Cue the confetti and pop the champagne! We’re celebrating the new year AND this month’s outstanding Super Yogis (250+) and Fear Nots (500+):
Joanne B.
Kateri C.
Beth C.
Marylou K.
Jenna K.
Kristie K.
Francesca O.
Joan T.
Diane D.
Lisa S.
Dan V.
Anna Baeten – Funky Buddha Executive Director | Chris Jett Photography
Motherhood. Oh Motherhood. The roller coaster that is motherhood. It is a roller coaster, the highs are so high and the lows can catch you by surprise, but it is more than just the ups and downs, it is an evolution of personhood.
After growing (or adopting) a human being, we can’t really be the exact same human being that they were in the before. We are the same, but we are different, forever changed by the tiny human(s) that have entered our lives. And so, we embrace the evolution of our personhood. We do the best we can.
As a mother myself, I am a firm believer in the necessity and unselfishness of mommy self-care. Yes, I said unselfishness. Mothers as a group (myself included) tend to feel guilty about self-care. And by self-care, I do not just mean pampering and pedicures (not that those aren’t nice – they are 🙂), I also mean things as simple as time – uninterrupted time. The fact is: parental self-care IS family and child care.
My personal Funky Buddha story began not as an employee, but as a mom looking for some “me-time.” As the mother of two small children, self-employed, and working from a home office – the Funky Buddha was literally like a haven of grownup awesomeness. For me, the fitness benefits were great, but totally secondary to the “social solitude” of my mat. The studio was a place where I could simultaneously be surrounded by grown-ups and be completely present with ONLY myself on my mat. As a person that still can be found celebrating the times when I get to pee by myself – time on my mat is precious.
To all of my fellow Mom-Warriors. Yes, you. I am talking directly to you. You will not find the time – you must TAKE the time. Take the time for yourself. Your sanity (and your families, as beneficiaries of your sanity) will thank you. So, yes your kids want you to yoga.
Give it a try. The new student special is deliberately designed to reduce all the obstacles. Unlimited Yoga for 30-days for only $39. Take the first step, and then be deliberate – TAKE the time for yourself. You won’t regret it.
From one Mom-Warrior to another.
Anna Baeten
Executive Director
Funky Buddha Yoga Hothouse
Slow Flow is, and has always been, designed to be a physical compliment to Power Flow. While no less athletic, Slow Flow focuses its sequencing on heated opening and releasing of the major muscle groups that are worked in a more contractile manner in Power Flow.
2017 will be the launch of our fresh, shiny, newly updated and super fantastic 60-minute Slow Flow Sequence. These updates better align the class with the original intent for the Slow Flow experience: to act as the compliment and counter-balance to Power Flow. The updates include both student feedback and teaching insight we’ve accumulated over the last 5 years of Slow Flow’s history.
It’s worth noting that Slow Flow is not intended to be physically easy or in any way easier than Power Flow just because the word slow is in the title. Slow simply refers to a physical approach to yoga that is intentional, simplified, and meant to target very specific areas of the body. This kind of physical experience, where a student takes more time to place and open his or her body in an exacting way, may actually be more physically challenging.
Slow Flow is meant to offer a physical and mental challenge, just like a Power Flow class, but by using a different, precision-based door. Our all new Funky Buddha Slow Flow classes will debut starting January 1. We hope you’ll jump right in and enjoy. Happy Slow Flowing in 2017!
At the heart of the Funky Buddha are our Core Values – a deliberate and thoughtfully compiled list of ideals by which we operate, live, and create. Our Core Values permeate everything that we do and can be seen in everything from our employee policies to our class formats. Funky Buddha Core Values are at the center of both our student and staff culture. They provide a foundation on which to build excellence, and guide our continuing evolution.
A side benefit of being a business with intentionally formulated and strongly supported Core Values is an increased awareness of displays of excellence in the business community around us, and in Grand Rapids, there is excellence all around us.
This month, as we move into the party-heavy part of the Holiday Season, our featured business/organization Kudos goes out to The Cheese Lady!! So much YUM and such an excellent service experience.
In our humble cheese-eating-opinion the amazing-ness that is The Cheese Lady comes down to the incredible and unique service experience (Service First) that you get when you go into their shop.
Going to The Cheese Lady is like going to a wine-tasting, except that it is CHEESE!!! Smiles (Professionalism/RICH Action). Samples Galore (Accessibility). A Rotating Selection of Premium Cheeses (Quality). Education (Continuous Improvement). Cheesy Recommendations (Accessibility/Professionalism). This is what every trip to The Cheese Lady is like. Even if you don’t like cheese (gasp) you will have fun visiting this little Grand Rapids treasure.
