As one of the inspiring yogis at the conference shared, she knew she “needed to make lifestyle changes before the big C-word came knocking at the door.”  It wasn’t until she had to quit her job to start her chemotherapy treatments that she found the time to incorporate daily health rituals to support her mind and body.

There is no one size fits-all approach for channeling balance, joy and, ultimately, health into your daily schedule. Summer is a time where we all hopefully get to slow down, whether for a vacation or a lull in a hectic schedule. A few ideas we love at Fine Balance to help you build new habits:

Practice what you believe: Pick one shift you know you need to make whether it is attending a yoga class every Monday or cooking a healthy dinner every Wednesday.

Feed yourself with silence: Whether it is through a meditation practice or a silent walk alone in the park (yes, sans Blackberry or iPhone), start or end each day by giving your mind some much-deserved rest.

Power of positive language: When the negative tape starts rolling in your mind replace it with a positive thought. Post a reminder to help you practice. Example: Begin each day by reading a helpful reminder like, “I create peacefulness in my mind and my body reflects this.”

Live your passion: You don’t necessarily have to be living out your passion in your full time job but make sure you spend time every week doing one activity you absolutely love.

It can be exciting and fun to develop a new routine to support balanced living but the key is the implementation. Chose ONE of the above ideas and calendar the time in for yourself. Keep yourself from being overwhelmed by committing to just one change for an entire month. Once it becomes routine to treat your body and mind with great care, great health will naturally follow!

While the passage of the Health Care Bill may have been out of the hands of the general populous, food choice is not. But for many adults and children, there exists a hard wired legacy of experience and demand for the sugary, processed stuff. The brain is fueled by glucose and there is no faster way to get it into the bloodstream than a sugary soda or candy bar. Americans have been subsisting on processed food, advocated by the US Department of Agriculture since the inception of sugar and corn subsidies, for decades. It is no wonder Americans seem baffled as to why what they eat and feed their children leads them to gain weight and be more prone to illness, and mixed messages leave them even more baffled about what to do about it. Parents are bombarded with marketing material, including messages about the evils of high fructose corn syrup on NYC subway ads but then observe commercials, albeit sponsored by the Corn Refiners Association, where a mother touts the pure and natural state of the health sacrificing syrup.

Successful marketing has been a key to food choice in the US now for decades. At a dinner party last weekend, several guests were up in arms and disturbed about the extreme difficulty in procuring a twinkie. The reality is that even in a well educated group of adults the original twinkie, which is known to be filled with trans fats, is an American cultural icon and childhood staple for all those born after its creation. (Click Twinkie Trivia to learn a host of facts about the beloved Twinkie, including a list of ingredients). I surmise local government action, such as banning trans fats and the current push in New York to tax nondiet and sugar sweetened beverages, will have a deeper impact on the greater state of American health then any provision in the Health Care Bill. And yet the breadth of eliminating some of the health destroyers in American food will not be far reaching enough. As Warren Buffet has remarked the unsustainable health care costs in the US are “a tapeworm eating away at our economic body.”

Food Revolution depicts an alarming reality that American children today are unable to identify common produce like a potato or tomato, yet can easily recognize with great gusto the chicken nugget or fries. Then again, if I was a small child watching the currently aired Heinz ketchup commercial where the bottle of ketchup grows on a vine, I might also be quite confused. It is no big wonder that the enchanting, colorful images, often with misleading health pitches or happy cartoon characters, present a considerable challenge for the child, parent or educator who has not been taught the value of whole foods.(And yes, we thank the super market conglomerate by the same name that helped to spread the knowledge of more healthy eating to the masses, but they too have often succumbed to the brightly boxed food demands of suburbia.) From the first few episodes of Food Revolution it is clear that parents and educators struggle with the tools to assess quality food for their children.

Where does the knowledge about what food choices contribute to good health lie? One might reasonably think to turn to the scientific health experts, the doctor. A dear friend of mind, a physician and graduate of Harvard Medical School, once remarked about having the lack of tools to teach his patients how to eat healthy because he had only one nutrition class throughout his four years of medical school. My guess is it likely focused on nutritionism, an idea about the American diet criticized by the likes of Michael Pollan for the reductionist scientific approach to breaking down food into isolated elements, hence fortifying highly processed foods with every nutrient under than sun to deem them nutritious. Unfortunately, throughout the history of humankind the benefits of whole, unprocessed foods where a host of nutrients coexist naturally have stood the test of time but are not the chosen path in this culture.

