My Bikram Tattoo Collection

Yep. I admit it. I have a collection of Bikram tattoos all over my body. I bet you do to if you’ve been practicing for awhile. If not, then this post will give you something to look forward to. It started a couple of weeks ago when I looked down at my sad, scabby knees (don’t worry. i am not including pictures). My knees were always and forever scabby looking, it seemed, since last summer when I tried to perfect mountain pose. If you looked at the video, you will see that mountain requires you to balance on both knees.

Well, mountain is very, very hard. It looks simple on the surface, but it isn’t. Go ahead. Try it. I’ll wait.

See? What’d I tell you?

Mountain is worth nine points in competition if you can pull it off. I feel in love with mountain right away and spent all of last summer working on it. I also worked on short person (note: the way this posture is shown on the video is not how I understand it to be performed. however, the guy shows a great warm-up, and you get the gist). So my knees got all banged up last year between May-November, and they are still banged up to this day.

I was complaining to Mark recently how my knees don’t seem to heal and I’m tired of how they look. He examined them, informed me I had callouses, and that it was a result of constantly trying to do yoga poses that require me to balance on me knees. Ok – makes sense. His advice, and I quote, “If you would stop going down on your knees everyday then you wouldn’t have this problem.”

Uh-huh. Thanks for that advice…..Are you hearing yourself over there?

But rather than refer to this as the problem I have from constantly getting down on my knees, a lovely Yoga Buddy proclaimed them to be Bikram Tattoos. I love that. I think it’s super fitting.

Recently, I gathered around with a couple other Yoga Buddies, and we shared our Bikram Tattoos with each other. They included:

(a) Our knees. Everyone has at least one tattoo on their knee. Most have one on both.

(b) underneath our chins (probably from locust or any other time we might be putting our chins on the floor)

(c) various fingers, usually a knuckle

Where are your Bikram Tattoos?

 

 

Recipe of the Week: Polenta Fries

When I first read about polenta fries, I was intrigued but confused. I could not figure out what to serve with them! I mean, if you are not a vegetarian or a vegan, I am sure you could find a lovely meat dish to pair. But since I am a vegetarian/vegan hybrid, I did not have that option. So for awhile I did nothing.

Then, one day the light bulb went off in my head. Duh! Polenta fries was the reason I dragged Teenie Yogini to a particular restaurant during our yoga party back in March. Polenta fries was all I had for dinner that night. They are delicious if you cover them in blue cheese dressing (which I did so this dish is vegetarian).

The website for the dish will not give you grand amounts of information. I use Mark Bittman’s recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, but you can also find it here. I left out the butter and cheese for this. I suggest you leave out the cheese because you will be frying the polenta later. I used almond milk in place of whole milk. I have made polenta with whole milk plenty of times. This was my first time using almond milk, and I did a 1:1 substitution. It worked just fine.

So make your polenta, get it in a dish, and let it cool in the fridge. I had my polenta in the fridge by 2:00.

I couldn’t get the polenta out of the pan so I decided to cut it out. This worked fine. I just cut it into strips and sized my fries how I wanted them. I got my frying pan going and tossed them in.

Now, side note here, the day before all this I made blue cheese dressing. I did not use the recipe I linked to. I put it here as a suggestion. I used a recipe from an old issue of Cook’s Country. It’s an amazing recipe, but it doesn’t come free. Making blue cheese dressing takes 5-10 minutes and is way more delicious than anything you will have from a pre-made bottle. I suggest making it the night before. It tends to taste better on Day 2, and it will hold for a week (in my opinion, just make your salad dressings at home. i have never regretted this).

Back to the fries. They were a bit challenging in the pan. We had problems with them sticking. I eventually turned the whole thing over to Mark as he was having better luck than me. We think you might want to use a non-stick pan if you have one. We don’t have any.

That said, in the end the fries turned out great! Some got a little messed up, but I think that’s to be expected. I slathered my fries with blue cheese and chowed down. If this is not enough for you, consider having a salad alongside.

Polenta Fries Slathered in Blue Cheese

 

Favorite Things: Yogi Bagi

Let’s hear it up for the yogi bagi!!!!. I went to class a couple of weeks ago and found my studio owner was putting out something that was not yoga clothing. It turned out to by yogi bagi.

