Welcome to 2021! Whether it’s with a deep exhale, a sigh, or a groan (too much champagne last night, eh?), it’s time to welcome the opportunity of a brand-new year. And if you seek to deepen or rekindle your yoga practice, there is no better time than right now to develop and claim that intention for the year ahead.
This is one of my intentions as well. In 2020, I pulled away from my mat too much—perhaps due to a confluence of factors like COVID, the corporate job, and launching a studio, all while attempting to prioritize my family. In any case, I feel the gap everywhere from my hamstrings to my hippocampus, and it’s time to get back in the groove. My intention for 2021 is to return to as much of a daily practice as possible (and no, teaching time doesn’t count). Care to join me?
If so, let’s get cooking. Grab your mat from wherever it resides, whether that’s the place you left it after yesterday’s session or in a forgotten corner where it’s hosted the cat’s afternoon nap for the last several months. Then, map out your path. Setting a SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based) goal is important, as this will provide a clear game plan with no grey area or guesswork. So clarify the following questions for yourself:
1. Will you practice at home, or in a studio?
2. If you choose a studio, where can you go that is as safe as possible from a COVID-19 perspective, convenient to you and a fit for your yoga practice and personal culture?
3. If at home, will your sessions be self-guided, or will you utilize livestream or recorded instruction?
4. If you do choose virtual yoga, which studio or service will you use?
5. What is your financial budget?
Next, give it time. A 2009 study in the European Journal of Social Psychology indicated that it takes an average of 66 days for an activity to become a positive habit. The actual range in the study went as high as 254 days. So, the take-away here is to be patient and stick with it until those neural pathways start cooking on their own.
Finally, be gentle with yourself. If you don’t meet your goal on a given day or week, re-commit to doing so the next time. If you need rest, rest. Perhaps your practice on a given day simply involves several minutes of quiet, deep breathing. That, my friends, is yoga too. Being kind to yourself in all ways deepens your practice and meets a need that we all, universally, share in common. So listen to you, and abide in your guidance.
Ah, the poetic home-baked and house-fermented sourdough. I first tried it a few years ago, when we were living in South Florida. That time around I ended up with several bread bricks of golf ball density, a couple of edible loaves, and some nasty-looking starter in the back of my fridge.
But, as we say in the yoga world, practice makes progress. I went back to the drawing board, hit the cookwares store and even hired in some bread-baking guidebook big shots—master bakers Ken Forkish and Bryan Ford. With a lot of study, careful practice, the right tools (including the indispensable digital kitchen scale), and an amalgamation of guidance from these two Bread Badasses, I can now boast a truly bodacious boule.
While my original goal in starting my sourdough journey was, very simply, to bake Good Bread, what I didn’t expect was for the whole process to have a meditation-like effect. But there it was. By the end of “mixing day” I now consistently find myself tired, covered in flour, and relaxed. Disclaimer: the aforementioned calm did not flow freely during my bread-making education—there was actually a fair bit of swearing involved there, TBH. But ultimately, once the recipe works and muscle memory kicks in, it’s really not that surprising to find that there’s some zen in sourdough. Here’s why (at least in my world):
Single-Minded Focus. This process requires precision, no doubt about it. Ingredient ratios must be perfect, temperatures precise, and timing closely monitored. It’s not possible to “load it and leave it” like with a slow cooker. And so, just as in some types of meditation, we are asked to turn off our inner narrative in order to bring our attention simply to the bread (just like the breath).
