GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

Camping geeks rejoice - boonies-quality Dark Chocolate Cheesecake.  There are generally 3 ways to live the New York Dream if you still have to work for a living: 1. Earn an astronomical salary on Wall Street or similar, and live in a loft and eat out several times a week 2. Get a steady and coveted city/government job with benefits that make you basically unfireable 3. Piece it all together - act, sing, sell, wait tables, volunteer, teach, sell your own product online, knit condoms for Etsy - and still manage to eat out once a week and pay your rent on time. Mostly. Having surrendered my 9 year Oregon-based career as a Customer Evangelist , I've entered the realm of option 3:  I volunteer teach yoga , make and sell my original schtick , do freelance copywriting and social media, and today, I entered the world of retail - working a casual shift at Eastern Mountain Sports , the northeast's version of REI. Now, if you're an outdoor gear freak, EMS is the place to be

Last Tuesday there were around 15 -18 people in my 6pm Chelsea Rec Center class - mostly newbies to yoga. One game young guy, an 80 year young woman, and the rest in their 20-40's. Great! So much for my inital idea of a Yoga for Boomers class - with a timeslot of 6pm, this is now simply called, Easy Yoga by the Galfromdownunder. It's listed as part of the ShapeUpNYC initiative - so it's free to all participants, regardless of whether they are members of the Rec Center. One thing about being a volunteer teacher:  I get to teach whatever I want. As a warmup for this group, I've developed what I call a Groundhog Salutation. It's basically a Sun Salutation but you never get up on your feet to worship the sun, you say down at woodchuck (ferret or Aussies) level.  It's a good limber up for the back before you totter to your feet. The drill: Inhale - hands and knees post cat/cow. Exhale - Down dog. Inhale - drop knees on the way to ... Exhale

  The cool turquoise and sand colorway flyovers of Albuquerque I've just spend an intense week in Albuquerque jam-packed with stuff centered around the fine work of the LAB (League of American Bicyclists) - and in 100+ degree heat...    ... surrounded by Adobe, the concrete, not the software kind:   Learned how to ride a bike at the LAB Traffic Skills 101 course and LCI (League Certified Instructor) Seminar:   Yikes! Preston Tyree tries to teach me the life-saving Instant (Counter) Turn Watch a movie explaining this Proving to ourselves that a bike can lean right over in the Instant Turn and still have traction Because if I'd studied this course earlier and learned the mantra: BICYCLISTS FARE BEST WHEN THEY ACT AND ARE TREATED AS DRIVERS OF VEHICLES ... I would not have been doored the week before in NYC:   Thursday: Ride and cocktail reception, featuring a ceremonial guard (is that what you call it?), mariachi band and exhibiting the Giant Halfway folder donated f

  A die-hard New Yorker pal points to Jack Kerouac's house on the next block, Ethan Hawke brooding over a banana crepe, Scarlett Johanssen perusing a condo across his street ... and tells me "New York never fails to redeem itself." And sure enough, while strolling back from Union Square last night I came across a seething crowd, and in New York, that means it's either someone dead or  dazzling. In this case, whispers of "who is it?" were met by "Paris Hilton". When people asked me, I just repeated it and so it went around, like Chinese whispers, it could have been anyone in there ... Seeing the crowd three times taller than me due to step ladders, boxes and other height advantaging tactics, I turned away, then couldn't help myself. Out came the Gal li'll digi camera , and in I went. Turns out that you're not so disadvantaged if you're short. While everyone is trying to get upover, I went downunder. At around 2:43 on my vide

My Booma! Yoga is now being re-monikered to Easy Yoga. Yep, rather than "say it straight, then say it great" I'm going for "say it straight, then say it straighter." I discovered last night that newbies and seniors are pretty close in their requirements ... Apparently Doris, the Chelsea Parks and Rec mover and shaker, had spent the week strong-arming everyone able to bend at the waist to come to my class. Bless her. I arrived to find the room already full, including the four kidz who stumbled in last week. Most had never done yoga;  a handful had done "this much" - picture a raised thumb and forefinger pressed together. Ages ranged from around 20, to an 83 year young gal who was game to try everything. After teaching them a short dog and a simplified Vinyasa involving a short dog and a rock back to child's pose, the room was visibly sweating - who needs hot yoga? "Never thought yoga was so hard!" cried a really athletic look

My mother loves to send along intriguing things ... in this case, a clipping from the newspaper of yogis in India: Last time she greeted me at the airport with an for poledancing . While you can practice and practice and get more flexible, the kind of hyperflexibility in this photo is largely genetic. I've never been able to easily do back bends - Joschi told me that small people with small bones can experience a lack of room between vertebrae to enable the spine to bend - it's all a bit tight. But keeping these images in mind does give you something to aim for and who knows? See you Tuesday 6-7pm 5th Floor at the Chelsea Rec Center!

