Set Higher Standards by YogiRavi

I know sounds like an oxymoron but yes it is possible to get injured doing yoga. Especially the kind you find being practiced at most gyms and advanced yoga studios in the US.

I consider myself a pretty advanced asana practioner, but for the past 4 months or so have maintained a consistent 6-7 day a week practice. Many of my classes are very physically challenging (Baptiste Power Yoga is the style).

Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue as my body would have time to heal, but I started developing a bit of aching in my wrists. Instead of doing the smart thing and modifying poses (which you are told to do in case of soreness or injury) or taking a few days off, I just decided to power through.

Using a laptop computer 12 hours a day didn’t help matters.

In the end, one class was especially challenging, and I my right wrist was super-sore afterwards.

I continued to going to class for a week or so, modifying poses whenever arm balances were in order. The pain was not and is not that bad, in fact, I could practice through it without a problem, but I fear it getting worse.

Therefore, I took 3 days totally off, and did an Iyengar practice that  was much easier on my wrists. Iyengar practices focus on alignment, and I figure it would be a good thing for me to really delve deeply into to prevent any further injuries.

I figured out that my injury was caused by improper hand position and pressure. My position was just a few degrees off, but after hundreds of Sun A and B’s. this eventually wears you down.

Moral of this story is to never stop focusing on the basics, even if you are advanced. Really nail technique and you’ll go much farther over the long run and be more likely to avoid any injuries.

I’m now enjoying the Green Smoothie you’ll see in these pictures.

It never occurred to me to throw cucumbers or celery in the Vita-Mix, but after reading Anthony’s blog for a while and his comments about cucumbers being good for skin, I figured I would try it out. Celery is also a fantastic source for electrolytes, which is perfect for active folks like me. Especially with all the yoga I do (the room is heated to 95 degrees), I lose a lot of fluid through sweat every day.

This smoothie has a very neutral taste.I just finished a 7.5 mile run, and ate half a pineapple when I got home. After doing some things around the house, I was a little hungry and decided this would be a good way to get some of the micronutrients back into my body that I lost through sweat on the run.

As a bonus…I was dropping off a few things at the goodwill 1 mile down the road, and discovered a little farmers market tucked into a small park there! It has a whole bunch of local produce, including the pint of strawberries I had for breakfast, and the 1 medium sized cucumber and three celery stalks used in this smoothie.

I cut the ends off the cucumbers and the bottoms off of the celery, but that is it. I don’t peel anything. Especially not the cucs, you want all that green stuff in you!

A little longer than I planned. I really like exploring new areas, and now that I’ve moved to Downtown Bellevue, there are plenty of new areas to explore. Today I ran through Clyde Hill and Medina, past Bill Gates house and back along Lake Washington Blvd to Bellevue.

Details about the route here.

Just got back from seeing Bigger, Stronger, Faster. The movie is OK.

It’s a documentary about steroid abuse, and how people will really do anything to get ahead, even if it could cost them their lives in the long-run.

I’ll cut straight to the punch. 1. Quality 2. Timing

I should know a thing or two about this. I spend the first half of my life as a massively overweight kid. I tried all sorts of tricks and different diets. It took me a long time to realize that are just two simple things you need to get a handle on to get complete control of your diet.

Understanding these two simple concepts gives you the intellectual ammo you need to start being aware of the quality of your food choices and the timing around when you eat them.

It’s heck of a lot easier to just focus on these simple guidelines than some other elaborate diet. In fact, if you are following any other diet, just add in these concepts and you’ll be sure to get better results.

1. Quality is all about the nutrient quality of the food you eat. Is it unprocessed? Is it organic? Is it fresh? Is it ripe? There is a lot to be said for quality. You can consume an apple as a mashed up apple that has been sitting in a del monte can on a shelf for years in some warehouse until it makes it to your supermarket and finally to your mouth…..or you can enjoy a fresh, ripe and crisp apple plucked straight from a tree.

