Ayurvedic Doshas

I’ve been reading about Ayurveda lately, and I’m finding it fascinating. Ayurveda began initially as a means towards facilitating attaining enlightenment. Yogis seeking enlightenment couldn’t get there with their heads aching, stomachs grumbling, and skin itching, so Ayurveda developed as a way to get the body in order. In the mind-body-spirit connection, Ayurveda focuses on healing the body so that you can be free to heal your mind and spirit.

Within the 5,000 years of Ayurvedic knowledge is lots of practical health information and wisdom. It starts with determining what of the three Ayurvedic doshas is most prevalent within you. You can think of a dosha as an element. According to Ayurveda, three elements make up the human body – Vatta, Pitta, and Kapha – and each person has a main body type that is one of those three elements. The dosha body types, in turn, have general guidelines for maintaining health and balance through such things as food choice and lifestyle. Permeating all of this is a sense of mindfulness and balance – two things I have come to believe are essential and highly desirable in life.

I, apparently, am a Vatta. I’m also apparently a Vatta with a Vatta imbalance (although I’m working to balance out!). I have a little bit of Pitta, and almost no Kapha. Vattas are air; they are in their heads, very sensitive, constantly thinking, obsessing, feeling anxiety. Vattas in balance are all of those things, but enthusiastic and grounded, something they can achieve through grounding activities like yoga and meditation.

Reading about Ayurveda and Vattas has been like an unfolding revelation. It’s put the last couple of years, where I was so clearly out of balance, and then the last year where I’ve been working on attaining balance by exploring practices like yoga and meditation into perspective. One way of looking at it is to say that I have been trying to balance out my Vatta – unknowingly – by adding more Kapha (basically, chillness) into my life. I’m just an Ayurveda baby, so there’s lots more to learn, but so far I think it’s pretty freakin’ cool.

Don’t you want to know your Dosha? Take this quick quiz and find out. Namaste.

The Deep Blue

I get a “Daily Om” post sent to my email each day and though I’m always so busy I try to take at least a minute to read the posts. It’s a positive centering exercise that reminds me to take some time for myself, and that the be-all, end-all is not work, men, or anything else other than what’s inside of me. The posts also remind me to do basic stress-relief type things, such as to breathe and to be thankful.

I really like today’s post because it’s about this concept of interconnectivity. It imagines all of us as part of a great ocean of “love” – which I know sounds very new-agey – but which I take to mean the positive life essence that connects us all to one another and to the undefinable energy of the universe – whether you want to call that a higher power, God, the Universe, or some other name.

The negative aspects of life, the challenges, fears, and notes of discord that we all experience are imagined as sharks swimming about in the otherwise tranquil ocean. The sharks – despite their fearsome appearance – are not totally negative either because they too are made up of “love.” The point of the post as I interpret it is that we are all part of this love, the ocean. We, like the sharks, are made up of the ocean, and despite sometimes feeling like we are surrounded or attacked by sharks, beyond the sharks is a much larger ocean of… tranquil bliss; the happiness that is within us all that I personally tap in to through yoga, bubble baths, clearing my mind, running, practicing my Swedish, going to church, and spending time with people I love, among other things.

Sometimes I focus too much on the “sharks” and forget about the ocean, so it’s nice to be reminded about it. It’s calming.

Here’s the Daily Om:

“What We Are Made Of

Choose Love

Love is often presented as the opposite of fear, but true love is not
opposite anything. True love is far more powerful than any negative emotions, as
it is the environment in which all things arise. Negative emotions are like
sharks swimming in the ocean of love. All things beautiful and fearful, ugly and
kind, powerful and small, come into existence, do their thing, and disappear
within the context of this great ocean. At the same time, they are made of the
very love in which they swim and can never be separated. We are made of this
love and live our whole lives at one with it, whether we know it or not.

It is only the illusion that we are separate from this great love that
causes us to believe that choosing anything other than love makes sense or is
even possible. In the relative, dualistic world of positive and negative,
darkness and light, male and female, we make choices and we learn from them.
This is exactly what we are meant to be doing here on earth. Underlying these
relative choices, though, is the choice to be conscious of what we are, which is
love, or to be unconscious of it. When we choose to be conscious of it, we
choose love. We will still exist in the relative world of opposites and choices
and cause and effect, and we will need to make our way here, but doing so with
an awareness that we are all made of this love will enable us to be more
playful, more joyful, more loving and wise, as we make our way. Ultimately, the
choices we make will shed light on the love that makes us all one, enabling
those who have forgotten to return to the source.

This world makes it easy to forget this great love, which is part of why we
are here. We are here to remember and, when we forget to remember again, to
choose love.”

