We can use a yoga Tree Pose today and these days as a reminder and metaphor for our lives, and the trees that have impacted our lives.
Firstly, what is so special about trees that have meaning in our lives?
The obvious being that trees are growing, living creatures just like us humans with unique features. We know trees are alive because they bloom, shed leaves, and pollen (not their greatest spring dominant feature).
Trees can grow from a mere seed that fits in your hand to a super strong tree you can climb (similar to a growing person from an egg to an adult).
The appearance and rings on a tree can show age, as our human bodies and features do the same thing.
When I was growing up, we purposefully remembered trees on National Arbor Day. Usually, the celebration included the installment of a new baby plant at school. The remembrance of the special day has been crowded out by other hashtag events but you can do your appreciation just by looking out the window at the trees near you, or by getting in a yoga Tree Pose.
These days, we celebrate yoga days more than we do trees it seems, but luckily there is a standing pose that represents trees in yoga. We can appreciate trees from a personal growth perspective.
Trees are a metaphor for our lives.
In Tree, remind yourself of these 5 areas:
1.Growth and direction. You can change your yoga Tree Pose at any point. You can lift your right bended-knee leg to rest on your left shin, or you can lift your right leg higher to form a number “4” formation with your right foot rested on your left thigh (looking like a flamingo).
You can take your wide arms and open them to the sky, have them go straight up parallel to your ears, or bring them to heart center with prayer hands.
Your tree can go in any direction of your choosing. As you balance one leg, you can build up strength and notice one leg is usually stronger than the other.
2.Grounded. You can feel grounded with your feet planted on the floor, like a tree with a stump firmly rooted in the earth. When you’re not sent from busy task to task, you can gain clarity about your life and deliberate actions you take. You’re not wishy-washy, tossed to and from. You’re steadfast and purposeful like a tree.
3.Learning. A tree is also a symbol of knowledge. From trees, we make paper that we can bind together to make books that expand our minds.
The more branches we develop, the more we can become useful to the world. Animals can use our tree and we can impact the community around us like moss growing on trees.
As you grow older, you can become wiser and stronger as you’ve experienced situations to increase your know-how.
4.Being alive! If you feel a sensation in any of your parts, you can take that as a positive sign you’re alive. Your automatic breath is no longer a gift you take for granted, if you become consciously aware of your inhale and exhale.
In yoga, we do a lot of breathwork. The inhale is often when we’re facing up or lifting up, and exhale when we’re grounding down. The breath is a little different than when lifting weights in a gym. So don’t get confused. And you can pause at anytime and do 4-7-8 breathing.
Trees and plants don’t get confused. They play a sustainable role for us by giving off carbon dioxide. Without them, we would not have a life in our ecosystem.
5.Uniqueness. The more you practice your various yoga Tree Pose styles, the better your tree can enliven yourself as you let your roots develop into hybrid trees. You can have properties like a flexible and resilient palm, a durable evergreen, or a hardy cactus. You could have overlapping properties in your versatility and personality.Continue reading “5 Yoga Tree Pose Life Metaphors”
Ideas for healthier lunches is always on the agenda year-round.
The time we take for lunch is often hurried and goes by in a blink of an eye. There are ideas for healthier lunches that you may have forgotten to try in your busyness.
We learn to speed through lunch when we’re old enough to learn. Lunches can be an afterthought when we’re hungry, running in between activities.
I would encourage the idea that lunch is the most important meal of the day (one I don’t recommend skipping or skimping on) when you need the extra energy to carry out your day!
If you like and can eat carbs or pasta, this is a meal where you can get the most efficiency out of your carbs.
You need and burn the energy in a working or working out afternoon. If you focus on carbs for your dinner meal, as you age, this can slow you down.
That’s why I like the idea of the plant-based dinner. But that doesn’t always fill you up during the day when you need the energy boost to keep you going like carbs can.
Growing up you have a memory about your overall childhood lunches.
My public-school lunches were both memorable… and not.
They were a special time that I could sit and spend time with my friends, and that probably helped me appreciate just sitting around with others socializing and chatting.
Barre class can be a metaphor for what we need to grow ourselves. When you think of a row of ballerinas with their arabesques, port de bras, and extended swan necks, you can be reminded of control and grace–what we all need in life for better performance and balance.
