I need to confess that I have been defiantly avoiding writing about eating a plant-based diet. It isn’t because I don’t do it. It isn’t because I don’t think it’s important. It isn’t even because I don’t know what to say. It’s because, in my coaching experience, eating plants is the habit that people have the most resistance to.

Maybe it’s because I live in New Orleans, where fried seafood is a religion. Maybe it’s because I live in the South, where food and meat are synonymous. Maybe it’s because I live in America, where we famously consume more meat than any other country.

I’m Vegan (ish)

I could blame these cultural factors, but frankly, I know that I need to take some responsibility here. See, I’m vegan (ish). And despite my constant reiteration that I am a non-evangelical vegan and that it’s not my business to decide whether you should consume animal flesh or not, when people hear a vegan talking about a plant-based diet, they usually stop listening and start groaning.

Please don’t do that. Just hear me out. I won’t judge you if you don’t judge me.

Even though I think being a vegetarian is totally awesome, I am not trying to get you to go veg. I just want you to eat more plants. I am not suggesting that you stop doing something you love. I am suggesting that you start doing more of something that you already do anyways that will benefit you, your family, and the entire planet.

Going Vegan is Good for the Environment, Duh!

Seriously, y’all, the environmental argument is just common sense. Do I even need to go there? Think about how many resources it takes to keep you alive. Think about all the water, gas, food, land, jobs, etc. You’re a complicated being and it takes a lot to maintain the health of a sophisticated creature.

Animals (like cows and pigs and chickens) are also pretty sophisticated, and it takes a lot to keep them alive, too. So when we consume other sophisticated creatures, we are using not only the resources that it takes to fuel us, but also all the resources that it takes to fuel them.  Add to that the cost of slaughter, processing, and shipping, and that makes animal consumption a practice that digs deeply into our communal resources.

Plants, on the other hand, make their own food, so they require far less external maintenance. Plus, you can grow them yourself and cut out all of the costs of shipping, packaging, etc. Basically, what I’m telling you is that for the price of some elbow grease and an uptick on your water bill, you can grow a lot of your own food. The cost on society is not only small, it’s actually negative considering that your plants will create a resource that we all need: oxygen.

So the more plants you grow and eat and the less meat, the more good you do for the environment and society and the less you tax it. Win. Win. Win. Even if you can’t grow your own plants, the cost of consuming a plant-based diet is significantly less on the environment than a meat-based diet.

Let’s Talk Karma Y’all

I’m not touching the moral argument here. Not on your life. What you think is right and wrong is definitely your business. But since we are all yogis (ish), let’s talk about energy exchange and karma.

There is a natural exchange of energy between plants and humans. What is waste to us (carbon dioxide) is food to them and vice versa. We feed them simply by doing something we have to do anyways: breathe. That is an equal exchange of energy.

Our relationship with animals is more complicated. In order to feed them, we must use up some (A LOT) of our human food resources. We could feed 800 million people with the grain that livestock raised for slaughter eat. That’s insane. There are 780 million undernourished people in undeveloped countries and 11 million in developed countries. So, with the food that we use to feed animals, we could feed more than the total number of hungry people in the world.

That is not an equal energetic exchange. We are trading quality of life for 800 million humans for the pleasure of eating meat, instead of just trading carbon dioxide for oxygen. Worst. Deal. Ever. We could feed all 791 million hungry people in the world and still have resources left to eat the occasional hamburger.

And Other Duh! Eating Plants is Good for You

But we don’t eat the occasional hamburger. The average American eats 164 pounds of meat per year. Even if you don’t want to think about the rest of the people on the planet, think about yourself. Meat consumption is linked to a host of health problems, including (but not limited to) heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity. Eating more vegetables can help reduce the risk of these ailments. For example, simply adding a half cup of produce to your diet daily can reduce your risk of heart disease by 4% and your risk of stroke by 6%.

So eating vegetables is good for you. Duh. Moving right along.

Eating more vegetables is also good for your karma. Since the exchange of energy between humans and plants is basically equal, no karma is created by eating them. When we consume another being, however, we take in the karma of both that being’s life and death. In other words, when you eat an animal, you eat its karma.

