Most of us would like to believe that we are completely free in all senses of the word. We make our own decisions. We are in charge of how we feel. We are responsible for what we do and the results of those actions. While I am not a fatalist by any stretch, I am a believer the people we surround ourselves with will define who we become.

Humans are social animals. Looking back over history we can see many examples where this is true, over both large groups (entire cities and cultures in fact) and small groups (individual family units). In this essay I’ll talk about why it is so critical to choose your friends wisely, some challenges that may arise while expanding your peer group and some methods for locating these folks to begin with.

I had a pretty intense week last week. I went on my mediation and fasting retreat. I then managed to get in several consecutive days of vinyasa yoga practice. My body really felt amazing. My diet was all dialed in. I was feeling light andflexible. I was mentally sharp. Then, I decided to head back into the gym on Saturday. Halfway through my first set of incline dumbbell presses, I felt my neck pop.

I knew immediately I did something bad. I tried to act like nothing happened. I was never a really good actor. Unfortunately, I couldn’t pick the weights back up! The dude next to me knew I was in pain. I sat down for a few minutes and decided to do some pull ups instead. Those were only mildly painful. I decided to cut bait, do some crunches and leave. Surely this pain in the neck would leave overnight? Wrong!

My neck hurts big time. It is worst in the night and morning. Better as the day wears on. I actually did this before while weight lifting about six months ago and it took a few months to heal completely. In the meantime, I just had to be careful with any incline or overhead press exercises in the gym. Looks like I’ll be sticking to yoga for the next week!

Lesson learned: never slack on technique or skip a warm up, no matter how good you feel or how light the weight. Turns out my overly flexible and “relaxed” body is probably what got me into trouble. The more flexible your ligaments and tendons, the more attention you need to pay to your lifting technique.

There is a lot of good information out there on the web, if you choose to read it!

Here are five sites I’ve been reading lately:

• Vegan BodyBuilding.com : This is an incredible resource for anyone interested in nutrition or fitness. The site was created by Robert Cheeke, a Portland, Oregon native and competitive (natural!) bodybuilder. Oh yeah, he’s also VEGAN! Specifically, check out the forums. They are really active and many of the folks are world class amateur bodybuilders, power lifters or athletes. I have met many of them in-person and I must say they are a super-helpful and motivating bunch!
• Steve Pavlina.com : I discovered this site a few months ago and it has very insightful articles about all aspects of Personal Development. Steve also shares tips about how he been able to grow his blog from nothing (2 years ago) to over $12K/month in income.
• The Dilbert Blog : This is the personal blog of Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. Scott is a not only an outstanding cartoonist, he is also a superb writer. His posts have a touch of humor, a dash of reality and little bite as well!
• We Like it Raw : Written by Raw Foodists in New York City, this blog is a great way to keep up on the happenings in raw-food culture.
• Energise for Life : Great site providing news and information regarding alkaline diets and raw-food. They also have a store (based in UK) where you can order great alkalizing supplements.

Ran across an interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal. The first paragraph is intriguing:

“In the 1930s, researchers stumbled onto a surprisingly simple way to slow the biological forces of aging: cutting normal calorie intake by about a third. Scientists found it boosts animals’ life spans by 30% to 40%, and considerable evidence suggests that calorie restriction, or CR, would slow human aging too.”

How does calorie resitrction actually help you live longer? People have many assumptions as to why this is the case. Slower metabolism, fewer free radicals and reduced cellular divisions are all cited in research literature.

In the article, Harvard Prof David Sinclair provides a new explanation, linking calorie restriction to activation of specific gene that produces many of the life-extending effects. Dr. Sinclair has started a company to pursue commercial application of a drug that will activate this gene, without any need to change your diet.  

Perhaps it would be more effective, and more safe, to just educate people on the merits of a vegan/vegetarian or mostly raw-food diet? These diets are typically lower-calorie (I say typically, as it is very possible to be an unhealthy vegan).  That fact that over $80 million has been raised by Dr. Sincliar’s company is testament to the potential market demand. It amazes me how people would be more willing to spend money on a new drug with potential unknown side effects than make a natural dietary adjustment.  

