My 1 week Experiment on Special Diet (21 to 27 December 2012)

I always wanted to try eating raw vegan foods for some trial period and see how the results are as i had heard a lot about it. But for various reasons i thought of sticking to partial-raw healthy diet first. So i thought of trying for 1 week period to see if i will be motivated to stick to it before committing to longer time period. 

I successfully completed sticking to the healthy diet for 1 week. It meant  no potatoes, no oily chicken, no wanton fries, no momos, no KFC chicken, no pastries, no CCD melting moments etc. When i shared this experiment with friends, they wanted to know my experience and results. so here it goes..

Period: 7 days. 21-Dec-2012 to 27-Dec-2012

Stuffs that i consumed are split into breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Break Fast: Cut Fruits + Milk + Honey, sometimes bournvita + honey

Lunch: Protein Shake, 4 or 5 Egg whites everyday with Boiled Vegetables or cut raw vegetables, some factory product soup - chicken delite or tomato soup

Dinner: Raw vegetables or fruits or Oats+ Honey + Milk, boiled vegetables, soups, Subway (chicken) sandwich

Fruits: Banana, Grapes, Apple, Pear, Orange, Pine Apple, Papaya, water melon, 

Vegetables: Cucumber, Tomato, Radish, Beetroot, Cabbage, Onion

The Experience: the good and the bad.

Day1 was normal. 

Day 2 and 3 were very lazy. I was feeling sleepy through out the day. I was not feeling motivated to work at all. I skipped working out. I was irritated. Had mood swings. Vegetables (salads) for lunch seemed like punishment. Above all this, "friends" all of a sudden started posting photos of tasty pastries, etc.

Day 4 and Day 5 was really good. I was feeling very motivated towards workout, my work, during the classes. I got tired during the classes initially and some mood swings (of frustration, irritation) present here and there.

However, there was a certain mental clarity towards my goals and was feeling very alive despite various challenges which i had never experienced before. The major difference in this area i found is that earlier, when confronted with challenges in life, i used to recede back to my safe zone - reading books, watching TV shows/ Movies.. however in these 2 days particularly, i was able to consciously choose to do the "right thing" and take action towards challenges rather than settling doing "the convenient thing" and let the "to-do" list to pile up indefinitely.

People had started mentioning about certain "glow" in my face.

The Benefits:

• Aliveness
• Lightness
• Motivation
• Facial Glow
• More Toning difference showed up in my muscles
• The most important benefit is that i am finding more and more people got inspired and wanting to try this out

Tips:

• If you are living with many people and you are the only one trying this diet out, DO NOT ENTER THE KITCHEN.
• Meditate and Keep reminding yourself everyday of the intention of this "stupid" experiment
• Declare it in Facebook. On my day 1, friday evening, after my classes, the thought of KFC chicken pulled me towards chucking the experiment. But ever since i declared in facebook, many started following and looking up to the experiment and results. So i didn't give in to the urge. If will power runs out, fear of looking weak will get the job done for you.
• Dinners are the worst challenge. Ask your cook/ friend to make something for you before you take a whiff of whats already cooked for others in the kitchen.
• Keep something ready to eat always. You will get hungry more often.
• Have lots of bananas kept all the time for instant energy.

Conclusion

I made this a short spanned experiment one because i slowly wanted to shift to this kind of diet and also i wanted to freak out at the new year's party ;) . I actually mixed some unhealthy items (like factory product soups, wine, etc) in a very less scale (about less than .05%, in my girlfriend's terms). I am proud of this experiment though! And major chuck of credit goes to Rachana.

I am planning to do this diet, a little more rigorously, for 2 or 3 weeks this time. Mostly from Jan 11 to Jan 24, 2013. I already have 2 or 3 more people joining me. Just let me know if you will also join. We can share the variety of fruit and vegetables recipes and also keep each other inspired and motivated! 

The Invitation: Oriah

I found this one from facebook. It was set as someone's favorite quotation.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

Integrity

The more and more I confronted who I truly am and what I wanted in life, I more and more became a heart person.
Instead of being run by my brain all the time, I ran my brain a little. 

I switched it off sometime and just surrendered to somebody else's wisdom. 

I enjoyed the "Trusting someone "experience. What a liberation!!

