your first few (or many) attempts, your feet will have to touch the floor. No worries. If bhuja pidhasana is an asana you are okay with in general, this is the way for you to enter it. Sooner or later, you will be able to jump in without your feet touching the floor.
The trick is not losing your mind after you jump. Personally, I think it helps to think of, almost visualise, what I am about to do. And the second part of the trick is not to worry if your feet keep touching the floor. Actually, when you jump straight into the posture, the thighs will have a tendency to land in a more correct position in relation to your upper arms and shoulders, compared to what often happens when you work yourself in from standing. Jumping straight in, most of us are unable to jump the thighs high up on the shoulders, so you will not have to think about having to slide them down when you start leaning forward to touch the chin on the floor. Oh rejoice!
The jump-in method makes the position more fun to do. For me, it also made it easier to lean forward and down. One part of it is probably the more correct distance between thighs and shoulders but there must be something else too, as my feet (they’re big!) slide through between my wrists easier. What used to happen was that I had to walk them backwards and then lift them off the floor. Since I started practicing jumping in, they seem to slide without me having to do much (or any) walking.

So, next time you practice….

Next time you practice, given that you are generally comfortable with this position, try flying in instead of the easier version where you enter after landing your feet on the mat. At first, it might seem ridiculous, but come on, this is yoga we are talking about, so what did NOT seem ridiculous when attempted for the first time? Swing your adho mukha svanasana (down-dog)a bit forward right before you jump. This might make it easier. Make flying into the posture the way you practice this vinyasa, even if your feet touch the mat every time. Eventually they won’t. You can also ask your teacher to give you some pointers.
For those of you who practice this position and try entering it in a new way, this could be one of those little things that give your practice a bit more zest.
If you used to stop at navasana (especially if this is what you have done since the dawn of civilization), this might be the time, to give bhujapidasana a try. Try the modified version first and see where it takes you. It might just be well beyond the yellow brick road. And YOU just might turn out to be the wizard!

Thank you

On May 18 2009, Sri K Pattabhi Jois died in his home in Mysore, India. The way I found out was unusual and even now as I am writing this, almost two months later, it seems unreal. I found out after I had held a class and as people were leaving, someone commented on how Guruji had been ill. And then she asked: "Has he died?" I answered: "No, of course not, he's probably fine!". And the girl behind the reception desk said "No, he died today." Unreal.

I haven't studied under him and I had always thought I would someday. I have been fortunate to train with many of his students. All my teachers have been his students, so through them he influenced me. They say he had a unique touch and could train even severely injured people. Alexander Medin, a great teacher, lovely human being and certified teacher once said that what Guruji appreciated was being seen as a regular human being once in a while, amidst all admiration of him as a guru.

No matter which yoga tradition you belong to or follow, K Pattabhi Jois has probably touched your practice in some way. For us ashtangis, he has been and will always be the teacher of us all. Now that his grandson Sharath has taken over as the leader of the Mysore Shala, the teachings of Ashtanga yoga are in the best hands they could possibly be in.


We thank you, Guruji!

Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better: Yoga And Competition

By Vedran



Your main point of reference in hatha yoga practice is yourself, your body and your mind. But what when the competitor in you leaps forth? How do we balance out our desire to excell with the need to be better than others just for the sake of being superior to someone?


You are on your sticky mat, flowing through your practice, floating through some postures, strugglig a bit with others, just your regular drill. Then your attention turns to the person in front of you, effortlessly lifting up into a handstand or seemingly levitating in her/ his jump-backs and jump-throughs. You feel a pinch of jealousy bubbling inside of you and you put some extra effort in whichever posture you are doing. Then you see the same person struggling in a backbend while you lift off like a yogic god. Self-contentment and a feeling of superiority washes through you while you notice how perfect your ujjayi is in your immaculate backbend.

We have all been there - either feeling inferior because someone else's practice (as far as yoga practice can be "mine" or "yours" or belonging to anyone) looks like Cirque Du Soleil compared with what you are doing, or thinking what you´re doing is better or more correct or advanced than what a fellow practicioner is doing. There are even "Yoga Olympics" being held, where people compete with each other at fields of contortion, flow, grace and what not. When it is a "yoga competition", is it yoga at all anymore, or not? Oh well, who can tell?

