Let’s
Count it!
Aristotle had a hypothesis: women have more teeth than men! For
almost 2000 years the dogma remained unchallenged until someone had a brighter
idea. He said, “Let’s count it” A revolutionary insight. Reflection on age-long
practices often unravel truths. Recently, I gave a presentation “Plant
pigments: beyond aesthetics” at St. Xavier University on plant pigments,
flavors, fragrances, artificial food colorants, their drawbacks and
alternatives. I was hungry after the question/ answer session and thought to
eat some cookies. While I was about to bite one, a student raised her hand. Her
question caught me off-guard: “you told the issues with artificial food colorants,
why are you eating the cookies loaded with those”. I was embarrassed. Another student
saved me with another question on the subject matter. I ignored the first and
tried to answer the second one; the first one persisted. To make the story
short, I had to give up those cookies. The seminar sailed through unchartered
territories- meditation, yoga, mindfulness, organic, vegan…I was challenged.
Challenging our thoughts, believes and practices is the beginning of
realization to transform the body, mind and soul. Now you know where I am
going, hold on.
Once I met a faithful vegan; enjoyed the discussion on the
science; and felt an urge to follow it.
His spouse termed the habit a headache. Deliberation with others on the
subject crystallized my thoughts: it is expensive, and it’s hard to balance the
demand of our body and food sources. I took the challenge and decided to go
vegan this advent season- economically and (mostly) transparent to the
household and parties. One of my friends asked, “what the poor plants did, in
the past thirteen years (my career as a plant scientist) to hate them so much?”
I never thought so. I don’t have an agenda driven by any faith or fallacy. My
goal is to analyze food matrices in the molecular level and find alternatives
to meat, fish and dairy products respecting the wallet; challenge myself beyond
what I have been doing. Remember: finding solutions to challenges is the
beginning of intelligence. (So…that’s is your agenda: Yes, agreed.)
I happened to share my thoughts with two of my friends, Sarah
Giuliani and Kate Schwatz- both have a good understanding on the food, food
ingredients and alternative sources for proteins, amino acids, fats and
vitamins. Sarah suggested it may be good idea to rename veganism due to various
stigma attached to it. I am planning to dig little deeper into this topic in
this season and will share some of the recipes and thoughts of Sarah and Kate
here. I am going call this “Eating Mindfully”, segue for the theme of my yoga
classes for this month. I consider mindfulness as a tool to create kindness,
reduce anxiety, depression and ADHD. In the context of yoga, I was specific on
the mindfulness of executing yoga poses, practicing breathing and quantifying
foci. This time, I incorporate food into that puzzle.
Yoga, meditation, pranayama (breathing) techniques, corpse pose, Mindful
Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and prayer could all lead you to mindfulness.
How to create mindfulness in our yoga practice.
1.
Make breathing mindful. Explore
the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and targets in your breathing. Triangular,
SWOT (4-4-6-2) breathing is an excellent tool: inhale for 4 seconds; hold for 4
seconds; exhale for 6 seconds and hold for another 2 seconds. Exaggerate the
actions of thoracic and abdominal muscles. Bring into your mind the
complementary benefits (internal organ massage, sensitization of endocrine
system…) of deep breathing. Redefine breath, if you may: breathing is nothing
but our ability to enhance the three dimensional capacity of lungs.
2.
Make poses BEADED: In every pose
scan your body to see how it acts, how the energy flows (close your eyes and
listen), how you are working with your body; how you are directing and
elaborating your poses to yield the dynamic stability you need to stand or sit in
a pose for a long time (if needed) without any discomfort. By definition, yoga
should be stable and comfortable.
3. 3. Make all foci -external, internal
(locks) and cognitive (chakras) - mindful
Hope you see you, hear your thoughts and share mine.
Love,
Jay
