**NEW SESSIONS & DECEMBER SPECIALS**

Here are two great NEW types of sessions!!


Buddy Sessions:

Workout with a partner. Personal Training or Yoga sessions for 2 people with 1 trainer.
Save some cash, exercise, AND have a great time ;)

DECEMBER SPECIAL: 1 session for $100 OR 3 sessions for $285

• Great present for your significant other, best friend, or relative
• Get inspired by your exercise buddy and have a blast
• Save mucho money




½ & ½ Yoga and Thai Massage:

An hour and a half ALL about YOU. Drop into a meditative state while strengthening your entire body with 45minutes of vinyasa yoga. Then become completely passive as you receive 45minutes of Thai massage.

DECEMBER SPECIAL: 1 (90 min) session for $120 OR 3 (90min) sessions for $285

• Guaranteed to reduce stress and tension
• Will increase circulation and flexibility
• Strengthens and stretches muscles
• Perfect gift to put on YOUR wish list

Call 201-240-4288 or email esparkes@gmail.com to book your sessions!

City Harvest

Feeling full from your Thanksgiving meals?
Now is the perfect time to do some giving.

One of my favorite organizations to donate to is City Harvest.


"Now serving New York City for more than 25 years, City Harvest is the world's first food rescue organization, dedicated to feeding the city's hungry men, women, and children.

This year, City Harvest will collect over 25 million pounds of excess food from all segments of the food industry, including restaurants, grocers, corporate cafeterias, manufacturers, and farms. This food is then delivered free of charge to nearly 600 community food programs throughout New York City using a fleet of trucks and bikes as well as volunteers on foot. Each week,
City Harvest helps over 260,000 hungry New Yorkers find their next meal.

City Harvest also addresses hunger’s underlying causes by supporting affordable access to nutritious food in low-income communities, educating individuals, families, and communities in the prevention of diet-related diseases, channeling a greater amount of local farm food into high-need areas, and enhancing the ability of our agency partners to feed hungry men, women, and children."

You can donate your time in volunteering, individual or corporate gifts, or food drives.

Gluten-Free Girl and Thanksgiving

Many of you already know that I am a gluten-free girl. Not the Gluten-Free Girl (a well known blogger, chef, and author), but a gluten-free girl.

What is gluten, and why would I be free of it? Read about Gluten Intolerance and Celiac Disease at www.celiac.com


My favorite hip and cool gluten free resource is Celiac Chicks. You can watch one of the celiac chicks in this (long but informative) video.

Now, how does all this relate to THANKSGIVING?
Holiday eating can be torturous with food allergies and restrictions (missing out on bread stuffing, pies, sauces, etc.), especially on a holiday that's all about one enormous meal.

BUT...
there's hope.

One of my personal training clients, a chef, suggested that instead of trying to replace those holiday staples with gluten free alternatives, try new recipes that will appeal to gluten eaters and gluten free alike.
This makes me happy.
Very very happy.
:)

You can experiment with recipes that will give a new flair to your traditional Thanksgiving meal too!
I'll try to make Quinoa Stuffing and maybe Rum Apple Cake.

(recipes & photos from www.food52.com)

There are also some good recipes at Gluten-Free Girl Thanksgiving 2009


Want some other tips for the holidays? Read my post from last year: Thanksgiving 2008

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

have FAITH see CHANGE

This weekend, in my yoga teacher training course at OM yoga center, we began to delve into the teachings of The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali.

Patañjali organized the study of yoga. He wrote the Yoga-Sutras in the second or third century and people still use it today as a guide for observing the human mind. The word sutra means thread, an appropriate description of the work, as Patañjali threaded and interspersed the ancient yogic ideas with practical meditative techniques.

According to Chip Hartfranft's translation the Yoga-Sutra is a, "collection of 196 compact observations on the nature of consciousness and liberation [that] remains unrivaled for its penetrating insight. Though brief, the Yoga-Sutra manages to cut to the heart of the human dilemma."


This is one of my favorite quotes from the translation...

"The forces that give rise to change exist before change becomes visible."

To me this comes down to having FAITH. Faith that you are where you are supposed to be at any given moment.

Do you ever feel like you're NEVER going to get what you want?
Or that you've been working SO hard towards one goal, which always seems to be unattainable?

I do and I often find myself getting stuck in the "What If's" of a situation.
What if I don't make enough money?
What if I never lose those 5lbs?
What if my foot pain never goes away?
What if I'm single forever?

And then when things do happen, (I financially support myself, I make positive changes to my body image, my injuries heal, I'm in an amazing relationship, etc.) I look back on the stress and worry of the "What Ifs" and wish I could've just relaxed and had faith that everything would work out.

This reminds me of my previous post Living RIGHT NOW! with a Buddha Body
If I have FAITH that I am doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing RIGHT NOW! then it is impossible to label something 'good' or 'bad'. If something is neither good nor bad, it just Is. If everything just Is at any given moment in time, then you can feel content in knowing that you are on your path. The forces that give rise to the changes you want may be unrecognizable to you until after the change has occurred.

All you need is FAITH that you are on your path!

(cue Beatles song)

;)