Daily Practice for September

As it happens sometimes, I have neglected my yoga practice. Regular practice, turned into some practice while on vacation, turned into sporadic practice by the end of the vacation, turned into no practice while I recovered from a mild health hiccup after vacation. Since September 1 kicks off National Yoga Month, I can think of no better time to renew my commitment to practice.

As bloggers do, I'll chronicle the progression here. I just printed out a YogaWorks coupon for "10 days of yoga for 10 dollars." There are loads of these deals available for yoga month. Head to the National Yoga Month site to search by zip code for studios offering new students a free week of classes. The catch here is that you have to be a new student for the studio. In San Francisco where I live, I've been to many of the studios offering the free week.

It's going to be an exciting month!

The Sorry State of Broadband Adoption in the United States

PCWorld's Mark Sullivan explains quite eloquently what's wrong with the broadband industry in the United States, and he suggests a public broadband option as a solution. In his article, he says he's a socialist when it comes to broadband. Me too. As a writer, I want to reach all the people who would be interested in what I have to say, not just the ones who can afford it. Anyway, read the article. It's pretty good.

Mixed Feelings About Judith Hanson Lasater's Yoga Journal Letter

Image courtesy of Yoga Journal

What a star-studded letters section in the September 2010 issue of Yoga Journal. First Sharon Gannon, co-founder of Jivamukti yoga, expresses concern about a review critiquing a DVD by Trudie Styler (that's Mrs. Sting to a lot of people). Then there's the letter by Judith Hanson Lasater, who co-founded Yoga Journal in the mid-1970's. The letter respectfully and gracefully takes issue with some of Yoga Journal's sexier ads. As a yogi and former magazine journalist, I have mixed feelings about her point of view.

"I am confused because I do not understand how photos of naked or half-naked women are connected with the sale of practice products for asana, an important part of yoga," writes Lasater.

As a full-time yogi and part-time yoga instructor, I totally get what she's saying. There's enough pressure to be thin, pretty, and sexy. Do we really need that from yoga, the one place where many of us go to get in touch with what's inside, free of judgment? These ads feel counter to Yoga Journal's editorial message. I get that same contradictory feeling when I read natural health magazines, which can be rife with ads for diet and nutritional pills that don't seem natural at all.

And yet as a former magazine editor, I accept that this contradiction is part of the business. The fact that Yoga Journal has a healthy core of advertisers is a gift in today's publishing industry. My own magazine career came to an end when the publication I managed was discontinued for financial reasons. Did our little magazine run ads that ran askew of its DIY "girls are beautiful as they are" message? Yes. How far would we have gone before drawing a line? I don't know. We didn't have the luxury of finding out.

I do feel confident that yoga-magazine readers are savvy about the difference between advertising and editorial and that they wouldn't feel pressured to look a certain way just because an advertisement suggested it. At least, I hope that is the case.

Yoga has gone more mainstream, as Lasater points out on her Facebook page. You can most definitely see that in Yoga Journal. In the September issue, celebrity musician Sarah McLachlan graces the front cover where traditionally a yoga instructor would be featured. That example shows the opportunities offered by going mainstream. However, Lasater's letter points to the challenges, for which I see no easy solutions.

Yoga Class Canceled Today

I'm going to take my own advice (for once) and stay home when I'm sick, so unfortunately today's 6:00pm yoga class at Temescal Arts Center is canceled. Be sure to attend Karla's Vinyasa flow class next Tuesday, August 31. As always, our full schedule is up on the Yoga Collective site. Enjoy the weather and stay healthy.

Back from Bali

I spent the past two weeks in Indonesia, mostly in Bali. I did my first dive vacation on Bunaken island in Northern Sulawesi, Indonesia. I did a bunch of home practice (well, hotel practice) and even managed a studio yoga class at The Yoga Barn in Ubud, Bali. The experience was great. More later. Very tired.

Shelfari to Goodreads

My Goodreads bookshelf of titles I've read.

