Category: Healthy Living

Categories
Healthy Food

Foodie’s Detox Holiday Luncheon Japanese Style

Holiday luncheon hosted by a local Japanese cooking teacher was just so amazing. Amazing in that as stuffed as you are, you feel good NOT guilty about stuffing yourself with this quality food. Normally after stuffing yourself, how do you feel?  Fat and sick? You may suffer from various not-so-good feelings normally when you over-eat.  Not with this food with its detox benefits in mind. Her cooking really brings home the idea “Food as Medicine” . Fresh ingredients are locally sourced and organic; other less known ingredients with health benefits were imported from western/southern regions of Japan.

Here’s the link with few of the dishes served but will try to translate onto this site in the near future…

Among many dishes, one and only dessert she served appealed to me especially because there’s no place you can find this kind of healthier version of a traditional sweets anywhere in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley  – typical oshiruko is a very sweet red bean soup that has a mochi, fluffy white sweet rice dumpling floating in the bowl.

Oshiruko, when done right has sweetness that’s subtle and not over-powering.  It is a dessert dish you don’t have to feel badly about upon eating but rather, feel healthier, stronger and energized from it with no worries over counting calories.  You eat this dish slowly as it’s served hot – thus, it feels you up s l o w l y… Guilt-free!  Indeed, this dessert is so good for you.   Like this dessert dish, each and every dish she served had significant health benefits.  The most convincing proof ?

I feel GOOD … no, No, NO

I feel GREAT!

 

Categories
Healthy Living Yoga

Yang vs. Yin Yoga

We need both in this life of dualism. Our body is a beautiful microcosm – it’s cosmic within. We know so much through advances in medicine and science but even to Dr. Hinohara (refer back to my 10/5/2013 post), much is still shrouded in mystery.  Some may refer to our body as a refined machine to marvel but as a non-medical person, I am in awe of it as a temple that houses our divinity… at its peak, I am in awe of it and …as it withers and ages, I am in awe of it. Modern medicine is amazing but it does not reverse the clock. What can we do? We need to tend to it … lovingly. Just like my grandmother used to pray with seasonal offerings, we need to make an offering to our own alter… in my case, through yoga and other movements …to lift the spirits.  All things important to us, we have to care for them or they wither away and languish or even perish…

More on this later – just realized I am subbing a yin class tomorrow for a wonderful teacher. May I just say that when I sub, I am not a replacement – I am just a provider of another style, another guide, a facilitator for you to find or stay on course on your own path. Just like there are many sherpas on the Himalaya, the maps we share are the same but we may not take the same route… the trail and the terrain may look a bit different … so please don’t expect me to replicate the same blue-print of your regular teacher whose style is unique and irreplaceable.

I like to sub as with me, I like breath of fresh air and enjoy the change in the routines. I tend to always unroll my mat at the same place, I always order green tea soy latte with no syrup, I always like to watch certain shows, I always like to X Y and Z… we are all a creature of habit. To me, it’s like this:  Subbing allows both the teacher and students to experience another style, another personality …. another way – it’s a good thing. Also it means that the regular teacher entrusted this humble sub just there to please by sharing her practice  – Thank you Myra & Marcella! I know this yoga tribe to be filled with brilliant gems…you are both precious, like such gems.  Thank you for your trust (that I won’t do something crazy!).

At Judith Lasater’s advance-level teacher training, we talked about how we hate subbing because of EGO…some egos have a distaste for anything called a “substitute”. Seems to me, there’s a prejudice or a perception that a sub is less than or not as good – it’s that notion you got from your school-boy/girl days growing up where subs really were there just to do the very minimum to get by, most with little passion. Post school, we need to see it as an opportunity to learn another way or a chance to enjoy a breath of fresh air. Prejudice clouds perception – why not see it as an opportunity to gain freedom from self imposed entrapments.  It’s an opportunity to explore something new.  Be assured it is not a waste of your precious time – Anything “new” is good for your brain circuitry!  As for your nerves, maybe you will grow new synapses just by coming in contact with me, serving as a sub:) What a thought!  My teacher, Judith Lasater herself started from subbing while she raised 3 children. I respect her authenticity for teaching regularly only when she felt she was able to really give all to her students. Because that’s what it takes… ALL.

