Goodness From Goop : Gwyneth, Guts, and Clean Beauty

Look, let's not live in dreamland. Goop has gotten a lot of hate over its lifetime and I am the most sceptical of all about celebrities touting wellness brands and books. In fact, I believe there are several lines across my forehead that are totally down to grimacing with every new celebrity "how to be well" glossy hardback. BUT.

But.

Goop Clean Beauty (Hachette Australia, Hardback RRP $45; eBook RRP $19.99) really is full of good, substantive advice and knowledge. Gwyneth hasn't written some "drink juice for 20 days, do yoga and you'll look like me!" style tome. Thank goodness. It's actually wry, real and it asks the leading experts in the fields of dermatology, dietetics and digestive health, fitness training, yoga and beauty manufacturing for their opinions and real life advice. Of course, the photos are fabulous. It's a good looking book, but let's face it, you don't buy a book on beauty if you don't value good looks, right?

What I also love about this book is that it doesn't have a holier-than-thou approach to all aspects of beauty. We all want to look and feel as great as we can. That means we can eat an abundance of organic foods and use only all-natural beauty products but we can also accept that age inevitably means a loss of fullness and wrinkles. Some people embrace this fully and accept it. Some of us think we wouldn't mind using the beauty of science and technology to do some plumping and freezing IN MODERATION for a natural lifting effect. The book goes through these options - including Botox, fillers, thread lifts, plasma and stem cell injections and so on. There is a no-judgement approach. I like that. There is an emphasis on being careful in selecting a practitioner and in starting small and maintaining your natural appearance only improved rather than going for a dramatic overhaul. Wise.

Here's some quick, simple "I Can Do That!" inspiration from the editors of goop.

A detox of your life does not mean you need to rule out everything that gives you some joy. It is not an abstinence regime that is only bearable for a week before you throw yourself into a weeping, wailing despair that can only be healed with organic dark chocolate and cacao smoothies. A detox rules out the most likely culprits for inflammation of the gut - which is most likely the origin of other health and beauty concerns from acne to mood swings to poor sleep, bloating, sensitive sinuses and hair thinning or loss. Here are the rules of Clean Eating according to Dr Alejandro Junger and it is recommended you follow for at least 10 days. After that time, try introducing what you really want to back to your life gradually to see if it may be the cause of mood, skin, hair or digestive problems.

No alcohol
No caffeine
No dairy
No eggs
No beef or pork
No raw fish or shellfish
No gluten
No soy
No nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers/capsicum)
No strawberries, oranges, grapefruits, grapes or bananas
No corn
No white rice
No added sugar
No peanuts (all other nuts totally fine!)
No processed oils or butters (stick to nut-based oils and coconut oil)

Before you have a breakdown thinking you'll need to eat apples and kale for 10 days, there's pages and pages of delicious breakfast, lunch and dinner meals and they are all simple, doable and delish.

After you've committed to 10 days minimum of avoiding common inflammatory foods, here's some of the other recommended detox tips and consider this, the body DOES have natural detoxifying tools in the liver and kidney but any way you can optimise their functioning and decrease the amount of pollution internally and externally, the greater energy your body can devote to absorbing the good nutrients you're filling it with and to fuelling your brain, skin, muscles, hair and nervous system. Nobody is toxin free - it's a matter of how well we can manage our own system of detoxifying to feel, look and live as purely and well as possible.

Sweat.
Yup, get yourself into an infrared sauna and sweat it out. This is a highly effective means of sweating out heavy metals as well as providing benefits in alleviating arthritis, musculoskeletal ailments and increasing endorphins (feel good hormones). Wheher it's 10 or 30 minutes, try to get into a regular practice. A regular sauna will do.

Exercise.
Moving fluid through the lymphatic system supports the immune system by filtering out toxins and avoiding retention and lethargy. Exercise also boosts happy hormones, enables us to challenge ourselves physically and mentally, provides an opportunity to do something healthy and fun with people we know or to make new friends. Weight-bearing exercise also builds bones, muscle and enables our bodies o function healthier well into old age.

Meditate.
Calm the mind. Bring yourself into the present. Find a sense of peace that isn't dependent on anyone or anything external.

Get On A Foam Roller.
Get your fascia flexible. Many instructors and personal trainers I know swear by the foam roller as a regular part of their fitness routine. Sure, it can be deeply uncomfortable, especially if you have a tendency towards really tight muscles or you rarely stretch. It's entirely worth it. It is vital to stretch, lengthen and release tightness in the muscles to avoid that tension becoming habitual or loading the joints because the muscles that should be doing the work are too fatigued, overworked or dysfunctional to do their job. Hit up google and youtube - there's loads of guidance online as to how to use a roller.

