To be effective, every yoga practice must have purpose, order, and meaning

PRACTICING YOGA


Get the most out of your yoga practice

VIEW POSTS

Heal your aches and take a deep dive into specific layers of your system

VIEW YOGA SERIES >

TEACHING YOGA

Sharpen your yoga-teaching skills

VIEW POSTS

Design effective yoga practices for yourself and your students using stick-figure images

CREATE A YOGA SEQUENCE >

BECOMING A YOGA THERAPIST

Deepen your professional expertise

VIEW POSTS

Get to know your student to create truly customized yoga practices

CREATE STUDENT PROFILE >

LATEST POSTS

Calling all yoga professionals: Help us build the perfect scheduling tool

Are you a yoga teacher or yoga therapist who schedules classes and private sessions online? Become a Beta tester of our new scheduling system and shape it with your feedback.

Breathe better, feel better: Your body’s built-in reset button

Your breath is a powerful bridge between your physical body, mind, and nervous system. These two practices offer two foundational techniques to help you access and strengthen this connection. The first helps maintain the strength and mobility of your diaphragm, the central muscle in respiration. The second offers a grounding technique rooted in yoga philosophy to help you release overwhelm and restore calm.

Start with breath: Your best tool for easing pain and stress

Many things in life can take our breath away. Sometimes it’s joy or awe that makes us feel overwhelmed. Other times, it’s acute pain, bad news, or stress that leaves us breathless and frozen. These strong experiences jolt the nervous system, throwing us into a heightened state of alert.

YOGA FOR CHRONIC PAIN

Learn to listen within: Body appreciation practice

Many years ago, I took an anatomy and physiology course in college. I went in…

How to work with chronic pain on the level of intellectual mind

According to Walter Freeman, one of the great neuroscientists, “All the brain can know it…

Is there a difference between pain and suffering? Insights from Patanjali

When it comes to dealing with chronic pain, we have to differentiate between pain and…

How to work with chronic pain on the level of physiology (part 2)

When you are in pain, the body gets stuck in a loop of emergency stress…

How to work with chronic pain on the level of physiology (part 1)

Some days, when I begin my yoga practice, I can feel the entire physical history…

Pain vs sensation yoga practice

Your brain interprets your bodily sensations based on context and experience. If you feel a…

How to work with chronic pain on the level of physical body

There is a heated ongoing debate in the yoga community about the difference between a…

Active listening and pain assessment in a yoga session

One of my clients is currently shopping for a doctor. She has been trying to…

Why yoga is effective for chronic pain management

In our digital world, technology experts continuously come up with solutions to make our everyday…

How the brain can interpret other signals as pain

One of my clients has recurring knee issues. For her, there is always a low…

Why do we tend to expect the worst when it comes to pain? Negativity bias

If you accomplish ten great things today and make one mistake, what will you more…

How does pain become chronic?

A former client of mine, let’s call him John, bent over to tie his shoes…

When you are hurt where does the pain come from?

A few years ago, my family moved from one house to another. On the moving…

Recent guidelines about dealing with back pain: do they make sense?

A recent article in the New York Times discussed the updated guidelines by the American…

TEACHING YOGA CLASSES

Taking care of yourself as a yoga therapist & yoga teacher who works with trauma recovery

The ability to hold the space for clients who have experienced trauma requires the ability…

“Every move you make, every step you take, I’ll be watching you” – the art of observation in yoga

I can’t help it – everywhere I go, I see people with my “yoga-teacher” eyes.…

How to give your yoga students an experience, rather than “same old, same old” yoga class

A couple of weeks ago, I went to get a massage at a wellness center…

PRACTICE VIDEOS

Breathe better, feel better: Your body’s built-in reset button

Your breath is a powerful bridge between your physical body, mind, and nervous system. These two practices offer two foundational techniques to help you access and strengthen this connection. The first helps maintain the strength and mobility of your diaphragm, the central muscle in respiration. The second offers a grounding technique rooted in yoga philosophy to help you release overwhelm and restore calm.

