Every yoga practice must have purpose, order and meaning
I love it when Eastern and Western approaches to health and wellness overlap, even if they speak entirely different languages. For example, the Ayurvedic tradition is based on the concept[…]
I recently read an article about some major employers closing down their operations for weeks at a time to make sure that all their employees could get a break. The[…]
How’s your yoga practice going this summer? Do you have an opportunity to luxuriate in your practice, or does it fall by the wayside of other activities? If it’s the[…]
Last week we discussed how to set long-term goals for your work with yoga students. Once the student (with the teacher’s help) gains clarity on what they wish to accomplish[…]
When we work with yoga students one-on-one, we always begin by identifying each student’s unique needs. The first question we always ask our new yoga students is, “What do you[…]
Yoga teachers and therapists often handle student information that is considered private and therefore bear certain responsibilities under the HIPAA. It is the personal responsibility of every yoga teacher and[…]
About ten years ago, I ran a wellness center that housed different types of practitioners, including yoga teachers, massage therapists, acupuncturists, and movement therapists. One day a laptop belonging to[…]
After a year of keeping our interaction circles and our travel routes intentionally small, we are now starting to venture out into the world, only to discover that our bodies[…]
I will never forget the description of the experience my yoga teacher Gary Kraftsow shared with us about his recovery from brain surgery many years ago. As I remember it,[…]
Our digestive systems are in charge of breaking down food into its basic components, which are then absorbed into the blood and transported throughout the entire body. Food is the[…]
Humans have used body movements and hand gestures to tell stories and facilitate particular psychological states since the beginning of time. For example, Hawaiian hula dance was meant to promote[…]
Nyasa is a symbolic gesture of placing the mantra onto one’s body so that the body becomes the seat or temple of the Deity. One of the most potent and[…]
Mudras are specific hand gestures that are meant to have symbolic, energetic and healing qualities. Most mudras are static gestures, but you can also make them dynamic when the actual[…]
In our home yoga practice and in our work with our students, we always seek to make the yoga practice personal and relevant to the practitioner. This can only happen[…]
Last week we discussed how you can organize an entire practice around a mudra, if you give your mudra a leading role in your yoga practice. A mudra can also[…]
Since most mudras are simple hand gestures, they are pretty easy to integrate into one’s yoga practice. What we try to avoid is making a mudra an afterthought, something that[…]
The word “mudra” is most often used to describe a particular hand gesture, but there are also face mudras and whole-body mudras. According to the yoga tradition, mudras have multiple[…]
I noticed that when I start my day with news, social media or to-do lists, the whole day is marked with a tinge of urgency and mild agitation. But if[…]
When you plan to use your yoga practice to aid digestion, images of deep twists might begin to crowd your mind. We’ve been conditioned to believe that twists are great[…]
There is a series of eight sequential movements in qigong called “eight pieces of brocade” or “eight silken movements” that has been around for hundreds of years. Individual movements of[…]