The Health Care Bill will likely do little to deepen American’s knowledge about how food can impact greater states of health. It may help more when they are seriously ill, but it will likely continue to avoid the route to victoriously reduce the skyrocketing development of diseases like hypertension and diabetes – prevention. For two weeks in a row Food Revolution has ranked #1, beating out Dateline on NBC and Medium on CBS. And while the health transformation for all Americans can’t be solved entirely by food choice and Jamie Oliver’s US TV debut, thankfully someone equipped with the knowledge of how food relates to good health, as well as a successful track record, is lighting the way for Americans to actually rectify the problem at its root.

To join the Food Revolution movement, sign Jamie’s petition to provide cooking skills in schools and improve the quality of school food. Watch Food Revolution 9pm/8c on ABC.

What some of The Brooklyn Latin School students had to say about yoga and the new equipment:

• “These tools contribute to the relaxing of tensions and a clearer frame of mind.” – Bertram
• “Yoga class allows me to relax before starting a stressful day of school. The blocks and the straps allow us to make a variety of poses easier.” -Zuleica
• “Yoga is my favorite class of the day. With the addition of these necessary tools, yoga has become more challenging and also more relaxing.” -Shahadah
• “The equipment has helped me gain a greater grip on balance when stretching (a la holding the strap) and positioning my body at different heights (resting limbs on the block).” -Andrew
• “Yoga is a necessary relaxation time I need after and before a stressful day of class. It also helps me clear my mind before I start my homework.” -Cielito
• “This (yoga) is the one period where we are able to relax, stretch and forget all of the work we have coming up for the rest of the day.” -Clifford

Thank you to all those who contributed to developing the next generation of leaders equipped with yoga based tools to deal with the stresses they will encounter along the way!

Visit EWG’s cell phone radiation list and database to find out where your phone and service provider rank on the list.

At Fine Balance, we have witnessed the transformational impact yoga has for the young women in our high school programs and regularly hear remarks such as, ” this is the only time during the day that I feel good.” As a yoga teacher, I see the awe and pride young women can have in themselves after a challenging and successful yoga class. And it appears yoga may be going even further to help girls with their self-image. A recent study of 50 girls at Seattle Children’s Hospital found yoga, in addition to providing girls with an uplifting physical experience, may also help them achieve lasting success in overcoming serious eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia. In the eight week study, girls participating in yoga showed steady weight gain beyond four weeks, the point at which the non-yoga teens disease state relapsed.

We believe in the power of yoga and are excited about the far reaching positive clinical effects of the power of yoga. We look forward to the day when every high school student has access to the infinite potential of yoga.

This morning as I was walking down Broadway,  an aggressive, ungracious driver pulled out in front of another driver, agitating the driver from behind to the point that she slammed on her horn and simultaneously threw her arms in the air. In that instant, the offended driver lacked the awareness that this moment would pass. Her loud horn and splayed arms did nothing to alleviate the congestion nor prevent the encounter, it only escalated the tension between the two drivers and everyone in near proximity.

Regular, daily experiences are perfect teachable moments for meditation. A conscious re-connection with the breath during stressful times provides a platform to develop a more mindful, balanced state of mind.  If you think meditation can only occur in peaceful solitude, try to use a stressful moment during your daily routine to tap into the powerful teachings of meditation and take a minute to follow your breath. Your mind, your body and everyone around will thank you.

Don’t you love those unexpected moments when life seems so good and so simple that it fills you with great joy? I had just that feeling after spending the afternoon volunteering at the produce distribution at my local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). It was another great week as we received a beautiful selection of produce including three varieties of eggplant, beautiful green tomatoes, carrots, four varieties of squash, fennel, fava beans, 2 1/2 pounds of peaches, 4 pounds of plums, maple yogurt, eggs and non-homogenized milk — all for under $30.  (I am including such detail to help sway those of you who are only thinking about joining a CSA to take action!)