Start with breath: Your best tool for easing pain and stress

Many things in life can take our breath away. Sometimes it’s joy or awe that makes us feel overwhelmed. Other times, it’s acute pain, bad news, or stress that leaves us breathless and frozen. These strong experiences jolt the nervous system, throwing us into a heightened state of alert.

Reclaim your back: A yoga practice for better posture and strength

In a sedentary lifestyle, we often tighten the muscles in the front of the body,…

Yoga for young adults: Strength and balanced body development

Traditionally, yoga practices for young adults were vinyasa-based and centered around a Sun Salutation. Sun…

Challenge your vestibular system with short multi-directional practice

Your vestibular system, working in tandem with your eyes, proprioception, and pressure sensors in your…

How sturdy do you feel on your feet? Train your balance with yoga

Last week, a blast of cold weather moved across the United States. Here in Portland,…

Yoga Boosts for strength: Strengthen your hips and create a sense of spaciousness

There is a particular group of poses within the side-bending category that is useful for…

Yoga Boosts for strength: Bend sideways to feel spacious and free

Yoga poses are meant to be “prana pumps”, because the ultimate purpose of asana is…

Work your core to take the load off your back

Are you planning on lifting suitcases anytime soon? Shoveling snow? Hauling a Christmas tree? If…

Stretch and strengthen your hamstrings and back

Our contemporary sedentary lifestyles are not kind to our backs (weakening them) and our hamstrings…

Yoga Boosts for Strength: Twist your body to rinse out tension

The amount of twisting we do in our daily lives is minimal, yet spinal rotation…

Yoga Boosts for Strength: Core strength and integration

To have a strong body, we need a supple spine, stable skeletal structure, supportive core,…

Put a spring in your step: Strengthen your hips and legs

Would you like to feel a spring in your step? When our hips feel stiff,…

Soothe your back and sense the reasons for back pain

Oftentimes our bodies try to get our attention through physical pain and discomfort. The messages…

Release tension in the hips and integrate your brain hemispheres

Your right and left brain hemispheres approach the tasks you do throughout your day a…

How to do the Brain Huddle to find inner peace

How do you feel when you are at peace with yourself? Inner peace (or peace of…

Listen to your heart and improve your circulation

Your heart is small but mighty. For an organ that could fit into the palm…

Issues in the tissues: What are you carrying in your body?

According to the yoga tradition, there are three qualities, or three energetic forces, that are…

Find your inner stability when you feel depleted and uncertain

When did you last feel like a superhero: strong, confident, capable, and vibrant? Try this…

BENEFITS OF PRIVATE YOGA SESSIONS

Why do students come to yoga? Surface vs under-the-surface needs

When students arrive at our yoga classes and private yoga sessions, they usually have a…

Seven steps we can take to help students get through difficult times

About a month ago, one of my students had a knee replacement surgery. We planned…

What to include in a yoga program for students with osteoporosis

Some months ago, I met with a new student who’s been recently diagnosed with osteoporosis.…

How patient-practitioner relationship impacts the healing process

When my son was little, he used to freak out every time he fell down…

Case study: What we can learn from working with complicated cases

A new client showed up to our first appointment a few years ago with a…

What we need to know about a student with osteoporosis when we work with them one-on-one

When a new student starts private yoga sessions, we usually ask many different questions about…

Five kinds of sleep disturbances and how to identify them

Sleep impacts every aspect of our physiology, so it is not surprising that we always…

How dreaming helps us get over traumatic experiences (or not)

Have you ever had this experience when you get worked up about something one day,…

Six sure ways to ruin your relationships with your yoga students

In my yoga teacher training, we used to have Observation clinics, where we would observe…

AI in yoga: Can AI create personalized yoga practice plans?

Since the beginning of the last century, reporters have been taught that the lede should…

FEATURED AUTHORS

Most Effective Yoga Adaptations of 20 Superposes

How to Create Yoga Student Profiles: A Simple Step-by-Step Guide to Keeping Records of Private Yoga Sessions

Yoga Student Profile: Workbook

Personal Yoga Practice Journal