I grew up with an adopted brother.  The “adopted” part is important, because my parents didn’t know the child they were getting was born to an alcoholic mother, who abused her body and his the entire time she was pregnant.  He came to our family when he was 6 months old, sickly and weak, and nearly died before his first birthday.  A few years later, he was diagnosed as hyperactive with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome along with a laundry list of other things, including violent behavior and aggression. 

One of the suggestions our pediatrician gave my mom was the Feingold Diet and we followed it to the letter.  No artificial colors, flavors, mint, or chocolate.  As a kid, I hated never having Kool-Aid in our fridge, and used to love going to visit friends who ate mac n’ cheese from a blue box.  But as much as I resented having to follow the diet, to say the difference in my brother’s behavior was noticeable would be an understatement.  When he ate anything artificial, he went absolutely crazy with rage – kicking people and walls, screaming, and looking like he couldn’t contain the anger that shook his body.  To even write about this is difficult, because most people who know me in my adult life don’t even know he exists.  It’s always been easier to be an only child when people ask, rather than explain the complicated relationship that I still haven’t fully accepted.

Several months ago, I noticed Alex having the same out of control reactions to little things.  My mom was the one who first pointed out that his worst behavior came right after a treat of some sort: a lollipop or a candy apple. It made me physically sick to think that my child had the same behavioral reaction to artificial colors.  How was this possible?  I exercised and ate organic, healthy food while I was pregnant, and now I was going to have to go through the same drill that my mom used to, explaining politely that , “No, he doesn’t want/can’t eat those yellow crackers/birthday cake/bright red popsicle” to the other moms.   Even more disturbing to me though, was the thought of Emily Kate growing up witnessing the cycle of violent behavior, frustration, and rage that I grew up with, so to reject something that I knew worked seemed stupid, despite hating the idea of it.

I started reading.  I read a book on the Feingold Diet, and I read The Unhealthy Truth.  I convinced my husband that the majority of our grocery shopping had to be at Trader Joe’s.  (TJ’s products don’t have any artificial colors or flavors.)  Then I started noticing articles popping up everywhere – on growth horomones and high-fructose corn syrup, on pesticides and antibiotics.  All of a sudden it seems like our society is starting to realize that how unhealthy we are is directly proportionate to how much we’ve messed up our food.  A simplistic summary is to say that everything from allergies to obesity to behavior has a root cause in what we eat because our bodies don’t know how to process all the crap that we put in our food.

Yesterday one of my friends on facebook posted a link to this article on MSNBC.  This is a decent introduction to what I’m talking about, but it focuses more on why we’re fat, rather than why we’re unhealthy.  At least it’s a start.  The bottom line is we all need to wake up and stop trusting that just because a corporation or the government says that something is healthy and safe doesn’t mean it is.  When animals get high doses of antibiotics, we do too when we eat them.  Genetically modified corn hasn’t been modified to be healthier, it has been modified to be resistant to pests – which means it has pesticides in it’s genes.  We have no idea what artificial horomones in milk and meat are doing to our endocrine systems.  Stop feeding your kids colored goldfish crackers.  Don’t cook with Splenda or mix it into smoothies like the commercial tells you to – why does your smoothie need sugar anyway?

This post isn’t preaching about being all organic or vegetarian, but an encouragement to be more aware and make simple changes where you can and where you see the need.  There is so much we don’t know about “food technology” but the evidence is growing that it isn’t the best thing for us.  So why not become educated?

This weekend is my next to last weekend of teacher training and so far I LOVE IT.  Initially my brain fought with my body during every single practice, because it was HARD.  And DIFFERENT than what I am used to practicing – teachers at this studio hold poses until your legs shake and although my butt hurts constantly it is in a good way.  I have discovered things about my practice and my body that never occurred to me – for example maybe the reason my lower lumbar spine is always slipping and sliding out of place is because I have a ridiculous imbalance of strength between my right and left sides.

I am learning from an E-RYT 500 who trained with Bikram Choudury and with B.K.S. Iyengar…in person.  In the yoga world, that’s like having Slash and the Van Halen guy teach you how to play guitar.  The professor teaching us yoga philosophy has a PhD from Harvard and lectures at the Smithsonian and has an amazing way of making all this stuff seem exciting and accessible.  We’ve also spent a significant amount of time discussing the concept of Atman, and I am delighted to learn that Finding Atman as a concept still makes perfect sense.  (The blog name anyway, maybe not so much the posts.)

