Mindfulness

Squatting Whole Body Health Benefits and Politics plus Video by da-AL

da-AL Body, Cancer, Exercise, Fear, Global, Health, Humor, India, Joints, Mindfulness, Public Speaking, Squatting, Uncategorized, Videos, Yoga

Picture me sitting on my haunches atop a conference table, assigned to perform an entertaining Toastmasters speech titled, “The benefits and the Politics of Squatting”…

Can you do this and smile? Image by edwindoms610 from Pixabay.

The subject first piqued my interest years ago, when my mom moved in with us. To make things extra comfy for all, we had some construction done on our snug home.

Each morning, a crew of men assembled under our backyard gazebo. Aged from early twenties to eighties, each hailed from Cambodia.

What intrigued me was the way they waited for each other to show up. In totally relaxed full-squats, the gentlemen sipped coffees, munched pastries, chatted, and smoked. Once all were there, they stood — not a one groaned or complained of creaky bones.

Lunch involved more of the same. They full-squatted as they passed around freshly steamed rice with fragrant grilled meat and veggies. Afterward, still squatting, they finished with smokes and maybe a sweet.

Squatting was still on my mind when, a couple of years later, I broke my knee twice in the same year. Torn cartilage, fractured bone, stretched tendon, blah, blah, blah. Ouch!!!! and Ohno!!! don’t begin to cover it.

Enter, Francisco Rufino, a gifted yoga instructor who pointed out that squatting keeps people in India free of knee and back problems.

Voila! Thanks to his suggestion that I squat five times a day, for thirty seconds each time, as I watched TV, my knee is so great that I never needed the surgery that two doctors prescribed! Yesterday I went for a terrific jog, no problemo!

By aligning muscles and organs from toes to neck, squatting aids in…

  • Getting rid of hemorrhoids, diverticulosis, and hernias.
  • Preventing heart attacks caused by straining on European-style toilets.
  • Alleviating incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse.
  • Making pregnancy easier.
  • Guarding reproductive organs, including protecting against prostate cancer.

So why don’t we do it more? When I gave the speech, at least one audience member expressed disgust. My h-a-unch is that we think we’re too good for it — and that includes politically. This Korean woman, married to an Anglo man, explains his chagrin when she and her family socialize while squatting.

Would your family be embarrassed if you performed full squats?

Guest Post: Alone on Valentine’s Day: I Promise, It’s OK by R.K.B.

da-AL Blessings, Bravery, Challenge, Courage, Fear, Gratitude, Guest Posts, Happiness, Holidays, Joy, Life, Loneliness, Love, Mindfulness, Reblog, Self-Acceptance

Blogger/poet/writer/daydreamer R.K.B.

Is there a certain day that you least enjoy spending alone? Valentine’s Day is meant to be about love — let’s start with ourselves! It’s only a day — only one day — as are all days — wise reminders from guest blogger/ poet/ daydreamer/ writer R.K.B. …

Take a Shot -Facing Bipolar, Depression, Anxiety and Suicide

Lonely-WomanYou won’t die. It’s not the end of the world, but I know it feels like it.

I get it. This day might even cause you to become depressed every year.

This year, let’s change that.

You are still worthy. 

You are not worthless. 

You have love, because you love yourself.

I know, it sucks because you might want to know what it feels like to be spoiled on this day. Or maybe, you just would like to know what it feels like to be acknowledged and told that you are beautiful. Sure, you can take yourself on a date and get all dressed up, but you’d want to know the feeling of having someone else to appreciate it and share it with.

I get that, too.

This isn’t your typical, feel-good post about how “loving yourself will cure all wounds,” because even though that is true, nobody really wants…

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A plea and a solution for food sellers by da-AL

da-AL Activism, Cancer, Consumerism, Cooking, Crafts, Eating, Environment, Environmental Protection, Food, Global, Global Warming, Marketing, Mindfulness, Nature, Plants, Poison , , , , ,

My dear blog reader, if you or anyone you know agrees with the letter below, won’t you please share it, hashtag it, copy/paste it, add your name to it, and do whatever you like to get the basic sentiment out there? (And read on for an additional message to you that follows it.)

Dear Trader Joe’s, as well as other grocery stores and processed food manufacturers,

Food, glorious food! I love your stuff, and I adore it all the better when you sell it in containers that are healthy and easy to re-use.

Rather than cans and near-impossible-to-recycle (let alone repurpose) plastic vacuum-sealed boxes, sell us stuff in containers like these!…

Something delish…
Tastes better when it’s in something useful…
Like how this keeps a snack fresh!

Here’s the kind of jars I love best — think healthy, easy-to-clean, and uniform in which to store my beans, grains, flour, pasta, and such:

  • Straight-sided and where I can easily reach in wash clear down to the bottom.
  • Labels that require just a quick soak to remove.
  • Better yet, no labels at all, as in the case of the adorable drinking glasses illustrated after this letter — how sublime that the Welch’s name appears only in fine print!
  • Interchangeable sizes and lids would be extra classy!

The mustard sauce in the photo is great — and is all the better for the jar!

Yours truly,

da-AL — a customer who I doubt is alone

P.S. Don’t think you can get away with overpricing products with super-cute holiday gift-type containers and expect us to think you’ve done anyone a favor.

Back to you my dear cyberland friend,

As you can guess from above, I’m asking businesses to go beyond using less plastic. It’s lovely when grocers sell us food in glass jars. Let’s encourage them to take it up a gazillion notches by doing something that’ll benefit us while making us more loyal to them!

