Wednesday, November 03, 2004


comments from one of the girls in the front. . .

today i was very interested to read this story about a promising college football player who, like many pros, has added yoga to his training routine.

what immediately caught my attention was the last line: "he'll be hiding behind 12 girls hoping they don't see him." as one of those girls, lemme jump in here to offer encouragement, because i believe attitudes like this keep too many guys out of yoga class!

apparently he believes that the girls in his yoga mock him because he's not as flexible as they, that he can't put his legs in lotus and bend over to set his head on the floor.

and my swift response is: if they were, they aren't doing yoga. if the practice was solely about flexibility in crazy positions, circus contortionists would be the true yoga students.

and yet nothing could be further from the truth. pretzel positions without ujjayi pranayama and mental focus are just cheap gymnastics.

if the football star can only touch his toes, but does so with complete focus and movement to the breath, he is a much more advanced yoga student than any of the smug little chicks who are resting their heads on the ground, relying solely on their natural hyper-flexibility.

over time, yoga will markedly increase your flexibility, joint stability, and strength, altho' you may never do those complex poses in a picture-perfect way. so what?

but yoga also offers much more than the brief satisfaction of putting your leg behind your head. . .to succeed in football he wants flexible strength, sure, but also the ability to concentrate under extreme pressure.

and this yoga will give him in spades. in yoga practice, we not only stand about in the poses breathing, but we also practice thought and behavior.

we learn to handle frustration, fear, competitive feelings, impatience, distraction, and many other personal emotional issues. clearing this stuff away helps you not only in daily life but also during that last crucial play!

so i applaud his devotion to his sadhana. showing up when it's hard is an indication of tapas; coming to yoga when it's easy and you can just flop into any pose is not necessarily indicative of anything at all. . .

and realistically, as anyone who maintains a steady yoga practice can tell you, when you are doing yoga, you are so involved you really don't pay attention to anyone else. thus i doubt the girls are really judging him.

in fact, i suggest he move from the back up to the front. there's every possibility that his effort motivates the satsang, that his work is inspiring to those girls!

finally, to follow up on a funny topic: the wacky acquarella water-based fingernail polish. the question was how does it last after 7 days of serious yoga practice as a pedicure?

and my answer: as good as regular polish! which surprised the heck outta me. since i do a lot of cooking and baking, i found the manicure to be the issue.

like regular polish, acquarella will lose shine and begin to wear on the edge in 2 or 3 days. normally, you just plop on another clear top coat when that happens and hang about 15 mins. waiting for it to dry.

with acquarella, just add another thin coat of color (since there is no top coat here) and it's dry in 90 seconds. however, since rubbing alcohol removes acquarella, if you use a lot of beauty products that contain alcohol, like some facial toners, the polish might dull or even start to come off a bit.

so watch that. i'm enjoying the ease and speed-drying of this product.

that it has no icky smell or toxic ingredients -- i repeat, i think you could probably safely drink this stuff, but again, i wouldn't recommend it -- is the key. if you or someone in your family is sensitive to the chemicals in regular polish, i find acquarella's worth the expense.

you don't need to buy their pricey polish remover either. i successfully removed it with plain old rubbing alcohol, which costs me just US$1 a pint at my local drug store.

as for their aloe vera gel and green tea hand lotion, it's good because it doesn't dull the polish. again, some regular hand lotions contain ingredients that appear to slightly dull acquarella after a day or two.

but again, you can just buy your own aloe vera gel or aloe-based products at the health food store. . .at my local neo-hippie hangout, aloe vera gel sells for US$6 for a 3-1/2 oz tube. you can mix in your own green tea to create a consistency that pleases you!

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