Five Points Yoga

Barrett's Blog

Archive for December, 2009

Cauliflower and a Love of Diversity

Posted December 30th, 2009 | 4 Comments » | Bookmark and Share

Oh, I miss my farm!  It’s only been 2 months, and I am already in withdrawl from the lusciousness that is fresh vegetables.   Yes, I love this season for the citrus fruits and the winter squash, but I miss the weekly trips to the farm, and I even miss the wrestling with fridge space every week as Gadi and I try to finish the share. 

So, how could I pass up this amazing cauliflower that was at Whole Foods?   It wasn’t cheap, but I had never seen anything like it!   I googled it and found out it’s often called the Romanescu cauliflower (or broccoli – depends on what you think it tastes like more).  It took me awhile to find it, because it’s also colloquially called a Mandelbrot cauliflower, after the mathematical Mandelbrot set (see Gadi’s post). 


 Really Awesome Cauliflower

Along with the taste of fresh vegetables, the thing I love most about a local farm share is that we are actually promoting botanical diversity with these farms.   I’m going to get a little political now, but part of the agribusiness model depends on uniformity.   Big (monopolozing and dishonest) companies that supply the majority of our produce to supermarkets spend time studying which tomato they can get to grow the fastest, biggest and cheapest, and then how they can ensure that each tomato they grow will be a clone of that. 

The result?  We start to lose diversity, both in species of plants, and in their flavor and vitality.   In yoga, we have the idea of PRANA – life force, or vitality.   Practicing yoga helps take you from a state of less prana, less vitality, to more.   When I eat a sad supermarket tomato, I can’t help but think that there’s so little prana in that tomato.  Part of my yoga off the mat is eating foods full of prana.  

So I LOVE when I see a new food.   Or a new variety of food.   There’s not just one kind of cauliflower!   There’s not just orange carrots!   There are hundreds of kinds of tomatos out there!   Every time I realize this, it’s this enlightening moment, for my brain and for my tastebuds.  And I’m amazed that even here in New England, where we don’t have a year-round growing season, we can grow an astounding variety of foods!  

Gadi and I were both so taken with this food that we each wanted to write a blog post about it, for very different reasons!  I hope you enjoy.

My parting words: Eat yogic foods – foods high in prana, foods that make you appreciative, and food that nourishes you body and mind!

Love to you all,

Barrett

Posted under Food

The Beauty of Chaos (by Gadi)

Posted December 30th, 2009 | 10 Comments » | Bookmark and Share


I studied chaos theory and fractals in my nonlinear dynamics classes studying Fluid Mechanics in grad school.  It turns out that a bunch of really cool and beautiful parts of our world behave almost randomly… but not quite: turbulence, weather, astronomy, biology, and many more.  In fact the chaotic nature of fluid visualization is one of the things that attracted me most to studying fluid mechanics.  I’m not the only one who appreciates it… the “Dancing Bag” scene from American Beauty is a great example.

So you can imagine how amazed and enthralled I was when Barrett brought this home!!!


Mandelbrot Cauliflower With Barrett

Romanesco Cauliflower With Barrett


This is a Romanesco Cauliflower.  Its pattern resembles a Mandelbrot set which is an equation that defined a group of fractals.

So, not only was I fascinated by this foods sheer visual beauty, I was also immensely curious about its origin and nature.  I immediately took about thirty pictures of it.  I’m including a couple here and hope that Barrett also posts some. (You can click on the pictures to see the full size images!)


Romanesco Cauliflower

Romanesco Cauliflower


The depth of the pattern is mesmerizing.  That is basically  what attracts us to images of fractals.  But when you see them occur in nature – well… that’s when it really blows your mind.  There is some design happening in nature which creates these patterns.  I for one believe it is simply the biochemical signals determined in DNA.   But don’t get me wrong, in my opinion that is no less amazing than some divine power.

The other side of this beauty is the technical…  turns out the mathematics of chaos isn’t really that complicated.  The fundamentals are basically just arithmetic.  While it might make me cross-eyed or give me math anxiety (seriously, I totally get it), I still find it amazing that such complex looking beauty can be very simple.

For example, the  Mandelbrot set (which the Romanesco Cauliflower resembles) is basically defined as:

zn+1 = zn2 + c

So, if C=1, and Z0=1, then the set is: 1, 2, 5, 26, ….  It turns out it’s a little more complicated than this, but not a ton more complicated – though the equations might make it seem that way.