You can also grow strong. When you have control over your body in a certain position, your muscles are flexing to build strength.
Don’t be fooled with thin and dainty ballerinas as they have very strong legs (and toes)! They’re usually slender, have Vata-like bodies where they are aware of every body position from the waist down to the crown of their heads and through their fingertips.
To get in perfect positions, they have concentrated mind-body awareness. If they lose focus then they could soon fall or be out of alignment.
If you aspire to have ballerina moves, that usually requires hours of imperfect practice. A Nutcracker play ballerina has paid their dues.
To start, you can make your life easy and see how the barre concept feels especially if you’re new, by trying a mild, less-strenuous workout in a barre class.
You usually start off standing along a bar as your equipment. And if you’re doing this from home, you can use a chair. It’s that simple!
One of the first things you want to think of is extended height. That requires stamina and strong legs and specifically upper leg strength in your quadricep muscles (quads) that could give you the endurance you need.
That’s not something you develop overnight, but you may be naturally more built out in that area. That’s the opposite of someone who wants to try-out for America’s Ninja Warrior show. There you see athletic men and women alike on the show who have demonstrated strong upper body strength. We’re all given different strengths in comparison.
And ballerinas are athletes, with strong quads. Like everyone else, you can develop your legs in other ways every day. Like, climbing stairs or doing squats in place. And say you want to take an outdoor 20 plus mile bike ride, having strong upper leg muscles will help give you the extra strength and extra oomph to push you over the hills.
A great way to develop your quads is by following a barre class.
If you take a class, that can be just as effective through video, you can lose your inhibition. You’re focused on your screen and mimicking the instructor and not thinking how silly you look with self-consciousness and awkward body movements (that we all have).
Your body doesn’t care how ridiculous you can look to move its joints, muscles, and all the parts gluing your butterfly parts together. It’s just happy you’re moving and that’s what you can positively focus on.
Similar to learning foundational yoga poses for a yoga class, you can learn and focus your attention on ballet positions for a barre class.
You can even find that you’ve known or been doing some of the French named barre positions for years without knowing how that they would be practical in your barre class now.
What I love most about barre class:
I do think barre is a Vata-designed workout. ♥ ♥
A Vata person’s middle name is Variety.
Choosing to take a barre class is a variety from the norm while the type of exercise is growing in popularity. The crux of the class can be ballet moves, but most barre classes incorporate moving to the floor for pilates and yoga poses.
You just never know what kind of journey your barre instructor can take you on and how intense the workout is until you get a sense of the instructor’s style.
If that unknown element of what-happens-next appeals to you, then you may have a ‘lil more Vata in you than you think (we all have some trace).
If in your recreational time, you still like to know every move you’ll be taking and that’s expected, then you could be more Pitta/Kapha dominant or falling into those stronger imbalances.
In any case, life is full of surprises so taking a barre class can help you become flexible.
By the way, do you know what your main dosha is?
If you want to know the reverse, what is not happening the way you want, then you can take the balance restoration, Body Balance Quiz, to find out what you can do to get back to yourself.
If you pay attention and learn to get in awareness of your natural body tendencies, then you can lean into your ways and not be so hard on yourself. We can wonder why we’re different in some ways from our friends and people we admire.
Doshas may be one insightful clue and a more fun way (leaning into your natural strengths) to follow in life.
Be encouraged, many others share your mind-body type. You just have to find your peeps. They’re out there!
But back to barre… whether you’re a natural Vata body-mind type or not, you get a mix of a heart-pumping workout with very few breaks to catch your breath, unlike these peeps just standing around. …sorry, Easter is in a couple weeks, so I couldn’t resist the reference!
One class I went to regularly for a season had exercises where you moved from one end of the room to the other, mimicking a Nutcracker Toy Solder.
Repeating the movement takes body coordination and also self-discipline, as you’re trying to look cookie-cutter mechanical. Concentration is good mind-body health (and can help a Vata-sporadic brain get back in line).
Making even-movements is a talent that I don’t have today (maybe you do and could consider trying-out for the Rockettes!), but whatever the case you still can have your best-attempt version.
In that one class, we learned how to march across a room with our stiff arm and leg movements, and afterward we each picked up a stability ball for an even more energizing workout.
