Dude, wait, what? I emerged blinking into the wan oatmealy light of North Burnaby after a rockin’ start to the workshop there and M is waiting in our trusty Kia to take me home. I’m burdened by an entire blueberry cheesecake from Pappagallo Cafe and

All the tyeyeyeyyeyeyeyyeme.

I’m so IN IT: I’ve been watching femurs and molding fascia and distilling rudimentary Tantra all week. The first thing I hear is Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” and I remember there’s a whole other world out there that ISN’T yoga and it’s quite shocking really, like somebody pouring a tankard of icy Gatorade down your back.

All this really means is that I can’t wait for Big Rock Fridays to return for an exclusive one-day blowout this Friday, March 6 at 4 pm. I’m off to Costa Rica on retreat for the next two Fridays so if you want to be a part of the myth and the legend, please come out and rock with me this Friday, in accordance with the prophecy. Requests in comments if you’ve got any.

Oh, the luscious decadence of preparing my own meals…hot diggity. This was simple and cost-effective, and it’s great to eat a meal at home. It’s funny how it switches like that: you’ll be so tired of cooking or doing whatever menial chore gets your particular goat, and then you travel and hosts of excellent restaurants present themselves, and all you want to do is just slice some onions in your own kitchen. Well, I do anyway.

You’ll need:

Splash canola oil
1 shallot, half of it in fine dice, the other half left peeled and whole
2 cloves garlic, one finely sliced, the other one left peeled and whole
A thumb-knuckle sized chunk of ginger, peeled and whole
1 stalk celery, julienned on an angle
Half a red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 package extra-firm tofu, cut into cubes
1 bunch cilantro with the bottom ends of the stems cut off
Couple of sprigs of Thai basil [Italian basil will work in a pinch]
3 tsp green curry paste [I found a rad one in the local grocery today: it says J-Lek with some unintelligible Thai characters afterwards. Good luck and Godspeed.]
1 can coconut milk
1 package frozen peas [ideally organic]
OPTIONAL: pea shoots, chopped in inch-long pieces
Splash rice vinegar

TO GARNISH: Chopped unsalted peanuts and lime wedges

[I recommend that you cook some whole grain of some sort to go along with this; we had brown rice. Some rice noodles would be awesome.]

Cut off the cilantro stems. Put them in the blender with the coconut milk, 2 tsp of green curry paste, basil, whole shallot, whole garlic, whole ginger, and about half a cup of water. Blend thoroughly, and sit tight.

In a heavy-bottomed pot, heat the canola oil on medium-high heat. Add one tsp of green curry paste and stir. Add tofu, veggies, shallot and garlic. Stir to heat and saute, stirring well, for just a couple of minutes. Add peas, stir, and heat thoroughly [another couple of minutes], then cover with the blended sauce. Heat and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add pea shoots if using, and rice vinegar to taste. Depending on your curry paste you may wish to salt a little more at this point; the paste I got was wicked salty, so I got off the hook in that respect. I also threw in some chopped cilantro at this point because I’m a cilantro junkie who can never be satiated. Simmer for another 5 or 10 minutes and then let rest off of the heat.

Ladle curry over grains or noodles and garnish with some sliced fresh basil, chopped cilantro leaves, a wedge of lime, and some chopped peanuts.

All the best nerdy shows like House MD and Heroes are on on Monday so it’s good to have a steaming hot bowl of awesome to sit down with.

I’m one event behind, here, in February; I just got back from Seattle and I’m still digitally lagging.  Theoretically, this internettery would allow one more organized than I to blog in REAL TIME!!1! EVERY EVENT OF NOTE!!1!!! in a MULTIMEDIA EXTRAVAGANZA!  But let’s face it, yoga is an analog activity and as much as I love this blog, I’ve been so immersed in real life and the practice.  In fact, the Seattle workshop was so moving and so inspiring that I feel like I should be writing about that right now, but all in good time…

This is a representation of pure divine love in the form of food, hari om

This was the wicked awesome meal that could have fed most of Cumberland but ended up being savagely ransacked by yogis on the Sunday night after we were fully rocked.  Check out the cilantro chutney.  You know you want some of that.

And here’s me, with a clearly bright and pleased inner body, in the beautiful Yoga On Rosewall space, watching the brilliant efforts of the workshop students totally kicking ass and taking names.

