Back from Tibet

Have you been looking for that special something to surprise a loved one?  Or a nifty accessory to impress the beautiful yoga nymph from class, or the friendly barista guy behind the health food store juice bar, whom you always wanted to ask out but never dared to?  Maybe you are in need of a gift to show your partner, that rarely spending any time with him or her anymore because you are in nursing school now or spent the past month searching for yourself in Tibet, doesn’t mean anything?  Don’t look any further, my friend.  You have come to the right place:

The Muses’ Catalog of Must-Have Gift Ideas

This handy little tool gets rid of the mess your “all organic-all naturally freshly grinded-all naturally separating peanut butter” leaves you with!  Just twist on the lid and crank the embedded chrome-plated mixing rod for an evenly mixed spread—just like frothed up in the factory.  Easy like this!  Should the included lid not fit onto your naturally separating peanut butter jar, you have two easy options: a) Take a bamboo spoon and scoop the gooey unstirrable mess into a jar that fits the new lid.  b) Close your jar with the lid it came, take a sharp knife, or a hammer and a nail, and create an opening large enough to insert the chrome-plated mixing rod—and done!  Easy like this! 

Natural peanut butter lovers all over the world will love this incredibly sleek and clever gift.  It’s yours for only $10!

The technology interested target of your affection will be thrilled to receive this “Deluxe Personal Air Supply!”  Stifling patient rooms?  Muggy Bikram yoga spaces?  Just returned from the clean airs of Tibet?  Moving to Taiwan?  This is the gift to give!  It comes with a breakaway neck strap, so in case anyone else should grab this device in a desperate attempt to breathe some clean air, it won’t hurt to share.  And who wouldn’t want to own a gadget that produces 120 trillion—yes, my friend, that’s 120,000,000,000,000—ions per second?!  This equals to an incredible 7,200,000,000,000,000 ions per minute!!  Unbelievable!!

It’s yours for only $99!  Get it now—and enjoy watching them thrive with clean air!

Now this one is a gem!  You may remember my Recycled Recreation post in which I commented on landfills.  We should all cut back on producing waste, right?!  Here’s a cute way to help out with this—the Countertop Bag Dryer.  At first sight it may look like a bunch of incense sticks, which even more underlines a thoughtful lifestyle, but this tool can do so much more!  You just rinse out your used plastic bags and hang them upside down over one of the skewers made from sustainably harvested birch and ash woods.  Even the most difficult to dry plastic bag is no match for the air circulation provided by this unique tool.  And when you don’t have any plastic bags to dry?  It folds neatly for storage!

This is a must have for any thoughtful countertop owner and always a welcomed gift.  Considering the money you save by reusing your plastic bags—and the infinite positive karma this will bring you—the $20 for this cute product is very well spent.

You are looking for a gift for an environmentally conscious dog owner?  Then this is for you!  Who would think that this flat, white plastic cap on the lawn is not part of a solar-powered, water saving sprinkler system, but instead contains a pile of decomposing dog crap?!  This well-disguised cesspit is merely identifiable by the adorable “Doggie Dooley” print on the lid (sorry Heather!).  To start out, you simply dig a round hole 48" deep by 15" in diameter, slip the Doggie Dooley in, fill it with 6 gallons of water and 2 tablespoons of the Waste Terminator enzyme digestion powder.  Now you are ready to fill in whatever dog shit you can find around the house and on your lawn!  Easy like this!  Never worry about Pooch’s organic wastes anymore.  This really works! [Just disregard the customer reviews on the website…]

Buy the Doggie Dooley together with the necessary Waste Terminator powder for only $98.  And always remember—you will never have to use another plastic bag for Pooch again.  Just drop it in!

Saving the best for last, let me introduce you to this amazing Digital Zen Alarm Clock.  Given as a thoughtful gift, this alarm clock, which is set in a hardwood casing, awakens your loved one to the gentle sound of a Tibetan chime.  You don’t know what a Tibetan chime sounds like?  Click below to find out.

 

This wonderful clock can also be used as a pre-programmed timer to softly remind you of the outside world towards the end of a meditation or yoga session.  

I just received breaking news, which may be especially interesting to students of SFSU’s School of Nursing.  Dr O, it says, has contributed an alternative alarm sound to the Digital Zen Alarm Clock.  Please, sample this deeply nurturing tone below while reciting all pharmacology and pathophysiology facts you can remember!