All there is in life is "Experience". I studied, partied, bunjee-jumped, swam, switched jobs - all for an experience, I thought. A new experience.

New experiences of my being through doing.
I "did" somethings to "be" somewhat.  Now I am learning "being" and "doing" things being that being.
I am no master in that. But, I practiced, practice & will practice.

I heard a saying, "They first win the war and then go to war". For its just a game, For that is the level of Integrity. For that is their mastery in integrity, whoever they are.

Integrity, I think, is being true to my deepest self and allow the expression of that through actions, when somewhere in the quest, the deepest self and the actions are one and the same.

Integrity is a word and nothing else. Just plain Nothing else.
And, I shall live for that word.

Whats so & The illusion of meanings

Whats So is just whats so. The meaning comes only from you. 

I think this is one of the most beautiful motivational line you can you use when you are down. I use it mostly when I am attached to a certain task and the results let me down. To keep moving on, I need to remove the significance i gave to the result!

Law of Attraction: Guitar

Ever since I first saw "The secret" documentary some 3 years back, the Law of Attraction concept intrigued me. I looked up and read a lot of interesting stuffs that people were doing with the concept. Many have had lots of success in attracting what they wanted. Many have had lots of failures. Also, there are lots of theories about how to apply this concept.

Well, I have had my share of trials as well. Some half-hearted trials with doubts and some real "sincere" trials ;)

Recently I experienced a success which swept me away. Let me tell about it...

Last week, after a long time, I remembered that I wanted to learn guitar. So, I thought, "I am in a place where I can actually spend time learning it. Now, I should stop giving reasons for not learning it. May be I should do something about it".

And I fixed a goal, "I want to be able to play a song with a guitar 1 month from now". For that, I first needed to buy a guitar.  What I asked the universe (i think) was this: I just want guitar coming to my hands by this Saturday. I was also thinking, It'd be cool if i just get it in my hands without actually going through the process of narrowing down a model, or even spend time buying one.

The following Saturday, I walked into my clients place, there was it, a guitar just lying there waiting for me to be seen. I asked her, "Wow, this is cool, who plays guitar here? I was thinking of getting and learning a guitar, so do you know where can i buy it and give me some tips?"

She said, lifting the guitar, "Here take this. This poor thing has been lying around and been used as a stopper for the door from getting closed. Let it be of some use in your hands".

I could not believe what was happening.

I was taken aback, pondering if i should actually accept such a gift. I was like, "No... I don't know... blah... blah... this & that" and then I stopped. For a second, I got present to my want and what was happening.

After a while, I said, "OK. Cool. May be, I'll learn a song, come and play within a month or so, May be then you'll get inspired and then you can start actually using it!!"

The coolest thing was, I wasn't particularly testing or trying out Law of Attraction. I just knew that I should have a guitar with my by Saturday, and the precise day on which i got it was what still amazes me. Also, I don't usually ask the way i did.

I think, when the context of why you want - what you want is clear, the want becomes clearly understood by the universe and it responds quickly.

Now, I ask for the next step to the universe: "Send me a tutor who can teach me to play a song in a month".

Share your comments on law of attraction, Guitar tutoring or your general opinion about Saturdays! Whatever! I am so happy!

[P. S. : The dialogues are actually paraphrased. I made it in dialogue format for the interesting appeal and also that i don't remember the exact dialogues :) ]

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

The simple beauty of unpredictability

I watched this movie again recently and i felt inspired to write about it.

The present system of marriage is in place predominantly because it facilitates for a wholesome, joyous and intimate living with another. But what if there could be another way where same things are possible and much more fun? How open are we to even consider it? i think, a viewer who is very rigid or righteous about relationships in general would have a lot of confrontations and uncomfortable moments and that's precisely the reason for him/ her to watch it. :).

Vicky is a conservative & goal-oriented kind of woman and is engaged to be married. Cristina is liberal, impulsive, creative and she is single. Both are vacationing in Barcelona when a charming Juan Antonio invites both of them to spend the weekend with him in oviedo for drinking, eating and making love (yes, that's exactly the line in the movie :) ). The story is about their response to the invitation and further consequences of their actions.

I am tempted to write about the specific moments in the movie and analyze how simply creative woody Allen is. But that would knock out some surprise if you plan to watch it. So...