Sunshine, lollipops, and backbends

We’re planning a retreat this summer so if you’d like to join Kristen and I on Vancouver Island for a terrific week of dual styles of practice [Vinyasa and Anusara] and contrasting yoga philosophies [Classical and Tantra], plus some other assorted awesomeness [Kayaking!  Swimming!  General high alpine frolicking!], get in touch.

Okay, this is crazy: I actually MISSED this blog, like the same way you’d miss a person. I’ve been teaching in Courtenay on the weekend and am just now returning to the regular pace of Sjanz Life, which is to say like watching the lemurs at the zoo: not as manic as promised. My laptop adaptor remains somewhere in the wilds of eBay shipping; pray for its soul.

I have lovely pics of the workshop and of all my wicked awesome experiences but of course like any great diva I gotta leave you wanting more. In lieu of a proper post, here’s Courtenay Blog #1: The Courtenaying, a sampler of all of my favourite things about Courtenay.

10. The fact that some of the links I wanted to post here still say “New Website Coming Soon!” That’s Island time, my friends.

Duuuuuude.

9. A fantastic little space in Cumberland, The Asana Room, where I got to self-practice after we were all done, and I did silly things like Eka Pada Padangustha Dhanurasana and tried wide-legged press handstands against the wall, which I can’t really do, in the spirit of getting one’s ass kicked. Thanks to Catherine and Alistair for having us for dinner. We’ve got some sweet beauty shots of that meal to be posted, stat.

8. <sings> Edible Island….Keeping Courtenay HEAL-THY!

7. Phillips Beer and its apparent ubiquity in all places of both fine and ill repute throughout the Comox Valley.

6. Haven’t been skiing on a Monday afternoon since last Christmas. Was obscenely pleasant to be bombing around w/o little helmetted child-pylons in the way; I love kids but seriously, a big train of those little suckers snowplowing their way through their intro lesson can get wild sometimes. My colleagues in snowery took it easy on a poor East Coaster [that's what they call people who grew up east of Regina] who only has the stamina for 1.5 minute Ontario runs. We got to the bottom of Whiskeyjack and Kristen was all like, “That’s the fastest you’ve been all day!” and after I put my eyeballs back into my skull and stopped quaking in my mental rental boots I was like, “I KNOW”.

5. Yoga on Rosewall has provided the space for my last two Courtenay workshops and it is fabulous. It is an Iyengar studio which helps me get on the good foot before I do my thing. I just look up at the picture of ol’ B.K.S. and give him a salute and get down to business. It’s good for me.

4. The pace of that town just works for me; it’s like my breath and my heartbeat just settle and I can be there without strain.

3. The way the good folks at Harbour Air kinda tease you about whether you’re going to be able to get on the floatplane on standby, and then they let you on, and it’s basically half empty. You crazy kids.

2. Maya and Sperling [sp.?] at the Freakin’ Coffee Shop and their excellence at, well, everything: conversation, philosophy, smiling, playing disco in the early morning, double espressos, purchasing vintage furniture, hazelnut soy lattés, &c. &c.

1. Oh man, #1 should so be Tita’s. And it sort of is. But the real #1 best thing about Courtenay, and there should really be some violins for his part, is how many great people I’ve met there. This last weekend, although intense, was so deeply moving and inspiring that I’m still kind of processing it all. Courtenay is one of those places that you blow past on the highway and you think, “Meh, whatever, a 7-11 and a Taco Time” and then you find out that every second house hides a Qi Gong master, or an abstract sculptor, or an heirloom seed collector, or [conversely] some of the most legit country folk I’ve seen since I was a little girl, only like West Coast styles: detailing their teal green Corolla in their yard and drinking Coke Zero instead of beer and with an ashtray but not smoking and with a cat instead of a dog. I will follow this link farm up with a proper post sometime in the near future, but for now I’ll just say: COURTENAY WASSUUUUP <makes fake gang sign>

Welcome to the new digs!  Pretty great, huh?  We’re still all in progress with our chakras hanging open and little bits and bytes scattered here and there; if something doesn’t work let me know in comments and I’ll, uh, tell somebody who’s smart enough to fix it.

Yup, that's what it looks like all right

I got to reminiscing yesterday with a friend who is currently pursuing his post-secondary education, and of course his education is a technocratic junta full of Google Books and little remote-control PowerPoint presentations.  I realized that my career has nicely bracketed the digital and and the analog; when I went to school, [harrumph!] you had to actually show up for class in meatspace.  I don’t think I had a Hotmail address until I went to Banff in ‘99.  You kids get off my lawn!

