AHIMSA – Non-Harming, non-violence

The world has always been and will forever be a violent place to live, even if we go to live on Mars I trust that violence will ensue there too!  Why?  Why can’t human lives in peace?  Of all the steps on the path of yoga, the first one in a classical sense is Ahimsa.  In fact, you don’t get to skip this one and just carry on with yoga.  I have found that in our culture we like to disregard the parts that make us super uncomfortable or are asking us to change part of ourselves or our behavior.

Mother Nature has never screamed louder at humankind then she is right now!

Truth is she is enraged at our lack of respect for her oceans, forests, air, lands.  This time things are more critical.  The rainforest has always been considered the lungs of this planet, a belt of green that helps control the planets changing climate, providing us with oxygen and now it’s burning away as I type.  I’m worlds away up here in Canada but that is the mistake, to believe that what we do in another place doesn’t impact the entire planet.

You likely heard and if you haven’t then I’ve no problem being the person to explain why this is happening!  GREED mostly, money, corruption, power and specifically in the amazon …… Animal Agriculture!  The food on your plate is  fueling the flames.  This isn’t my opinion this is a fact and it’s one that if we don’t face right now, we will see more devastating consequences in the not so distant future.

This isn’t our first crisis, the bees have been dying by the millions for and without them we are in trouble, the water is full of plastic, without the oceans we are in trouble.  It’s so hard because everytime we turn around we see the devastation that is happening to earth all around us and it’s hard not to feel hopeless and give up, Swaha!  But you can’t, please, you must not turn away from this, you must act in a way that aligns with healing the earth.

Did you know that there’s a law in Brazil that if  you buy property there you must have livestock on your land, you must raise cattle?  The demand for meat, (although thankfully the Beyond Meat products have helped people choose plants over animals more)  has risen not decreased.  The fact is we can not sustain animal agriculture, we can’t!

Here’s a look at the current situation in Brazil – https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49433767. Glad to see many countries including Canada releasing funds at the G7 Summit to help with fighting the fires.

What’s causing the fires? 

The Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam) has stated the recent increase in the number of fires in the Amazon is directly related to deliberate deforestation.

While the exact scale of deforestation in the rainforest will only be certain when 2019 figures are published at the end of the year, preliminary data suggests a significant rise.

The National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) tracks suspected deforestation in real-time using satellite data, sending out alerts to flag areas that may have been cleared.

Over 10,000 alerts were sent out in July alone.

Deforestation was 278% higher in July 2019 than in July 2018

The resources it takes to make one burger is outstanding and deeply concerning.  It takes 18,000 Gallons of water to raise 1 pound of beef, that 100 days of showers, this is about the same for pork and poultry by the way, so choosing white meat over read isn’t really going to help here.

I also understand that in certain situations ingesting animal products are believed to be a positive addition to one’s health.  This is more rare than most people believe and many doctors are not recommending the removal of animal products due to their counter-productive impacts on health.  High cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and many more concerns can have a direct correlation on what you are feeding your body and the formation of disease, that is undeniable!

What is undeniable is that most people want to continue to eat for flavour, texture, experience, likes and disregard any direct connection to disease until something goes really wrong then maybe they start to consider their diet.  But for many reasons, cultural, socio-economical, personal believes many people seem to feel that having meat everyday at every meal is not a problem.  Maybe you get away with that when it comes to your health based on genetics or whatever but you need to understand that those choices are what started these fires to begin with.

Like many activists, i’m tired of wondering why people are not changing, posting things to at least get you curious about what you can do to help, the answer is….. stop buying meat and dairy.  That is the single most impactful thing you can do today, this is more important than your thoughts and prayers and maybe even monetary donations.  Don’t shoot the messenger, or direct your anger about someone questioning your eating habits!  This is not just my personal opinion, this is based on knowledge and  devastating outcomes to our planet because of the demand for meat.

I don’t think I am better or higher than any other person.  I became a vegetarian at 15 years old and I believe I was born that way.  Cutting out meat wasn’t a punishment for me at all.  When I got into yoga and learned about ahimsa I connected strongly to the concept of not harming others/animals.  I didn’t go vegan until many years later because “I loved cheese” (if I had a dollar for everytime I heard someone say that…. well you get the point.”  I get that too cheeze is almost as addictive as cocaine and you can dive into why you might feel that way and I’m certain you may be shocked to find out the real reason you feel that way about cheeze.