Sleep.
Everyone knows this - just as you have a routine for beauty, fitness, travelling to and from work daily, so you must have a routine for sleep. Switch off social media at least an hour before bed and if you are panicking over something, write it down and know you can deal with it in the morning.

Try Yoga Nidra.
"Psychic sleep" is an ancient practice that deeply restores, relaxes and rejuvenates the body. It is a guided relaxation wherein you don't actually sleep as the mind is still active, but the body completely melts into blissful quiet. Try downloading Kirit Thacker, head of yoga at Ananda Ayurvedic spa in India.
Also try Elena Brouwer's 10 minute version from Yoga Journal.

Bringing Yoga To Life

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are many books on yoga, but not many really delve into what it means to study and engage in yoga practice beyond the mat. What makes yoga different to simply doing stretches or gymnastics at the local recreation centre?
In Bringing Yoga To Life, Donna has an easily relatable and no-nonsense style of writing and teaching. She can illuminate very complex ideas and concepts through stories, both personal recollections from her classes and retreats, and also from yogic texts like the Bhagavad Gita.
Essentially, though this concept is easily articulated, it is the very heart of yoga and cannot truly be appreciated and integrated into our practice and our daily living until we are open to learning. Yoga is the unity of not only our own body and mind, but a unity with the world. It is, as Donna tries to examine and explain, finding our self in every thing (leaf, animal, air) and every person and also, knowing that we are in everything around us also. Donna describes this idea as being like a matrix of energy, or a silence, that exists behind all the noise of daily living and our own mental chatter. It is our connection to the universe that hums along eternally. This is also the concept of Om, often chanted before and after class. The unity of our bodily selves with our infinite selves and with everyone and everything around us.
If I’ve lost you already, then this book may not be for you yet. If you have just done your first class, or your fifty-thousandth class, this book will confront and challenge your ideas about yoga and about your life. I know I have spent nights awake and stopped at the traffic lights considering everything from my approach as a teacher to whether I’m breathing fully and what my intentions genuinely are for every choice I make. As yogis, we aren’t going to do everything perfectly. Donna recognises the obsessive and ritualistic approach of a well-known yoga instructor in her book and his rigid adhesion to his own practice is so determined, he leaves the class he is conducting to go and do his personal practice alone.
What this also illustrates, inadvertently, is that yoga is a diverse school and there are many approaches. Donna’s most enlightening chapter, for me, was about seeking the teachers who resonate for us and recognising the traits that we most seek, require and benefit from in our teachers are what we really need to absorb into our approach to ourselves.
For me, I seek teachers who are frank, no-nonsense, challenging but also with a deep joy for living, movement, sharing and able to challenge my ideas and movement so that I push further than is comfortable, but doing so with a compassionate and attentive instructor overseeing.
I seek teachers who are passionate about what they know and always open and curious to learning and seeing what they know in a new light. I seek teachers who are exceptional students. I see this in myself as a deeply curious person.
Using anecdotes, spiritual texts, poetry, stories passed down from family and friends, Donna has not written a step-by-step guide for dummies on the spiritual life by any means. This is, however, not also a prescriptive text but one that like all great teachings, invites us to question what we think we are certain about and then to indulge new ideas and practices in our daily life and to also appreciate that our approach to life and to yoga will change with circumstances, age and experience.
My only niggles are very few really. I also think that with time and consideration, and more practice, I may change my mind on finding them niggles at all. Towards the end of the book, one chapter makes a few references to what particular age groups, from the 20s to the 30s “normally do”. As a yoga instructor and a writer, I meet many people of all cultures, ages, gender identity and what I have learned, is that there is no “normal”. In yoga particularly, instructors are a wild and diverse group of spiritual seekers of all ages and physical abilities. To define age groups and what they should or should not be doing is an exercise in narrowing down what a life ought to look like. This is perhaps just my sensitive interpretation though!
Donna is candid to a very controlled and short extent, in revealing family trouble that lead to an eating disorder in her twenties, exacerbated by dance training where her teacher made derogatory remarks about her less-than-bony physique. This is a common experience for many who studied dance or gymnastics as children and teens and found their bodies became battlegrounds for control and aesthetic worth. I know I have had my battles and it is enormously comforting to me to also know there are many well-known and honest international yoga teachers who speak about overcoming these lethal disorders to find a love and appreciation for their bodies through yoga. This may sound simplistic, and it is not through doing tree pose and having some amazing moment of enlightenment that acceptance and appreciation is nurtured in the body.
It is, as Donna reveals in Bringing Yoga To Life, through questioning, studying, and also accepting the mystery of life and having faith. This doesn’t mean worshipping God or Buddha or identifying with a religion. This means accepting the enormous joy and rarity of actually being here at all, of all the endlessly possible genetic and energetic combinations of a human being, you are here. This means accepting that we are not alone – we exist as part of the universe, and it exists in us. I am still considering what I read in Donna’s book. Hourly, daily, weekly. It has inspired me to seek more reading and to approach my classes with a greater curiosity and desire to inspire that same curiosity and joy in yoga as a spiritual practice in which asanas are an element but not the end goal.
Originally published in 2005, this is a book that has not aged nor can I imagine it will ever be redundant. For curious yogis and those who seek to embrace yoga on, off and beyond the mat and the routines of daily life. I had the great fortune to read this book via SocialBookCo.

