Let’s talk about yoga for just a moment. I’ve often found myself victim of proclaiming that I participate in yoga, when in reality I’ll do some morning stretches and call it yoga. The truth about yoga, as I’ve learned over the years, is that the way in which you orient your body and mind is the distinguishing factor between stretching and yoga. Two months ago, I was offered an exquisite opportunity to participate in a morning yoga class at the beach with a plethora of old folk (hey, I’m an old folk at heart). Appreciating the connection with nature and how we view our lives in the present, with the sound of the ocean waves in the background, is something that I wish I’d done more in the past. Taking just an hour to connect deep within ourselves does so much in shaping our mindset for the day going forward. As an intrinsically introverted individual, I find this fact beautiful, hence why my appreciation and participation in yoga has dramatically increased over the past several years. I want to backtrack to a specific date – July 26, 2016 – when I first engaged in a meaningful yoga session within the constructs of my own home. I found a CD lodged within my mess of random shit and chose to watch it one morning; it was an AM Yoga lesson. While I’m no proponent that digital teaching is the way to go for yoga, it was certainly better than doing nothing. The AM session culminated with what I still believe is the most powerful aspect of yoga – the magic of mouna (Sanskrit for “silence”). When we take a metaphysical approach to our thought process and observe how we tackle communication and the world around us, we resonate within ourselves a deeper understanding of our behavior and its relevance in our day-to-day lives. One might relate this experience to ascending into the astral plane; by relaxing our body such that we distance our mind from the physical world around us, we focus on the most fundamental aspects of existence in a state of appreciation. My story culminates with an epiphany I had regarding motivations: people do shit because of the promise of what is to come, whether consciously or unconsciously. Often, we get so lost focusing on a slate of false promises that we lose sight of the real choices right in front of us. I’m guilty of this; back in 2016, all I could think about was going to New York or jumping ship. Yoga has helped me to rebalance my aspirations and contentment with the present, for there is no journey to the former without the latter. A year later, on July 20, 2017, I met an enigmatic woman at a park who claimed to be a prophet – a false prophet, maybe, but a precog nonetheless. Curious, I chose to listen and hear what she had to say. Claiming that my future would be endowed with wealth and that a certain someone (baring a name that matches nobody I currently know) will play a significant role in my life, I was smartly skeptical but keen on asking questions. Our conversations lasted several hours and ended with an acute observation about how the present and future coincide: everything we want is within arm’s reach. It’s the decisions that hold us back. Such was a clever nod back to July 26, 2016, a day in which I had no plan, insisting on impulse rather than disincentives. I engaged in my first solo yoga outing, fixed my violin, baked some pies for myself, and made roasted tomato mozzarella paninis (just like the ones at Starbucks). I didn’t plan for any of that, yet it ended up being a good day. It got me thinking about how we frame our lives around the arbitrary schedules we structure. Why not just do things? Why do we waste so much time thinking about them? I’ve asked these same questions throughout every endeavor, the most recent being my decision to initiate an online presence. Why did I wait until 2016? I’ve had shit to say since my eventful childhood. Yet, I still have no answer to that question. Over the past few years, I’ve kept a planner which has helped me do more things I’ve wanted to do, but I’m still somewhat fragmented about the balances we make to sustain ourselves. Structure is arguably the antagonist to our creative potential. At least I have my culinary diary, where I can talk about these topics and mold them within the milieu of food. Perhaps, this diary is hardly even about food, as you can clearly tell by this entry. Rather, food represents a contextual landscape about culture, ourselves, and the world around us. Regarding tomato mozzarella paninis, I took those straight from Starbucks. The story I told with those paninis was that all things can be appreciated, even mass-produced food items (because they inspire homemade renditions of the same thing). Personally, I don’t even like Starbucks’s version of that panini. That’s why I made my own, and they were much better. You see, the world is but a collage of ideas. What we decide in the present moment dictates how that those ideas manifest in our actions – just like yoga.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2018
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