Ashtangis might be especially prone to this mode of competitive attitude, as Ashtanga Vinyasa is physically powerful and invites to a certain degree of athleticism. What better chance to sport some good ole testosterone rush and flex some prana driven muscle? Then again, a major part of our training as Ashtangis is exactly not getting carried away by the physical aspect of it all. Knowing the physical vigour of Ashtanga yoga, it is clear that this is one of the most challenging parts of the practice - giving your all, doing your best while doing the hatha practice and still not slipping into


What all of the teachers I have practiced with and under have conveyed to me is that yoga is a non-competitive practice. Because your body is just your own, like a fingerprint, with its very own and unique strengths, weaknesses, wisdom and fields to develop on, it is hard to see how you can compete. Could you compare fingerprints and then judge whether mine looks better than yours? During all my years of practice, I have always seen people generally less flexible or strong than me do one asana or several in a way I really admired. Or if we push it into a more comparative mode - better than me. I remember a guy that attended the same class as me for a couple of years that had the most spectacular utthita parsvakonasana (extended side-angle posture). His muscles were quite stiff all over and he himself probably wouldn´t have called himself an advanced practicioner. But he mastered the sequence he practiced and his utthita parsvakonasana was a thing of beauty. So, would I than be called a better practicioner because I can put my legs behind my head? Or he because of his Yoga Journal-esque utthita parsvakonasana? I doubt that. Because it´s not about what you do but how you do it. Nowehere in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is it stated that enlightenment and mastery is achieved by being the best contortionist. It is about your inner attitude, about observances and how you apply your practice off the mat when you relate to the world and your fellow living creatures. You can be the most obnoxious and rudest individual in the world and still be capable of performing the most impressive asana sequences. Do the sequences and your mastery of the postures make you a yogi? Naw..... Being a decent, honest person that respects the world and its living creatures is as much a yoga practice as your endevours on the mat. Maybe even more?

I remember seeing David Swenson demonstrating the Ashtanga yoga primary series. Before launching into a beautiful, flowing and strong (oh god, so strong!) practice, he said that a physacally stiff person who doesn´t go so deeply into the postures but does them with good breath, concentration, reverence and respect has a stronger practice than the one who is ever so bendy but with scattered attention and constricted breath. The lesson?

Attitude IS everything.

Don't Compete - Create!

The attitude of competition comes from an idea that there isn´t enough beauty, power, strength, affluence etc. for everyone. If you think that someone else's acquirement of the world's physical and spiritual goods can lead to your lack of the same, you will feel the need to compete. And the truth is that there most definitely is more than enough for everyone.
The same applies to yoga practice. As stated earlier, the practice you do is going to reflect your body, your muscles, your skeleton, your internal states. As this is any yogi's starting point, competing is absurd. Your life (or lives, who knows?) has formed you and this is the work you need to do. Comparing this to anyone else leads to futile efforts and spiritual blindness.

Your work is to (re)create yourself, both as a physical being and as a spiritual and sensual entity. This process of creation is through grounding yourself in wherever you are in terms of your own self and your training, being true to the tradition and developing yourself from there. Your work is yours alone. Trying to "take someone on" on your yoga mat is both arrogant and unconstructive, as you attempt doing another person's work. Which you, naturally, cannot do because you are not them. Aren't you a lucky camper now?

Of course, we could set some standards to go by in terms of what constitutes an anatomically perfect asana, or how perfect breathing techniques are done and so on. But then, the practice turns into gymnastics and ceases to be yoga. Yoga is a practice of personal improvement and your own road to becoming a better person, so that you can enrich the world you live in by enriching yourself. You don't improve yourself or the world by trying to make someone else's work seem smaller or less relevant.
Your job is to do your very best and this is a big enough task. You are supposed to excell, but you excell for your own sake and you go on from there. There is enough good stuff ("Love Shack" by the B52's starts in the background) for all of us out there and you have no business making other yogis' practice seem worth less than yours. The only thing you acomplish is diminishing what you yourself are doing.

Plunge Into Santosha

Santosha, the principle of contentment, is one of my favourite nyamas (I shouldn´t have favourites, I know, I know...). Practicing santosha is not settling for second best. It is being grounded in the moment and in wherever you are and recognizing its worth so that you can go on and make it better (or stay where you are if that pleases you). It is the art of appreciation. And you know what they say: "Don't hate - appreciate!". Real contentment is knowing that you are never stuck. It is knowing that good things are going to get better and that the not so great things are going to get better as well. Santosha is loving what you have got and knowing that the power to do anything with everything you want to do anything with is all in your hands.