So that hamburger at McDonald’s is, karmically speaking, a lot more costly than the $1 you pay for it in greenbacks. It costs you both the life and death of the cow and also all the conditions of its life, death, and consumption. Basically, with that hamburger, you get a lot more than your bargained for: the karma of environmental waste, animal cruelty, factory farming, corporate greed, and underpaid employees. Even if you’re not looking to get enlightened in this lifetime, that is still a pretty fucking expensive hamburger.

So, y’all, if you don’t want to stop eating meat, fine. But consider adding more vegetables. And make sure you know the cost of your dietary choices, not just on you and your family’s health, but on the health of our cosmic community and terrestrial home.

Tips For Eating More Plants

1. Make It a Game. How many different kinds of plants can you eat in a week? Start a competition within your family. Keep score. Whoever eats the greatest number of plant species in a week gets a foot massage from the person who ate the least. (I hope my wife is reading this. I would definitely win.)
2. Cut Back on Packaged Foods. If you make an oath to cut down on the amount of packaging you bring home from the grocery store, your meat consumption will naturally decrease. You may be able to get away with not buying loose apples, but an unwrapped slab of bacon? No way. So unless you have chickens in your backyard that you are ready to slaughter, you will end up with a lot more veggies on your plate.
3. Consider the Life of Everything You Eat and Whether You Want Its Karma. I am not suggesting that you sit around berating yourself for your food choices. What I’m saying is just be mindful. Think through the life of that celery or that pig. Consider the circumstances of its growth, its life, and its death. If you can’t handle thinking about it, maybe you shouldn’t consider eating it.

We all know all these things. And yet, Americans are more sedentary than ever. We sit almost 8 hours a day. And apparently, all the money and education in the world won’t help you, because the wealthier and more educated you are, the more time you are likely to spend sitting down. So that means the more likely you are to know that exercise is good for you, the more likely you are not to do it.

Which is just to say that knowing that something is good for you and actually doing it are not the same thing. We think the distance between what we know and what we do can be measured in motivation, but let’s be honest. Motivation waxes and wanes. It might get you running once in awhile, but  it’s not going to make you do it daily.

So what really cuts the distance between, “I know I should run,” and, “I run every day,” is habit, pure and simple. If exercising is a daily habit for you, you are going to do it every day, whether you feel motivated to or not.

Habit is the life hack for slackers.

And I should know. I am one.

Sure, I’m a yoga teacher now. Sure, I get lots of exercise. But I haven’t always been this way.

I was a chubby, bookish, indoorsy child. I didn’t play sports. I didn’t like games. I didn’t ride a bike until I was 11. I still don’t know how to swim. I started smoking when I was 12. None of these factors predicted my future profession.

I have struggled with my weight my entire life. I have yo-yo-ed between 110 and 210 pounds since I was a teenager. If I was lighter, it meant that I was starving myself. If I was heavier, it meant that I wasn’t. There was almost no physical activity in my life.

In 1996, when I was in massage school, I got into a car accident. I had bad whiplash. At the time of the accident, I weighed about 210 pounds and  I smoked two packs a day. I was injured and out of shape, in pain and chronically sick. The massage therapist who helped me rehab told me I needed to form a kinder relationship to my body and sent me to yoga.

So I went to yoga and the rest is magic.  Now I’m happy and beautiful.

Not.

I went to yoga in the basement of a retirement community once a week for a year. It was me and my girlfriend and thirty students over 65. I was the weakest, least flexible, and most out of shape person in the room. I smoked a fat joint before every class just to make it seem like fun. It was not fun. But I made it a habit to go once a week for 45 minutes.

Eventually I felt results. Slowly, I started a conversation with my body. And I found that my body wanted to feel better. So, I started making other small changes. I bought a bike. I biked for 10 blocks every morning when I woke up. Ten blocks! That’s barely a mile. It took maybe five minutes. Then I walked around the block every night after dinner. Four blocks!

