Yoga Chickie: Rice - it's not just for dinner anymore

And by rice, I mean brown rice or any whole grain rice. Otherwise, why bother? I mean, you might as well eat Wonder Bread rather than going to the bother of preparing constipation-inducing, bland-tasting white rice.

After our Saturday morning led practice (I'm talking about Yoga Shala Summer Camp again), we helped ourselves to a bountiful buffet of diced fruit, granola, yogurt and brown rice, and possibly some other goodies I may be forgetting (possibly leftover dal?). I was positively psyched to have the opportunity to eat brown rice for breakfast. You see, I have had this idea brewing on the backburner of my brain for quite some time that rice could, in fact, be used as a cereal for the morning meal. I have gone so far as to make brown rice and then stir in some milk and maple syrup. Of course, the looks I have gotten from my boys (and by boys, I am including the Husband as well as the Sons) have given me pause to consider that perhaps this is not normal. Perhaps it even amounts, somehow, to some sort of disordered eating.

But now I know (and this is, I guess, Lesson Number Three that I learned from Yoga Shala Summer Camp - or are we up to Four? In any event....):

Good eating knows not what time it is.

Brown rice in the morning for breakfast? Bring it on. Chai in the evening as a sort of yogic apertif? Ladle it up.

But a few caveats: the later into the evening that you eat, the more you feel it in your morning practice.

And eating BEFORE practice is a recipe for binding difficulties as well as excessive belching and even, at times (as I have observed), the alarming feeling of suddenly needing to (as my boys say) "wahk". If you don't know what I mean, then say it out loud.

As for eating AFTER practice, my understanding is that there is some window of time immediately after practice asana during which your body should have the opportunity to settle into its asana-induced calm. Coffee during this time period would be counter-productive to such calm. (Sir told me that he does not drink coffee right after practice....as I lifted my mug to my lips....) I believe that Yoga Mala advises waiting half an hour between the end of practice and the beginning of the morning meal.

Just now, at 1:00 p.m., more than two hours after I finished my morning practice, I had a delicious bowl of steel cut oats. And I have to say, I feel damn good. But what I ate after practice is only one part of the why-I-feel-so-good equation. Add to the steel cut oats a few additional factors:

Mark is back!!!
I had a super-calm and focused practice today and had no trouble binding in any bound poses, including Mari C and D and even including Badha Padmasana.
Did I mention Mark is back?
Head on! Apply directly to your forehead! (wait...how did that get in there?)
Mark and Xtina two-on-oned me in Supta K and had my hands thiiiis close even WITH my ankles totally crossed over my head. Afterwards, they said, "your hands were thiiiis close", so that's how I know.
I got 8 hours of sleep last night.
I ate my own homemade dal for dinner last night (hoping to reproduce a recipe here soon)
I'm having a good hair day.
I'm seeing my friend L today. She's taking me on a tour of her adopted hometown of Scahhhsdale...just in case we ever decide to leave the city and eschew my dream of a white picket fence in Westport. This is not going to happen. I repeat. Not. Gonna.
I am finding that I am calmly dealing with the fact that my parents' 16-year old Yorkshire Terrier (Terrorist?), who is crashing with the Yoga Chickie family while my parents take a cruise to Eastern Europe (that's right...a cruise....I know...I don't understand it either), is peeing all over my home with utter impunity. She is very spoiled, this little dog, she is.