5 Simple Ways to Eat More Compassionately in the New Year

1. Eat less chicken and fewer eggs. When you reduce or eliminate chicken and egg consumption, you’re helping some of the most abused animals on the planet. Chickens raised for meat are crammed by the thousands into filthy warehouses and denied access to the outdoors, fresh air and sunlight for their entire lives. Specifically excluded from the Federal Humane Slaughter Act, chickens are carried through the slaughter process so rapidly that many are injured but not killed and are instead boiled alive when it comes time to remove their feathers. Gardein and Quorn, two brands widely available in supermarkets, make chicken alternatives that — wait for it — taste just like chicken! Minus the fear and suffering, of course.

Chickens raised for eggs don’t have it much better. They are packed so tightly in fetid cages that they can never engage in basic natural behaviors or even stretch their wings. Millions are starved for a few weeks each year to shock their bodies into another egg-laying cycle. Think about it: Is your momentary enjoyment of an omelet really worth making an already depressed and miserable animal go hungry for weeks? If that doesn’t sit right with you, opt for the high-protein, cruelty-free tofu scramble instead.

2. Replace cow’s milk with a healthy, animal-friendly, non-dairy, calcium-fortified milk made from almonds, rice, oats, coconut, soy or hemp. It’s complete hooey that people need cow’s milk for calcium. Cow’s milk is for baby calves, and there are plenty of delicious, more healthful and calcium-rich plant-based alternatives we can consume. The only way for people to consume cow’s milk is to routinely tear newborn calves from their mothers as dairy cows are trapped in an endless cycle of pregnancy and lactation. Pushed beyond their biological limits, they are worn out and sent to slaughter after just a few years “in production.” Have you had an almond milk or soy milk mocha latte? They are fantastic and truly guilt free!

3. Avoid foie gras like the plague. Foie gras, or fatty duck liver, is only produced by the systematic and abusive practice of over feeding ducks via a metal tube that is forced down their throats. Foie gras is in a class with veal in terms of the cruelty inflicted on animals, and we should shun it every bit as much.

4. Resolve to eat vegetarian one day each week. If the above seems like too big of a challenge to start, eat vegetarian at one meal a week. Before long, you’ll realize how easy and delicious it is to eat vegetarian, and it will feel effortless to increase how often you eat vegetarian meals. Using this incremental approach, you may decide to eliminate animal products from your diet all together. Simply decreasing your consumption of factory-farmed meat will prevent countless animals from living a life of pure misery. More than 95 percent of all meat sold in restaurants and supermarkets comes from animals so cruelly confined they cannot lie down comfortably, extend their limbs, or engage in any of their natural behaviors.

5. Eat more plants! From salads and pasta dishes to vegetarian meats and cheeses, there’s a new world of flavorful alternatives to enjoy as part of a kinder, healthier eating plan. If you want cheese, try the Daiya non-dairy varieties; for sausage, reach for the Field Roast chipotle or apple sage links; instead of a hamburger, try a veggie burger with pickles, tomato, onion and other fresh toppings; when the kids want chicken nuggets, they won’t even realize that Quorn brand nuggets are missing the meat.

It’s 2012 — isn’t it time we stop eating foods produced by industries that treat animals like unfeeling commodities and start eating in a way that reflects the healthy, evolved, compassionate society we aspire to be? Let this be the year you opt out of eating cruelly. You’ll be amazed at how great it feels (and tastes) to eat compassionately.

For more by Gene Baur, visit farmsanctuary.typepad.com/making_hay/

Photo credit: Beth Terry

Sweat With Love: Three Ways to Rejuvenate Your Workout

God, do I love to dance.

I love the way music feels in my body. It’s like the boom, boom ka of a drumbeat calls my cells to celebrate, which call to my bones, which call to my muscles, and before you know it, I am movin’ and groovin’ with pure abandonment.

I loved to dance so much that, in 4th grade, I decided that was it. Move over Jennifer Beals: There’s a new flash dancer on the way. The boom boom ka and I were going to be wed forever.

I spent countless hours in dance studios, pointing, stretching, turning, and jumping. However, at around 16 years old, the magical rhythm of the music that once soothed my soul turned into the ringing of Pavlov’s bell. It became the signal that I needed to work harder, turn faster, be thinner, jump higher, and plie my way to perfection.

I spent several years moving my body with one intention. Do better.

Even getting hired to tour with a renowned dance company didn’t quiet the, “This isn’t good enough” voice that joined me every time I slipped into my dance shoes.

But in 1996, while I was battling it out with myself in dance class, my mom was presented with her own battle. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

She took on the challenge like a warrior goddess presented with the task of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Determined. While she did what her doctors told her, being a child of the 60’s, peace love and everything in between, my mom employed her family as part of her healing team.