You may be thinking that I was taking it too easy on myself, but within two years I had lost 80 pounds and was running 20 miles a week. I started boxing. I went to the gym. My whole experience changed.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was practicing kaizen, making small incremental changes that add up over a period of time. Some part of me knew that I couldn’t rely on motivation to change. Motivation, or a lack thereof, had gotten me where I was.
Instead, I made small changes that I knew I could handle. When those habits were locked in, I upped the challenge. Eventually, I started liking the challenges. I started looking forward to exercise and started loving the way that I felt.

And yeah, now I’m a yoga teacher and I exercise all the time. I get really frustrated when people assume that it comes easy for me or that I can’t possibly understand how hard it is to forge a healthy relationship with your body. I totally understand.

And I still go through periods of intense lack of motivation. But because exercise is a habit for me, it just happens. I could skip it, but it’s as weird to me as skipping tooth brushing. Yeah, I can get away with it, but it feels kind of gross.

So basically, what I’m telling you is that the secret to “getting in shape” or whatever the magazines are calling it these days is GO EASY ON YOURSELF. Set small, realistic goals that make it really really easy for you to meet. Once you have integrated small habits, upgrade them.

Here are five of my favorite ways to bring breath body practices into your everyday experience without a lot of time:

1. Wake up and roll around in bed. I’m so not joking. Kick your partner and your cat out of bed and just roll around for five minutes. Follow your body’s desire to move in whatever direction it wants to go. You will find that your muscles love having this time to unkink and stretch.
2. The 4- or 9-minute marathon. Grab your iPod, put on your running shoes and walk, jog, run, skip, or all of the above for 4 or 9 minutes. It’s hard to talk yourself out of because it’s less than 5 minutes! Or less than 10! Start where you need to! (This may sound like bullshit, but the 9-minute marathon got in me in shape to play roller derby.)
3. The 7-Minute Workout. There are a million apps for this. They guide you through a 7-minute workout that is easy to do with little to no equipment. Even if you already get a lot of exercise, these are great for breaks and morning energy boosters.
4. Six Sun Salutations. The sun salutations activate the muscles in every major muscle group in the body. This will probably take less than five minutes and is a really easy way to become able to brag about your daily yoga practice.
5. Zombies Run. If you are the kind of person who won’t run unless you’re being chased, this app is for you. It’s a running game app that tells you a story about the zombie apocalypse, sends you on missions, and tells you when to run to avoid certain death.

My challenge to you is to pick one of these things and integrate it into your life, first thing in the morning. Your metabolism will get a boost if you get the blood flowing before you eat. Plus, it will get you off the couch to nowhere and on the not-so-fast track to thrive!

If you need help integrating body breath practices (or other habits) into your life, check out my Embodied Alchemy course. Change your experience so you can change the world!

Sometimes I would meditate or practice asana or do spiritual-ish or healthy-ish things after coffee. Sometimes not. Sometimes I would start checking my email and Facebook while I was still in bed and get lost in a two hour click hole. Frankly, that’s what happened more often than not.

Starting the day right was one of the first habits I tried to integrate into my life. Even before Body Thrive I started to recognize that rushing into my day with a brain and body full of undigested material was exhausting.

In the past three years, my morning rituals have varied greatly. They have changed and evolved with the seasons and with my increasing sensitivity. Whatever the exact details of my morning ritual are, though, I always have them.

Right now, my alarm clock is birds chirping. I usually wake up before it goes off, and I always look forward to hearing it. Sure, it’s the same birds everyday singing the same old songs, but it never fails to remind me that the world is bigger than the inside of my head and the inside of the house.

Every time I hear them, I remind myself that birds probably never say to themselves, “Oh shit, it’s time to get up.” They are naturally motivated by instinct to have the best morning possible, because the best morning means feeding themselves and their family and ensuring the continuation of their line.

Those are high stakes to get up and out into the world with the right mindset. And while it might be easier to be distracted by social media and consumerism, the fact is that the stakes are that high for us, too. The way we move through our days determines our happiness and success.

The first thing I do each day is go  to my altar, light incense as an offering to Spirit and offer water to my higher self.  It is both a recognition that there are powers greater than me and also that I am capable of greatness. It is a recognition that the abundance in my life is both a gift and a responsibility.

