Sweet potatoes are a year-round staple in my house. They're simple to make, taste delicious and contain vitamins A, B6, C, D, and magnesium- making them super healthy as well. To make them i just cut them into fours as shown, drizzle extra virgin olive oil on them, add pepper, nutmeg and cinnamon, and bake them at 200c for about 45 minutes. Cut them thinner for a more traditional sweet potato fry. Easy breezy.
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Thought of the Week: If you don't Know
If you don't know, now you know.
Yoga Tip: Video for Balance
Here's a 6 minute yoga flow that works on balancing. Warm the body up first before you go into it, and be sure to always move in a pain-free range. Subscribe to my YouTube channel to be updated when I post new ones. Happy Friday, friends!
Movement: On Feet & Spreading the Toes
If you're new to yoga, you might be surprised that yoga is practiced barefoot and often involves focusing on your feet. After all, since we were babies our feet have been shoved into socks and shoes, and now you're in a yoga class grabbing your toes with your hands, interlacing your fingers between your toes, and getting acquainted with your feet. Why?
There are a number of reasons. In yoga, we work from the foundation up. This means that if you're doing a standing pose, you start not by jumping right into it, but by looking at your feet and building a stable foundation. You ground down through all four corners of both feet, you spread the toes. For all standing yoga poses, start with the feet. You'll be surprised at how it can transform your postures.
As for spreading your toes- just as you have muscles in your hands to help your fingers to spread, you have muscles in your feet to help spread your toes. When our feet are shoved into tight shoes, our toes get crunched and we lose the muscles that help our toes to spread. A number of bad things can occur when our feet are squished from shoes- plantar fasciitis, poor circulation, fallen arches, Morton's neuroma, etc.
The good news is that it's never too late to retrain those muscles. You can start by standing tall, lifting the toes, spreading them as wide as you can, and setting them down. You can always interlace your fingers between the toes.
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Another option is wearing vibram five fivers shoes (pic above, link to the left). My cousin swears these have cured his fallen arches (and subsequent back problems). My husband wears these during weight lifting, saying that he feels more balanced and stabilized when doing squats, etc. A good friend wears them when he runs (he's a marathon runner!) and says he has less injury as a result. I have a pair and have worn them for running and weight lifting. You don't need to wear them all the time, but a few hours a week will help retrain those muscles.
As previously documented here, I love these Gaiam toe socks as well. They also work to spread the toes, and have these little non-slip nodes on the bottom. All you'd have to do is put these babies on and walk around the house going about your business.
Ultimately what I'm trying to say here is that our feet are important, and they can be the root of a number of health problems, so it's time they come out of the tight shoes and sweaty socks and get some attention! :)
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Smiling at Strangers
My husband travels quite often for work. When he leaves, it's business as usual for me- I run errands, take Buckles (our Siberian husky) for a run, catch up on household joys like laundry and vacuuming the almost comical amount of husky hair he sheds, etc. Some days, though, besides running the dog, I don't have errands to do that require leaving the house which means I don't have any human interaction. Yeah, I'll be on twitter, or I'll text with friends, but it's not quite the same as a real, live, in-person convo.
It's not a big deal to me, usually, as I genuinely like being alone. I do my yoga practice, and then I'll read, or turn on the music and clean while belting out songs karaoke-style at the top of my lungs. (Bet the neighbors love that!) Other perks of my husband being out of town? I can turn the heat up way past our agreed upon level (he's always hot and I'm always cold), and leave the place a mess while I bounce from one activity to another (he is a clean freak and I am, how shall we put this...relaxed about cleaning up).
But some days the loneliness creeps in and once I get one little negative thought in my head, it's easy to get swept up in it. That happened yesterday.
It's not very "yogic", or whatever, but contrary to the stereotype, I don't sit around chanting OMs and balancing my chakras. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do meditate daily and have a strong liking for any song with a sitar, but I certainly have days where I just don't feel as "at peace" as you'd assume a yogi would be. Anyway.
So I was irritable. I was exhausted and didn't feel like running with Buckles, who, as if instinctively, decided he'd be irritable too and pull me like we were racing the Iditarod. My ears were cold (does that happen to you when you run?) and I had forgotten the headband thing I wear over my ears, and my jaw started to ache (side effect of the cold ear thing, so weird!).
Each person I passed looked down at the ground. Huh, I thought. We're all having a sh!t day, maybe.
And then I saw "my guy". My guy is this older man- older than my dad but too young to be my grandfather. He has graying hair and a mustache. I see him out for a walk nearly every time I'm out with Buckles. One of the first weeks being here in Germany, he stopped me and gave me the newspaper and pointed to the front page where there was a picture of my husband and our dog. "Husky!" He had exclaimed with a smile. It was such a nice thing to do- to give me the paper and just kind of make a connection. Ever since then, I've referred to him as 'my guy' when I talk about him to my family or friends. We always nod or say hello when we pass one another, but since my German isn't very good, and it doesn't seem like he speaks much English, our exchanges end there.
Yesterday, as my guy was approaching, Buckles pooped. It's like he's got this uncanny timing. I didn't have a poop bag with me, which was a given considering the way my day was going, so I just stood there awkwardly as he finished. As my guy walked by, I gave a slight nod, and he said hello with a big smile, and pointed to his jacket logo, which was the team my husband plays for. He gave me the thumbs up sign and a big smile, and it broke my mood. I smiled back and said, "Yeah!" and did a fist pump, because I couldn't think of a better universal "Go team!" gesture, and we continued on our separate ways.
The fact that he went out of his way to say hello and try to communicate even though there's a language barrier just meant so much to me. He took a chance, however small, and it turned my whole day around.
Now I know that if we're thinking about this in terms of yogic philosophy, I probably shouldn't care one way or another that my guy said hello. I should have just chosen to be happy regardless, and turned my day around on my own because happiness doesn't, or at least according to yogic philosophy, shouldn't depend on anyone else but yourself.
.....but doesn't it feel nice when someone does something small like that? It reminded me of this poem I had once heard that starts off "Smiling is infectious, you catch it like the flu. When someone started smiling at me today, I started smiling too."
What's Better than Toe Socks? Leg Warmers.
Leg warmers are the best thing since toe socks for yoga, and after posting a picture on instagram wearing these, I had a number of people ask where they could get their own pair. These were made by my friend's mom, who will happily make you a pair of your own. These are a merino/cashmere blend, super comfortable and stretchy. Handwash. Message her here, but please note she is on holiday until December 7th, 2012. Also note she ships from Germany.
*This is not a sponsored post- I genuinely like these and wanted to share my find. :)