Food matters a really cool and informative website published this article which I found very informative so I'm sharing it with you.

WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU PUTTING ON YOUR SKIN

Is your bathroom cabinet bulging with toxins? Is your make-up or toiletries bag a cocktail of chemicals that could do you harm? Yes is probably the answer to both questions. Check out the ingredients list on your bottles and jars: the higher up the list these 15 come, the greater the concentration.

Formaldehyde - Combined with water, this toxic gas is used as a disinfectant, fixative, germicide and preservative in deodorants, liquid soaps, nail varnish and shampoos. Also known as formalin, formal and methyl aldehyde, it is a suspected human carcinogen and has caused lung cancer in rats. It can damage DNA, irritate the eyes, upper respiratory tract and mucous membrane, and may cause asthma and headaches. It is banned in Japan and Sweden.

Phthalates hit the headlines last year for being "gender benders". They are a family of industrial plasticisers already banned in the EU from being used in plastic toys, but are still in hairsprays, top-selling perfumes and nail varnishes. They can be absorbed through the skin, inhaled as fumes and ingested from contaminated food or breastfeeding. Animal studies have shown they can damage the liver, kidneys, lungs and reproductive system -especially developing testes.

Parabens are listed as alkyl parahydroxy benzoates -butyll methyl/ethyl/ propyllisobutyl paraben on some toothpastes, moisturisers and deodorants. They are used as a preservative, but are oestrogen mimics. Research suggests that parabens in antiperspirant deodorants can cause breast cancer. Oestrogen-type chemicals have also been linked to testicular cancer and a reduction in sperm count.

Sodium Lauryl Sulphate (SLS) is one of the major ingredients in nearly every shampoo, bubble bath, liquid soap etc. Why, when it is a known skin irritant, stops hair growth, can cause cataracts in adults, damage children's eye development and cause urinary tract infection?

Toluene is a common solvent found in nail enamels, hair gels, hair spray, and perfumes. It is a neurotoxin and can damage the liver, disrupt the endocrine system and cause asthma.

Propylene Glycol is a cosmetic form of mineral oil (refined crude oil) used in industrial antifreeze. People handling it are warned by the manufacturer to avoid skin contact and wear respirators and rubber gloves etc, and yet this is a major ingredient in most moisturisers, skin creams, baby wipes and sun screens. Why? It's cheap and gives the "glide" factor in body lotions - but is in fact robbing lower layers of skin of moisture. Lanolin and collagen also clog pores and cause skin to age faster than if nothing was used.

Talc is recognised as carcinogenic and has been linked to an increased risk of ovarian cancer and general urinary tract disorders. So don't dust it on your baby's, or anyone else's, bottom!

Parfum/perfume A typical cosmetic can contain up to 100 chemicals in the perfume alone! 95 per cent of these chemicals are synthetic compounds derived from petroleum -26 of which are on an EU hit list. Fragrances have been linked to allergies and breathing difficulties and they penetrate the skin.

Xylene is listed as xytol or dimethylbenzene on nail varnish bottles. It can damage your liver, is narcotic in high concentrations and causes skin and respiratory tract irritation.

Diethanolamine Also Tri and Mono (DEA, TEA and MEA) are absorbed through skin where they accumulate in products also containing nitrates, they react and form nitrosamines which are carcigonemic.

Aluminium is found in most deodorants and has been linked to Alzheimer's. If you want to stay alert, and still smell fresh and clean switch to a safer one.

Triclosan sometimes listed as 5-chloro-2 (2,4-dichlorophenoxy) phenol, is in deodorants, toothpastes, vaginal washes and mouthwashes. Toxic dioxins are produced during its manufacture or incineration. It is stored in breast milk and in fish, and can break down in water to create a member of the dioxin family.

I am reading a book called " Autobiography of a yogi" and I'm really enjoying it and because of that I want to share it with you!

The book is available online here 

I admit that sometimes the English is a bit challenging but keep in mind that this was written in 1946...

The other thing I wanted to share is something called 30 Days Yoga Challenge created by Erin Motz you can access it here

One of the nice things about it is the amount of time of each class, which is about 20min so if you don't have the time for 1.30hr of practice you can start slowly getting into it! Of course it will only work if you like her, but I think she's pretty down to earth and has a great energy, so why not give it a try?

