Cirque du Malaise

I sometimes write about food and even occasionally post recipes, because eating locally, organically and sustainably is something I find really compelling and wholesome. (Although, just to be clear, I don’t care what or how you eat. Promise!) So I am pretty excited to officially announce that I will be co-leading a retreat at White Lotus (in Santa Barbara) next May with Christy Brown:

Christy Brown is an old friend of mine who I occasionally collaborate with to lead retreats where she teaches what she is amazing at: yoga, mindfulness and just how to be a generally decent and lovely person, and I lead reflective journaling sessions and try not to act terribly surly toward people.

Helge Hellberg is basically a rock star in organic/local/sustainable farming circles, working hard to bring us back to the days when farmers got respect and we ate according to what was natural for the season and the climate in which we live. What this means, in a nutshell: don’t eat watermelon in January if you live in New England.

The beautiful thing about shopping at farmer’s markets is that you are automatically eating local and seasonal food. And the even cooler thing is that you just might discover some pretty fabulous stuff that you never even knew grew near you.  I recently signed up for a bi-weekly organic produce delivery from Farm Fresh To You. Every other Tuesday, I get a box of delicious surprises on my doorstep. And, thank Christ, there are often no mushrooms in it.

If this subject matter interests you, I highly recommend the memoir Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Or anything by Michael Pollan, of course, but most notably Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Anyhoodle, if you would like to sign up for this retreat (please come! I was just kidding about being surly!) visit my web site and click on ye’ol’ Paypal link. Full details there. And beautiful photos of White Lotus below.

Santa Barbara is warm and sunny and will be epic in May.

We'll stay in these adorable yurts. I deign to call them magical.

This is the community table where we will share our local, organic, fucking delicious meals.

This is a place you can steal off and read.

This is a peaceful-looking Buddhist thingie.

I don't know what this is, but I think it's pretty.

Le ocean. Speaks for itself.

Every once in a while — okay let’s just call it once a month — I resign myself to take a mental health day. A mental health day is when, despite the mountains of work and exercise obligations and “should’s” and “must’s” and “have to’s,” one instead collapses on the couch in a state of general malaise, maybe sobs a little bit, and then watches 8 straight hours of mindless television while eating cookies and soup for dinner (in that order).

Mental health days are absolutely essential for maintaining spiritual equilibrium, especially around the holiday season. And to be really worthwhile, they have to happen when it’s least convenient and there is the most amount of pressing things to get done STAT.

I had a mental health day yesterday. Mondays are good days for mental health days because they are a) high pressure days to begin with and b) a great way to set you up for a week of saying “fuck it.” On this particular Monday, I had just gotten back from spending the weekend with good friends up in Mendocino. I had already taken a half day to drive home, and was planning to buckle down the moment I arrived at my office in order to power through several hours of work before going to yoga at 6:30pm like a good Godfearin’ yogi.

But it was not to be.

It was too cold in my house to think (cursed damp 55 degree November day) and things were out of sorts. Because I was gone all weekend and have been busy lately, there was an ominous pile of laundry calling me. There were tumbleweeds on the floor and a sink full of dishes and, try as I might, I could not ignore them. But I couldn’t get myself to do them, either, because that would just be admitting defeat over my concentration issues. So instead, I did the logical thing: I flung myself on the couch, had a tantrum for just a sec, and then commenced to watched back-to-back episodes of Six Feet Under until midnight.

I didn’t go to yoga. You know how they say, “You never regret going to yoga”? You know how they say that? You know how they tell you that going to yoga will fix whatever ails you? That if you have a cold coming on, you should “sweat it out”? If you just got really bad news, you can “find gratitude” on your mat? If you are experiencing general malaise, you should “get out of your head”?

Sometimes they are right. I’ve had these yoga-saving experiences; I have. But I’ll tell you what. Nothing brings you back to a state of equanimity and peace like a good old fashioned mental health sesh on the couch.

The slow decline into winter’s dark days is a time when my bio-clock says “Slow down! Hibernate! Store up fat for winter!” and accordingly, my energy level plummets and I desire warm, high-calorie foods and less activity. This is the season when I am most inclined to blow things of a social or active nature off and geek out on the Internet instead.

I used to fight it. I used to self-judge. But I’ll tell you, I’ve really learned to abide by my need for a periodic mental health day. I’ve been taking them my entire life. They really do work. Better than yoga.

Here's the paradox about reading in bed:

You want to read books that are riveting, because life is too short for boring books, but riveting books have a way of keeping you up until the wee hours. That's what's been happening to me lately. I've been on a reading rampage. Mainly I’ve been stuck on memoirs by women around my age. This is all part of me gearing up to eventually write something MEANINGFUL and maybe do something with my life.

