Well+Good NYC » Wellness Culture

Would New York City chefs rather be Food Network stars than do-gooders?

Well+Good — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:06:12 +0000

This past June, Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Campaign to fight childhood obesity launched the Chefs Move to Schools Initiative. Chefs across the country were invited to adopt a school and teach students that vegetables can taste great and chicken nuggets aren’t laid like eggs.

At P.S. 11 in the Bronx, chef Raquel Rivera-Pablo taught a six-week cooking class for third graders, where the students learned to make vegetable crostinis, Greek salads, and even summer squash ribbons. “We try to do a lot of cooking and nutrition education,” says Deborah Osborne at P.S. 11. But the students were especially engaged when working with a real chef.”

Since the launch of the initiative, 54 schools in the five boroughs have signed up to get cooking and a chef. There’s only one problem. Of those schools, only seven have been matched with a chef. In a city that is home to 24,000 restaurants, where are all the chefs? On the Food Network and lobbying to cook at the James Beard House?

To be fair, most city chefs most likely don’t know the opportunity exists, says Jean Daniels, the USDA Public Affairs Director. “The initiative was really started at the end of the school year. So over the summer, it would have been difficult for the schools to sign-up chefs.” Now that it’s fall, they’d love to see the initiative grow. “The simple answer is yes, we’re looking for more chefs, and more schools,” adds Daniels.

Learning to make better lunchables: Students at P.S. 11 rub garlic on their sliced baguettes for vegetable crostinis

What about you, Tom Colicchio? We know that Season 8 of Top Chef has you back in good old NYC, where Humanities Preparatory Academy is in the market for a chef—and hey, they’re just one avenue east of Colicchio & Sons on 18th Street.

And Mario Batali, your foray into the world of healthy eating doesn’t have to end with Meatless Mondays. Maybe you could take a short walk over to P.S. 347 on East 23rd Street with Eataly‘s Vegetable Butcher to teach some slicing and dicing?

Chefs of New York City, these are your marching orders!

Chefs Move to Schools, Click here to view participating schools and access the chef sign-up form, www.letsmove.gov

Refrigerator Look Book: Kate Reil

Well+Good — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 23:09:33 +0000

Well+Good brings you a new kind of look book—an exclusive sneak peek into the refrigerators of NYC wellness practitioners.

KATE REIL, Yoga Instructor, Bend & Bloom, Kula Yoga Project, and Program Director, Little Flower Yoga

Lives in: Boerum Hill, Brooklyn

W+G: Where do you go to stock your fridge?

Kate Reil: For regular groceries I go to Brooklyn Fare on Hoyt and Schermerhorn. But I try to buy most of my staples at greenmarkets around the city. Most of the stuff in this picture is from a greenmarket I hadn’t been to before in Park Slope, on 5th Ave. and 4th Street on Sundays. I also go to Trader Joe’s about once a week and stock up on nuts and dried fruits because I love making granola and giving it to people.

W+G: Everyone has a food they can’t live without. What’s the one thing that’s always in your fridge?

KR: Honestly? Sabra hummus and red cabbage. Oh, and seltzer. It’s always time for a seltzer. If I’m lucky, pickles. Nothing is better than a good pickle.

W+G: Favorite fruit or vegetable that’s in season right now?

KR: How could I deny being from Warwick and say anything other than apples? Honey Crisp in particular—so delicious! I also love me some brussel sprouts, and they’ve just started to peek out, too.

W+G: What’s in that jar on the top shelf on the left-hand side? Looks yummy!

KR: It is indeed! It’s salsa that my friend Tali made. She works on a goat cheese farm in the Adirondacks called Asgaard Farm, and she made lots of salsa from the garden this summer.

W+G: Something you like to eat or drink before or after a yoga class?

KR: Usually nothing, but on Thursday nights, after I teach at Bend & Bloom, a bunch of us gather for beers and popcorn at 4th Ave Pub. A good way to practice the Middle Path.

Yoga under the influence

Well+Good — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:30:58 +0000

Can cannabis improve your practice? That’s the claim made by a handful of yogis in Toronto (and Burning Man?) who say yoga’s spiritual relationship to pot is centuries-old, reports the Globe and Mail.