Ok here, check this out –

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpellmanrowland/2017/06/26/cheese-addiction/#4582bc663583

“I just LOVE cheese so so so much!”

One book changed that for me and I read it a long time ago,  Kris Carr’s book called My Crazy Sexy Diet that came after her TV show My Crazy Sexy Cancer.  Her book did it for me and I’ve never looked back.  Here’s a link if you want to pick one up. – https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/crazy-sexy-diet-eat-your/9780762777938-item.html?ikwid=Kris+Carr&ikwsec=Home&ikwidx=0

From my own health experience I feel great living on a gluten free (mostly) plant based diet.  Dairy caused me so many health issues that I denied for a long time.  One of the biggest ones was asthma.  My lungs always felt tight and it was always hard to breath.  A wine and cheese party had the power to send me to the ER with a serious asthma attack.  Once I cut out dairy, all my breathing issues cleared up.  I know I would not want to hear or act on that back in my “I love cheese days,” but it was undeniable given I haven’t needed and asthma puffer both ventolin and the steroid one since I went plant-based.

The personal story is to offer the other side here.  I feel better, I am healthier than I’ve ever been in my life and I feel that they way I live matters to this planet of ours.  I want to make this a better place for us and please please please for our kids!  Can you imagine what it will be like in 10, 20 or 30 years from now?

We must take action in the direction to stop the demand for animal products, today!

Although, I don’t think it’s great to be addicted to our stuff, buying things we don’t need, hoarding or deepening the roots of addiction by the constant desire to shop on-line, I do believe that we are meant to express ourselves in our own unique way.

I’ve had many “styles” in my life.  In high school I had an emo-thing that morphed into a grunge thing, that turned into a skater thing, I won’t mention my almost non-existent bar attire back in my early days.   I even had a “Yoga” style!  For many years I was rocking fancy bindi’s, all the om’s, tie dyed yoga pants and that was my look.

Mostly, I still am in the yoga clothes and my style is pretty, casual and comfy.  I don’t know if it will or when it will transform into something else but for now, I can say I am comfortable in my own skin, which is far more meaningful and important to me than keeping up with any style trends.

The body-suit with snaps in the crotch are back….. and I am not rocking that, no way.  It wasn’t comfortable in high school and I am pretty confident it wouldn’t be today either.  

There are many underlying yoga philosophies that refer to the physical body in different ways.  In one of the school’s the body is seen as inferior to the spirit, it’s a lazy, dying, sac of pus and bones….. really?

In another view, because the body is forever changing it means, it isn’t real at all, a total illusion, a misperception in your thinking, all part of Maya, the grand illusion.

There are renunciate paths where you renounce all your worldly goods and in no way differentiate yourself from others, like you wear all the same clothes, in the same colour as everyone around you.  You wear nothing to make you unique.

I think when I was first introduced to tantra, so many of the teachings finally felt authentique to me and … well right.  Our body isn’t a problem, or less than, or inferior, or a dying sac of yuk, but rather the God or Goddess embodied.  We are all unique and the we are also same.  Think of humanity as one giant mirror smashed into 7 billion sparkly pieces, you are one of the those unique sparkly pieces.

In this way, we are encouraged to adorn ourselves with nice things, wearing jewellery and unique clothing styles, make us even more beautiful.  We can stand proud and tall to be in the embodied life as a divine being.  We can embrace our changing and aging bodies not as a punishment but as a badge of living life fully, scars, and all.

That totally resonated with me.

I still keep things simple, I am attracted to certain colours, like pink and blue, unicorn colours, and I love jewellery that has sacred symbols and crystals.  I am in love with my recent purchases of my Rocking Vibe –  Inferno Gold necklace, you can see it here – https://rockingvibe.com/collections/short-minimal-necklaces/products/inferno-gold

and my Super Sparkly, Soul Sparkle Choker in Rose – check it – https://rockingvibe.com/products/soul-sparkle-choker-rose

I wanted to get these two piece to honour my womanhood, my journey and my month!  May is both Mother’s Day and my birthday so it was perfect.

Never let someone take away your sparkle and force you to fit in.  There has never been a person exactly like you on this earth and their will never be again a “you.”  So adorn, dress up, get your hair and nails done (non-toxic is best of course), take care of your skin, by clothes that make you feel happy, sexy, powerful, buy the jewellery that you love because all of it is how we adorn the Goddess, that we are.

