Gentle Reflections on 2011.

I just baked my first loaf of bread, and the house smells amazing.  Nina is sleeping, Josh and Elena are playing in her room, my coffee is still hot.  At this moment, life is good and there is time to reflect.

Each year I choose a different one word phrase to add to my routine intention for my yoga practice.  At the start of each practice, after the Anusara invocation, I add "May I cultivate..." and then I run through each one.  Some days/weeks/months/years I need the recitation to remind me that I wanted to work towards that ideal.  Other times the ideal just begins to take shape in my life and/or my practice, which always takes me a little by surprise.  Wise teachers will always say that the physical asana practice is just practice for real life--the physical challenges are a metaphor of sorts for the challenges of our daily lives.  I suppose that is why each word of my choosing tends to have both literal and deeper impacts on my life.

I think I practiced fewer times this year than I have since medical school.  As a result, I can't really remember this year's word.  Patience, maybe?  I certainly have lost my patience *many* times this year, but in my better moments have been able to access an amazing vault of calm that I didn't know existed.  (Note to self--visit there more often!)  A couple of years ago I chose the word "gentleness", if that even is a word.  And really it's this intention that I wanted to write most about today, because I think 2011 has been a turning point in my quest to better emulate this virtue.

Things I have done in 2011 to live a more gentle life:

1. Have a second child.  She has softened my heart even further and makes me coo softly even when I want to scream.

2. Continue to nurse my older child.  My nursing relationship with Elena helps us both recenter ourselves during tantrums, and now that I've mastered the nursing two at once maneuver our post-work/daycare time is more peaceful and recharges us all.

3. Switched to Charlie's Soap.  Given our copious laundry, choosing a detergent that doesn't pump chemicals into the earth makes me feel much more environmentally responsible.  It also works great as a surface cleaner on counters and such.

4. Started to cook vegan meals.  I stopped eating meat January 1, 2010.  I can remember sitting in Corner Bistro, surrounded by the saliva-inducing aroma of grilled beef, having just ordered my Bistro Burger (beef + cheese + bacon = YUM) when Toni ordered a chicken sandwich.  "Why didn't you order a burger!?" asked Jen, echoing my thoughts.  I think I may have even said that I could never do without beef--my burger cravings were not common, but strong and in need of fulfillment when they did hit.

Nixxing beef was no big deal, especially after going out with a Swedish meatball bang on New Year's Eve.  But vegan?  NEVER.  The cheese!  I always cited as my biggest obstacle.  Really, for me, the biggest obstacle might be my two-a-day egg habit.  I just haven't found anything that offers that much satiety, and for a mom nursing two babes, keeping my appetite at bay has been really challenging.

Michael Pollan eats vegetarian until dinner.  I have been trying to eat vegetarian at breakfast, and then transition to vegan for the remainder of the day on most days.  We ate at B-Line the other night, and I ordered my usual Feta Jack Burrito.  With my first bite, I tasted meat and spit it out.  'There's chicken in here!" I told my dining compatriots.  How embarrassed was I to bring my dish up to the better-lit counter to point out the chicken to the staff, only to discover that my "chicken" was tortilla?  The salty feta and smoky beans were so flavorful, I mistook them for meat.  Woah, retrained tastebuds.

I watched Isa's video for making Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles and she states that the chocolate, cinnamon, and cayenne flavors meld and stand strong in the absence of butter.  I know most people won't buy that, but the cookies are awesome, and my morning cold-pressed gingerbread coffee smells awesome but tastes blah with cream added.

In any event, I like the idea of minimizing animal products in my diet.  I am still eating rich and delicious foods, but no animals are suffering to make that happen, nor land ruined to raise those animals.

5. Changed out wasteful baby products.  New parents have no clue on so many levels.  We depend on other more seasoned parents to help us make decisions on what do do and buy for our babies.  With Elena, I started out with "earth-friendly" disposable diapers on the advice of an earth-friendly friend.  We both made the switch to cloth eventually, and felt much better about the absence of so much waste.  I had told numerous new moms that I felt okay using disposables since liquid-fed baby poop is so liquidy and another friend had told me that her experience with cloth early on was messy.  Elena was out of diapers and thankfully Nina was big enough to jump right into the same ones, and let me tell you, liquid baby waste is SO much easier and less gross than solid stool.  Oh well.  Live and learn, then pass along the message.

With Nina I also bought cloth wipes.  She still has disposable ones at school, but at home the cloth ones are so easy to use and then just pop in our diaper pail along with the dirty diaper.  Again, kicking myself for the waste with Elena, but glad I am moving on to the creation of less trash.

Another friend had been using the Playtex Drops Ins, which are sort of like a bottle with a female condom--sorry to be graphic, but I don't think anyone can see the inserts repeatedly and not have that thought at least once.  We bought those, as well as lots of Medela storage bags for my milk.  Now that our bottles are falling apart, I've invested in washable Medela bottles, which I can just pump into and screw on a nipple/ring/top apparatus.  Same amount of cleaning than the Playtex, less waste.  Oh well.

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So that's it for now.  Josh just eyeballed my work and said, "Holy long blog!" so I suppose I should stop before you stop reading.

If you don't have any New Year's resolutions, I would urge you to consider how you can be more gentle to yourself, your loved ones, your Earth.  I think I still need to work on being more gentle to people in my daily life, but that's the nice part about keeping these words in a regular recitation--the work is ongoing, and practice makes perfect.