We transformed from gliding Ballerinas to marching Toy Soldiers to Downward-Facing Dogs. …Phew! I was tired.
So next time you’re wondering if you should give barre a try, here are few surprise benefits that can help sway you:
-Increasing mind-body awareness
-Developing grace and better performance
-Building strength and resilience
-Finding self-discipline and self-control (that leads to bigger and better things!)
And if you can’t dance, barre is a good alternative to say Zumba, as you’ll still be on your toes and you may just become a ‘lil more aware which is the right, left foot 😊
Today is the first day of spring and the a hashtag event calendar day for #InternationalDayofHappiness.
It’s also coincidentally the weekend of my happiness book release. And I have a spring roll (swiss cake roll recipe to share below 🍥) to celebrate the occasion.
swiss cake roll recipe below.
Up to now, most of us have learned to be more patient with the world, and uniquely in our individual lives. For better health and to enjoy your day, it’s better to celebrate what you have. Time today is a gift.
In the wait, focus on the positive things. You are a day closer to your destiny and joy if you decide to focus on love, beauty, and growth that you can find evidence all around in spring and nature.
In my muse and self-reflection today, I’m tickled (and a bit relieved) that my happiness book, Empowered Happiness, that I started editing last summer is completed and available now. I had intended for the book to be published last year.
I started writing in 2019, but for all kinds of start and stop reasons, I didn’t make the deadline. …and now I understand why it takes most authors more than a year to publish a book that has nothing to do with procrastination or writer’s block 😊
You know how things always take longer than you expect… my happiness book project was no different.
On the other side now, I see how slow cooking a book takes patience but produces a better, heart-filled, and soulful meal (end-product) than microwaving can ever produce. (…and as a writer, we prefer “simmering” over “nuking” and also the rhyming words associated).
When asked yesterday in a phone interview why I wrote the happiness book, I was stunned by what came out of my calm thoughts, mind, and mouth.
Like you, if you choose, I’m here to impact others’ lives with the gifts and opportunities I’ve been given. With the book, I aspire to impact readers in their own lives, no matter what stage they’re in as I know others have gone through similar experiences as I have. The mentors that I’ve turned to, time and time again, have been self-help books. And this is my way of giving it back as a writer and mentor advocate.
Everything else is gravy.
We all need each other for validation and can learn from one another about authentic living in this beautifully organized, delicate, and sometimes complicated Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs place we share called Life on Earth.
With what you can do, you just never know how you can positively impact someone else with similar or different backgrounds.
While piecing together my happiness book, I decided to include a childhood story about an older neighborhood kid who put on an Easter egg hunt. What suddenly happened that day, impacted my life and helped put a memorable smile on my face, like colorful confetti or rainbow sprinkles can.
You never know what an ordinary day can bring. Maybe I’ll get a chance to put on a surprising egg hunt someday and you’ll get a chance to plan or suddenly impact your local community in a way you never imagined.
Make it a great first day of spring… and if you think about it, reach out to someone you haven’t talked to for months. They may just be waiting for your text, call, or a nudge of encouragement that only you can give ♥
I was inspired to bake this spring imprime cake roll from watching an episode from The Great British Bake Off. Enjoy! 🍒
Separate egg whites from yolks. Tip: it's easier to separate eggs cold and straight from the fridge. Then let them warm to room temperature.
In a bowl, beat egg yolks and add in sugar. Add water and vanilla.
In the same bowl, add flour to make a slightly thick batter.
In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Gently fold in fluffy egg whites.
Pour on rectangular baking sheet (Silpat recommended).
Level with a spatula or knife. Then bake at 325°F for about 12-15 minutes. Watch closely toward the end. Look for when the cake is set/baked. If thinner, browning on edges can happen quickly after the 12 minute mark.
Immediately peel off Silpat-lined pan onto a tea towel.
Roll into a spiral log while warm-fresh-out-of-the-oven.
Let cool in fridge for 20 or more minutes.
Unroll and cut off ends.
Add filling of choice (Greek yogurt for healthy) and then roll cake back up.
Inflammatory eczema allergy foods is something I became deeply aware of when I experienced adult eczema in a nightmarish way during the world pandemic.
Backing up some, I was familiar with the common allergy foods as I planned parties and food menus working with thousands of groups with food allergies and gluten sensitivities.