A Feast for the Senses. Mindfulness is in part about coming back into the body and to the senses, and the baking process calls on each sense repeatedly. We must look for bubbles, rise, shape and other readiness cue in the dough, and must be able to know by sight when the baking process is complete. We smell the slightly sharp tang of mature starter, the freshness of the dough, and of course the ridiculously good fragrance of baking bread. When we knead, both hands literally elbow-deep in goo, we use our sense of touch to help us determine precisely when the consistency is right. Not only do we depend on the hollow sound of the bread when we knock on it to know it’s done, but there is also some real sound mindfulness in the groans of culinary pleasure that accompany the sharing of your warm, freshly buttered boule with the lucky folks around you. And finally, there is the taste. Oh, the taste…
Ritual. As we’ve chatted over above, there is much precision in the baking of bread. Wild-yeast fermented sourdough is a two-day process, not including the ongoing maintenance of the starter, and each step is carried out in a specific way, at a specific time, using specific ingredients and materials. The same ritual applies on every single occasion, and just like a self care ritual or other tradition, there’s a soothing quality to the dependability of this process, in the reassurance that we know and can look forward to the next step in the litany, and the next, and the next.
Solitude. Depending on when you start your full-day prep, which involves two ferments, some folding and a pre-refrigeration proof, you may be starting things before the rest of the people in your house are awake, or wrapping up after they’re in bed. My style is the latter; toward end of bulk ferment and throughout the proof, I’m often alone in my kitchen / great room. It’s a lovely opportunity to read a book, sip some tea or a glass of wine, listen to music, or catch up on my Bridgerton (guess which one happens most often?). Any way you slice it, bread prep can be a haven for quiet and meditative time, regardless of how you choose to savor it.
Mindful Eating. Can you focus on anything else when you sink your teeth into warm, crusty sourdough fresh from the oven? I didn’t think so.
Want to give this form of mindfulness a try? If so, you may want to check out Ken Forkish’s Salt, Flour, Water, Yeast and Bryan Ford’s New World Sourdough—both offer approachable, complete guides to getting started in sourdough as well as scads of amazing recipes to keep you cooking. Share your works with us here or on Instagram–we’d love to see your creations. Happy baking!
In the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, it may just be a good time to come back around to the topic of keeping yourself in mind. 😊
Several years back, I began to notice that the skin around my eyes would get dry and flaky. Not consistently, mind you, but just often enough to drive me batty wondering what the heck was going on. At first, I thought it was the result of forty-something Hormonal Havoc. My acupuncturist considered that it may be part and parcel of the hard work my liver was doing to clear all those hormones, since the liver and the eyes correlate in Chinese medicine. Alternatively, I figured it could always be inflammatory payback for too much candy at Halloween or a few extra burger and fry benders during vacations.
What was the answer? Not to be difficult, but the culprit incorporated elements of all of that( plus corn, apparently). As I began to dig even deeper, though, like going through the seven why’s, there was one consistent factor that acted as either water or petroleum to the inflammatory fire blazing under my eyeballs.
Stress.
It’s a tiny word with a serious Napoleon complex. And when I really paid attention on a larger scale, the level of influence of this single lifestyle lever came into ever-brighter focus. Rocking a light and highly manageable workload? On a frequent visit basis with my green smoothie barista? No eye flakes. But guess what? If you poke the bear, you get smacked with a paw or two. Later that year, after I started a new job in a new city with a new school for my son and some pretty jarring personal loss + life in general, voilà! The diminutive dictator was back with a vengeance.
This whole concept of Stress Napoleon and his teensy waving sword came into clear focus on one particular workday during the above-referenced period, underlining for me in black Sharpie the epidemic of self-neglect that is so pervasive in our society. It was a Friday. Just as a note, this was a good couple of years pre-COVID, so I was physically in the office at my company site. I had two back-to-back meetings that morning with a few female colleagues with whom I worked regularly. In this half day of observation, every single one of these women exhibited what are very clear signs of physical, mental and/or emotional overload. Every. Single. One. That’s a 100% percent affect ratio.
Two women were scheduled to join me in the first meeting. While we waited for the second colleague to arrive, the first discussed as pass-the-time banter how she rarely sleeps well, a fact clearly evident in the puffy circles under her eyes. The second colleague shuffled into the room about 15 minutes into our session, pallid and lethargic, which was not surprising, as she’d been violently ill with the flu 36 hours beforehand. Even so, she had hauled herself into the office to manage a full day of executive meetings, which weren’t set to wrap until six pm (on a Friday). I recommended anise tea; she concurred that it has benefits, because she drinks it daily to combat chronic tummy pain related to stress.