“When you’re high, you can focus better on your breath,” says Dee Dussault, who runs a monthly session of cannabis-enhanced yoga called Follow Your Bliss. “For some people, it makes them uninhibited and open to the idea of the heart chakra, for example.” Another yogi finds that “marijuana quells those voices in your mind.”

I thought that’s why I take yoga classes?

Not to get all goody-goody about pot use before practice (or during class if you live in Canada), but I think my New York City yoga teachers would be somewhat pissed to learn that I wasn’t really learning to focus on my breath—or being totally present—but using pot as a prop. Not to mention that my altered states of tree pose could knock over a row of yogis.

Is purity required to practice? Or is pot-smoking, part of yoga’s spiritual past, welcome in the present?

Waitlisted natural beauty product creates serious buzz

Well+Good — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:39:23 +0000

A waitlist for a new and ever-popular La Mer skin-care serum wouldn’t faze me. But I did a double-take the other day in C.O. Bigelow when I saw a woman adding her name to the list for the launch of a totally natural beauty product. Viva la revolucion!

Natural beauty brands tend to play up their great ingredients (taking the moral high ground approach to marketing?). But the anticipation brewing around the new serum by Nude, a London-based line that touts the power of probiotics—yes, the live bacteria cultures found in yogurt—feels like the approach of a big-deal department store brand. It’s too soon to say if my press sample is pulling this off, but the ingredient list looks promising.

In fact, Nude’s new Nude Advanced Cellular Renewal Serum ($92) kind of reminds me of Estee Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair (only without the chemicals). Both are designed for use at night during the skin’s natural cycle of repair and renewal, and tout the presence of hyaluronic acid, a super-hydrating ingredient. And both put the price tag at upwards of $100.

The buzz-generating waitlist for Nude's new night-time serum, at C.O. Bigelow

I might be the only one who sees it this way, but I’m glad to see a beautifully packaged all-natural line take a department-store marketing tactic. When there are high-quality natural and organic substitutes for traditional beauty products getting the attention of a bigger audience, it’ll make the choice perfectly clear. Or in this case, naked.

Nude Advanced Cellular Renewal Serum, $92, launches on Sunday, September 12th, 1pm – 4 pm at Barney’s New York, Madison and 60th Street, Lower Level. Attendees can receive a mini Nude facial and meet Nude’s co-founders (Ali Hewson, of the organic fashion label Edun, and Bryan Meehan, of the UK organic grocer Fresh & Wild).

Doga during the Dog Days of summer

Well+Good — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:01:36 +0000

We couldn’t resist. The hot, sultry Dog Days of summer make us think of doga, or yoga for your canine BFF. Both adorable and ridiculous, doga pictures are irresistible. So check out these shots of canine chaturanga and puppy pigeon pose. Namas-dawg!

Seated spinal twist

"You said that use of props is fine."

Teacher to student: "In happy baby pose, you need reach up and grab onto your own feet."

Getting an assist for handstand.

Pet as prop: Twisting triangle

Super active legs in plank pose

Yoga, Buddhism, and psychology: Training yogis to heal communities

Well+Good — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:00:41 +0000

Picture this: In a classroom at the Henry Street School for International Studies on the Lower East Side, boys with ADHD are learning meditation, yoga poses, and deep relaxation, encouraging a mindful awareness that will help them focus later on during Geometry class. A few blocks away, in a group therapy session for women in chronic pain at Gouverneur’s Hospital, the clients try simple chair-yoga poses and meditation for pain management.

Jill Satterfield is the reason why these scenes are already a reality. And Satterfield, a seasoned yoga and meditation teacher, aspires to make them commonplace by arming yoga instructors with the training and tools they need to work as compassionate counselors in New York City communities.

The first class of the School for Compassionate Action, which Satterfield has founded, will start this September at the Tibet House. The 300-hour certification includes courses with yoga and meditation teachers, clinical psychologists, social workers, and Buddhist psychotherapists. Students, who may come from a variety of backgrounds but must have a developed yoga practice, will also complete internships working with at-risk youth and adults, patients with chronic illnesses, and people living with PTSD and addictions.

