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Thank you for visiting my blog. Obviously I haven't posted anything here for a while. Hopefully that will change soon, but I am active on my Grass Based Health facebook page and on twitter . Please visit these sites for more recent items.  

Yoga instructor embraces Lakeside Health Awareness Month

Previously unseen article from the East County Californian. I had no idea this article was published... Wow. http://eccalifornian.com/article/yoga-instructor-embraces-lakeside-health-awareness-month Yoga instructor embraces Lakeside Health Awareness Month Special to the East County Californian Wed March 23, 2016 05:23pm By Katherine Finnegan Small business owner Jackie Gadd is embracing Lakeside Health Awareness Month with complete dedication. Gadd does not promote a healthy lifestyle to community members only during the month of March, however. Gadd is the owner of BYOM Yoga, which provides yoga classes to community members of all ages at different locations. As a certified instructor, she incorporates music, books, and crafts into yoga, as well as a diverse blend of styles to encompass all ages, interests, and skill-levels to promote physical and emotional well-being and an all-around healthy lifestyle for those in her community. California State Sen. Joel Anderson was honored to pro...

Semi Anti Social Media

I don't tweet, use instagram, or post (that many) selfies that are scripted/posed just to "further my brand" despite what yoga business counselors say you "must" do to be successful. The people I want to share my time with socially, intellectually, and professionally (clients), don't need in your face stylized media blitzing to sell them my brand of soap. They find me because we are on intersecting paths. I trust in the universe that way. Call me an optimist, and I"ll gladly take that label. Call me anti-social and you'd be inaccurate. You'd also be wrong if you say i'm against or anti social media. I value the connection enough to not cheapen it. Rami Malek, an actor with whom I am not very familiar I admit, talked about how he feels about the surge of social media inundation, and I relate: "People are spending so much time staging photos - what they're eating, how much fun they're having … even the way they shape their faces i...

Wanderlust108

From today's yoga triathalon (5K walk/run, hour of yoga, hour of meditation, sprinkled with other fun events like hula hooping, slackline yoga, and dancing, and tribal body painting by Tribal Markers). A day of joy to be sure, but a beautiful somber note during the meditation delivered by Noah Levine ( refugerecovery.com ) from the "Against The Stream Buddhist Meditation Society,” who posited: "Can you be compassionate about what is unpleasant or even painful...?" Here is a link to a video of a few hundred of my closest friends Om-ing together with Chelsey Korus. You can't see but DJ Drez is spinning on stage MC Yogi was leading this flow Just had to come out of the pose to click a pic These ladies wanted to practice with their new body markers The results (1) The results (2) Less painful than a real tattoo but one heck of a suntan line I'm a yoga slacker! Poseur :)

Dream self, yoga self, authentic self

In this dream I had the other night I was teaching an unusually large yoga class, discussing how to come into a yoga state of mind to start our practice. One person spoke up and said "Oh, so we should put on our yoga personas?" I gave it a thought, and then with much gesticulation energetically responded "Actually, think of it like peeling off the persona(s) you put ON everyday, to get back down TO your yoga self.  Take off all that outer shit, the stress of your job, the thick shell of negative interactions and defensiveness and sarcasm. Let the heaviness of responsibilities and obligations for the outer world, just for now, fall away. Shed that overprotective skin and allow the real, authentic you to be presented, to be present. Yoga is what is essential, at the heart of you, what is always there, what is true. So, no, don't put on your yoga face, take off what obscures it. Get back to the authentic YOU.

Yamas - a little Etymology, a little Philosophy

Yamas are the first of the eight limbs of Yoga; the first of the eight guiding principles for helping to lead a yogic lifestyle, or, more generally, to "calm the fluctuations of the mind" (for whatever purpose you choose). The word "yama" comes from the verbal root [yam] which means to subdue or to control, which implies that these "yamas" are controls or acts of curbing or suppressing our behavior (towards others or the outer world) to help us become more "yogic." There are five of these principles, or disciplines, in the yamas, as follows: Ahimsa: non harming. Ahimsa   is a term meaning 'not to injure' and 'compassion'. The word is derived from the Sanskrit root hiṃs – to strike; hiṃsā is injury or harm, a-hiṃsā is the opposite of this. Satya: truth. Satya   is the Sanskrit word for truth. It also refers to a virtue in Indian religions, referring to being truthful in one's thought, speech and action. Asteya: non-stealing. As...