by Jasmine | Jun 1, 2012 | Alternative Health, Meditation, Yoga Health
Occasionally we have the opportunity to interview contributors from websites that share our goals of educating people with cancer about the benefits of holistic lifestyles and wellness. I recently had the opportunity to interview Libby Lowe, Social Media Manager of Yogabear.org.
Yoga Bear is a national 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to promoting more opportunities for wellness and healing to the cancer community through the practice of yoga. They have all kinds of resources on the site for patients, yoga teachers and health care providers that are dealing with cancer such as videos as yoga for pain relief.
Jasmine: Tell us about your background?
Libby: I got involved with Yoga Bear in 2010. I had recently lost my mother-in-law to ovarian cancer and I was looking for a way to give back. I’ve been doing yoga for about eight years and volunteering with Yoga Bear seemed like a great way to honor her memory in a very personal way. Professionally, I have been writing and editing for more than 10 years. I work on a mix of projects including editorial, corporate communications and social media management. I live in Chicago.
Jasmine: What do you think your mission in life is?
Yoga on the Steps: Living Beyond Breast Cancer
Libby: When I think about what I truly love doing, it makes tons of sense that I work on building community within Yoga Bear. I love making connections and helping people.
Jasmine: How has your spiritual practice transformed you?
Libby: Yoga taught me patience. Because of yoga, I understand that being good at something isn’t the goal, being present is. I’m not 100% there, but before yoga I wouldn’t have even recognized those moments of disconnect.
Jasmine: What daily spiritual practices do you do every day?
Libby: I don’t have a formal spiritual practice. In some ways I see emailing friends and connecting our community members as a spiritual practice—and it’s one I find great joy in.
Jasmine: What is the most surprising thing about you?
Libby: I absolutely love feel good sports movies. Remember the Titans, We Are Marshall—if I’m desperate, even Wildcats.
Jasmine: What do you think the government can do to aid in health and wellness?
Libby: This is a huge question, but the short answer is: Make sure that everyone has access to preventive care, insurance, and understandable information about the system—as well information about how to take care of themselves. I also feel very strongly that Planned Parenthood is an essential resource for women. More than 1.5 women received cancer screenings at a Planned Parenthood in 2010, and I believe the government needs to support women by supporting the organization.
Jasmine: What have been some of the most transformation events or milestones that led you to be the person you are?
Libby: In terms of the work I am doing now, my mother-in-law was very inspirational. The determination with which she took on cancer–and won for more than seven years–is truly inspiring. She advocated for herself, educated herself and fought like hell. And while she was living with cancer, she truly lived. I didn’t meet her until after she was diagnosed, and I wasn’t sure how much time we would have together. I’m extremely lucky to have had the time with her that I had–knowing her made me a better person.
Jasmine: Any exciting projects you want to share?
Libby: Keep an eye on Yoga Bear! We have an awesome library of free yoga videos–and we’re always looking for more. I’d like to invite all of the teachers out there to submit.
We hope you enjoyed this interview with Libby Lowe, Social Media Manager of Yogabear.org.
Namaste, Jasmine
by Jasmine | May 2, 2012 | Alternative Health, eStore, Gluten-Free, Gluten-Free Desserts Book, Reviews, Stuff I like
If you feel powerless to resist these sweet morsels of the devil in a plastic-wrap like I do, then why not make them in a way that is clean, pure but still tummy-rubbing satisfying? Fat-burning brownies? Pizza? Cheese Stuff rolled? Focaccia? Muffins? Crepes? New York cheesecake with raspberries on top? All Gluten-free? I can feel the drool leaving my mouth just thinking of these things…
Author, and diabetes coach Kelley Herring whips up foods for those in a healing crisis such as diabetes, cancer or just overweight with low-glycemic, low-sugar foods for healthy living. At this stage of the game, we all know the culprits are things like blueberry muffins, Dominos, …. anything cheesy or sugary seems to be satan to our butts and thighs. But just imagine a…fat burning brownie!! She includes this in her gluten free desserts book.
