Similar Posts
Being a good guest (why not to drink bottled water)
In The Yoga of Discipline, Swami Chidvilasananda says that we should eat in such a way that the earth is happy to have us as a guest. (See Thanksgiving blog). As I get ready for the holiday season — a time of being a guest and receiving guests — I continue to contemplate this exhortation. We’ve all had the house guests who seem to ravage our homes and our larders without any apparent appreciation for our hospitality, leaving us exhausted after they are gone. We have other guests, who make us feel gracious, whose way of relating to our home and our hospitality makes us want to invite them in further and helps us enjoy our own home and food more.
My favorite guest is the one who makes herself at home, helps herself, and is delighted with offers of specially prepared meals or touches to the guest room. The ones who invade private spaces and make a mess and, on the opposite side, those who tiptoe around and refuse nearly every attempt to make the visit special, are equally difficult.
How can we be a good guest of the earth? Not only should we be grateful for what we are given, but we should not take more than is offered from the heart. Here’s a practical example: it takes about 60 ounces of water to bring you a 20 ounce plastic bottle of water. The earth cheerfully offers the 20 ounces of water as nourishment. Taking the 60 ounces, when 40 ounces is waste and destruction and only 20 ounces is for nourishment, is like being the kind of guest that exhausts you rather than enriches you by honoring your hospitality. I’d love to hear other practical examples from you about how to be a more gracious guest of the earth.
State of the Garden
Growing some of your own food–even if just herbs on the countertop–connects us to the earth and the rhythm of growing things and to the place we are inhabiting. And if we all grew some of the basics, what needs to be shipped to us is reduced.

Slow Cooker Granola (and Intentions)
It is my intention to write a newsletter talking about the shift in my life that is leading me, effective this week, to take a partial sabbatical from teaching yoga. I will still have my Tuesday night class at William Penn House and hope to see many on at least an occasional basis. I will also be available for single and group privates and expect to teach a workshop or two in the Fall. But after eight years, I will no longer be traveling up to Takoma Park every weekend, currently on Friday nights and before that Saturdays, to teach. In this shifting, I have much to say about Kali–goddess of sequencing–and moving within the limits of time and space and some other things beside.
In the meantime, while I am wrestling with how to say what I believe are among the things I want to express and as I deal with a bout of being very busy at work and spending far too much time at the computer to want to spend more time writing in the evening, I just want to mention that it is indeed possible to make decent granola in the slow cooker. I experimented with that today, in between conference calls and emails and document reviews (slow cooking, after all, takes very little consistent attention). The cooking reached its conclusion while students and I gathered for Wednesday night practice. More important than requiring little attention after the initial preparation stage, the slow cooker doesn’t heat up the kitchen, and I refuse to turn on the oven if it is going to be 80F or above. Slow cooker granola is an excellent compromise between no homemade granola in the hot months and turning on the oven.
When I’ve experimented some more, perhaps I’ll create a recipe, adding to the many dozens on the internet. My first attempt was relatively low fat and no refined sugar. Yum. And if you’re a local, do come join me this Friday for a sweetly nostalgic and celebratory evening of restoratives. 5:45pm-7:15pm, Willow Street Takoma Park. Drop-ins and make-ups welcome.



