The best thing is, well pay for your yoga, spinning, kickboxing whatever! Youll save so much money! said the Lululemon manager during my interview. Plus, youll be so healthy you wont even need to worry about health insurance!

Fantastic! I love exercise! I replied, smiling broadly and flexing slightly, hoping to land the job solely through enthusiasm and muscle tone. I had no retail experience, but I was tired of working at restaurants, and this seemed like a respectable place to bide my time and the easiest way to make money while I searched for something better. Free yoga, discounts on expensive clothes, a prime location in Union Square. At Lululemon, salesgirls are called educators and customers are called guests, a touch of class that helps to justify both the $100 yoga pants and the hours of life spent selling them.

I got the job, becoming a Lululemon educator one week after moving to New York. It was the first real thing Id accomplished in the city, besides convincing an old co-counselor from camp to let me crash on his couch in Stuytown, where I slept in a living room dominated by games Xbox, Wii, even an electronic putting green belying the serious nature of my quest for a job, a life, that mattered.

Lululemon employee training was so tightly scheduled, I couldnt help feeling like I was part of something important. Ten of us, new hires from Lululemons across Manhattan, gathered every day for about a week before any actual work began. After group yoga, the mornings were for lectures on willpower and videos on the importance of goal setting starring company founder Chip Wilson (Oh, just call him Chip, giggled one of the managers). Afternoons were for group folding sessions: long pants in fourths, capris and tanks in thirds, headbands and underwear in half; wrinkles smoothed with the flat of your hand.

Evenings were spent poring over the required reading: Jim Collins corporate self-help book Good to Great, which Chip was obsessed with. The message: Good is the enemy of great, dont settle for a mediocre life. Yes! Exactly, I exclaimed after all, wasnt that why Id left my Indiana hometown? Being hired by Lululemon began to feel almost providential.

On the eve of our first day on the job, all of us trainees got together for a last hurrah in the basement of the SoHo store. We drank kombucha and ate gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free cookies from Whole Foods while we crafted goal sheets: lists of our life goals for the next 10 years, to be framed and hung on the walls of our respective stores.

This put me in a bit of a pickle, since my goal was to leave as soon as I found an office job with benefits. But now Lululemon had invested so much time in what was called my development. Perhaps, as my empty goal sheet suggested, I really did need their help. After several crappy jobs, the steadiness of 9-to-5 was appealing not having to run around, sweating, sucking up to people, dependent on tips as was the idea of helping to make something that would last. But what would that look like? I liked to read, so Id mostly been applying for editing positions. But I couldnt write down such a half-baked goal for all to see.

Under the guise of getting another hemp-seed cookie, I leaned over and read my neighbors goals: run a marathon, do yoga teacher training, buy a country house. Easy enough. I copied her. Id figure out my real goals later.

The first few days of work were heady, accompanied as they were by a flood of endorphins: spin class at 6 a.m., vinyasa flow at 8 p.m.; Saturday morning run clubs in the park and Sunday morning yoga classes in the store. Exercise what sort, how often, the afterglow was the main topic of in-store conversation, so if you skipped a day it was obvious and people asked if you were feeling OK. We were encouraged to choose our favorite method of exercise, but it was best if it was something other people liked too, since The team that sweats together stays together!

While everyone had something else they wanted to be their passion it always seemed to fit within the Lululemon rubric. I went on runs with Jo the marathoner who also made handbags; spinning with Catherine the triathlete who was also a dancer; yoga classes with Sam, who was also an actor and a personal trainer. I spent my life trying not to be careless, he rasped in his best Vito Corleone impression. Real men stretch before they run.

See more here:
Yoga, spinning and a murder: My strange months at Lululemon

You can change your life.. You do have the power to create anything, anyway you wish to experience it.

I'm all about helping you to understand and experience a New Movement! This movement is TRUTH. Spiritual TRUTH!

The law of attraction is more than what you've been led to think it is. It's deeper than most teach.. it's about empowerment of YOU. You are the creative force.. you just don't realize it.

What I offer you is more than coaching, more than energy work to heal your body... I offer you the tools to SEE yourself as you really are.. to know yourself as Source Energy. This is the secret..

