Kryptonite and Ideas in Everyday Ramblings

It is most definitely lily time here. I did see a gladiola just starting to bloom day before yesterday but didn’t have my camera and they are hard to capture anyway but sure come in those beautiful jewel tones.

So I am listening to a series of talks by the scholar and writer Georg Feuerstein called The Lost Teachings of Yoga. It is fascinating and very serious. He answers a bunch of questions I have had all along about the differences and similarities between Yoga and Buddhism much to my satisfaction.

This is my kind of guy. He died a few years ago at 65 (in his home in the Canadian forest where he had lived for over ten years) from complications of diabetes. My guess would be this is Type 1 diabetes we are talking about here. He was born in Germany and spent time in India, the Middle East and the United States.

He has a pretty thick German accent and he is kind of well.. dour in his presentation and so I just burst out into full throated laugher when he said the following about one of the moral disciplines in the yogic traditions…

"As everybody knows food can be incredibly consoling and when chocolate becomes our kryptonite its time to look at our eating habits..."

Without a doubt chocolate and caffeine are my Krptonite. The siren song, they sing to my weaknesses… I have had some slippage back with Diet Coke and alcohol on occasion lately but I can periodically restrain from using them. It has pretty much been never since I discovered chocolate and then caffeine that I have not been in their thrall somehow. The delivery system has become higher quality but still…

I am also reading an electronic book called The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner by Michael Stone. I discovered this book because I was nosey and looked at the cover of a book a woman was reading on the bus. Then I got out my phone and looked it up and ordered it on the spot.

I’d never even heard of Michael Stone. He is a therapist Zen Teacher and Yoga Practitioner/Teacher and writer with a very dynamic community in Toronto. Unlike Feuerstein he is very articulate and engaging and full of vigor and the desire to change the world. I might see if I can seek out some of his local followers. I am in need of a community of practitioners.

Not just students. Though I could use a few more of those too.

Wish me luck saying the right things to entice folks to my Caregiver class tonight. I have had a very interesting week thinking about all this. One of the rare folks at work that I adore does a lot of volunteering, mostly in the hospice arena and he said to me today that it would be useful to just accept that I am not going to always please my coordinator and that expectations for volunteers can be way out of line for what their skill sets actually are.

How am I supposed to know how to encourage these caregivers with no real training and unit volunteers that have their own agendas and nurses who have a job to do and would just not rather deal?

Either I will find a way or I won’t. But a little support might be helpful and good.

In the meantime I have some ideas… wish me luck. Think relaxed caregivers thoughts our way, okay?