Chocolatey goodness!

Happy Easter you guys!

Whatever your religious beliefs, most of us tend to indulge in a bit of chocolate over the Easter break. And I am definitely not an exception! Right now, I am basically experiencing what can only be described as a chocolate coma.

As a vegan, my Easter treats are a little more limited but there are still plenty of dairy-free goodies for me to get my chocolate on. And it just keeps getting easier to buy animal-friendly chocolate too - there are even vegan Easter eggs! Like this yummy Organic Times dark chocolate egg:

Source: www.biome.com.au

Nom!

It is important to note that not all dark chocolate is necessarily vegan - you have to read the label to make sure it doesn't contain milk solids or butter fats. The higher the percentage of cocoa, the more likely it is that it will be dairy free (but this still isn't a guarantee). It is worth searching for though and at least you know that, while you might be being a little bit naughty, at least you are getting a nice dose of antioxidants at the same time!

There is also another issue with our Easter noms that has got a lot more attention this Easter - the use of palm oil.

The use of palm oil is controversial as palm oil plantations have caused the destruction of rain forests in Indonesia and Malaysia, where around 85% of the world's palm oil is produced. This has resulted in habitat loss for a number of endangered species, including the orangutan. You can find out more about this here. Because of its direct impact on the welfare of animals, a lot of vegans avoid palm oil even though it isn't an actual animal product itself.

Palm oil is used in a lot of products - it is usually just listed as a vegetable oil so it is hard to know what you are buying. And this Easter, it was showing up in the ingredients list for a number of brands of hot cross buns - including Woolworths' and Coles' home brand varieties. This received a lot of negative press though so hopefully most people bought their hot cross buns from local bakeries instead.

Baked goods aren't the only thing that can contain palm oil - in the past Nestle has copped a lot of flack for using it in its chocolate.

One way to guarantee that you won't be getting any of these nasties is to make your own. Yes - even chocolate!

I was lucky enough to attend a special Easter yoga event this weekend at the gorgeous yoga studio, House of Yoga in Redfern. After sweating it out through a yummy 90 minute vinyasa class, we all got to indulge in some AMAZING homemade raw chocolate goodies.

I am not exaggerating when I say these were some of the yummiest treats I have ever tasted. I mean it - they were SO. GOOD.

Instead of being made with cocoa (which is what most chocolate is made from) they were all made using cacao. While they might sound like they are the same thing, the differences between the two are very important. Cacao is basically the seed that is used to make cocoa, but that hasn't gone through the cleaning, roasting and processing that cocoa goes through. So cacao is essentially raw. Why does this matter? Well, when it is processed, cocoa loses most of its nutritional value. Even if you eat dark chocolate, if it has been made with cocoa, it won't contain anywhere near the same levels of antioxidants and other nutrients that you get in cacao. In addition to high antioxidant levels, cacao also contains iron, copper, zinc, magnesium and calcium as well as a whole host of vitamins. 

The basic ingredients of cacao chocolate are cacao powder, cacao butter (not actual butter obviously - it is just the fat that comes from the cacao bean) and some kind of sweetener, like honey or agave syrup. The tasty treats that we were served up also had all sorts of amazing ingredients added in - coconut, almonds, dried figs, fresh ginger. All tasty and all super good for you! Win!!

But what if you can't / don't want to make it yourself (or be lucky enough to have yoga teachers that make them for you)? Well, you can buy chocolate made with cacao too so you have no excuses! My favourite is Loving Earth but there are lots of other brands out there and more and more are showing up in the shops as people learn about cacao's amazing properties.

Another easy way to get a dose of cacao is in powder form - I add it to my green smoothies to turn them into perhaps the healthiest chocolate thick shake EVER. You can also use to make up a hot chocolate - definitely something to keep in mind when it gets colder.

So, even though Easter is practically over for another year, you can totally justify getting your chocolate on all year round so long as you make sure it has been made with cacao (oh and, you know, blah blah moderation blah) aaaaaaand you can feel good about doing it! Yay cacao!!!!

Small changes, big difference!

Over a week has now passed since I started my yoga teacher training course. As I mentioned in my last post, the training goes far beyond the physical aspect of yoga (the asanas) and looks at the whole system of yoga (which includes pranayama and meditation).

That said, the training has still made some pretty significant changes to my asana practice. The changes haven't really been big ones - they have just been small refinements - but the impact they have had is quite remarkable. So here are the three things that I have learnt so far that have made the biggest difference.

1. Make friends with your bandhas 

I had heard yoga teachers use the term "bandhas" berfore, but to be honest I have never fully understood what they were talking about. From what I could gather, engaging my bandhas somehow involved keeping firm through my belly. Which, it turns out, is kind of right. But it is not the whole story.

There are actually three bandhas - one at the perineum (mula bandha), one just below the belly button (uddiyana bandha) and the third one at the throat (jalandhara bandha). The idea is that, by engaging or contracting these three bandhas (which is sanskrit for "lock") while you perform your asana, you are able to control the flow of energy ("prana") throughout your body. This helps you achieve balance and also supports and provides stability during your practice. (This is a very basic description - this website provides a pretty neat overview of the whole bandha situation if you want to know more.)

Learning how to properly engage your bandhas is complex and takes a lot of practice (and I am definitely still at the early stages of this process) but there are a couple of simple adjustments that you can do in pretty much any pose that will start you on your bandha journey and improve your overall asana practice.

First, start by drawing your belly button towards your spine. You have probably heard your teacher saying this to you in class during certain poses, but it is good to get into the habit of doing this throughout your whole practice. As an extra benefit, holding in through your lower belly like this will support your lower back and prevent you from overextending your lower spine when you are doing backbends. (Particularly important if you are hyper mobile through your joints - this will save you from very painful lower back SI joint issues in the long run. And trust me, prevention is WAY better than a cure when it comes to your lower back!!)

