Tag Archives: yoga district

Blog Post for Yoga District’s Blog

NotForgotten

“Nothing in this shelter makes more sense, makes me understand my purpose more, than to kill bugs on a homeless man’s flesh, to dress him well in donated, cast-off clothes, to see him the next day laughing besides a burning barrel.” Nick Flynn in Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
If home is where the heart is, what happens when you don’t have a home? Well…you are not the heart-less one; if we don’t offer our hearts to you, we are. Having a home is so central to one’s existence–in a practical sense but even more so in an emotional sense. Root-less, place-less…and love-less…recognition-less. 
It’s almost as though having no address condemns you to oblivion; dooms you to live in the shadows, unable to be located. Lost… The homeless are ubiquitous, yet utterly invisible to us, wraith-like as they present themselves to us out of the peripheries of life we choose to pretend doesn’t exist. “That’s someone else’s lot; not mine.”
The vent that his father sleeps on in the winter is no less a prison because it has no walls: “The blower is a room of heat with no walls. My father stands in this room, an invisible man in an invisible room in an invisible city.” He has “plenty of places to go, but no place to be.”
Nick Flynn’s metaphor of standing in one place, if you are lost, so you may be found is especially poignant when he adds, “but they never tell you what to do if both of you are lost, and you both end up in the same place, waiting.” He continues, “I see no end to being lost. It isn’t a station you reach but just the general state of going down.”
SOME seeks to help people, at least temporarily, even if for one night, be visible…be seen…be humanized…and be welcomed. This is why I am teaching a benefit class for them. When I was little, I read “The Little Match Girl” by Hans Christian Andersen and it always stayed with me. A man in Dupont Circle sometimes holds a up a sign,”Please help. You could be in my shoes one day.” He is right.
My dearly-beloved friend Jeffrey Prosser (and the DJ for Yoga District’s NYE class in 2013) recently left us, far too soon. He always spared some change…and some heart. I want to honor his memory and help SOME continue their work so no one stays lost…or forgotten.

Post on Veganism for Yoga District’s Blog

My post on veganism

“Eat socially. And I don’t mean eat with other people necessarily, but rather eat with other people in mind. When we make decision as to what to eat, it impacts a lot of people. And of course the environment, which impacts us all. If we choose to eat food that has taken less land, water, and fossil fuel to create, and produces less C02e, it will be better for us all. So plants. Eat plants.”–Brendan Brazier

If every American dropped one serving of chicken per week from their diet, it would save the same amount of CO2 emissions as taking 500,000 cars off the road.

Chickens, turkeys, pigs and cows are collectively the largest producer of methane in the U.S.

It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat.

1 pound of wheat takes 25 gallons.

Raising animals for food uses 30 per cent of the Earth’s land mass… that’s about the same size as Asia!

Source: Infographics by The Mindful Word

The statistics go on and on, but really…let’s talk about being a vegan. Let’s *really* talk about it! The prevailing view people have of vegans is that we are are proselytizing lot, perching on some sort of a moral high ground of sanctimoniousness and telling everyone who will listen of our impossible-to-please palates. Or that we are sitting there constantly wondering what we *can* eat…because there is nothing for us to eat.

They might even call us vegangelicals! (ha, here I go with the puns again). The truth is that’s one really broken stereotype. So is that the one that you can’t take us out to dinner anywhere. Don’t worry–we play surprisingly well with others (although, don’t show up at said dinner in a fur coat. We will have problems!)

Let me share a little bit about my gastronomical journey. I grew up eating meat–I am Bulgarian, what did you think!? But I also grew up on a farm, where I saw what it takes to put that meat on a plate and where the animals were always treated with thoughtfulness and care. I never had any illusions about exactly what happens to an animal before he/she provides sustenance to you. One day when I was in my 20s, I decided to go vegetarian just on a whim, wanting to “minimize, downsize, and simplify.” The month I had given myself as a trial period quickly passed and eating meat was no longer something I had any desire to do. Transitioning was easy–I had always done a lot of cooking and I simply cooked all of my meals, not being concerned at all about what I could and could not find in the store. Fast forward several years–now let me preface this by saying that no, I am not so naive that I make lifestyle choices based upon the viewing of a documentary, I assure you. But watchingEarthlings, easily the most violent and grotesque movie I have ever seen (yes, it trumps Requiem For Dream in that department), made me so violently ill that I stopped eating dairy. Now, do I have an issue with this documentary? Oh, most definitely! It is exploitative, biased, and…runs like a snuff film. Yet, did it turn me away from eating dairy? Was it my Requiem For An Animal Product Diet, if you will? Sure.

