More Olympics and Zen Breathing

My usual posts are going to have to be postponed until after the Olympics due to my obsessiveness. I know that all my loyal readers (hahaha) will be so disappointed, but everything will be back to normal next week.

First of all, there is an Olympic Tweet. If you are as obsessed as I am and hate to be away from the action check out the new BeijingOlympic tweet to keep you informed.

Ok, if you didn't happen to catch it last night here is a small documentary that was shown on Michael Phelps. (This isn't the exact one that was shown but it is the same footage.) I wanted to share this with everyone because one thing he said completely blew me away. While the rest of the population struggles with eating between 1500 and 2000 calories a day, Phelps aims to eat between 8000 and 10000 calories a day. 8000-10000 calories!!!! That is how much a person that works out and wants to maintain there weight would eat in 5 days. WOW!!! That just goes to show how much and how hard he works. It also mentions that he is in the pool at least 5 hours a day, that probably has something to do with the calorie consumption.




It also seems that people are trying to keep the clips of the Olympics from being shared on Youtube. For this reason I might post a clip that you will not be able to find the next day, so I apologize for that, but will continue to try and share those with you.


I don't know how many of you saw the men's gymnastics last night either but it was amazing. I am so impressed by the abilities of Olympic athletes and the stability and strength of these guys just blew my mind. The U.S. team did some amazing things and didn't seem to even touch the abilities of the Chinese team yet with my lack of knowledge on the sport it was hard to distinguish the differences that were made. Either way, it was worth watching.

This brings me to another point that I want to bring up. The wife and I have noticed that commentary on the Olympics on the major networks might be skewed in a way. In events such as men's and women's diving and gymnastics is seems as if the commentary is extremely critical on the U.S. team, as would be expected. The issue is that when the commentary comes to the Chinese teams, there is little to no mention of mistakes that even I can see. Sometimes there is even praise on items that are clearly flawed with mistakes and just not mentioned. I could come up with some underlying reasons why this might be the case, but I would feel better if the comments could be more even. Either be hard on everyone or lay off a little bit. Personally, I don't need to hear talking the entire time.....take a breath every once in a while.


Last but not least, Zasta over at Zen Happens has shared a very good breathing technique to help you center and refocus on those overly stressful days. I have used this method in yoga practice before and it works rather well and is very easy. Here ya go:

I am not invensible

I did it again; what I usually do. I take for granted that I do have some medical knowledge and believe that I have a better awareness about my body than most people do. In this case it backfired. I had my cold that finally turned into a sinus infection, I knew that much. I went to the Dr. and got medication and while doc said it was beginning to clear up on its own, the medication would simply speed up the process. I took that as meaning that it could be worse and as illnesses go, I was doing ok. I then proceeded to attend Music Fest (Beale street open air music festival) combined with a LOT of drinking accompanied with rain and a lot wind. The result: I woke up this morning in so much pain it was making me sick. My sinuses were mega-swollen. Anyway, that brings me to here, sitting at home by myself on a Saturday night. While I love writing and hearing from all of you wonderful people, my plans of listing to Santana live were much more exciting to me personally.

It has been a while since I have been able to write anything of a lot of substance, but I have a couple of projects that I have been looking into now that school is over. First of all, there is an amazing CSA available for Memphis and Savannah residence. For those of you who are not familiar with CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture) it is a great way of getting food on a regular basis. The way it works is that you pay a monthly fee, usually around $100, and once a week you get a box of fresh food for your weekend meal planning. I think it is a great idea and am going to convince the wife that it is worth while. The farm we are looking into is the Downing Hollow Farm in Olive Hill, Tennessee. They bring food to the University campus every Friday and would make really easy for us to get. The farm is out HWY 64, east of Memphis and would really be nice to go visit, as they invite as many people to come visit as possible. They have a wide variety of produce that they offer and they also will include baked goods and other produce from farms surrounding them.

Ok, on another note, modern gal wanted me to look into the recycling of CFL'S (Compact florescent light-bulbs) within TN. For those of you that don't know, CFL's contain high levels of mercury and should not be included in regular trash and there is a certain steps that have to be taken when they are broken as they can cause severe irritation if inhaled and can ruin many different types of surfaces. First of all, you should check out the website Earth 911 where you can enter the item you are wishing to recycle and your zip code and can get a recycling center near you.
One of the problems you are going to run into is that despite CFL's popularity most people do not realize that they are toxic and therefore there hasn't been a lot of initiative for recycling center establishments. The other thing you might run into is that the only program recognized in your area is the local hazardous wasted disposal center, and you will have to find out where that is and call to ensure that they do except CFL's. It is a worth while thing to recycle though so the effort is worth it. Another option is to buy a CFL recycling kit. The way it works is that you pay the $120 and get a container to store up to 30 bulbs. Once you have collected that many, there are containers and labels for Fed-Ex to come pick up your light bulbs and send them to a proper recycling center. While it might be a little pricey, it is a really good program so check it out. There are numerous programs for mail in recycling, but more importantly just save up your bulbs in a bucket or such so that there is no possibility of them breaking and then just make one trip to the recycling center.

Last but not least. There are a couple of you, like myself, that are starting summer workout programs different from your winter program, or lack there of. The thing that I go for is definition and lean muscle and not bulk. For that I do yoga (or palities) and cardio. If you incorporate weight/strength training in your exercise program you will gain weight in the beginning and can become bulky where you might not have intended to. Especially when talking about abs, don't do any weight based ab exercises until after you have gotten rid of all the belly fat or you will build up muscle behind it instead of in its place. So, you have to decide if you are looking to lose weight or bulk up, it is all up to you.

Just another day

As the semester is pressing on, I am getting less tolerant of the classes that I am taking this semester. This morning: yoga. I have been taking yoga for about 8 months now, and while I really enjoy the practice and am beginning a great understanding of the practice, yet my instructor is a quack. I decided that I didn't want to pick up another class for this semester and since I only needed an additional 2 hours, I thought that I would take yoga. Granted, this instructor has been trained at the yoga institute in PA and his been doing yoga since the 70's, but our personalities just do not match up at all. On the other had, yoga is amazing. I started doing yoga at the beginning of last fall semester as a research project for a Complementary and Alternative Medicine class through the anthropology department. I was planning on showing how little yoga influenced individuals whom were skeptical about the practice. This didn't end up being the case though. I started doing it three times a week, then started going up to 4 classes a week and did it at home as many times as possible. That all stared in August, now I go to classes on campus twice a week, do yoga at home twice a week, and go to studio class twice a month......and I love it. I had a decrease in anxiety, depression, mood swings, stiffness, muscle aches, and increased flexibility and self esteem. I have to say that it has provided benefits that I never would have thought possible. It has also been a life changing experience through which I have become more aware and more in tune with my body while beginning to understand the benefits of looking to alternative healing methods before looking to biomedicine for help with illness. That is a whole different soap box to get on, and one that I will have to write on a little later. Cheers!