View all my reviews

Sowing The Seeds and Making Your Intention Come To Life

Have you had times in your life where you've deeply mourned the end of something or come to the end of a relationship and thought, THAT was a big chunk of my life wasted!?

I have. But I've also discovered that while not everything has an obvious purpose or meaning, quite often things that I've struggled with at the time have been entry points to opportunities - whether it's jobs or meeting new people or going to new places - that I wouldn't otherwise have known.

I am facing the end of a class that I have adored taking for over four years now and while it makes me very sad to think of it ending, I also remind myself that I've loved it for four years. My teaching style has evolved and I've watched my regular participants get stronger, more flexible, walk taller. I have gone into every class wanting to be there and delivering. I have sown the seeds to be able to move into something else and know that the experience I've had has prepared me for what's next.

I've been excited about the prospect of what else I could do. I'm curious and passionate about so many things. I will always teach - in some way, in some place - but I also want to write, to design, to collaborate creatively and to share my excitement for colour, texture and the incredible universe of beauty and fashion. I've also always been a media junkie. I could edit and write about music, beauty, fashion and design 24 hours, 7 days a week.

These are all things I'm exploring.

I digress though. I wanted to introduce you to a concept in yoga called Sankalpa. In the same few days, I was listening to two podcasts discussing this and both were very different. One was a Hindu yoga practitioner and the other was Jillian Michaels. Essentially, both had the same message though. The actions we take, with the intentions we have, are much more valuable and important than the outcome of whatever those actions are. If you put all your energy and your passion and your focus into your yoga class today - does it matter that you get to the end and you can't get your leg over your shoulder and do a perfect peak pose? For every minute, you felt fully present and every muscle and every thought and breath mattered to you. That has to be enough. Then, because you have applied yourself so intensely and devotedly this time, maybe next class or the class in two weeks' time, you will find yourself in a pose you hadn't even imagined your body would manage. 

Sankalpa translated means resolution, or resolve. It is setting an intention to give your mind a clear direction and focus. It is less about the actual result, than the intention behind it. 

Swami Satyananda, in his book Yoga Nidra, says 'The resolve you make at the beginning of the practice is like sowing a seed, and the resolve at the end is like irrigating it’.

I have gone into every one of my classes with the full intention of informing on safe and effective methods of being stronger and more flexible. With the full intention of inspiring greater body awareness and appreciation for muscles and movement. I have had the full intention of making the environment one of inclusion, and a joyful and challenging space. 

I don't regret that for a moment and I believe that I have sown the seeds in every minute and every hour of teaching that particular class time that have made whatever comes next possible.

Bahia Yoga gives a nice, easy guide to 5 Tips On Choosing A Sankalpa.

If you're up for a bit of homework, have a think right now about a time when you challenge yourself - whether it's personal or professional - and set an intention that you can return to.

Maybe it is to attempt a pose or a technique that you have been afraid of. Maybe it is to be kinder and more patient. Maybe it is to reject the voice that says you aren't good enough or accomplished enough. Maybe it's to sit with uncertainty about your future and your life and to see that as fascinating and a world of opportunity rather than something to be feared. Maybe it is to face something more confronting and scary like an addiction or a habit that you are struggling with and to stop. Keep coming back to your intention until it comes to fruition. Then make another.