Turkeys: Before The Table

I don’t eat meat. It used to be for health reasons, but now it’s mainly because I literally cannot stomach the cruelty perpetuated against animals in the industries that prepare them to become food. My personal view is that we all have a responsibility to understand what happens to animals before they wind up as carcasses on our dinner plates, and it’s also my belief that if more people were aware of the poor treatment that animals receive they would work to make the system more humane – so at least if humans must eat animals, we can do so in a way that minimizes the pain caused to them.

If you are interested, check out the below video, filmed by an undercover investigator from PETA. It’s short and not as informative as some of PETA’s other videos, but it gives you a sense for the kind of senseless cruelty that turkeys are exposed to while waiting to be slaughtered. If they have to die, they should at least be treated with dignity and compassion. After all, if giants invaded the world and started eating us, wouldn’t you want to be treated – at a bare minimum – with dignity and compassion?

One Grind At A Time

As many of you know, I’ve been trying to create the type of life that I want to have, one in which I feel in tune with myself and my ideals, where I nourish my soul and feed my passions, where I’m at peace in the present, balanced, and completely happy with me. It’s harder than one would think. I date the beginning of this effort to around the time I eliminated two major causes of toxicity – a job and a boy – from my life. With those two negative elements pruned away, I was free to focus on making positive changes for me (many of which were kind of about rediscovering me), and that’s what I started to do.

I found a new job that I really enjoy, built new friendships, and took a trip that I had been wanting to take for years. I tried a diet, started going to the gym more frequently, and opened myself up to new social experiences, dating, and enjoying this amazing city and all that it has to offer in the way of restaurants, clubs, museums, outdoor space, and, of course, shopping. Kidding (kind of). I assumed a new motto, which though not neatly encapsulated in any little phrase, is about living life in the present, trying to focus on being happy now, and making each moment the best that it can be. It’s about making the changes that I want to make now, at once, and not waiting any longer to be who and what I want to be. A worthy goal.

Though I have accomplished a lot, there’s still a lot I need to do. I’m still far away from where I want to be, and I don’t know why. Attaining balance, for example, has proved elusive. I understand that many people, including yogis, struggle for years and entire lifetimes to attain a state of balance, and I recognize that I’m in good company in my current state of failure (or current state of partial success). However, I want it now, and it frustrates me that I haven’t done a better job of reaching that point.

Part of it is the city. There’s so much going on here all the time – much of it fantastic, pleasurable, and stimulating -it’s hard not to feel stretched thin on a regular basis. Part of it is my job. I’m a lawyer for a large corporate law firm in New York. Even under the best of circumstances, working with the best people, it’s stressful, and it’s a challenge to make good choices to deal with that stress (such as yoga instead of happy hour). Part of it is being single. I’m on my own – along with my friends and family – in this journey at the moment; I don’t have that sense of stability, security, or added strength that comes from being involved with a loving partner. I’m also dating, which with its ups and downs, uncertainties, doubts, and unknown future poses its own challenges, many of which, on occasion, pluck away at my best efforts to be wholly happy in the now.

I don’t like that dating does that to me. I don’t like that I’m the type of person who could have my center pricked and bruised and thrown off kilter by the unknowns of the dating world. As I think I’ve expressed before, I’d like to be impervious, invulnerable, and perfectly and absolutely one hundred percent happy in my singledom. I hate, loathe, and despise more than words could ever say that sometimes I feel like I’m missing something from the present by the mere fact that I’m not in a relationship. Ugh, did I just say that? I don’t want to be that woman – the type of woman that needs a man to be happy. I know that I’m not that woman. But yet, I also know that I’m not completely 100% happy in my singledom, and I must admit that I think it would make me happy to fall madly in love with someone terrific. Or to go on a date with someone terrific. Or someone remotely interesting, for that matter.

I don’t like nor want to get emotionally caught up in the dating thing. I realize that’s a funny thing to say for someone who also says that she wants to fall in love, which would presumably involve the embroiling of emotions. That raises the question of whether I truly want to fall in love right now. Good question. The truth is that I just don’t know.

No, that’s not right.

The truth is that a part of me does not want to fall in love right now. I haven’t yet attained in my singledom the life that I want for me. I want to fully maximize and appreciate this time when I’m on my own (and that’s why it irks me that sometimes the pitfalls of dating make me blue). I want to make more of the changes that I’ve been trying to make forever. I’m sure your familiar with the litany by now: yoga, going to the gym regularly, meditating, being healthy, etc. I want to prune away the rest of the negativity, get my shit in order, fill up on positive elements, and make my life how I want it to be, now. Before some boy waltzes in and mucks things up.

