Instead of heading to Bikram Yoga in Glastonbury for the noon class today, I decided to try out a new yoga studio, West Hartford Yoga, and to take a hot vinyasa class-- my first vinyasa (non-Birkam) yoga class in almost three months!!!
Stepping into the soothing, female empowering confines of the studio, I remembered why I used to love going to vinyasa yoga so much, but during class and after class, I remembered why I switched over to Bikram: I simply get a better workout that stretches, works, challenges, and detoxes my body far better than any other form of yoga. I also have to admit that it's hard to love something that you aren't good at. Although I have been practicing yoga for years, taking a three month hiatus on ashtanga/vinyasa style yoga has really taken its toll on my practice. It's quite bizarre when your body is so fit and competent at one form of excercise and yet completely inept at another.
After class, I decided to drive to a nearby raw food cafe and juice bar that I had read about on the internet rather than drive the 25 minutes home to juice, shower, and do homework. Let's just say, it was a bad decision.
Driving from West Hartford to Hartford isn't as peechy-keen and easy as it seems. No siree Bob. If you've never been to Connecticut than you might not know that some of its areas aren't the most, well, safe/well kept/ or welcoming. When you just get out of yoga and you're cruising in your car with the windows down and the sunroof open, your hair flying in the wind as you jam to the music of Wah!, worrying about drive-by shootings or dangerous, illegal traffic violations aren't something you want to think about.
After getting a bit lost, I made it to The Alchemy Juice Bar. The Bar is conveniently located across the street from Trinity College (for all those raw food loving students, if there are any), and, despite the still skeezy and shady neighborhood, is quite a cute joint.
I don't want to harrangue this raw food joint too much because my sour experience there is partly the result of hormones and circumstance. Although my experience there was not so fun, my opinion on the joint is not marred. This, of course is partly due to the fact that it is one of the two raw food joints that exist within at least 30 miles of my town in Connecticut and thus I am partial to such a lone wolf enterprise. The intention behind the cafe is also admirable as it seems like the owners want to make the juice bar than just a place to eat. They want to make it a community center where people with like minds can come together and partake in various events. While I commend them on that goal, I think they need to take a few steps to make the place a bit more welcoming.
First things first, the people (or rather, MEN) who work there are not very friendly, alert, or experienced. I was there for about an hour and for the entire time I was there, there were at least five men wandering around the store, outside, or in the kitchen area. They were slow to take orders and in fact never even asked me to pay. I had to go up and remind them of what I had bought and then ask them to ring me up. They also took decades to make their food. At first I only ordered a juice, but I watched as it took them no less than 20 minutes to make a salad and a sunshine burger. Later, I ease dropped on a woman sitting behind me who ordered a salad. It took her at least 15 mintues to get her salad. Keep in mind that this cafe is/was virtually empty. Two of the salesmen left the store entirely at one point to check out a mountain bike outside the store and one of them sat down with a woman and her son as they ate their lunch and caught up on life ( I assumed they were family members). Lastly, as is generally the case whenever you go somewhere that people with strong passions congregate at, I had to sit through a seven minute long diatribe on why cacao is a superfood. Interesting, but the story was not in the least scientifically grounded. The man literally told me that in Sedona, Arizona, energy tests were being conducted on cacao where they hammered it with energy to see how long it would last. Ummmm?
The juice selection was sparse and quite limiting for a raw food juice bar. All they offered was: apple, orange, lemon, ginger, beet, kale, cucumber, celery, carrot, and dandelion sprouts. What about bell peppers, brocolli, spinach?
And the food....yes, it was good, but far overpriced. Unreasonably so. Even the juices were ridiculously priced. $8-$10 for an average juice and $12 for a celery, cucumber, sprout juice? Really? I just made a celery, cucumber, lemon juice at home and I calculate that, at most, it cost me about $3.
All in all, the juice bar is a nice operation but I left it feeling more out of sorts and frazzled than when I entered. I felt robbed (because I spent far more money than I'd have liked), unsatisfied (because the juice I ordered wasn't that good, nor were the kale chips when I compare them to what I get in Los Angeles), robbed of my privacy (because I was forced to enter into conversations I did not want to be in, as well overhear conversations of others that I did not, yet could not, avoid hearing), and just un-zen.
Yes, that's it. Today was a completely un-zen day. Maybe it's because I didn't follow the number one tenent of Zen Buddhism: 'Zen mind, beginner's mind.' By going into the vinyasa class with the mindset that I was an old pro, and then coming out of it with a bruised ego, I went against this ancient mantra. I should have gone in with a beginner's mind, a zen mind. I should have approached it as something new, and not as if it were something that I had already conqured in life.
Note to self: Zen mind, beginner's mind.
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