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Today I cannot stop thinking about those little decisions that end up changing the entire course of life. A little over three years ago I decided on the spur of the moment to accompany my friend Courtney to Bikram yoga. At the time, I thought that it was a fantastic work out and I enjoyed the benefits it gave me in the areas of flexibility, strength, focus, breath. I never suspected that I would find myself three years later teaching at that same studio. Sure, there were tons of decisions that steered me towards teacher training, but that very first class was the starting point to the journey. Had I never gone to that first class, I would perhaps not have discovered it until I moved to Hawaii, where I fell into the company of Bikram yogis through scuba diving. Who knows if only a single year into my practice I would have been ready to attend teacher training? So that very first class changed the course of my life – at the time perhaps just to a tiny degree, but over time my course was drastically altered by that small adjustment.
I went to Hawaii to go to graduate school in molecular biology. What I found in Hawaii was a passion for life and the realization that I had the power to choose my direction. I was not a pawn in the grand scheme of things – I am the queen, able to move front, back, right left and diagonally. Hell, I even made the decision to leave the game of graduate school, a game that I had worked my entire life to enter in the first place. I was probably about 12 years old when I decided that I wanted to be a research scientist; I held onto that goal because of its familiarity, even though it brought me no joy. That is until I realized that I held the key to my life and my happiness. My yoga was a huge part of that discovery. So I went to Hawaii to attend graduate school and left Hawaii a year later to attend Bikram Yoga Teacher training. And how did I make the decision to go to training? I started work trade at the studio because I could not afford to continue to pay for classes. I cannot even take all the credit for that move, since I mostly just talked about it until Chris one day introduced me to Cas and handed me the work trade application. Work trade turned into six days a week when graduate student became merely a title rather than an actual occupation. Six days a week and the students knew me. One day one of those students asked me a simple question after class. “When are you going to training?” The way she phrased it caught my attention. She didn’t ask “Are you going to training?” That question would have invited a simple answer, which is the one I had been giving, which was “Nope, can’t afford it.” No, she asked me when I was going and I realized that the answer was, “When I figure out how to afford it.” That day I made up my mind to figure that out. I applied to the scholarship thinking, “If I don’t get this, I will try again in spring.”
Turns out I didn’t get the scholarship. And yet I still went to teacher training. Two things got me there: My beloved Hyundai, Biscuit and Chris.
After teacher training I moved to the Bahamas. Oh, what I would give for there to have been a Bikram studio there. The following months I won’t recall in detail here. I learned a hard lesson about self fulfillment and taking the beauties of life for granted. I learned about trying to force happiness and I learned about the importance of goals and growth. I also loved and laughed a lot. I floated amidst a thousand translucent comb jellies;
I was knocked around by tropical fruit;
I sat on the second floor of an abandoned resort and watched evening fall over a perfectly flat ocean;
I rescued a potcake and named her Gidget;
I tromped through the jungle in search of a blue hole;
I had a million little adventures. And I got to do it all with someone I love.
Two years after moving away from Arizona I am back. But I have to remember not to give myself grief for finding myself right back where I started. Instead I have to give credit to how I got here. Each step of the way has been beautiful. Maybe this is where I need to be to take my next step, to discover something new and exciting about life and about myself. I had a student thank me for class the other day literally in tears of gratitude. I change lives doing what I do. One sweaty 90 minute class at a time, I help people help themselves.
Every single day, every single choice has the potential to change your entire life. That is an incredibly empowering fact of life. Never, ever, are you trapped. You only have to open your eyes to opportunity and never be afraid to give something a chance, even if it scares you.
So if you live in the Phoenix area, come sweat with me : )
I must be spending too much time in the kitchen and not enough time out on the water. This afternoon I will remedy that, having finally realized that I need saltwater, and not just sweat and tears, to keep my sanity. I have been out of the ocean for almost four weeks and that, of course, is unacceptable. To be fair, I have been preoccupied with getting my Bikram classes started and beginning my running routine again. And when I was not emailing and facebooking about yoga or running along the roadside toward the beach then I was probably pouting that people are not yet flocking to my classes to find wellness in the form of a 90 minute hot yoga session. I have decided to keep the Bikram time and the running time and nix the pouting time. In its place I will make diving time. I can run and work in the afternoons four times a week and dive a couple days a week. No time for pouting and more time enjoying the Bahamas.
