For years, I struggled with the apparent dichotomy of being a yogi, an Ayurveda specialist and a foodie.

I was a foodie first. Really, I was a foodie before being a foodie was a thing. I came from a long line of gourmets. My grandparents were part of the early food & wine culture in New York City in the ‘60s and ‘70s. My grandfather had a wine cellar and was president of the New York chapter of the Physicians Food & Wine Society for years. They hung out with the likes of Craig Claiborne and Julia Child and traveled the world to eat amazing meals. They prepared four-course, sit-down Christmas dinners, each course meticulously paired with the perfect wine, by my grandfather. They threw big lobster parties in our backyard in Montauk, with multitudes of friends and relatives driving out from the City for the festivities. When I was 16, they took me to Europe for six weeks. While we did a lot of the usual touristy things, on the days that we dined, we DINED. They took me to Cafe Girardet, in Crissier, Switzerland, at the time, considered to be the finest restaurant in the world. We drove two hours to get there, had a five hour meal, and drove two hours home. It took up the entire day! In my teenage mind, I found that absurd, but I didn’t complain about the food!

While my parents were not the extreme foodies that my grandparents were, they always cooked from scratch, had a garden, and we always had a sit-down family dinner, a time that we’d eat, talk and laugh. After dinner my Dad would often break out a piece of parmigiano-reggiano, pour some olive oil on it, and wash it down with the rest of his Bolla Valpolicella.

My memories of food in my childhood are good memories, cherished memories.

I inherited my grandparents’ love of cooking, food and wine, as did my sister. Maybe it skips a generation? I started cooking for my roommates in college and afterwards. I started working in restaurants and gravitating towards other food & wine lovers. We’d cook big meals together or go to great restaurants whenever we could. I ended up marrying a chef. Then we were the ones throwing the big, elaborate, fabulous Christmas dinners. By this time, I was in the wine business, so between the two of us and our foodie friends, we threw a hell of a party. And we did it often.

As many others did, I started dabbling in yoga in the mid-nineties. When my daughter was born in 2003, I started taking my yoga practice much more seriously. In 2007, I became a yoga teacher and in 2010, I started studying Ayurveda. Yoga became, and still is, my spiritual practice. I grew up without any religion, and while I never felt drawn to any organized religion, I felt drawn to spirit. Yoga filled that void for me. (More on that in a future post.)

People started asking me how I dealt with the contradiction of being a yogi and being in the wine business. At first I didn’t see it as that. Yoga and wine are both ancient and both have deep ties to God and Spirit. But, then it did start to concern me. As my then-husband’s drinking became problematic, I experienced the damage that alcohol can do to a family. As a mother, I wanted to feed my child healthy meals and as a yoga practitioner, I wanted to be healthy. I still do.

I tried all the things. Vegetarian, vegan, Ayurvedic, Paleo, Paleovedic, Keto, Keto-cycling, Intermittent fasting. All are good, healthy ways to eat. Not all are for everyone; we all need to find the diet and lifestyle that best fits us.

I left the wine business and went to work for an Ayurveda company. Unfortunately, the person I worked for took Ayurveda to an unhealthy extreme. But, I didn’t realize that at the time. I thought I was just a gluttonous yogi and that I had to change.

The Ayurveda/yoga community I was in, had some pretty rigid rules:

Let me be clear, Ayurveda is not this rigid. Neither is yoga. But the yoga/Ayurveda community I was in, was. Or at least they were striving to be. While there are some people who do best with a rigid approach to eating due to certain health issues or a predisposition to disordered eating, I think most people do not.  And I know that I do not. This doesn’t mean that I don’t follow Ayurvedic guidelines or eat healthily. I do. I eat seasonally; Spring brings bitter greens that cleanse the heaviness of winter, summer is the time to eat lightly and enjoy the bounty of fruits and vegetables, fall and winter bring rich, warming soups and stews, a little more animal protein and root vegetables. I also eat locally as much as possible, frequenting my farmers market and purchasing my dairy, meat and even maple syrup from Wisconsin producers. (The latter being a tough move for someone who lived in Vermont for a decade!)

Ayurveda prescribes a dinner that is smallish and early. And I mostly subscribe to this theory. That does not mean that dinner  has to be close to nonexistent. But if I am particularly hungry or haven’t eaten much during the day, dinner is sometimes bigger. Sometimes later. And that’s ok. On the other end of the spectrum, if I’ve had a bigger, later lunch and I’m not hungry, I am happy to skip dinner altogether. Ayurveda is all about learning what’s best for you. Learning to eat when you’re hungry, not just because the clock says it’s mealtime.

