If you love eating ... AND you love yoga,…
If you love eating ... AND you love yoga, read this!
In our recent survey, “I love how it makes me feel afterward!” was one of the most overwhelming responses when we asked regular students what they love about their practice.
Does Hot Yoga make YOU feel like doing this?
A surprising majority of respondents also said that they would like help and insights into finding ways to take yoga from their practice, their studio and their space into every area of their lives – expanding that “feeling great” sensation to permeate every minute!
Routines and rituals
One of the keys is to be able to notice pre-conditioned or “unconscious” patterns of behavior and begin to zero in on the changes you need to make using your “yoga energy”.
But beware – our old routines and rituals can be tough adversaries!
How about you? Do you ever find yourself reverting back to old behaviors in times of stress because they are your old conditioned responses?
Maybe it’s simply in the way you react instead of respond to your own child, parent or friend? It just goes to show you that despite all our efforts, we are human!
Changing old eating and food preparation routines
I guess it wouldn’t surprise you to know that many people are using hot yoga to help them lose weight, change shape and above all be physically fit!
It’s true, Hot Yoga can easily change your shape – and eating well helps accelerate the process!
But as you know once you start your yoga even though those goals are there they get packaged differently – people FEEL so much better in their own skin that a special alchemy is created that makes some changes happen all by themselves.
You might have found, like me, that magically some changes to your eating habits have happened, you make better choices and wonder how they snuck up on you like that.
Still those choices are often INSIDE your regular eating reality. What do I mean by that? Well it means that your ability to be creative and different is usually still limited by your own experience.
If you’re a meat and 3 vegie kind of family then you aren’t likely to shift gears all of a sudden into a vegan-juicing-raw foodie kinda thing at the flick of a switch.
For example, you may change the type or frequency of the meat and eat more stir fries or more steamed vegetables.
Are you preparing the same style of food you’ve always prepared?
In all likelihood, your changes are mostly going to be within your own paradigm or contain a bunch of the familiar so that your changes become sustainable.
How I changed my own food habits
Late last year I found some great resources that have inspired me to make changes to my nutrition and the way I feed my family.
Yes, Robert does cook and extremely well, but because I am the more, shall we say, particular (!) about what we eat, I influence the family habits more. And both being accomplished cooks, boy oh boy do we love to eat well.
It’s nothing for us to whip up a nutritious meal with Asian, Indian, Mexican or European influence.
But here’s the thing: Robert and I and our adorable girlie were stuck in our old eating habits. They weren’t bad by any means.
We do happen to be vegetarian (and don’t worry, I won’t be trying to change you if you’re not) and we don’t eat a lot of dairy, but we did for the longest while there eat a great deal of cooked foods.
The first one INSTANTLY rewired my mindset
It was because of 2 truly great DVD products that I recently became really inspired to make some sustainable changes that I feel so happy and strongly about that I have now made these products available on the Hot Yoga Doctor website.
The first one had me INSTANTLY rewiring my mind about health and nutrition.
It goes way beyond ‘you are what you eat’ and looks at eating naturally, what proportion of raw or cooked food you should actually consume.
Do you know what proportion of raw:cooked is best?
It examines in great detail issues such as whether you should take supplements and whether the food we eat is enough to create vibrant bodies and minds to go along with our (aspiring) yoga bodies!
If you haven’t seen it then please go check out our cart for a special deal at the Hot Yoga Doctor Store or even the Food Matters Website.
And then I was INSPIRED by being shown “the how”
Anyway that’s only half the story. These OTHER videos were the tipping point for me. Don’t get me wrong, I really believed I was already doing a great job; a vegetarian diet with tons of vegetables, organic food and so on and so forth.
While Food Matters really had me think about what I was eating, these other DVDs actually showed me what to DO.
Raw nuts being activated – very quick, VERY healthy and easy!
I like to say that it helped me expand my yoga practice to include my eating practices. And that’s exactly how Susan teaches it in her DVD program.
It is my opinion that if you’re going to get all conscious about your body and mind in your yoga practice then it seems natural to want to extend the effects through every part of your life.
Eating well is such an incredible way to nourish your body and mind. Now you may be thinking: “Well Gabrielle, you’re already a good cook and know what to do in the kitchen”.
Yes, that’s true, I can negotiate my way around a kitchen very well. But what really struck me with these DVDs is how easy everything seemed, and how I was thoroughly INSPIRED to make instant changes.
What style of cook are you?
You may be like me, a cook that needs some extra inspiration to find better ways to do what you already do well, OR you could be someone who can only cook when you have EVERYTHING that’s written in the recipe on hand and ready to drop into your bowl.
I think that these DVDs will help you regardless of your style of cooking: Both Ad Hoc AND Organized.
So, I thought I’d put a list together of the stuff that impressed me because I am SURE it will impress you too:
I loved the way the DVDs showed me loads of things including:
- What to have in my kitchen at the least (in terms of things to garnish, oils to have in the cupboard and other essential ingredients)
- What to cook without preaching a raw food only diet (I really believe that it’s important not to be pigeon holed into eating a certain type of food because geez, you want some flexibility. Hmmmm sounds like yoga again! Seriously though, I may be vegetarian but you may enjoy whatever you’ve chosen. So these DVDs help you adapt what you’re eating NOW)
- How to integrate these simple ideas into any cuisine (didn’t I just say that?)
- How to get minerals and enzymes into your diet daily
- How to nourish the body AND please the palate
- Precise recipes for a large number of dishes
- How to vary these recipes so that they change to suit what’s in your kitchen cupboard that day! (I like that!)
- Easy, simple ways to add extra nutrition and taste
- How to use ingredients that pack a wholesome punch and what amounts to try to include and when
- How to negotiate your way around your kitchen healthily with minimal effort (well of course there’ll be effort, but that’s where habits are born!)
- I like the emphasis on taste and functionality as a way to get your health needs met
You see, I can wax lyrical about food, because it’s another of my favorite subjects!
So if you would like to check out how to do this simply, easily and make some fast changes to your food preparation habits, I strongly recommend you check out Susan’s amazing DVDs (just click here)!
In the next few days I hope to have time to put together at least one video of a simple, family-friendly, fast and super-healthy recipe that you could use with the equipment you probably have in your kitchen right now.
It’s NOT on the DVDs, it’s my own recipe inspired by these DVDs and the books I’ve recently borrowed from the library.
Then after that I will share with you how to use what you have equipment-wise to start your move towards even better holistic health.
As a result of my new exploits I also want to show you my new toy (for the kitchen OK?) and I hope that together we can start to make this website a resource for health-inspired yoginis and yogis like you and me who want to be there to support each other…
Won’t you join me?
If you have a “changing food habits” story, or a favorite healthy recipe you’d like to share, please share it with us here! (just click the “comments button”)
Namaste,
Gabrielle
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