I think Woody Allen explores brilliantly how the society evolves in relationships and as in any of his other movies, it's so much fun to watch him play through his characters with a light sense of mockery humor. Right from the way the movie starts, the way Juan Antonio approaches the girls... their intriguing nature of response... the unexpected way things turn out between the 3 of them... and then the introduction of ex-girl friend... are very unexpected and unconventional, yet shown in a temptingly possible way.

Purely about relationships, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is very romantic and adventurous. 

Woody Allen is a master in showing our life situations to ourselves through his characters. Almost of all his characters go through a phase of unbound, limitless exploration finding exquisite fun and happiness in the process, going beyond their judgment of moral (right/ wrong). Then, all the characters gets pulled back to the past life style because of limited beliefs and the morals, gets pulled back to the state of perpetual pseudo happiness, always short of the potential happiness.

Its a knock at you to take a look at yourself where you are holding back from exploring the unexplored.

Moral: The experience of wonder always comes from the place of the unexpected and the uncertain, beyond your reasons.

On Being Present

We are absent most of the time. We spend time thinking or wishing to be in some other place, there by, being absent for current situation. Be it in a conversation, or in a movie hall or even while at work, we always have an alternate reality going on inside our head. The disadvantage of this absence is that we are half-assed in the current situation, loosing the focus on what we are doing.

In my Yoga Class I often encounter such absence in people. From keeping the eyes closed for 5 minutes, to holding a difficult posture, I see various levels of absence. Heck, I see absence in myself. The reason is not the incapability in doing a posture or that pain is involved, its just that there is an inner voice in the head that keeps asking question "why do I have to do this?, cant it be any other way?" or such similar questions. If you notice it, that inner voice is not just inside the class, its everywhere in life; not just while doing uncomfortable things but even while doing comfortable things. And that voice does not cease to exist, ever.

Now that we know the presence of inner voice, what can we do with it so that we can be completely present? The answer is easy. Kill the inner voice get back to the current situation. But, killing it is not as easy as it sounds, because if it was, you would not go through the absence phase for such a long time.

The key here is to get present to what the inner voice is saying. What are the reasons it is giving for creating the alternate reality in the head. And to answer that, you need to look from a broader perspective. You know that there are 2 parts of you, one part wants to be present here (and do the postures, in case of the yoga class) and the other part constantly judges the situation as to whether it is right or wrong, whether it will work or not, etc.

At this level of clarity, you might be able to choose which voice to listen to and which voice to kill (To kill for now and focus on it later). But, at this point, you have to choose.

If you choose to listen to the judging voice, honour it. Cut off the voice which says you to be here and instead walk outside and give full concentration to the judging voice, so that you can gain clarity and come back when you are ready. Else, Cut off the judging voice for later and choose to be present completely and honour your choice. There are no good/ bad or Right/ wrong in them. It is choice/consequences. 

Since both parts belong to you, in the quest for clarity, you can’t ignore one for the other. And, if you are not able to gain clarity even at this point, then get in touch with the vision/ goal that brought you to this current situation on the first place. In this case, why did you choose to do yoga? Access that goal and see if you still want to be here.

Now, considering that your goal was to enjoy the yogic mental journey, your next action will be clear. Get present and push through the pain & disturbances for realizing the goal of experiencing the journey. If you choose to listen to the inner voice and still continue to stay in the class or choose to do yoga and continue to listen to the inner voice, know that it would be an in-congruent action towards your goal. You would be stuck in between deprived of the consequences of both the choices.

Know that you have to choose based on the consequences that you want to experience and you have to be the choice completely, 100%. So, be happy about your choice, either ways.

Not only in the Yoga class, you can take this distinction to every aspect of your life. Every time you start rejecting your reality (every time you stop being present), admit that you have just lost in touch with your goal and forgot why you are there. Take a moment and ask yourself, what was the goal I had in mind because of which I am here? Once you access your vision/ goal, the reason for being here becomes clear, and getting present becomes easy & natural.

The reason why you are unable to focus on one thing is because there is some other thing that demands your attention. Give your attention to it, gain clarity on it and then the choice will come naturally to you. Then you can be 100% committed to the one thing which you chose.