We went to meditation and tai chi classes, changed our diet, and found a way to love each other on a deeper level.

My mom was certain that the way to heal her body was through a whole lotta love and tenderness.

So, strange that at the same time, I was certain that the only way to get my body to what I wanted it to do was to beat it into submission. If I didn’t crack the whip on myself, wouldn’t my lazy butt end up on the couch, eating ice cream and watching hours of television?

My mom’s approach was the opposite. She allowed herself to have days of “Well, this really sucks” that were always followed by days where she would paint on her eyebrows and proudly walk out the door. When asked how she was doing, she said, “Gettin’ better every day.” And she meant it.

My mom’s healthy vibrant cells won out over ovarian cancer.(They won out again over breast cancer six years later! A miracle indeed. ) I learned that she did not win because she beat, prodded, forced, or made herself do anything.

She was kind to herself, every step of the way.

When I finally took on this approach in my own life, not only did my body change, but my whole life changed. The extra pounds I hung onto melted away. The self-criticism that spilled into other areas of my life was transformed to a sweet, steady voice reminding that I am doing pretty damn good.

If you’re looking to make radical changes with your body, whether it’s to heal, lose weight or even train for a marathon, it starts with radical kindness and compassion.

Here are a few radical ways to move your body:

1. Get on the love train: We choose our thoughts. You can’t get to destination I love my body by riding the I can’t stand my ______ (insert body part) train. That train ride will only lead to one place: where it is dark and murky and the sun rarely shines.

It starts with love and absolute appreciation for what you are able to do today.

Do whatever it takes to make appreciation for what you can do your primary thoughts. You might have to slow down to access these thoughts, or you might need to ramp it up, but be determined to catch that love train.

2. Set your intention: Instead of jumping on the treadmill or into your favorite exercise class with the intention that you have to burn off the calories you ate the day before, try something different.

Try sweating with the intention that you are going access your power. Intend that you are going to open your heart. You are going to heal. You are going to shine. You are going to become more of who you are meant to be.

This philosophy can be applied to any kind of physical activity you’re doing.

The more you sweat with love, the easier it becomes to be loving even when you are not exercising. This new behavior changes your brain chemistry, which, without doubt, spills into all areas of your life.

3. Add affirmations: I created a playlist and recorded spoken affirmations over it so that when I go for a walk, a run, or even dance around my apartment, I am moving with specific intentions.

I started sharing the playlist with my clients and friends, who love to incorporate it into their workouts.

It’s one thing to think affirmations. It takes it to a whole other level when you are moving and saying them to the rhythm of music. The affirmations become a part of your muscle memory, and they get embedded into your cells. This is where the real change happens.

Bottom line: Decide today that you are moving to celebrate your life. Let the boom boom ka fill you with joy as you move to any rhythm, cherishing the body you’re in and all that it does to support you. It’s has taken you this far. What a blessing.

Money-back guarantee that your body will change, your life will change, and moving will feel more like the final scene in Flash Dance … What a feeling!

Erin Stutland is a life coach, personal trainer and fitness instructor. She is the creator of SHRINK SESSION: 30 Days To Tighten Your Body + Rewire Your Mind and Air In Sculpt. She is one of four Premiere Intensati Leaders in the world.

Turn Your Attention to the Arrow in Your Heart

If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart and relate to the wound.

-Pema Chodron

Human nature is a curious and often paradoxical thing.  We often act with compassion toward others who are suffering but never consider doing the same for ourselves.  We have a compassion double standard.  If we saw someone bleeding, we would jump into action to tend to the person’s wound right away.  We would place all our heartfelt and focused attention on the wounded instead of yelling at the person who caused the wound.  We would stay right there with them and take care of the most important thing — the wound and the hurt.

In my early twenties I was driving home around two in the morning from a job I had as a line cook at a busy restaurant.  As I drove up the Post Road in Fairfield, Connecticut, I saw a police car pulled over behind another car and a man on top of the police officer beating him with, what turned out to be, the policeman’s own baton.

I turned my car around right after I passed the scene and got out and ran back toward them (I know, I know … crazy, but that’s another post!).

The police officer’s head was badly bleeding, and someone else who had also pulled over had wrestled the guy (who was drunk), off of the cop and had him pinned down.  I was yelling for someone to call 911 while ripping my shirt over my head and putting it over the cop’s bleeding skull.  I didn’t think about the fact that I was in my bra on the side of the road in the dark with a bleeding cop and a crazy man and the danger of the situation.  I simply was attending to the cop’s wound. I wasn’t thinking about who did this at all.