I’ll leave you with one more image of this amazing food!

Oh… and it tasted exactly like a cauliflower.  No different at all.  Yummmmy!


Mandelbrot Cauliflower

Romanesco Cauliflower


Posted under Food, Guest Poster

Nasya and Neti

Posted December 27th, 2009 | 9 Comments » | Bookmark and Share

So, many people know about the wonders of the Neti pot – Oprah’s talked about it, and I’ve blogged about it, so it’s pretty much out there now 🙂

What’s not so well known is Nasya, and it’s been hugely helpful to me in this very dry start to winter.  Nasya are oil drops that you put in your nose whenever you’re feeling dry. If, like me, you wake up every morning, and your face feels like the Sahara, and you need to drink about 5 glasses of water before you feel like you’re not all dried up from the inside, then Nasya may help.   My nose has been totally dried out, which then leads to an overproduction of mucus throughout the morning, and some really gross nose blowing (when your sinuses and nasal passages get dried out, sometimes the mucus is bloody when you blow your nose.  Yep, too much information, I know).  

You can put any plain oil you’d like in your nose, and it will help with the dryness.  I recommend olive oil or sesame oil.   In Ayurveda  and yoga, however, Nasya is not just used for these medicinal purposes.   Nasya oil has some essential oils infused in it, including the famous Ayurvedic herb Brahmi, as well as Eucalyptus, and the combination together is said to promote awareness and concentration.    

I’m all for more awareness, so I’ve got a yoga tincture from Banyan Botanicals sitting on my desk.  It’s a nice morning ritual along with my several glasses of water.   I’ve found a good combo for me is using the Neti pot a once per week to help ward off flu and colds, and daily Nasya to keep the nasal passages happy.  I recently heard Dr. Oz recommend coating the inside of your nose with Vaseline before flying to eliminate germs coming in through the nose.  I have no idea if it works, but I’ll give it a try next time. 

Finally, I also have a great humidifier that I sleep with at night which has made life a lot better.   I kind of enjoy the white noise of the humidifier, and of course, not feeling like a prune every morning has been a definite bonus.

 Stay well oiled and not dried out this winter time!!  I’d love to write more on Ayurveda (and learn more myself) – anyone else interested in this over the winter?  Let me know!

Barrett

Posted under Education, Health and Wellness

The Yoga Odyssey is taking flight!

Posted December 16th, 2009 | Leave a comment » | Bookmark and Share

Online yoga programs are really starting to get recognized!   On Thanksgiving, a Yoga Journal online article came out featuring the Yoga Odyssey!   It is good timing, because another Yoga Odyssey is right around the corner – starting January 6.   There’s an early registration deadline set for Monday December 21, so sign up now if you’d like to join us in January!

The Yoga Journal article is geared towards yoga teachers, so it talks about taking and also developing an online yoga course.   As this has been one of my main interests for the last 2 years, I was so happy that an article focusing on online yoga has come out!

I recently was talking to Ruth, a yogini who took the Yoga Odyssey about a year ago.   I’ve been amazed while talking to her over the past year, at how much the Yoga Odyssey really stuck with her.   I did a little “interview” with her.  Here are some highlights:

Ruth, who is 59, says, “I am not any kind of a ‘fitness freak’ at all.  I did start doing yoga in the early ’80’s, and have done it off and on since, but never with any true dedication.  It was just one of those things, where I had been talking to a friend and thinking about how I wanted to include more yoga in my life….then happened to read about the Odyssey and i thought, ‘wow, the universe is sending me this sign, just what I needed to give my yoga program a boost.”

Regarding how the month of yoga worked for her, Ruth says, ” It was fun, like having a new happy secret relationship (without the guilt!), to set up my practice space and devote that special morning time to it. Since doing the Odyssey, I pretty much can enjoy/appreciate/use any teacher’s style of yoga or any class situation. If I am tempted to be judgmental of the teacher, the others in the studio, the music or whatever, I just can get right into knowing that its MY practice no matter what. Today, I generally do yoga  5 times a week, and if its a day when I am NOT doing it, I am definitely thinking about it”

I love these words, I think they’re so powerful.  Wouldn’t it be great to give yourself this gift of 28 dedicated days to developing your personal practice?   A year from now, you will still be reaping the benefits of the Yoga Odyssey!

Be well,

Barrett

Posted under Yoga

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