Archive for the 'Health' Category

Be a Part-Time Vegetarian

Published on October 10, 2011 1 Comment

Can’t quite give up meat? Me neither.

But since my brother’s diagnosis with Stage IV brain cancer this summer, I’ve become a lot more interested in all things concerning health. Diet is a key. And, sadly, meat is a huge concern.

Yesterday, the Huffington Post came out with a great idea: be a part-time vegetarian.

That means, have a few days a week when you don’t eat any meat or dairy products. Eat less meat and dairy overall and you will decrease your chances of getting cancer. (This has been proven with massive research–I’m not talking nicey hippie ideas here, I’m talking NIH and Cornell-funded multi-year research studies).

You will also decrease the terrible impact that cattle and dairy farming–as well as other forms of meat & fish farming–are having on the planet.  Again, this is not some utopian vision of “I’m Ok, You’re OK.” Notice how warm it is today? Eighty degrees in mid-October?

To start, you could follow the Environmental Working Group’s campaign for Meatless Mondays.



in Health.

Anti-Gravity Yoga

Published on May 9, 2011 0 Comments

On a hot July day last summer, my adventurous friend Michele, who normally cooks at a research station in Antarctica, took me to Om Factory’s Anti-Gravity Yoga class.

I thought, no problem, I’ve done a lot of yoga, and even a lot of weird yoga. In fact, it would be a good addition to my repertoire, since I’ve never done yoga suspended in a large swath of orange silk.

Watch a video of it here: Anti Gravity Yoga at Om Factory

It was a lot of fun tumbling around in the hammock of fabric, twirling upside down, and swinging my body back and forth in some very creative interpretation of yoga poses (could you really call “that” triangle?).

It also stimulated a lot of abdominal and leg muscles I never knew I had since I was sore the next day. And sometimes it was scary. Falling backwards into the silk required a huge amount of trust—like standing on the high diving board as a little kid and praying that the water really would be there after I jumped.

In April, the NYTimes launched “Gym Class” as part of their Well column and video series, and Anti-Gravity Yoga was the first subject in their “interesting class that you were too intimidated to try” roster. According to the article,

AntiGravity Yoga was developed by Christopher Harrison, a former aerial acrobat and gymnast who found traditional yoga too hard on his injured wrists. The weightless poses can be used to strengthen the core as well as relieve aching joints and stretch tight muscles.

Or, as one commentator on the Gym Class blog said, “Wow! So this is what life is like when one has excessive disposable income….”

in Health, Trends and Weird.

Yoga + Infertility = Baby?

Published on February 7, 2011 0 Comments

Women battling infertility is a familiar (though harrowing) story these days. Women using yoga to reduce stress and love themselves better is another familiar story. So it comes as no surprise that yoga is helping women to cope with the physical and emotional stress of infertility and its treatments…

It’s also not a new idea. My ob/gyn, Dr. Eden Fromberg, opened Lila Wellness Center in New York several years ago to meet women’s pre-and post- (and pre- pre-) natal needs. And there have been programs such as Receptive Nest, and studios such as Brooklyn’s Bend & Bloom, helping women to reach full “bloom” in their childbearing years. Other renegade yoga specialists have been helping women for years to make the all-important mind-body connection necessary.

But the NYTime’s article this weekend, “Yoga as Stress Relief: An Aid for Infertility?” raises this issue with a new twist: once-skeptical fertility professionals (doctors) are giving yoga the green light. The tide is turning in how acceptable yoga is to support women in their quest to become pregnant.

Medical acceptance of yoga as a stress reliever for infertility patients is slowly growing. In 1990, when Dr. Domar first published research advocating a role for stress reduction in infertility treatment, “I wasn’t just laughed at by physicians,” she said. “I was laughed at by Resolve, the national infertility organization. They all said I was perpetuating a myth of ‘Just relax, and you’ll get pregnant.’ ” At the last meeting for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Dr. Domar, now on the national board of Resolve, gave multiple talks, including one about how to help the mind and body work together in infertile couples.

And this is a national phenomenon, not just a jag in New York or San Francisco where there are always a handful of people pushing the envelope.


Still, even with yoga’s help, infertility doesn’t sound like too much fun.

“A lot of people want to boil it down to ‘If you relax, it will happen,’ ” Ms. Petigara, a former in vitro fertilization patient who adopted a son, wrote in an e-mail. “I absolutely feel that yoga can have a very positive impact on infertility, but infertility is a lot more than ‘just relaxing.’ ”

Oh!!! As in, lie back and think of England? Well, yoga never was really about passivity.

If you happen to be dealing with infertility right now, you can attend the March 17th tele-seminar on “Yoga for Fertility” led by Jill Petigara, who teaches in the Philadelphia area. But you’ll have to Google the details.

Food for thought

in Culture, Health and Trends.

Winter Yogi, Hot Yogi: the Sauna Factor

Published on February 6, 2011 0 Comments

This has been a devastating winter in New York: cold, dark, icy, blizzardy. We’ve hauled out shapeless jackets. We’ve procured sensible, water-proof, slip-proof footwear. And worn them day, after day, after dark day.