So I recently read Yoga Bitch by Suzanne Morrison in less than 48 hours, and then I wrote a short, spazzy review of it for Lexi Yoga. I couldn't help but focus in on one small part of the book in my review: (SPOILER ALERT)...

...the part where she DRINKS HER OWN URINE. Yeah, that happens.

The thing about Suzanne is that she seems an awfully lot like me. She's into yoga, but not that into it. She can roll her eyes with the best of them. She lives in Seattle (where my heart lives). She's been known to smoke a cigarette. She kind of doesn't give a fuck. I adore her — at least based on this one memoir. Oh, she's also a good writer, surprisingly not a prerequisite for writing a memoir, it turns out!* Good to know.

The fact that Suzanne seems an awful lot like me is what tripped me up, because if two months in Bali could convince her to drink her own pee, what would happen to me? Would I do that too? Given the right circumstances? I’m going to Thailand in a few weeks, so these are important questions.

* Being not a brilliant writer does not mean that you won't get your book published, and it also doesn't mean that I won't stay up until past 2 in the morning reading your book, as I recently did with another memoir: Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies. I'm pretty sure that one of you guys recommended this to me. This book is not a Shakespearean masterpiece, but I'll tell you what, it kept my attention but good. It's about a woman who thought she was in the perfect marriage and family — until her perfect husband left her and their perfect kids for another woman. Shocking? Nope. Happens every day.

I got into this one because I related to how much of a terrible mystery and a speeding train wreck most relationships are. I also, unfortunately, related quite a bit to the childish way that Ms. Gillies acted during parts of her relationship. Ugh. Thanks, mirror.

I’m ready for another book — preferably a memoir about a late-bloomer 40-year-old woman who suddenly manifests all her hopes and dreams (just yoking). Any suggestions?

Oh, but speaking of late bloomers, this is a great Malcolm Gladwell article that you will probably enjoy:

I've been in and out of the yoga industry for about 15 years now and I've had to endure a lot of conversations with a lot of people about yoga. I wrote about it for Recovering Yogi this week. In case you missed it:  Conversations I've had with people about yoga

I just spent a week in Cape Cod with my oldest girlfriends. The seven of us grew up together, and now we are growing old together too. We've been friends our entire lives, and so when we get together, there aren't a lot of barriers. We talk about everything and in really loud, fast, interrupting-each-other kinds of voices. But we never talk about yoga. Yoga might come up in conversation once in a while; after all, three of us have been yoga instructors, two of us actually owned yoga studios, and every single one of us has taken plenty of yoga classes. Even the least yogic among us has done her fair share of down dogs. But when we get a chance to see each other, yoga is generally the last thing on our minds. It's so refreshing not to talk about yoga.

In the yoga world, you learn how to talk to people in a certain way. You use Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication techniques to avoid hurting feelings. You take Responsibility with a capital R for your own emotions, judgments and thoughts. In the yoga world, you don’t cross-talk and you don’t interrupt and you always respect other people’s opinions (or pretend to) and you listen thoughtfully with your head slightly tilted to one side and, above all, you never, ever break eye contact. Conversations are punctuated with tender touches on the arm and they always start and end with a big, lingering hug.

In my tribe of childhood friends (I feel justified using that word for once because of the savage nature of our bond) we have to vie for airtime and the most alpha always wins. Therefore, interrupting and trying to talk over everyone else is the nature of our communication. At any given time, 5 of the 7 of us might be talking at the same time, or, I should say, shouting at the same time. People snap, feelings get hurt, sometimes someone cries briefly. No one ever tries super hard to be nice and if they do, it’s obvious and seems a bit false.

It’s exhausting. It’s also refreshing. Cuz it’s real. And there is so much love behind it all. It’s like we’re a big Italian family who never went to therapy.

I signed on to be a part of a fundraiser that my good friend Lisa Rueff put together, here in Mill Valley (my hood and home of the awesome Twitter feed MVAsswholes, not that I have anything to do with it). It's called Collective Hearts for Haiti. (Aww.)

Now y'all know that I normally do not wax poetic about yoga events, but this one is for a really good cause. Lisa is single-handedly spearheading a charity effort to build an orphanage in Jacmel, Haiti — a town that was hard-hit in the 2010 earthquake and has an inordinate number of kids in dire need.

I was actually inspired to write about it for Elephant Journal.

