Daily Ablutions while Travelling

One of my treasured ayurveda teachers, Maya Tiwari, used to take us outside in North Carolina to perform our daily cleansing rituals, “ablutions” she called them. What fine memories I have of our group of sadhakas in the beautiful spring season near Asheville. Even the day we had our propane burner in the living room of our borrowed classroom NOT on enough insulation remains a sweet memory in my mind. Nothing was ever a problem, even a burned carpet. It’s that attitude of “find a way” without stressing that I value most in my teachers, each and every one. There have been so MANY times in my life when things seemed to be falling apart that the “find a way without stressing” motto has served me well.

So, here I am, traveling again, and wanting to share with you some ways that I’ve found to keep the daily ablutions going while on the road. For one thing, traveling can greatly imbalance the vata dosha, so it helps to keep to a routine (once you are over jet lag, if that applies). If jet lag does apply, I find it useful to start using local time for local activities as soon as possible, usually after no more than a day of adjustment. If six am is your usual rise and begin pranayama/meditation time at home, stick to it within a day of arriving in Timbuktu (or wherever).  I consider pranayama and asana two of the basic daily ablutions, by the way–they ARE cleansing practices, after all. Asana and its movements and holdings give the blood and lymph time to regenerate and circulate, and pranayama renews prana (interesting that the spell check wants to turn prana into prank!)

The tools that will make the daily shower more like home for me are the dry brush I use to gently scrub the dead cells off my skin before showering and the small plastic spray bottle that contains the almond, sesame or coconut oil that I use on my skin once it is clean and warm and moist. I give myself time to soak the oil in before gently patting dry with a towel (so the towel does not become oily!) and already, I’m feeling more at home.

Two other practices I would not leave home without involve packing small tools: a plastic neti pot and a plastic tongue scraper. Keeping the nose and tongue clean is so important, especially in allergy seasons and in contaminated cities. Usually I have had no trouble finding sea salt where I am staying to use in the neti pot, but one could pack a bit of that if it looks as though it would be difficult. I use the neti pot in the shower and the tongue scraper after I brush my teeth in the morning.

I’ve heard that a copper tongue scraper is even better than my plastic one, but have not found one for sale. Maybe the next trip to India will be the time to look. Don’t forget to lightly oil the inside of your noise after neti potting, and you are set for the day (or night, depending on when you shower). All in all, this plan of keeping as much to my home “ablution” routine has kept me contented and functional wherever I might be. It took me a long time to fully understand that one could relax and take pleasure in these rituals. My mother was an overwhelmed young woman trying to raise four excellent children as a paragon of virtue in her community. Since we were not all angels, she was often stressed, and I inherited that stress. I value the teaching from ancient and modern ayurvedic sources that emphasizes that we can “find a way and not stress” in the process of finding it!

Asparagus and Strawberries and Biscuit Shortcake and Cream

Dear Universe,

It’s been awhile, and after a spring cleanse, the joy of cooking and eating becomes ever more delightful.

The fruits and vegetables of spring beckon, so my plan is to create the absolutely greatest recipe for asparagus soup, pasta, or salad, and create a menu to share with students in this May/June.  After hearing from a friend and student who had a birthday recently and reported feeling older, I’m more and more convinced that this ritual of spring cleansing has amazing powers of renewal.

Cream may not be the best thing in spring–it can provoke kapha which, if left unbalanced, can swing out of balance this time of year.  Yet the cold months and the dryness they bring can benefit from the sweet smoothness of cream with berries, so I’m going to stick with the strawberry shortcake idea. Off to research the asparagus component.

 

OK, It’s decided, after the 3:45 class on Monday, June 1, we will have a feast of asparagus, feta and quinoa salad followed by homemade strawberry shortcake with local-cow cream whipped. For my vegan friends, I will leave the feta and the cream on the side. But the shortcake will NOT be gluten-free. I cook with organic ingredients whenever possible and invite any of the regulars on Monday to join us on that day.