I hope that you are seeing that I am not rejecting Ayurveda; quite the contrary. What I’m sharing with you is what has taken me so long to come to terms with – Ayurveda and Foodieism do not have to be mutually exclusive. One can follow Ayurvedic guidelines and still eat amazing, sometimes indulgent food. And being a foodie is not about being a glutton; it’s about sourcing and eating the highest quality, fresh ingredients and creating delicious meals from them. It’s about the pleasure of eating, the experience of dining and connecting over food.

I recently returned to restaurant work, after years away. It’s so refreshing to be around people who are passionate about food and wine. I’ve missed that. I’ve missed people who “ooh and ahh” as they eat and who want to talk endlessly about the qualities of a particular wine. Those are my peeps! And I’m happy to be with them. One of my new co-workers (and fellow yogi) said to me the other day, “A meal without wine is like a life without love.” He was only being partially facetious. Passion for food and wine is part of who I am, just like being a yogi is who I am. I tried to squelch that passion for years. I am so glad that I’m no longer doing that.

Food & wine might not be your thing. I’m not pushing it on you. What I am encouraging you do do, is not squelch your passion, whatever that may be. I’ll be writing more about that in future posts. Until then….

Salute & Bon Appetit!

This is my first post since we were hit with COVID-19 and Stay-at-Home Orders. I haven’t been clear on what I wanted to write about. I could give Ayurveda Tips for Armageddon (I still might!).  I could talk about the effect this is having on our collective psyche (I’m not a mental health expert, but that hasn’t stopped anyone else!) I could rant about government and politics (But, I prefer not to have my entire list unsubscribe!)

The question I kept asking myself was, what can I write that will be useful for others during this time? How can I be of service to my community?

And then it came to me. Like many of you, I have a lot of time for contemplation these days.

My yoga practice has become more contemplative over the past few years. I’ve had some injuries. And while I’ve healed from some of them and am working on poses I haven’t been able to do in a while, I’ve also realized that there are some poses I will never do again, like headstand. My neck is just too jacked to risk it. And I’m ok with that. There are other poses I can do, when I want to be upside down. I also have to accept the fact that I am not as young as I once was. And as we get older, our practice is supposed to become more contemplative. We become wiser and more thoughtful.

I have been deepening my meditation practice over the past five years. Like so many, I got into yoga through the physical practice, asana, which is the third of the eight limbs of yoga. Dyhana, or meditation, is the seventh. Since each limb builds upon the next, we can assume that the seventh limb is extremely important. The only limb to come after it, is Samadhi, or Enlightenment.

I was recently initiated into the school of Neelakantha meditation, an ancient mantra practice, based on the Shiva Sutras, that has been passed down from teacher to student for thousands of years. This practice has catapulted my meditation into much deeper states. As my wonderful teacher, Jeanie Manchester says, I get to bathe in the bubblebath of the vibratory field twice a day. And it’s powerful.

So, I’ve decided that the way I can give back during this world-wide crisis, is to share meditation with my community.

Starting next Sunday, May 17, at 10:30 am CDT, I’ll be hosting a weekly, free, online Community Gathering and Meditation. We’ll start with a teaching/discussion/conversation and then go into a short meditation. You can join via  Facebook Live in my group, Life On & Off the Mat.

As I do want this to be a community gathering, I’m inviting yoga teachers, studios, meditation and spiritual teachers of any and all spiritual traditions to partner with me as a “sponsor,” and/or a guest host. I’ve put quotes around “sponsor,” because this is not a financial sponsorship, it is an energetic one. I will be happy to share your COVID online offerings with my community, and just ask that you do the same in return. I’ve got a couple yoga studios and teachers on board already!

I’m sure that many of you have heard how the power of prayer and meditation really do make a difference in the world. If we can get as many people as possible together, for just a few minutes, once a week, we can make a difference! In ourselves and the world. It’s called Subtle Activism. Whether you look at it as a simple stress-reduction for yourself during a very challenging time, or a way to deepen your personal spiritual practice, or as a method for planetary healing, I hope you will join us.

We’re in a time of unprecedented uncertainty. I’ll be writing more about that, and how we can keep ourselves grounded through it all, in future posts.