This weekend, I took some much-needed me time and turned something that could have been negative and discombobulating into a positive wake-up call. I spent Saturday cleaning my room, sorting though piles of paper and boxes that I hadn’t gone through since moving out of my Ex’s place, getting rid of old clothes, and reorganizing. The end result was a far less cluttered bedroom that is actually quite cute and inviting now that a portion of the junk has been cleared away. Internally, I feel less cluttered as well. On Saturday night, I went out but kept my alcohol intake to one drink and then called it an early night (1:00 am) so that I could wake up refreshed on Sunday morning for yoga and church.

That’s right. How much to I rock? I did yoga and went to church this morning, and I’m not even religious. I did yoga on my newly de-cluttered floor from a DVD that I had bought months ago but never opened. The DVD is called “Yoga For Happiness,” and the guy who leads it is not only hot, but also really funny. His name is Eoin, and I think I just might make him my new imaginary boyfriend. To give you a taste of his sense of humor, while I was leaning into pigeon pose, Eoin said, “Feel the honey in your hip.” Recall that pigeon is not the most comfortable pose to hold for more than a few seconds. He encouraged us to lean into it more, and while I summoning my energy and grimacing, he said, “it should feel good, like someone licking ice cream off of your body.” What?? Bent over my knee, I burst out laughing and then easily leaned in to the pose more.

This is what I need more of in my life. Eoin. OK, fine, not him. Someone like Eoin? No, focus. I need yoga and other activities that give me something positive in return when I put my energy into them; activities that make me feel happy, healthy, grounded, and balanced. Things that cultivate and nourish the happiness that I have within me, and build a sense of security, peace, and satisfied joy. Visions of hot men licking ice cream off of my yoga-fied body are also perfectly acceptable.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that this weekend, though it started off with a little emotional dip, I managed to turn it into something really great and productive that ultimately made me feel balanced and happy – exactly what I’ve been striving for! Granted, it’s how I feel now, and tomorrow may be a totally different story. But, for right now, I’m proud of me. Along with cleaning, yoga, and church I also bought a host of new kitchen appliances that I’ve been meaning to get for ages, including a super fancy blender and a programmable coffee-maker.

One of my dreams has been to become the type of person who has her life so together that she wakes up each morning to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, and then sets out to face the day with her non-Starbuck’s coffee-filled, eco-friendly, reusable mug in hand.

Sometimes it takes big changes to become the person you want to be. Other times it takes small ones. Tomorrow at 8:00 am, barring some technical malfunction, I will be just a tiny bit closer to becoming the me that I want to be. I can’t wait.

Excellent Evening

Today was a good day because… I went running. I motivated and left work at a little after 6 pm, and then ran for over 4 miles. I’m psyched. I’ve noticed that though it’s sometimes hard to make myself go to the gym, usually once I’m there and running I end up feeling great. It’s probably the endorphins, but I think it’s also just being proud of myself for motivating. While I’m running I’m also aware of my body in a way that I’m not throughout most of the day, and that awareness usually leads to an appreciation of its strength, and how cool it is that my body can do things like run 4 miles. It makes me want to nurture and care for it and feed it lots of protein and green leafy vegetables (not fudgsicles).

I think women, including me, need to do that more, think about why they should love and value their bodies, as opposed to focusing on what’s wrong with them. I don’t spend enough time valuing my body for everything that’s great about it and treating it the way I should. It’s a superb machine and it needs certain things to function at an optimum level, and too often I deprive it of nutrients and feed it semi-toxic things like sugar (and spoonfuls of peanut butter).

After I went running, I stopped by Origins and bought plantidote face serum because I really digg Dr. Weil and all of his mushroom-based potions. One of the new things I saw there today that I want to try some time are mini herb flavored honey-ies. So cute, and I love that honey can be so beneficial for the body. Yum. After Origins, I went to a little boutique for some more hanky panky undies. I’ve decided to throw away almost all of my other underwear because all I wear anymore is hanky panky. The rest of my undies just sit in a pile smushed together in the pack of my drawer. They need to be pruned. It’s on my list, as is purging my closet of any piece of clothing that I haven’t worn for the past year. Egads! I don’t know if I can do it, but it’s on the list.

Another thing that made me happy today was that I bought a “calm to your senses” lavender and vanilla scented candle at Origins. I lit it in my bedroom and then went downstairs to make dinner. An hour later, when I went back upstairs, my room smelled amazing! So luscious and relaxing. I love it. Every time I light candles, it makes me happy. I think it also makes me feel calmer and more at peace. I need to remember to light candles more often. It’s a nice way to really be in the moment.