There are so many reasons to transition to a vegan diet–ethical, animal right-based, environmental, health, cost-saving and you will find the people who are vegans espouse the very spectrum of these reasons. There is no “vegan” type. If there is anything that is most definitely true about it, it is that it certainly is a *mindful* way of eating, even on the most literal, basic level. But moving beyond that, I feel that rather than getting bogged down on whether your bread contains honey, veganism is about switching off your auto pilot when it comes to what you put inside your body. It’s about considering how you *can* make a difference on a global scale with your very “small” personal choices.

Veganism is not about a Draconian, impossible-to-follow lifestyle of privilege and entitlement. PETA will not come knocking on your door if you ate an egg and fell off the vegan wagon once (although, I sure hope it was a cage-free happy chicken, for your sake!)

To me, it’s a true return to our roots. Literally. For eons, our ancestors have been eating plants, nuts, and berries (Paleo diet converts, if you want to argue this, come to my workshop! I will do my best to disabuse you of our ancestors as meat eaters myth :). Finding those plants made us grow socially–it taught us to cooperate, to spend more time together, to watch out for each other. This is why veganism is often called the “kind diet.” It’s about being kind to your tummy, being kind to all of kind, not just our fellow Sapiens.

Food for thought, no?

vegan 1011 Veganism for Beveganers: Why a Plant Based Diet IS For You

If you’re interested in adopting a plant-based diet, join Toni on Saturday, April 25 at Yoga District 14th Street for our two hour Vegan for Beveganers workshop (in honor of Earth Day!).

Yoga District Blog Post: Building Skills and Community

My post for the Yoga District Blog: Building Skills and Community, the For the Teachers, By the Teachers Series

Do you know the origin of the expression “ships that pass in the night?” Neither did I, but it is apparently from a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem entitled Tales of a Wayside Inn:

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

Teaching yoga can be a lot like that. Teacher training is a communal experience — you bond with your cohort in lasting ways. But once you are a newly-hatched yoga teacher, still finding your wings and feet, you sort of have to look around to find the protective canopy of a momma bird’s wings. Sure, all of your teachers have their own practice and, in turn, their own teachers, but teaching can be an incredibly (and oddly so) solitary endeavor. Sometimes all you hear is your own voice . . . and that can be disorienting. Building community becomes something that requires its own investment of time — reaching out to your fellow teachers, seeking out further education.

Yoga District is the only studio I practice at that not only understands that but does something about it. No other studio where I have been is so committed to the growth of its members, student and teacher alike. And no other place understands that the teachers are still students themselves.

The “For Teachers, By Teachers” series of workshops allows us to not only meet fellow teachers, laugh and share in our general foibles, but most importantly, learn. If you are wondering how that is different from going to a traditional workshop or attending continuing education classes, my response to you would be that the teachers teaching these workshops are selflessly offering their time and knowledge just so our community can stay vibrant and tight-knit — a tough thing to find in the increasingly transaction-oriented and transitory city of Washington, DC.

These workshops are but an example of Yoga District’s general ethos of community and “yoga for the people, by the people”-ness (yes, I realize this is not a word). They are not lectures where we are being talked at — we do, we share, we discuss, we bring up questions from our experiences. That is what makes them fundamentally different from going on a retreat with a stranger/superstar yoga teacher. To me, they are like a Sunday hangout with family.

I have now had the pleasure of attending two of these workshops: the first on hands-on assisting with Ros and the second one on prenatal yoga with Brittany. Both were incredibly, incredibly helpful.

In the hands-on assisting and adjusting workshop, we learned not only the specific adjusts for each pose but also more subtle information such as how to respond to students’ responses to these adjusts and assists. How is that for meta! The laying of the hands, so to speak, is an incredibly fraught process. Understanding cues and proper way to implement hands-on work is critical to making the process beneficial and comfortable for our students.

The second workshop on prenatal yoga was equally illuminating. Brittany even brought along a little fabric pelvis and a fabric baby doll to illustrate all the changes that take place in a woman’s body and make us understand why certain poses are not optimal for pregnant ladies. For example, did you know that the hormone relaxin, which allows the uterus to expand, also softens connective tissue, putting women are risk for hyperextending through joints and causing other joint injuries (so being newly able to get into splits is not always a good thing!). From the second trimester on — when the center of gravity really starts to shift — most of the balancing poses are best done next to a wall for support so as to eliminate the risk of injury to the baby as well as the Mom. Steering clear of asanas that work on the central abdominals is also recommended.

These are just snippets of everything that was shared in these workshops. It truly is a blessing to be a part of a community that works for the betterment of both its teachers and students — and does so without much fanfare and horn-tooting.

This is also another one of my posts.