Come! But let me know you are, please!

 

 

Sensing the Right Time for Pre-Cleanse

After spending two weeks working in Mexico, teaching yoga and helping with an Iyengar assessment, I found my digestion badly out of balance.

In Ayurveda, this is an important observation NOT to ignore. Of course, it is also busting out spring here in the Austin area (and Queretaro was ahead of us, Monterrey about the same). I’ve always been sensitive to spring pollens. As a child I was pumped full of a medicine I think was called chlortrimeton, don’t know if it is even made anymore. What works better for me now as an adult is regular cleansing, of hair with frequent shampoo (and once a week oil treatment), of nose (with neti pot) and of tongue (with tongue scraper).  As I bring these practices back into my life (NEXT time, travel with these things, note to self!), I can feel balance beginning to be restored.

The cardinal sign of imbalance was not really anything concrete, but a strong craving for sweets. The mexican vegetarian diet is heavy on carbohydrates, and when I don’t add sufficient protein, my sweet tooth goes crazy. It’s rare that I find myself in an airport looking for cupcakes, but there I was (and fortunately did not find any). Now that I’m home and able to add the nuts and yogurt and occasional eggs to the daily fare, things are coming back together.

The signs are here, though, to begin a pre-cleanse, a prelude to a week of nothing but nonfat kichadee/kicheree/kichadi (it has various spellings) with an increasing dose of ghee at the beginning of the day. This is the ayurvedic practice of deep cleaning the intestines: a non-fat legume and rice diet for up to a week or two, with ghee in the mornings. I actually look forward to this time of year, and usually do it twice, spring and fall. During the pre-cleanse, I let go of sugar and caffeine completely, and gradually lower the amount of fat in my diet, adding in more vegetables and grains, simply cooked. As I prepare myself for the radical mono-diet of kichadee, I can feel my bodymind appreciating life in a deeper way.

My book “Physical Poetry” describes in more detail how to undertake this practice. It’s important, too, after the week or weeks of only kichadee, to take triphala or castor oil to purge the large intestine, and to go back to normal eating slowly, beginning by adding a little ghee or olive oil to salads or grains and vegetables. This way, the kapha accumulation of winter will not overwhelm us and we can ease into spring and summer renewed.

Yogurt Rice with Spices and Curry Leaves and Yogurt

A key text for me in shaping my thinking about food is “Diet for a Small Planet,” by Frances Moore Lappe. She points out that when we combine a grain and dairy, we have a more complete set of amino acids in our food. Here we have rice (I like basmati or texmati in the warmer weather, short grain brown in the winter) and yogurt and spices for a tasty one bowl meal. Thanks to my friend Wendy for sharing this recipe!

4 cups cooked rice

2 medium onions

1/2 ” piece of ginger, finely chopped or grated

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 green chili, finely chopped, or 1/4 tsp cayenne

2 tbsp. vegetable oil (I like sesame or olive)

1/2 tsp black mustard seeds, could use more to taste

pinch of asafoetida (also called “hing”)

8-10 curry leaves (thanks to my friend Leah, I have a big plant and will be making smaller gift plants soon; I’ve also heard the plants are sometimes sold at Indian markets)

salt to taste

1 cup yogurt, beaten with a spoon

1 tbsp chopped cilantro to garnish

Chop onions and chili finely, warm oil over medium heat and add mustard seeds and asafoetida. Cook until seeds splutter. Add ginger, garlic, chili and curry leaves. Cook for about one minute and add onions, saute-ing until lightly browned. Add salt and rice. Toss and cook 2-3 minutes.

Remove from heat, add yogurt, and stir gently. Enjoy!

Amazing, Colorful, Green and red and orange citrus salad!

You can see a photo on my (Margaret Kelley’s) facebook page. Can’t figure out how to put it here, though I tried. The colors are so lovely and cheering, and the taste is amazing. Worth the effort, and not that hard!