My fun yogi bagi.

The idea behind the yogi bagi is simple. It’s for putting our nasty clothes in after class. The bag is lined and can go in the washer (I believe it’s supposed to lay flat to dry). No more having to use plastic bags, and it looks way cuter. There are several designs. I took the striped one. Since the yogi bagi is not yoga clothing (important distinction), I could purchase it. Yogi Bagi does not interfere with my self-imposed ban on yoga clothes that is currently going on.

Now, I’m not one who normally showers and changes clothes at the studio. I usually come home and do all that. BUT, there are days (once or twice a week) when I do find myself showering at the studio. This bag is perfect, and I swear your clothes do not stink nearly as bad if it takes you awhile to get home and wash them. At least it seemed that way to me.

My studio sold this one for 15.00. It’s a fine price for what it is, and even if I don’t use it often, I am super happy to have it when I need it.

 

Gifts Fit for a Yogi

What do you get for a yogi when it’s birthday time or you just want to give your bestest yogi a cool present? If you’re reading this, you likely are a yogi so you can probably figure it out on your own. In that case, pass this post on to the non-yogis in your life.

I started thinking about gifts for yogis in the last couple of weeks because I have found myself the reciepent of some gifts (just for the sake of, “Here! I think you should have this), and I noticed that the kinds of gifts I get as a yogi are different than the ones I got when I was not a yogi.

Here’s what I have recently been gifted over the last three weeks:

(a) a yoga t-shirt from a non-Bikram studio, but where a friend of mine practices (I love collecting and wearing random yoga shirts!)

(b) a Bikram yoga tank top

(c) a bag of kale

(d) more kale, plus some carrots, lettuce, and strawberries

You can’t go wrong when you give a yogi kale, people. You just can’t. There are so many ways we know how to use it. Am I right?

What are interesting gifts you’ve gotten since you started your practice? What are gifts you’ve given to other yogis? I always hand out hydro flasks.

So This Buddha Walks Into a Bar See….

Sounds like the start of a joke, right? A Buddha walks into a bar, and, wait a minute….Buddha wouldn’t walk into a bar, right? Buddists don’t drink alcohol, right?

Well, maybe yes and maybe no. And what’s all this stuff about Buddha’s and drinking got to do with Bikram Yoga anyways?

A lot. That’s what.

Buddha Walks Into a Bar by Lodro Rinzler is, on the one hand, a book about Buddhism. On the other hand, it’s not a book that tries to turn you into a buddhist or even assumes you are one. What Rinzler does is show you how to take principles of buddhism, like compassion, and apply them in everyday life. What do the principles of Buddhism look like when applied to our typical lives? THAT’S what this book will help you do.

So while Rinzler’s book has a lot to offer us in terms of thinking about how we live our everyday lives, it also offers us much to think about in terms of how we practice our yoga. This means how we practice our yoga on our mats as well as how we practice and live our yogi lives in relation to our yoga community and our communities at large.

One of my favorite take aways from Rinzler’s book is what he calls, “Not Saying No.” Not saying no is about applying the principle of compassion to our everyday lives. In the book, Rinzler challenges us to take one day, just one simple day, to not just say no when someone asks something of us. He notes this does not have to be complicated.

Let’s Be Less Like This

When I read about the not saying no day, I thought of something simple I had engaged in before reading Rinzler’s book. I was on my way into my office building when a blind woman, with a service dog, stopped me. In her hand, she held a tied up bag of poop. She could not find the garbage can. Could I show her?

Well, the garbage can was not conviently located. So I took the bag and threw it away for her. “I have dogs of my own,” I explained. “It’s not a big deal. I do this sort of thing ALL the time.”

See? Not that complicated.

But I wasn’t down with a day of not saying no. For whatever reason, I gravitated towards this challenge and have tried to make it a general life practice. Just today, I got the chance to do it again.

I was driving home on a two lane road. My lane had a school bus in front of it. We were slowing down and getting backed up as you do in this situation. Well, eventually I came upon a car in the on-coming direction that was trying to make a left turn across traffic and was getting nowhere. As a result, cars were getting backed up behind her.