Satterfield, who was motivated to form the school by her own experience with illness 30 years ago, began practicing yoga to heal chronic pain. She’s now been teaching yoga for 21 years, and in 1992, she founded Vajra Yoga, which integrates Buddhist philosophy and meditation into the practice of hatha yoga.

The Compassionate Action program marks the first formalized effort to bring the tools of meditation, yoga, and psychotherapy together on a community level. “There’s great need for the benefits of yoga and meditation outside of yoga studios,” says Satterfield, who trained yoga teachers to do just that for ten years with her Social Action Teacher Training, a 120-hour course that she offered her yoga teacher graduates. “I realized that a gap existed in terms of training yogis to go out in the world and use their practice to help people,” says Satterfield. “And yogis wanted to deepen their training.”

The School for Compassionate Action takes the yoga and social action training even further—by training yogis to teach and implement these healing modalities.

Jill Satterfield at the Tibet House, where most of the School for Compassionate Action coursework will take place

While most of her students have been yogis looking to branch out in their practice, social workers, counselors, and therapists are also enrolling in the new program. “There are a lot of New York City therapists bringing mind-body practices into their work without the training,” says Satterfield. “And a lot of yoga and meditation teachers bringing psychological or emotional support into populations, and they haven’t been trained. This program is an effort to bring everyone together for thorough training,” she says.

Satterfield’s goal? To create a new profession of informed healers. “I want to educate as many therapists, school teachers, and facility directors as I possibly can,” says Satterfield. “And little by little, it will change the landscape of what’s being offered in New York City.” —Lisa Elaine Held

For more information on the program and faculty, visit www.schoolforcompassionateaction.org. The school is still accepting applications for September.

Fall fitness fashion: Smart pieces you’ll be seeing and sweating in this season

Well+Good — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:44:34 +0000

Day to night: Adidas by Stella McCartney Run Glow shorts and jacket, and Marialith glow runners

These new high-performance pieces for fall marry serious fitness function with fashionable form. This gorgeous gear is great for getting your workout on—then getting around the city.

Glow in the Dark
It’s no metaphor. This jacket and running shorts (pictured over tights, above) are made from ClimaProof Wind, which fends off the elements, and a glow-in-the-dark leopard print to protect you from wayward taxi cabs when running after dusk. Adidas by Stella McCartney Run Glow shorts ($75) and jacket ($175), and Marialith glow runners ($14), at www.shopadidas.com

*****

Hyde Yoga is known for its drawstring pants. But these Kelly Morris pants are a departure—with a sort-of skirt

Practice Makes Perfect: Hyde Yoga Kelly Morris pants
As part of her “by yogis for yogis” philosophy, AK Kennedy, the founder of Hyde Yoga, designed these organic cotton pants (with 8 percent spandex) in collaboration with New York City yoga teacher, Kelly Morris. The fold-over waist covers your backside almost like a tiny skirt, and proceeds from the pants go to Bent on Learning. Hyde Yoga Kelly Morris pants ($68), at Kula Yoga Project, Amazon.com, or order through yogahyde.com

*****

Zohba Asymmetrical Zip Pullover with Hot Shorts

Hidden Tiger, Crouching Champion: Zohba Asymmetrical Zip Pullover with Hot Shorts
Capitalize on two trends this fall: asymmetry with a zipper pullover that hits the hip and a jolt of purple. The hot shorts, with flattering hip seams, offer a tad more structure and length (at 3 3/4 inches) than your typical Bikram or running shorts, and the performance material keeps you cool. (Dude not included.) Zohba Asymmetrical Zip Pullover ($90) and Hot Shorts ($52), at www.zobha.com

*****

New Balance debuts its first yoga collection with printed performance tanks like the Suzani Racerback

