Livin' in the moment - the book

A commenter asked me to recommend other books like Michael Pollan's. I did not read other books like Michael Pollan's, but here's another recommendation: brand new, released on March 17, David Romanelli's book: Yeah Dave's Guide to Living in the Moment - Getting to Ecstasy through wine, chocolate and your iPod list.  

The book is excellent! I went to his yoga classes whenever he was around over the last year and I am reading his email newsletter and I pretty much know all the jokes, but I still find it refreshing to read the book. Dave is great. He's just another guy and is admitting it. Only he's not just another guy. The way he's observing the world and the way he's showing how he deals with it it's very original. He's fun and honest, silly and serious. 

I have a hard time realizing why I like him, but I am hooked. His is the kind of yoga that I want to practice. You can also check out his blog for funny and interesting weekly posts. 

I am a Certified Yoga Teacher

Woohoo! I passed the exam. It wasn't that difficult, but while studying I realized how much we learned that other people do not know. I would have loved to go deeper into anatomy and physiology, and to have more power, better balance and less fear, but it only has to start here. I have a lifetime to learn and build my life and my body as I'd like them to be.

I learned an incredible gem yesterday that will probably help me better explain what yoga and meditation does to your mind. Imagine a jar with dirty water. The dirt in the water are our daily thoughts. There are lots of them and they are hanging around popping in and out and moving in no particular direction. You can't see through the water because there are so many thoughts. If you put the jar down and leave it there for an hour or so, all the dirt falls to the bottom and the water becomes clear. Yoga and meditation helps you slow down the stream of thoughts, let them rest, see clearly the things that are important and pick up the important thoughts and make them happen.

Meditation and living in the moment

If you were around for a while you know my hunger for comments. While feeling better over the last couple of months, I (and my blog) survived without many comments for a while now. On Friday I had the great pleasure of finding two very nice comments... Woohoo! I inspired someone to do something about their anxiety.

A new social anxiety blog is out! Please welcome travel.trekker1 and wish her good luck in your journey. She seems like a good buddy for me so I am looking forward to more posts and communication.

And an additional note about the last blog I wrote about: Matt Ambrose at Overcoming Social Anxiety: this is a must read. It is kind and gentle. It is the best writing on social anxiety that I stumbled upon. It makes me feel good about myself when I read it.

The guys at the Mental Health Blog Research Study have their survey up and you can take it if you want to help research anxiety disorders and blogs. Email mhblog@tcnj.edu before July 10, 2008 if you are interested.

In one of the latest comments, a reader talked about how difficult it is to be living in the moment. I've been working on this for the last half an year, so I can tell you what worked for me:

- Some sort of vigorous activity that requires concentration and doesn't leave you time to drift into thinking. Ashtanga yoga does this for me. But it took a while. For weeks I kept just thinking how hard it is, what comes next, this is hard, this is easy, and when is the end of the class, etc. I'm now just concentrating on the current posture and it's great.

- In the beginning, use your senses with strong cues: eat something you really love with great attention and pleasure: enjoy a chocolate truffle for a minute or so, smell a great perfume, listen to the birds singing, or to the ocean waves. Eventually you will start being aware of all the chatter around all the time and you will feel and touch and smell things without judgment, for example smelling something foul will just bring awareness not necessarily disgust.

- Read. You will be surprised how many successful people (like Seth Godin or John Halamka) have some sort of meditative practice and preach living in the moment and utilizing the time while you have it... NOW! to do something rather than think about what you could have done or what you will do.

- When overwhelmed with thoughts, ask yourself if there's anything I can do about this right now (can you write an email, make a call, etc. to make the idea happen)? If yes, just do it, if not, let the thought go. I used to fantasize a lot about spending time with friends and intelligent discussions we would have, etc. Now when I think about this, I just smile, say I love you to my imaginary friends and then think: Hey but you are not really here so Good Bye, I'll see you next time! No beating up, no frustrations, no expectations.

And because my commenter mentioned Eckhart Tolle, here's the list of things that helped me in my journey:

- The yoga teachers training at the Yoga and Healing Center in Scotch Plains, NJ - graduation in two weeks... need go practice and learn
- A Yoga, Chocolate and Wine seminar with Yoga Dave
- A 3 hours seminar with Bijan and reading Effortless Prosperity daily lesson and trying to practice it
- Reading A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle