YogaWorks' Take on the New Year's Resolution

Having domesticated in Santa Monica for almost a year now, I have fallen prey to the most obvious of cliches...I'm a YOGI. I love, love, love YOGA. Those who know me have listened to me drone on for periods of 30 minutes or more about the benefits of a regular practice, those both seen and unseen. Clearly I embrace the LA yogi stereotype freely and without reservation, in fact with pride. To that end I would like to share with you an email that I received from my yoga studio, YogaWorks (which has locations in NYC as well as the West Coast) regarding New Year's Resolutions that I found particularly insightful. Enjoy!


"RESOLUTION

"Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong".
- ELLA FITZGERALD

We all know the old cliche about resolutions - you quit smoking on Jan. 1 and are back off the wagon by Jan. 2. The type of resolutions that crash and burn before even getting close to Valentine's Day could be described as "January Penance" or "Stuff I'm making myself do because I'm bad." First of all, you are not bad. Everyone else just spent a month eating sugar cookies and watching movies in their pajamas instead of going to the gym, but it's been dark and cold and it's okay to cut yourself some slack. If you want your annual goals to be successful, it's best to choose them from a place of kindness.

When you think about changes you would like to see in your life over the next year, keep in mind your deepest values and focus on dreams that get you excited. For example, say that spending more time with your family feels important to you. You may love the idea of having a group dinner, but cooking can feel like torture after a long day of work. Rather than drumming up a precise schedule of meals and ingredients that you need to stick to (does not sound fun), instead make your resolution simply getting more excited about cooking. That might involve pouring over beloved old cookbooks, exploring new ones, and thrilling over the nurturing, sensual possibilities of providing beautiful meals as an act of love.

For many of us, this past fall was a tough time, and the last thing we need is to be even harder on ourselves at the start of a new year. By choosing resolutions that will bring more of what your soul personally craves, whether it's spiritual connection, warmth, passion, adventure, or healing, your success is inevitable."

-excerpted from YogaWorks LA News - Jan/Feb 2009

You Gotta Start Somewhere...Running Charades

One of the most obvious and somewhat disturbing differences between New York City and Los Angeles is SPACE. There's just more of it in LA, both inside and out. For this reason, people spend a considerable amount of time entertaining at home. Dinner parties and bar-b-cue's abound. The most appealing part of the evening for me is usually the game. Sometimes of the board nature (Balderdash is a recent obsession; one that I imported to NY for the Christmas holiday), but more often games are selected that require no tools other than your own physical being, for example Running Charades. It's like regular charades but on crack, which I find highly appropriate for LA. As if the dominant industry in this town wasn't competitive enough, now our "games" need to be cut-throat too.

It goes like this: Each player comes prepared with a list of ten or so books, movies, television shows, plays, songs, what have you. If you are already charade savvy, your list contains a theme (last time I played I devised a list made up entirely of films staring Burt Reynolds...it was the high point of my evening as I spent much of the rest of the time feigning both excitement and devastation as other people guessed correctly and bolted from the room). The person with the list sits in the hallway while players from opposing teams are located in separate rooms to avoid eavesdropping or more accurately answer-stealing. A player is sent (usually running) to the clue-giver for the first title on the list. Once a teammate guesses correctly (the same rules as regular charades apply) he or she runs full steam to retrieve the next title. And it goes on and on until all ten titles on the list are named and a winner is declared. The game remains oddly quiet but for the sound of feet running back and forth from the clue-giver or the occasional celebration of a particularly difficult answer or in some cases an unfortunate but frequent head-on collision in the hallway. Do not be fooled by the silence, the intensity is high.

The other popular game around these parts is MURDER. I kid you not.