Oy vey.

For the first time in 4 years, I don’t have a tropical destination this winter: no Costa Rica yoga retreat to lead. My teaching cohort has gone off in India for 6 weeks. So there’s no guaranteed relief this year: relief for lizard-like skin, plunging vitamin D levels, or the feeling of being embalmed in wool (boiled or cashmere makes no difference: I’m a summer girl; I like to feel my limbs free).

So imagine how grateful I am to the yoga centers nearby who had the brilliant idea of installing saunas. In this weather, it’s fantastic to be warm. It’s great to feel really HOT. It feels SO GOOD to sweat like a tropical plant opening up to a sweltering afternoon shower. And in a weird way, it’s great to suffer in the way opposite from the day-to-day suffering.

When Spa Castle (Korean spa in Queens) is too far away, the Russian baths are too skanky (or just too much cash), I know I can slip over to Kula Williamsburg or Greenhouse Holistic (N7 & Roebling), take a class, and douse my unhappy epidermis with dry heat until the leathery stiffness begins to give. And at Kula, I can also have some of Brownie’s delicious banana bread after (which is going to make bikini season a little harder to prepare for this year).

Ahhhhhh. Long live the convenient neighborhood sauna.

in Culture and Health.

Eating Meat–or Not?

Published on December 2, 2009 0 Comments

It’s true that I eat meat: the humanely raised, grass-fed kind. I have been surprised by how many restaurants offer it. There’s even a full on BBQ place that’s all organic near where I live.

In fact, to eat good meat that’s not full of hormones, antibiotics and that won’t contribute to any being’s misery has been my New Year’s resolution for a few years running. (Sometime towards the end of the year I find myself at a dinner party or in Chinatown breaking it, hence the need for a re-up.)

With the end of the year approaching there comes a slew of help from the New York Times, and, of course, literary star, Jonathan Safran Foer whose recent book is Eating Animals, and why we shouldn’t.

Mitchell Feinberg for the NYTimes

Mitchell Feinberg for the NYTimes

I have to confess that these days I eat mostly vegan anyway. No dairy, no sugar, no meat, no wheat (not that vegans avoid gluten). It’s not quite a question of ethics, but what is easier to digest. And what will keep me healthier now that it’s plague season. (The subway: H1N1 incubator?)

According to the Times, 1% of Americans in 2009 are vegan, and it’s getting easier and easier to find vegan food. Not just at ethnic resautrants such as Indian and Thai, but in mainstream America. A 17-year old Long Island boy—a vegan—managed to instigate a slew of vegan fare at his father’s pizzeria where he works. It attracted a vegan crowd.

Moo-Cluck Bakery on Long Island sells retail and wholesale. And it’s not just the vegans who like their cakes: the bakery owners, “took a box of several dozen Moo-Cluck cookies to a family Christmas party of 30 people last year, intending it for a vegan relative.

“The vegan arrived too late to enjoy the gift. Half an hour after Ms. Cummings brought them into the house, the cookies were gone, she said. “All the nonvegans ate them.”

If cutting out meat, dairy, and sugar seems dire to you, consider this: vegans eat cookies like everyone else.

Here’s a cookbook to prove it: Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar: 100 Dairy-Free Recipes for Everyone’s Favorite Treats by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero (Da Capo).

That’s sounds like holiday fun (though the reviewer of her sister’s vegan cookies in this article thought they tasted “like homework.”)

Decide for yourself. Make your own resolution.

in Culture, Health and Trends.

How Cool: Yoga for the Deaf Foundation

Published on June 8, 2009 2 Comments

Last week NY1.com reported a very cool story in their “NYer of the Week” column.

Yoga for the Deaf

Yoga teacher Lila Lolling, inspired by the works of Hellen Keller, got herself trained in American Sign Language, and now is one of only 20–that’s right, TWENTY–people in the world who teach yoga to the deaf.

(Another one is the inimitable Susan “Lippy” Oren. Amazing teacher and salty dog besides.)

Lolling is shown in the NY1.com video (that I couldn’t   figure out how to import) pounding on the floor to signal poses, waving a fan to wake students up, and even chanting OM with her deaf students. In class at East/West Yoga, the mesmerizing Alex Grey paintings on the walls provide a trippy backdrop.

Lolling says that one of her goals is to create a dictionary of yoga poses for the signing community. Her foundation will also provide scholarships for teacher training for the deaf. One student, Kat Burland, quoted in the article, says, “It’s just totally visual, it’s wonderful. And because of that I have relaxed and my total health has improved tremendously.” ”

The video is really worth watching. Check it out here. Go NY1!

More Yoga for the Deaf2

in Culture, Health and Uncategorized.

YJ Conference a Whole Lot of Fun

Published on May 16, 2009 2 Comments

When I signed up for the Yoga Journal conference, I was sad knowing that I could only attend one workshop at a time. How to choose? Ana Forrest? Shiva Rea? Rodney Yee? David Swenson?

But each one has been so good that I’ve forgotten any regrets. How could I think of anything else when Gary Kraftsow —a man with sweet gravitas—is explaining the cakras?