Much Love,

Happy Mothers Day to the Mom’s of the world, including the fur baby ones.

Mindy

Over the years many people have told me that they were interested in a home practice and wondered how to begin doing that.  My answer is “yes its where the real, deep, potent stuff is.”  and in the next breathe I caution that you need to have some yoga experience first of course.

I LOVE my home practice.  I’m so lucky that we have a room in our home dedicated as a yoga space, ok some toys in there too, but it’s an open space, with my alter and murties, mats, props, blankets, straps, bolsters, windows and view of sky and trees.  It’s magical really.  I practice almost daily, lately I’ve had an interesting twist to my home practice my Husband and I have been doing yoga together, most nights and its great.  The practice, however, is more gentle which I enjoy too but my body needs a strong practice, I love inversions, arm balances, and experimenting with new modifications of poses.

I have a YogaGlo account and use it frequently.  If you are not sure what it is there is a free 15-day trial you can sign up for here…   https://www.yogaglo.com/register    

The cost is about what a studio drop-in class costs and the teachers are truly awesome.

I also love Bruce Bowditch’s books as a visual guide.  You can pick what level or type of practice. I often put on some yoga tunes and follow along.

http://bruce-bowditch.com/store/

Other days I ask my body what I need and after years of training, teaching, and practicing I can create a sequence on the fly that fits my needs.  I often think backward here, what poses have a not done in a while?  What poses have I been avoiding?  What poses are not my fav?  Then I know there’s something there for me to do some work on.

With a home practice, you can run or get distracted…. umm no you can and some days its far to easy,  I need to do laundry, check emails, blah blah blah, so with time and devotion you learn that nothing is worth disturbing your practice time and those moments when you are about to give in to the distraction are often when you feel the deep squeeze of truth about to be revealed or accepted.  It’s best to stay put, soften breath, and be present.

Other times, the call of kula is what I need, community, heart connection, yogi friends, an inviting and safe studio, with great teachers.  I always learn something when I go to a class, even if the teacher is brand spanking new, they will always say something that gets my heart and gets me ruminating, which I love.  I am always a yoga student first so that means I am in a space of receiving and openness, it doesn’t work for me any other way, even when I am actually the teacher.

The bottom line… just practice yoga.

Namaste & peace,

Mindy

Diving into yoga on all levels has been a major part of my life for 14 years. I have explored various yoga philosophies, schools of thought, and styles of yoga, how yoga helps with stress and dis-ease, various meditation techniques, pranayama techniques, cleanses, Ayurveda, anatomy, therapeutics, and more.

I enjoy going deep into the information even if it is just a repeat as it helps my brain make sense of some of it. Some of it I read and I have no idea what it’s about but I am still interested. I didn’t understand when I started yoga how much other stuff came with the practice, so much more than a downward dog pose.

After all these years I am only more intrigued. I intent to go to India to study but not yet and not with just anyone it will be an opportunity to immerse into yoga at it’s roots. I have no interest in doing a tourist trip or attending an ashram that caters to Westerners’ s flocking over for yoga teacher training immersions, just not my thing. I do want to understand more about the Hindu culture and how various ritual practices are tied to yoga.

I have little experience with this side of yoga but of the few traditional rituals I have attended I am more than a little intrigued to know more. Each one of us practice daily rituals but one of the major differences is that most of us are doing them with no mindful fullness at all, with no gratitude or connection to something more, it’s just daily, necessary body maintenance.

Recently, I wrapped up my 7^th Yoga Teacher Training and sometimes there are just these moments that stick out from the other moments that really change how you see things or how you understand things. This one moment where a slight change of words, changes the meaning.

My understanding of Advaita Vedanta is that there is only one reality that we work with and everything else falls into the realm of illusion or maya.

This means that the only thing that is truly real is spirit and that everything else is “unreal,” a misunderstanding, and illusion and that our goal in life is to figure that out and to come back to this understanding. When we don’t get it we will suffer and the way out of the suffering is through remembering this, only Spirit is real and anything that changes and is matter, is a figment of the mind.