It would be so wonderful that if the next time we felt hurt by the world, or by someone else, we focused on the arrow that landed in our heart.  Instead of spending time and energy telling that person about our boundaries and what’s acceptable and how they should communicate better, and all the things we think they should do so that we can feel right and better, we could turn our gaze back to our own wounded heart, lingering there with great kindness and gentleness for however long it took to feel better.

For example, you’re following your partner on a bike ride to the store in Brooklyn.  The streets are busy. You don’t know where you’re going.  Suddenly there are a million cars and last you saw her she was weaving in and out of traffic. You’ve lost sight of her.  You feel left behind.  She knows you don’t know where you’re going. You get very angry and pull over to the sidewalk and start texting her.  Where the F are you?!  When you find your way back to each other, the anger has set in, and you let loose verbally on her about being left, her inconsideration, her selfishness. And the rest of the day is ruined.

Or, you could tend to the arrow in your heart. When you lose sight of her and are aware of your upset, you stop and take a breath and realize that you are actually afraid. You feel shaky, vulnerable, embarrassed, and abandoned. You stay with these feelings right there on the sidewalk. You let yourself cry as a way to let the feelings come up and out in a genuine way. When your partner comes back and finds you, you describe how you were left behind as a child and how very painful that was.  You flood your own heart with care as if you are wrapping your arms around a lost child.

One of the things that keeps our attention on others when we are hurt is that we often don’t fully understand the role that the past plays in the present.

The past is rarely in the past.  The examination, healing and compassionate understanding of the past is, in my opinion, perhaps the single most powerful thing a human being can do with their life.

Understanding our past and healing our wounds brings us a freedom in the present that is unparalleled.  People who have done this work are some of the most available, deep and non-reactive people I have met.  They are fully available to be in the present because the past has no grip on them.

By looking at our past and doing our healing work, we not only free ourselves, but we free others from our entrapping projections onto them.  We no longer demand that they change in order for us to feel better.

Yes, we can try to surround ourselves with people who are genuine and can look at themselves and aren’t always passing the buck.  But it’s not always totally possible, and the point is not to sanitize our lives anyway.  The point is to keep tending to what hurts us until it’s healed.

We are naturally caring.  We rush to help others in catastrophic events. Yet when it comes to our own emotional wounds, we often get confused about what to do.

Here are three simple tips that have helped me when I find an arrow in my heart:

• Pause and take several breaths. Turn inside.
• Flood your heart with the warmth and care that you feel for a small puppy or of a loving mother for her child.
• Try to make a connection to your past and where you’ve been hurt before.

By tending to the arrow in our own hearts, we engage pain directly and can minimize further suffering.

Bindu Wiles has been a practicing Buddhist for 20 years.  She has her BFA in photography and her MFA in creative nonfiction. Bindu offers life coaching and online courses, and she is accepting registration for The Photo Essay Project.

The Missing Link

The connection between compassion and human happiness is woven into all of the great spiritual traditions. The Buddha, the Yoga Sutras and Jesus Christ were all quite specific about it (to name a few). The cultivation of gentleness and compassion for others and ourselves has the capacity to set our minds and our hearts free. Wow. That’s big. Unfortunately, it also appears to have been buried in the fine print of human civilization. Or maybe I just did not get the memo.

In the world I grew up in, we became happy by being successful, usually at others’ expense. It was not that we wanted others to suffer, it was just that for every Lance Armstrong there has to be thousands of losers, and we were OK with that. Growing up with those odds, the point seemed to be to get really good at something and fight like hell to get your share. True, we were supposed to have compassion for those near and dear to us ? you know, like family, a friend or, at least temporarily, a teammate. But that was the extent of it, and, as a guy, compassion really was not much of a priority.

That began to change for me when I became the grateful recipient of some world-class compassion from some people in not so world-class circumstances. In order for me to get sober from my addiction to alcohol, a number of people had to go out of their way to help an unsavory stranger. This not only had the effect of saving my life; it touched my heart. I have spent the last 21 years attempting to emulate the kindness of the strangers who worked together to save my life.

Despite their example and my own sincerity, it has taken the entirety of those 21 years to understand the role compassion plays in our experience of the world. Consider the experience of judgment, the mental and physical experience we endure as we hold another in contempt. No one considers this to be a good time. It might create a temporary relief from negative feelings we hold toward ourselves, but it is no day at the beach. Now consider the experience of compassion: the moment you went out of your way to perform a kind action; something as simple as giving someone on the side of the road a jump, cheering for the victory of someone you’ve never met or a kindness you extended when no one was looking. Feel what just the memory of kindness does to your whole body.