In the meantime I’ve witnessed various sorts of resistance and recalcitrance to the digital juggernaut, some of which I’ve been a part of.  For example, I have always had a completely groundless aversion to MySpace.  No reason, can’t explain it, just don’t like it.  Some people had a hard time with the camera-phone thing.  Shoot, not that long ago it was considered kind of classless to talk on your cellphone in company.  Plus ça change; nobody would even HAVE company any more if it wasn’t for cellphones.  There are always these little pockets of humanity, particularly in the yoga world, who proudly claim to be the last stand against {choose your weapon}:  television, cellphones, digital wristwatches, the Internet, Twitter, those newfangled automobiles, audiobooks, microwave ovens, mp3 players, text messaging, indoor plumbing, DVDs, bittorrenting, automatic dishwashers, &c. &c.   To which I say:  Good luck with that, and let me know how it works out for you.

If there is a medium more suited to the yogic lifestyle than the Internet, I haven’t found it [at least until my prana is raised to such a level that I can communicate telepathically with my students and community].  Consider:  You can now begin a home practice instructed by the best and brightest via podcast.  As a teacher, you can travel all over and still remain available for your students’ questions.  The promotional aspect, while it can sometimes seem like the most tawdry face of the Tubes especially when you get pop-ups and similar nonsense, is a great boon.  It has, for better or worse, democratized [word?] the most esoteric teachings.

Apart from those specifics there is something inherently tantric about the Internet.  I mean, here we are weaving a community out of nothing but pure intention, made manifest through 1s and 0s.  Through the abstraction of words and pictures, concrete connections and friendships are formed and maintained.  I’m not suggesting it’s the only way to form these connections but, for me, I wouldn’t have the life that I do without the sloppy, nutty, bizarre bazaar of the Internet.

So that’ll be the kickoff thought for this new Great Orangeness.  Many thanks to Oliver for his help, vision and ability to find and destroy purple.

I’ll be teaching the workshops below and going to see John Friend in Seattle so February is alllll bidness.  This will be the first, last and only BHHF for February; lots of oldies and goodies; check it, wreck it…

“Never Can Say Goodbye”, Jackson 5

“No”, De La Soul f. Elizabeth “Yummy” Bingham, one of my favourite singers

“Heard Em Say”, Kanye West f. Adam Levine

“Bust A Move”, Young MC [I had this on cassingle]

“Listen”, Talib Kweli

“Funky Cold Medina”, Tone Loc

“Good Life”, Pete Rock & CL Smooth

“Virgo”, Doug E Fresh, NaS and Ludacris

“Paris, Tokyo”, Lupe Fiasco

“Give Love A Chance”, People Under The Stairs

“She Said”, Pharcyde

“All I Need”, Al Green

“Me Myself and I”, Beyonce

“He Think I Don’t Know”, Mary J. Blige

“Lady”, D’Angelo

“Wild and Peaceful”, Kool and the Gang

“On The Couch”, Prince

There are two kinds of colds in this world:  one variety is certainly symptomatic and makes you a medical menace to man and beast alike, but you can kind of worry down a Contac-C Non-Drowsy and go through your day with dessicated mucous membranes and a clear heart.  The other variety, while it has cold-like symptoms, is more an affliction of the soul.  I’ve been down with the latter, culminating in a sleepless whooping-cough night filled with weird nightmares, fear and loathing.

To add insult to immune injury, the stupid AC adaptor to my lovely lappy decided to bail [maybe because it is FILLED WITH EVELYN TEETH MARKS??!?!!/!??!!1!!  Who can say in these trying times?]  And if there was ever a time when it was appropriate to sit in bed and watch the entire Pixar movie catalogue on your laptop, this was that time.  It also stifled my blogulation a bit, for no good reason I must confess, since the desktop is not 4 paces from where the lappy is usually set up, but M and I are one of those highly digital couples where any time spent together involves at least 3 screens up and running [desktop with good graphics card to play .avis with no hiccups, the TV to show said .avis, and the lappy to settle any trivia or cast-related debates without having to get up ("Isn't that the guy from Rudy?")]  But it just wasn’t the same.  I love my lappy, so Godspeed to ol’ eBay as they send a replacement adaptor.