Back to why I must be spending too much time in the kitchen: I have another cooking tale for you. This one is actually a few weeks old, but the story is too fun to keep to myself and the recipe is absolutely delicious. That’s right, you get a story AND a recipe today. We’re coming into summer, but we haven’t left the cold weather completely behind and so now is perhaps the last opportunity to share this soup with you during an at least semi-appropriate season. I am not opposed to soup in the summer, but let us be honest, it just is not the same as soup on a chilly night after a cold day in the water (or snow or whatever brand of winter your home offers). Sitting, in fact, exactly in the spot I now occupy in the Starbucks in Cable Beach, I had the pulled chicken epiphany. The brainstorm spawned two fantastic dishes: chicken chili and chicken tortilla soup. The latter is the subject of the day. There are a multitude of renditions of tortilla soup, but all share some common elements. To make a successful soup, you need tomatoes, onion, garlic and cilantro. Ingredients and spices vary from this point, but I maintain that without those four you may as well not make the attempt. I may seem rigid on the matter and in theory I remain so, although my steadfastness was shaken when push almost came to shove.
The day I made the soup, Chris and I went shopping for ingredients only to find everything except the cilantro. Choosing not to despair, we headed to another market a little down the way. One danger, living on an island this small, is that one store being completely out is often a harbinger of all other stores also being completely out. Such was the case and in the basket where the cilantro should have been, we found only parsley. The next best option was to investigate the spice isle and look for dried cilantro. I was not nearly as excited about this prospect, being a firm believer in fresh herbs whenever possible. We found the dried cilantro, but the only brand available cost $5.50. Since I 99% of the time opt for fresh cilantro over dried, I could not see the logic in spending that amount. Fresh cilantro is only $1.87 per bushel. I shook my head and told Chris to put the dried stuff back. I would make the soup sans cilantro. Thankfully, Chris was scandalized by the suggestion and so led us back to the produce section to make one last sweep in our search. We lifted bushels of parsley but found only rogue sprigs of cilantro. Rogue…sprigs…
“How much do you need?” Chris asked me, pulling the sprigs from the parsley. I only needed 1/4 cup to make the soup and so we delved in, searching for more cilantro. And we found just enough cilantro to give that oh-so-important flavor to the soup. But now we had another dilemma because cilantro was not priced by the pound, but by the bushel and we had far less than that. We did not want to pay full price for a tenth of the product and we also did not want to try leaving the store pinching a few stems of herbage. Luckily, celery has leaves that camouflage cilantro quite nicely. We bought the celery after tucking the cilantro in amongst its leaves and left the store with the conviction that we had found a mutually beneficial solution. We got our cilantro and some celery and the store made a sale and did not lose anything since no one else was going to pay for that cilantro anyway.
And so here it is! The priceless ingredient for the soup!
To go along with it, the recipe:
Ingredients:
1/2 bag black beans (actually a little less) – precooked; a can of black beans rinsed and drained would suffice, but the fresh ones make a big difference I think
1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast
14 oz whole peeled tomatoes
1/2 onion chopped – divide into 1/3 and 2/3 portions
1 red bell pepper chopped- divide in 2
3-4 corn tortillas (more for thicker soup) roughly chopped
1 can corn, drained
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
3 cloves garlic chopped – divided in 2/3 and 1/3 portions
4 cups chicken stock
3 TBS oil
1 bay leaf
1 Tbs cumin
1 Tbs + 1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cayenne (how much you use depends on taste)
1 lime
salt
cheese of preference topping
Method:
Of course, first you need to prepare the black beans – I did this the day before so that I didn’t have to worry about timing.
Boil enough water to cook the chicken in – boil the chicken breasts 15-20 minutes or until done
While the chicken cooks:
Puree the peeled tomatoes
Heat 1 Tbs oil and saute the 2/3 garlic, 2/3 onion, 1/2 bell pepper and tortillas about 5 minutes
Add the pureed tomatoes, stock, cilantro, bay leaf, cumin and chili – Bring to a boil, reduce and let simmer for 20-30 minutes
The chicken should finish cooking while the broth boils. Take the chicken out of the water and using two forks, shred the chicken.
Remove the broth from the heat and the bay leaf from the broth and puree the mixture – a hand mixer works well if you have one, but so does a blender. Return to pot but do not place back on the heat quite yet. At this point if the soup looks a little thick you can add a bit of water to thin it out to your liking.
Heat 2 Tbs oil in a large pan – I used a little hot oil, a nice addition if you have any – and saute 1/3 garlic, 1/3 onion and 1/2 bell pepper for 1 minute. Add shredded chicken. Spice with cayenne and 1 tsp chili powder. Squeeze the juice of 1 lime onto the chicken. Cook for about 3-5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the beans (drained) and the corn (drained). Cook for five minutes, stirring frequently.