Back It Up: Anue Suzani Racerback tank
New Balance’s brand-new yoga collection marries organic cotton tops, tunics, and wraps and with performance pieces like the Suzani tank (with a shelf bra). It’s made from a 90% post-consumer recycled polyester called Nirvana. Also blissful: the top’s curving hemline dips an inch lower in the front for belly coverage. (PS: The Spree capris, not pictured, are flattering as hell.) Anue Suzani Racerback tank ($55), at www.shopnewbalance.com

*****

Athleta Reflective WorkitOUT Tights and Tribal Floral Crew Neck

Reflectology: Athleta Reflective WorkitOUT Tights and Tribal Floral Crew Neck
The decorative elements that distinguish these running tights also reflect light. And the ones that adorn this base-layer wicking top are original tattoo designs. Athleta Reflective WorkitOUT Tights in Velocitek (Polyester/Spandex); Gusset Lining: CoolMax Polyester ($69) and Tribal Floral Crew Neck ($98), at athleta.gap.com

*****

Yogi About Town: Lululemon Athletica Journey Jacket
This short, slim-fitting jacket in stretchy cotton terry is an ideal fall piece to take you from yoga to brunch with friends. With loads of cargo pockets to stuff your smart phone and keys into, it also has Lululemon’s signature thumb holes. Lululemon Journey Jacket in proprietary blend of breathable cotton french terry with stretch ($88), at lululemon.com.

“The Subtle Body”: What the New York Times book review missed

Well+Good — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:35:25 +0000

It’s hard to read The Subtle Body (FSG), Stefanie Syman’s terrific new history of yoga in America, without noticing the starring role New York City has played as one giant asphalt yoga mat.

But that’s exactly what happened in the New York Times review of the book by the famously harsh and analytical Michiko Kakatani. “While Ms. Syman has amassed a lot of entertaining anecdotes about the history of yoga in this country,” writes Kakatani. “Her overall narrative suffers from odd gaps and elisions.” The reviewer wants to know why Syman, a historian, doesn’t cover contemporary yoga culture or explain why yoga pants cost $98.

We posit that it’s Kakatani’s review that’s guilty of gaps and elisions: It’s quite strange that one of the sharpest book critics writing for New York City’s hometown paper missed that so much of the history of yoga unfolded right here.

Syman’s book is page-turning 300-page string of historical vignettes that flow easily like a vinyasa over the cast of characters (swamis and gurus, philosophers and starlets) who make up the flexy-bendy history of the city. The takeaway lesson? Just how long this pastime has been undeniably popular. New Yorkers have been practicing yoga since the late 19th century.

In Syman’s book we learn that New Yorkers got their first exposure to Hinduism and yoga around the turn of the twentieth century with the first wave of swamis like Vivekananda. “In 1898, a piece ran in the New York Herald that basically said all the fashionable people in the city are doing yoga,” explains Syman, who lives in Park Slope. “It could have run in 1998. There were a lot young, attractive women teachers, and students on the social register mentioned, like the Rutherford sisters, who would have been equivalent to the Hilton sisters. The scene was that contemporary-sounding.”

By 1919, we had our first “aesthetically pleasing” yoga studio for hatha on East Fifty-third Street called Yoga Gymnosophy Institute for Women. (In a five-floor townhouse with marble staircases and Oriental carpets, no less.) “Yoga was immediately popular with the same kind of people then as now,” says Syman. “Mostly upper and middle class women.”

“Yoga’s now a pastime,” a term that Syman, an Ashtangi of 15 years, often uses. “But for the first half of its life in New York, people were seeing it as a fully realized spiritual practice with meditation. It was not really physical culture until the 40s.” What people were looking for, says Syman, was something that that mainline Christianity or Judiasm didn’t offer: a tangible route of personal transformation.

Park Slope resident, Ashtangi, and author, Stefanie Syman

Physical culture came quickly enough, when Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois unfurled his mat and Mysore-style Ashtanga practice here in the 1970s displacing hatha yoga as the only game town. “Yoga infrastructure took shape sooner here than in California,” says Syman. “And even during yoga’s ebb and flow in popularity, New York has a held onto a handful of continuously operating studios, like Integral Yoga, Shivananda for a long time, and Dharma Mittra.”