I resigned from teaching regularly Thursday evenings at a lovely community center with lovely people for reasons I don’t feel like disclosing.  Yesterday, I was asked at a studio from a well meaning lady, “when would you be teaching?” – while it was flattering, I felt the pressure. I might have said something about ahhh, figuring out the schedule, etc. blah, blah (read “excuses”)- I should have said, thank you – let me know what works for you and I will try my best to accommodate. I am sorry I didn’t. I hope to be at that place sooner than later.

See you tomorrow AM – I will focus on stomach/digestive system… our “gut” so that you can live more true to your “gut” feelings. Your physical state totally affects your emotional state of being.  It’s all connected.  Unclog & detox (more through foods we eat) your meridians and allow the prana to flow to all your vital organs – feel the flow.  It’s my “gut” feeling – Very important region in our body as we head into the holiday season when we get overloaded with To Do list that snowballs. Hope to relieve you a bit through the magic of yoga:)

 

 

Categories
Beautiful People Healthy Activities

Boys’ Voices

Boys’ voices undergo a change from about age 13 – it’s does not occur overnight but over time during puberty- in other words, it’s a process that coincides with becoming a teenager (gasp).  Their singing voice may all the sudden dry up, there will be fits and starts… their voice may crack…fade as it progressively becomes… lower… like … men’s.  If you do not sing, it’s subtle or gradual but if you sing… you are quite aware of the change that is inevitable. You may dread it; you may welcome it.

We don’t think about this but children’s voices, especially boys’ voices change so much, adults around them sometimes really miss that voice which represented that boy and his childhood… that of innocence, limitless exuberance… their voices were like angel’s.  It is a form of “loss” as we realize how we were attached to that angelic voice and took it for granted.  That voice is lost and it never comes back. It sounds dramatic but (nothing is dramatic in teen’s life) there’s a small “death” and then… “rebirth”.  When they start losing that “voice” that hits those angelic high notes, the boys themselves FEEL the loss of that ability to hit those high notes and feels the diminished “range” … and realize they cannot audition for those solo parts that used to come so easily…  Being boys, they may not be able to express how that feels.  They may turn on the “Falsetto” whenever those now unattainable notes are demanded of them.  Then their voices transform themselves into one of  Bass, Baritone or Tenor…Until their new voices develop, there’s an adjustment period that may be awkward or stressful or neither…  Some may even quit the choir, some may not care or be unaware (how’s that possible?); but with proper guidance, they go on to develop deeper, beautiful voices of men.

When it comes to boys’ choir, on an international level, Vienna Boys Choir (wonder if those angels are “retired” at age 13) comes to mind but in San Francisco Bay Area, there are many choirs in which Ragazzi Boys Choir, in particular stands out. Their UTube footages are minimal and not done with commercial purpose in mind so… not the best recorded sound quality (if only they had Libera’s sound/visual’s pros – and nothing like a Anglican cathedral acoustics!) so better catch them live or with their CDs… And speaking of boys choirs on UTube, here’s a group closest to Ragazzi I think…

http://youtu.be/5NYTnuAfFp8

Close your eyes and listen.  The value of this singing is made even greater when you realize that none of these boys on this video is probably able to sing like this anymore as their voices surely changed.  That’s the impermanent nature of life we talk about in Buddhist teachings.  Nothing is permanent and we all experience “loss” in our lives.  Loss of “that” voice, Loss of youth, loss of innocence, loss of health, loss of life – then we gain, gain wisdom, gain knowledge, gain perspectives, gain depth and …connections – there’s ageless timeless renewal and rebirth… That’s why we have to treasure the present and live in the present.  As well said, “In the Moment”. Today, here and now is so precious…Blink an eye and boys have transformed, from boys to men.  Poof, it’s like magic. Be Present.