My Daily Dose of Wellness – at Starbucks

I love living a lifestyle that revolves around my health and well-being. Finding a new organic restaurant to try is the highlight of my week. When I’m having a rough day, a good Pilates class or a trip to the farmer’s market quickly and easily lifts my mood. Anything and everything I can do to enhance my wellness, I’m all for it.

But here’s the kicker: I work at Starbucks. Not exactly what one pictures as the center of health and well-being – I know!

The truth is, I love Starbucks! I think they are a great company. Not only do they offer a variety of options for all palates, (I prefer the unsweetened green tea lemonade), but they strive to help local communities and have an eco-friendly attitude. Every day we compost the coffee grounds and give discounts when people bring in reusable cups. This year Starbucks even launched a stronger version of their hot cup, which is lightweight plastic and reusable up to 30 times! The company is even making strides in community support by working with responsibly grown and ethically traded coffee. Additionally the loan programs and support centers provide resources, expertise in sustainable farming and financial aid to the farming communities in Costa Rica and Rwanda. My favorite thing is the Global Month of Service. Here employees and customers alike get together annually to volunteer in local neighborhoods and work with the Ethos Water Fund. 

While I wouldn’t necessarily make a full meal out of the food on offer, with whole grain options, steel cut oatmeal and full leaf teas, the company’s attempt at nutrition and education is clear. All foods are free of high fructose corn syrup, dyes and artificial flavors, making it easier to find a treat I can happily enjoy. And while not organic, they have come out with a new fresh pressed juice product - Evolution Fresh, which is a huge step in educating the public on the benefits of juicing. 

Wellness encompasses many things, including enhancement of your health, nutrition, environmental awareness and sense of community, but it also involves the enhancement of our soul. Aside from everything else, simply showing up to work increases my daily dose of wellness. The overall optimism within the store and the aim to increase the happiness of everyone who walks in is a trait I admire. A bad attitude is one of the worst qualities a company can have and we all know bad attitudes can be just as contagious as a smile.

I am proud to say that my experience with Starbucks has enhanced my wellness. I’ve been treated with immense respect, made lasting friendships, increased my work experience and witnessed just how far that smile can go. In this economy having a job, especially one that I enjoy, contributes to my overall wellness. So, next time all you see is that little white cup full of corporate coffee, look again - there’s more to that Siren’s Eye and your $5 coffee than you think. - Kirby Duemig

A Juice Recipe a Day

Whether you are new to juicing and have no idea what goes with what or you are a pro and just looking for some new ideas, these juice recipes will be perfect for you!

Just a tidbit about juicers. You can find different types of juicers ranging from $35 to $2500. If you are looking to purchase an easy to use home juicer I recommend the Omega VRT350 Heavy Duty Dual-Stage Veritical Single Auger Low Speed Juicer. It is on the lower end of the price scale, but in terms of function it’s the best for home use.

Red Rootz Juice

Red Rootz Clarifier 
1 beet
3 carrots
3 apples
1” slice ginger root

Sweet Green Energizer
1 lg. bunch spinach
1 lg. bunch kale
1 lg. bunch parsley
3 gala apples
1 lemon

Spicy Citrus Detoxifier
3 oranges
2 lemons
1” slice ginger
3 garlic cloves
1 tsp. olive oil
Cayenne pepper, to taste

All of these are great as a juice a day or in combination for a mini-juice cleanse. Either way you will be flooding your body with real, bioavailable nutrition that will get you burning fat and cleansing. Enjoy! - Jessica Geier

Jessica Geier is a Certified Holistic Health Coach and the co-owner of Raw Generation Juices. Raw Generation makes it more convenient to incorporate fresh juices into a busy lifestyle without being a slave to a juicer. Jessica trained at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and continues to educate herself daily on what’s new in the field of nutrition. In her spare time she runs, practices hot yoga, is obsessed with the Bar Method classes, and writes for her two blogs at Raw Generation & Plenty of Thyme. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter. 

Recipe for a Balanced Life

The path that lead me to juicing was not a quick and easy one. Like most progress, it happened little by little with a lot of trial and error. My conscious decision to try to live a healthier and more balanced life began a few years ago when my grandmother was diagnosed with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer. It was sudden and severe, and it scared the hell out of me. With cancer running on both side of my family, I took it upon myself to start learning about how I could make changes in my life to try to prevent terminal illness.

One of the first concepts I came across was that your health can be directly affected by the foods you eat. Thus my journey towards a healthier diet began. I started with cutting out dairy (one of the hardest things I’ve ever done!), then meat, then adding a little organic dairy and meat back in but from a local humanely raised farm, then moving towards a whole foods plant based diet, which I mainly follow today.

It wasn’t until I found out about raw foods, and specifically juicing, that I saw any noticeable changes to my health. I started incorporating juicing into my daily diet, and then juice cleansing, which was when I really saw a remarkable increase in my energy levels, seriously decreased PMS (something I had suffered with since I was 13 years old), clearer skin, and probably the most profound benefit was effortless weight loss. Through my research on the topic of juicing I found the reason for the dramatic positive effects I was experiencing. It is a pretty simple concept... Calories do not equal nutrition! 

If you are eating the Standard American Diet (SAD… so appropriate) you are getting plenty of calories, but little to no real nutrition. Your body needs nutrition to do what it wants to do which is detox, burn fat, and heal itself. On a diet filled with highly processed foods the body thinks it’s starving, and in turn holds onto fat (our reserve energy), and isn’t able to get rid of the toxins that build up and make us sick.

When you drink fresh fruits and vegetable juices you are giving your body the rush of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes it needs do what it wants to do… burn fat and heal itself!

