Roxtar Yoga

buy nothing day November 25, 2009

Could you go without buying anything for a day? This Friday is known as Black Friday in the U.S., one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Isn’t it funny we have a holiday for shopping? One of my favorite magazines, Adbusters, a wonderful little anti-consumerist gem, has proposed that everyone buy nothing for this day of typical over consumption. They say: “You know the saying: a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. You feel that things are falling apart – the temperature rising, the oceans churning, the global economy heaving – why not do something? Take just one small step toward a more just and sustainable future. Make a pact with yourself: go on a consumer fast. Lock up your credit cards, put away your cash and opt out of the capitalist spectacle. You may find that it’s harder than you think, that the impulse to buy is more ingrained in you than you ever realized. But you will persist and you will transcend – perhaps reaching the kind of epiphany that can change the world.”

This week I am winding down after a busy week of working in New York City, helping wellness businesses become more successful, a job I feel blessed to have. My gift to myself this holiday weekend is that I have kept my schedule clear and will be spending the weekend chillaxing in my humble abode in SLO, CA. I have a tendency to do too much and wear myself out so this weekend I decided I wanted to give myself a Roxy Style Staycation Yoga Retreat. This will include home cooked meals, daily yoga and meditation practice, some time enjoying the great outdoors, and I’m not exactly sure what else. Maybe it will also include a day or full weekend of buying nothing, a little technology break, no driving. I was thinking it wouldn’t be that hard to make an efficient compromise to do this more permanently by only supporting local businesses, and once I started thinking of it, I realized how lucky I am to have farmer’s markets everywhere, a locally owned co-op, and local restaurants, movie theaters, everything, all right in my back yard.

I am grateful for everything in my life this Thanksgiving, my loved ones, yoga practice, work, health and more. Yet, I also feel like this is a great opportunity to acknowledge what I don’t like and what I can do to help change it. I think it is possible to enjoy the good part of the holidays, and to find a way to stop making them so much about consuming but about the subtle, yet sweeter things we can give each other.

my lotus is laughing November 16, 2009

My lotus has found itself in the Big Apple once again. This is my 7th trip here and I really enjoyed the city today. I found myself attending a vinyasa flow yoga class at Laughing Lotus Yoga. I loved it. I have tried to document what I remembered from the class for future teaching to my yogi friends. We did lots of sun salutes, I even saw a few drips of sweat on my yoga mat. I loved the inhaling the arms to the sky with wrists touching, palms face out, thumbs forward, looking at your hands, exhaling hands to the heart. I really liked the mandala sequencing, we faced the backs of our mats just the right amount, the balance and the flow felt so good. I also liked the building of the sequence: from warrior ii to peaceful warrior to triangle on the back leg to wide legged forward folds back to the front thank you very much for that runnnnning sentence of sorts.

Other things I enjoyed: Walking around a ton, knowing how to get around, the smell of fall in the parks, eating an excessive yet delicious salad from one of those cafes with every topping and dressing you could ever imagine, more walking and checking out hotels and therefore getting to see tons of different people, I like the old people here, delicious dinner with a friend, and seeing a neat little cabaret style show with amazing performers. I also had no internet and lots of technical difficulties today. I was reminded that the nature of event planning is that little things go wrong, and there is no need to let it get me negative. It is now, in the heat of my planned event, more than ever, that I need to stay on the mat before the stress molests me and I let the little unplanned things affect my well-being. I was also reminded today to be my own guardian angel, that there is no one or no thing going to save us. We have to do that. I can’t give my best to anyone if I’m not giving some of it to myself.

I hope others are enjoying the Thanksgiving season as much as me. At a Friendsgiving this weekend I enjoyed my first bites of roasted turkey in a very long time, homemade mashed taters, fun with some up and budding yoginis, and overall good times. Lots to be thankful for this year. Have you taken a second to think about it?

Look at these awesome yoginis!!! What a treat to be reminded that playing on the yoga mat is ok.

how green are you? November 11, 2009

Yesterday I attended the SLO Green Awards where MINDBODY was one of six organizations recognized for efforts in making voluntary environmental contribution by SLO Commerce. The MINDBODY offices use 1/4 the electricity of our former space and our new office was built with LEED certification practices including carpet, flooring, counter tops, and other recycled materials, motion sensors for our lights, and without sacrificing a beautiful space to work in. During the meeting we heard speeches from the other award winners and also Hewlett Packard which is one of the largest green companies around.