Then I fill my water glass and sit down to plan my day. I write down three things I am grateful for, three things I need to get done, and what my goal is for the day. This gets my brain in a goal-oriented mode that is relaxed. By this time, I know what I need to get done and how I am going to do it.

While I am working in my journal, I drink a quart of warm (almost hot) water. I try to poop, but this won’t usually happen until later in the morning. Still, I try, because I have faith in the habits and that they will work eventually. I am trying to relax about the fact that this isn’t happening for me, yet, but sometimes it makes me feel a bit impatient.

Whether I poop or not, it’s time for my body to move. I do a few sun salutations and focus on the breath. Then I sit down for a brief meditation. I usually use “let go” as my morning mantra.

If it seems like a lot to do before breakfast, it is, but it really only takes me about 30 minutes. I am usually going right from here to practice asana for 1-2 hours. If I’m not, I do 15-30 minutes (at least) of asana or other breath based physical movement.

Here’s the thing, y’all. I don’t do these things in the morning because I have an easy life and not that much to do, I do it because I have a jam-packed schedule and a shit ton of things to do. I wake up at about 5:45 and have to be out of the house by 6:45 to get my wife to work.

I have six pets to feed. I have to be dressed, drop off my wife, and be ready to practice, teach, or assist my teacher by 7:30. I do not get to walk in the door depressive or frantically caffeinated. It is my job to walk in the door present-minded and ready to go.

If I didn’t start my day right, my whole day would go wrong.

If you want to start your day feeling lighter, brighter and happier, here are a few tips:

1. Get Enough Sleep. Seriously. You are not going to start the day right on five hours of tossing and turning. Your body needs to rest in order to maintain physical and emotional stability. If you don’t prioritize rest, you will pay the price with your body and mind and probably your money.
2. Start the Day Right Even if You Didn’t Get Enough Sleep. This may seem to contradict my first tip, but the reality is that sometimes you won’t get enough sleep and it will be tempting to try to drown yourself in coffee and rushing as a way to cope. It won’t work. Sure, you might get going, but you won’t feel good and it won’t last.
3. Set Yourself Up for Success. Set out your water glass, your yoga mat, your meditation cushion, the clothes you are going to wear, or whatever. You know what you need to do the things you want to get done in the morning. Make it easy for yourself.
4. Have a Plan.  If you aren’t sure what your morning routine is, you probably aren’t going to be able to have one. Write your plan out on a post-it note and stick it to your alarm clock so that you remember right away how you want to start the day.
5. Be Flexible with Your Plan. Your morning rituals are going to evolve. Sometimes you will feel like dancing instead of sun salutations. Sometimes you will need more meditation. The important thing is to have a consistent structure than can change over time as you need it to.
6. Prioritize Spirit. It’s really easy to move in to each day with ambition. We all have lots of things to do. Before you start doing things, make sure that you are in the right frame of mind to be the person you want to be in the world.
7. Don’t Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good. Woke up too late to do twenty minutes of cardio before you walk the dogs? Fine. Compromise. Walk the dogs quickly. Don’t have time left to mediate? Okay. Practice mindfulness while you do the things that you aren’t going to skip. Just because you aren’t going to do your whole routine in the order you wanted to doesn’t mean that you can’t bring the spirit of starting the day right into your morning.

They say that the early bird gets the worm. It is true that getting up early might make you productive. But it’s the relief that early morning productivity ensures that is the real prize. The early bird also gets that sense of assure accomplishment.

I’m the one in purple. I don’t know who that other girl is.

Okay, sure, as a twenty-something working for nightclubs in South Beach in the 90’s, I did have a lot of fun after midnight. And, yeah, as a thirty-something derby girl, I did a lot of crazy shit after midnight. But despite the fun, you know what else is almost uniformly true? I barely remember anything that happens after midnight.

There are two reasons for my late night amnesia. One is inebriation. After midnight is when I got too drunk to stand or speak clearly and my choices were dance or die. Another choice was to go home with someone, who may or may not take good care of me, or who I may or may not have remembered the next morning.

The other reason is that often the fun I had at midnight started much earlier in the evening. All the great outfits and all the great conversations inevitably deteriorated as the night went on.

Still, staying up and out late doesn’t really sound that bad, huh?