Photo by Buttercup – Garden in Millennium Park, Chicago

Being a Gentile Is The Bomb

Jewish holidays are the best. Being the non-believer that I am, I didn’t realize today was Rosh Hashana until yesterday afternoon when my partner informed me that our office would be closed today for the Jewish holiday. Could anything be better than a free day just dropping out of the sky like that? At my old firm, all the non-Jewish folks had to work on Jewish holidays. I love working for a firm full of Jewish lawyers. It is awesome.

I took full advantage of the windfall by sleeping in, going running down by the river, doing a bit of work from the comfort of my bedroom, and meeting my friends at a boutique champagne sale downtown. I bought a sparkly purple party dress from a Japanese designer that made me feel slightly like a giant blueberry but in a fun celebratory, fashionista sort of way. It’s all about confidence and with a banging pair of silver heels, I think I can pull it off.

Today was so good, I hardly need a daily dose of positivity, but here goes:

Thursday’s DDP: My therapist called me and I called her back. We talked about the bad session we had on Thursday and I decided to go in another time to see if we could repair the relationship. I’m seeing her next Tuesday and I’m glad about it. Very mature of me, I must say. It made me happy because I know that if I lost this relationship, particularly on such negative terms, it would have made me really sad. I’ve been going to her for over 2 years! I also texted Bacchus, who texted me back. It’s a baby step, but a step nonetheless.

Hope everyone else had an equally positive Rosh Hashana!

New Leaves

I’m turning over a new leaf, two of them actually.

I feel like, especially lately (when I’ve had the chance to write), I’ve been spending a fair amount of time on the blog regaling you all with angst-filled stories (Exhibit A), hopefully with touches of humor amidst the emotional turmoil. It’s therapeutic, interesting to me, and often times enjoyable to write. However, I don’t want my life or my blog to focus just upon the angst-filled moments. I want perspective.

I’ve decided to change – the blog at least – in one small, but positive, way. For the rest of the month of September, I’m going to try to post about at least one positive thing each day, in addition to the usual stuff. I think it will help me keep a bit of perspective, and I think it’s more of what I’d like my blog (and me) to be. I mean, emotional turmoil is entertaining and all, but it can look negative (especially if the dark, dry humor is missed) and I think it’s important to balance the craziness with some pure positivity.

Daily Dose Of Positivity: That’s the first leaf. The second leaf is also the subject of today’s first positivity post: I’ve decided to start waking up earlier during the work week and today – drum roll please – I did it! I set my alarm for 7:30 am this morning and actually got up on the first buzz. Due to my diligence, I was showered, blow-dried, and out the door by 8:30 and in the office by 8:50 am. That’s the earliest I’ve been in for a while. Go me!!

I want to wake up earlier mainly because I think it will help me organize my days and weeks better. If I wake up early, I’ll get in earlier and I will have a few extra minutes to get things together for the day before it begins in full force. On days when I don’t have to wash my hair (I wash it every other day), I could do pilates. That’s the plan so far, and I’m going to do my best to stick to it.

But, for today, I’m just proud of me for waking up at 7:30 am. Awesome.

Photo found here.

Reflections

This week was intense, filled with a lot of working and playing hard, and now that it’s finally Friday I find myself filled with relief at the prospect of a weekend to chill, relax, work-out, eat healthy, and catch up on some much-needed sleep.

I went out every single night this past week, after going out four nights in a row last weekend with IP. Monday I went out to dinner with a co-worker, Tuesday I had therapy and a facial (which sounds relaxing and didn’t include drinking which was a plus, but also did not constitute an evening of unadulterated downtime), Wednesday I went out with my co-workers to a fabulous sit-down wine tasting dinner followed by bar-hopping, copious amounts of alcohol, and a massive lime-throwing war (don’t ask), and last night I had the first meeting of a book club that I recently started with a friend of mine in which we discussed Jane Eyre (excellent).

All fun, but I’m exhausted! Add to that a relatively stressful week at work, and I’m really exhausted, and in desperate need of some solid down-time.

It was funny because last night, while I was flying up the East side in a cab after just finishing up my book club meeting, I happened to look out the window and catch site of a Blockbuster and I was suddenly filled with a wave of nostalgia and an inexplicable feeling of longing. It was as if the fleeting image of the Blockbuster had conjured up some pleasurable, relaxing memory of the past that I had somehow forgotten or lost. Thinking about it, trying to place the feeling of longing, wondering what it was that I was remembering that was making me feel a sense of yearning, I realized that the last time I was in a Blockbuster was almost two years ago.