If you don't really like her style you can also take it as a challenge to get over it ;) and try to really go into yourself and connect to your body and enjoy. 

It is such a good feeling when we can let go of our pre-conceived ideas and judgments and truly enjoy what is around it.

Namaste

ps. You can find more about the meaning of this word here 

"yoga provokes in us a deep transformation"

When I was little my parents took me to a couple of yoga lessons, I still remember them but it was only until few months ago that I connected the images to the practice.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine invited me to practice yoga with her, after a couple sessions she beautifully draw me the sequence of the sun salutation and I was on my on to keep the practice. When I felt it was not enough I went on a search for "my" type of yoga. 

There are so many styles and teachers and from the very beginning I felt that finding the yoga style that  was fit for me was like finding "my" GP or therapist...It is, at least for me, a very personal choice.

I feel that it had to be someone I trusted and in a style that suited my body and my rhythm. In my search I ended up finding great teachers that thought me a lot and got acquainted  with several yoga styles or methods.

One of those, and the one that inspired me to deepen my practice was Sivananda hata yoga. I had a wonderful and inspiring teacher and trough her classes I became more and more engaged with yoga both physically and spiritually.

Yoga had already been part of my life for five or so years but after I started Sivananda I feel that my practice progressed and I allowed my self to go to the next level. 

Yoga is something that inspires me everyday either it being in my own practice or the practice with my students. 

Yoga changed my life and continues to do it. It inspires me to be a better person and to share what I have learned with others.

Goddess of Disappointment

By Sally Kempton

A couple of weeks ago, I was in London preparing to teach a workshop on Goddesses called “Dancing with the Divine Feminine.” At dinner one night, I asked a friend which goddess he most wanted to hear about. “I’d love you to talk about the goddess of disappointment,” he said.

The table went silent. “You’re kidding, right?” someone said. This guy is one of the more successful people I know, the author of more books than I hope to write in several lifetimes, married to a beautiful woman he loves. Why, we wondered, did he want to investigate disappointment?

I shouldn’t have been surprised. In the years since I started teaching the yoga of the Indian goddesses, I’ve noticed that many people with enviably successful lives feel a strange kinship with Dhumavati, the crone goddess whose name is synonymous with disappointment, despair, and difficulty. One reason, perhaps, is that even people who mostly succeed at life also know the taste of failure. Even those of us who desperately fear disappointment, know at some level that there is no real success without coming to terms with our fear of failing, and with the hidden gifts that failure offers.

Still, Dhumavati—her name means ‘the smoky one’ –is not at first glance a goddess you’d want to invoke. Skinny, poor, elderly, she is the very opposite of the auspicious goddesses like Lakshmi. One verse describes her as wearing dirty clothes, and riding in a chariot decorated with a crow banner. (In India, crows are birds of ill omen.) Another verse says, “Her complexion is like the black clouds that form at the time of cosmic dissolution… Her face is very wrinkled, she has disheveled hair, and her breasts are dry and withered.” Dhumavati, in short, is that familiar figure from both Eastern and Western mythology—the crone, the eternal bag lady, the witch. Moreover, Dhumavati personifies the feelings you might experience when your luck runs out, when your business tanks or your lover leaves you, when you get sick or injured or get rejected by your first choice college. In short, she’s everything that most people do their best to avoid.

Why then, would you want to get to know Dhumavati?

Perhaps because you intuit that there are certain gifts we can only attain if we’re willing to navigate disappointment. There are boons in difficulty, profound empowerments that come to us when we face into the inevitable disillusionment that exists in every human life. And Dhumavati, with her wizened, ugly face, is literally the guardian of those gifts. Her Shakti, her divine energy, is the primal guide along the path that can turn disappointment into enlightenment.

We need her. Without Dhumavati’s grace, we can remain trapped by our images of success and our fear of loss, especially the losses that come with age and sickness. When we have her grace, she empowers us to mine the exquisite wisdom hidden in the heart of life’s most difficult moments. On a worldly level, Dhumavati often shows up in your life to remind you of your fundamental human vulnerability. A friend of mine met Dhumavati when her back went out so badly that she couldn’t get out of bed for two months. Another discovered her when his business partner ran away with all the money in the company account. One of the most profound teachers I know has spent the last 15 years in daily, grinding pain from nerve damage brought on by an accident—and learned to walk through it with a grace that inspires everyone who meets her. Dhumavati has been her teacher.

