Yoga Teacher Training Journal: February 5

Come on winter, end already! It's time for some fresh yummy stuff.

Look Around, Leaves Are Brown, There's a Patch of Snow on the Ground...

Why is it so hard to get motivated to be healthy in the winter time?

One of the cool things about practicing at the Plainsboro studio is that I get to drive by Whole Foods on the way home. And I'm sorry, but I LOVE WHOLE FOODS.

I know it's not cool to say that. It's shamelessly bourgeois, vaguely hypocritical, and appallingly expensive--as anyone who has walked out with a $75 bag of groceries (containing no more than five items) can attest.

But when the weather outside is frightful, and the landscape and the sky blend into each other indistinguishably, both the color of dingy gym socks, Whole Foods provides an oasis of abundance and vitality and when I walk in there, I can pretend for just a moment that it's spring. Colorful, beautiful fruits and vegetables as far as the eye can see... Fine meats and cheeses, actual butchers and fishmongers... A salad bar brimming with bright raw veggies, heaps of garlicky kale, tabouleh and quinoa and hummus and grape leaves... Soups and soups and soups and soups... I could go on and on. My politics jump ship in the face of a simple need to passively absorb what I can only call "brightness."

For whatever reason, I hit that winter moment today where I decided it was time to really get serious about eating healthy. Cutting out the weeknight booze, rethinking how I eat when and where, and why. I've added "dropping ten pounds" (or a more experiential version thereof) to the Universe List, but really, weight loss isn't the point so much as feeling good--healthy, balanced, vigorous, abundant.

I have been treating my body well with the hot yoga, but I acknowledge that I do not treat my body as a temple in other ways. I'm ready to experiment with health--Lord knows, I've already experimented with just about everything else. Many excuses to go to Whole Foods. And an opportunity to explore my yoga practice more deeply, in a deeper commitment to health.