Heather Zinn, owner of the Grand Rapids Cheese Lady, says, “We want everyone to feel comfortable coming into our shop. You don’t need to know anything about cheese to come here (Accessibility). We can guide you to a selection that you will love (Professionalism). Cheese is an affordable luxury – a little splurge that is delicious and fun. Kids love it. Families make trips to our store. People go on dates here.” (Accessibility and Service First x 1,000)
Need snack/appetizer ideas for your Holiday Party? The Cheese Lady has a million ideas and all of the things you will need to pull it off. Click here for all sorts of ideas for 30 Second Appetizers.
The Cheese Lady * 315 Fuller NE Grand Rapids, MI 49503 * www.thecheeselady.net
It’s that season where there are what seems like endless amounts of parties to attend sometimes more than one a day!
Here are some options for different mocktails, so you can be festive and social, even when you don’t want to be tipping back too many actual cocktails (like when you have an early morning yoga class the next day).
Mock ChampagneIngredients:
Fill half your glass with white grape juice and the other half with grape flavored sparkling water, then toss in a few frozen grapes and blueberries to keep the bubbly chilled.
SO delicious and just so simple! Add mulling spices to your cider, heat to a boil, and strain out the spices. Do a cinnamon and sugar rim on your glass and if you’re feeling fancy add a cinnamon stick!
Ingredients:
Homemade Whip Cream (for topping)
For the mousse: Add your pumpkin pie mix to your blender along with your favorite vanilla ice cream and a splash of milk, blend until smooth. Top with ~homemade~ whip cream and pumpkin pie spices! If you have never made whipped cream—no worries! It’s SO easy and SO good, you’ll never want store bought again. (Pro tip: Place your metal mixing bowl and metal whisk (or metal beaters) into the freezer for 10 to 15 minutes for best results!) Place the sugar in your mixing bowl and add the whipping cream and a splash of vanilla extract. Whisk away or whip on high until you see stiff peaks. Licking the beaters after is highly recommended! 😉
Ingredients:
Mix in whatever fruit you like best, and chill for about 20 minutes to let the fruits soak in the goodness.
Ingredients:
Add two scoops of your favorite hot cocoa mix to your coffee and mix well as the chocolate will want to sink to the bottom! Top with some homemade whipped cream and chocolate.
Cheers to Mocktails and Happy Holidays to all!!!
—Christina
You may have noticed that the Funky Buddha Boutique (Retail) has been going through some major overhaul. Just as the Funky Buddha has evolved, so have our retail offerings. When the Funky Buddha opened almost 6 years ago (shameless plug for our Anniversary Festivities, click here), there was no hot yoga scene in Grand Rapids and absolutely no hot yoga CLOTHING scene. In fact, athleisure was not even a made up word yet. If you wanted yoga clothes, the choices were slim. But in a very short time, the world has caught on…caught onto yoga, caught onto yoga gear, and caught on to yoga clothes. Now you can buy a pair of yoga pants pretty much ANYWHERE.
As such, the Funky Buddha Boutique strategy has changed. Fewer basic basics (only the BEST basics). More unique cool stuff that you can’t get everywhere. More variety. More locally made accessories and fun stuff. Made in Michigan. Hell YES!! And as we go on this crazy Yoga Retail Scavenger Hunt, looking for the best and greatest things to bring you, your Friendly Neighborhood Yogis are here bravely committing themselves to….product testing!! It is a hard job, but somebody has to do it. 🙂
Alo Yoga – AlliThe best way to describe the Alo yoga brand is luxury, style, and function. I have two pairs of the Moto high waist legging and they’re my favorite pants to practice in AND do errands in. So comfortable I could sleep in them! These pants are very flattering and they hug my body in all the right places. And the best part is how cool and unique the moto design is! I get compliments all the time when I wear them. I have an Alo tank top to match, which feels like silk and dries easily after a sweaty yoga practice. I highly recommend all things Alo – including their fun and inspiring Instagram feed.
Zobha – Larissa
I purchased this particular pair of yoga pants almost 6 years ago after my first hot yoga class. (After my first VERY sweaty class, I realized my cotton pants and hot yoga might not be best friends for the long term!)
I knew I wanted a pair of ‘yoga pants’, but wasn’t 100% sure what that meant, so I just wandered around a few stores. I pretty much shop by feel. Touch, no. Touch, no. Touch, no. Touch, so soft, yes! These were one of those ‘so soft!’ friends that jumped right into my shopping cart. I didn’t know anything about the brand other than ‘Soft’. Turns out, after hundreds of wears and washes, they are amazing!
My other shopping criteria is ‘one interesting detail’. (Sometimes that’s still just ‘Soft’.) These pants also had a fun textured panel of material at the bottom of the legs. I’ve found that most Zobha clothes are like that; Simple, Lovely Fabric Feel, and one Unique Feature. I’ll practice yoga in anything, but I’ve definitely enjoyed the quality and longevity of my Zobha gear.