Gluten-Free Desserts Book
Kelley Herring is the Editor-in-Chief of many clean-eating cookbooks including: Eat to Fight Cancer, Eat to Beat Diabetes, Eat to Lower Cholesterol and Eat to Boost Fertility. Her books which are available online as downloads are: Guilt-Free Desserts, Better Breads, and Awesome Appetizers.
She taught me about a fiber which adds a “cotton-candy” sweetness and creamy mouth feel to desserts that feeds good bacteria in the gut as well as covering the bad side of artificial sweeteners (Equal, NutraSweet might as well be Lysol in a pretty packet that you can sprinkle on your coffee).
She describes an alternative to sugar that have zero calories and no glycemic impact which will be critical for diabetics or anyone that wants to lose some blubber around the middle. In her recipes, you’ll see how to add “invisible fiber” to your desserts that doesn’t change flavor, texture or preparation.
She even substituted the evil ingredients with “metabolic power ingredients” which help to keep your blood sugar stable and even “stoke your body’s fat-burning furnace:. Many conventional comfort food recipes such as chocolate mousse, cheesecake, pizza, muffins, creme brulee and mucho mucho others were given a “total health makeover” while keeping all the taste, texture, moisture and decadent sweetness.
Some of the ingredients will be trickier to find such as non-aluminum baking powder, organic coconut flour, agar agar powder, chia meal, erythritol, xanthan gum, pasture-raised eggs, SweetLeaf Stevia Vanilla Creme Liquid Stevia, Organic Sunbutter and a few others. Most of the other ingredients call for organic ingredients and often will be chemical-free, processed sugar free and they contain ingredients that are minimally refined or processed (if at all) in this gluten free desserts book.
You probably won’t be able to find these ingredients at your local average supermarket and will have to get many of the ingredients at a specialty health food store such as Whole Foods. You might be able to get some of the ingredients at a local farmer’s market such as the pasture raised eggs. She often gives resources for where to get some of the ingredients online.
I chose to make the brownies and there were about 2 sticks of pasture raised butter and 6 pasture raised eggs in there. It was a simple recipe to make and I always love to lick the bowl and beaters after I have mixed up all the ingredients. After about 25 minutes in the oven, my steamy brownies came out and the perfume of chocolate was wafting throughout the house. The texture was like a brownie, mousse and souffle……. light, dense and moist all at once. It is taking every once of my limited will power to just not eat the whole pan right now (If I did that, could I lose a few more pounds?)
Often when I make low-fat or gluten free baked goods, there is something missing in the texture or the sweetness is off. Not so with the brownies…. only problem is that they are TOO yum-yum. When I am God, I am going to make broccoli taste like cheesecake, and cheesecake taste like broccoli.
Probably the most unusual ingredient in a cupcake is organic cannellini beans for the Yellow Cupcakes. (It’s so strange though that it has to be good)
Have you ever cooked a gluten-free, or naturally sweetened (with Stevia or coconut sugar dessert)? If yes, what results did you get? What did your friends and family think?
So if you want to cook gluten-free desserts or gluten-free fat burning brownies, cupcakes, breads or any other yummy things then start cooking with Kelly Herring’s gluten free desserts book.
by Jasmine | Apr 26, 2012 | Stuff I like, Yoga Teacher training
- Benefits of Yoga for Depression and Anxiety with Viniyoga
I just got back from my first Viniyoga training with Gary Kraftsow at the NYC Yoga Journal conference last weekend. I’ve been practicing hatha yoga for over 15 years and have mostly gone to classes that just had a bunch of sun salutations in them.
Yoga has been a way for me to release tension and tightness but I think I was not trained in proper alignment and anatomy and after doing thousands of up-dogs, down-dogs, shoulder-stands and warrior poses without proper body mechanics, I have a feeling I injured my body pretty badly. I’ve had chronic neck stiffness and headaches for many years now and the last year my knees have been pretty bad. I was starting to dread teaching so much since I would have to ice my knees after my classes and I would not be able to sleep due to my screaming knees.
