As you munch your lunch, you might want to contemplate the fact that there are only 11 hours left to purchase your ‘namas’play’ T-shirts(s).
We reached our minimum needed to print and ship, and a quick look at similar T-shirts seems to indicate that we have a top-seller! (Lots of T-shirts show ‘zero sold, and a small number of 1’s, 2’s or 3’s (units sold)” so we’ve apparently got a winner here with FIVE sold!)
Eleven hours left to get your ‘winning’ ‘namas’play’ T-shirts! Have a nice day.
Here is a photo I’ve titled “Artful Tomato Shaped Like an Egg, Reposing in a Beam of Sunlight” and I’m offering signed numbered prints for sale. Friends keep asking me if they can buy prints of my work so I’m offering 100 numbered and signed prints of this photo. I’ve decided to price my work on a sliding scale and the price of the first numbered signed print (1/100) is one and a half trillion dollars ($1.5 trillion).
The full price list is below. Have a nice day. I’ll be setting up a PayPal account in a day or two but in the mean time you can purchase a print by contacting me in the comments here or by message on Facebook on my Roberto Blizzard page (http://on.fb.me/1yrmDhl). You can also contact me on Twitter (@VeganYogaDude) or Instagram (@veganyogadude).
First come first served, and one photo per person. I love you all. Namaste.
Prints are 8″x10″
Shipping included within North America.
Price Schedule:
#1 – $1.5 trillion
#2 – 1.5 billion
#3 – $1.5 million
#4 – $150,000
#5 -$15,000
#6 – $1,500
#7 to #100 – $150 each
Please indicate which number you want to purchase (for example,#1/100 or #100/100).
Please note that Numbers 7 to 20 have already been purchased so the next available number in this price range is #21/100.
After eight weeks following the vegan path, my total cholesterol was down by 20% and LDL cholesterol was 25% lower. That’s the takeaway from this post. If you’re in a hurry, you can skip the rest. Nutrition affects our health. You knew that. This is just another example, with some numbers.
I didn’t do anything in a logical, well-planned way, but those results speak for themselves.
Looking back now from just over a year later, I smile at my rushed purchase of a slow cooker (still in its box) and a (now very well-used) blender. Thank you, blender, for all those green smoothies. I’ll get around to using the slow cooker someday.
Nana lent me a great cookbook and gave me a pack of index cards to copy out the recipes I liked. I enjoyed flipping through that book and looking at the pictures, but I did not prepare any of those meals. I returned the book a few months later and I still have the cards … somewhere. I also have a year of vegan living under my belt, so it was all for the good. Thank you Nana.
Last October my doctor told me my cholesterol was twice as high as it should be, well into the danger zone. He said he was going to put me on medication that I would have to take for the rest of my life. “I want you to start right away but I’ll give you eight weeks to change your diet. Eat less red meat, eat chicken breasts—the white meat only, and fish … ” I had already been eating this way for quite some time (as the rest of my life was falling apart, I’d thought this was the one thing I was doing right) but I said nothing as I panicked and my morale sank even lower into something beneath depression; I went underneath that and entered the realm of sub-depression.
His clear blue eyes looked straight into mine as he continued, “That might lower it a bit but it won’t be enough, so we’ll do another blood test in eight weeks and then I’ll put you on the medication.” I think the good doc might have been doing some sort of psychological aikido motivational thing here, because without saying a word to him I decided right there at that instant that I was going to be—no, I was now from that moment on, a vegetarian.
Back home, I sent a message to my friend Nana: “Can you recommend one book or resource to start off with? … I’m concerned about getting enough protein and about finding out what can actually help reduce cholesterol and oh, yeah, on top of that, I have to lose 25 pounds. So a few lifestyle changes are obviously in order. And I hate tofu! So I’m sort of up the creek, here. I’m off to a vegetarian restaurant … Never thought I’d see the day …”
Half an hour later I sent her another message: “So I nixed the restaurant idea … and am enjoying (?) my own bizarre creation: a spinach, cantaloupe, almond and sesame seed salad (without dressing). Can’t say I’m a fan, and I’m feeling slightly bogus, like an imposter or something …
Nana got back to me a half hour later. She mentioned something called The China Study, and provided a link to a video of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who she told me “is famous for treating Bill Clinton.”
She suggested following the video with a look at a vegetarian/vegan food guide pyramid, and mentioned a Dr. Greger and a Dr. Barnard. I didn’t get far enough to actually read anything. I Googled the China Study and saw way more reading material than I had the energy to confront. I got halfway through the video and stopped it. I had no mental energy left to figure out whether or not I was going to use olive oil or something else. I’d made the decision. I was going to make this as simple as possible: vegetarianism was now already behind me – I was now a vegan. Done.
I had no idea how to proceed or what groceries to buy and I felt overwhelmed and terrified but I knew that one thing: I was now a vegan. Done.
So that happened.
It’s almost a year later I’m still on the vegan path.
(Very Important Note: Women can be Vegan Yoga Dudes, too. This is written in stone but as always, I’m open to discussion or debate.)
