Traveler, painter, and a mean hand with a sewing machine, Chantal began practicing Yoga in Miami and went on to study Iyengar yoga with Vladimir Ferrerio Gonzalez while she lived in Havana as the Hampshire College Cuba Program Coordinator. She is currently teaching yoga at the Centre de Yoga du Marais in Paris, while continuing her studies under Rod Stryker in the Tantric Hatha lineage to complete her Para Yoga certification.

Here, Chantal talks with us about the difference between Miami and Parisian mindsets, the eternal debate over audible sighs, and how to get your hubby to come to a yoga class. 

How did you come to teach yoga? What else might you be doing if you weren’t a yoga teacher?

I  worked at the front desk of Prana Yoga in Miami off and on between college and traveling/working in Cuba. I had just come back from Cuba and my cousin was leading the teacher training at Prana Yoga. I had always wanted to do it, and it just seemed like the next step.

If I weren’t teaching yoga, I would be teaching something else. Probably painting or working with disabled children and teens. I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher, but “yoga teacher” was not always the image I conjured up as I played “teacher” with my imaginary students. My make-believe took place in the form of detention with forms and grades, not straps, blankets or blocks.

Did you always follow a vegetarian diet, or did you go veggie when you discovered yoga?

When I was younger, my mom didn’t eat any red meat or anything with bones in it except for fish, which I never liked.  I learned first about veganism, then vegetarianism while I was in college learning about the planet and how much waste goes into the whole “raising of animals for human consumption” thing. It just seemed that it was more logical to eat closer to the earth.

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I have a little longer left to plan fortunately and I’m feeling very inspired by an article I found at Portovert on making your own wedding rings, specifically making them from old silver coins. These DIY wedding bands could even be made from coins manufactured in the year of your - or each others birth, what a lovely touch.

This wikiHow article gives detailed instructions on making the rings as well as explanations of what can go wrong and why - always useful. But even if it does take a couple of attempts to perfect, at $3 a shot your hardly going to break the bank.

Without further adieu… My name is Dave Room (and that’s my daughter in the photo). I have been working on localization for the past four years. Sometimes it has felt like I am swimming upstream. Actually it still feels like that - the difference is that now the current is not quite as strong. As the financial underpinnings of our society unravel, as food prices soar, as oil prices regularly hit new highs - it seems like I am living a prophecy. Everything that is happening now has been more or less accurately predicted by a large International community of people who have been following our oil predicament. Another name for our oil predicament is peak oil, but its really all about the oil depletion and the coming imbalance between supply and demand. Sometimes I call these folks “the depletionista”.

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Have you seen Ed Begley, Jr.'s show Living With Ed? If you missed it, it's a "reality" show that follows Ed and his wife, Rachelle Carson, as they go about their daily lives.

Why would following this couple around be interesting? Because Ed is "green" and Rachelle isn't.

I made sure to set it up in my Tivo because I didn't want to miss one episode. You see, their "green relationship" is mine and my husband's, only reversed. I thought that I'd glean some tips on how to make encourage my husband to be more friendly to the environment.

Dave and I have been together for more than 14 years and I feel I've scarcely made an impact on him. Despite all my efforts over the years, he continues to choose eco-unfriendly behaviors: he throws recyclables in the trash, he'll put a disposable diaper (used for away from home) on our son instead of cloth, and he keeps "the pedal to the metal", even if the light's red up ahead.

I am completely frustrated by his lack of interest in choosing the environmental option and don't know what to do about it. I've tried so many different ways to encourage his environmentalism:

• I've explained to him why it's important
• I've shown him how simple it is to make green choices
• I've shared statistics with him
• I've gotten angry with him
• I've told him he's disrespectful of me because he doesn't respect something about which I'm passionate

None of them seem to have made any impact.

I told Dave about the series and was surprised to find out he was interested in watching it with me. And although we both found the show quite funny, I soon regretted "letting" him watch it.

Not only did the series not give me any ideas on how to help my husband, it made my point even more arguable to him. While we were both laughing at the show, we were laughing at different things: Dave would laugh at "what" Rachelle was saying while I would laugh at the fact that she was saying it.

Ed also has the finances to live the kind of green lifestyle that I'd love to live, even if it is probably more extreme than I'd ever be. Dave saw Ed as a zealot, his lifestyle unrealistic - at least for us and most others. Still, a lot of what Ed said (to Rachelle or to the cameras) were reminiscent of things I've said to my husband.

What I just don't understand is why don't the points that make environmentalism important to me make it important to my husband?

Now my husband is in his 40's and I'm wondering: Is he too set in his ways? Can I have hope that we won't be having these discussions when he's in his 80's?

Or do I need to get over my frustration that he's just tolerating my green ways instead of embracing them himself? I've heard there will be a second season of Living With Ed. It's my hope that this time the show will highlight the "why's" of the choices Ed¹s making and be more educational, instead of it being a showcase of the back-and-forth between Ed and his wife about the choices around their house. Then I might finally get some ideas to use against with my husband.

Mr. Begley, care to share some tips with me?