Yoga Positions and Styles for Headaches and Stiff Necks
I started to take some Iyengar classes and that seemed to help my throbbing knees. I went to a doctor that specialized in athletes and knee pain and based on his recommendations and my Iyengar classes I was finding a higher level of manageability for my knees but my neck and headaches were persistent ( despite rounds of holistic practitioners and conventional western medicine I could not figure out how to get rid of my head-aches and neck stiffness)
Imagine having someone whack you on your head with a sledgehammer all day long and just about every day. Now imagine someone is sticking a little knife at the back of your neck.. Welcome to my body. I used to want to run away from my body but there was no where to run to. Deep sleep provided the only vacation from my body. I used to hate waking up in the morning since I had to wake up to my neck and forehead screaming at me.
Enter Viniyoga…..
I am not sure if I had ever heard of Gary before this weekend. I think his name was familiar to me from Yoga Journal. I remember reading once about Viniyoga but whatever I read didn’t grab me and I was never interested in exploring it any further.
I went to his first workshop on upper body, neck and shoulder pain. We did some unusual poses that were similiar to other poses I had done before but there were key differences. Gary kept emphasizing coordinating our breath to our movement, (otherwise it’s just calisthenics) . We twisted, We triangled. We saluted and we warriored. After about 30 minutes of breath-centered poses, I slowly but deeply started to feel some relief. It would take hours for my body to integrate what we did and later I started to feel more relief.
Yoga Workshop for headaches, neck pain and shoulder tightness
I was comfortable just being in my body. I felt present. I felt at home. I didn’t want to run away from myself or my body.
I went to Gary’s all day intensive even though the title sounded uninspired. ” Yoga for Depression and Anxiety.” We dove deeper into some of the physical and emotional mechanisms behind anxiety and depression. We explored chanting and breath centered movement. It was like a moving meditation. I could feel deeply ingrained patterns of limitation, pain and constraint being worked though levels of my fascia and psyche.
I felt a sense of liberation. I was freed up to have new thoughts and new feelings.
I taught some of these methodologies the next week in my classes and was delighted to see the look of relief on my students’ faces after I had introduced them to viniyoga.
I can’t wait to dive deeper into the warm waters of Viniyoga.
by Jasmine | Apr 20, 2012 | Couples Yoga, Date Night, Partner Yoga, Yoga DVDs, & Podcasts
Intimacy Ideas for Couples – Yoga – Doing It Together
Partner Yoga – Doing It Together
Intimacy – Into Me You See
If your couch is starting to get a permanent imprint from you sitting there it may be time to mix things up with a buoyant and bonding couple yoga session. With all the date night activities out there, most of them involve the two of you watching some kind of performance, often in the dark where the two of you are not interacting and not focused on each other for most of the evening.
Other date night activities can often be in crowded noisy places such as bar or concert which makes it harder to hear and focus on each other. Even just going out to a restaurant you often get interrupted many times by the waiter asking for your order (I don’t know about you but it always irritates me when I am in the midst of an in-depth topic and the waiter just butts in asking if we want to get a drink instead of pausing a few moments to and giving us some space to conclude our sentence or conversation.
My hottie, hellenic, hubby and I started practicing partner yoga, our sessions would be mixed with poses that were strengthening, restorative, balancing, silly, and challenging. We would often just experiment with movement and shapes and create or modify traditional poses. We find that the practice, helps to balance out upsets and disagreements that we had earlier in the week. All those times that you wanted to whack your partner across the head with a frying pan, start to dissolve in a practice that is about supporting, nurturing and soothing and finding intimacy for each other.
Here are some of my Reviews of some of my favorite Couples Yoga DVDs and Books
Here are some tips on how to be a good yoga partner.
Practicing Yoga Together – Intimacy Ideas for Couples
Hygiene – Before your practice, you should be clean and brush your teeth. How fun is it to grab someone’s arm that is sticky and sweaty or hold someone’s foot that smells like the ebola? Since you will be in close proximity to your partner, skip the tuna fish sandwich with extra onions right before your practice also.
Limitations – If one of you is much more athletic or flexible than the other then don’t expect your partner to be able to do some of the balancing poses or to be able to get their foot behind their head.