The secret is knowing how to work with the principles of life itself.. the law of attraction Creative LifePrinciplesto create with conscious intention.

Most of the people in the world, most of the time, create unconsciously from the place of fear, doubt, dread, past painful experiences and expectation that life is hard.

This is exactly what they get over and over again.

Perhaps you are one of those people.

You've worked hard, long hours and still you don't have the success you dream of.

Read this article:
TransformationCoaching

As I travel around the state, I am sometimes asked by well-meaning skeptics: "Instead of providing additional options to students, why not build it within our existing traditional public school system?"

This question is understandable. For many defenders of traditional public schools, government funding for public charter schools and private schools makes them cringe. And, while there is a small minority of people who believe that public schools - or as they say, "government-run schools" - are inadequate and not worth investing in, I am not one of them.

My position on public education reform was perhaps best described in the award-winning 2011 documentary, "Waiting for Superman." When studying the quality of public education compared to yesteryear, researchers found that formerly high-performing schools had become low-performing schools, and that the low academic scores may have very little to do with the state of the actual school in question. In fact, the real issue may have more to do with the major decline and devastation in the communities that surround the school - in warp speed.

Think about it. When I attended public schools in the textile town of Kannapolis 23 years ago, North Carolina was an economic leader in textile manufacturing. Today in my hometown, where textile mill smoke stacks once stood, there are bright, brick biotech research buildings. Further, North Carolina was also a leader in tobacco farming and furniture production.

Consider this: Twenty-three years ago, 70 percent of the African-American households were two-parent households. Today, more than 70 percent of the African-American households are one-parent. And while I would in no way imply that our single mothers are somehow inadequate, I'm appalled that they had no choice in the matter.

Tough statistics and hard facts like these have me spinning the question back on those same well-meaning skeptics: Given the plight of our families, communities and the impact of a new global economy, why should we expect our traditional public schools to wrestle with these challenges alone? Now more than ever, we must be open to new ideas, innovation and change.

Change is constant. All of us must adapt. And our public education system is no different.

When slightly more than 30 percent of children from low-income communities meet grade standards in Cumberland County, it is clear that these parents deserve greater educational options for their child, traditional or nontraditional.

And when you add these countywide numbers to statewide figures, the number of children who are unable to perform at grade level is jaw-dropping.

According to the state Department of Public Instruction, 70 percent of low-income North Carolina students failed to demonstrate proficiency of their subject - that's 7 out of 10 students.

Here is the original post:
Columnist-Darrell Allison: 'As the World Turns, So Does Education'

American glutes, biceps and bellies are fueling a $22 billion industry centered on keeping U.S. bodies fit. In Oakland alone there's yoga, Pilates, CrossFit, endurance racing, boxing, aerobics, weight training and running, plus multiple variations of each of those.

Keeping up with the competition requires offering as many services under one roof as possible, said Kewesi Simon, owner of Kinesthetic Exercise Sciences fitness studio in West Oakland.

"You want to be a one-stop shop," he said.

Simon said he was able to "niche out" by offering boot camps, muay thai martial arts, women's self-defense and yoga, with a dance fitness class planned.

"That's how you make it in the industry at this time," he said.

Owners like Simon also have to keep up with the latest exercise fads as well as variations within the staples.

Take Pilates for example. The body conditioning system once occupied a specialized and somewhat exotic domain in the world of step aerobics and stationary bicycles. Now places like Pilates ProWorks on Lakeshore Avenue offer, among several other variations, a bumped-up version that looks to the outsider like a mix between yoga and weight training.

"You want to think of this as Pilates on steroids," instructor Skipp Swoope said. Upstairs, a series of black straps hang from the ceiling for TRX suspension conditioning classes.

Even boxing gyms have varieties, from the classic King's Boxing Gym on 35th Avenue to Boxing for Health on Santa Clara Avenue. Then there are kickboxing, martial arts and mixed martial arts.

On the other end of the spectrum, Hipline on Lakeshore Avenue promises to set "all buns blazing" with classes like Shimmy Pop ("We are gonna move like a pack of wild horses"); Power Pop; and Shimmy Meow ("Get fierce!").

Read more from the original source:
More choices than ever in Oakland for getting fit in 2014