Balancing With Chef Allison – Michelle D. Williams

BALANCING WITH CHEF ALLISON

By Michelle D. Williams

We all know that eating and yoga don’t really

mix. It can be tricky to time meals at least two hours before class or home practice. And preparing a nice, healthy meal can take up a lot of time—certainly longer than ordering takeout or grabbing something ready-made. If you’re working full time, taking care of a family, enjoying hobbies, and spending time with friends, it’s difficult to find time to actually cook. But the food we eat is so critical to how we feel overall, and what we eat can drastically affect our yoga practice.

For Allison Bader, who has been a professional chef for 25 years and practicing Iyengar Yoga for more than a dozen, cooking, eating, and yoga are all part of the same practice. “Good food— healthy food—is a passion of mine,” Bader says. “And I’m passionate about my yoga practice too. In fact, I find a lot of similarities between yoga and cooking.”

When she first started taking Iyengar Yoga classes, in her mid40s, it was a way for her to build strength and stay flexible. Bader is also an avid tennis player and skier so wanted something to balance out the active, physical side of those sports. But she was immediately drawn into the philosophy of yoga and the “just being” of it.

“In my classes with Julie Lawrence, we’ll be working hard, putting a lot of effort into a particular pose and holding it,” Bader says. “Then right at the point when I say to myself, ‘Oh, my god. Can I just get out of this?’ She’ll say, ‘Okay, now let go of the points and just be in the pose.’ When I get to this “Food to me is not just fuel. Cooking is an act of love—it’s nurturing, it’s creativity. And yoga is similarly all of those things…”

moment, it can be sort of magical. I’m just in the pose, and I’m not struggling with it.”

Bader says cooking is the same. “There are so many things I love about cooking. I love the mundane—all the chopping of vegetables and other prep work. I love it because those tasks make it easy for me—for my mind—to just be there with the product that I’m working with. I’m not thinking about my kids and what they’re doing, and I’m not thinking about what I’m going to make for dinner at home. I just let go of the points and I’m there. And that for me is where yoga and cooking really kind of merge.”

Lost in Asparagus Life in the food industry can be crazy—and seemingly not very balanced. Shifts can be long, and depending on your focus, you’re either getting up at 3 a.m. to bake or you’re getting home at 3 a.m. after a long night followed by post-shift hanging out.

Back when she lived in Boston, Bader worked as a pastry chef at a small but very busy restaurant. She’d go in really early and make all of the pastries and then all of the pasta for the day. Then she’d start the stocks and some of the other prep. Gradually as the day went on, more staff would roll in and things would get busier and busier. By lunchtime, it was

HOW TO PEEL ASPARAGUS

Chef Allison prefers thick, meaty stalks because ultimately they are not as woody and stringy as the thin stalks.

• Snap off the tough ends of each stalk—or cut them off so that every stalk is the exact same length.

• Peel the bottom half of every stalk.

• Take your time, and peel very lightly using a regular vegetable peeler.

“It’s one of those extra steps that brings food up to the next level,” Bader says. “Just like making your own chicken stock.”

controlled chaos. As the dinner crew came in, Bader would be wrapping up her shift.

“One of the things I loved to do in the spring … we would get these huge cases of asparagus. In the afternoon, when everything was ramping up for dinner, I loved to just get a stool, sit in the corner of the kitchen, and remove myself from all the chaos. I would just sit there for an hour or two, peeling asparagus for the dinner shift. None of the other prep cooks ever wanted to do it because it was so tedious. But I could get into a state where I didn’t have any thoughts. It was completely mindless. That sort of task has brought me closer to a meditative state than any other activity.” Indeed, Bader is in her element when she is focused on the details of chopping and peeling. For her, the attention to detail in preparing food parallels that required for practicing Iyengar Yoga.

“I think I was attracted to Iyengar Yoga because it is very focused and detail-oriented. That’s how I cook. My mind stays really focused on the physical aspect of what I’m doing—partly because I’m working with a sharp object! In yoga, I have to focus on what my physical body is doing or I will hurt myself or fall out of the pose. There are those days when I can’t seem to find my balance in yoga. And that’s because I’m not present. My mind is elsewhere. That’s when I feel wobbly or tippy.”

Cooking as Practice “The most nurturing thing you can do for yourself or anyone else is to cook food,” Bader says. “It nurtures your body and your soul. Food to me is not just fuel. Cooking is an act of love—it’s nurturing, it’s creativity. And yoga is similarly all of those things— it nurtures me, my soul, my physical being. Being athletic in other areas, it’s helped me maintain a balance in my life.”

And that’s what Bader’s life is all about really: balance. She loves eating healthy food because it makes her feel good. She loves feeding her family healthy food that tastes good because she wants them to enjoy food. And a big part of cooking for friends and family is about spending time together, balancing out work and other obligations with nourishing community time.

“I’m an omnivore. I eat everything,” Bader says. “But I eat less meat now. Not because I’ve consciously chosen that, but because other things sound better. Generally I don’t snack. I don’t eat junk food. I read package labels religiously—I won’t buy anything that has more than five ingredients in it.

“But I’m really not that dogmatic in the way I eat or cook,” she says. “I would never forego cream or salt or butter. But when I’m feeling good and healthy, I use so little of that. I think yoga brings that to my life—that sense of moderation and balance. I just automatically make good choices.”

Many people talk about taking their yoga practice “off the mat,” but it seems that Bader actually took her cooking practice onto the mat. She found peace and centeredness early on in the kitchen. Years later, when she joined an Iyengar Yoga class, finding it there was a piece of cake.

Michelle D. Williams lives in Portland, Oregon, and is the editor of Yoga Samachar. She has been practicing Iyengar Yoga since 1994.