Distractions – Send the kids to grandma’s, turn off your Iphone (even if it vibrates every time you get a text that is going to take your focus off your partner)
Size – If there is a big different in height and weight you won’t be perfectly symmetrical in many of the poses and feet, arms and hands won’t always line up as you might want. For the weight-bearing poses, where you are putting your partner’s weight on top of yours ( such as a hand-stand on top of your partner’s downdog) For some of the other balancing poses where you are leaning back, the heavier partner should let the lighter partner lean back first to not throw them off balance.
Acceptance – Are you able to let go of the need to do the pose just like on the cover of Yoga Journal? Can you be accepting of your partner’s inability to do the full expression of the pose.
Synchronicity – Yoga is not just about stretching…otherwise it’s just calisthenics. Put more emphasis on coordinating the rise and fall of your breath with your partner, especially in the seated poses and you will feel more in sync with them.
Non-Verbal Communication – Some of the poses you will be back to back and if you have some discomfort and you need to readjust and don’t want to have to talk to loudly in the session, you can tap your fingers on them or squeeze their hand to let them know that something needs to be altered in the pose.
Intimacy Ideas for Couples – Practicing Yoga Together
What kinds of special activities do you do with your sweetie to stay soulfully connected? Post your answers on our Facebook page.
by Jasmine | Apr 10, 2012 | Beginner Yoga, Yoga Teacher training
Half-Moon Pose
When I start a yoga class, I usually make sure that the room is clean, the floor is ideally a hardwood floor and there should be bathrooms nearby that are also clean. Lights that dim are also ideal so I can create a soulful class and really make the mood quite serene. I usually start the class off by telling students what props they need. I then let them know to turn their cell phone off and to have a bottle of water nearby.
I then usually start with some simple warm-ups. Most yoga classes start off with some kind of silent meditation which I would ideally like to do. Since students often come later and it is incredibly disruptive to come to the meditation part of the class late, I usually have the meditation part about 10 minutes into the class or at the end of the class. It always angers me (even though I am in a yoga class) when people come in late during meditation. Most of the people that come in late don’t even have the courtesy to not set up during the meditation but they are just fumbling around noisily when I am trying to find some inner peace.
Ideas for Yoga Sequences such as sun salutations
Ideas for Yoga Sequences
After the warm-ups, I have various ideas for yoga sequences which usually are something that is seated on the floor to warm up the mid-section, I do some poses on the floor to warm up shoulders, hips, hamstrings, low back and to stretch out and elongate the spine. They usually consist of seated forward bends, side bends or a cat and cow flow that ends with a child’s pose.
After some seated postures, we then transition to some standing postures such as mountain pose, warrior pose, down dog, triangle, standing forward bend and side angle. Since I teach gentle beginner yoga classes I don’t do a lot of sun salutations. If I do teach any kind of sun salutations it is usually a modified version with a chair to support such as hands on top of the chair for down dog or you can also you the wall with your hands up against it for down dog. For a modified warrior, you can do that against the wall with a block between your knee and the wall which makes it much easier.
Then we will do some balancing poses and I love doing half moon pose against the wall with a block. Even yoga newbies and those with physical limitations can do this challenging pose using a block and a wall and it really builds confidence. Sometimes I will do tree pose or occasionally dancer pose but always against the wall so that everyone can do it even if they don’t have very good balance and focus.
Sometimes we will do some poses in a chair depending on the athletic ability of the class. You can do lots of traditional poses with a chair such as down dog, side angle, hamstring stretches, standing wide legged forward bend, seated arms stretches, eagle pose and even thread the needle.
Then we transition to the mat and we do some poses such as twists, bridge pose or we grab a strap and do some hamstring and abductor and aductor stretches.
I almost always finish with a restorative pose such as legs up the wall or legs up the chair. You can also roll up a yoga mat and lay your spine on top of it for a nice and gentle shoulder opener. If I have a lot of props I will put them in other poses such as goddess pose.
I then finish the class with a controlled breathing exercise and meditation.
Warrior Pose
Are you a yoga teacher? What are your ideas for yoga sequences? Write your answers on our Facebook page.