Ingredients:

for the dressing:

2 oranges or tangelos, juiced

bunch of basil (I left it out, did not have any)

1 tablespoon dijon mustard

salt and pepper

4-6 tablespoons of olive oil

for the salad:

4 large handfuls of spring mix (more for more folks)

I like to include spinach as well as lettuces

1 large pomegranate, seeded (fun to do, use a sharp spoon)

4 oranges or tangelos, sectioned

2 radishes, tinly sliced

1/2 cup toasted pecans or walnuts

Mix dressing ingredients in a blender or food processor. It is meant to be thin.

Wash and chop greens, place in a salad bowl, add MOST OF THE pomegranate seeds, all the  orange sections, nuts and radishes, sprinkle the saved seeds over the top, toss with dressing, ENJOY!

Unctuous Food

Creamy Millet Casserole is something I make regularly. The miso and tahini make it unctuous, creamy, delightful. Here’s the recipe:

Cook one cup millet in three cups of boiling water, reduce heat and cover, simmer till done, about 20-30 minutes.

Stir fry an assortment of veggies: onions, mushrooms, broccoli florets, shredded cabbage or kale or collards, adding the more quickly cooking veggies last. Use whatever oil you find best for you, a tablespoon or two to start the onions, mushrooms, garlic and/or ginger if you like. You can add a half cup or so of water, cover and cook the harder veggies for awhile till tender (carrots, broccoli, for example) and then add the more tender veggies later.

To one half cup of hot water, cream in 3 tablespoons of miso and a half cup of tahini. Mix all together till creamy. In a casserole dish, combine cooked millet, steamed veggies, and creamed miso and tahini and water. Bake about 15 minutes at 350 till warmed and blended. Enjoy!

Unctuousness in food is important at this time of year. Winter is drying, depleting, and can be generally gloomy. Cheer up the kitchen with a medley of veggies and grains. Of course, use organic when possible! By the way, the word “unctuous” comes from a Latin root meaning “anointed with oil.” The tahini has sesame oil in it, and miso has an oily quality to it as well. Unfortunately, it’s a word on the hate lists of some food writers. Perhaps because when applied to people it can mean smarmy or falsely flattering. It’s a word I like, obviously, fun to say! If the photo comes through, it is of guacamole and chips, also unctuous. Photo of creamy millet perhaps next time May all be fed! May peace prevail!

Good Food for the Waxing Moon

Dear Cyber-Universe,

I’ve decided to write more regularly this year and to limit this blog to Ayurveda and food-related topics. So twice a month, you will see a new recipe on this blog. This month, with the new year upon us, so many things are on my mind; new legislation in effect in California mandating more humane conditions for chickens and pigs (if you eat eggs, chicken or pork), a defense by the State of Vermont of their mandatory gmo-labelling law, rising rates of autism (seemingly related to the use of glysophate, an ingredient in Round-up, a widely used pesticide). More on all these topics later.

For now, how about some good winter food:

Kale and Buckwheat Pasta

Clean & coarsely chop a bunch of Kale (trim the ends and chop the stems especially fine)—set aside.

Put 2 T olive oil in a pot along with a tablespoon (more or less to taste) of finely chopped garlic.

Add kale, with just the water from washing, when garlic becomes translucent.

Cook about 20 min, stirring once or twice. Add salt & pepper to taste.

Cook buckwheat noodles according to package directions. When the pasta is done, drain and toss with the cooked kale. Add parmesan, vegan or dairy, if you like. A nice color addition is to add finely shredded organic carrots and/or beets. Enjoy!

