What a summer! I've been here, I’ve been there, and I'm going back later this summer...well at least to some places. Through my journeys, I am trying to keep you and my yoga practice up-to date, fluid, strong, and flexible. Well that driving to & fro has definitely tightened up my right hip and thigh muscles but has also tightened up my time considerably. Good news I am in the eye of the hurricane I have a few steady days here in Eugene before I brave four more weeks of adventure on the high seas in and out and all around Oregon. Fun!

  I'm trying to stay connected to the water element can you tell? Staying connected to water helps me to simply go with the flow. When learning to float you must relax your muscles to allow your self to remain supported by the water, the exact opposite of light as a feather stiff as a board. I feel that it is the same in our daily lives we must encourage our bodies to relax, open the chest to the sky, take deep breaths, and trust the universe to hold us up.

Who do you trust more the universe or 6 of your giggling friends and there lil'weanie size fingers?

No offense to your friends or there fingers.

   This is my theme for the week, all classes are going to encourage you to turn inward, connect to your water element, helping you to relax and go with the flow no matter what the seas have in store.

~Namaste!
Christiana

Hello Everyone!
After all that rain last week I can't help but feel refreshed, optimistic, and a general surge of love! Or maybe that's traveling anxiety...anyhow, I just wanted to remind everyone that there will not be a class this Wednesday as I will be out of town. I'll see you all in class bright and early Wednesday April 27th though! Till then,

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”  ~ Rumi

Hi ya!

I know I've been away. As spring came bursting back my life has really picked up speed, a common theme for spring for many. I only have a second but I really wanted to share that I have completed my training to be a Birth Doula! I have a few steps to accomplish before certification but with my training complete I am well underway! The best part now is I am ready to assist with birth, wahoo!

I am completing my training and certification process through Doulas of North America (DONA) International. The first thing I learned about doula work is that not many people know what exactly a doula is so...a Birth Doula is a proffesional labor support guide trained and experienced in providing continuous emotional, physical, and informational support to a woman and her partner during birth.

DONA's specifications
A Birth Doula
  ~Recognizes birth as a key experience the mother will remember all her life 

  ~Understands the physiology of birth and the emotional needs of a woman in labor 

  ~Assists the woman in preparing for and carrying out her plans for birth 

  ~Stays with the woman throughout the labor 

  ~Provides emotional support, physical comfort measures and an objective viewpoint, as well as helping the woman get the information she needs to make informed decision 

  ~Facilitates communication between the laboring woman, her partner and her clinical care providers 

  ~Perceives her role as nurturing and protecting the woman's memory of the birth experience 

  ~Allows the woman's partner to participate at his/her comfort level


Isn't that swell?! I am so very honored and excited to be of service in this way
Numerous clinical studies have found that a doula’s presence at birth

• tends to result in shorter labors with fewer complications
• increases positive feelings about one’s childbirth experience
• reduces the need for pitocin (a labor-inducing drug), forceps or vacuum extraction and cesareans
• reduces the mother’s request for pain medication and/or epidurals

Isn't that swell?! I am so very honored and excited to be of service in this way. I have so much information and tools to use I just can't wait! Zippa-dee doula!! 

Alas, time is slipping. I hope to write more soon!

Namaste!
Christiana

Delicious & Nutritious!

Was that a kix commercial? Remember kix? Do they still sell kix? I liked kix. Then again I grew up on cereal and I pretty much liked all the cereals…provided the cereal in question was covered in sugar & cinnamon, loaded with marshmallows, or/and contained every color of the rainbow. For the cereals that I kinda liked but were lacking in the major ingredient (sugar) such as raisin bran and rice krispies I always added a spoonful. Cereal was my breakfast of choice. I would order cereal even when we went out to breakfast. I can still here my parents groan as their heads hit the table. Could you blame me though? Cereal was put in front of my face 6 if not 7 days a week. It was a trusted ally a meal where I always knew what I was getting. Frosted flakes where frosted flakes no matter where you were, Even in Spain.

However, today’s delicious & nutritious post is not about cereal. Well, it kinda is because my experiences as a young lass have influenced who I am today and who I am today is…I like breakfast but I tend to skip it. This is not a very good habit and I am working on changing it, one day at a time. Today I was successful. I was so successful in fact, that I just had to share how easy my success was!

Bring in the OATS!

Here in Eugene at my favorite stores, i.e. Kiva, Capella’s, Sundance, we have the luxury of bulk bins and these bulk bins carry every kind of oat imaginable including steel cut. Now I am no oat expert and I am not sure what the variety and differences are all about but what I do know is that Steel Cut Oats take a long time to cook, something I prefer to leave for later in the day.

However, with a crock-pot, all is easy and right with the world!

So here’s what I did to make delicious & nutritious Oatmeal for breakfast.
Serves 3-4
Ingredients

1 cup of oats
½ cup frozen** or fresh fruit (optional) I used blueberries
4 cups of water/milk/rice milk/almond milk/hemp milk you get the picture
Large pinch of Salt
½ teaspoon Cinnamon (optional)
½ teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
1 tablespoon Maple Syrup/Agave/Honey (optional) I used Maple Syrup
If you like you can also add a tablespoon or 2 of butter

Combine all of the ingredients in your crock-pot and turn on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours. Stir it up and serve hot! Any extras can be freezed or refrigerated to be reheated. You may need to add some milk or water to get your desired consistency.

