Puzzling it Out

One of the really beautiful things about yoga for me, is that it makes everything into a metaphor for life:

-Increase your flexibility in a pose... increase the flexibility of your mind and your ability to accept impermanence.

-Focus on alignment of your bones and muscles in class... have an insight about the alignment of your values, thoughts and actions in life.

On January 1st I started a 2,000-piece puzzle of Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night

I also spent time (since it was the beginning of the new year) setting goals and intentions, and generally putting pressure on myself to know what I need to be doing; the next steps in my life.

The irony of that hit me as I was trying to fall asleep one night, and visions of puzzle pieces danced in my head.

So you have a puzzle, and you have a general idea of what it's going to look like, but it only gets revealed one piece at a time. Sections become clear bit by bit, and you simply have to trust that all the pieces will fit together eventually to make a beautiful picture.

So relax Ali :)

"Let go of the life you imagined, to live the life that is waiting for you."

- Joseph Campbell

Bakerista

As I've mentioned, my "new" (January) Seva is in the bakery, and I so so love working there.

Cooking and baking are two of my great creative loves, and I don't think I even realized how much I missed them until I got into the bakery and started creating again.

It makes me so happy; I have a new energy, a spring in my step, and feel like I'm in a beautiful flow of creativity. People have actually told me I look different!

I work 8-4, five days a week, but it doesn't even really feel like work. I leave with more energy than I went in with. We have a really nice space to work in with a gorgeous wooden table to work bread on, a giant oven, and a giant mixer...

My supervisor Hedley is awesome and lets me and River (the other volunteer baker - see above with handfuls of icing) experiment when our regular work is done. I've been having a lot of fun making vegan, raw and gluten-free stuff, and generally being creative.

The only thing that's hard about the bakery is the list. We have a list of things to do each day, and you'd think that would be nice for my brain, but Hedley likes to mess with me by crossing things off the list while I'm doing them! UNacceptable! We have an ongoing competition to sneakily cross off the other's work before they get a chance.

Overall, I'm learning a lot about bread and pastry and even find it easy not to eat too much sugar or gluten while I'm working. Sunday marked the end of my sugar- & gluten-free month and it went really well (lost another 10 lbs! geez) I noticed a distinct evenness in the quality and quantity of my energy throughout the month and feel really healthy and happy here at Kripalu.

Next: Why Life is a Puzzle

And then: So You Want to be a Kripalu Volunteer?

Why I love(d) Veggie Prep

Even though I'm now in the bakery, I still have a very soft spot in my heart for my old job of Veggie Prep, and here's why:

Veggie Prep is a listmaker's dream job:

I'm a fairly obsessive listmaker and cross-er off-er (to the point where, if I've done something that wasn't on my list, I'll write it on just so I can cross it off).

Working in veggie prep is like working on giant list. You start out the day with a board full of labels, and every time you finish a job, you get the satisfaction of sticking a label on your container, and by the end of the day, you're left with a clean board. My brain LOVES this.

Another thing my brain likes to do (almost as much as making lists and crossing stuff off), is to learn a job really throughly and then try to think of ways to do it better and more efficiently. Not only were there lots of opportunities for this in VP, but it was highly praised as well (double hurray!). So basically I was really good at my job, which always feels nice.

Also, I love working with food, and having the opportunity to put my love into the food that goes out to everyone at Kripalu has been really rewarding.

So my brain was happy in all sorts of ways.

But the other big reason I loved it is that we just had lots of fun:

Giant Daikon

Squash!

Turnipman

Be still, my beeting heart...

We also liked to add punctuation to the labels:

potatoes? Sweet!

Spinach, baby!

...but of course, what makes or breaks any job is the group of people you work with, and veggie prep has some of the best.

On my last day in there before I went to the bakery, they gave me a going away card and we all toasted with leftover sparkling cider from New Year's.

A few messages from the card:

"Ali, I want cookies all the time so I can eat my feeling of betrayal and loss. I'll miss you"

"Ali! You're leaving! Your loyalty's a fakery! I can't believe you're going to the bakery!"

the funny thing is, the bakery is about 10 feet away from the prep kitchen, so I still see them all the time :)

Next time, I'll tell you about my new job in the Bakery

A Day in the Life of a Kripalu Volunteer

Just like in the "real world", your day is very different depending whether you're working, or you have off.

We'll start with a workday.

There are several different "sevas" or "jobs of selfless service to the community" or "karma yoga" (which is traditionally doing service without the expectation of anything in return, whereas we get room and board and programs, but we'll let that slide for now).

The sevas that volunteers do include: housekeeping, dishwashing, veggie prepping, grounds keeping, maintenace, production support for events, and a few office jobs.

Let me tell you about Veggie Prep, the seva with which I am best acquainted:

We go in at 8 am, and there is a magnet board filled with labels for the day that need to be fulfilled.

These labels are spit out by a computer and are for the recipes the chefs will be cooking the next day (we prep one day ahead). They're based on some (I'm sure fabulously complicated) math taking into account projected guest & staff headcount.

The labels tell us what to prep, how to cut it, how much, and what it's for.

When you're done a job, you stick the label on the container and put it on a cart that goes upstairs to the hot kitchen.

We work in a large room with tables that are giant cutting boards, chopping and slicing not just veggies, but cheese, tofu, tempeh, and some meats. We also measure out and soak the beans, and crack the eggs. So basically, we see just about everything before it goes upstairs to the hot kitchen.

