Dance Party

It's a beautiful day in downtown Sydney - and there's this magestic, serene, clean park...my brother and I decide it's a perfect place for dancing! :) Check out more of our silliness below

reality show with sally & mark

My brother and I were a little bored, and decided to get creative:) hope you enjoy

I'm here!!!

And it's amazing.

Mark (my most excellent brother!) and I hiked up Mt. Keira yesterday... which is right behind his school.

It was about a 4 hour walk (we got a little lost!) But absolutely spectacular. And it felt good to get some exercise after all the travel. We saw a wild peacock!!!, and the most incredible views from the top...

LAX

I feel fantastic.

After the 5 hour flight from Philly, I am amazed. I think this incredible feeling is due to the following welcome when I arrived in LA:

1.) The most vibrant and fun check in area I’ve ever seen. I almost cried when I walked up - they’re playing fun hip hop music, the stewardesses are all wearing long red coats and look like movie starts, and the signs for the airline are glossy and shiny and red. The trim of the counters is glistening clean stainless steel. it’s gorgeous!

2.) Stunning foreign men with great accents and great shoes

3.)Beautiful friendly women who like to dance, like me, in the aisle while waiting to check bags

4.) Red luscious tiger lilies on the counter - I mean, come on! fresh flowers in the airport - I don’t see that in Philadelphia

And the delectable soy chai from Starbucks hits the spot. You all know that if you ask for Soy Chai Tea Misto - they’ll actually add the real tea bag instead of the syrup, right? Someone taught me that a while ago and I’m eternally grateful.

My shoes!

It was a little uncomfortable the first time it happened - I walk into the airport and all these people start looking at me. My shoes! They are fascinated by my Vibrams (shoes that have toe holes - basically very very thin rubber soles that mimic what it feels like to be walking bare foot. I admit, they look very bizarre, and they are not stylish in the way I like to normally choose things. But they are SO comfortable. My toes really appreciate the separation, and I never really LIKE wearing anything with a heel anyway)

So I have a good conversation starter - or bad conversation starter, depending on your perspective. Many people have chosen to ask me about them - and for now, I’m having fun telling them.

Why not spread the word of these super comfy shoes that, according to some studies done by Harvard, are helpful for relieving many of the impact-related injuries and pains that runners who use "traditional" running shoes experience. I haven't done a tun of research yet, because I'm more of a "if they work for me, that's all the proof I need kind of person" anyway - but if you like research... here's a place to get started:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08723.html

Ayurveda in the Airport - Australia here I come!

In a couple days, I'll be in Sydney - but for now, I'm starting my journey in the Philadelphia airport and I'm starving...

So many food choices. So few of them feel like they’re going to help stoke my agni.

Agni is fire... meaning digestive fire. And when we fly, it tends to inevitably go down. Some even say we should fast while flying. But I love food too much.

My choices seem to be lots of cold stuff, lots of things that look like they’ve been in plastic wrap for a long time, and lots of sweet breads. Oh how I love sweet breads:) - and if I were feeling 100% I would definitely have some. But I feel just a tad under the weather, and want to take care. The sweet breads will come later, I tell myself.

So here’s what I found, that sparked my interest as being tasty as well as helping to stoke my digestive fire, making it easy for me to digest -

Creole soup from Au Bon Pain. I’m lucky that I’m not picky about if there’s a little chicken in soup - because otherwise, I’d be in dairy-free vegetarian trouble; meaning the other soups that don’t have meat... all have milk in them. And well, as much as I prefer not to eat meat, I find that I digest it much much better than milk or cheese.

I enjoyed every bite of this delicious, slightly spicy, warm soup. It had okra, carrots, rice, lots of whole spices, capers, and peas. It feels really nice in my belly and nourishing to my tissues. I find that the warmth of what I’m eating is essential to help ground vata, which is the dosha that goes up when we travel, and needs to be calmed in order me to not feel totally depleted by the completion of my travels.

Cold drinks, ice cream, even those sweet breads or desserts create a cooling effect in the digestive system. And on these kinds of days, when my hands and feet were already feeling cold, and I know that I’m asking a lot of my body to be flying for 5 + 14.5 hours - I don’t want to go there.

Yay! I like writing while I’m traveling... This is going to be fun!.... all you millions;) of readers out there - comment! and let me know what you’re curious about.

Love,
Sally

Sweetness... Madhura

So I had the unbelievable grace and privilege to meet Sri Dharma Mittra a few weeks ago, and after the sweet asana class was a kirtan with Shyam Das. Shyam Das, as you might know is an amazing storyteller who has this voice... that well, blows me away.

My favorite mantra from the whole night was

Madhura Dhipate Rakhilam Madhuram

I sang it in Yin class the next day, and someone asked me where it came from... So I did a little research:

It looks like it comes from the Madhurashtakam, and that this line (Madhura Dhipate Rakhilam Madhuram) is repeated at the end of many paragraphs...

The version of the Gita that I have doesn't have the full sanskrit translation, so I am still looking for what surrounds it otherwise...

In the meantime, here's something to listen to. Shyam Das sounded completely different... and maybe we can find one of his recordings somewhere soon.


enjoy

Love. Self. Love

Lately I've been deeply deeply considering what love is, and how to do it well.

Funny, even just looking at my choice of words is curious to me. Perhaps trying to "do it well" is impossible... because to love we don't have to do much... is it inherent in our beingness?

Either way, I feel like I have a lot to learn about love... so I'll take that desire and run with it. It can't hurt to learn how to love better, can it?

Sometimes I feel like I don't know how to love - like I'm bad at it... that I like to receive it in certain ways... I like to be on the "taking" end of love... but giving it!!! Ahh! That's scary and hard.

And what's the deal with looking for it all the time, falling for it all the time, orienting so much energy towards it all the time.

I think these questions are really relevant to Ayurveda... in fact I might start translating "Ayurveda" as "the Science of Self Love." I do tend to come up with many translations for the word... since it's in Sanksrit and I think it's important for Practitioners and Teachers to give a meaning of Sanksrit words in our own Native Languages... letting those translations come from our lived experiences in the cultures in which we inhabit.

Ayur means life
Veda means wisdom

Life is this amalgamation of events and movements that can only happen within some grace and vastness and mystery that I will choose to call Love. When we are "in love" we often have the strongest sense of being alive.

Ayurveda is therefore love wisdom.

And that's cool to me, because I always think about Ayurveda as learning to love our selves for our own uniqueness... or constitutional make-up, Learning to love and accept ourselves as we are

And then there is this strong emotional resonance that I have between the word love and a sense of "being taken care of." So that Ayurveda might be wisdom of learning to be taken care of/take care of ourselves... feels right.

Luscious Asian Pears

It's not rare for me to fall in love with fruits. Something about their freshness, their prana, their sweetness, juiciness - they're just so irresistible. And then the feeling of being energized while eating them, as well as after eating them - without the sluggishness of, well.. let's just say other sweets that like to wear hats of frosting and go naked in the middle. For those of you who don't know me - I have a bit of a weakness for donuts.

So what is it about these Asian Pears that is inspiring me to write today? Well, I just want to make sure all of you try them! And at least where I live, they are abundantly stocked in the grocery stores - at a much more reasonable prices than I normally see them - and they have been at such peak ripeness!

Please go out and try these most magical fruits. A word of advice - they, like most fruits, are best enjoyed on their own (meaning away from meals). I happen to like having them either for breakfast if I wake up not so hungry... or around 4 o'clock as a nice mid-afternoon snack.

And let me know what you think! ? Am I crazy? Or are they simply amazing? :)