The concepts of divine love and uniting our spiritual self have sparked an interest and started to fill a void and I find myself more patient, and able to just…sit…without being antsy, or looking for something to do, or constantly checking email every 5 minutes.  I feel incredibly fortunate to have stumbled on a yoga teacher training of this caliber, and it truly was the right time for me to do it, furthering my belief that things happen when they are supposed to happen.

Initially I was dreading the drive to and from the studio – it’s about 50 minutes from my house.  Thanks to books on CD, the drive time has become a sort of meditative practice in and of itself.  The first book I listened to was Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  I’ve listened to and love all his books -they have the kind of logic and examples and pace that make me sad when I get to the last CD – but this one was probably my favorite so far.

The second book I got was The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom.  Depending on my mood, this book was either heart-warming or unbearably saccharine.  Mostly it was the latter, but the concept is interesting and there is a quote in there about children that will resonate with me forever – “All children are damaged by their handlers – some get fingerprints, some get cracked, and some get shattered.”  (That isn’t a word for word because I am disinclined to go look up and link to the exact quote.)

In my queue are The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan (I think the Omnivore’s Dilemma should be required reading for everyone who eats meat), and Super Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner.  Currently in my CD player is Raising Boys by Dr. James Dobson.

Now, about that last one.  I read somewhere that it is good for us to listen to and read things that we disagree with – it keeps your brain sharp and engaged.  I’ve always tried to follow that and indeed even seek out material that presents a differing viewpoint.  That is the single reason that I was able to get through the introductory chapters of this book.

Having made it to Chapter 8, I’ve finally been able to stop gnawing on my knuckles/screaming/laughing out loud and can agree with some of what he’s saying.  (SOME.  Not all.  Not even half.)  I often feel like I have no idea what I’m doing with Alex which is why I picked it up in the first place, but the in-your-face approach, blatant disparagement of women in the workplace, and feminism as a dirty word, plus assertions with no hard facts or studies to back them up has been…ahem…hard to swallow.  I think my buddy Malcolm G would disagree with Dr D., who thinks that boys are better at math because they are wired to be that way, since one of the examples in Outliers is a fascinating study of why Asian cultures are so much better at it than Western cultures.  Anyway.

As part of the teacher training, I’ve also read four amazing books that have opened my eyes to the rest of the practice of yoga.  One of the books talks about how to be a student – come to practice with a mind like an empty cup, because any knowledge the teacher gives a student with a half full cup will spill out and is lost.  I have tried to make a concerted effort to approach every day of training and every book with that mindset, and not having to be right about anything has made a huge difference in my daily attitude.  Humility, I think it’s called.  It’s refreshing.

emmy’s happy feet from Heather on Vimeo.

Unfortunately, the kids came back from the in-laws with a sort of stomach flu thing, and have been home with me in various levels of sick the whole week. Today everything is back to normal but it’s already Thursday and by now I’ve lost some of the “I heart yoga and the world and everything in it” buzz, not to mention losing almost a week’s worth of actual non-yoga related work (you know, the stuff that pays my mortgage).

Tomorrow starts another weekend of training. Suffice to say, I am so happy to be doing this and have found things in common with everyone in my class. I may have lost some of the immediate high but definitely find myself more deeply in thought and more aware of every action…working at keeping my brain connected to my heart and keeping my ego (in the yogic sense) out of the way is teaching me so much about parenting and just…living.

I was that girl.  Granted, I was not the worst of my friends but I still jostled for mirror space with the best of them.

When I was 8, I used to take my $1 allowance down to the drugstore on the corner and buy cheap .99 eyeliners and nail polishes.  I coveted Dr. Scholls clogs and all the makeup that was out of my budget – the Cover Girl and Maybelline and Revlon.  I can still picture the aisle of that store, I loved to just sit in the makeup aisle and drool over all the sparkly, shiny colors.

I still do that, except now I stare at the Sephora catalog and I covet higher end eyeshadow palettes from Urban Decay, liquid eyeliners from Boujois, airy foundations from Smashbox, lipsticks, lip balms, lip glosses – any brand thankyouverymuch.  Skincare from philosophy and Bliss and Aveda; hair products from Bumble and Bumble – I love them ALL.

Unfortunately for me, the painstakingly developed step-by-step daily routine has become somewhat…over-developed.  It is no surprise to anyone that knows me that I am most definitely the highest of high-maintenance.  I require 5 products in the shower alone (shampoo, conditioner, 2 kinds of soap, and facewash) and that’s not counting the deep conditioning or shaving days.  I step out of the shower and layer on face serum, face lotion, eye cream, body lotion, deodorant, tinted sunscreen, and two kinds of hair products.  That’s before I get to makeup, hair dryer, velcro rollers, hairspray, and on and on.