Where does competing belong in a perspective like this, my dear yogi? Well, it doesn´t. The practice we do is the same practice no matter what we do, as long as we follow a correct method and as long as what we do is done with reverence, respect and lightness of mind and spirit. If you judge your practice or anyone else's, if you compare them and deprecate yourself because the other person is steadier on their head, cut it out now. Being a competitive yogi is like skipping your practice - it weakens you.

What it boils down to is this: In yoga, there is no competition. When you start competing, you stop doing yoga and start doing gymnastics. Which is okay, just as long as you know that your yoga has gone bye bye. Give yourself a break if you don't quite like your forward bends or inversions or whatever. Start liking them, no matter what they look like. And leave other people and their practice alone. Get inspired looking at others, share their energy and share yours with them. Do not put labels.

Roll out your mat now. Enjoy it, dammit! ;-))

To Be Or Not To Be 100% Raw

Now this one will be a bit off topic but I enjoy some coulinary radicalism, so I thought I`d post it even though it`s not about yoga as such. Many of us aspireing yogis, practice also through what and how we eat. I have never embarked on a raw food trip and the fact that many people get it to work well fascinates
me. A friend once told me he considered trying araw food diet. I thought "Oh God, no!". On the other hand, i always think that when I hear the world "diet". But then I thought I would educate myself. Quite accidentaly, I came across a fab article by Jennie Murphy. So, here it is:


By Jennie Murphy

There are many different ways to eat a raw food diet. There's low fat, high fruit, low fat low fruit, there's gourmet, there's no fruit, there's vegan and non-vegan, superfoods, or not superfoods, supplement or no supplement. There are so many different raw diets to choose from that I often feel for the new person coming to raw… there is so much different advice out there! Many people go through several different phases before they find the style of raw that fits them.

I myself started as high raw and was content with that. I originally did not want to be 100%. I did not want to be vegetarian either. However, in may 2007 I was fortunate enough to be helping out at the Mind, Body, Spirit festival in Sydney. There I met some beautiful people who had health glowing out of them. These people were 100% raw vegan; I've not eaten meat since.

I started out high raw, which was raw breakfast, lunch and two snacks and a salad with my dinner. The cooked portion was quite small. Evening meals were usually gourmet. Then I eventually got to the stage where I had cooked food once or twice per month. I'm still having cooked food once or twice per month but even that has changed. No more is that cooked portion chips or Chinese take-away. If I make myself some cooked food it's steamed veges. On top of a heap of shredded greens.

I'm two years into my raw journey. I'm still not 100% raw despite the perceived pressure to be. The other day I spoke to a lady on the phone. I've had dozens of conversations similar to this one. She was asking "How do I be 100%? I'm an all or nothing girl but this healthy food tastes like (insert swear word here)". I was not surprised as I've heard this many times before.

100% all or nothing. Where does that come from? I'm not sure myself. There are a lot of raw authors who are 100% raw vegan and even 100% raw non-vegan who are great advocates of being 100% raw. "The difference is unbelievable!" they say, "You will be blown away by the difference between 99% and 100% raw. Just try it" and so on. This is probably true. In fact, I believe that it is. There are so many testimonies out there of people living 100% raw lifestyles who are thriving. Whether they do superfoods, no superfoods, low fat, high fat, low fruit, high fruit... there are many, many people around doing various styles of raw and getting amazing results.

Then there are others. Who struggle. They get to X amount of days raw and then go crazy. Emotions surface that are too painful for them to ignore. 'Getting the crazies' is something I have heard once or more to describe how they feel on a 100% raw diet.

I'm one of those people. Recently I did a 100 day raw challenge. After day 35 or 36 I started to get quite agitated. I gave in on day 56, decided that raw food sucked, I could never be a raw fooder, I was too weak to be 100%, I must find another owner for my raw food business and went on a cooked food binge of biblical proportions. As the owner of a large raw food business I felt that I could not hold up my head in the raw community. I was ashamed which is a sad and unhealthy way to be.