Put the broth back on the heat and add the chicken mixture. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 15 minutes. Don’t simmer for too long or the soup will get very thick.
Enjoy topped with shredded cheese
Other toppings you might consider: avocado, tortilla chips, sour cream
Here’s another special tidbit about the soup: Chris made the corn tortillas from scratch. Since he rarely writes down or tells me his recipes, I don’t have that to share with you, but a recipe should not be difficult to find. I highly suggest that whenever you have the chance to do so, make things from scratch. Store bought tortillas, pita and bread are quite convenient, but also packed with sugar and preservatives to guarantee a long shelf life. Making them from scratch is also cheaper than buying them packaged. If you have the time, save yourself the money, a few grams of sugar and compounds you were never meant to consume and whip up these corn tortillas yourself. You can even add some salt and bake them crispy for the tortilla chip topping!
Enjoy! (And don’t forget the cilantro!)
On Saturday I had a fantastic, wonderful day. I taught two classes back to back, went for a three mile run and then immediately jumped into the hot room for my own practice. I got all nice and clean and then headed out the door to go get Chris from work. I jumped in the car feeling all sassy and turned the key. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Utterly confused I checked to make sure that the lights had not been left on. The lights were off. Some how or another I must have managed to drain the battery but had no idea how. I did not have time to sit around and think too deeply about how it happened, I just needed a jump. Luckily Melrose is chock full of people who work with Chris and also luckily, one of them was home. We hooked up the jumper cables and tried to start the car. Nothing. Realizing that there were two batteries we hooked it up to the other battery. Nothing. Now I began to sweat because if this car broke down it would not be a pretty thing since we only have one car and do not have four thousand dollars sitting around to replace it. Now I do not know anything about cars so I did not even attempt to look under the hood to try and spot the culprit. All I could do was accept Neil’s gracious offer to let me use his car to get Chris from work.
I was disappointed that I now had to offer Chris the bad news instead of just a happy, smiling me. I especially was sorry to have to tell him that it was not just the battery, since we tried jumping both of them without any success. To further our plight, the next day was Sunday and in the Bahamas nothing much more than grocery stores and bars are open on Sunday so there was not much of a chance that we would find an auto parts store or a mechanic open. And the cherry on top of it all? I teach a 6 am class on Monday morning. I repeat, I know nothing about cars and so I had no way to even guess what the issue was and so decided to not jump to any conclusions until Chris popped the hood and gave his verdict. We came home and thanks to daylight savings time had plenty of sunlight left in the day. Turns out that it only took Chris a brief moment to diagnose the problem.
“Okay race car driver, I thought you said you hadn’t been taking corners fast.”
To my defense, I really had not been taking corners any faster than I usually do and I would not qualify my driving as reckless. Unfortunately, the evidence worked against me.
“The whole battery slid over and snapped this bracket completely off! Of course it wouldn’t start and a jump didn’t work. Didn’t you notice that the thing was broken?”
Again to my defense, it was Neil that connected the cables. Although I admit that my eyes had peeked at the battery as well and had not caught that it was completely disconnected from the engine. I will take this moment, now being sure that it was only a battery-related problem, to point out that karma completely failed me in this department. Only a week prior I had given a stranger a jump in the grocery store parking lot. Surely that should have deposited at least a few bucks into my car karma account. This, however, was one of those sad reminders that the universe does not work on a sort of simple checks and balances. Apparently I took a corner too quickly and no amount of good deeds for fellow car owners was going to save me from snapping that bracket. Physics wins in the end.
“At least it is something stupid and not a short. Can you think of anything metal that we have that has two holes in it?”
“Only thing that comes to mind is a pop tab. And that is no good.”
“No, it needs to be steel or copper.”
Our hunt around the car and the apartment was fruitless and we came back inside defeated for the evening. Chris went into the yoga room to practice and I sat down to read. An hour and a half later Chris announced that he had found a possible solution to our problem. We were going to go strip car parts off an abandoned car that had been sitting two miles down the road for several months.