My second meeting that morning was a round-table demonstration of precisely the same phenomenon. There were five of us ladies in the conference room this time. The first had gained 15 pounds since moving from a work-at-home environment to the corporate office six months prior. The second was one of those sangfroid unshakable professional types who never gets rattled…but who was also currently rocking a solid case of rosacea. The third told us all about the burn marks next to her eye and on her upper eyelid, sustained while hurriedly cooking her family’s dinner earlier in the week. A burn. On her eyelid. The fourth woman looked the picture of calm seas, smooth of complexion with twinkling blue eyes…until those eyes filled like the ocean at high tide and she broke down crying, a victim of just Too Much Stuff all piling on bit by bit until the dam just had to burst. And finally, at the end of the table, there was me. ‘Ole flaky eyes.
What were we doing? I’ll admit that it was a busy time at my company–the year had started with a bang, and there was a lot to get out the door at that particular point in time. However, this company was at that point also one of the most balance-friendly corporate entities I’d been involved with, and I’ve seen a fair few. No, what I witnessed that Friday was a phenomenon not as much related to what we’re subjected to at work or home or anywhere else as it was to how we incorporate those inputs into our lives.
Imagine if, for every new responsibility we’re given, every new to-do that pops on to our ever-evolving roster, we were to add a column next to it, a column into which we scribe one additional self-care element we will gift to ourselves because we deserve it? What if, every time someone pulls at our yin, we tug in the equal and opposite direction on our yang?
Now I was perfectly crummy at high school physics, but even I can see the linearity of this argument. If you add a stressor to one side of a personal balance, you need to add an equivalent de-stressor to the other side. Otherwise, the whole thing crashes. For every forgotten-until-the-night-before school project, there should be an equivalent foot massage (at least that’s how it translates in my world). For every heavy-lift assignment at work, there should be an equal and opposite live or virtual Ladies’ Night (also my world). But how many times to we actually do that?
My friends, here is my challenge to you. Start today. Compose a list of the things that make your toes curl, or uncurl, as the case may be. Even the small stuff. Yes, one little piece of dark chocolate does have an impact (think magnesium and antioxidants, but also think deliciousness). A workout, a break from working out, a bath, a night off from giving your kids a bath, a round of golf, a slice of apple pie, a yoga class (clears throat meaningfully)–the choices are endless. But please do take the time to actually note down your ideas somewhere, just so you aren’t left trying to think up something on the fly when Le Corporal shows up at your door. Plus, simply composing a list of the things you enjoy is in itself an exercise in mindfulness, and it can be a great resource to page through anytime for a quick dose of zen.
And then, after you’ve jotted down all of these fabulous self-care ideas, act on them. Every time a new responsibility comes in, be sure to treat yourself. You deserve it. In fact, what the heck, go ahead and enjoy one of those list items right now. I’ll bet you ten francs you’re way overdue.
When I first got into procurement as a profession a billion years ago, my best friend, a teacher, found it a little challenging to effectively describe my job to people. After all, “strategic sourcing” and “procurement” both sound a bit like corporate speak to begin with, and “buyer” can mean basically anything. So in the end, after several highly entertaining rounds of word charades, she threw in the towel and borrowed a line from one of our favorite Friends episodes. She now refers to me simply as a “transpondster”(and if that reference resonates, you’re welcome).
Functional medicine can be a bit like that too. Over the past several years, the blossoming of the wellness field has brought with it all of its not-quite-mutually-exclusive terms and definitions. Words like integrative, holistic, allopathic, alternative and functional now all float together in a lovely bowl of wellness word soup, and and it can be a challenge to clearly discern one from another. I get this on a personal level–in addition to my corporate and yoga roles, I’m a health coach certified in the functional medicine space, a role which begs questions like these:
Which “function” does this pertain to, precisely?
Did she study medicine at some point?
Is there fitness training or a specific sport involved?
What type of health does this kind of thing support, anyway?