During my first year in New York, I used to go all the time. After moving to the city, not knowing anyone and not having much time to do anything except for work, one of the few things I did for pleasure, along with wandering through the city and visiting museums, was to watch movies. During that time, my first year in the city, I was quite lonely. Back then I keenly felt the emptiness left behind from everything that was missing in my daily life, including friends, activities outside of work, relationship prospects …joy.

A typical week back then included working the entire week with no breaks and oftentimes no human contact beyond work associates (one of whom was Dragon Lady), breaking down on Saturdays, and then picking myself up and trying to make something positive out of the last few hours of freedom left to me on Sunday. It was a very difficult period for me, and I never would have dreamed that almost two years later I would have found myself looking back at any part of it with a sense of longing.

Astounded as I was, I sat for a second with the feeling of longing as the reflections of the city lights flashed across the window of the cab and the reflection of my face mirrored there, and thought for a moment about how far I’ve come since that time when movies served as poor, but much-appreciated, substitutes for human contact. Now, almost two years later, I have a job and friends in the city that I love, too many activities to fit in each week, and hardly any time to do laundry, much less to rent a movie.

Comparing the two, I’d have to say that I choose the present state of exhaustion over the past state of loneliness, hands down. But, just for old times sake – and because I have a massive crush on him – the only thing I’m planning for this weekend (so far) is to go watch my man Jason in the Bourne Ultimatum.

Art found here.

Zenning Out

If you’re sick of me talking about dating, skip this post. If you’re not, read on!

As of today, I’m adopting a new aspirational goal in terms of my dating philosophy: I am going to be zen about dating. Zen, zen, zen. From here on out, Buttercup + Dating = ZEN!! (Imagine a chorus of red-robed monks raising their voices to the heavens and crying zeeeeeeeeennnnnn in perfect chanting harmony).

I know a lot of you are shaking your heads incredulously at what you no doubt imagine will be a fleeting sentiment on my part. You’re aware of my penchant for over-analyzing everything, for parsing texts and spoken words, for agonizing over the possible meanings behind a delayed call or text back, and for constantly pondering the meaning behind the smallest actions or omissions.

It’s true, I’m guilty as charged of all of those things. Although those are all facets of my personality, and in fact part of my considerable charm, I’m personally sick of the knots in my stomach, I’m sick of the worrying, and I’ve decided that the over-analyzing MUST END. It’s either this, or I get out of the dating game now and resign myself to a life of spinsterhood (which frankly, when compared to the knots in my stomach looks quiet peaceful and appealing).

Now, in terms of what it means to be “zen” in dating, as this is a new concept for me, I’m still figuring that out (and I’m open to ideas). For starters, I’m going to try to channel my thoughts into the now instead of worrying about possible future repercussions of this that or the other [insert dating issue]. I’m also going to try to focus less on how the male in question might be perceiving things, and more on what I want in the present. I’m going to try to have faith that all of this will work out eventually, and focus on having fun in the present.

How’s that for a philosophy? What’s your dating philosophy? (Or, for you taken types, what was your dating philosophy?)

Art found here.

Subway Tadasana

In one of the most basic yoga poses, Tadasana, or “Mountain Pose,” you are supposed to stand purposefully with the soles of your feet pressed firmly into the earth, your thigh muscles firm, your knee caps and sternum lifted, your shoulders pulled back and downwards, the crown of your head centered directly over your pelvis, and the weight of your body perfectly balanced.

Like all yoga poses, there’s nothing passive about Tadasana. Instead, the pose is a dynamic attempt to create a line of energy running from the crown up your head, down your back, through your groin and legs, and out the soles of your feet into the ground. Standing in Tadasana takes energy, and it also creates energy, energy that you can use to stabilize yourself and ground yourself firmly into the floor. The term “Mountain Pose” makes sense to me, because in Tadasana you attempt to become as stable and evenly balanced, and as firmly rooted into the earth, as the most mammoth of mountains. It’s a pose of power that is also excellent for your posture.

I practiced Mountain Pose this morning while riding the subway on my way to work. Usually, I hang on to the nearest rail with a grip of death to keep me from flailing about the subway car. It’s express so it goes really fast. But, today I loosened my grip and concentrated instead on planting the soles of my feet, and the weight of my body, firmly against the shaky floor as the car careened down the track. I felt the tension and strength in my thighs, knees, and toes, and envisioned myself as perfectly stable and in balance.

My experiment was a resounding success. I managed to stay perfectly up right without having to grab the railing through both jerky turns and a screeching stop. It was a triumphant start to the day.