Adventures and Misadventures of a Month of Storing Trash
Keira was the winner of the LA YOGA and Green Yoga Association Mindfulness Challenge, where she accepted what may seem like a crazy directive: save all of your trash for a month in an effort to create more mindfulness and less trash. For her dedication and humor, she received a tuition scholarship to the Green Yoga Association Conference held at Loyola Marymount University in May. We published part of her story in the July/August, 2009, issue of LA YOGA. (Missed it? Check it out online) and now…the conclusion of Keira’s Mindfulness Challenge.
“I make the most of all that comes, and the least of all that goes.” –– Sara Teasdale (teabag quote)
Trash Journal: Week Three
I’m still able to fit my trash and recycling in the two brown bags that started this journey. They are beginning to fill more quickly and I’m getting concerned about my personal amounts of trash. And I’m worried about the competition. I imagine the hard-core guys from today’s hot Yoga class who look like they sustain themselves on flax seed and wheat grass who say “No!” to frivolous modern luxuries.
Fortunately, I accepted from the start that simply completing the month is my goal. I’ve been handing in assignments in on paper collected from the recycling bins in the library and I’ve been using receipts as post-it note replacements. This is great until the back of the receipt you need for an exchange says, “Buy tampons WITHOUT applicator” and “SAVE YOUR SH*T” (an innocent reminder keep all trash).
My sister is visiting, and we’re having a sublime time cooking, packing lunches and walking or riding the bus everywhere (I don’t have a car and my sister was not cool with riding on my bicycle handlebars). Luckily she lives in Madrid, and has lived in Barcelona and Brooklyn, so she is no stranger to walking. Last night we bought two fully-loaded bags of groceries and didn’t want to carry them so we borrowed a shopping cart and then found out that we had committed a serious crime, even more serious because of our selection of the superior metal shopping cart, committing the most challenging, dangerous and risky of all shopping cart thefts. So, we quickly returned the cart.
Week Four
I’m back to school and work, and my sister has returned to Spain. I miss having an accomplice in my trash saving. However, saving garbage is definitely easier when you only have to be concerned with one person.
Finish Line!
At first I felt lost at the end of the month. I found myself running to my room with a hand of crumpled garbage, only to remember that I no longer needed to fill my paper bags.
I actually felt sad. Engaging in a challenging experience for the sake of the Earth, something bigger than myself, was worth every moment. In fact I might do every year, just to keep me on my toes.
It would be incredible if everyone tried this out; even if just for a week. New and interesting ways to reduce waste would surface and people would start to notice how many things get thrown out unnecessarily.
Green Yoga Conference
At the Green Yoga Conference, informational speeches on spirituality and vegetarianism, an incredible history of sea otters, Gandhian principles in practice and more were layered between fresh and fantastic Yoga classes unlike anything I had ever experienced. We were encouraged to see our interior surroundings as sacred and beautiful, just like the wild, and even practiced, literally, in the trees. It was an incredible and affirming way to connect with other green minds.
Keira Belisle Lamoureux is a student at Ventura College where she picked up LA YOGA in Constance McClean’s Spirituality and Health class and became inspired by Adi Carter to taken on the Mindfulness Challenge. She received a tuition scholarship to the Green Yoga Association and Loyola Marymount University’s Green Yoga Conference in May. For more information about the Green Yoga Association, visit: greenyoga.org.
By Keira Belisle Lamoureux
Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.