Trader’s Narrative

In the comments a few days ago I mentioned that I’ve gotten into yoga recently. John from MovetheMarkets, requested a picture of my yoga teacher but since I don’t want a restraining order slapped on me, here’s a video of a Ford model showing you some cool yoga poses:

I can’t believe it took me this long to discover yoga. As a fitness regimen, it fits the needs of traders to a tee. Or for that matter anyone that spends a lot of time in an office setting or sitting in one posture.

I noticed late last year that eventhough I had set up my chair and desk as ergonomically sound as possible, I was still finding myself hunching, leaning to one side or doing some other bad stuff for my posture. The result was that at the end of the day my whole body and especially my lower back were really cramped and sore.

I’ve found yoga to be an amazing answer. I know, I know. If you’re a guy you probably think of yoga as “wussy”. All I can tell you is, try it. If you like, try the moves in the video above. Just don’t hurt yourself. Then you’ll find out just how hard it really is.

I’ll share some specific yoga postures you can do while sitting down at a desk or in an office setting to get mini-relief during the day. There’s one specific one for the chest that I really love.

Till then, if you’re a trader (and you probably are reading this blog) I would encourage you to look into yoga classes. Most traders out there are guys. Guess what the predominant gender is in yoga studios around the world?

A while back I mentioned that my sister was gung-ho about the health benefits of BarleyLife. Now that a few day’s worth of holidays has me within reach, she wasted no time in making me drink the stuff.

How do I describe it? Think of a horse stable; then imagine you go in and indiscriminantly shovel what’s on the ground into a 500 horse-power blender. And then drink it.

Visually it looks like fine algae. But it isn’t. It is powdered barley shoots and brown rice and some other stuff.

The smell? Again, a horse stable.

The taste? You don’t want to know. Trust me.

According to her though it is incredible stuff. It gives you lots of energy, cleans your system, and full of vitamins. Guaranteed to keep you regular. Or as she puts it, ‘you will eliminate first thing in the morning’. Thankfully she doesn’t elaborate what exactly is being eliminated.

If you are going to try it, I recommend taking it within a strong smoothy.

Sis: You take barley right?
Me: Sure
Sis: Isn’t it awsome?
Me: Yeah, ofcourse mine is usually in liquid form.
Sis: What?
Me: You know, as in beer… barley, hops, etc..
Sis: You’re such a dork. I’m talking about BarleyLife, this supplement… didn’t I tell you about it?

My sister is a total health and yoga nut (I mean that in the nicest way possible). So I find out more and it turns out that there is this supplement which has actual barley shoots in it - as in young green barley leaves. It has a few more things too. But the important thing is that according to her it gives you a total energy boost during the day.

So far the only natural supplements I’ve tried are chlorella (from Japan) and ginseng root (from Korea). I’ll give this Barley thing a try and if I suddenly get a boost of energy and start doing laps around the neighbourhood I’ll let you know.