the yoga poll, brain-in-situ, and ideas worth spreading.

I am frequently tempted to do two things that are trite and overdone in blog-world on this blog: post weird silly things found on the internet, and/or advertise either my own paltry accomplishments or those of others.

As you can see, temptation and I are hard to keep apart.

My friend JP owns a yoga studio, that I have been going to since it opened, what, two years ago? They are Amazing, all three owners of Octopus Garden, and said studio also lacks much of the...how shall we say..."fashion sense" of other studios. That is, one can practise in one's pajamas (ahem) with little fear of being ousted from the premises, or mocked in whispers from stroller moms across the change room.

This came out in their last newsletter which I received this weekend:
As you may have already heard, a recent poll published in the Toronto Star stated that 98% of Canadian men said "No way to yoga". We aim to change these statistics, one man at a time.
Along with a "30$ for yoga for the month of June" deal for guys.
Which, if you've ever practised yoga weekly, or, so help you, daily, is a VERY GOOD DEAL.

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Also, although unrelated, I was sent a link this weekend to TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, which I had never heard of before, and it's really really cool. Particularly so, since it seems like a complete antidote to the daily news, which I feel in need of in the last while.
(Clicking on the site's title here will bring you to one of the particular samples I watched today, about a brain scientist who survived a stroke and gave a play-by-play of what happened as it was going down. For those of you with little interest in clicking forward, I shall pilfer bits here to tell to you. My favourite part is where she is having a stroke and says to herself "but I'm a busy woman! I don't have time for a stroke!". She explains that the left brain has a linear nature, sees it's owner's life in terms of past and future, in a linear fashion, and tries to put sensual experience into something cognitive, something expressible in language. And that this was the side of her brain that capsized during her stroke due to a blood clot, so she found herself, despite being caught in a medical emergency, relieved of this incessant need to analyse, categorize, and define. Bloody fascinating.