Do-It-Yourself Cleaning Tools from Martha Stewart

This link is the portal to all sorts of home remedies and cleaning supplies - how to make your own all purpose cleanser, laundry detergent, silver polish, toilet bowl cleaner, etc. etc. 

Not only will these tips save money but will also reduce chemical residue and are better for the environment.

If you try any, please report back your experience. 

"Yoga IS My Bailout"

Very cool and clever t-shirts. Check them out here.

The Perils of All That Mindfulness

Judith Warner of the New York Times penned a witty, perceptive essay, Being and Mindfulness, on the perils of trendy "mindfulness."

Mindfulness is supposed to bring people together. By embracing your essential humanness, getting in touch with and accepting your body, sensations, emotions and thoughts, you are supposed to join with, and empathetically connect to, all humanity.

This, I think, is true and sort of defeats the purpose:

in real-life encounters, I’ve come lately to wonder whether meaningful bonds are well forged by the extreme solipsism that mindfulness practice often turns out to be. For one thing, there’s the seemingly unavoidable problem that people who are embarked on this particular “journey of self-exploration,” as Pipher has called it, tend to want to talk, or write, about it. A lot.

And one of the problems with this tendency is that everyone's experience with the practice is unique.

And those who talk, write, share it tend to hold out their experiences as ideal, which in turn leaves those who've never felt the "kundalini rising" feeling left out, inadequate and perhaps quit. This difficulty was one of my problems with Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, as I discussed in my review.

It also bring to mind the passage from Matthew's gospel which tells Christians to pray in secret and not to blab or brag out it (Matthew 6:6-8).

One of Warner's concluding insights:

Some of us experience our emotions always in capital letters and exclamation points. This isn’t always pleasant but, to go all mindful for a moment, it is what it is, and if you are one of these people then probably one of the great pleasures of your life is finding others like you and settling in with them for a good rant. A world devoid of such souls can be cold and forbidding, and above all terribly, terribly dull.

True. But for me, it's still worth while to try and smooth out the edges. To me, the practice is like a calculus curve - always approaching. I'll never get there, but that doesn't mean I stop trying.

Thanks to student Sara for the link.