Except that there is a difference between having fun and being happy, and while I might have been having fun late into the night, I often wasn’t happy. I was often just pushing myself to stay up later and drinking more to try to conjure up the feeling of happy.

At forty, I can say with conviction that this tactic doesn’t work. If you aren’t happy at nine, you aren’t going to be happy at midnight, and chances are good you will be miserable at 2 am, at best, and at worst completely inoperable. I am done chasing late night happy.

Most of the happiest moments of my life happened in the bright light of day. The beach… My wedding… All the yoga practices… All the life-changers and all the game-changers.

Wedding day!

Wouldn’t you rather chase that kind of happy?

I would. And honestly, I usually do. Because my body will wake me around sunrise no matter what time I go to bed, it’s really better if I get in bed by 9:30. Plus, as Cate Stillman notes in Body Thrive, 10 pm is when Pitta time starts, and once that fire gets burning, it gets much harder to go to sleep.

Here are some things I do to get to bed by 9:30:

• I set an alarm an hour before bedtime. Yes, that is really necessary. It takes me a full hour to wind down and do my evening rituals. I spend a few minutes straightening my house and the rest is pure self-care. I love that hour. That hour is full of sweet sleepy conversations with my wife and leisurely cat petting. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

• I turn off all the screens in my house. This has a triple purpose. First, it keeps me from being overstimulated by artificial light. Second, it prevents me from working. I love to work and sometimes it’s hard for me to stop, but turning off the iPad makes it much more likely. Third, it ensures that I don’t start scrolling social media and get lost in a click hole.

• I make my bedroom as dark as possible. I close all the blinds and curtains, not just in the bedroom, but in adjacent rooms. Darkness is a signal to your body that you can relax, that it’s okay to be tired.

• I rub my feet.  First I scrub them with a washcloth soaked in essential oils, then I rub homemade body butter into my tired soles and cover them with socks. This is a super relaxing way to wind down and it also keeps my feet super soft, even if I only get a pedicure every two years.

• I don’t talk about anything important after 8:30 pm or before 8:30 am.  It’s a family rule, and it keeps my wife and from starting conversations that we can’t or don’t want to finish. Plus, both of us feel more relaxed knowing that we won’t be surprised with the surprise arrival of a marital grudge or gripe.

Here’s what happens as a result of my early to bed habits:

• I get enough sleep. This is so important that I feel like I should put it on the list twice. As a person who was sleep deprived for probably twenty some odd years, I actually can’t express to you how much of a difference this makes in my life. I have more energy. I feel more in control of my emotional state. I am less prone to overwhelm. Because I honor this simple physical need, I am more in touch with how I feel generally. I know immediately if I feel tired during the day that something is going wrong and I need to pay attention.

• I sleep better in a dark room. The insistence on the dark sleeping quarters in the newest of my habits, and it’s awesome. I used to be the kind of light sleeper that was constantly awake at the slightest sound or movement in the room. It was like there was almost no difference between sleeping and waking. I was always aware. Now I sleep hard and deep and waking is a daily revelation.

• Other bad habits lessen. The more sleep I get, the less coffee and alcohol I drink, because I’m not trying to artificially regulate my energy. I eat better. Because I am well rested, I am less tempted to justify indulgences. Who needs a cookie when you can have nine hours of sleep?

• I get up before my alarm rings. I used to be a snooze-aholic. Waking up was almost never pleasant because it came with a screeching alarm. Is that anyway to introduce your consciousness to the day? No way. Waking up before the alarm gives me time to stretch and yawn and reckon with my humanity before I have to inhabit it.

I know, I know. That’s great for me, but you’re a night owl. Uh-huh, yeah, me too. Except all that means is that you stay up late. What you have to do to change it is change your ideas about what it means to stay up late. If you think life is only interesting at 2 am, of course you’ll stay up.

You might have to shift your perspective on what kind of person goes to bed early if you want to become one. And it doesn’t have to be that big a deal, either. All you have to do to become the kind of person who goes to bed early is go to bed early. You don’t have to hate fun. You can just have it earlier.