I have never been able to understand this, at the moment I am sitting on an airplane, bumping along through the air at high speeds, typing these words on my computer with a plane full of other people.   The idea that the plane is an illusion doesn’t jive with me. The idea that I am not my body, while I sit here and can feel every toe, finger, joint, muscle and I’m using my brain and senses , don’t resonate with truth to me. The idea that I am not my emotions, seems far fetched since I can feel a whole bunch of them right now in this very moment and since waking up I’ve likely touched on at least 100 or more different emotions. To tell me they are not real makes no sense and I question the validity of teaching people they are not their bodies, their thoughts, their emotions.

During the training this slight shift of wording hit me like a bomb and opened me up to a new and beautiful understanding of all of this. In yoga class, I have heard teachers say these very phrases “You are not your body, you are not your emotions, you are not your thoughts” but if we change this a little bit all of the sudden my heart lights up as if it was plugged into a powerful source of truth. What if we are MORE than our bodies, MORE than our thoughts, MORE than our emotions? What if we are MORE than we ever thought we were?

Perhaps some people that study in the Vedanta lineages of yoga have already come to that understanding and even mean that when they repeat or teach “I am not my body,” especially when it is sore , tight, falling apart, broken, failing but I haven’t heard a teacher imply that I am more than that but that it’s a flaw in my awareness, that I am only spirit and nothing more.

How liberating to know that you are more than just this aging body, the negative thoughts, the feelings of guilt, shame, sadness, anger, fear.   I am in love with this new understanding that I truly felt I was gifted to know, by a shakitpat like experience, as if the universe hit me in the head but what if it was this way, does that help? It brings me more peace and joy to see it in this light.

There is so much to be said about immersing yourself in yoga for 5 days at a time, to meditate with a group of people everyday, to breath together, to feel together, to laugh together, to grow together, to support each other as we expand our awareness of our own bodies or come to terms with injuries, chronic pain, people that have lost a child or a friend or a partner, people that are looking for community and connection in a time when it feels like any progress on the path of light was abolished with the recent election in the US.

Now I am filled with the idea that we are all MORE, we are more than we every thought we were and we get to use that information for our own awakening so that it helps each day for us to connect to MORE, even through the most simple, mundane rituals we all have. That we make each day rich with this understanding of being more and that we can use all of our experience to feel and experience the full spectrum that life has to offer us every day rather than sleep our way through life or feel that everything that is matter is an illusion of your mind (although at times that is also true, and valid, and important but not always).

You are MORE, much more,

xo

Mindy

My Soul Warming weekend is coming up next weekend at Wholistic Hall.  I really wanted to create an event smack dab in the dreary, cold, Winter months for the yoga community to come together for an event that will cultivate growth, inspiration, light, love and community connection.

Each day will be a blend of asana combined with anatomy lessons, assists to help softly deepen the pose or guide the direction of energy in the pose, each day will also bring long, deep savasanas, pranayama (breath work to increase and balance one’s energy), meditations, inspiring messages or poems and on Sunday practicing yoga with essential oils (my absolute favourite).

Students can be of any level to come for the weekend.  My role as the guide on this journey is to provide the appropriate amount of challenge for each student will allowing people to expand but also to honour each persons boundaries and limitations as well.  Please touch base with me before the event if you have a particular injury that may limit your practice and also that I can be there to help you in certain postures to ensure no further damage occurs.

There is enough time each day to grab some lunch, take in a walk or grab a tea before the afternoon sessions begin.

The cost is $140 plus tax for the weekend.  You can also join for the day or individual sessions. The hours attended count toward continuing credits through Yoga Alliance, please indicate that you would like a certificate for the weekend so I can provide you with one.  If you wish to pay cash please bring the exact amount to the event.

If you haven’t been to the Hall the trek up to the third floor is so worth it.  Candice has created a lovely space for practice.  Parking is a bit tricky so give yourself a bit of extra time.  There is a lot right behind the studio off of Queens that is reasonable and you can cut through at Spaghetti Eddies walkway, then take a right.  It is upstairs from David’s bistro.   If it’s your first time at Wholistic Hall please sign at waiver at the desk when you get there.

I am so excited to have the time to be in yoga with such a dynamic group of people.  There are just a couple spots left if you wish to attend you can sign up  at the bottom of my website under events and you can also pay on line as well.  If you wish to do an etransfer please send it to mindy.menard@yahoo.com.

Till then peace, harmony and light,

Mindy