 

While on retreat in Colorado , I had only one purpose; to do no-thing. I didn’t shower. I didn’t shave. I didn’t eat. I just meditated. I did hike do yoga…but these merely served the purpose of helping to calm my body so I could sit down and do nothing again (i.e. meditate).

The single-pointedness of it all brought about more focus than I have had in my life in years. There was no opportunity, energy or desire to do more than one thing at a time.However, going back to work I again found myself constantly interrupted and distracted. When other people weren’t interrupting me, I found my brain creating interruptions for itself! Did I just get an email? What is the stock price? Did someone leave a comment on myblog ? Did I remember to pay all my bills this month? Should I work on one of the other 5 projects I have going on right now? Did I just get another email? Should I go get some coffee? Should I eat something again?

I have successfully plugged myself back into society! The Yoga Retreat at the Relational Yoga Mandiram was incredible. The place has changed me forever. Definitely for the better. It is hard to truly capture all the experiences, and definitely impossible to do any of them full justice with words. Nonetheless, I will provide a summary of the four days I spent there. It is my hope that others will endeavor on similar journeys. Everyone should strive to catch a glimpse of who they really are; sans cellphone, internet, work, routines, food….and of course words.

You must take 3 minutes out of your day and watch this once…or perhaps twice! For background on the video, see the news clip here.

Hats off to this Juan Mann, the “Free Hug Guy.” Also, hats off to the Sick Puppies lead singer, who created this documentary on a whim after seeing this guy in the mall day after day. It has been a runaway success with over 4 million views on YouTube alone in only one month. Millions more viewed the video when it was played on Good Morning America! They deserve all the attention they can get.

The Syndey Herald has some more insight into the story:

The hit video came about after a meeting - and a hug - more than a year ago with the lead singer of the Sick Puppies, a Sydney band made up of three former Mosman High School students.

The singer, Shimon Moore, was working odd jobs by day and playing gigs by night.

“I was one of those guys in Pitt Street Mall with a sandwich board advertising a shoe sale,” Moore told smh.com.au today.

The two became mates, and Moore borrowed his father’s video camera to shoot footage of the hug man at work.

Personally, I’d love to see more insipring stories like this get media coverage than have to deal with lonelygirl15 recaps and rants from bored entertainment gossip columnists and uninspired radio DJs.

If you enjoyed this video, pls send it to a friend or three.

Tomorrow I am heading out to Woodland Park, Colorado for my third retreat at the Relational Yoga Mandiram . The Mandiram is a place where students can relax and study hatha yoga postures, yogic breathing (pranayama and kriya breath work) and meditation. The Mandiram was established by John McAffee. John, who founded the McAffee Antivirus software company in the late 1980’s, has been a longtime yoga teacher and student. He has established this retreat center to help others get on the spiritual path.

 

  

The Mandiram is located on his own personal property, a majestic 1400 acre plot in the shadow of Pikes Peak at 9000 ft elevation. It is absolutely breathtaking. Also, I say spiritual because the intense yoga training helps you realize higher levels of awareness. There is nothing religious about it. All the techniques that are taught have been empirically tested over the ages by hundreds of millions of people. This is not hocus pocus, it works (even though the exact mechanisms for how it works are less clear).  

The retreat will begin on Friday and end on Sunday evening. As is typically the case, the routine is flexible and I will not know full details until I get there. The days will probably include Fasting, Kriya Breathing, Yoga Classes, Rounding, Meditation, Hikes. Fasting is something that I have done only a handful of times in my life. My last fast was 72 hours and happened in April 2004, at the Mandiram. This fast was a water-only fast. No juice or solid food allowed.

Fasting has many positive effects. From a scientific standpoint, the body consumes a great deal of energy just to process the food you eat and fluids you drink. Even if you eat a primary vegan or raw-food diet, your body is still working hard to assimilate the nutrients. As a result, less energy is present for inturning and channeling the energy into other endeavours, specifically mental or spiritual pursuits. My experience has been than after the first 36 hours, during which the body is expecting food and some withdrawal takes place, you begin to open up and feel a surge of energy and general feeling of well-being. You are able to concetrate and meditate at a much deeper level. 