Some of the common benefits you could expect from adding juices to your diet are:

• Clearer, more radiant skin - less acne!
• Increased energy
• Decreased PMS
• Improved sleep
• Increased mental clarity- no more brain fog!
• Increased endurance during workouts
• Effortless weight loss

I encourage everyone to try adding at least one fresh juice to their daily diet, and the greener the better! Check back tomorrow for a few of my favorite juice recipes! - Jessica Geier

Jessica Geier is a Certified Holistic Health Coach and the co-owner of Raw Generation Juices. Raw Generation makes it more convenient to incorporate fresh juices into a busy lifestyle without being a slave to a juicer. Jessica trained at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and continues to educate herself daily on what’s new in the field of nutrition. In her spare time she runs, practices hot yoga, is obsessed with the Bar Method classes, and writes for her two blogs at Raw Generation & Plenty of Thyme. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter. 

Getting Rooted – Exploring the 1st Chakra

Chakra Chart viaIf you've ever spent any time around the yoga or healing community, you may have overheard a discussion involving the chakras. While I could keep you here all day with various definitions and meanings surrounding these energy points, just know that in Hinduism, there are 7 chakra points that correspond to organs and areas of the body. For the past year, I knew I had some unresolved issues around my 1^stchakra, the root chakra. This area energetically represents security, safety and simply being here in body, among other things. The themes emerging from the root chakra are practical and earthy, and seem often overlooked by modern-day yoga practitioners or students of the metaphysical arts; there’s just not as much wow factor in the root chakra as there is in those that revolved around intuitive faculties or love.

As a yoga instructor, I continue to explore my craft and what I discovered over the course of nine days in my latest advanced teacher training was that neglecting to connect with this dark and mysterious area was robbing me of huge reservoirs of vitality and power. Connecting to the pelvic floor is difficult for many of us. Culturally, this area holds loads of shame, around sex and excrement and since childhood we’re taught to relate to this area, as a messy place to be controlled, kept clean, and not speak about. Subjects of digestion, menstruation, birth, incontinence and loss of bowel tone are topics kept secret, discussed only between a person and their doctor, if even that. For many of us, the pelvic floor is a place we would rather not think about and have little relationship with, unless we are troubled by physical issues. Yet it is the place of birth and death, the place we emerge from and the place which puts the final punctuation mark on our passing by emptying its contents as our body ceases to function.

During my training, in poses like handstand and forearm balance, (where balance has been historically tenuous for me), we were encouraged to use our inner leg lines to squeeze in and pull up. I found I lacked connection to my inner groins and that I gave up quickly, feeling overwhelmed and wanting someone or something to come and rescue me from this flailing state of insecurity. I literally could not or was unwilling to support myself. Over these days, my give-up point receded as my connection to my lower abdominals and pelvis grew clearer. I learned I was able to use my pelvic floor, a hammock-like structure of muscle and ligament that supports the organs of digestion and reproduction, to find stability in inverted poses. Using techniques like nauli and uddiyana bandha, my connection to my pelvic floor and lower back grew stronger, until one day I was able to balance in handstand. The feeling was exhilarating and light, as if I were weightless and flying. My inner body structure supported the pose, and I was free of fear.

Metaphysically, I realized that fears around money, security, and safety were a mirror for the physical darkness I had in this area. I feared that if I left my secure, full-time job to seek a life that had true meaning and purpose for me, I would fail, that I was not strong enough to hold myself up. Speaking to friends, I knew that fear around leaving a secure job is normal, but the deep anxiety I had around survival was not, especially when I deconstructed the reality to understand that I do manage my money, that there are no threats to my immediate security and that I have a stable home life.

Through my own experience, I have discovered that an incomplete relationship with any of the chakra areas manifests in our body as lack of tone, energetically speaking, amongst the remaining six. How can we truly self-express (3^rd chakra) and speak our power (5^th), love openly without expectation (4^th), be confident in our creativity (2^nd), trust our intuition (6^th), and connect with a sense of universal family-hood (7^th) if we do not believe we can survive?

Healing the relationship to my 1^st chakra and working thru the cultural and familial programming lodged therein has gifted me with a renewed sense of confidence and a rootedness in my purpose. It has enabled me to both float upside down physically and move into advanced 'life asanas', outside the safe and secure cultural mainstream of what a single woman is supposed to do to find belonging and security. I am excited at the new frontiers that have opened up in my practice, in my life, and especially in regards to my relationship to myself.

As I continue to study and build my awareness of the pelvic floor, what I am beginning to see as the energetic root to all of life, both physically and metaphysically. Moving into this much-maligned and ignored space has transformed my yoga practice and my life. 

If you are interested in joining me to develop a relationship to your 1^st chakra, and start building a true inner support system, I suggest joining me as I learn more from Leslie Howard, an authority on all things pelvic, who will be giving a workshop entitled Yoga and the Pelvic Floor at Reflections Yoga in NYC on March 9th & 10th. I can't wait to see you upside down there. - Lola Rephann

Will you try Evolution Fresh juice?

As many of you know, Evolution Fresh, Starbucks new juice venture started selling their fresh-pressed juices at select Starbucks' locations this week in NYC. Many people have wondered about the nutrition content and kind of vegetables they are using. We picked up one and wanted to share.

SWEET GREENS & LEMON:

While the nutrition labels does say 100% Juice, no where on the bottle or on the website does it talk about the where the vegetables come from (local?) and if they are organic. We think probably not. In the Sweet Greens juice, the largest portion of the juice is made up of celery. While celery is low in saturated fat and cholesterol, it does contain high amounts of sodium. The juice tastes like many of the other green juices out there and it costs almost half the price at $4.95 a bottle. What do you think? Would you rather spend twice as much for organic pressed juice which is much higher in your daily vitamin intake? Let us know! - L.S.