If I’m being honest, I don’t particularly care about becoming lower maintenance or streamlining my routine.  I love these girly things, and when there aren’t kids hanging off my legs I can go from bed to out the door in 35 minutes.

The problem is, it sure is a bitch when I have to get ready away from home.  For one thing trying to remember all this stuff is next to impossible and I’m guaranteed to forget the critical basics, like deodorant or a bra, in my haste to remember three kinds of moisturizer.  It’s also somewhat embarrassing to unpack, repack, and cart all this stuff around in the locker room or at a friend’s house.

This problem has manifested itself, along with all the other emotional and physical stuff that comes up, in my yoga teacher training.  We practice a hot yoga class each morning, then have lecture or posture clinic the rest of the day.  I have to shower after the class.

I can easily reduce the skincare stuff and not wear makeup, but I am not and have never been a wash-and-go-hair kind of girl.  For my professional life, I have a shoulder length cut that requires…something.  I can’t wear a hat because my hair is too short and my ears stick out.  I could try a headband, or bandanna I guess.  Or what about those buff things that Survivor contestants wear?  Could I pull that off?

Suggestions are welcome.  My hair thanks you.

My engineering-major husband liked to joke that to earn my degree I watched television and analyzed commercials. This is true. I would rather be watching commercials than plowing through hours of complex math problems that take 4 sheets of paper to solve when both paths resulted in a college degree.

Therefore I feel somewhat qualified to rant on the Dodge Charger spot from the Super Bowl last night.  When the commercial started with those tired looking guys listing all the things they do everyday I had a feeling where it was going, and I wasn’t wrong.  It was described as a “defeated man launching into an internal tirade against a castrating little wife” and ranked as one of the ”best” ads in unscientific polls.

Seriously people…WTF?

I’ll stay away from the fact that Chrysler is basically owned by the government and that its only thanks to a gigantic bailout that this brand even still exists.  I’ll also refrain from a discussion of how much this commercial cost to produce and air, again if not using government money then certainly thanks in part.

I would like to point out that in playing into these same sexist stereotypes of men always being nagged by the woman and never getting to do what they want because they appear to be dragged down by marriage and family, Chrysler proves that they didn’t learn anything from events over the last 2 years and they still believe perpetuating the good ol’boys network is the way to go.

I should mention that numerous studies show marriage is highly beneficial to men in terms of longevity, happiness, and overall health while having the opposite effect for women.  Poor you commercial-guy, for having a job and all those responsibilities.  I know plenty of people who would love to have a job and a family – some have neither.

At the risk of sounding hyper-sensitive, I was really offended by this spot. 

Perhaps it was the fact that I’ve been spending a lot of time immersed in yoga teachings lately, learning that THINGS won’t make you happy and neither will negative perceptions about how much your work and life suck.  If you don’t want to do those things, then don’t.  If you don’t want to live that life or be in a partnership, then don’t.  It’s as easy as that.

Perhaps it’s because marriage should be a relationship of equals and when it comes to major purchases there should be  none of this “I’m going to do what I want” garbage.  Maybe if more people had actual conversations about finance there would be less debt and less divorce.

Perhaps it’s because I have a better marriage than that, and I want my daughter to have better than some loser who thinks she is a burden to his imagined free-wheeling lifestyle. 

Perhaps I just took offense to the amount of money spent on continued stereotyping rather than original thought.  I’m starting to despise the advertising industry for their lack of creativity and perpetually enforcing and teaching notions that degrade both men and women.  Then again, I am more astounded by the number of people who, lemming-like, think this qualifies as a great commercial without taking any time to really think about it.

There is a theory that every single thought and action affects the overall happiness of the world and that we are all affected by problems other people are having, no matter how irrelevant it may seem to you.  Think of us as all standing in one big giant line, waiting for help from whatever God or god you pray to.  By clearing out some of the negativity you hold on to, you make room for other people to work on clearing theirs and then you are in a position to help them do so.  Further, if you can approach things positively you never get in the line in the first place.

If you watched the show Undercover Boss that was on right after the Super Bowl, maybe you were inspired by the people working hard clearing up trash and cleaning port-a-potties and never bitching about the work.  Those are the people who are contributing to the happiness of the world and putting that theory into practice.

I recognize that there probably was very little thought put into this ad other than trying to make it funny.  Certainly, suited execs sitting around the table while some eager creative director pitched it to them didn’t stop to pontificate whether some over-burdened guy would then go out and buy a car without discussing it in the grand scheme of family finances, thus leading to a marital rift. 