I love Lucy!
My favorite thing about Lucy is their leggings. I have several styles, but you can’t go wrong with the basic Studio Hatha Legging. They hold up well and they don’t pill like I’ve experienced with other brands.
I’m also a fan of their basic racer back tank. Simple. Functional. Comfortable.
So, I am the worst and the best person to write an article about Self Care because I am terrible at it – like the worst – like really bad. I put self-care items on my calendar, and then cancel them, despite the wisdom of prioritizing them. I run a million miles an hour until my body literally tells me to stop. I am that person.
If you are like me, your life is busy, and if you are lucky, like I am lucky, life is busy with things that you love, enjoy, and that fill you up: family, friends, work, yoga. Now add on top of that the joy, excitement, and routine destroying crazy that is the Holidays. You get the drift.
Let me just say, “I love the holidays.” For. Real. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, hands down. To me, Thanksgiving is all the best stuff from the gift-giving holidays, but with less mess and wrapping paper. But, I also have small children, so the gift-giving and Santa portion of the holiday season holds an undeniable thrill for my household as well. And…the little white lights….if it were up to me there would be little white lights all over everything year round.
But, it is exactly this inherent overpouring of holiday positivity that can sneak up on me and bite me in the butt when it comes to overwhelm. Ironic, eh? It is really just an extension of the rest of life, but hopped up and magnified by sugar and Holiday Parties.
How can a person be overwhelmed and stressed when all of the things in their life are GOOD things? Well, let me tell you…..it can happen. It does happen. Hell, I would go so far as to make the bold prediction that it could very well happen TO YOU (at some point).
So here is some little “preemptive strike” stuff that you can try, and when done consistently, it really does help make for happier, healthier, and more resilient busy people. I am focusing this article on little things – the tiny things. The big stuff is amazing too, and we definitely should ALL make time in our schedules for The First EVER Funky Buddha Rest Fest on Saturday, December 10th (See how I slipped that little plug in there?), but it is the little stuff that saves my sanity every day. None of this stuff is magic. It is simple. Sometimes we all just need a little reminder that we are not alone, and everyone is running around with their hair on fire a lot of the time.
FYI. If a regular more formal meditation practice is also on your TODO list, this strategy of habit making has been proven to work by many Funky Buddhas. 5-10 minutes of meditation every morning – first thing – BEFORE you pick up your phone. It is the before you pick up your phone thing that really makes this work. All the sciencey stuff about cues, rewards, habit loops….blah blah blah. It is all real stuff. It totally works.
2. Say No. Again, so simple….and yet….. There have been entire books written about this, workshops that you can attend, consultants and life coaches that make a living focusing on this specific topic.
The flip side of this, for me, is to “Say Yes, but when it is strategically feasible.” Figuring out how to do this well is important for everyone. In my life, this plays itself out most prominently at my children’s schools. Like every working parent – really, like every parent – in the world, we want to be great at ALL THE THINGS. Great professionals. Great parents. Great friends. Great community members. ALL. THE. THINGS. We want to participate at our children’s schools and attend all of the events. We all know.
I want to be the parent that is present at her children’s school. However, I had to have a stern talking-to-with-myself earlier this year about how to do this in the most strategically feasible sanity-preserving way. Sometimes, I am not going to be able to make a home cooked creation that represents our family’s culture and ethnicity for a mid-week potluck. Because if I am going to do it, I want to do it well, and some weeks that is a possibility and some weeks it is just NOT. So instead, I donated money that was used to buy extension cords to power the 6 bazillion crock pots. And Boom! Community participation. Someone has to buy the extension cords. This time it was me, and that is okay.
In Holiday-land this translates to, “be strategic about where you expend your festive energy.” What events/parties/school activities are the most important to you and your family? What things do you WANT to go to? What things are feasible for you to attend? Is there a way for you to consolidate your Holiday Cheer – like see a bunch of people that you want to see at ONE time? How can you make your housewarming contributions easier (I buy a case of my favorite mid-level-yummy-enough-be-a-treat-but-not-so-yummy-that-it-breaks-the-bank wine to have on hand for holiday shindigs)? Catch my drift? At least worth a some thought before you socialize yourself to burnout.
3. Thank Yous. This one really really works for me. Call it gratitude training, call it good old fashioned manners, call it whatever you want. I am a believer in the Thank You. There are so many reasons to believe in the Thank You. Gratitude. Kindness. Grace. An exercise in really seeing the people around you every day.