In fact, during the second day of my last fast, I felt so much energy that I decided to go for a run in the mountains! Keep in mind, I was staying in a cabin at 9000 ft elevation. The air was thin and I had not eaten. I then realized that while the spiritual energy was there, the physical energy was not! I stopped my run after about a mile and just did a short hike! The point is, fasting is a great way to channel your energy for spiritual pursuits.  

During the fast, we will also perform Kriya Breathwork to increase our energy levels and clean out the spiritual body and help the mind let go. This breath work, coupled with yoga asana (postures) routines will prepare the body for the true goal, which is the inturning process made possible by meditation. I will save a longer essay on Meditation for another day. In a nutshell, meditation is the process of changing the focus of your mind from that of “doer” to that of “observer.” Instead of creating ideas, images, thoughts, feelings…you learn to subtly move into a position of passive observation and awareness. In this awareness, you begin to discover your own true nature. The following is quote is how Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has described the affects of Kriya on the body:

“There is a rhythm in nature. Seasons come and go. In your own body also, there is a rhythm. Life has a particular rhythm. Similarly, your breath also goes in a pattern. Your emotions move in a particular rhythm, as well as your thoughts. All these rhythms arise from your being, which has its own rhythm.

“In Sudarshan Kriya, we get into the rhythm of our being and see how our being is permeating our emotions, our thoughts, our breath and our bodies. Soon, every cell of our body becomes alive and releases all the toxins and negative emotions it has stored from times past. Once again, we are able to smile from our hearts.”

Oh yes, the other aspect of this retreat is that it is a silent retreat! There will be no talking, no writing, no watching TV, no e-mailing, no cellphones. Therefore, I will also NOT be blogging while away. I will be sure to write a few posts detailing my experience when I retun. I would also love to hear from anyone else that has had experience on similar retreats. Please do drop me an email (ravisraman@gmail.com) or add a comment to the blog.

Was reading some of my favorite blogs, including We Like It Raw, and noticed an article about the new Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Cory Booker. This guy looks like the real deal. A couple of excerpts really got me:

It’s August of 1999. Booker is a fed-up, 30-year-old City Council member, thwarted at every attempt at reform by four-term mayor Sharpe James. Newark’s decay and despair, and the inability to do anything about it, stress out Booker so badly that he’s getting migraines and back spasms. After a particularly violent crime at a particularly drug-ravaged high-rise apartment complex, Booker decides it is time for drastic measures.

He buys a tent, pitches it next to the complex and goes on a hunger strike. For 10 days, he fasts and sleeps outdoors in one of the grimmest neighborhoods in one of the country’s grimmest cities. “It transformed my life,” Booker says, sitting in his office last week, where he was preparing his inauguration address.

Wow. If you thought that was some sort of fleeting charade, check out this description of his current standard of living. He lives amidst the poverty-stricken in a not-so-nice high rise buildng in a not-so-nice part of town. And he is the Mayor!

“I pay $600 a month, which seems like highway robbery at the moment,” says Booker, “because I haven’t had heat or hot water since November.”

Wait. The new mayor of Newark hasn’t had a hot shower since November?

“I boil water. First I used pots, but then a friend of mine came over one day and she said, ‘Have you ever heard of a camp shower?’ And now there’s this sack that hangs in my apartment” that provides hot water.

This guy clearly has a stellar emotional IQ, and it is also clear that he has the intellect and work ethic to back it up. Standford Undergrad, Yale Law, Rhodes Scholar. Class President…TWICE! This guy must be an robot!

“He was the kind of guy who slowed you down when you hung around him because he’d say ‘hi’ to everyone,” says Chris Magarro, his best friend, whom he met in fourth grade. “The kids, the teachers, the janitors. Everyone.”

He played football at Stanford, too, and heavily into his overachiever phase, he also worked at a suicide prevention hotline, won the student body president job and earned stellar grades. He recalls that the toughest question during his Rhodes scholarship interview was something along the lines of “Are you real?”