I remember clearly the PR mantra that there is no bad publicity, (at least that’s what we would tell ourselves in the midst of a PR debacle) so any discussion over the ad is probably considered good for the brand.

I just think we can do better.  Better than accept this as one of the best, most creative commercials out there.  Better than to accept that any married, employed man is burdened by those things and that no matter what the person he’s talking to thinks he’s going to do what he feels like.

Come on Chrysler and Go-Daddy (not touching this one, BTW) and my fellow Ad/PR grads…YOU CAN DO BETTER.

When I first started practicing yoga I was a fairly hardcore group fitness instructor, teaching 9 classes a week on average.  Step, kickboxing, boot camps – as long as I could sweat and exhaust my students I did it.  Yoga bored me, because it was hard for me and I wasn’t in charge of the workout.

I don’t even remember what convinced me to start teaching yoga, probably because I wasn’t in charge of the workout.  Or maybe it was taking a class with a not-great teacher, throughout my life and career some of the biggest changes I’ve made have been a result of someone else doing something and suspecting (oh all right, KNOWING) I could do it better.  (Confidence has never been a problem for me.)

My only qualification to teach yoga back then was a fitness yoga weekend certification.  I look back now at how little I knew and think about what a danger I was to myself and others, especially special needs students.  A few years later, injured and on the verge of giving up yoga altogether, I attended an Anusara workshop and my teaching style was forever changed.  All of  a sudden I could see myself doing yoga for the rest of my life.  Every workshop and training I’ve attended since then has focused on that style.

A few weeks ago, I took a hot yoga class that was team taught by the studio owner and a trainee.  The trainee was terrible, mostly because her lack of confidence and self-deprecating comments distracted me from the zone I usually get into when I take a class.  It wasn’t that she was new, but that she pointed out her errors during the class while giggling nervously, and afterward kept talking about it.

My experience teaching is that when you screw up, 80% of the class doesn’t realize it, 19% only suspect, and 1% know.  That one percent is usually another teacher.  Confidence makes all the difference.

The difference between this trainee and me is that she was a RYT-200, an official Registered Yoga Teacher.  (For those unfamiliar, the 200 hour training is a regulated curriculum overseen by Yoga Alliance.)  I had experience, but she had the education.  She was official, I wasn’t.  It suddenly became very important to me to find a teacher training program.

I had never been particularly interested in pursuing a RYT before that moment, partially because I had been holding out hope that I could somehow overcome distance, financial, and family commitments to train at an Anusara studio 3 hours away.  Which is truly ridiculous, not only because teaching at a gym requires absolutely no yoga training beyond that first weekend workshop, but because realistically with two kids under 3 and a full-time job it was never going to happen.

Last weekend I started a teacher training program at a local studio training in multi-style – hot yoga, vinyasa, and Iyengar.  Just reading the first book assigned has shown me how much I don’t know about everything from history to breathwork to meditation.  I will spend the next six weeks learning Sanskrit pose names, observing other teachers, reading and writing about yoga, and practicing, practicing, practicing.

At the end I will emerge as an official yoga teacher.  On the surface everything will look the same – I’ll still go to work, and parent, and teach yoga at the gym.  I suspect underneath I will have a whole new perspective.

My January items revisited:
Hot yoga twice a week:  Surprisingly, I actually did this one, in addition to my regular classes.  I decided my weeks would run Sunday to Saturday, and was greatly aided by the 8pm classes at my studio that I can attend guilt-free after the kids are in bed.  I almost made excuses, but I think Brett is also enjoying some evening quiet because there was one day when he literally (gently) shoved me out the door (which I was grateful for after the fact).  I’ve found that I am really enjoying being taught, and attending classes as an anonymous student.  I’ve had a few people comment that I’ve lost weight, and this most certainly cannot be attributed to any other physical activity, because my cardio workouts have been sloth-like or non-existent (mostly the latter).

I would like to note that I attended one class where more than FIFTY people were packed into the room, including one guy right in front of me who was twitchy the whole time.  This is notable because fifty people doing hot yoga together is not only super hot, but also panic-attack inducing with how close everyone was to me – literally inches.  But I stayed, and tried very hard not to freak out, and then forced myself to stay in savasana until almost everyone had left.

Pack up the baby swing:  Done!  There is now a big empty space where the baby swing has sat for 3 and a half years.  My womb feels not a twinge.