A wise man from Sri Lanka was asked what would spell the doom of humanity, and his answer was “the separation between you and me.” Compassion heals that separation. The cultivation of compassion is the cultivation of the mental and physical underpinnings of health and well-being. The effect it has on our bodies is no different than the effect it has on our relationships and our communities.

Compassion is an appropriate response to life’s complexity. It works and it’s infectious. If we offer it to those around us, we increase the likelihood that they will do the same.

For more information on how to optimize your health, visit http://rolfgates.com/.

Photo credit: hurleygurley

How Yoga and Meditation Will Help Us Create a Brighter, Better Future

by Christa Avampato

If ever there was time in our history when the world needs every ounce of creativity from every corner, it’s now. Our environment, governments and healthcare and education systems are just a few of the areas of society that desperately need reinvention. We must begin to look for solutions with new eyes and unwavering confidence that we can make a difference.

Your Potential for Greatness

I have been spending quite a bit of time thinking about how my work teaching yoga could help us begin to reframe our challenges and tap into the very deepest levels of our imaginations for solutions. A few months ago, I went to an event with Dr. Deepak Chopra. His new book, “The Soul of Leadership: Unlocking Your Potential for Greatness,” discusses the need for a wisdom-based society and the need to return to our roles as human beings instead of human doings. To achieve this state, he advocates for meditation and yoga as tools to tap our creativity, our greatest natural resource.

He talked about the need to stop the constant inner dialogue of our minds so the wise creativity within us will spontaneously rise to the surface. From his point of view, our very existence going forward hinges upon our ability to tap that deep wisdom. We know the right way forward in every area of our society; we already know what we need to do to create a more peaceful and just world. What we need now is a clear roadmap of how to reach those goals, step by step, and the courage to follow through. The evening with Dr. Chopra made me see meditation and yoga not as just healthy rituals, but as necessary practices to discover and reach our own potential so we can begin to transform our communities to healthier and happier places to live.

Compassion Matters

Shortly after the event with Dr. Chopra, I spent an afternoon at the American Museum of Natural History at a series of programs related to the exhibit “Brain: The Inside Story.” Dr. Richard Davidson of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds has spent over 30 years studying the role of contemplative meditation. Dr. Davidson and his staff have spent countless hours studying the brain activity of Tibetan monks who practice this form of meditation as part of their faith, with a supreme focus on compassion and empathy. Many times over, they have found that this practice creates a healthier, heartier immune system, staving off illness at every age and increasing the mind’s capacity to connect disparate pieces of information in new and creative ways.

To take their findings out of the lab and into society, the translational research conducted by the Center is their basis to create programming and training that uses those lessons to help all members of society to cultivate positive qualities. And it doesn’t take much time at al: 8 to 12 weeks of twice-daily sessions that last approximately 20 minutes each are enough to significantly create a healthier brain and more positive outlook on life. This research further supports the concept that yoga and mediation are resources to help people become the healthiest, happiest and most effective individuals they can be.

How Yoga and Meditation Shaped My Life

I began to teach yoga and meditation because the practice has had a supreme effect on my life. It helped me end a lifetime’s struggle with insomnia, something that seemed incurable from the time I was a very small child. It helped me to make peace with my father, who passed away before I had the chance to reconcile with him, releasing the burden and guilt that plagued my life and my relationships for too many years. It gives me the daily confidence to live my life by my own design, pursuing the many and varied passions that make every day a blessing. In short, it helps me to make a difference in ways I never thought possible. As Rumi so eloquently stated, yoga and mediation help me to “walk out like someone suddenly born into color.” I love that imagery and I want to help others do the same by giving them the gift of this practice. That’s why I teach.

If yoga and meditation could help me turn my life and health around, then I have every confidence that they can do the same for others, no matter what circumstances they face. In “The Soul of Leadership,” Dr. Chopra states that the soul’s mantra is “I am enough.” So often we think we need X, Y and Z to be successful, to make a contribution, to live our lives fully. You don’t need anything more than you have right now, at this very moment. If your lungs breathe and your heart beats, that is enough to help create a better world. There’s so much knowledge and confidence wrapped up in those three tiny words — “I am enough”— and it is a power we all so rightly deserve. Just as you are, you have everything you need to live the life of your own choosing, to make a difference. That’s the wisdom that yoga and meditation provide — a chance to get to know who you really are and what you’re meant to do.

Christa Avampato is a yoga instructor, writer, and product developer who believes that creativity and hope is the most powerful combination for living an extraordinary life. She lives in New York City with her rescue pup, Phineas, and tweets tidbits of inspiration @christanyc.

Photo credit: Kelly Loves Whales