Kraftsow teachingKraftsow’s Cakra chartGary KraftsowGary Kraftsow w/ student

Or, when Roger Cole shows us the four ways to stretch a muscle. It’s more than interesting, it’s riveting. (We did mostly hamstrings, which I’ve overstretched on this body.) Dive deep, bring up pearls.

I’ve also really appreciated the humor here—Judith Hanson Lasater is a firecracker sending hilarious (and too true) comments fizzing and popping around the room faster than a Catherine Wheel. (“I gave up the idea that you could make anyone do anything when I had kids.”)

She seems to instantly read bodies. Then she instantly—with permission—tells (or shows) the owner what’s going on and how to work with it. Trust the body, she says, it’s trying to tell you something. (She was able to tell me something about my stuck left pelvis—a puzzle that’s eluded me for years.)

Also a laugh a minute—who’d have guessed—eminent professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Robert Thurman. Buddha’s First Noble truth? Life sucks! How to detach yoga students from their obsession with the body? Tell them to watch The Matrix or Star Trek.

Reasons to meditate on happiness for all beings? “If your enemy was happy, do you think he’d be running around enemying on you? You want him to be happy!”

This humor would not resonate as well without presenter’s deep knowledge and abiding passion for their subjects. And, I have to think, their fearlessness in the face of dark or ugly news: we’re all going to die. They seem to get that, as much as anyone can. We humans are infintessimally insignificant.

And their self-driven, but not (seemingly) self-ish desire to know more, be more, grow more, enter more fully into some nourishing mystery seems to help as well.

Thurman: yoga’s true meaning: to yoke yourself to ultimate reality (nirvana, bliss) and unyoke yourself from limited reality (suffering).

The original purpose of asana: to get the body settled for meditation. This is not news. But it was fun to hear it from him. And in case you are wondering, Patanjali agrees with Buddha—life does suck!

in Culture and Health.

Deepak Chopra In Flight

Published on January 25, 2009 0 Comments

Qatar Airways must have a lot of money. They commissioned a 4-page, in-flight, how-to yoga brochure this month for passengers on long-haul flights from the king of high-end spiritual wellbeing, Deepak Chopra.

Chopra’s Center for Wellbeing, in Carlsbad, CA, charges almost $4,000 for 5 days of spiritual instruction, ayurvedic cleansing, yoga, and gentle vegetarian means. It’s designed for those who can afford it. Chopra, once a practicing MD, is a fantastic entrepreneur.

The Qatar Airways brochure, “Fly Healthy, Fly Fit” is not the first of its kind; other airlines in have also offered yoga instruction in the past. However, this is the first one I can remember that retained a megastar.

The brochure offers simple yoga poses, self-massage techniques, as well as tips for meditation and anxiety-conquering breathing.

“In an attempt to make the in-flight experience more enriching and less a means to pass time, the guide contains meditation practices to reduce stress, so travellers reach their destination relaxed and rejuvenated. In particular, being aware of one’s breathing – the conscious in- and exhale process – is a powerful tool to fight anxiety and jet lag.”

I applaud Qatar Airways for their concern and their investment. But in my experience, the only being who can make a long flight more “enriching” is God (or some equivalent).

(I know, I know, yoga helps. But flying is just awful.)

in Celebrity and Health.

Yoga for Food

Published on January 3, 2009 1 Comment

A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor lead me to Yoga for Food, a non-profit yogic effort spearheaded by Kimberly Smith, founder of Riverdog Yoga in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

Smith started Yoga for Food in 2001 after 9/11. According to the CSM article, Smith got 30 students to bring a bag of groceries to a special sunrise class (according to the Yoga for Food website the number was 20, but who’s counting). They collected more than 200 pounds of food.

Now more than 30 yoga centers in 13 states run their own version of Yoga for Food, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds of food.

“It was a natural fit: Yoga is food for the spirit,” says Ms. Smith [in the CSM article]. “It’s become a win, win, win: The students who get involved feel good, so do the studios that participate. And then, of course, the food banks are grateful.”

Smith hopes that in 2009 yoga centers in 50 states will host a Yoga for Food event. No time like the present! A lot of people in our new crash-n-burn world order need seva, the selfless service of others.

While Riverdog Yoga organizes their food-drive event around the winter solstice, anytime this year will be a good time for donations like this.

Register a Yoga for Food event on yogaforfood.org or click HERE.

in Health and Trends.

Not like Cod Liver Oil of yore

Published on December 13, 2008 0 Comments

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine recently released a report that shows a significant number of children doing yoga, practicing meditation, and doing deep-breathing exercises. Children under 18 are also taking more supplements such as probiotics, echinacea and fish oil.

The NYTimes reports, “The single most influential factor driving children’s adoption of alternative therapies appears to be whether their parents also use them. Children whose parents or relatives use alternative therapies are five times more likely to use them than children whose parents do not.

I like the idea of kids learning yoga and meditation tools early in life (though I’m less sure about parents applying their own alternative remedies to their kids). We’re not talking a spoon full of cod liver oil and a run around a frozen track in shorts anymore.

Read the article here.

in Health.
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