I was totally worn out and sick when I boarded the plane to Biarritz. At home I wake up 45 minutes earlier to do my practice.
Peoples reaction to this is why?
I can´t see how I could not. Daily practice has been part of my life for the past 16 years in one form or another.
It´s a thermometer of my physical, mental and emotional state. It gets me through the days and mirrors where I am.
Of course the physical aspect is a big part of it, even more so when not working as a yoga teacher.
My body is active the whole day and stress is the key ingredient in my life at the moment.
Ideally it would´t be like this but life is seldom ideal. I´m working with and thru whats around me. Trying to not get sucked into the dramas at work and in my personal life.
Of course this is impossible but with the practice it becomes very apparent what I can change and what I can´t. This makes it easier to focus on transforming a shitty situation into something productive.
I have not succeed with this the weeks prior to my trip.
So even though not part of the yoga retreat as a student and with work to be done both there and else where.
The nature, silence, people, making food the way I love to, local organic markets, and with time to really practice every day made me feel a little bit less fragmented than when I left.
And we’ve laughed a lot. Josefin, Peter, Isabel, Gonzalo, Jessica and Shay where a great crew.
Yogaakademin and Surfakademin are run by Peter, Jens and Josefin. They are travel agencies for yogis and surfers looking to deepen or learn to practice yoga and surf in different parts of the world.
Vera learnt how to surf with Surfakademin who took her to the beaches along the coast of France and Spain to find just the right waves.
New friends where made and I remembered a part of me that has been neglected for far to long.
It´s important to get your fibers and protein. Or you´ll end up playing the “Hunger Games” like I´ve the past week.
In France it was easy to eat lightly. The days where filled with only plant food breakfasts, juice for lunch and something more foody after the sun had set. With the heat the most important intake of the day was water and minerals such as salt.
When I practice a lot of bikram yoga or if I´m exposed to warmer weather I use my Friway Well salt spray. Made with ionised water and mineral salt it´s a great little invention to keep your salt intake without adding the bad salts.
Also on vacation there is no stress and yoga everyday so my system gets pretty much balanced out from the city lifes overindulgence and work.
A clean body is more receptive to the food you eat. A little yoga everyday helps as well
But once I got back home and the heat diminished, I was back at work and my hunger kicked in. I´m pretty good at reading my bodies signals but this time my head was`t with me so instead of eating more and drinking less juice I just continued as the week before.
Cold, tired hitting the snooze button each morning instead of yoga before work I just didn´t get it. Untill a couple of days later I realized that even though loaded with nutrients I needed something more meaty and had to add more fibers to my diet when back at my regular speedy life.
So this weekend I´ve been making gluten free flat bread and eating fish. Carbs and protein.
ENJOY LIFE
Fishlys and oysters
More oysters…. Great for minerals and salt, maybe post yoga 🙂
Everyday is a new day and so are you listen to your needs move from there
For many years I didn´t eat meat due to yoga filosophy and not listening to my needs. I ended up totally depressed and just craving bad stuff such as too much coffee, sugar and bad habits.
For every coffee drink dubble the amount of water and up your intake of greens
And before those years I didn´t eat anything. So even though my mind and body can work on starvation mode my soul can´t anymore.
So from time to time. REGULARY, once a week or more I eat animals. I´m happier and more free this way and working with food I just couldn´t eat everything.
I mean why do we call it nut cheese, plant yogurt, zuccini pasta or raw vegan beef if we weren´t inspierd by the tastes and forms used in the more traditional cooking. Also it´s easier to explain the foods and a busniess to made money from, so easy does it.
It´s not only animal protein that is excluded from peoples diets but carbs, gluten and lactoes.
Pizza lover
Eat your carbs with flowers and cheese
Gluten free flat bread brunch
Get an expert to tell you what you can and can´t eat, don´t guess. There are many important nutrients in these products and to exclude them for random diets could be realy bad. To eat organic and local is also a great way to stay away from allergies and upset tummies, bad ph level and mood swings.
I tought I was allergic to gluten and lactoes but if I eat “lagom” and choose organic products there´s no problem at all. Veggies should come from the earth and soil. Meat should be grassfed and chickens roam freely.