My first thought was, “That sucks. There’s a line of cars in front of me, and a line in back of me, and that poor woman is going to be waiting forever and…” Wait. Who said I had to just drive on by? I wasn’t having an emergency. My lane wasn’t getting anywhere anytime soon. So I stopped and waved her on. Cleared that issue up. Got one lane moving again. Simple.

Obviously, and Rinzler points this out with a very funny example, you don’t just stand up and said, “YES!” to everything that comes your way. Use common sense. His point is to get us “…pushing the envelope slightly in terms of being open and compassionate,” (pg. 72). And while I have given examples that happened off the mat, I think you can see this applies on the mat as well. We just have to be open to seeing them and responding.

Read the book and see what you think. See how it challenges you in the ways you engage with your life. Better yet, read the book AND come chat with Mr. Rinzler himself in our July twitter chat. He’ll be with us on Sunday, July 7th from 8:00-8:30 pm EST. It will be an opportunity not to miss. And we will likely leave looking more like this:

Maybe slighlty loopy, but happy with who we are

Doubles Friday Fun!

Last Friday my studio had an official double days. I thought it was a great idea. Over the course ofthe day (6:00, 9:00,12:00 and 4:30) about 10 people did a double. After the 4:30 class there was a little party at the Greek restaurant next door. It was fun!

The day was advertised via the studio’s FB page, twitter, and a flyer on the wall. The flyer allowed you to sign up. I think it’s great to show people how many of us (and who) is doing the double. I think we had two people participate that had never done one before. But anyways, if you’d never done a double before and were interested this let you see who was going to be doing it right there along with you. You didn’t have to do it alone. No matter what class you went to on Friday, there was at least one other person in there who was participating.

For me, my double this time was far better than last time. My first class was actually the most difficult. I woke up with a stuffed up nose and some allergy issues. I was only breathing out of one nostril. Usually this clears up within the first 10 minutes of class, but not on this day. For class #1, I was only able to breathe out of one nostril for most of the standing series. This meant I was not getting enough oxygen. I got a bit dizzy and didn’t feel so good. Someone later told me it was insanely hot in the room. I won’t say how hot it supposedly was because for all I know it was a rumor. Let’s just go with, “Holy crap. Really?”

Side Note: My idea of gossip is what the actual temperature/humidity levels were in a yoga room on a given day. Is my life interesting or what?

By my second class my breathing was normal, and I did not have any major issues. I still didn’t do camel though. I did do everything else. I had an awesome standing head to knee in class #2. I thought I was going to fall, but I held on and got it solid. I came out with control like I’m supposed to. Hooray! I also had some great standing bows on both sides.

Now I have to decide when I’m doing my next double. My studio is going to do an official doubles day each month I think, but I’m doing one a week until August. Anyone out there doing a double this week? If not, want to?

 

Recipe of the Week: Onion Quinoa Bites

I am suddenly finding myself addicted to quinoa, and these onion quiona bites deliver! For whatever reason, my early encounters with quinoa were not positive. However, I have hung in there and have been open to trying various quinoa dishes. I’m glad I did! Turns out, quinoa is supper yummy (I suspect y’all already knew this).

This recipe can be made vegetarian or vegan. You can help yourself out a bit by making the quinoa in advanced. The recipe calls for two cups of cooked quinoa (at least that’s how I read it), but it needs to cool before you can start making them into little patties and bites. If it’s just two people, I could cut it down to one cup of cooked quinoa. We had more than we needed.

You could likely do this recipe up until the point where you toss the bites in the pan. I suspect, but I cannot say for sure, that if you make the bites and keep them covered you could just pick up with cooking them the next day. Note though that when I made this recipe I used the flax seed substitute and not eggs. This suggestion may not be a good one if you use eggs.

And while I’m at it, I appreciated the author’s attention about the flax seed egg substitute. I had never done this before, but it worked out fine. I did have to grind the seeds, but we have a grinder in the house already. These are minor details but important. You don’t want to get caught off guard by something small once you get into this!

The bites are easy to make. It really just requires some hanging out in the kitchen. Hanging out while the quinoa cooks and hanging out while the bites themselves cook in the pan. Mark made a great vegan ranch dressing to dip these in. I will nail him down on the recipe and get it posted soon! These go well with something to dip them in so use your favorite dip.

The bites were enough for me to make a meal from. Mark added a salad. I am not sure how well these would save, but we didn’t have any leftovers!

Eat up!