I hope you’ll share this with anyone who’s as upset as I am with how impossible it is to get away from plastic. Share this with individuals as well as with businesses. Even small gestures can go a long way when they’re multiplied. As consumers, our wallets wield immense power.

Every time I turn around, I read more scary stuff about how corrosive plastics are to our bodies, and downright catastrophic to the environment. There may have been a time when we deluded ourselves that plastic was better than glass, but these days, we know better.

When I was small, my family ate Welch’s jam. Why? Sure, it was tasty, and we needed something not too expensive for our toast — but with all the jams out there, Welch’s outsmarted the others! Theirs was in glass jars meant to be repurposed into drinking glasses! Customers wanted to collect the cute freebies while getting decent jams at the same time.

In the stone-age, harhar, jam came in these. They were great to drink out of and made shoppers want to go buy more to collect them!

Win-win joy here, there, everywhere!! Pardon me while I do a little jig at the keyboard! Why the heck don’t all stores and all brands continue to do something like what I described?

For crafty readers and those of us who enjoy looking at stuff we’ll never do — here and here and here and here and here and here and here are some links. Key search words: repurpose and up-cycle.

Are you concerned about plastics?…

Does Your Light Frighten You? by da-AL

da-AL Achievement, Activism, Blogging, Bravery, Celebration, Challenge, Common Good, Decision-making, Depression, Fear, Focus, Goal-Setting, Gratitude, Happiness, Help, Identity, Joy, Kindness, Mindfulness, Motivation, Nelson Mandela, Quotations, Remembering, Self Esteem, Teachers, Uncategorized

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Marianne Williamson, activist/author of, “A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A COURSE IN MIRACLES,”
Marianne Williamson, activist/author of “A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A COURSE IN MIRACLES”– Photo by Supearnesh – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

This famous quote — which surely Williamson is proud of however zillion times it’s attributed to Nelson Mandela — reminds me of how sneaky my fear of success can be. As a kid, I worried that setting myself apart would invite criticism, jealousy, and ostracism. My ultimate goal, I was firmly instructed when my imagination soared, was predetermined. Girls must be cute and sweet so they’d be attractive to boys. Women, I was told, were born to be wives and mothers.

Fears continue to gnaw at me. Now they’re sophisticated, requiring constant vigilance to upend them. Art begs an audience. When art is personal, it’s difficult to not give a damn what others might think, not to mention how wicked my own self-doubt can be. An hour after I was awarded an Emmy, a stranger asked me how the honor felt. My reply was blather. He reminded me that I had indeed won it…

Williamson is correct to point that that being our best benefits everyone. When I’m upset about my goals, I remind myself of her wise words.

Do you ever hold yourself back?

Video Joy to Soothe You by da-AL (with furry and feathered friends)

da-AL Animals, Authors, Dogs, Happiness, Joy, Love, Mindfulness, Novels, Publishing, Uncategorized, Videos, Writing

Being a soon-to-be self-published novelist requires learning a) to wear many hats, b) to be absolutely humble, and c) to continually lavish oneself with self-care.

Happiness came this morning to my doggie and me in the form of a walk to the park. The sky bode the kind of sunny day that entices zillions to relocate to Los Angeles. We were greeted with the scent of fresh-cut grass, the caresses of cool breezes on our faces — and the honking of visiting geese!

Thank you’s to this and this and this and this vlogger for teaching me iMovie techniques that added art and several seconds to this micro-video.

How do you derail interior monologues of self-doubt?…

Guest Blog Post: My Dog is a Zen Master by Pamela Wight

da-AL Animals, Authors, Blogging, Dogs, Guest Posts, Happiness, Joy, Love, Mindfulness, Novels, Publishing, Reblog, Teachers, Women, Writing

When my dear doggie grins, I do too!
When my dear doggie grins, she reminds me to smile along!

Is there a useful lesson that an animal has imparted to you? My pets have shared so much wisdom with me, like this and this and this!

Fellow novelist/blogger Pamela Wight has published two romantic suspense books, “The Right Wrong Man,” and “Twin Desires,” as well as an illustrated children’s book, “Birds of Paradise.” She also teaches creative writing. Here she describes how her dog lovingly teaches by example…

roughwighting

I arrive home at lunchtime with a 30-minute break from work.  I am hassled and frazzled and tired.  I dump some leftovers in a saucepan while washing the breakfast dishes, starting a load of laundry, and cleaning up the newspapers scattered on the dining room table.

That’s when I see the patch of sunlight, and the yogi.

He can’t cross his legs as human meditators do, but instead sits like a Sphinx, front legs straight ahead, beautiful gold and white furry chest held straight and proud.  His neck rises a bit as he faces me and holds my green eyes into his chocolate brown ones. The expression is wise and all-knowing, and I can hear his thoughts immediately:

Why don’t you calm down, for heaven’s sake? 

The sun is basking his body in heat and light, and his mouth opens to pant.  But actually he is trying to say something to me…

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Video: Hail! Hail! All Hail Hail! by da-AL

da-AL Beauty, Dogs, Happiness, Joy, Life, Mindfulness, Modern Life, Multiculturalism, Pets, Uncategorized, United States, Videos

My doggie and me on a sunny day.

Hail in Los Angles is highly unusual. Hail that lasts longer than a minute or two basically never happens.

But that’s what we got on the first day of Spring, a.k.a. Persian New Year! A hailstorm that lasted twenty minutes and was followed with brilliant sunshine!

Surely this means we’re off to an interesting season — or year — ahead! As you’ll hear my husband talking on the video, even our doggie shivered with anticipation…

How often does it hail where you live?