I finally switched social reading services from Shelfari, where I've been a member for years, to Goodreads, which I just joined today. I've been meaning to switch for sometime now. It feels good, like when you finally put away that sweater that's been laying crumpled on the floor for so long it became a bas-relief on carpet. But deep in the back of your mind, the clutter was bugging you. And finally, you took five whole minutes to fold the sweater neatly in its drawer and you felt a renewed (yet false) sense of control over your otherwise chaotic life. And by "you," I mean "me." But anyway...

The point was that it took less than 20 minutes to make the actual switch from Shelfari to Goodreads, and I should have done it ages ago. There's nothing worse than a dying social network, and that was what Shelfari was to me. It had a full catalog of books and some good features. It liked its tagging system and its pretty shelves, which I could add as a widget on my blog. It had a good blog, and some cool groups. The problem is that no one I knew was on Shelfari. The only person who tried to friend me online was trying to pitch his novel. And since Amazon bought Shelfari, I expected to be able to post reviews directly from Shelfari to Amazon.com. I couldn't. Boo, Shelfari! That's a no-brainer integration.

The export was easy. Through Shelfari, I exported my library as a .tsv (tab separated values) file. Goodreads imported the file pretty easily, though it turned all my tags into bookshelves and it marked everything as having already been read. No biggie. I'll just go back and fix that for my 40 books.

The other service I was considering was LibraryThing. Now, people LOVE LibraryThing. According to users who gave me an opinion on Facebook and Twitter, they love the taxonomy features. There are loads of ways to catalog books, so you can find recommendations that are made for you. I didn't take full advantage of categories on Shelfari, so I figured that wasn't such a sell for me. Plus LibraryThing costs money once you've cataloged more than 200 books, although it's pretty cheap at $25 for a lifetime membership.

Ultimately what sold me on Goodreads were my friends. A scan through my Gmail account found 25 friends right off the bat. (Only four people had ever accepted my friendship through Shelfari.) And these are people whose book recommendations I trust, since many of them worked with me at VIZ Media, a publishing house for Japanese entertainment.

I'm a library nerd. I head to the San Francisco Public Library at least twice a month. I love the smell of the stacks. I love that a homeless person, a law clerk, and I are sitting next to each other, sharing a need for books. But since I'm an online gal, a book social network is a highly-required complementary tool. Oh, the friends I'll meet, the groups I'll join, and the book recommendations I'll get. I have high hopes, Goodreads!

iPhone Jailbreaking: Why Right Can be Wrong

While I applaud the U.S Copyright Office ruling that Apple's cannot legally lock iPhones, I will not be cracking my iPhone 3Gs for the reasons mentioned in Daniel Ionescu's PC World blog post. Basically messing with my iPhone voids my warranty. I like my warranty.

I was one lucky sucker last month. When I upgraded my iPhone to the OS4 operating system the day it came out, my phone essentially died: no calls and no text messages. I tried firmware upgrades, backups, resetting network settings, resetting everything. Nothing worked, and I was getting mad.

After four days of silence, I backed up my phone and took the ailing hardware to the Apple store with only one day left on the warranty. The happy Apple Geniuses (they are unusually happy, aren't they?) simply swapped my broken 3Gs for a new 3Gs, and they sent me on my way with AppleCare extended warranty in hand in case it happened again. The unfortunate out-of-warranty iPhone user next to me did not leave the store so happy.

I would love to download non-sanctioned apps, use Bluetooth, and bypass the tyrannical blackmail that is AT&T's international calling plan, but I would also like to be sure that I'm not shelling out hundreds of dollars should I need to replace the phone again.

Unfortunately, Apple still has the upper hand where my phone is concerned. And that's why I may go Android when my current AT&T contract is over.

Two Great, Totally-Opposite Books About Zen Buddhism

I recently finished two books about Zen Buddhism, Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies, & the Truth about Reality and Alan Watts' The Way of Zen. I read Watts' book before reading Warner's book. If I could do it over again (which I can't, particularly according to Zen philosophy), I would read the books in the reverse order. Hardcore Zen's combination of personal memoir, humor, and Zen fundamentals is like stepping into a hot tub of Zen knowledge. You'll enjoy the experience. The information packed into the The Way of Zen feels more like an icy cold plunge, uncomfortable yet effective.