Restorative

With the arrival of summer produce and locally produced foods, it's been much easier to fall back into a healthier pattern of eating. I've been more-or-less doing CR for the past month but the 'optimal nutrition' part has been missing (though I have been making sure to get my daily allowance of protein).

I'm not logging my foods every day, but do so occasionally just to see where I'm at. I'm keeping a simple formula: greens and protein. I've been buying big tubs of spinach and making spinach salads, accompanied by a protein source on the side. I discovered those little tins of flavoured tuna and salmon and I'm now addicted to them. At the moment, I'm in a 'why bother to cook' mode, so it's nice to be able to quickly throw a salad together, open a tin of yummy protein and be done with it (when I do cook, it's usually an egg white omelette).

As long as I don't indulge in sugar or flour (read: bread), this results in a healthy, well-balanced CRON diet. And I feel great. I always feel great when I'm eating this way. I don't know why I fall back into disordered eating patterns (well, according to the book 'The End of Overeating', it's because my body is biologically wired to crave sugar/fat/salt and food manufacturers maximize these properties of foods to reel me in). I just like chocolate cake :-D

Over the winter, I got into the habit of drinking an occasional glass of wine. Just as easily, daily Astanga yoga has broken me of that habit. I can see a huge difference in my practice with the wine - I'm stiff and my joints are gummy.

Anyway, it's great and I'm enjoying the salads, but it's been more expensive (at least initially) to eat this way. I hope my grocery bills settle into something reasonable. And, for the curious, I did gain a few winter pounds and they're now falling away quite easily. I'm fitting into my summer clothes again.

Today's practice was very simple and delightful: a half-hour of restorative yoga before bed, mostly backbends over a bolster.

My brain is churning. I'm thinking about prep for backbends, (Urdhva Dhanurasana specifically), dropbacks, standing up from backbends and also how beginning to practice the Second Series might enhance my ability to do these things. This recent post from Grimmly, led me to this archived post and the comments were a fascinating read, particularly Ursula and Arturo, and V's contributions.

As a home practitioner, I'm free to modify my practice however I deem fit and I have, adding Eka Pad Raj Kapotanasana (Pigeon) on occasion and plopping Hanumasana (splits) into the middle of my practice. There's nothing to stop me from inserting some Second Series backbends in the seated poses.