It was wonderful to meet fellow CSA members and to see the diversity of people all driven by one desire – access to amazing, affordable, healthy food. But beyond the self-serving aspect of participating in a CSA, I also  witnessed a true community driving change in this great city. People cared about one another in a way that seems rare nowadays. As volunteers, it was an unspoken commitment to take great care when bagging this week’s fruit allotment to not bruise a single peach or break the skin of a single plum. It’s a generosity of spirit I can’t say I’ve seen at my beloved Fairway market (and trust me, Fairway shoppers really care about their food as well). In the wonderful fulfillment I experienced volunteering for such a profound community movement in the way we receive our food, I couldn’t help to still be saddened by some of the incredible injustices currently taking place across the United States with regard to our food system.

Food, Inc.
Last weekend I watched Food, Inc., an incredible documentary about the wretched state of the American food system. Michael Pollen fans are able to visually experience some of the horrific conditions of feed lots and slaughter houses across the country. You witness pigs slaughtered by mechanically crushing them together, cows and chickens who have been grown so fast and furiously using synthetic growth hormones that their legs are not able to support them. You may know E.Coli originates from the bowels of improperly fed animals, but did you know that if a cow is taken off a feed lot and placed on green pasture for only 5 days almost all traces of E.Coli are removed? 5 days! Yet in the big world of agribusiness, 5 days is time they are not willing to sacrifice for the health of their customers.

Since the beginning of time, seeds, whether from a flower or cabbage have been saved. It is nature’s way of preserving all of the essential ingredients to sprout new life the following season. Big businesses, like Monsanto, now use patent law to prevent any farmer from saving their own seeds to be used the following harvest season. Food, Inc. details the story of Moe Parr, operator of a seed cleaning business in Indiana where, at the end of each harvest, he would clean seeds for farms to store over the winter months to rid the seeds of any spores of mold or other contaminants that may cause the seeds to rot during the winter months. This practice, that has existed since at least the beginning of agricultural man, was grounds for Monsanto to initiate a law suit against Moe Parr in 2007. Monsanto claimed that Moe had encouraged farmers of genetically modified (GM) soybean to save their seed.

Given Monsanto’s patent law over the GM Round-Up Ready soybean (yes it’s genetically modified and ready to withstand that toxic spray that instantly initiates death in the weeds in your yard), it is against the law for Moe Parr or anyone to clean and reuse the seed. But the real trouble here revolves around the issue of seed ownership and cross-pollination. At no other time in history have patents on seeds existed. Throughout history they have been a product of nature and nature does a fine job of helping them spread.  It has been found seeds can cross-pollinate with non-GM seeds more than 26km away. What happens if genetically modified seed from a GM farm cross-pollinates with seed on a non-GM farm?  According to Monsanto, the originally non-GM farm has now infringed on the patent for the genetically modified seed! This means the farmer is legally obligated to forgo profits from that year’s harvest and it is impossible to ever remove all traces of the GM seed. For the previously non-GM farmer the only solution to continue to operate his farm is to purchase GM seeds from a company like Monsanto. And since Monsanto owns the patent on the seed they can require that the seed is not cleaned at the end of the harvest and must be repurchased the following year.

Cast Your Vote
We all have two very important tools. The first is knowledge. Understanding what happens to the food you’re eating is the first line of defense in protecting you and your family. The second is every time you spend a dollar on any type of food item you are making a vote. You either get to vote for the large business who patents seeds and builds forced consumer bases (and did I mention the seeds like corn and soy that make up most items in the American diet aren’t that good for you?) or you can vote for the business that supports the animals and the land it runs, values its customers health and satisfaction and builds community. I imagine Moe Parr’s whole life has probably been turned a bit upside down. Monsanto forced him out of business, he exasperated his savings in legal fees and many of his former friends and farming partners, who are now, freely or not, Monsanto customers are not allowed to speak to him. I am saddened by part of his journey but I am so grateful his story can be shared so more of us can learn from his trials. Are you ready to vote with the choices you make about food?

The beautiful weekly bounty!

