The best yoga style for you

I am often asked by friends and family members who are interested in getting into yoga what style of yoga is the best. The quick answer to that is, "It depends."

There are many styles of yoga to choose from, and many different types of teachers. To choose the best style for you, I recommend investigating some of the styles and trying out a couple that appeal to you.

The article at the following link describes some of the main styles of yoga offered in North America:

http://www.yogajournal.com/basics/165

And don't forget that the teacher makes a huge difference to how well you connect with the yoga class, so don't be afraid to shop around for a teacher you really love.

Frown lines

Ever since one of my girlfriends told me she had had Botox injections in her forehead, I have been obsessed with frown lines. It was like one day I woke up with these lines between my eyebrows, like they had just magically appeared overnight. I had never noticed them before, although I realize they must have been there for some time.

I've always taken my skin for granted, never worrying about wrinkles or age spots or laugh lines. After all, I always had nice skin like my mother, or at least that is what I had been told my whole life. But wait, hold on a sec - what's that between your eyebrows, Mom? Why, it's the exact same pattern of lines that I have! Darn genetics.

OK, I am approaching 40 - I'll be 39 next month - so a few lines on my face are normal. And as a yogi, I'm not supposed to care about something as shallow as wrinkles. So why did I spend an entire road trip to Maine last summer, staring in growing distaste at my frown lines in the passenger side mirror? Why am I so obsessed with wrinkles? I am a little embarrassed to admit that I even ordered these things called "Frownies", adhesive strips that you wear at night that purportedly erase frown lines - a Botox alternative, if you will. (By the way, the stupid things don't seem to work. $24.95 plus tax and shipping down the drain.)

I suppose my fixation with wrinkles is a symptom of a much deeper issue - a fear of aging. The lines on my face are an irrefutable sign that I am getting older. Like many others, I haven't yet come to terms with my own mortality. Fear of aging is pervasive in our society today, so I guess it's not surprising that the mere glimpse of my frown lines in the mirror can bring up feelings of panic, revulsion, and denial.

There is also the societal pressure, especially for women, to look younger, to deny our age, to cover the signs of a life lived with passion and emotion - with creams and makeup and cosmetic interventions like Botox and collagen injections. It's difficult to embrace our aging faces and bodies, to celebrate our older, wiser, and more experienced selves.

The more rational and less superficial voice inside my head tells the fearful, vain, and ego-driven voice that aging has its own rewards (wisdom, self-knowledge, opportunity for introspection, feeling more comfortable in our own skin), that I should focus on my inner strength and health, and the blessings in my life (it all comes back to gratitude), and who cares about a few lines on my forehead? And even as the media bombards me with air-brushed images of young, sexy women and celebrities who spend a fortune on cosmetic surgery and expensive creams to look half their age, I try to listen to this deeper, wiser (and yes, older) voice.

At a yoga retreat for women that I attended a few years ago, I learned the following mantra:

I am blissful, bountiful, beautiful

Excel, excel, fearless!

What a powerful and potentially life-altering message, if only we could fully internalize and believe it. And so I continue to repeat this mantra to myself on a regular basis, to remind myself of my true nature - powerful, loving, kind, strong, and beautiful (both inside and out). And I sit quietly with the feelings of fear and insecurity, acknowledge them without judgement or attachment, and then let them go.

I wish I could say that I am ready to throw out the Frownies, to stop colouring my hair, to end my quest for effective anti-aging creams and serums for good. Unfortunately, I am not quite there yet. But I am willing to consider these things, and to continue my inner work to come to terms with my own mortality and embrace the aging process. Who's with me?

New blog title!

After agonizing for hours (OK, maybe more like minutes) over a catchy yet appropriate title for my blog, this is the best I could come up with. I'm not totally sold on this name, but I was wasting too much time and energy thinking about it, so it was time to just pick something. Also, I believe I was using this little quest for a title as an excuse to procrastinate on actually writing a real blog post!

So this is it. If you can think up something better, I would love to hear your ideas. You can leave your suggestions in the 'Comments' section of the blog.

Guilt and gratitude

Being a Catholic (baptized and raised, anyway) and a mother, I have more than my fair share of guilt. It's actually ridiculous how much guilt I carry around with me. The objects of my guilt range from the most trivial and benign to the more substantial and significant. For example, here are a few things I feel guilty about almost daily:

- Watching bad (but oh so good!) reality TV
- Reading blogs about bad reality TV shows
- Procrastinating at work with said blogs and other equally escapist online materials
- Eating meat
- Binging on chocolate or chips, or both
- Not working out
- Skipping my home yoga practice
- Choosing light, escapist literature instead of spiritually uplifting books and articles
- Not meditating enough
- Choosing to meditate instead of cleaning the kitchen, all the while thinking about the dirty kitchen and other tasks to be completed instead of finding my bliss or whatever
- Not feeding my kids enough vegetables
- Working part-time, yet paying for full-time child care
- Paying someone to clean my house
- Judging people
- Not finishing my son's first year scrapbook before his 4th birthday
- Not calling my Mom every day
- Having so much when so many in the world have so little

And the list goes on... Crazy, isn't it? I truly believe that the majority of our guilty feelings are completely useless and a waste of energy, and yet, I can't seem to shake all this guilt. Just the other day, I reluctantly agreed to play hockey in the basement with my sons (Mom, you be goalie!), and felt guilty that I wasn't enjoying it more. After dutifully standing in net for a respectable amount of time, trying not to yawn uncontrollably or pass out from sheer boredom, I escaped upstairs to wash the dishes. And of course, I felt guilty about that. After all, only a bad mother would choose housework over spending time with her kids, right? Especially after blogging a few months ago about leaving those dishes behind!

So what is to be done? Guilt, it seems, is my constant companion. Like tight hamstrings and frown lines. But I digress.

I guess this is where gratitude comes in. I've been thinking a lot about gratitude lately and reminding myself to be grateful for even the small blessings in my life. Several times a day, I stop the steady stream of thoughts to consciously say thanks for my family, my health, my job, my home, my friends, the sunshine, the silence, my morning cup of tea, my car's heated seats. And when I notice that unmistakable feeling of pointless guilt rising up in me, I try to replace it with a feeling of gratitude. So when I start to feel guilty about that scrapbook, I remind myself that I wouldn't have a first-year scrapbook to work on if I didn't have my two awesome boys. And the only reason that scrapbook isn't done is that I am busy taking care of my boys and watching them grow. When I miss a yoga practice, I remember to feel grateful that I am healthy and able to practice yoga at all, and then I cut myself some slack. Gratitude is so much kinder than guilt. Yes, guilt does have its place when it alerts us to immoral or harmful behaviours and encourages us to be better human beings, but so much of our guilt is the pointless kind that just makes us feel needlessly bad about ourselves. Gratitude, on the other hand, makes us feel good, and also attracts more good things to us.

Gratitude doesn't always get rid of guilt, but it does help. So I'm working on the guilt thing. And the gratitude thing.

Now pass me my hockey stick.