There is a difference in the quality of nutrition you get from different food choices. Eating 500 calories worth of pizza is not the same as eating 500 calories worth of fresh greens, avacado and tofu or beans. Even if the “labels” look the same, use your common sense and think about what your body will have to do to digest that food.

In accounting, you look at assets and liabilities, revenue and expenses to measure the health of a business. When you look at food, just don’t think about what it puts into you, think about what your body will have to do (“spend”) to make those nutrients available to every cell in your being.

Focus on quality nutrition. There is no price too high to pay to feed yourself the highest quality food. I hear lots of people complain that organic food costs too much, and in the next breath blow $50 on an overpriced bottle of wine with a dinner. You body deserves the best and most high quality food around.

2. Timing is critical. Eating 500 calories after cycling a century is not the same as eating 500 calories when you are awake at 2am wasting time using the computing instead of going asleep. Your body has a rhythm and digestive fires need a break.

Eating a burger and fries in the middle of a sedentary workday is not the same as eating a high calorie smoothie before a big day of snowboarding.

It is time for common sense.

People get fixed into eating the same things and the same amounts (often too much) regardless of their situation or time. Feed your body what it needs, when it needs it. Don’t feed it what YOU want.

Perhaps the single biggest change people can make to their regarding timing is to limit the size of their final meal in the evening. In many cultures, the evening meal is small, consisting of a few fruits, breads, salads, etc. The midday meals were also lighter unless the daytime was busy with physical activity.

Today, we eat for convenience, which means a skipped breakfast (coffee is the most popular breakfast in the USA…how sad), a quick fast food lunch of pizza or a burger and an oversized dinner to feed a body that has been so starved of real nutrition during the day.

Today I started my day with a large glass of water mixed with dried greens. I ate 1/4 of a large pineapple midmorning and a vegan sandwich with lots of veggies for lunch. I had another 1/4 pineapple for afternoon snack.

After work I did a very intense 90 minute yoga practice, and am now enjoying a smoothie made with 3 celery stalks (great for replenishing electrolytes) and more powedered greens blended in my vita-mix. My dinner will probably be a soup of some sort. Something light. If I don’t wake up in the morning and feel a little hungry, I know I overate at dinner.  I burned a lot of calories in my yoga practice but I still am getting more than what I need because I have timed my nutrition appropriately and am getting high quality and unprocessed nutrients in my body.

This is typical of my average day. Some days I fall off the bandwagon and have a large plate of Chinese food for lunch, in general I try to keep my meals as high quality as possible, and timed appropriately.

Try focusing on quality and timing a bit more during your day and your bound to make better choices. Remember that the goal is not to get it perfect. The goal is to simply make 1-2 changes that stick and move you in a more positive direction. Even a 1% shift in course over the long term will translate to massive positive change over the long term.

Namaste.

So I’ve not been posting as much lately in part because I’ve held this idea in my mind that every post on this blog needs to be fairly well thought through, with images and stuff where possible.

The process of it all has kept me from taking action.
So now….I am writing this post in the time it takes my vegan pad thai to heat up in the microwave….I know I know….I should just be eating a raw salad, but it is 11pm, I just finished yoga and I am not in the mood for much more than just pushing a few buttons.

OK, microwave just beeped…..gotta go eat!

(me doing Natarajasana “dancer pose” at Badlands National Park in South Dakota)

I’ve been practicing for almost 7 years. The past 6 months my practice has been very consistent, making it to a studio 6 days a week on average. For yoga, I have found that practicing more frequently really does yield superior results. I’d go so far as to say it is better to practice 20 minutes every day than for 90 minutes 2-3 times a week.

Yoga is infinitely challenging though. My studio, Shakti Vinyasa, recently switched up a few of their classes, substituting a couple of my the normally “advanced” level II/III classes with “beginner” level I/II classes.