Of course, Syman’s a historian, and as such the contemporary yoga scene falls outside the scope of her book. “Covering the scene now would have been a whole other book,” says Syman, who touches on yoga’s revival in the 1990s thanks to luminaries Eddie Stern and Sharon Gannon and David Life of Jivamukti.

I can see how Kakatani missed Syman’s New York City. The typically sharp and pragmatic reviewer didn’t approach the book as a straightforward work of non-fiction, but responded to its topic with the Times’ trademark skepticism and distrust of yoga culture today. As though to turn each page was to take a symbolic sip of yoga’s spiritual Kool-Aid.

“When I started this project, yoga was not being written about like any other American pastime,” says Syman, though that’s what yoga’s become for 16 million Americans. “It’s like baseball only without the teams, scores, and stadiums,” says Syman. And, as her book shows, it’s a pastime that’s been around for just as long. —Melisse Gelula

On the Wellness Wire: July 31, 2010

Well+Good — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 19:48:05 +0000

Well+Good's weekly wellness news wrap-up

On the wellness wire this week, poor Chelsea Clinton’s wedding guests will have to be vegan for one entire meal. MSNBC tries to explain what that means.

The true superhero identity of our friend Yoga Dork is revealed in the New York Times (though not her face), making it the first yoga-related piece in the paper that actually breaks news and not, um, wind.

John Friend doesn’t like the way the New York Times fact checks its articles. The Anusara founder responds to Mimi Swartz’s piece last weekend on his six-figure sun salutations. A flurry of instant comments from yogis on this issue suggests that this group will soon be able to reply promptly to an email.

Wanderlust, the uber yoga-music-nature festival, kicks off with tented classes, a concert by Moby, and a video of Elena Brower practicing yoga in a moving gondola. Thousands of New York City yogis not able to attend the Squaw Valley event demand souvenirs in the form of Wanderlust yoga apparel.

Demi Moore does Master Cleanse followed by the Clean Program and is lambasted for both on Twitter and in the NY Daily News.

Book reviewer Michiko Kakutani didn’t like Stefanie Syman’s “overall narrative” in The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America. The book is missing “the latest permutations of the yoga boom in America” (aka the gossip)—and the retail price of Lululemon Groove pants, which Kakutani doesn’t hesitate to provide in the review.

Duncan Wong waxes poetic: yoga in New York has changed—and changed the city

Well+Good — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:36:10 +0000

Duncan Wong, ready for takeoff, in Central Park (photo: Ben Spell)

Duncan Wong, the creator of Yogic Arts, was in New York City for a whirlwind tour earlier this month. His short stay included leading a meditation cruise, teaching Jumping Principles at Kula Yoga Project, and headlining workshops at Jivamukti and YogaWorks. Wong, whose practice is a fusion blend of Ashtanga, Korean martial arts, and Buddhism, now lives in Asia. But he called himself a New Yorker from the mid-90s until 2005. So we asked Wong for his perspective on the NYC yoga scene and how it’s evolved:

“During my decade or so in NYC, I studied with Sri Eddie Stern and at the Jivamukti Yoga Center on Lafayette—before it became the Jivamukti Yoga School and Vegan Cafe on Broadway. I trained and taught under the auspices of my spiritual parents and system co-creator’s, Sri Sharon Gannon and Sri David Life. And I started to observe the expansion and, sometimes contraction, of mom-and-pop yoga shalas (studios) across every neighborhood and borough of city.

“Of course, the corporate yoga brands followed suit, right behind the Pottery Barns, Chase banks, and Rite Aids, replacing old family establishments, and pressing the gifted young and old farther out of the circle. Yet, nonetheless, each space, vast and fortified or inventive and soulful, provided a way onto the path of consciousness and compassion.

“Each yogi was balancing their athletic inclinations, their passionate profession, and perhaps a desire to access the radiant glow and sunshine attitude embodied by Madonna, Sting, and Christy Turlington, who were setting the stage to make this long wave a lifestyle. The result was a collective shift in awareness, transforming the face of New York and the world.”