Organize the photos:  Almost done, and only sort of done well.  I started this project all gung-ho to organize and label places and people so my grandchildren would be able to reconstruct every detail of my fabulous life.  I ran out of labeling steam around the time I got to photos from my sophomore year in college (it should be noted that I opted to ignore high school and earlier and started sorting the college years, so this is really an unimpressive stat).  I did learn some important things about myself though, namely that my hair size grew in proportion to the grade I was in and that I have a tendency to become VERY fat if left unchecked.

Regular blogging: I did better.  Not as often as I would have liked, but in my defense it took me half the month to figure out the iPhoto (and everything else) on my new laptop.

On to February!

I have no motivation to list new things for February.  I resolve to take a day to think about it.

Anyway, it occurred to me Thursday afternoon that I should buy a few things just in case we got a few inches and I couldn’t do the regular Saturday shopping.  As is my way, I kind of meandered around Trader Joe’s throwing things I thought were necessary into my cart.

Things I bought:

• milk (a nice addition to the unopened gallon already in the fridge)
• eggs (ditto for the dozen already there)
• a pork tenderloin (no I don’t know why either)

Things I DID NOT buy that I totally should have if I were seriously planning to not go anywhere for the next 3 days:

• COFFEE ( We are out OUT of everything but decaf and may not survive another day in the house without)
• butter (necessary for everything from pancakes to cookie baking to mashed potatoes)
• salt and pepper (again, necessary for everything)
• mandarin oranges (one of the only guaranteed kids will eat it foods)

So that said, for once we actually got the worst case scenario. In fact, our street is now a solid sheet of 3 inch thick ice.  Total we got about 8 inches of snow topped with ice topped with more snow.

Day 1…waking up to white

You know it’s a good time when your pants are totally snow covered…

The snowman may not have a head but he does have a hat…

Shoveling…

Helping build the snowman…

With the phone to my ear, I looked at my kids eating breakfast, and looked at the playroom that I told them they couldn’t play in this morning because the toys were all picked up and I said no.  ”No”, I thought, “you cannot come on Thursday because you do a terrible job and the only reason I keep paying you to clean is because I feel guilty that you are a single mom and haven’t got up the nerve to fire you.”  What I said instead was that she could come earlier than normal so that then she could have the rest of her day free.

—————————–

I have known for two weeks now that today Brett wouldn’t be able to get the kids because of a class he’s taking this week.  Tuesday is normally when I teach yoga and two other classes.  When I couldn’t find subs, I lined up a babysitter.  At 11:40 this morning, the babysitter informed me that she was sick. She didn’t mind watching the kids, but she was sick – really sick, runny nose and foggy stuffy head sick. Any mother knows better than to do that, because whatever the occasion, nothing is worse than the aftermath – two sick, cranky kids and an excellent chance that you’ll get it too.

Faced with a dilemma that is now impossible to solve without asking someone for help, I run through combinations of scenarios, from canceling the classes altogether to some complicated combination of part time babysitting/part time emergency sub/possibly canceling one and teaching two.  I called my friend Liz who also teaches yoga -she couldn’t sub but was willing to come over and babysit for us.

Trying to figure out what to do for a class that would start in 4 hours while I’m at the car dealership getting my oil changed with only half a phone battery and none of the phone numbers I needed, combined with guilt over things getting screwed up in the first place left me shaky and confused, unable to decide on a course of action.

Why the meltdown over something so minor?  Because I hate asking for help.  I especially hate doing it last minute.  I feel, and part of me knows how irrational this is, that I shouldn’t ever need to ask for things – I should be able to get and do things all on my own.  Before I had kids, I didn’t ask.  Or did only rarely.  Asking for help is humbling, and hard.  Admitting that I need someone else is not a personal failure, logically I know this.  Being this way has made my life and ability to love harder than it needs to be.

It was Brett who made the decision for me, telling me he would leave his training early to come meet me at the gym.  He did it selflessly, without any attempt to make me feel bad about it, all for a few stupid classes that I wouldn’t even make $30 teaching.  Maybe he knows me well enough by now to recognize that the self-flagellation would be worse than anything he could say.

I came home from the dealership having paid too much for an oil change, and trembly with gratitude for the people I called that were willing to help  me to find the cleaning lady still here, only halfway done.  I kept driving past the house, and as I rounded the corner swearing about what to do next I had the first calm, rational thought I’d had in over an hour.

“You could go back there, and tell her you no longer need her services.  You could take care of this right now, instead of coming home to a still half-dirty house and being ticked off as you dust all the things she missed, and next time complaining about the same thing.  You could act like an adult, and handle it.”

So I did.