Second, focus on drawing up through the crown of your head. Together with holding in your lower belly, this encourages you to lengthen out your spine and create space in your body. When you are doing this, your chest tends to lift up and your shoulders drop down, helping you to achieve better alignment. Obviously, extending through the spine won't always be appropriate - for example, it isn't much use when you are in bridge pose or shoulder stand - but it is really useful to keep your torso extended and open in a lot of poses, for example most standing poses, forward bends and even in downward dog.

The final adjustment to make is to lower your chin towards your chest and to gently draw the front of your throat to the back of your throat. This again helps with aligning your spine by bringing your head an neck into line, and also assists if you are doing ujjayi breathing (that raspy sound that your teacher will sometimes ask you to make with your throat while you breathe during your class).

I have found that just by focussing on these three small adjustments during my poses I am able to achieve better alignment - but with less thinking! For example, in downward dog my mind used to go through pretty much every muscle in my body as I tried to get them exactly into the right position. Now, I just focus on getting these three things right, and everything else just seems to happen!

2. Slow down

There is a tendency amongst a lot of modern yogis to move from one pose to another with great speed - particularly in vinyasa and other "power" yoga styles. Maybe we feel like we get more of a work out when we quickly flip from one pose to the next, or maybe it is just a reflection of our busy, overworked lifestyles. But the truth is we are doing ourselves an injustice by whizzing through our yoga sessions. If you have taken the time out of your busy schedule to do a yoga session, why do you want to rush it?

You still get the same benefits if you take the full breath (that is, for a full count of four or so) to gently flow from one pose to the next. In fact, it often takes more strength and control to do your asana at a slower pace because you can't rely on momentum to swing your body into a pose. It also gives you more of an opportunity to get your alignment right.

The other benefit of slowing down is that it helps prepare yourself for meditation by really connecting your movement with your breath and allowing you to more deeply engage with the flow of energy throughout your body. Add this to the techniques set out in 1 above, and you are really getting somewhere!

3. Be still

When I hold a particular pose, I tend to spend the whole time constantly adjusting myself to move more deeply into the pose. I scan my body from bottom to top to bottom again, seeing if there is any area of my body that I can shift to improve the pose.

What this means though is that I never really get to just sit with a pose and enjoy it. I am always pushing, trying to get more out of it.

Now though, when I am holding a pose, I set my alignment up and then - I let myself just be still.

This is easier than it sounds - as an A-type, I naturally tend to want to push myself beyond my limits and to go further. But when I stop trying to force or further refine a pose, I find that I can actually enjoy my practice a lot more. I still work on my edge (that place in a pose where you feel challenged but not so challenged that you feel pain, you start shaking and/or your breathing gets shallow) but once I get there, I just surrender into it. And it feels goooooood.

I am really finding that just by introducing these three, relatively minor changes to my practice, my teacher training is already having a big impact. And these are definitely making me look at my asana practice in a different, more healthy way. I also find I am finishing my classes feeling more refreshed and balanced than I used to. And definitely feeling happier.

Which is kind of the point, right?

What's your dream?

My yoga teacher training has finally started - yay!

Today was day two. I was incredibly anxious before starting - but that is nothing unusual for me. Anything that is unfamiliar and involves lots of other people makes me nervous. My belly was all full of butterflies and it felt like the first day of school. Which I guess it kind of was.

I had the usual first day worries: Like what if no one likes me? What if I'm not good enough? What if I fail? What if I don't enjoy it and it is all a waste of money and time? Blah, blah, blah.

But so far, so good! Everyone is lovely, I don't feel like I am in over my head and I am really loving it.

One thing that has become clear though is that the course involves more than just learning the skills to become a teacher. It is going to be quite a personal journey too with a lot of digging deep. And it is definitely looking beyond just the physical side of yoga - the asanas. We are gaining an understanding of all of the elements and how they can be integrated so that we can achieve increased flow throughout the body and a quietened mind. It is heavy but amazing stuff.

Today, a relatively simple exercise left me feeling a bit lost and, as a result, quite introspective. We were asked to discuss in small groups what our dream life would look like if there were no obstacles. Basically, let our minds go wild and put out to the world our greatest fantasies for an ideal life. What could be easier?

Some people seemed to have no trouble at all. They could articulate beautifully what their perfect life would be like down to the finest detail. And it was out-there stuff too. Global empires and what not.

Me? Well, I came up with some cool stuff, I guess. A house in the rainforest but also near the sea - perhaps in Bangalow. But I wouldn't live there all the time. Nooo. Because I would still have to keep my job, wouldn't I? I would work in the city and then, when I needed to escape, I could go to the house in Bangalow. Oh and I would have a dog in addition to my two cats.

Seriously. I let my mind run wild and that is the best I could do!?! A holiday home and a dog? Thing is, every time I thought of something cool - like living on a tropical island, teaching yoga and looking after stray kittens and puppies - this voice would come into my head saying "But you have to be realistic! Otherwise, you are being silly!"

It didn't seem to matter to me that the aim exercise wasn't to think about what I could realistically achieve. I was meant to be thinking big, thinking outside what might seem possible. I was allowed to be silly!

I found this to be really confronting. Like if I said something crazy, I would be ridiculed if I then failed to achieve it. Which is daft, really. Because when others shared their awesome hopes and dreams, my instinct was not to ridicule them. It was to encourage them. Their dreams sounded great. And I wanted to think of ways that they could actually achieve maybe even just one small part of their dream to help them on their way.

But I was still unable to think of anything for myself. I am just not sure what my real dream is. There is definitely a lot of work for me to do around this.

Hmmm...

So day two and I am already feeling challenged. Imagine where I will be by the end of the year!!