Help Feed the Hungry
Did you know that five million children faced hunger in the U.S. in 2020? It's not exactly an uplifting fact to think about when you're about to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast this month— and that's exactly what should compel you to take action.
Join me for a charity-driven yoga class on Thanksgiving- Nov 25 EST 10:00-11:15am live on Zoom to help benefit my local food bank, The Food Bank of the Hudson Valley or Donate to a charity like No KidHungry or Feeding America or Glynwood Farms to help ensure everyone has food on their plate.
We should all have the right to access healthy fresh food. Yet, it’s not always affordable and accessible. Food is very dear to me and part of my Seva Practice (a selfless service that is performed without any expectation of result or award for performing it.)
May the Universe never abuse food
Breath is food,
The Body eats food,
This body rests on breath.
Breath rests on the body,
Food is resting on food.
The one who knows this
Becomes rich in food and great in fame.
---Taittiriya Upanishad 11.
What can we do to make healthy food more accessible? Take a look at your purchasing power and consumption to start. Do you buy fair trade products? Can you support local? Can you support your local food bank or pantry? What can you give, share or swap to help feed someone else? And then look at you own food waste. What and how much do you throw out? Is there a better way to only buy and use what is needed? What can you create with your leftovers? Maybe it’s my Italian heritage with a long line of poppers and nonnas whose love for the source of the food, the care to cooking it and desire to share it –just pumps from a place in my heart through my veins. Or maybe it’s my love of creating something out of things, like using the tops of the carrots, or the bottoms of the asparagus cut or the onionskins to make vegetable stock. I understand that not everyone likes to cook, eat, or have the resources to do so, but if you do- do you share? Can you take your awareness this Thanksgiving towards gratitude for all those people, land and animals that helped you have a meal to be shared at your table? Give thanks at the table and gratitude on the mat this Thanksgiving by practicing with me to help serve the community.
We are all interdependent.
It always gets me excited to experience the cooking and the eating along with the conversations around meal sharing. Wether it’s standing up next to a fruit stand or sitting down on a picnic blanket or dining at my kitchen island. The colors, cultures, textures, flavors and pleasures of nature come through with farm fresh food when harvested and cooked for an experience at a table. Just think about the smells of a classic Thanksgiving meal. Did your mouth water? Mine did. It is amazing what the mind brings up in memory and then is expressed in the body. We are trying to form a healthy relationship with memory in our yoga practices.
I know that not everyone’s relationship to food is the same like everyone’s relationship to fire log pose. (Agnistambhasana) When translated from Sanskrit to English, Agnistambhasana breaks up into three words: “Angi” means fire, “stambha” means statue, and “asana” means pose. It may be a mouthful, but with descriptors like fire and statue, this translation alone should hint at the nature of this posture. Agnistambhasana, as with many asanas, is all about feeling the sensation… in your hips in this case.
Remember, breathing techniques are utterly essential while doing Fire Log. Also, be sure to maximize your experience by keeping your thoughts open and encouraging. Steady breathing combined with an open mind can offer you an overwhelming sense of certainty and prowess when in correct position.
I am using that pose as a reference since it is my least favorite semi-accessible pose with props. For some based on their body, it might be a resting position based on their structure of thighbones into the pelvis along with muscle flexibility. Everyone’s relationships for them should be honored and anchored in awareness .
Food should not be used as a reward system and no one should be forced to finish his or her plate. We should try to cultivate our relationship to our food that serves us to bring us each of us individually into a life of balance and good health. Food to eat can nourish or deplete the body and mind of balance. As well as food should be an accessible resource for the sustenance of life. The energy and attitude we place while preparing our meals has affect to what is taken into our whole being - mind, body and spirit.
The Vedas are the oldest and most complete body of knowledge to address the who, what, and why of human existence. They have covered the “how to “ through healing and attunement methods coming from the understanding that we are body, mind and spirit, innately intertwined and divine and unalterably dependent on the rest of creation.
I leave you with this stunning table setting of photographed hand made pottery that will be on sale at the Annual Garrison Art Center and prayer for Thanksgiving ---
With Gratitude xoxo Dani
A prayer Before Meals by John O’Donohue
As we begin this meal with grace,
Let us become aware of the memory
Carried inside the food before us:
The quiver of the seed
Awakening in the earth,
Unfolding in a trust of roots
And slender stems of growth,
On its voyage toward harvest,
The kiss of rain and the surge of sun;
The innocence of animal soul
That never spoke a word,
Nourished by the earth
To become today our food:
The work of all strangers
Whose hands prepared it?
The privilege of wealth and health
That enables us to eat and celebrate