Hemp milk

I thought I’d share my recent love of hemp milk. It’s good cold (plain, vanilla, or chocolate) but my new discovery is *hot* hemp milk. And if you heat it with a peppermint tea bag it makes the perfect winter holiday drink.

Hemp milk is a good alternative to cow or soy milk. It can usually be found in the soy/almond milk section of grocery stores (not yet at Trader Joe’s). It’s basically just made up of hemp seeds and water… and it's so good for us! Just one cup has:

~900mg Omega-3 Fatty Acid & 2800mg Omega-6 Fatty Acid (this is apparently the ideal ratio of Omega 3: Omega 6)

~All 10 essential amino acids

~4g protein, >40% daily calcium, 0 cholesterol, Potassium, Phosphorous, Riboflavin, Vitamin A, Vitamin E, Vitamin B12, Folic Acid, Vitamin D, Magnesium, Iron, Zinc…

Iyengar: Keep it pure and clean

“The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.” ~B.K.S. Iyengar

I’ve been reading Iyengar’s book, Light on Life, and like this excerpt on “The True Nature of Health:"

“Most people ask only from their body that it does not trouble them. Most people feel that they are healthy if they are not suffering from illness or pain, not aware of the imbalances that exist in their bodies and minds that ultimately will lead to disease. Yoga has a threefold impact on health. It keeps healthy people healthy, it inhibits the development of diseases, and it aids recovery from ill health.

But diseases are not just a physical phenomonenon. Anything that disturbs your spiritual life and practice is a disease and will manifest eventually in illness. Because most modern people have separated their minds from their bodies and their souls have been banished from their ordinary lives, they forget that the well-being of all three (body, mind, and spirit) are intimately entwined like the fibers of our muscles.

Health begins with firmness in body, depends to emotional stability, then leads to intellectual clarity, wisdom, and finally the unveiling of the soul. Indeed health can be categorized in many ways. There is physical health, which we are all familiar with, but there is also moral health, mental health, intellectual health, and even the health of our consciousness, health of our conscious, and ultimately divine health. These are relative to and depend upon the stage of consciousness we are at.

But a yogi never forgets that health must begin with the body. Your body is the child of the soul. You must nourish and train your child. Physical health is not a commodity to be bargained for. Nor can it be swallowed in the form of drugs and pills. It has to be earned through sweat. It is something that we must build up. You have to create within yourself the experience of beauty, liberation, and infinity. This is health. Healthy plants and trees yield abundant flowers and fruits. Similarly, from a healthy person, smiles and happiness shine forth like the rays of the sun...

As long as the body is not in perfect health, you are caught in body consciousness alone. This distracts you from healing and culturing the mind. We need sound bodies so we can develop sound minds.”

Ashtanga in Rwanda - Project Air

Check out this video about a medical NGO which started using yoga to help rape victims in Rwanda.

And this interview with Deirdre Summerbell who started it all.

Deirdre said yoga in Rwanda is a "conceptual void" so the women had no anticipatory skepticism. Deirdre started by doing some demonstrations and the women "were horrified!" But they threw themselves into it and loved it.

They teach Ashtanga yoga, taking the women through the fixed routine. It helps the women heal and reconnect with their bodies, as well as make them strong. She said "Yoga is slow medicine, but it is medicinal in character."

It's gone so well in Rwanda that they're now seeking funding to bring it to other places... (how about Penn!)

Project Air: http://www.project-air.org/

Week 2

It’s looking like measuring telomerase might actually be a real possibility! But there’s a lot of work to do. I applied the 80/20 rule (80% of outcomes come from 20% of the input) to finish a draft of the protocol yesterday. I’m glad I didn’t spend too much time perfecting it because getting my mentor's initial feedback today was incredibly helpful. He gave me some much needed guidance and focus.

Key points from our meeting today:

• Become an expert in ONE thing. The more you put into the study the more you have to defend. I had put about 20 different ideas into the protocol and am now narrowing it down.
• Take the next 2 weeks to become the expert on telomerase. This is the time to focus and be a scientist. Read EVERYTHING about telomerase.
• Don’t get too attached to one idea, research is a lot of back and forth. Try not to get frustrated. If I spend time doing something that doesn’t work out in the end, it doesn’t mean it’s a waste of time -- in 5 years I could come back to a lot of these things.
• Don’t involve too many other people in the study just yet. Be careful of people who want me to do their work for them. This is my year to learn clinical research and pursue MY project.
• Within 6 weeks, write a grant to get funding for the telomerase enzyme assays.
• By mid-January, submit protocol for IRB approval and begin enrolling in March.

Yin yoga

I’m still processing the Yin Yoga class that I went to last night. It was completely different from the Ashtanga practice. The teacher talked the entire class, about nadis and chakras and opening up our connective tissue to let prana flow (prana = energy, life force). Her voice was calm and soothing and nonjudgmental, and I found it incredibly relaxing. We did a total of about 8 poses, holding each for ~4-5 minutes (surprisingly hard to be still for that long). The idea is to relax into the position and allow gravity to take you deeper.

The idea behind yin yoga is that it works on the deeper connective tissue and joints, while hatha/vinyasa yoga (the yang of yin yoga) works more on muscles. Yin yoga can be practiced in addition to our regular practice, and can help increase flexibility when muscles reach their limits.

Nadis and chakras are concepts I still have a hard time grasping but they pique my curiosity… for another post another time.

The palm of one hand

Pattabhi Jois instructed his students that meals should not be bigger than what can be held in the palm of one hand (and it's okay to eat every hour if necessary).

I am going to try this.

Endure

"Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured."

~B.K.S. Iyengar