Okay, so night before last was the really ghastly one.  My nightmares involved pieces of space shuttles crashing into my ancestral home and neighbourhood, flaming wreckage everywhere; no doubt this was due in part to the most recent episode of “Fringe” with planes falling out of the sky in Scarsdale, so viewers beware.  It [the nightmare] still sent me scurrying to the Dream Dictionary in the morning.  Here’s what I got:

"Sweet dreams and flying machines, flying safely through the air"

To dream that a plane crashes, signifies that you have set overly high and unrealistic goals for yourself and are in danger of having it come crashing down. Alternatively, your lack of confidence, self-defeating attitude and self-doubt toward the goals you have set for yourself is represented by the crashing airplane; you do not believe in your ability to attain those goals.

…

WHICH ONE?

I was back to the grind yesterday morning anyway, after I realized my body might be improving but my heart was not benefitting from grogging around the apartment.  All the way to the studio I’m trying to think of a compelling theme and also trying to parse the Dream Dictionary koan.  WHICH ONE?  Is my intuition trying to tell me I’m barking up the wrong tree, trying to get certified, trying to teach for a career [or write more or sing more or whatever]?  If so, wouldn’t I be a bit of a chomer to totally ignore my own internal promptings and hammer on all the same?  Maybe they’re hiring at Starbucks.  Visions of my bank balance are dancing in my head at this point.  OR, was this dream a call to refocus on my goals…to hug in more, stronger, to practice more assertive mental hygiene and bust all these worries and Negativity Prayers?  It’s like trying to keep the hot stuff hot and the cold stuff cold:  how does it know?

I got to the studio physically shaky [you know how you feel better when you are still at home but as soon as you venture out you realize how you're not really better?  Yeah.] and not a little mentally confuzzled.   Gotta make some yoga out of this stuff.  Here we go…

I felt better almost as soon as I got started, and continued to improve all day with some good sweaty practice.  The more I taught, the more I saw my community, the more I held to what was the higher truth [that is, what I wanted to offer to people, instead of rolling around in my own mess] the more my heart cleared.  After my last evening class I got some lovely positive feedback from some regular yogis, basically to the effect that I was “giving so much”.  Let me be clear:  I get at least as much as I give.  I so appreciated what they said, but in all honesty my work is my healing; coming in to teach was by far the best therapy  my body and soul could have received.  I suppose this is what is referred to as “doing your dharma”, and it helped me come down on the side of the latter Dream Dictionary interpretation.

If you are troubled by whether or not it is appropriate to follow your dreams, whether they will serve the larger purpose as well as light your heart, consider that the sweetest dream will actually do both in equal measure.  When I am feeling tired or unwell or less-than, there is an enormous resource waiting for me in the form of getting reconnected to my intention and having the world rush up to support it.  And sometimes a flaming spaceship crashing into the neighbour’s roof is just too much farfalle the night before.

13:58 PST: Kurt Warner looks like some kind of futuristic potscrubber; abrasive and shiny. I believe in anything and everything that Tony Dungy says, up to and including his choice of snacks. We have some Hot Wing/Blue Cheese Doritos, some plain chips, some soup from yesterday and a bit of star-anise mixed veg stirfry from the other day, also some applewood smoked cheddar and Triscuits. The suspense, as always, is killing me. I despair of my chances of playing in the NFL because the lead-up absolutely destroys me, also in spite of my best efforts I’m just not heavy enough. They’re playing “It’s A Long Way To The Top If You Wanna Rock’n'Roll” in the filling stadium; I can tell by the bagpipe solo.

14:01 Now it’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. I wonder what the likelihood of covering my Big Rock Friday Playlists would be? Is is like an infinite-number-of-monkeys kind of scenario? Or is the NFL actually where I get most of my ideas for BRF? “Crazy Train” would be perfect…

14:20 Obama’s little fireside chat marred only by subtle media weirdness ["rockstar status"?]. He is a smooth operator! And I agree with him about the college playoffs. The stats thing is just so very weird. And the multiple bowls make me feel like I’m at the Ming Wo clearance sale.

14:23 Faith Hill’s only half-decent song is the Sunday Night Football song, but she did sing the anthem well; I am looking forward to Jennifer Hudson who can totally sing not only her own gonads off but the gonads of everyone around her.

19:15 Worst. Liveblogging. EVAR. I gave up hours ago, obviously. This is treacly but both teams played really well, and I’m simultaneously pleased and disappointed that the Steelers won, pleased because they’re awesome and disappointed because the Cardinals winning would have been a Lord Of The Rings-calibre win.