Rest in Peace B.K.S. Iyengar, 1918-2014

Remembering Guruji B.K.S. Iyengar
Iyengar appeared in a dream I had in about 1968–this was our first meeting. I had recently started taking yoga classes at the suggestion of my boss at work (how can you refuse your boss?). We were living in Cambridge, Massachusetts then, and I was working at Harvard part-time while my then husband attended school. We had a young son, and Mrs. Katz, my boss at the international office of the Unversity, recognized my need for some grounding. She had been attending a lunch time yoga class with Sandra Merrihue in Porter Square, and I happily tagged along.
One day Sandra pulled out a copy of one of what she called her “yoga bibles.” It was one of the earliest editions of Iyengar’s “Light on Yoga.” I stared at the now iconic black and white photographs and went right after class to the Harvard Coop to purchase my own copy. So perhaps it would be more correct to say that I first met B.K.S. Iyengar in a book.
But the dream was what kept me going back to classes and getting on my mat (well, I didn’t have a mat in those days, so I was probably on the floor or a carpet). In the dream, Guruji approached me in the kindest possible way and said “Come to Yoga.” It was an invitation, and I accepted it.

In 1984, thanks to Manouso Manos’ efforts, and I’m sure the efforts of many others in the San Francisco Iyengar Yoga community, the first International Convention of Iyengar Yoga took place. Iyengar himself attended, so this was my first experience of him in the flesh. The demonstration at Davies Hall, his unannounced visits to the classes the senior teachers were teaching, the brilliance of the gathered community there were all overwhelmingly inspirational for me.

After the excitement of the convention, I was determined to get to India. But by that time I had two children and had left the marriage and was struggling to make a living as a young, just-out-of school lawyer doing public defense work and working for the Women’s Advocacy Project. These were not jobs that paid a lot of money, so when I signed up for a Pune Intensive telling Ramanand Patel that I did not have the $100 deposit but would get it to him soon, he remarked that it was unlikely I would ever have the 2-3K$ that would be needed for the journey and tuition eventually.
He was right, but the second time he let us know that he was gathering names for an intensive, I managed to scrape the money together and was part of the group in l989 at Geetaji’s first intensive, or one of her first.

Guruji had announced in the late 1980’s that he was retiring from teaching. His presence, however, could not have been more felt. Though Geetaji gallantly began every class with a plan and a clear sense of direction, he would invariably interrupt from his practice corner and get us working to the absolute limit of our potential. This was a big part of his genius–to craft clear enough language and demonstrate crystal clear actions in asanas, either himself or by asking one of his children or students to demonstrate, that we could hear verbally and see visually just what he was asking for. This was no mean feat, when you consider that English was not his first language. His mastery of English was a big factor in the spreading of his method and genius throughout the world; indeed he was able to wax so eloquent from time to time that I consider him as much a poet as a yogi.
Over the years, I have returned to Pune several times. It has always been a financial hardship on a teacher’s salary. I finally saw the light in about 1995 and realized that yoga would keep me alive, whereas continuing in the practice of law would take me to an early grave, so I decided to leave an active law practice (though I keep my license) and become a full time yoga teacher. I think my early passion for social justice and my ongoing serious student’s interest in yoga studies are related–there is a “justness” we can find in any asana, and in a just balance of all the eight limbs of yoga.
Highlights of my times in India were the 1996 gathering in Rishikesh where Guruji was honored, and the 2000 Silver Jubilee anniversary of the Institute’s 25th year in Pune. In the last ten years, I have been studying ayurveda, inspired by Geetaji’s example of ayurvedic studies, and have been involved much more intensively in the medical classes, both with my own injuries (a broken back–spondylolysthesis, and carpal tunnel syndrome) and with the injuries of my students in Texas and Mexico. From the bottom of my heart, I thank Guruji for his insight into my conditions. He told me the injuries are “not so serious”, giving me hope when I felt hopeless. I thank him also especially for helping me last year in Pune on some of the asanas on the senior syllabus. This was the first and only occasion where he and I were both in a position to be seen by each other for that to happen, and I will be eternally grateful. His last communication to me, written February 14, 2014, relayed that he had seen improvement in my asanas and wished me well in the future.
We celebrated his remarkable life and work at our center on Tuesday, August 26th, along with thousands across the United States. We will celebrate again next Monday, September 1, the 13th day after his death, marking the end of our grieving process. May his example and great generous teaching forever shine.