Don’t worry it can stand to cook past 8 hours and be just fine. I kinda slept in this morning and didn’t get to my oats until they had been cooking for about 10 hours and they were still great!

**If you use frozen fruit I suggest using 3 ½ cups of water.

The cool thing here is that you can flavor your oats however, you want. If you don’t want to do a cinnamon sugar thing. You can use a little extra salt and pepper with some allspice. You can add raisins and dried cranberries. Experiment and see what you like!

You can also cook up the oats and then add all the flavorings in the morning for individual preferences.

I am always looking for easy yummy breakfast options, if you have one you would like to share please do!

Namaste!

Christiana

Yesterday, I was going to write all about how I donated blood a couple weeks ago. I had a nice morning yoga practice and then Ian and I took the dogs, Baum and Arlo, for a walk. Ian is a friend of mine and Willie’s from Missouri. He was living in Colorado for awhile and has decided to re-relocate to Eugene. He and is beautiful Springer Spaniel Baum have been living with us for a couple weeks while they find a home. Both Arlo and Baum have been getting along fantastically, two little boy dogs running around causing chaos. Just the best of friends, that is until yesterday.

We went for our walk over to the nearby park where we started tossing a toy Frisbee for the dogs to chase. There was some growling and tug of war with the first toss but they have been playing together for the past couple of weeks and it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Then we threw the Frisbee a 2nd time and it was all over. Baum and Arlo got into a pretty nasty dog fight and Ian and I were having a hard time getting them to stop.

When we finally got the dogs pulled apart I saw Arlo was bleeding, and a pretty good bleed too. His front left paw has a pretty deep puncture and two other smaller punctures closer to his arm pit. I have never, and my dog has never, been in a fight of this caliber before and as I watched my sweet little Mr. Man’s blood flow onto the grass I felt my throat tighten and my eyes bug out of my head. My thoughts began to race and I could feel myself loosing my grip on the situation. I was headed for an all out scared momma freak-out! Then I heard this voice say , “Remember your yoga.” I took a deep breath in and slowly released it out through my mouth. Then I took a 2nd one and releasing it slowly I began to put together my thoughts to form a proper course of action.

Unfortunately Ian has had experience with this sort of thing and new how to clean Arlo’s wounds and bandage the bigger puncture wound. He was hardly putting any weight on it yesterday but is getting around much better today. Fortunately, the wounds don’t seem to be anything too serious and Baum is unscathed.

However, that whole thing totally through off my day as well as took up my scheduled blogging time. The situation seems really ironic, here I was all prepared to write about donating blood and how it really is important yadda-yadda and then my dog starts gushing the stuff! I did have this silly thought that Arlo would need a blood transfusion. He really didn’t loose that much, probably about equal to that time I scraped my knee really bad trying to teach myself how to ride a bike without training wheels.

The whole dog fight situation is a really good example of why we practice yoga. Sometimes crazy stuff happens. I had no more control over Arlo than Ian had on Baum. Just another of life’s many circumstances that nobody really has control over. Plus, the more I stop trying to control everything that happens to me I realize how little control I really have over anything. For some people this can be a scary revelation, but once you realize that you can’t orchestrate the world you realize how much easier it is to control the things you can control, like yourself.

Like I said, I had no control over the dogs, their fighting, or even the precious life force leaking out of my dogs wounds. However, in that moment when my own life force, or purusha, spoke up I remembered I could have control over myself. Starting with my breath, I have the choice in any moment to take a slow smooth inhale and slow deep exhale. Once my mind registers that I have taken control of my breath it is more willing to listen to calm logic and reasoning in order to handle a situation, and just like that I am in control. Back in the cock-pit of my mind I am able to pull myself out of a downward spiral into total chaos. This is yoga. The integration of body and mind through the breath.

In our physical yoga practice we fine tune this control by using ujjayi pranayama, breathing through the nose/out through the nose making the soft sound of the ocean, and link the breath together with the asanas, yoga poses. The mind is so busy following the breath and poses that there is little hard drive space left to think of much else.

Now you might be saying, I can think of a zillion things while practicing yoga! I assure you, you’ve lost your breath. Sure you may be breathing (or you might even forget to if you’re really focusing on a pose or something else) but the conscious smooth and even breath with controlled movement is the goal. That is what helps to tame the mind. It’s funny how the simplest things can be so challenging, but that is why we call it a yoga practice.

So go out there, take control, breathe consciously, and be the best you ever!

OH! And you should really try donating blood if you can. It won’t go to waste, your body makes more, you feel like a really good person afterwards, it’s gotta be good karma points, I hate needles and it really wasn’t that bad, takes ½ hour, and you are saving somebody’s life! Mad props!!

Until next time, remember to breathe & keep practicing your yoga!

Namaste!
Christiana

Our brave little Mr. Man, Arlo Roland Dancer