Today we honor Staff Sergeant Joshua Hager, United States Army, who was killed in Ar Ramadi, Iraq on February 22, 2007. Rest in peace Staff Sergeant, we've got the watch. 

For time:
21 Overhead Squats 95/65#
42 Pullups
15 Overhead Squats 95/65#
30 Pullups
9 Overhead Squats 95/65#
18 Pullups

Take a moment today to reflect on what it means to be a hero. Can you incorporate heroic bravery into your life? Have you ever thought about what it means to be brave? I believe you can only be brave when you are afraid. Bravery is not the absence of fear, but rather action despite the fear. 

Remember, our new weekend yoga classes start today! Join Tami today at 10:15am and Laura tomorrow morning at 9am. 

Happy Halloween! Do you think you'll get a trick or a treat when you come in for your workout today? Guess you'll just have to come to class to find out, 'cause we're not posting it today! Boo!

Our next mind, body, spirit book club selection is The Omnivore’s Dilemma, A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. 

What should we have for dinner? The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves? The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.

In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance. 

The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.

This is a longer book, so we're going to give everyone two months to read it. Our mind, body, spirit book club will meet again in January 2015. 

Workout of the Day
Work on your gymnastics skills today. Try skin the cat on the rings, iron cross on the rings, handstand shoulder touches, or press to a handstand on the parallettes. 

As many reps as possible in 12 minutes of:
Hang Squat Clean 95/65
Muscle-ups
Add 3 reps each round. For example, 3 & 3, 6 & 6, 9 & 9, 12 & 12, and so on

This week's Whole Life Challenge lifestyle challenge is 10 minutes of mindfulness. What exactly is mindfulness? At it's simplest, mindfulness is sitting, laying, or walking quietly where you are the observer of your thoughts. It can also be time spent in silent prayer, or time spent journaling. The purpose is to connect you with your spirit. This requires some effort; for most of us, as we sit quietly a ticker tape of thoughts race through our minds. This is perfectly normal. 

The purpose of mindfulness is not to get rid of the thoughts, or try to ignore them. Rather, the purpose of mindfulness is to be aware of your thoughts. The hardest part of practicing mindfulness is to not judge your thoughts. They are part of you, but they don't define you. Try this exercise, imagine the thoughts racing through your head are the words of someone sitting next to you. How long would you allow this person to sit next to you and say these things to you? I bet, not for very long! Treat yourself with loving kindness and don't dwell on the thoughts that come into your head. They are not the truth. They are just thoughts. You  can be the silent witness of these thoughts. No judgement, they are just thoughts. Be mindful of them, and let them go. 

Yogi's and yogini's have a saying, "I am not this body. I am not this mind." It took me many years of yoga practice before I finally understood what this meant. My thoughts do not define me. They just are. I observe them enter my head and let them go without judgement. 

Here is today's workout. Can you read this and not get attached to the thoughts that enter your mind? 

4 Rounds for Time:
40 Double Unders
30 Russian Seated Twists 45/35#
20 Box Jumps 24/20’
10 Wall Balls 30/20# (yep! they're heavy!)

Please take a moment to take our short poll to help us schedule classes for the Thanksgiving holiday.