After Yale, he moved to Newark in the hopes, he says, of becoming a community activist in the tradition of Marian Wright Edelman. He claims that becoming a politician wasn’t on his agenda.

And after all this he ends up chasing and achieving a high level in a political career that “wasn’t on his agenda.” Wow, looks like I need to raise my own standards just a little bit :).

Other posts you may enjoy:

• Yoga & Meditation Retreat Experience
• Lose Weight by Sleeping More
• Held Hostage by Technology
• Chose Your Friends Wisely
• The Dangers of Multi-Tasking
• The Power of Affirmation

When I was a kid I had constant validation that I would do well when I grew up. Noone told me how old a grown-up was supposed to be, but ever since I can remember, all the grown-ups had moved out on their own. So once you have gotten your own place, you were an adult! I also knew that while there was a lot of unknown between now and then; it would all work out very well in the end.

The concert was really great. Dave Matthews rally stole the show (IMHO), and his little duet with Mick Jagger really topped it all off! I must say, with the energy The Stones showed today, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them still touring 10 years from now!

My Flickr slideshow is here.

To top it off, The Dave Matthews Band (one of my favorite all time bands) is opening for them! This will be my first big stadium concert. It is all going down tonight at Qwest Field (Seahawks Stadium). Will let you know how it goes!

After yoga this morning I made my way over to Chaco Canyon for some lunch. I figured that it was safe bet. Everything on their menu is either Vegan or 100% Raw-Vegan. You can only mess up your diet so much in that place. I was starving and ordered the Peanut Stew with whole wheat toast (which was amazing) and the Grilled Vegan Reuban sandwich and chips (which I will never ever order again).

These types of places end up attracting some interesting characters. They tend to fit into one of three camps:

1. die-hard raw foodists and/or vegans who definitely look the part.
2. health conscious and/or curious people who want to see what this type of food is all about.
3. university students who were hungry and stumbled into the place, only to leave confused and dejected (but satiated) after learning that their Tuna Melt did not contain a single ounce of mercury…I mean seafood.

The place was fairly crowded today and I invited some first camp folks to join me at my table. Turns out that Dan has been raw for 4 years and his girlfriend has only been 100% raw for two months. He couldn’t rave enough about it and the wonders it has done for his body and “spirit.” He gave up a heavy meat-eating diet (he use to be a bodybuilder apparently) and switched to a Raw food diet literally overnight.

The change was so impactful that he is trying to start a business around helping and educating other people to become aware of and transition to a raw-food diet.

At any rate, this chance run-in reminded me about how I felt when I was raw (amazing) before I started to detox (which wasn’t so fun). I am not going to jump back into the totally raw food thing just yet, but am going to continue making a concerted effort to increase my raw food intake steadily over time. Perhaps through this gradual approach I will alleviate the detox symptoms and actually end up with a dietary change that sticks for the long term.

Also, Dan informed me that wheatgrass is da bomb (he takes it everyday) but that Jamba Juice wheatgrass is a waste of money. Apparently, it is hydroponic (grown in water) and is lacking many of the micronutrients that soil-grown grass contains. If you want the good stuff, try going to a real juice bar.

As per the slogan to this website…we are raising the bar again! Lets call this release Beta 2. This site now features the following improvements:

• I have implemented a new theme that should make the posts much easier to read. The Cutline theme is absolutely awesome. Chris Pearson has done a great job. Some things I really like about this theme:
• The layout is very clean.
• The theme is super easy to customize.
• Clickable “Tags” are listed at the bottom of the post, making it easier to sort through things and see related content.
• Image controls allow you to add borders to images, making them look more professional.
• The Subscribe to Comments feature allows you to leave a comment for a post AND choose to be notified by email when anyone else replies to your comment! Very handy. Just leave a comment to see the “subscribe” option. Click it and you are good to go.
• The Notable Social Networking add-in allows you to add any post to one of several different media, including Digg or Yahoo.
• I am now using Post Slugs & Pretty Permalinks. Basically, this means that the direct links to my posts will not be a series of numbers, but a friendly name. So the link to this post will be www.sethigherstandards.com\pimpin-a-website instead of www.sethigherstandards.com\109. This will help search engines index the posts.
• I added Google Adsense. Frankly, I only have about 5 people who ready this blog with any regularity, but I was am curious about how it works, so I am doing it as a learning experience more than anything else.