There is a gigantic walk-in fridge where thousands of dollars of produce are kept, as well as a walk-in freezer and "39 degree room" where we keep proteins (meat, fake meat, cheese, eggs, milk and nuts).

There are all sorts of cool machines that help us do our work. We have a giant carrot/beet/potato peeler/scrubber:

as well as a few chopping/dicing/slicing/crumbling machines.

It's actually a really fun job, and I loved doing it.

Next time: Why I love VP

30 New Friends

Alright, so obviously I've been busy (and/or avoiding blogging for various creative block reasons). But here's a quick update, which I will begin expanding on in posts to come.

1. I'm still in Massachusetts living and volunteering at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health and loving every minute of it. I might stay. Like, for a long time...

2. In January, we started a new "term" (we commit to volunteer for 4 months at a time), and so about 30 volunteers left and 30 new ones came (all in the same day - what a crazy emotional transition).

3. I left my beloved job (and friends) of Veggie Prep and am now working in the Bakery, which I absolutely love.

4. The holidays were a dietary disaster, but with the new moon (new moons are good for setting intentions) last week, I'm back off sugar and this time gluten as well (more experiments, hurray!)

5. This past weekend I did a 4-day workshop with Dharma Mittra (pretty well-known yoga teacher who posed for the book 608 Yoga Poses - that's a lot of postures!) and it was really wonderful. It kicked my butt, but I loved it. I also started learning Capoeira, took people contra dancing, and led a partner yoga class. New Year, new energy.

#2 Expanded:

In a lot of ways, the Kripalu volunteer program reminds me of TRiP (the outdoor adventure program I led trips for in college).

One way for sure is that whenever a new group comes in, it's like automatically getting 30 new friends. Simply by virtue of the situation you are in (leading trips or living and volunteering together), you will become friends with a lot of these people.

I'm really excited about this new group, there are a lot of really wonderful and talented people who are enthusiastic about Kripalu and the karma yoga program. I have been re-inspired by their fresh energy and look forward to this semester.

Merry Christmas!

So today I worked and did yoga, and now I'm sitting in my room stalking people on facebook... it doesn't so much feel like Christmas as it feels like a normal day.

Kripalu tries to pretend that Christmas isn't happening. I guess mostly because there are a bunch of people here trying to pretend the same thing? For some it's a retreat from hectic holidays, for some a retreat from a lonely time when you're not supposed to be lonely. Good ol' Kripalu, always the retreat center.

We did have a special meal, which was nice, but the only sign of Christmas is a tree for the volunteers that is relegated to the basement.

I'm not really bothered, I had a nice time with my mom and Grandma last week in Florida, and my Dad and Stepmom came to visit Kripalu for a couple nights, and left today.

But I did want to say Merry Christmas to those I love and am far away from

- there are too many of you to phone individually! (which I've realized will always be true -that's what happens when you travel around the world collecting friends and then go live in a place far away from all of them and your family... serves me right I suppose! but I do still love you)

Christmas Morning at Kripalu:

Sun Dogs in the icy sky:

Free, at Last!

I ate some honey today, it was quite sweet.

Free? well, not really. For me, freedom would be if I didn't care that today was December 8th because all my sugar cravings had ceased.

I must say, they have significantly dropped off in the last week. So that, on the first day in a month where I could have any sweet thing I wanted, I just had some honey and a couple pieces of chocolate, and didn't want much else.

But I did indeed care that today was the 8th. The other night I actually had a dream that I came across some really nice chocolate and took some ONLY to save for the 8th, and the next thing I knew, I was stuffing my face! I woke up feel ing all guilty and stressed out... Layered, I tell you. This sweets things in layered in my subconscious.

I learned some very interesting things in my month:

1) Sweets are Stealthy:

When you're not eating something, you begin to notice how often you would've eaten it on a normal day. In my month I noticed all the unnecessary sweets I would normally consume.

There are the obvious ones like cookies and cake, but I started noticing jam, granola, soymilk, every time I would've put honey in my tea, how many sauces for lunch and dinner have sugar in them, even soups... juice, crackers, bread, maltose, dextrose, maltrodextrin, sucrose, fructose... it's everywhere!

2) Sweets are like Crack:

Okay, maybe not that bad, but even a little bit makes you want more. I had a spoonful of cranberry sauce on thanksgiving, and for days my cravings were in full tilt! They had been abating a bit, but after that I thought about sugar all the time.

3) Sweets Numb Your Tastebuds:

This one isn't going to be popular, but the most interesting, least expected thing I noticed was that I tasted everything more.

One might expect that my sense of taste for sweetness would become more sensitive (which it definitely did), but what surprised me was that all the other flavors came through more clearly as well. I stopped putting salt on things, plain vegetables or brown rice were more delicious than ever.

Also, I desired lighter, healthier foods. It made all my other dietary goals easier. Bread, cheese and anything rich or heavy turned me off. I couldn't eat it. Give me steamed Kale! Bring on the Spinach! Collards here I come!

Last night I stopped eating the piece of bread I had thought would be so good, and got a second bowl of plain steamed collards... because my tastebuds wanted it. Who am I?

In conclusion, I would recommend this experiment to anyone interested in their health and their body (I also happened to lose about 10 lbs, if that's your thing).

Life is not always how we think it is, and doesn't have to be like it's always been.

In other news, this is what Kripalu looks like: (hurray!!)