Sunday morning arrived, and we slept through most of it but immediately after a breakfast of banana pancakes we grabbed the pliers and screwdriver and started the two mile trek to the rusted out, abandoned Oldsmobile. Walking along the side the road is not the safest endeavor since sidewalks are a feature only found in the wealthier, touristy parts of the island. Speed limits have no meaning here and while some cars sail down the windy two lane road at breakneck speed others creep along, seemingly no faster than their cars idle. WIth the limited visibility around bends this is a dangerous combination and can turn out badly for anyone strolling along the shoulder. With this in mind, I was quite happy to see white bags of clippings lining the side of the road where overgrown brush had until recently hugged the blacktop. The sun was shining and the wind was blowing just enough to have a cooling effect without becoming nettlesome. I had to hand it to this Sunday morning. Sleeping in, banana pancakes, unpaved sidewalks and sunshine.
Reaching the Oldsmobile took climbing over a dilapidated chain link fence and winding our way through knee-high brittle grass. There it was on the top of a knoll as non-sequitur as the circular stone landscaping feature next to which it was situated. There, inside its rusty innards Chris found the wire to which the bracket we needed had been attached. Someone else had beaten us to our bracket and probably only took it because cutting the wire was easier than unscrewing the attachment. I wonder if they know what a valuable piece they carried away with them that day. Fortunately, Chris is one of those problem-solver types and was not easily discouraged. We poked around the stripped car for a while longer until Chris saw the solution in what I can only describe as a wire attached to a steel washer. He attacked the wire about four inches from the washer with the pair of pliers. We had not thought to bring a tool for cutting, but with resolute pinching and twisting, Chris had soon separated the needed piece from the rest.
Our walk back was just as sunny as our walk there, made even more so perhaps by the possibility of a running car on the horizon. Chatting merrily on the jaunt home, we were back in no time at all it seemed. Chris popped the hood, inserted the wires into the unbroken part of the bracket that still encircled the battery pole and hammered it down tightly with the help of the wrench. He placed the washer between the washers that had been liberated when the bracket broke and screwed all three together. He hopped into the front seat of the car, turned the key and the Beast roared to life. I let out a grateful sigh and promised to take corners with more care. Despite it being Sunday, Chris had come through and figured out how to get me to work the next morning and the process had even been rather enjoyable. Thank the Bahamas for sunny days and abandoned Oldsmobiles. Even if, as it turns out, a thunderstorm chased all my morning yogis away and my shoulders are tender from sunburn.
Where am I? Currently I am living on New Providence in the Bahamas. What am I doing here? Living.
A little about who I am and how I got here. For the majority of my life I was a student, and not just in the capacity that I attended school. I took my career as a student seriously, becoming valedictorian of my high school, graduating university with a 4.0, studying abroad at a field school, living to pass my GREs with flying colors so that I might go on to graduate school to earn my PhD in cell and molecular biology, the first step in a long career doing research and teaching. I got as far as graduate school before realizing that life should involve happiness and fulfillment, neither of which I was achieving in class or in lab. Had I gone anywhere other than Hawaii, I might still be on the path I had set out for myself long ago. Instead I slacked off in graduate school and went diving instead. Over the past year, my direction has shifted from a PhD track to dive master and Bikram yoga teacher. For anyone who has ever had their life train derailed, you know it’s both exhilarating and terrifying.
In May I took permanent leave from graduate school, in August I packed my bags, sold my car, found my dog a home and left Hawaii. Why? The answer to that question is so cliche that I almost blush to type it. I followed a boy. Roll your eyes, “awww”, smirk, just do what you gotta do because here comes the next one: “Follow your heart”. I was in love and in a position to take life by the reins and kick it into a gallop. I moved to the Bahamas. Three weeks later I was in Las Vegas to begin my 9 week training to become Bikram Yoga teacher. From Hawaii to the Bahamas to Vegas back to the Bahamas. From student to dive master to Bikram yoga teacher. That has been the last nine months of my life. I believe I have earned the right to another cliche: “Change is good.” At least it can be as long as those changes are made with honest intention and an open mind.
That is the highly abridged version of how I came to be where I am and a bit of the back story as to why I believe in “no worries”, “living the dream”, “all you need is love” and still find myself biting my nails anxiously because I can’t shake the feeling that I should be DOING something. Some days I just can’t shake that student mentality. Hopefully on Monday far fewer of those days will plague me. Monday morning I begin teaching Bikram Yoga at a local wellness studio. There is not a Bikram Yoga Studio here, much to my chagrin, and so it is up to me to launch a Bikram yoga community. It took me 3 months to find a studio and set up my classes and I am two days away from walking into that hot room as a Bikram teacher. Wish me luck!
So that wraps up my little “about me” section. To come is a blog about my Bahamian adventures, from tales of diving to yoga news with everything from recipes and rum ramblings in between. But right now I have to pick up Chris from work. One of us has to bring home the metaphorical turkey bacon.