I believe in the Thank You every day, but I especially believe in the Thank You when I am stressed, busy, at my wits end…..and especially when I don’t feel gracious. You know the feeling. I am not talking about being flippantly positive when things and or people are crappy. I am talking about when it is YOU. You are stressed. You are agitated. You are sad or grumpy. Making a conscious effort to spread the Thank Yous on thick really does help – not always in the moment, but in the net positivity you experience for the day. And so often what happens, is that someone’s response from your Thank You can have the power to snap you out of your funk and get you back where you want to be mentally and emotionally.
There you have it, just a couple little coping mechanisms that might help you in your day-to-day, and if nothing else, just the acknowledgement of the crazy. Sometimes that is all we need, just a little camaraderie as we bustle about, spread holiday cheer, get shit done, and do the very best we can.
XOXO,
Anna
Check out this month’s long list of outstanding Super Yogis (250+) and Fear Nots (500+):
Laura M. S.
Stephanie L.
Natalie S.
Monica B.
Bette O.
Teresa D.
Megan B.
Kirsen D.
Stephanie K.
Leah S.
Mark S.
Darcy A.
Andrea B.
Annika B.
Alison R.
Kristine S.
Laurie V.
Kristi C.
Peter H.
Frances H.
Sara K.
Alisha T.
Andrea W.
Dying of plague? Apple Cider Vinegar will cure you. Carpenter ants in your home? Apple Cider Vinegar. A family of unfriendly woodland trolls in your backyard? Apple Cider Vinegar.
But seriously, we <3 Apple Cider Vinegar, and after taking a little informal Funky Buddha Staff poll, here are some of the ways that ACV has made our lives better:
So there you’ve got it, some real life uses for Apple Cider Vinegar. What is your favorite use for ACV??
So, why WYCE and The Funky Buddha…? Music has been an important part of the Funky Buddha culture since the beginning. A little live music with your yoga? A few LASERS and a DJ?!?! Maybe a slow jam now and again – all “normal” things in Funky Buddha-land. Through our live music and live DJ yoga classes, the Funky Buddha has developed a strong, creative, and collaborative partnership with the Grand Rapids local music scene. The Funky Buddha’s relationship with WYCE developed organically – cordial acquaintances, casually hanging out with the cool kids in the “Cool Things Happening in Grand Rapids” pool. In 2015, in a show of support for all of our Funky Buddha Musicians, The Funky Buddha Yoga Hothouse sponsored the WYCE Jammie Awards, the largest celebration of local music in Grand Rapids. And as the paths of The Funky Buddha and WYCE continued to cross, a more involved Community Partnership became obvious – like DUH, obvious. Funky Buddhas <3 local music, and WYCE’s WHOLE LIFE is local music. So here is a little glimpse into the funky cool world of WYCE, Radio for the Community.
By Quinn Mathews, WYCE Station Manager
Article published October 18, 2016
I think it’s pretty safe to say EVERY town has a radio station right? Everywhere you are at anytime you can throw on the radio and choose many different options. Hard Rock, or Hip Hop or talk radio from the left, talk radio from the right. Everything, Everywhere.
But Grand Rapids has something unique and in 2017 that unique thing will celebrate 30 years in West Michigan. It’s 88.1FM WYCE non-commercial community radio. It’s listener sponsored and volunteer powered.
Let me explain…
Non Commercial: NO COMMERCIALS. Zero. Zip.
Listener Sponsored: Funded by the community, not by a company, not by the government.
Volunteer Powered: ANYONE can program a show on the radio, it’s volunteers from the community.
The only catch is, the station plays a wide variety of music that people like to hear. Not music that someone requires you to play. Sounds like a dream come true right? It kind of is. I guess if it’s a dream the dream has been lasting for 30 years. You will always hear unique programming, the best blend of Folk, Rock, Bluegrass, Jazz, Blues, Reggae, and World Music.
We are so fortunate to be able to take this musical journey in a city as vibrant and creative as Grand Rapids. This city, our city, has so many opportunities for WYCE to interact musically with the public in non-traditional ways – be it a music festival on a bridge during the largest Art Festival in the world (I am referring to Art Prize, just in case you were wondering), regular live music on your lunch break in the heart of Grand Rapids, or a packed live music hot yoga class at the Funky Buddha Yoga Hothouse (talking to you, you music loving Funky Buddhas).
Also tune in to specialty shows:THURSDAYS at 12pm: “GR LIVE” A live radio show experience on 88.1FM that takes place downtown at The B.o.B. every Thursday at noon! Live performances and interviews all open to the public for lunch! Join us and watch a radio show!
FRIDAYS at 11am: “Local Spins” All local West Michigan music and in studio performances!
SUNDAYS at 10pm: “Soul Club Hour” Spinning 50’s and 60’s soul music all on Vinyl!
88.1FM WYCE, give a listen, make a request, or even come take a class at the Grand Rapids Community Media Center and start your own show! We’d love to have you! See you out in GR!
Stay Funky,
Quinn
