I am reintroducing my other blog called O2vegan. Can you guess what it is about? When I was a nutrition counselor,I was paid to tell people what to eat. When I was a personal trainer, I was expected and paid to tell people what exercises to do. Now, I am a yoga teacher, yoga teacher trainer, and studio owner. I moved away from my previous jobs because I didn’t like being held responsible for people’s health. In fact, I believe that no one can tell you what you should or should not do. That is your job. However, I think my job is to empower people with knowledge about all things yoga. I love to think and write and talk about yoga, yogic philosophy, yogic diet, food in general. To me, food is love. Love is very much part of the yogic path. When I teach yoga and especially when I teach yoga teacher training I would be remiss if I only taught the asanas. There is so much more to the yogic lifestyle.
So why not just have o2vegan be part of the O2 blog? Ahh, now we are getting to something interesting. Because diet is a very touchy subject for people. It is okay for me to say, “breath”, or “turn your toes to 90 degrees”, but it becomes a different story if I say, “this is what you should eat”. We all have different relationships to food. I am passionate about food because it is a choice that we make many times a day. Yoga is about paying attention and I believe strongly that we all need to pay more attention to how we treat each other, the world, and other beings. Is there only one way to do that? Of course not. However, I believe that being joyful is infectious. I love vegan cooking and want to share it with whomever is interested! Does that mean you must become vegan to be a yogi? Again, of course not.
Ten years ago, I broke up with a man who I almost married. I was devastated at the time. Soon after, I met the man who would become my husband. My ex was a vegetarian, and after some much needed space from him, I discovered him to also be not very nice. My now husband, Steven, was of all things, gasp, a carnivore! However, he was and still is one of the kindest, most thoughtful people on the planet. He is now a vegetarian, which is lovely, but the point is, you can’t judge a person by what they eat, or their political party (that one is a struggle sometimes!), or what car they drive. It takes more than that. It takes patience. It takes paying attention. It takes courage.
That said, I am passionate about the vegan diet and it’s benefits to the planet, to the animals, and to human health and consciousness. It’s my thing. If you are interested, check out my blog. If not, thats cool too. I will keep talking about it and cooking for anyone who will let me. To me, this is not about shoulds, this is about possibilities, joyfulness, love, and yumminess.
