flissy's blog

I have a confession to make. I kind of hate salads.

Can you blame me really? If you get a salad in a restaurant, it's likely a pile of poorly chopped iceberg lettuce, which pretty much just tastes like crunchy water. If you're lucky there is a wedge of tomato AND a slice of cucumber. I don't even like tomatoes so I'm really out of luck. Fancy salads I like, especially if there is the trifecta of nuts, fruit and cheese. I never fix salads at home. It seems like a lot of trouble with the gathering of tasty things and the chopping. It's too much trouble. My mom says that everyone feels this away about salads, but then again, my mom gave up on "cooking" sometime when I was a teenager.

Anyway, I actually love all kinds of greens but I was having a hard time incorporating them into my diet consistently, until we got a fancy Vitamix blender and now I am completely obsessed with green smoothies. They are delicious and now and I am sharing what I've learned and loved with you!

I have to credit Raw Family for a lot of what I've learned about green smoothies. They have an app you can download for your iPhone that has a ton of recipes that are great inspiration. From there I have figured out, in general, what works for me.

It's my understanding that blending your fruits and greens break down the cell walls and make the nutrients more easily absorbed by your body. Smoothies (and juices) for this reason are easily digestible, and so I tend to stick to this formula and don't add dairy, almond, or soy milk, or any other veggies except leafy greens. So far this has made my tummy happy. If I'm still hungry after my green smoothie breakfast, then I'll make some toast or have some yogurt or something. It's also my understanding that you should rotate your greens because all greens have alkaloids in them, and if one type builds up in your body, it can make you sick. That being said, the many of sources where I've seen this point back to Raw Family, and as far as I can tell, alkaloids have other benefits for your system. If anyone smart about nutrition can clarify, that would be awesome. I'd like to know the scoop. Variety is good, and so I like to change it up anyway.

OmChantress's (nearly) Fool-Proof Green Smoothie formula

• 1. Greens
  Obvious, yes? Start small if you're nervous. I'll pack my blender about 1/3-1/2 full. This is about 1/2 bunch of spinach. Spinach, and especially baby spinach is very mild tasting, a little grassy and fresh. Romaine is also mild. I like swiss chard, which is a little earthy tasting. I found Kale to be a little too strong, but I'm OK with that because I love kale chips and this lemon-miso kale recipe.
• 2. A banana
  The banana is essential to creating a good texture and it also adds a little sweetness. If you can't deal with bananas, pears, peaches, blackberries, and citrus fruits are also packed with the soluble fiber that will help hold your smoothie together.
• 3. About 2 cups of fruit
  Go crazy! I like to just stick with just one or two kinds of fruit. I'll use stronger tasting fruit with swiss chard or other stronger tasting greens. A couple dates will add sweetness. I'll also sometimes put in a little bit of fresh grated ginger.
• 4. About 1 1/2 cups of water
  I like my smoothies to be pretty thin. You might need to adjust depending on what kind of water content your goodies have. Coconut water or juice is nice, too.
• 5. 1 Tablespoon Flax Seed (optional)
  The Omega-3s in flax seed reduce inflammation and are good for your joints! Hard to get otherwise, so I toss it in my smoothie.

When I make a smoothie I'll tweet about it (@omchantress). If you're on Twitter and making smoothies use #greensmoothie so I can see your favorite recipes too!

Roseanne over at It's All Yoga, Baby pointed out SadieNardini's new Facebook ad campaign, which reads:

Get a Summer Yoga Body
Lose weight and look younger with Yoga

Wait, what?

Read the story at It’s All Yoga, Baby. Make sure to note Sadie’s comment, too.

Last year I earned a Core Strength Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Certification with Sadie Nardini. I blogged about it then, and I still stand by everything I wrote. It was a great training, and Sadie has a lot to offer as a teacher and TO teachers. She has a ton of free instruction on YouTube that I refer to and recommend to students. I've admired her a lot for keeping it real even as she rises as a "celebriyogi."

And for that reason, it bugs me even more that her marketing is all about weight loss and "detoxing" (My most hated word! It means nothing!). According to her comment on IAYB, she didn’t have control over how her course was marketed, and she’s now working to get the ad changed.

As I said in my original post about CSVY, "...core strength is not limited to the physical core. It's not about having six-pack abs. It's about understanding the center of your being and developing the discipline to move and expand from the truest, most rooted part of yourself."

Even if that is still the underlying message of her teachings (and I believe that it probably is), it is being sold as something else. Weight loss. Getting skinny. Selling the idea that there something to be "fixed" about your body and that yoga is the way to fix it. My friend Marianne shared this article by Sharon Gannon, "Making Friends with Your Body" which does a better job at addressing this than I could.

Unfortunately, commercially speaking, there IS such a thing as a "yoga body." Pick up any issue of Yoga Journal. You will find at least five pictures of a skinny white girl in Eka Pada Rajakapotasana. It is probably even on the cover. A friend also pointed me to the Wanderlust Lineup. Hello more skinny white girls! It's the image that's being to sold to us everywhere else, why not yoga, too? I guess someone's got to fit in all those little expensive Lululemon pants.

This is something I am constantly trying to get my yoga students to understand: I do not care what you look like in a pose. Really. I am not impressed if you can touch your toes and I am not thinking badly of you if you can't. I want you to feel something. Release tension from somewhere. Energize something that is weak. Enjoy experiencing every moment in your body. Learn to understand your body’s signals, listen to your deepest inspirations, and then be bold enough to respond! It doesn’t matter what you look like when you show up for class, or how it looks while you’re doing all this investigating. That is why I offer dozens of modifications and alternatives in class. Everyone is different and should have the opportunity to move in the way that will work best for them. We will work it out together to get you comfortable so you can have the best experience possible. So as far as I’m concerned, your “yoga body” is the one that shows up for practice, on and off the mat.

For more wonderful insights on yoga for all bodies (including larger ones!), check out Curvy Yoga and Body Positive Yoga.