Life is so much richer these days when food is not an issue and just something to enjoy.
SWISS CHARD
Swiss Chard
Beets are a great bloodsugar stabalizer
We got some beautiful Swiss Chard and beets to the work this week. Both these plants are great blood sugar stabalizers since they help regulate the speed of digestion and keep food moving at the right pace through our digestive tract.
Like beets, chard is a unique source of phytonutrients called betalains. The betalain pigments in chard have been shown to provide antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and detoxification support.
Take care if your pregnant you should stay away from these 2 and spinach. Also included in this family called the chenopod is quinoa.
The days when vegan food was considerded weird or too “hippie like” are numbered. Very soon we, who love this food will all be able to get what we desire and have longed for at other places than in our own kitchens.
And it will look beautiful and taste even better.
The plant food movement around the world is seeing to that.
Top of the line resturants such as Noma have vegan chefs and use water cleaners to enhance their vegetables, both taste and quality. No one is excluded. And in the process nature is taken care of, local products are brought to light as well as local farmers.
At my work Stockholms Matmarknad we seek out the best products. Plant or animal. We get inspired and learn from each other so we can bring our hay to the stack in this movment.
More and more people grow their own veggies. Foraging and urban farming are two of this seasons most used words on IG.
People are starting to care about thier food and where it comes from. Food is starting to matter.
Raw food is not only for hardcore yogis and health freaks.
To use products such as chia seeds, buckwheat and drink juices are becoming more than a silly trend.
The methods used by raw food chefs have caught the eye of other chefs, or it it the other way around.
Who really care as long as the word is spreading that this is just another way to prepare food. It broadens the spectra of what we can eat and it makes us healthier even if that isn´t what we sought out to become.
I´m one of the lucky ones and can eat almost everything in normal amounts. If I overindulge or underindulge I feel bad.
Both body and my mind gets disturbed. BUT note this it has taken me all my life to get to this point and the journey has been hard and painful.
But it was worth it and it continues everyday. I hope for the rest of my life and the richness it has brought to me I hope to share with others.
I practice yoga daily and have done so for the past 15 years, no day is the same. The practice changes as life moves on. It´s just like brushing my teeth. I don´t really think about it but without yoga as without the brushing it is just unthinkable.
All of this and more has helped to deal with my low self esteem and disrespect to my body. I´m 41 years now and as I look at pictures of me at lets say the age of 20, I can´t get passed the thought, why was I so unhappy with that?
Well the answer is simple to me now. Your body and how it looks has little to do with what you eat or don´t eat. That´s just the headache, the symptom of something much deeper rooted in you.
The eating is just a way to control what can´t be. And to not deal with what actully can be dealt with.
As with alot of these issues we deal with them in quite harsh ways. We feel bad that we have issues and this becomes a hinder to becoming more healthy.
Who doesn´t have issues, if it´s not food it´s something else.
This is why plantfood is not diet to me and it´s not food as medicine. It´s just like brushing my teeth. I don´t really think about eating this way and would rather eat a good goatscheese than over eat nuts and seeds. Just as anything else when eaten to much makes me sick.
Thur my blogging here I want to create a forum where instead of talking about detoxes and cleanses as removing the lustfullness in life. To transform the “detoxlife” into finding the tools to add the good stuff first.
First you learn how to crawl then walk. And then you can make what you want with your world.
Turn the rice in tarrogon, lemon zest, cold pressed apple cider vinegare and cold pressed oil of your choice.
Mandolin half of a small cauliflower head into the rice mix. If you can find purple this will boost the dish in color without effect on the taste.
Pimp with small tomatoes, again use color!
Color is such and easy way to make any dish go from a bore to a beauty!!!!!
Almond parmesan is easily made with soaked and rinsed almonds and for better taste you acctivate them in 40° in your oven. I prefare to work with dry nuts instead of wet.
Here I used 1 dl of almonds.
3 tbs of kombucha.
2 tbs of nutrient yeast.
1 tsp of turmeric.
Lemon juice and zest, maybe half a lemon.
1 tsp of pink salt.
Mix and use straight away or store in a cheese cloth for 2-3 days.