Further Thoughts on Yoga and Addiction, with thanks to Christina Sell

Who/Hoo are you? (ask not once, but three times!)

Christina! Thank you for your response. I could not agree with you more about the power of yoga asana classes to draw people in to the practice and maybe eventually into study of the philosophical foundation of yoga. Like you, I recognize that the history of yoga in this country, and probably the entire western world, has come from an initial interest in the practice of asana. This very body we all inhabit and that very body of ananda/bliss that we all share are certainly connected to each other!

Yet words have always seemed to have a life to me, beyond ink on the page or light and dark on a screen. As children, my brothers and I were not allowed to use the word “stupid” to refer to each other. I think this was because Mom recognized the power of words and did not want us thinking we were stupid or calling each other so. I was not aware that you had redefined the word “junkie” differently from its usual meaning. Here are dictionary definitions of junkie and junk:

junkie |ˈjə ng kē| (also junky)

noun informal

a drug addict.

• [with adj. ] a person with a compulsive habit or obsessive dependency on something : power junkies.

ORIGIN 1920s (originally U.S.): from junk ¹

 

junk ¹ |jə ng k|

noun

1 informal old or discarded articles that are considered useless or of little value.

• worthless writing, talk, or ideas : I can’t write this kind of junk.
• Finance junk bonds.

2 informal heroin.

3 the lump of oily fibrous tissue in a sperm whale’s head, containing spermaceti.

 

And I have seen “asana junkies” in other contexts beyond Texas, and certainly did not mean you personally any criticism! Defining junkie as a person who derives a lot of pleasure from or has a strong interest in something seems fine, though the yoga sutras speak of pleasure as one of the “kleshas” or afflictions (hmmm…wonder why?).

It’s amazing to learn that junk can refer to worthless bonds (how timely!) AND to the tissue in a sperm whale’s head as well as to heroin and worthless objects. Who knew? Spermaceti is the waxy stuff that candles were made of, so no wonder that there seems to be some light coming out of this discussion.

It MUST have been hard to weather the changes the anusara community has gone through. John Friend was a friend of mine before he became famous, and I always wished him well. Though his insistence that there are universal principles of alignment did a disservice to Iyengar’s teaching on the importance of individual alignment, there are some wonderful people in the community, like you, continuing to teach excellent yoga.

Honestly, your thoughtful response made me question my sense of humor, but I have checked, and it is still there. So if you decide to keep your course name, I’ll look on it with a lighter heart, and if you don’t, let me suggest “Asana Lovers!”

 

 

 

 

Thoughts on Yoga and Addiction

Why I am not a Yoga Asana Junkie (and hope you aren’t either)

We’ve just sponsored a workshop here in Austin with H.S. Arun, a senior Iyengar teacher from Bangalore, India. He spoke for awhile before each of his six classes about yoga (or as Prashant Iyengar likes to call it “Yog”). Two moments stood out for me. First on Monday, his story about Guruji B.K.S. Iyengar advising him to practice and teach “with depth.” During his teaching, Arun ably demonstrated his understanding of depth.

The second moment, from an earlier class, involved his story about a student of his who became so attached to her practice that she boasted to him about doing her salamba sirsasana (headstand) in the toilet on airplanes when she was travelling (!?). He then spoke briefly about the dangers of attachment to asana practice and the challenges of balancing tapas (burning zeal in practice) with upeksana (detachment), More about the first comment in a future post, my thoughts on the second comment are below.

Friends in Central Texas, a hub of yoga excitement (among many others, I’m sure, now worldwide), sometimes alert their students and friends to come to their class/workshop/practice session via facebook, using the header, “Asana Junkies.” I’ll tell you why this makes me, a yoga practitioner and teacher in her sixties, both mad and sad.