If you’re anything like me, rebellious and adventurous, it won’t be a perfect system. I go to bed before 10 about five or six nights a week. I usually don’t make it past eleven, but every couple weeks I stay up really really late. The extra bonus of keeping a regular schedule is that I can take things in stride.

On Tuesday, I was up until almost 3 am, drinking and dismembering Trump piñatas. I got up at six to practice and I was fine. I didn’t need a nap. My body is so habitually well-rested that I can totally handle a late night here and there without freaking out. Going to bed doesn’t make me any less of a rebel. It makes me a more effective rebel.

Viva la revolución.

Y’all, this is New Orleans. The Early Bird Special starts at 8 pm and the band doesn’t go on before midnight. That’s not just a rumor. Those are the rules.

The good news is that every hour is happy hour. The bad news is that the late nights and rich food of this city will do you in. Many a soul has regretted that 3 am daiquiri and fried pickles run, myself included.

The other bad news is that late night food and liquor become so habitual that you don’t even notice the grey pallor of your skin and the extra ten pounds until you go to someplace crazy, like California or Idaho, where people have tans and eat organic chickpeas or whatever.

I gave up the really late dinner habit almost a year ago, the first time I read Body Thrive. I lost 15 pounds in three months. Yes, I also made other changes, but ditching the midnight pizza was major.

So, when I made Earlier, Lighter Dinners my adventure of the month, I thought, “no problem. I already have this down. Now all I have to do is think of something interesting to say on the blog since I actually have nothing to say.”

Except that I do. Because, somehow in the past year, earlier has gotten later and later and lighter has gotten heavier and heavier. And I gained seven pounds, which, I think, is no coincidence.

Once I started actually tracking my dinner times, I realized that earlier has become 6:30 to 7:30 instead of 5:30-6:30, so I set the goal of eating at least six dinners a week by 7 pm.

Because kaizen, y’all. Small steps are do-able.

Aaaaaand…I did it every week except one. Despite the fact that I had numerous evening social engagements and my father visited from out of town for a week.

Here’s how I ate lightly before 7 pm and still had a social life in a twenty-four hour town:

1. I offered to cook. When I had guests over, I invited them to come at 5:30 or 6:00 and made sure we ate before 7:00, dessert included (which I never skip). I love to cook, so it’s no big deal for me to offer to hostess if it means I get to set the terms.
2.  I ate before I went out. I met people for drinks or hangout time after I had already eaten my quinoa and spinach salad. A side bonus of eating before you go out is that it makes going out A LOT less expensive.
3.  If I couldn’t eat early, I ate light. When my friend Claire came over for our crafting coven (it is what it sounds like) and made homemade vegan pizza at 7:30, I just didn’t gorge myself. I wanted three pieces and I just had two.

                                          Hanging out AFTER dinner.

So, then, what happened?

1. I lost weight. I don’t know how much because I don’t keep very close track, but I’d guess about 3-4 pounds.
2. I went to bed earlier. I hate going to bed with a full stomach, so sometimes if I eat late I end up binge watching until I feel settled enough to sleep. My screen time for the month went down dramatically because I wasn’t trying to find a way to wind down from a late meal.
3. I slept better. If my stomach is empty when I fall asleep, I sleep better. And I don’t have nightmares. Incidentally, I had nightmares five out of the five times I ate late during the month. Crazy ones with snakes and exes. Yuck.

                         Earlier light dinners are totally metal.

In other news, taking control of my late eating habit gave me the confidence to take control of some other habits that have been sliding (like grabbing whatever food is around instead of actually cooking) and made me think carefully about what I eat, at least during dinner time. I ended eating much more nutrient rich, satisfying, and beautiful meals as a result.

So, did my social life suffer? Nope. Not a bit. Actually, I think that I ended up having more interesting conversations and interactions with people when I invited them over for dinner instead of meeting out. Plus, eating early gave us more time to enjoy each other’s company before we got tired.

So, if you think that the early bird special is just for shut ins and retirees, think again. Early is the new late.

To be fair, it was Mardi Gras and I was probably the least inebriated person in a three block radius.  But honestly, there are a lot of pictures of me like this out there, and most of them were taken on regular Tuesdays, not Fat Tuesday.