Eat local. You’ve heard it several thousand times and you know why it’s right – for you and for the environment. But, particularly for those of us in NYC, we rarely find ourselves in rolling pastures (other than Sheep’s Meadow) and public transport doesn’t have a direct route to farm country. Enter Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). This year marks the first year I have participated in a CSA and it is a practice I will partake in for the remainder of my days (ughum, ok, years) in the City.

Each week I stop by a church near my apartment in the afternoon to pick up a glorious supply of produce, including vegetables and fruits, farm-fresh eggs, and non-homogenized milk and yogurt. In the first two weeks I encountered vegetables I have never seen nor heard of  before, like garlic scapes and lamb’s quarters (a green with absolutely nothing to do with the furry friend), let alone ever eaten or prepared. Each week is a new adventure, almost as if I am a forager from the distant past, except surprising finds are delivered to me. All for a little under $25 per week. Pure joy!

Now all I need is some sun to balance out the rain for my window sill herb garden.

If you are interested in finding if a CSA is available near you, visit the Just Food website.

It is so wonderful to see the faces of new yogis light up as they draw parallels between their every day world and yoga. Not to mention it is amazing to witness when the awe of the ability of their body in a more challenging balance pose, such as Tree Pose or Crow Pose.

While adults around the globe have long had an appreciation for the sense of balance yoga can bring to one’s life, I can’t even really begin to comprehend what it might have meant for all of us yogis had we been exposed at a much earlier age. I am just grateful we are able to pass this unique tool on to as many children across New York City as possible.

Blackberry Farm provided a perfect platform to delve deeply into yoga. The serene environment, combined with the out-of-this-world hospitality perfectly complemented my goals as a yoga instructor to help guests unwind from the hectic bustle of their everyday lives and recharge. While any new place or new experience can challenge us in a myriad of ways, Blackberry Farm offered an energy that both soothed and calmed, similar to that of a mother, to allow us to be fully present in this idyllic retreat. Upon arriving to the resort you are greeted with the ease of visiting extended relatives, the one’s whose company you truly enjoy. You are escorted to your own cabin hidden in the lush woods of the mountains. Once in your room, you are reminded of what true hospitality feels like: beautiful classical music floating in the air, a welcome card with flowers, a gift basket with the finest of snacks and treats from the region, and, my personal favorite, a fridge stocked with Dove chocolate covered ice cream bars.

Yoga sessions were held each morning and afternoon in a beautiful open-air pavilion overlooking a serene pond surrounded by 4,200 acres of natural beauty. During the Yoga Getaway retreat, yoga became less of something you tried to manage to fit into your day, and more about what your day revolved around. Sessions were practiced amidst the glorious sounds of nature, which seemed to automatically eliminate the competitive nature sometimes found when practicing yoga in more high-strung environments. We ended with long meditative walks throughout the property, either guided or at your own pace. After each yoga session, superbly prepared local food, most of which comes from the garden, dairy and smokehouse on site, provided for exquisite meals served at a leisurely pace. Dinners were served in a glorious, original red wooden barn, where the owner, true to his roots and commitment to southern hospitality, greeted each table and served as the restaurants sommelier, which made you feel almost as if you were visiting an old friend for a home cooked meal.

Blackberry Farm is not the type of retreat where you attempt to continue to focus on your profession life and ignore the idea of relaxation; the lack of reception in the area makes it nearly impossible to wander aimlessly chatting on a cellphone or typing on blackberry. Fortunately, for you and all of the other guests, it enables you to be fully aware, allowing you to drink in each new experience with a sense of aliveness under appreciated in the grind of a daily routine. It served as a reminder for all, including those  who juggle the many different roles that the breathtaking awe of life is often found in the most simple moments, a baby’s first smile or the recognition of one’s own breath.

Spending time at Blackberry Farm can inspire thoughts of the quality of life being better at a different time in history. But the beauty of such an experience is it allows you to take elements of a slower pace and relaxed air back home. The solitude and fortitude that arises from such a tranquil setting helps to plant the seed for great change, as if something larger inside of us, something that has existed all along, is now allowed to grow. Blackberry Farm provides stepping stones for a profound way to live life: graciously interacting with everyone you meet and providing a reprieve from chaos to facilitate deep relaxation and fully recharge.