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[…]
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[…]
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[…]
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[…]
Your immune system is complex and multilayered. It includes seemingly unrelated parts of your body, like skin, mucus and tears; a range of organs and tissues, like bone marrow, thymus,[…]
The beginning of a new year always gives us an opportunity to organize our thoughts about what we plan to focus on in the upcoming year. What is most important[…]
This year certainly turned out to be like no other. At times it felt like it was dragging on, yet it’s somehow surprising that it is almost over. Faced with[…]
I used to have a student who would quickly bounce his knee up and down when seated. The first time he caught me looking at his knee, he said: “I[…]
I did my first 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training course at Mt Madonna Center in Santa Cruz, California twenty years ago. Mt Madonna center is a residential community that was established[…]
In yoga, breathing is closely linked with the concept of prana, or life force. Prana is said to be the force that animates all living things. Prana is a manifestation[…]
With COVID-19 still wreaking havoc around the world, the race for the treatment is on. Different organizations use different strategies to combat the virus. Just last week a biotechnology startup[…]
Do you hold your breath while typing, emailing or texting? Apparently, this is such a common occurrence, that Linda Stone, a writer and speaker, had coined a phrase “screen apnea”,[…]
Time and time again I see new yoga students being confused about whether to do a certain movement on the inhale or the exhale. “How does it go?” – they[…]
The normal unconscious exhalation is a passive process, as one simply relaxes the muscles that were engaged on the inhale. However, in our yoga practice we purposefully augment the natural[…]
Many of your body’s physiological processes have a rhythmic nature: your heartbeat, blood pressure, digestive peristalsis, breathing rate and many others proceed in pulsating (or wave-like) fashion. Each system has[…]
Two years ago, my family and I went to the beautiful San Juan Islands. The San Juan Islands are an archipelago of about 170 islands in the Pacific Northwest between[…]
In college I majored in Russian literature, and I remember being fascinated by the sheer number of heroines in the Russian classics who would faint at the slightest sign of[…]