I was scheduled to train Chest and Back in the weight room after my “off” day yesterday. The off days are never really off, it just means that I don’t do any weight training on those days. Yesterday I did a 90 minute yoga class. It was an intense workout and just what I needed.

Today however, I wasnt feeling fully recovered. My chest and arms were still sore from Tuesday and Wednesday’s training!

I mentioned in a previous post about limiting beliefs, and how keeping a log has helped me greatly in the weight room. I noticed that my lifts on Wednesday and Thursday were slightly less during my previous session doing the same exercises. This was a sign that I was a bit overtrained.

Therefore, today I decided to go for a little run instead. Felt good. Will surely be ready to hit the weights tomorrow!

The RSS feeds on my site are all messed up. Feedburner isn’t working. Hope to have it fixed this weekend.

Limiting beliefs are false assumptions you make about a specific action and its result. Your repetitive actions create your values. Your values, well they turn into your beliefs. When your beliefs actually impede your ability to make progress…they are limiting beliefs.

Since I was in my early teens, I have been weightlifting on and off. You would never guess by looking at me! The issue has been consistency.

My weight training has always been as a supplement to some other sport, such as running, swimming or tennis in high school; and triathlons in college and beyond. The longest consistent duration of weight training has been 5 months. I say consistent as getting into the gym at least twice a week with a dedicated and focused purpose.

During this 5 month period I actually made decent gains (about 10 pounds). This was back in spring of 2001. I then turned vegan, started doing lots of cardio and lost all the weight and then some!

Right now I am again nearing 5 months of consistent training. I am also taking a much more focused approach to my nutrition and overall training routine. Looking back at my workout logs, I have clearly gained a lot of strength, and I feel much much better. I am also starting to see subtle changes in body size/shape, specifically around my hips/thighs, waist, chest and neck/jaw.

Making any lasting change takes time. In the case of my body, making any gains at all in the gym took a lot of time. For the first few months I saw some gains, but then they slowed down. It was as if my body was fighting itself to maintain status quo. Call it a plateau. For the past month or so, I am growing again. Who knows how long it will last before the next plateau.

When I was a swimmer in High School, we lived through the most grueling workouts known to man. I am actually amazed I survived six years of that training. What was most amazing, was that rapid progress that was made practically by everyone on the team, over the course of a relatively short 4 month season.

Many folks on the team would not swim at all during the summer/fall, which made the progress even more suprising. The key here was consistency. You trained on a regular basis, in a very scientific manner (intervals, racing, paddles/buoys). Even though the swimmers didn’t keep track of training sessions (w were total drones!) you can be sure our coach did.

Training on our own requires the same type of discipline and consistency. The biggest mistake I have made in the past was not being consistent. In a best case scenario, this will just result in poor gains, at worst, injury.

As other reference points, training for my past two Ironmans required consistent training over 8 months for each event. This was really the longest I consistently trained in a set of related sports. The progress made during this period was slow at first, but rapid in the final 3-4 months. In fact, for many things that I do, I tend to be a slow-starter….but ramp and accelerate very quickly towards the end.

I am hoping for a similar “fast-ramp” over the coming 3-4 months!

I just discovered the new Google Docs and Spreadsheets feature . Looks like they’ve finally managed to integrate the Writely acquisition into the fold. In fact, I typed this post in the product and it auto-publishes directly to my blog! Pretty useful.

I reinstalled the OS 10.4.8 software update and magically my bluetooth is now fully functional! Disaster averted. From reading the Mac support forums, looks like this update has caused quite a few problems for people. If were you I would avoid installing it right away. Let other folks (like me) work out the kinks.