It took me five weeks to get back on track. During that time I beat myself up like you would not believe. I lost all happiness about myself, loathed myself in fact, and just had no will power at all left.

During this time I got to talking to others. In Australia it seems we are so focused on 100% that we often forget to enjoy the journey. We are so keen to see some of our own make it that a lot of people try a style of raw for six months and consider themselves gurus! Perhaps this is why we feel pressured to move faster than we are ready. Some raw foodies become so enthusiastic that their approach can appear one-eyed and superior. Which is a shame because they could be quite inspiring.

All or nothing. I had opted for nothing. In fact, I vowed that I would never touch raw food again as long as I lived! Luckily, my loving hubby did not take me seriously.

So, to those who can be 100% and feel sane, hold your compassion, and still be yourselves I applaud you. I hold you as someone to be inspired by. However, if you are not 100% raw, I also hold you as someone to be admired and loved and I am just as inspired by you. As are many others.

100% or nothing? So, if this is you saying this, ask yourself, when you ate mostly cooked food, did you eat a 100% cooked food diet? No fresh fruit, veges or nuts at all? I do actually know a few people who have lived that way. But not many.

If you did not eat all cooked, did you still think 100% or nothing?

Lets look at 'all or nothing' another way. What about fitness? Lets pretend you have never been fit in your life. You have now decided to become a runner! So, do you go and book yourself into the nearest marathon, which, luckily, just happens to be in 4 days time? Or, do you get a training program. Ask around... get your running style checked to make sure you are not going to shred your joints in the first place? Hmmm....

Do you think that fitness and raw food eating should not be compared? I ask "Why not"? Are they are both physical activities? Sure there is an emotional aspect to them both as well, but in the main they are physical.

If you think that eating is more emotional, which it is for many many people including myself, let us look at an example of something else that is about emotional control. Meditation. You have just read about meditation, think it's the bees knees, the answer to all your questions, and have decided that from today you are going to meditate for 6 hours per day 7 days a week. You could probably do it! I'm sure many have. But, for most, you would be better off starting smaller and working your way up to meditating 6 hours a day. Starting with just 5 minutes two to three times per day.

In our society we are not really used to having to wait for anything. Everything is so fast. You want it, there it is. Banks make sure that most people can get a loan just by sneezing on their way in the door so you can buy yourself the latest house, car or handbag. Fast food outlets are everywhere along with microwave dinners to ensure you have a meal in five minutes flat with little to no effort. But going raw can take time folks.

Karen Knowler, a great raw fooder and life stylist from England took 5 years to go raw. Frederic Patenaude says it took him 10 years and he is still learning! Please do not give up after a day, a week or a month because you are an 'all or nothing' person. Have patience with yourself.

Train as you would for a marathon or even a 100 metre race if need be. Set aside time each day, as you would to learn to meditate, to plan what you are going to eat. Are you meeting friends at the local shopping centre and know they will all be at the food court for lunch? What can you pack? Is there a fruit shop nearby where you can get yourself some watermelon or apples while they have their deep fried whatever?

Are you going to a family dinner where you know that you are going to be questioned, even ridiculed by worried relatives about what you are eating? What can you tell them to calm their minds. What compromises are you willing to make? I told my family that I was doing a '8 week detox'. I also told my friends this. It was perfectly true, I was! At the end of the 8 weeks I told them I felt so great I would eat that way until I didn't want to anymore. Only one person objected strongly and I asked her to give me two years, promising that if, in two years I was ill or unhealthy etc, I would change back to eating a more 'regular' way.

Enjoy it! Never feel bad about what you eat. If you are 100% or nothing, then I challenge you to this, enjoy your food 100% of the time. Feel good emotionally after eating 100% of the time. Be YOUR friend 100% of the time. If you have a day that is high cooked, don't feel bad. Enjoy it for what it is, then... move on. Tomorrow is another day. Be raw then. Or high raw.

If you really cannot get around the whole 100% or nothing, but are finding 100% raw 100% of the time is making you 100% miserable, can you try and be 100% raw eighty percent of the time? The other twenty percent you can do whatever you like with! Remember, if 100% is what you want, you don't have to do it overnight. It's extremely rare that 100% overnight happens. Work towards it. Plan it. But most of all, enjoy the journey.

These are some thoughts I have that you may find useful. Or know someone else who does. Take them with you and do with them what you will.