Given the generous well of question marks on the topic, I thought it might be a good idea to take a few minutes to walk through the ways in which functional medicine differs from other areas of the wellness community … and from transpondsters, for that matter.
What is Functional Medicine?
Per the Cleveland Clinic, “Functional medicine is a personalized, systems-oriented model that empowers patients and practitioners to achieve the highest expression of health by working in collaboration to address the underlying causes of disease.” All righty, then. There’s a lot to chew on here (and chewing is important), so let’s break down this definition into it’s key components:
Systems-Oriented: This field focuses on the integrative nature of the body and its systems rather than taking a “single system” approach. For example, a functional medicine practitioner will likely want to understand neurological and gut health when treating a hormone imbalance. We humans are a company of many dancers all twirling simultaneously, and we must tailor our wellness approaches to benefit each and every person on the stage.
Personalized: Care is taken to understand the unique construct of each patient or client, from diet to lifestyle to life history and beyond, based on the belief that each individual is just that— an individual—and the congregation of a person’s life experiences have a key role in explaining that person’s current state. This is N = 1 medicine.
Underlying Causes: A basic tenet of functional medicine is its work to identify and address the root cause of disease rather than treating symptoms alone. And this root cause may involve several distinct but interrelating system factors, some that might even come as a surprise to the individual, and some that may require a bit of professional detective work to uncover.
Highest Expression of Health: Functional medicine integrates therapeutic approaches across all areas of life—mind, body and spirit. One of the trade jokes is that you may be just as likely to walk out of your functional medicine doctor’s office with a prescription for meditation as you are for medication. In healing as well as in root cause identification, all systems and areas of a person dance together to build wellness.
One additional note here. When we talk about a functional medicine practitioner, it is any medical professional that has been trained in the clinical aspects of functional medicine through one of several recognized organizations, such as the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM). These practitioners may be MDs, RNs, PAs, acupuncturists, nutritionists, chiropractors or medical professionals of other stripes. Their overall clinical scope of practice will vary based on their license, so it’s key for you as a patient to review a potential provider’s credentials, think about what you’re looking for in that medical relationship, and assess that against the type of care and consult that practitioner is permitted to provide.
Now that we’ve talked a little bit about practitioners, let’s shift to coaches, the other side of the collaborative wellness offering. If the functional medicine practitioner is the car, the coach provides the wheels, in the form of an ongoing partnership with the client to support their wellness journey and goals. Per the IFM, we “guide patients to optimum wellness using Functional Medicine, Functional Nutrition, Mind-Body Medicine, and Positive Psychology Coaching,” which “embraces and enhances people’s higher selves to achieve optimal functioning.” That’s the common denominator (though admittedly a lot of words).
Equally compelling, though, are the unique skills that each coach brings to the mix. My training cohort at the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy (FMCA) included a nurse, a social worker, a marketing exec, an holistic nutritionist, and a PhD in English literature, among others. Like our clients, like the diverse array of practitioners in the field, each coach is N = 1, and that provides us with a fantastic opportunity to serve and support those individuals for whom our background most resonates. For me, as a yoga teacher and longtime transpondster, I focus on workplace wellbeing, self-care programs, and the incorporation of yoga into overall wellbeing.
So there you have it. The definition of Functional Medicine may still be a bit of a mouthful, but that’s simply because the offering is so very rich and deep. My friend may read this piece, but I’m not holding my breath in anticipation that she’ll let go of that Friends reference anytime soon. It really is good writing, after all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go call my invisible friend Maurice. If you know what his profession is, comment below! 😉
Stop anyone in the street and ask them about their middle school / junior school / junior high experience, and you will undoubtedly be rewarded with some variety of grimace. It’s just a tumultuous time in so many ways—socially, physically, emotionally, psychologically, hormonally—it’s hard to count them all. And the atmosphere laid by the fog of the last fifteen months only serves to hone that sharp point even more. During this period of life, any means an adolescent has at their disposal to help soften that edge should be celebrated and amplified, right?