(me doing Trigonasana “triangle pose” in the Grand Tetons)

From my perspective, the levels don’t mean much. I sweat about the same in any class. I also come out of any class feeling worked about the same amount. In a level I class I might go deeper into poses or be able to make some more advanced modifications. With a level III class I might take some modifications to make certain poses easier (e.g. dropping a knee in “twisted crescent lunge”). Either way I get the same “workout” physically, mentally (focus) and emotionally (dealing with ego and expectations).

It’s funny because on many occasions I’ve had people comment about how hard a level III class is or why I am going to a level I “intro” class (meant for people new to yoga). For me, it is all the same. Yoga is yoga. You get out what you put in.

So today I came out of retirement!

I stopped racing for a long time. My last real event being Ironman Coeur D Alene (I know I probably butchered the spelling but oh well). After I imploded during that race I decided to take a step back and stop all my competitive stuff. After over 10 years of racing and over a hundred events…it was time for a break.
Since then I have done a few half-marathons, a few shorter road races and swam across Puget Sound with my friend Kris, but in all cases I really did not race against the clock. I also didn’t train crazy hard either. I didn’t have a training plan, and just did things day by day. I ditched my heart rate monitor and my watch. I took the opportunity to travel more and deepen my yoga and mediation practice.

Lately, Yoga has been (and is) my passion. However, yesterday I really got this feeling, actually more like a compelling urge, to go running. I hopped in my car late in the afternoon and went to the trails at Cougar Mountain, a wooded area filled with challenging trails about 30 minutes drive from my home. When I was serious about training I would do most of my long runs down here.

This time, I parked at my usual trail head and made it about 200 meters (really) before I was slowed to a walk (hey, the trail starts on a steep hill!). I did about 30 minutes in total, a mixture of slow running and fast walking. This was literally the third run I’ve done this year and I realized how despite my diligent yoga practice, my cardiovascular system was not use to dealing with stress at this level!

In yoga, you get an outstanding total body workout with a mildly elevated heart-rate. However you do not get the same prolonged intensity that you would get from a hard bike ride, swim or run.

I decided then and there that is was time to start running again. I got home and saw that a 5K was going on the following morning (today) through Seward Park on Lake Washington in Seattle, WA, so I went on down there today to see where I was at. As added motivation, the Furry 5K supports the Seattle Animal Shelter, and I love animals so if nothing else I would be supporting an outstanding cause by doing the event.

The race itself was a total blast. Having all the animals around was a huge stress reliever for everyone. It was really hard to take anything seriously when you see all these critters running and playing, their owners trying to get them to go in a straight line and sniff each other! There had to be about 1000 runners and walkers….and at least as many dogs.

Walking over to the starting line, I was pretty late and most all the runners were gathered….waiting for the gun to go off in about 5 minutes. I decided to saunter up to the front of the line, like I always do, but then remembered that I haven’t done any training and would definitely get run over! I still stayed about 10 feet from the front, off to the side (which was a good thing since some of the dogs took of in a mad dash from the start pulling their owners for the ride!!!).

Right before the gun went off there was pandemonium. I am not sure what was going on, I think it was the timing system emitting some sort of high-pitched frequency, because for the final minute before the race start, all the dogs were going nuts and barking all over the place…at each other, their owners, the air, the trees! It was absolutely hysterical.

Anyway, the gun went off and within the first 400 meters I definitely felt that I went out way to hard….and decided to back off and just have fun. I even stopped to use a porta potty, something I’ve never ever done in a 5k!

At different points during the race I was getting passed by all sorts of dogs. A Marmaduke dog, a Wiener dog (very humbling to have this happen I might add), a few Labs…no Poodles though!

In the end, I crossed the three mile point and sprinted like crazy and passed about 10 people in the last 100 meters. I finished in 23min 20sec or so.The course was pretty flat so I can’t blame that on the hills!

I think this is the slowest 5K time for me in 13 years, and well off my personal best of 18:10. Despite that, it was definitely one of the more fun races I’ve done in a long time. I had no expectations going in and the dogs made it a ton of fun.