You can find Satyananda Yoga in Ballarat and Melbourne

Listen to The Jillian Michaels Show on iTunes

Yoga Books For Inspiration

I start my Yoga Teacher Training this weekend, and I won't lie, I'm nervous about launching into it. I'm excited, too. And mostly, I feel that it's the right choice. As someone who questions herself constantly, to feel so sure about something speaks volumes to me.
I want to be practicing, exploring, teaching and sharing yoga for the rest of my life. Flowing, vinyasa, meditation-on-the-mat yoga.

With that in mind, I've added to my bookshelf. Three different but inspiring yoga books.

Yogavataranam: The Translation of Yoga is intended for those studying yoga. It is an exploration of Sanskrit intended for university courses, yoga students and self study.
The Indian method of learning Sanskrit is by memorising texts and then learning what they mean. The Western approach is to learn the alphabet, grammar, syntax and then build the vocabulary (like all language lessons of my school years!). This book by Zoe Slatoff-Ponte incorporates both methods. It promises

• step-by-step instructions on writing the alphabet 
• sidebars on Indian philosophy and culture
• a glossary of Sanskrit terms
• original translations of passages from classic yoga texts including Yogasutra, Bhagavadgita and Upanisads

There's web-based audio files linked to each chapter so that you can perfect your pronunciation too. I know this is a book I'll be returning to...a lot.

Yogavataranam by Zoe Slatoff-Ponte @ Pan Macmillan

The Eight Limbs of Yoga looks deceptively slender and thankfully, it fits in my handbag so my guilt over not reading what is on my bookshelf can accompany me every day, everywhere. This is "a handbook for living yoga philosophy".

This little volume shows how to apply the principles of yoga to everyday life and our perspective on the big and small issues. This is not designed to be academic or deeply investigative. Perfect for yoga students and also just the mildly curious. 

The Eight Limbs of Yoga by Stuart Ray Sarbacker and Kevin Kimple @ Readings

The Eight Limbs of Yoga are:

1. Yama: The first limb, yama, deals with one’s ethical standards and sense of integrity, focusing on our behavior and how we conduct ourselves in life. Yamas are universal practices that relate best to what we know as the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
2. Niyama: This has to do with self-discipline and spiritual observances. Regularly attending temple or church services, saying grace before meals, developing your own personal meditation practices, or making a habit of taking contemplative walks alone are all examples of niyamas in practice.
3. Asanas: These are the postures practiced in yoga, with the ultimate aim of caring for and nurturing the body. Through the practice of asanas, we develop the habit of discipline and the ability to concentrate.
4. Pranayama: Generally translated as breath control, this fourth stage consists of techniques designed to gain mastery over the respiratory process while recognizing the connection between the breath, the mind, and the emotions. 
5. Pratyahara: This means withdrawal or sensory transcendence. It is during this stage that we make the conscious effort to draw our awareness away from the external world and outside stimuli.
6. Dharana: As each stage prepares us for the next, the practice of pratyahara creates the setting for dharana, or concentration. Having relieved ourselves of outside distractions, we can now deal with the distractions of the mind itself
7. Dhyana: Meditation or contemplation, the seventh stage of ashtanga, is the uninterrupted flow of concentration.
8. Samadhi: Patanjali describes this eighth and final stage of ashtanga, samadhi, as a state of ecstasy. At this stage, the meditator merges with his or her point of focus and transcends the Self altogether.

Do Your Om Thing is a memoir by Rebecca Pacheco, better known as @OmGal . Bec challenges the idea of the perfect yogi - flawless in their intentions, integrity, every living breath and perfectly executing every pose every time. It is an exploration of what it is to love yoga and to approach it as it ought to be approached, as a road to wisdom that isn't about striving to be the best, or to master everything, stop and pin a badge on yourself... Yoga is going to be different things at different times of life and circumstances. The idea of yoga off the mat is really explored. How to merge ancient philosophy and traditions from an Eastern world into a hectic, constantly evolving Western world is the cause of much angst for yogis (isn't it? I find it is!) and to read Bec's memoir is to find humour and joy in being imperfect but deeply curious and passionate about yoga as a practice and a school to learn about your everyday self and your infinite self.

Do Your Om Thing by Rebecca Pacheco @ Harper Collins

Mulga's Magical Colouring Book Finally! This one is for fun. An exercise in mindfulness, this colouring book is by Sydney artist Mulga, a freelance illustrator, poet, mural painter, t-shirt designer and market stall master. He draws quirky animals, zombies and bearded ragamuffins. I am starting with the seahorse, because...well, why not start with the seahorse?

Mulga's Magical Colouring Book @ Hachette