Do these look like 50+ boomers to you? Nope. My Booma! Yoga class is getting off to a slow start at the Chelsea Parks and Rec Center - and today's monsoon-like rain didn't help. Meanwhile downstairs, the aerobics class was packed and in full swing. What gives? I suspect it is partly little flyer the center prepared. * The time slot is 6-7pm, which  suits me and younger folk, but not seniors. * The poster says 50+, which suits seniors, but not younger folk. So it's keeping both groups away. I'm going to ask them if they can tweak it to ... BOOMA! 50+ YOGA All ages welcome No wait, let's K.I.S.S. that goodbye and make it EASY YOGA. Because it's a class that will suit newbies AND seniors. I waited a while, not really minding that no-one was turning up - I am offering my time as a service, and the commitment to do so is as much a part of my contribution as teaching the class itself. Besides I can always catch up on some Barackberrying. Enter

It's the end of the first week of my post-Bike Friday life, and I yet I still find myself subconsciously doing things one could call "work related". Since May is National Bike Month, I came up with the idea of giving the seniors at the Hudson Guild - where I volunteer teach yoga - a little thrill by riding it around their lunchroom. "Great idea!" said Yehudit Moch, the activities director, tasked with the tireless work of coming up with programs to keep seniors active and engaged. "Let's called it Folding Bike Fun, and do it at 12.45pm, towards the end of lunch, before they disperse." For disperse they do - the attention span is short, and hearing and vision loss doesn't help. The night before the demo I had this last minute idea to invite some local senior cycling friends to the show. Four names came immediately to mind: Tod Moore (72), a bicycle tour guide who rides every year in France; Jesse Brown (70), former president of t

Tuesday has become my day of double yoga volunteering. Chelsea Recreation Center Today I taught my first BOOMA! Yoga class at the Chelsea Recreation Center, 6-7pm. BOOMA! is what I wanted to call it, for want of a less ageist word than "senior" or "50+". But when I arrived at the center,  sure enough, a flyer stuck above the counter simply said "Senior Yoga Tuesday 6pm". The staff told me it was a bit of an oversight and they'd try and correct it.  Two woman who'd spotted the flyers came looking for my class - one from the Dominican Republic and the other from Mexico. Que bueno! Yet another opportunity para practicar mi Espanol! The 5th floor art room is a nice space for yoga - one of those rooms with smooth blond wood floors. If I narrow my eyes I might almost hallucinate I'm in the sumptuous studios at Equinox, where the membership is 20 times more expensive, and if you can afford it, you love it. But this is the "everysoul&q

I'm now teaching yoga Tuesdays 6-7pm, starting May 4, Chelsea Rec Center, 25th and 9th NYC. Best thing ... it's free to members, and membership is a recession suppression super deal - $75/year, $10/year for seniors - pools, access to all sister centers etc. I was asked if I would teach a senior class, since their needs are underserved a world where we worship the youth we all lose ... Since I already teach at Hudson Guild Senior Center, I'm aiming this class at Fit 50+.  And I've called it BOOMA! YOGA to be less ageist. (f-o-g-i-s did cross my mind but I'll wait til I'm 50 before I dare float that one). So don't expect any serious pretzel moves, but feel perfectly free to upstage me, as Colin Freestone, one of my customers, is doing in this picture. Colin's a long time yogi who offers yoga to cyclists on the trips he leads to Indonesia . So yes! Cyclists welcome - in which case bring on the pretzels or you might find yourself looking like

"We all like to think to ourselves, I could do that , right?" The opening post-performance remark by dance teacher Sarah Stackhouse was telling. Alluding to the ever-escalating razzle-dazzle of modern dance performance (Circ du Soleil? Momix?), she spoke of the virtue of winding back to something accessible, something perhaps even we could do ... I was offered tickets to see Signatures 10 , a performance by the New York Theater Ballet. This outfit is sometimes confused with the New York City Ballet by barackberrying blow-ins with short attention spans (like me). I had no idea what I was about to see, no time to Google, and more importantly, no idea what this little dance company was really all about. From its "About": New York Theatre Ballet was founded in 1978 by its artistic director, Diana Byer. It is the most widely seen chamber ballet company in the United States ... has earned acclaim for its restoration and revival of small masterworks by great cho

I took my tikit to the annual  Blessing of the Bikes . "Need a top-up from my water bottle?" I asked the Rev Tom P Miller, as he sprinkled holy water on the hundreds of assembled bicycles. But apparently it was like the loaves and fishes ... plenty to go around, and then some. Don't forget to bless the folder! I said. And he did.

I'm thrilled to be part of the the team tha made this happen: About the ad Thanks to the many customers and supporters who funded this ad!

Bike Friday Desert Camp 2010 is done and dusted. Check out the full montymedia . I should say "done and frosted" - for the first time in my 7 years of attending this camp, the weather was chilly and ominous, threatening to force us jointly and severally into the luxe sag wagon. Which of course we did - the tour leaders scooped us up in the van as we struggled along in amazing Scott-in-the-Antarctic headwinds.  Just look at this sky ... I taught a morning yoga class each morning and in the afternoon on 2 occasions. It was quite an eye opener to note very fit cyclists struggling with even basic flexibility - which makes me even more determined to develop my cyclists' yoga class ... I held the class form 7-7.30am, which provided time to do little more than a warm up and some standing poses. On a couple of days I offered a 1 hour class in the afternoon. The routine included lots of vinyasas (knees/chest/chin to make it easy), and lots of twists: Ujayi (ocea