But heightening my own sensitivities to food allergies showing up as adult eczema for the first time took the cake. It was a 3 month saga I’d love to forget.
Gluten didn’t help as a common offender in food and white flours so I’ll mention more on that below.
White flour is a common source of gluten food allergies and inflammation.
…Another food category was sweets!
That’s probably no surprise as too much sugar can make your skin crawl and no research has sanely suggested that sugar is good for you (other than your taste buds 😋).
But that’s hard news to swallow when you’re a sweet tooth (and a Vata body like me).
…And if sugar-tipped over the edge, then eczema can be the outcome where rashes mysteriously appear around the body.
They stay until the body is calm. It’s not like a mosquito bite where the poison and bite effects fade after a few days.
But I’m happy to say that even though I love baking (and do it weekly), I’ve learned how to bake healthy and keep eczema at bay. And yes the bakes are delicious (otherwise why bother?).
Firstly, I’m a foodie…
And when I started in catering management for upscale hotel chains, there were only vegetarian food categories other than the menu everyone else ate from.
Then common requests grew like “hold the onions” and “hold the garlic.”
At some point, I saw peanut and nut allergies crop up.
When I dug deeper into creating menus for food allergy group requests, we found that guests who had some peanut allergies could sometimes eat tree nuts like pine nuts.
With awareness, we never had a problem with food allergy association groups.
Shellfish can be another tricky area, but gratefully I didn’t work much with those foods.
An affected person who has even a trace of the shellfish can experience a life threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis shock.
We always had Benadryl in the First Aid kit nearby for general allergy reactions.
And by the time I was planning party events for busy American restaurants serving authentic Mediterranean cuisine, food awareness had grown even further.
Celiac Disease grew. It’s an allergy disease that can cause severe allergic reactions because gluten triggers the immune system.
And I can attest that gluten in moderation is better even for eczema skin allergy symptoms.
Your body gives different health conditions signs as warning. But a warning is a warning.
It can’t give a sour face. ☹️ Only you and I can do that. But it can give a health condition as a sign.
And the source can be the same ingredient culprits.
And so as we evolved in the world, allergies and preferences became the general norm.
Restaurant servers greeted you at your table asking, “does anyone have any allergies?”
A century ago that would’ve never been asked as you ate what you could and anti-inflammatory eczema allergy foods didn’t exist.
Also corn, oats, and quinoa (pseudo-grain) meals are good ideas since they are gluten-free so they bypass some decision fatigue.
Corn is the largest agricultural crop produced in the United States.
So there are still many options for gluten allergies.
Oh, and we also should consider…
Our different bodies where we react differently.
…What spikes the blood sugar of one person is different for another.
Getting to know your body with individual foods and enjoying in moderation is a good idea for all, and each of us living in our bodies.
Plus, lowering processed gluten foods for everyone is a good idea in general, considering all the environmental factors and chemicals (plastics, pesticides, and phthalates) we have no control over in the current state of food manufacturing processes.
For foods, adding more organic plant-based 🌱 in nature when possible, and not plant-based in factories 🏭 helps your entire body system run better.
Every little bit of our effort counts…
Adding more healthy variety, and nutrient-dense plant-forward foods is a double win scoring points for our bodies and our earth. 🎉
It can be as easy as exchanging pasta made from flour once in a while for spaghetti squash. See easy spaghetti squash recipe below. 🍴🍝
Spaghetti squash looks like spaghetti but doesn’t have gluten.
Focusing on anti-inflammatory foods and including Mediterranean Diet foods that overlap in your meals, helps.
According to the American Heart Association, The Mediterranean Diet is known to be the healthiest diet overall for preventative cardiovascular health and brain health today.
Overlapping with anti-inflammatory eczema allergy foods, focusing on healthy foods is as important as minimizing the bad food buckets, such as:
Processed, white sugar foods
Fried foods and unhealthy fats (such as high processed meats)
Eliminating these excesses from your diet can help reduce and potentially prevent life-shortening diseases and precursor chronic body inflammations from occurring.
These are lifestyle choices we get to make.
Replacing emptier calorie and excessively sweet snacks to healthier whole fruit and nut snacks, high quality dairy, and lean proteins help curb hunger in between meals.
