–
When my body is tired
And my mind craves rest
I give in.
An hour luxuriating
Then beg my spirit to rouse me
Help me rise above this mortal condition!
Breathe.
Aspire once more.
Discipline.

First train passes, rumbling under the weight
Of metal, petrol and people
Each a soul, a spirit, realized or unrealized
Called or yet uncalled
Lit or yet unlit by Agni
Who burns brightest in those
Who light and relight
his sacred fire daily.

It’s no sacrifice to rise a little earlier
It’s a joy.
A private, quiet, Universal celebration
of limbs and lungs and light
ritually replayed time and again
The journey is infinite
As the goal, too, is Infinite.

Yoga.

Well, I am lost for words.  I still find the whole blogging/status updates/public sharing of my thoughts and feelings to be a strange and unnatural thing.  However, in order to maintain a wide and far-flung group of friends (my “Social Network”) the blog becomes essential.  Here’s what I have to share today.

I have experienced a huge energy shift in the past weeks.  Having reached the 7-month mark in my raw food adventure, I have begun to live the deep changes that this diet brings about.  I have also completed a full year of Yoga Teacher Training and am  feeling the benefits of the deep inquiry and pleasant discipline that are indisputedly part of the yogic path.  I guess that the main shift has been toward a feeling of greater peace and a greater sense of personal freedom.  I feel freer to express my thoughts and desires, and freer to act upon them.  My anxiety gap is closing.  The anxiety gap, for those of you who don’t know about this part of my personal philosophy, is the space between what you know to be correct and what you are actually doing.  The wider the gap between these two states, the greater the space in your life that is filled with anxiety.

I tested this a few weeks ago:  I had committed to go to an event that did not really excite me, but which I “ought to” have attended.  A few days beforehand, I read about a Yoga Festival in Catalunya.  Of course, the two fell on the same date.  Now, I knew immediately which I wanted to attend but had a huge grapple about being able to express my desire.  I nearly crumbled, but then I slept on it.  The morning before, I awoke from a vividly graphic dream.  I had been bandaged all over my body with waht seemed like sticky tape, over which had been tattooed big black tattoos.  This covered my whole body.  I looked in the mirror and realised that I could remove the tape from my face.  I began doing so, and gradually removed all the sticky tape/tattoos from my entire body.  I awoke with the knowledge that this dream had meaning:  a shedding of the skin.  With certainty, I canceled the undesired event, packed up the car, and drove up to Girona with my little daughter.  People, the elation at the freedom that I actually DO posess to determine at any moment my actions was an immeasurable sensation.  This is what caused the energy shift – the second chakra, self-determination.

Since then I have had a quiet certainty about my wants and purpose.  I have never had this before:  although I have managed to tread a path that has led me to where I am now, I have done so with great uncertainty, doubt and lack of faith.  There is a distinct saving of energy when one ceases to worry about a decision, desire or directiong being “right”.  This energy can then be directed towards the task at hand – instead of sucking the energy away thourhg worry, you inject it with purpose.

I have been watching David Wolfe’s videos lately.  For some reason I had doubts about the guy.  Never having met him, nor read his books, (apart from Naked Chocolate, a gift from my man on my 37th b-day this month) I still managed to doubt him.  That’s your negative mind at work, Rachel.  Anyway, he is strangely compelling.  Even in his videos you can sense his energy and humour, and purpose and simplicity.  I have found myself having recurring dreams about David Wolfe.  The subconscious is a rare thing, I tell you.

I have the dehydrator running for the first time. I’m making flax crackers from a recipe I found on the Give It To Me Raw community.  I also whipped up a few atom bombs, according to the orginal recipe from many moon ago in my London days, and am having a go at dehydrating four of them.  It makes a fan sound, but otherwise is a pretty innocuous machine.

The Green Star juicer is proving to be a fab partner in the kitchen.  Amazing yield and fantastic juices.  I whipped up a little celery-carrot-purple carrot-pear-parsley-garlic green juice the other morning and man did it kick ass!  I walked around the whole day with garlic on the tongue, but I sure felt energized, even though I’d been up half the night with the baby.

The Blendtec Total I’ve also been using but am not totally convinced yet.  It is great for smoothies, and I made a fantastic almond mylk today.  But I agree with the critics of the Blendtec that the pre-programmed control panel is a bit of a pig to intuit.  I think I’d have preferred and nice twisty little knob.  And, the Blendtec doesn’t come with a tamper, like the Vita-Prep.  This means the dreaded situation where your ingredients are pasted to the edges of the jar while the blades fruitlessly whirl through air arises with frequency.  Or, at least, with what I’ve tried to do with it.  Maybe I am trying to make my blender be a food processor? Above-mentioned flax crackers were certainly not a happy glob in the ol’ blender.  Nor was the coconut I tried to cream the other day, but that might be because it actually turned out to be bad.  I dunno.  I am going to keep trying and see where the Blendtec leads me.

The cool thing is the my dude is getting quite into the whole raw thing. He’s making smoothies in the morning, salads at lunchtime, reading Shazzie’s books and generally quite enthused about the left-of-centre ideas that I keep springing on him.  Yay!