I am going to start running regularly now, and will see how my body progresses. Would be great to set a new 5K personal best this year. We’ll see how fast my running form returns. If you know of any good 5K or 10K runs around the Seattle area, let me know!

I’ve been watching Tim VanOrden’s energetic YouTube videos for a while, but just today ventured over to his website. He’s a Raw Vegan and on a mission to show that that you can achieve world class athletic performance on that kind of a diet, and at an older age.

Tim is 40 years old, setting personal records and beating runners over a decade junior to him.Here’s a taste of his goals for 2008:

• 2008 – US Tower Racing Champion at the Empire State Building
• 2008 – US Mountain Running Team – World Championships
• 2008 – World Record – Mile on outdoor track – First 40 year old to break 4 minutes.
• 2008 – US Olympic Track & Field Team – 40 years of age
• 2010 – US Olympic Nordic Ski Team – 42 years of age

I’ve been searching for a top Raw Vegan athlete that managed to improve performance radically after embarking on a Raw Vegan diet. I know of a few Raw Vegans who were top athletes, but they were either super fast before going raw, or stopped racing seriously altogether after cutting out cooked foods.

It looks like his diet is mostly fruits and raw food bars during the day (Lara Bars is a sponsor of his), with a monster salad in the evenings. No supplements either! He’s been doing this since late 2005, after several years as a vegan.

If someone like Tim can achieve significantly improved performance at an age where most would say his career as a top runner is over, then I would have to say there is something to his dietary approach. If this diet can power him to this level, just think about what incorporating more living foods in your diet could do to your energy levels at work or school?

Skip the sandwich, go for the salad.

I’m really into my blender drinks. I start out every morning with one, before work and even on weekends. I’ll add anywhere from 8-10 ingredients…a real mess of things. It’s tasty, organic, cleansing, energizing, alkalizing, hydrating, satiating and yes….I said tasty.

My drinks get pretty crazy because of all the great stuff I throw in there. When in doubt….toss it in. My Vita-Mix does the trick every time. If you don’t have a high quality blender…get one…..my Vita-Mix is one of the best investments I’ve made. I didn’t think there was a difference between a $40 blender and a $400 blender….but now I know that there is. You’ll never taste a smoothie so smooth.

My blender drinks are perfect meals. In the morning, they are so packed with nutrition, that if this one drink was the only nourishment I  had all day, I would be alright. Note that I said if, since I do eat several snacks and lunch every day.

I enjoy the process of eating, but modern day lifestyles make it tough to just sit around and chew all day. That’s why blenders are so valuable. They also take foods that might not taste great on their own (e.g. raw cacao, spirulina, maca root) and make them down right tasty when blended with banana, honey, dates, berries or other fruits.

Blenders also pulverize food to the point where your body can more easily assimilate nutrients. I typically have a second smoothie after my yoga practice in the evening, while I am preparing dinner. This will be lighter drink (about 3-5 ingredients).

I am a big believer that any craving for food is ultimately born from a craving for nutrients. We are so used to eating calorically dense foods are nutrient light. Pizza, pasta, rice, sandwiches, etc. Lacking the nutrients it needs, the body starts to crave more food. This causes us to eat even more calorically dense foods in a desperate attempt to get the right nutrition. In most cases, this nutrition is in the form of key vitamins, minerals, amino acids and enzymes. Unfortunately, our food choices rarely give us what we need. We get tons of calories but not enough real nutrition.

Blender drinks give you a way to consumer natural superfoods in a user friendly way. These superfoods (cacao, maca root, flax, goji berries and hemp are my favorites) are ridiculously nutrient dense. For example, cacao (raw chocolate beans) have > 5x the antioxidants of blueberries and is the top sources of minerals like sulfur and magnesium out of all food products. A high quality meal with these superfoods make food cravings a thing of the past. They make a perfect meal.