I am a 40 year old recovering party girl.

This is also me.
Serious, focused, and standing on one leg.

You could take this picture of me any day of the week. I get up daily before dawn to meditate. I practice asana ten hours a week. I’m vegan. I eat local, love home grown food and I can tell you where to find nutritious edible weeds.

I am a yoga teacher.

It may seem like these are two very different people, or at least two very different sides of me. But the reality is that I am both of these people at the same time.

Last week I baked pot brownies. They were vegan and organic. The oozed with THC and ooey gooey very high cacao content chocolate chips. Yum. I ate two. In the afternoon on a weekday. What did I do with my altered state? Binge watched bad tv.

Not.

I practiced. I got on my mat and wrung myself out. I luxuriated in the novelty of my altered state. I had a personal epiphany about side bends, twists, and subtle undulations of the spine that I neglect in the discipline of my regular practice (read sober).

Those ideas now inform my teaching. I’ve spent every class since slowing my students down, asking them to move in new ways, asking them to find strangeness in the familiarity of their own experience.

I did NOT tell my students that they should also get high so they can experience their practice with new eyes. I used my experience to help guide them into new territory. Altered consciousness can be experienced with subtle shifts in perspective. No substances necessary.

So why did I get high? Because it was a fun way to spend my afternoon. Duh.

I could probably do a lot of justifying my stoned yoga by saying that I did it to increase my awareness or so that my students don’t have to, blah blah blah, but really, it was just fun.

And I like to have fun. Not just good clean fun, but also sloppy drunk fun. Also muddy one with nature fun. Also spacing out and watching TV fun. Also marathon curriculum planning hard work fun. I like all the fun.

Some of y’all are totally on board with this. I see you outside the studio with a big fat spliff. I see you working 14 hour days doing something you love. I see you struggling to find that mysterious state called balance.

Some of y’all are totally not into this and you are probably judging me hard right now. Go ahead. I’ve been there, too.

Here’s the thing. We all have ideas about what yoga teachers are supposed to be like and what health coaches are supposed to be like. All of us want to have teachers and guides that we can look up to. The reality is that all the people we look up to are totally human beings who have habits that may not jibe with our expectations. There are no perfect role models.

So, then, we have a choice. We can accept our less than perfect role models or we can live in a state of constant disappointment. Personally, I think it’s more realistic to accept that our teachers are not perfect and, instead of judging them on their imperfections, we can judge them based on how they handle their imperfections. Do they use their bad habits to evolve or devolve. Do they unquestioningly follow their pleasures and addictions, or do they question and learn from everything? Do they show their work?
My general philosophy of life is, “try it.” Try it and see if it works for you. Be brave enough to see the answer. At this moment in my life, I really like the fun of tapping into my dinacharya in ways that allow me to feel more expansive, more energized, more alive, and more thrive. This is what brings me here to Body Thrive and Yoga Health Coaching. I also like pot brownies. Right now, both are working for me

I’m not new here. I’ve read the book three times. I’ve gone through the habit changes once on my own, once as a member of a group, and once as part of an immersion that I led. The changes I’ve made in my habits have had a monumental effect on my general feeling of wellness, on my productivity, on the alignment of my thought and action.

I believe that making subtle small shifts in your daily habits can change your total life experience. I want more of that, and I want to share it with other people. But I don’t want to be uptight about it and I don’t want to give up fun. But I am willing to question all my habits and pleasures to find new kinds of fun and new kinds of balance and new levels of thrive.

I’ve committed the next year to charting my voyage through the ten habits of Body Thrive here on this blog. I will go in deep on each habit for one month.

You can come, too.

Each month, I will write about my experiments in habit evolution. Each month, I will struggle and succeed (maybe). I will show you what it is like for a “real person” with bad habits and a rebellious streak a mile wide to commit to thrive. For your entertainment, I will demonstrate what it looks like when someone with equal parts discipline and total disregard for the rules comes into greater alignment.

I’ll laugh. I’ll cry. I’ll mediate. I’ll get high (on life, and maybe other things). I will use the wisdom of yoga and Ayurveda to evolve. And you will know that if I can do it, so can you.