The first version of this “How To …” elicited a comment which made me reflect and reconsider. As a result, I’ve changed it up a bit. The new thing allows for temporary states of Vegan Yoga Dudeness. It’s an inclusive program: there’s room for all in this tent.
1. Say “I am a vegan yoga dude” before or after eating something that is not meat, fish, eggs or dairy. You can also say it between mouthfuls, but only after swallowing. Don’t talk with your mouth full.
2. Say “Namaste.” Ideally to another human being, if anyone’s around. If not, say it to your dog, your cat or the fridge.
3. Do any form of yoga whatsoever. You can even just mimic and make fun of whatever you think yoga looks like, and hey! make jokes while you do it, too! Strike a pose. “Hey, look! Sideways cow!* Ha ha ha!” Go wild; it’s all good. If you say you’re doing yoga, then you’re doing yoga, according to the Vegan Yoga Dude guidelines.
4. Right up until your next intake of meat, fish, eggs or dairy you will be a temporary Vegan Yoga Dude. Rock that Dudeness. (That’s the action step right there, okay? Rock your Vegan Yoga Dudenesss.)
That’s it. Congratulations.
Namaste
*Thanks, Franklin, for the “sideways cow” thing. I like that.
2. Integrate the word “dude” into as many conversations as possible.
3. Skip the meat, fish, poultry, eggs and dairy. (If you’re a Canadian, you can start this part tomorrow, so by all means, go ahead and enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner. You’re welcome.)
4. Do yoga. (There are many videos available on YouTube.)
Congratulations: You are a full-fledged Vegan Yoga Dude. Carry on.
In the thirteen days since I began this blog, it has been read by people in 12 countries on five continents. Trinidad is merely 11 kilometers off the coast of Venezuela, so if I wanted to stretch the truth I might include South America and say six continents. It has triggered a few stimulating conversations both online and offline.
And so what, you might ask. And I’d agree. So what?
I don’t have an answer to that.
Here’s the list of countries:
Canada
United States
Trinidad and Tobago
Sweden
Taiwan
Australia
Jamaica
United Kingdom
Israel
France
Morocco
India
So that happened.
I don’t think this is earth-shattering (I’ve seen other ventures—not mine—expand much further and more quickly), and it actually makes me a bit nervous (so what do I do now?) but I’d like to put the following spin on it:
I procrastinated forever before starting this. If you’ve been thinking of starting something, there’s no time like now. Start. You’ll never know what’s going to happen unless you start. Summon up all your mojo and make your move. Step up to the edge and jump and see what happens. At the very least you’ll learn something. Good luck.
And that right there is probably about as explicitly inspirational as it’s ever going to get with me here, folks. If you can find any other inspiration in this ongoing reporting venture as I explore Vegan Yoga Dudeness, then that’s great. I’ll be attempting to stick to “Just the facts. M’am.” (We’ll see how long that lasts.)
Until recently, I had no interest in yoga. When I was physically active, I’d always done something aerobic with lots of impact and bouncing, like running, or, well, aerobics. Yoga was for those other people: people who … did yoga. The word itself made me think of incense and exotic music and hippies and Indian words like chakra.
Last year I met Christa, a fellow editor, for only the second time in person. We’d met years earlier at a conference, at which she led a workshop on Yoga for Editors. I didn’t understand why editors, or for that matter anybody in their right mind, would bother with all that twisting and bending. I didn’t participate in the workshop, but I remember seeing Christa doing one of those impossible-looking bending-backwards-till-your-hands-touch-the-floor moves. I thought the whole thing was a bit unusual, if not a little loopy. Why would any sane person do that? It just looked so … painful.
Last year when we met again, it was still months before I’d started this new hot yoga thing, and I had never done a yoga class or even tried a yoga pose at this point. I had mentioned on the phone that I’d recently gone vegan to lower my cholesterol levels. When we met for coffee at a busy restaurant, Christa insisted on showing me a few yoga poses and moves that were supposed to help reduce cholesterol. Right there, right away, in the restaurant. Her son Yarrow and her friend Stan calmly ignored us and kept chatting while we walked around and around looking for some space to do whatever it was we were going to do.
I don’t remember much other than being down on the floor beside Christa, both of us in the push-up or plank position, and listening intently to her instructions and following along with whatever moves she was doing, and watching the waitress’s feet going back and forth a few inches from our faces. That’s a pleasant and funny memory for me, that visual of those feet going back and forth almost under my nose. It might not have been that much fun for the poor waitress, however.
Christa, you planted a few seeds that day, there, down on the floor in the coffee shop. Thank you again. That was my first-ever experience of doing yoga. I’m sure few in my yoga class, or anywhere, can say their introduction to yoga was on the floor of a busy coffee shop. And, not that she’ll ever read this, but apologies again to the waitress, who was very sweet about it. I’m not entirely sure about that last bit, but at least nobody kicked us. I’m sure about that.
Vegan Yoga Dude 