One of the recurring themes of the luncheon was that consumer practices drive the market more than anything. In the last few years I’ve become more and more aware of my impact on the environment around me. From food choices, to lifestyle and transportation, we all interact with our environment differently. I like the idea of efficient compromises. I’m not going to live in seclusion off the grid and eat only homegrown food every day. Yet, getting my vegetables from a local farm isn’t so difficult, and it supports my community and tastes good, rather than only buying my veggies when I go to the grocery store. That’s a good compromise to me.

This year I continued my personal commute challenge which started in May 2008 and rode my bike to commute to work and around town as much as I could (I used mycyclinglog.com). When it rains, I drive, but how often does it rain in SLO? Every other week I do a driving grocery run as well. I have commuted 1213 miles on my bike this year, which has saved .5 tons of CO2 (or 1000 lbs). This was about 50,000 calories burned, which translates to 11 pounds of fat not gained in 2009. I also calculated my overall footprint with an online calculator (epa.gov and terra pass have great tools). My home usage was about 2800 lbs per year, transportation was about 3000 lbs driving and 8500 lbs flying (gulp).  My electricity usage was 1/7 the average single person household, and my total carbon footprint minus flights for work was 30% of the average American household.  Yes, I love numbers and spreadsheets. I think it’s all interesting to say the least. I found I could decrease my footprint further by washing my clothes in cold water (1 load per week saves 49 lbs per year), line drying my clothes (330 lbs per year), replacing light bulbs in my house (70 lbs per lightbulb per year), and composting (I just like the feeling of that one, not sure how much it really saves). I already minimize travel, commute by bike, recycle, and have a energy saving refrigerator and washer in my apartment (among other things). How green are you? Have you ever thought about this? Are there any efficient compromises you can make that wouldn’t terribly impact your life? Do you think making a green effort is worth it?

yoga for fitness November 6, 2009

Many of the best conversations happen in the most random places.  This is especially true at the MINDBODY offices where we are lucky to share a full service kitchen where I often connect with many of my peeps.  Today my friend Stephanie who is a fitness instructor, oops, Group Ex instructor at Equilibrium Fitness for Women in SLO town mentioned that she took at Bikram yoga class last night and wore her heart rate monitor out of curiosity. Her monitor reported some crazy results.  She burned a total of 826 calories in one 90 minute class (max heart rate 170, low 130)!  When she teaches the Body Attack class and Equilibrium she burns 726 calories in 60 minutes (max heart rate 195, low 156).  When teaching she is doing the activity while talking into a microphone so it is likely she would burn closer to 600 while taking the class.  If you do the math the amount of calories burned in a Bikram class is about the same as the Body Attack class. The Body Attack class is cardio and strength oriented.  Her stats are similar for the Body Jam class which is all cardio, except she burns a few more calories. I don’t practice yoga to burn calories so to speak, but I do enjoy the way Vinyasa yoga gets my heart rate up, working a sweat, and feeling challenged and pushed to my edge. I am going to borrow her monitor and see how a Roxtar Vinyasa class measures up. I don’t expect the same caloric burn, but I feel like that’s a good thing.

This got me thinking. I wonder what the biggest reasons people practice yoga are?  I think many of us are drawn to yoga for the physical benefits we feel in our body, and we stay around because we like the message of the practice and get continually challenged.  According to the Yoga In America Study published by Yoga Journal and MINDBODY in 2008, fitness is definitely part of what draws us to yoga, along with flexibility, stress reduction, overall health, and even weight loss.  For me,  I tried it because a friend recommended it and I was into being physically active. Living in Michigan my activities were mostly gym oriented, group ex classes, kickboxing, step aerobics, aerobics, spinning, stairmasters, ellipticals, weights, riding my bike outside when I could, jogging, and the list goes on.  The funny thing is that I got sick of all those activities eventually, some quicker than others.  I also ended up with injuries.  Yoga and riding my bike outside or hiking have been the only “activities” I’ve stuck with.  Why do I continue to practice?  I would have to agree with the survey, “yea, what you said.” My body is more flexible and I feel more comfortable in my own skin, yoga definitely relieves my stressed out feelings, improves my overall health and strength (yea chaturanga!). Bikram’s Yoga was good for me for a period of time, but it eventually just didn’t feel good. I think once in a while the detoxification by sweating feels really good, and maybe I was really toxic before and needed to sweat out a few years of build up.  It’s good for us all to remember that different activities and passions resonate with each of us at different moments in our lives. Just think of how healthy we would be as a planet if we all listened to our bodies and found the practices or activities that really nourished us, yet challenged us, the right balance of both. And we actually stuck with those practices. Wow, a girl can dream can’t she?