Some foods may be classified as healthy, but are still just as bad. I used to fill up on nutritional bars as filler snacks… but the problem is often they’re loaded with sugar.
I realized I would have been better off with a Snickers.
So I quit the bars habit along with sodas for breakfast.
…Maybe you can relate with your food habits?
I replaced sodas for black coffee and unsweetened teas that are more enjoyable as a caffeine morning practice.
I now do and recommend a cold brew coffee method if you have a sensitive stomach or acid causes issues. ☕️
Changing your habits like a regular sweet one for a plant-based breakfast is doable. I’m living proof. 😊
And I take a page from my catering days where Crudite was a platter offered at almost every event.
That’s basically raw veggies like cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, and asparagus.
Those are good sources of fiber that your body needs to better absorb foods.
We often forget about the fiber as we’ve been primed to think of the macros (protein, carbs, and fat).
So fiber is my prime start of the day… and maybe yours (now)?
The Inflammation Free Diet for Food Allergies
The book I had been using as a guidebook for preparing meals, The Inflammation-Free Diet, re-entered my memory after my pandemic eczema inflammation episode.
I realized that there was a connection bridged between spiking sugar inflammation and foods and that made me even more on purpose for consuming anti-inflammatory eczema allergy foods.
In making healthy food choices, moderation and choosing to balance good back-to-earth foods seems to be the better ageless answer to healthily feed our bodies.
Using your natural Ayurvedic healthy body to sway to your advantage helps too.
You could discover your body likes more astringent or bitter foods.
This is common in Kapha body types so lean in on this healthy advantage.
And you can find food like garlic or onions aren’t favorable to your body. But that doesn’t mean you have an allergy.
It could just mean eat less.
Managing Eczema Food Allergy Inflammation
If you experience chronic body or skin inflammations in your life, find out what food allergens could be a trigger for your body. Food triggers change as you age.
Try adding more anti-inflammatory eczema allergy foods like vegetables, fruits, and low-glycemic index grains, and see if those make a difference.
Many people are allergic to nightshade foods because of alkaloids in plants.
As a kid, I would get an allergic reaction when I ate eggplants. A rash would move up my back quickly.
But as life moved, this was no longer an allergy trigger.
So don’t assume what was a food allergy trigger before is still your predicament.
Test in small quantities.
Because we want to keep a variety of healthy foods and food categories in our diet as diversity helps the gut and body.
Plus, foods are enjoyable so we don’t want to rob ourselves.
To better manage food allergies, you can read food label ingredients and gain knowledge and awareness.
Another thing you can do is order a medical food allergy-specific prick test at an allergist’s office.
Also do a self-diagnose check-in on your stress in life.
Stress can come from past, present, or future-related thoughts and situations. Past trauma that you may know about, and future uncertainty can confusingly show up in an inflammation body life.
The symptoms on and in your body tell a story in the mind-body connection.
To help restore balance no matter what the source cause, you can take the 2-minute body balance quiz.
And, enjoy this gluten-free spaghetti squash recipe. One medium-size quash will yield about as much as a pasta box you would buy at the store.
It’s a smart and healthy plant-based way to stretch a grocery dollar.
I discovered spaghetti squash as a meal when vegetarians were the main special food needs categories for groups I planned catered meals for. Food allergies didn't exist in the zeitgeist back then.
Course dinner, lunch
Cuisine American
Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets
Equipment
Bread knife or safer sawing knife.
Spoon
Ingredients
spaghetti squash gourd
extra virgin olive oil
Instructions
Score the gourd lengthwise. do not try to cut the hard gourd raw
Bake your spaghetti squash for about 20 minutes at 350°F or so. Then softened, you can cut where you scored. Tip: for the ends (like on pumpkins, take the firmly planted inside squash knife and twist to the right at the top and then at the bottom of the squash and that should do the trick break it open fully into two halves)
Face the two halves down on a baking sheet. You can add a ‘lil EVOO if you like.
Bake for 50 minutes or until you can scoop out strands easily with a spoon. You can test with a fork if you like. About half way through, when you see browning, flip the halves so they're facing up, and add a 'lil more EVOO drizzle.
Optional: keep the healthy seeds and enjoy them as snacks! Roast them along when you're baking the squash.