I started yoga at 19 as a young mother. My family of origin was afflicted with the disease of alcoholism, though my father had a distinguished career as a Freudian analyst. HIS father had abandoned his family when MY father was only four years old. My grandmother took her four children to an orphanage in Cleveland, Ohio, because she could not support them on her own during the depression. Who KNOWS whether my grandfather was a drinker or not as well? What I do know now is that there is genetic evidence that the tendency to drink and/or drug to excess can be handed down through families.

My mother had grown up as the youngest daughter in a Polish/Lithuanian immigrant family. The only job her father could find in eastern Pennsylvania at the time was working in the coalmines. He drank and abused her sexually when she was a small child. She told no one her whole life long until she told me after my father’s death. She was in her sixties and had been married to a psychoanalyst and been a patient of a colleague of my father’s for years. Just imagine how many other people there out there who ALSO have told only one person (not their spouse or their therapist), or told NO ONE AT ALL and went to their grave with their heavy secret. When I asked Mom why she had not confided with anyone (including of course, HER mother), her answer was: “What good would it have done?” Something to think about the next time you are confronted with a friend or family member’s bizarre behavior or recurring rage.

I raised two children, a son and a daughter. Our family, all four of us, both endured and enjoyed an immature marriage for fourteen years. We battled through some of our demons, then declared a truce and finally called it quits. During all that time, I thank god I had yoga. At the beginning, of course, like most of us, I had a twice-weekly class with a teacher in Porter Square, Cambridge, to keep me on somewhat of an even keel during those early years of mothering and working to help make ends meet. We had moved to Vancouver, Canada, before my ex-husband and I separated. It was there that I started to teach yoga as part of the delightful community in and around Vancouver, BC.

In those years, there was not much recognition that the word yoga includes eight aspects, only one of which is asana. I was lucky to find the writings of B.K.S. Iyengar when my very first teacher mentioned that “Light on Yoga” was one of her bibles. After reading his classic first work, I read his “Tree of Yoga” in the 80’s, which gave me my first glimpse of the gigantic universe of yoga in all its glory. Since Iyengar teaches meditation through asana and pranayama, I studied meditation in other places. His daughter, Geeta Iyengar and son, Prashant, are both amazing teachers of ashtanga (8-aspected) yoga in their own right. I have studied with him and with them during travels to India since 1989. And, after practicing for over 40 years, I have begun to see how the 8 pieces of the yoga mandala fit together. Asana is only one of these pieces! And yes, a devoted practice of asana is essential, but addiction to only asana can lead to imbalance and insanity, just like any other addiction. Could this be why we have not yet seen the deep transformation that the full practice of yoga offers?

It has been the meditative aspect of practice that has helped my family and friends with addiction problems of various types. I would be lying to the world if I were to say that asana practice has not helped me as much as any aspect of yoga’s eight parts. But I have to say that the moral and ethical guidelines that Guruji Iyengar and classical yoga texts have insisted that we practice, and the pranayama and meditation that are now and have long been part of daily practice, are equally, if not more important and sanity-saving.

Fundamentally, perhaps, what we need is a new definition of physical, mental and spiritual health. Yoga practice, in all its aspects, has the power to transform the world, because it can lead to an unshakeable, unassailable contentment and therefore to peace and the ability to serve others. Yoga in its best form is colorblind, genderblind, ageblind, nationblind, and religionblind. After all, as Iyengar has said many times, practicing yoga in the fullness of its eight limbs will make whatever religion you already have stronger. The lasting peace that yoga practice brings may be rocked occasionally with ecstasy from excess of sorrow OR joy, but it does not go away. I can attest to this. We can surely use the incredibly powerful tool that the practice of all the eight limbs of yoga offers us and move beyond addiction to ANYTHING, including asana, fossil fuels, alcohol, drugs, and each other.

Think about this next time you find yourself in an asana-only yoga class. Are YOU a yoga asana junkie? Do you think of yoga or of yourself as JUNK??? Please consider thinking again.