Ultimate hydration

Fourteen years ago, I reluctantly took up yoga to delay developing the family curse, arthritis.  To my complete surprise, I loved it and have been practising regularly since.  However, I feel like a fraudulent practitioner because I simply like to do the poses and leave the bells and whistles such as yoga breathing, meditation and accoutrements for the real yogis. 

     I don’t go for the string music a devout yogi plays.  I don’t like incense because it stinks and under no circumstances will I chant. In fact, during my yoga practice, my concentration always wanders especially if I have to scream at one of the children (Kibbim or TK, usually), bite a nail, have a doris at someone walking by or playing on the oval or ponder a plot in a story I am writing. 

     I don’t wear the right clothes which are said to enhances one’s practice (hell, sometimes I wear undies, aaagh).  I don’t follow anything resembling a yoga diet because I eat to survive, not for taste or comfort.  I might have a meal that is exclusively meat and sometimes eat bad things like cheese that has cracked and developed grey spots (why? because it is the only cheese in the fridge).  I don’t do vegan (too hard), I don’t juice (think of the food miles on the flesh and skin that are discarded) and I don’t detox (I would if it wasn’t considered by scientists to be unhealthy).  And I only drink water when I am thirsty, nothing like the two litres a day the myth demands.  I drink two litres of tea and coffee, though.

     I don’t have a guru which seems to be a big no no for a committed yogi.  In fact, I am totally against the idea of taking wisdom from one living person. The fact is that I am a white, middle-class, Catholic housewife and I cannot understand how taking on the yogic spiritual lifestyle of an Indian citizen is going to bring me any sort of contentment. 

    But I really admire the clever creativeness of yoga product advertising.  

     A mandala on your yoga mat (the one the site is trying to sell me) will help calm and centre me. 

     The ethically made yoga clothes will enhance my practice.

     The yoga course will refine and increase the joy of my practice and redefine me as an intuitive and competent instructor.

     At the end of the day yoga is an industry and the yoga industry is no different to the fashion industry or the cosmetics industry or the food industry.  Industries are about selling products or services and making money and good luck to anyone who makes an honest buck from flogging off yoga classes, books, retreats, dietary advice or bling. 

    

     Last week Mum bought a yoga magazine for my brother, Stephen who has recently taken up yoga.   Stephen is a botanist and I felt that a yoga magazine which may contain some extreme claims and advertising would be anathema to his scientific personality and repel him from further yoga practice.  I read the magazine and determined it totally unsuitable for him.  He accepted this when I told him he was not reading it.  My grave error was not informing Mum who, while I was deafened by the sound of Home and Away and the hissing of the tuna patties in oil, convinced Stephen to read the magazine. 

     Stephen’s growl of disbelief caught my attention above the raukus.  I turned and found him reading the magazine.

     ‘Stephen, nooo!’  I was paralysed by horror. ‘I told you not to read it.  Mum, how could you let him read this?’

     ‘Listen to this,’ said Stephen, ‘made by European craftsmen, the Lagoena Drinking Bottle has been specially shaped to correlate with the dimensions of the Golden Ratio to revitalise and restructure water molecules.’  He rolled his eyes and shook the magazine. ‘Water can’t be restructured.  This is bullshit.  The Advertising Standards board might be interested in this.’

     From my ancient knowledge of senior chemistry water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen and I don't even know if it can be restructured.  If it was possible and we added an extra hydrogen, the result would be hydrogen peroxide, I think, which has two hydrogens and two oxygens.  Or let’s take away a hydrogen from water and we’ll have hydroxide.  And, hey, while we are at restructuring things we might be able to open the envelope and make gold or diamonds.

     As to shaping the bottle according to the dimensions of the Golden Ratio, I wasn’t sure how phi or 1.6 could apply to a receptacle for liquids.

     But I have a soft spot for yoga and I didn’t want Stephen to be put-off because he’d read one dodgy advertisement.  So I emailed the human chemical encyclopedia, Dad and related the claims about the Lagoena drinking bottle, hoping he'd find a redeeming or truthful element to the ad. 

     ‘Absolute rubbish,’ he wrote.

     Scientists can be so precise.  I emailed him again begging for some elaboration.

     Regarding water, I am not sure what you mean by structure.  Water is an unusual molecule – glory of God’s design.  Water has significant hydrogen bonding which is the property that enables life on earth.  The Hs are bonded to the Os and so as water cools it shrinks like any other liquid however at 4 degrees the hydrogen bonding stops the shrinking and the water expands.  That is why ice floats (less dense) than water and fish can survive the frozen rivers and lakes.  A marvel.

Water has structure but bottles have no effect. 

      So, the claims relating to the Lagoena Drinking Bottle are crap, sorry, have no basis in science, but hey, I couldn’t come up with something as creative in a month of blue moons.  And I realised I never drink water when I am practising yoga.  Bad yogi!  Maybe, if I had a Lagoena Drinking Bottle I would be more hydrated during yoga and I'd be able to ignore the children and my nails and people walking by and deepen my practice to become more spiritual and content.  The bottles are only AUD36.40 and come with an attractive, natural fibre casing to protect ........