 

I’m torn between the previous two exhilarating sound samples, so I would like to offer my own Zen alarm tone below.  After all, we are talking about an alarm clock here, right?  Right?  So, please sit back, and give this one a try…

  

Whichever alarm tone you prefer for your gift of good taste and tranquility, this incredible clock, made in China—land of ancient healers—won’t cost you more than a petty $136!  Go get it now, and feel the love!

                     

    

Thank you Gaiam.com, for making this post possible!  May it lead many enlightened customers to your website.

Read more ...

Video clips you'd be sorry to miss #1

I just love to watch this incredibly talented yogi from Sweden! 

She makes it look so easy, while practicing with the utmost grace.

Enjoy!

Ashtanga Yoga - Viparīta Chakrāsana

Read more ...

Aparigraha and the Mind of the Beast

She denies any involvement with this matter…

Although she has been seen around the site of the action right about the time of the incident…

But then…

Could these eyes lie?

No.  Hm…maybe…

Let’s look at the evidence:

The frazzled bite marks on my yoga mat….....................the fangs of the vicious beast. 

Check!



This happened last summer, and since the beast tends to have more of a dog-like demeanour, loyally following my every step in the backyard, I could hardly be angry about her adornment to my mat.  After all, the reason I bought my own about a year ago was by far more disturbing.  At the height of the cold season I took a yoga class—then still using the common mats offered by the facility—when one of the participants took a gigantic sneeze that spread unhalted all over her mat and the ones of her neighboring yogis left and right.  Now my friend, if you have ever seen images of sneezing people such as these… 



…then you will understand that only hours after this memorable class, I owned my very first personal yoga mat.  I think I bought it at REI, just because I had to run some errands there anyways.  You may know that REI isn’t a particularly dedicated source for yoga products, but rather of any kind of outdoor activity.  Honestly, I didn’t even care what kind of a mat I bought.  I just wanted one that would harbor only my own pathogens.

Now, after a good year of quite regular, often daily use, attacks by the beast, and misuse by the kids (sometimes they just need a roof for their play house structures…), even I can’t deny that it probably needs to be replaced.  Too many downward dogs with sweaty paws, attempts to balance a most wobbly crow, and too many times melting into the mat in my favorite pigeon, took their toll on it.

This time, however, I want to be cleverer when choosing such an important utensil!  I looked around in classes and online to find some inspiration, since the muses failed me in that matter.  While I could imagine that size, thickness, and material plays a role, until last week I had no idea that also the shape is a variable.

I was a few minutes late for class, rushed to the studio, squeezed through the door as quietly as I could, removed all unnecessary clothes then turned around to find a spot amongst the yogis who were already sitting in silent meditation.  Whoa!  My attention was immediately drawn to the young yogi, who had her mat placed right in front of the teacher.  To get the right visual, my friend, you must know that said yogi had a ROUND yoga mat that spanned across the space that could usually be utilized by two.  But that was not all…this bodacious, blue mat was bearing the sign—the sign of high quality, being en vogue and bearing a big wallet:  Lululemon.

Throughout the class I couldn’t help but glance over to the front-row yogi to get some idea of how practical this mat is.  I have gotten out of the habit of looking at my fellow yogis during practice.  I even close my eyes most of the time to be more focused (which unfortunately is quite detrimental to my already weak sense of balance…).  This external focus, however, almost led to a forwards crash-landing of my wobbly crow that morning.  But then…I’ve already been known to endanger my health in pursuit of new knowledge (keyword: chai) if necessary, so what’s a crashed crow?!

The young yogi seemed to enjoy her practice within her private double lot, although I could not make out any poses that would have actually required the extra space left and right.  While I’m not opposed at all to an enormous, blue, round mat—nor to Lululemon for that matter—I have some doubts this would be the right product for me…

I guess this leaves me a seeker for now.  Maybe I should consider the eight limbs of yoga to aid me through this process.  The first one, yama, often translated as ethical disciplines, includes aparigraha--the non-accumulation of superfluous physical objects.  BKS Iyengar writes in his book Light on Yoga:  “By the observance of aparigraha, the yogi makes his life as simple as possible and trains his mind not to feel the loss or the lack of anything. Then everything he really needs will come to him by itself at the proper time.”

Here my lack of knowledge in the philosophy of yoga shows terribly…  Maybe aparigraha is a hint to keep waiting for a new mat to magically appear.  Or even worse, it indicates that the old one must do for now, because it’s likely not the proper time yet for another.

I think I'll let the beast decide.

Namaste!

Read more ...