One way Dhumavati teaches us is by asking the question, “Can you keep your equilibrium when everything collapses? Can you find your yogic groove when everything falls away?” This, of course, is one of the questions that yogic practice is meant to answer. And, in my experience, when we walk through a Dhumavati moment with full awareness of her presence, she carries with her the key to some very potent yogic secrets.

Dhumavati is one of the Ten Wisdom Goddesses, who each represent a stage of enlightened consciousness. Dhumavati represents that stage of the inner journey where the spiritual goals we started out with become empty of meaning, and we have no choice but to let go of our agendas. As such, she bestows the inner gifts of detachment and freedom, the power to soar beyond circumstances. In other words, she is not only the goddess of disappointment; she’s the goddess who shows us that within disappointment is the secret boon of true freedom. (Remember the old Kris Kristofferson line, “Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose.”)

Esoterically, Dhumavati represents the void state of meditation. This stage, which we might experience as an inner blackness, or as a pervasive feeling of dryness and disinterest in practice, is sometimes called the ‘dark night of the soul.’ However, according to the tantric teacher Ganapati Muni, this is actually the precursor to Samadhi, one of the highest forms of meditative immersion.

When you sit with the intention of going into a deep meditation, you have to let go of egoic concerns, of thoughts, of all of your various agendas. Without letting all this go, it’s very hard to experience the vastness of your unlimited awareness. Most of us, even when we want spiritual experience, deeply resist this level of letting go—in meditation and in life. That’s why we so often have to discover Dhumavati’s gifts by having something taken away from us.

And here’s the secret: when you can allow yourself, instead of resisting disappointment, to see it as a lesson in letting go, Dhumavati can help you discover the profound wisdom of non-attachment. Dhumavati doesn’t empower us in obvious ways, like Durga. She isn’t dramatic, like Kali, or beautiful, like Lakshmi or Parvati. Her gift is the strength that comes from letting ourselves empty out, and the profound freedom and peace that we achieve only when we’re willing to renounce something we wanted. Who knew–-especially in our success and beauty-worshipping culture–that not getting what we wanted could be liberating? Yet when we are willing to be fully present to our moments of disappointment and failure, Dhumavati’s Shakti can free your heart of worry, fear, and grievance—making room for possibilities far beyond anything you could imagine.

So, the next time things aren’t going the way you think they should, stop resisting for a moment. Embrace the feeling of disappointment. Whisper to yourself Dhumavati’s mantra, “Let go.” And notice how, if you allow her in, she will fill your heart not only with peace, not only with compassion, but also with her own flavor of intense love. The kind of love that only the Goddess can give you.

in Yoga journal 

July 19, 2013

Thoughts From Within - Woody Harrelson

"You alone are the author of your future- experience teaches you that. Your behavior is not an unchangeable law of nature. At every moment, you have the opportunity to change- to alter your thoughts, your speech, your actions. If you train yourself to be mindful of what you do, and ask yourself whether it is likely to lead to positive results or negative, you'll be guiding yourself in the right direction. Repeated good intentions can generate a powerful inner voice that will keep you on track. It will remind you- whenever you trap yourself in a cycle of unhappiness- that you can get out of that trap. Periodically you will have glimpses of what it is to like to be free. You make this vision a reality by acting in positive ways and letting go of misery."

 in Eight mindful steps to happiness: walking the buddha's path
by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

We, anonymous people of this world are never happy with what we have. specially the weather. we always have to complain: either is too cold or too hot to muggy too wet to dry too  windy too grey too white...
well, i caught myself today thinking how grateful i am for everything around and beyond me, but i am grateful  specially to Yoga. 
I am grateful that i came across Yoga already so many years ago, if i think about it it's been more than 10 years, and that i followed this path and because of this amazing journey i allow myself to appreciate things and people around me each day a little more. 
I have come across so many kind, generous inspiring people, fellow practitioners- students and teachers. 
Yoga has brought me to myself. I can say that today i am a more balanced peaceful person and more positive person as well. Point five of Sivananda school: Positive thinking and Meditation.
So I THANK Yoga for existing in this world of mine and in this world of ours. 
And I THANK all the teachers, sages, gurus, yogis, for passing and sharing this fundamental knowledge since more than five thousand years ago.

Hari  Om Tat Sat