The second of the two fundraising events is happening on Sunday, June 5th. It will entail me doing yoga for about 3 hours with my good friend Christy Brown and 13 other local teachers. I went to the first event. It was surprisingly awesome. If you want to sign up, I bet you still can. When you sign up to be a student, you're on the hook to raise at least $125. The key is that there are so many students attending that, in the end, Lisa hopes to raise like $250,000. Yes, that's right, TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. Your every 20-spot counts! So if you don't want to sign up to raise money and come to the event, please do consider contributing in my name. Pretty please? I've already raised $125, but I want to be an overachiever. I'm not above groveling. It's really easy to contribute. You basically just push a Paypal button on this page:

THE PAGE WITH THE BUTTON

If you decide to join me on June 5th, there will be cupcakes.

On Recovering Yogi we're doing this new thing where we dig up our old yoga teaching bios and roast them. Vanessa and Leslie had the balls to go first, so I felt like I had to pony up. Sadly, it was really easy to find my old bio because a disappointing Internet glitch has preserved my old web site, even though I stopped paying for that account a long time ago. That in itself is really embarrassing, but as I explained in the roast, the bio itself ain't so bad. I was never all that woo woo to begin with.

Read my bio roast.

Roasting yourself is fun, so yoga teacher friends — if you're so inclined — dig up those old bios and let it rip. Making fun of ourselves is exactly what Recovering Yogi is all about. It's almost as fun as making fun of other people. If you have something for us, send it to: submissions@recoveringyogi.com

THEN: Taken many moons ago at the Baptiste Power Yoga Institute by Jonathan Pozniak

AHORA: Photo © andyfreeberg.com (Taken in the Marin Headlands just this spring)

Me neither. But this was a lot of fun to co-write with Matthew Teague Miller....

Sri Darth Vader, angry yoga teacher

Props to Vanessa Fiola for yet another RLAM cartoon.

Speaking of Vanessa, she compiled the most hilarious set of stats pertaining to the Yoga Journal Talent Search (a real thing, for those of you that have been living in a closet of naivete), which wraps up today. I know the words "hilarious" and "stats" don't always go together, but trust me on this one. If there is one girl who can make stats fun, it's my girl Vanessa. She is my creative hero.

Read:

Yoga Journal Talent Search—by the Numbers

Every Friday on Recovering Yogi we publish either a This-Could-Be-A-Yoga-Teacher-Bio or a This-Could-Be-A-Yoga-Class-Description. We take submissions from all over, but today I took the opportunity to write my own variation on "what yoga teacher bios would say if they were really being honest."

Check it out:

Yoga teacher bio: Sandal Satchel

Also, I love this NPR story so much, I have to share:

Jimmy Wong saves the Internet

I also love this TED Talk:

Jason Fried: Why work doesn't happen at work

And guess what else? I really love this picture of my cat:

Can you tell I took an adderall?

I coined a new term this week: Yasshole. Like Masshole, but for yogis. Get it?

Read more about this and how I feel about my latest failed yoga experiment at Elephant Journal:

Master Yasshole (Bryan Kest has a shtick and he's working it into the ground)

I don’t find it in the slightest bit ironic that I took my first yoga class in months just one week after RecoveringYogi’s Facebook page launched. My first three yoga classes, actually. In three days. Holla!

On some level I’m sure it’s the nonconformist in me doing just exactly what no one would expect; but really, there is a much less psychological and much more practical set of factors that just happened to perfect storm together:

• I recovered from tuberculosis just enough to realize I’m bored out of my mind with being in my house all the time.
• I’m having a slow week at work ‘cuz of the holiday, which serendipitously allows me to end my day an hour earlier so that I can get to class without it being so stressful that it instantly negates every positive effect that going to yoga might have.
• At this particular time of year, it gets dark so early that I don’t have the option of an evening hike, which means I don’t get caught up on the indecision maelstrom of whether I’m going to go to yoga or hike, which inevitably ends up with me—emotionally exhausted from the effort of trying to make a minor decision—collapsed on the couch, watching Glee on Hulu and eating enormous amounts of whatever.
• I finally realized that I’m allergic to red wine and stopped drinking it, and thus I have more energy. (Sorry you had to babysit me through that one last “maybe if I just have a few glasses” experiment, Christine. Good news; I can keep water down now!)
• There was a full moon. (That last one had nothing to do with why I went to yoga, but was awfully pretty indeed.)

I think it’s RLAM that one can be a recovering yogi and still go to yoga. Cuz, it’s really not about hating on yoga. It’s about recognizing what’s real about yoga and what’s, well, dumb. There are some things I really do love about yoga. I love the way it makes me feel connected to my body and grounded in my physicality. I love that opportunity to step away from my electronics for a good solid 90 minutes and just be with myself (although, to be fair, I can do that while hiking—or sleeping, for that matter). And the thing I’ve grown to love the most about yoga? The prerogative one has to go into child’s pose or modify the f*ck out of a pose whenever one feels like it.

P.S. Anna Hughes is the bomb diggity.

How incredible are these t-shirts that Vanessa made?