Happy Mother’s Day from the Conscious Cleanse (for those of you around the world who celebrate in May)! Since many of us are still staying at home, we may not all be able to celebrate Mother's Day in person with our moms so we wanted to share an easy recipe that makes the perfect Mother’s Day gift.
As a mom of three boys (Jules) and a mom to a girl and one on the way (Jo), Mother’s Day is a very special day for us.
This year we are especially introspective about what this day means to us. As the world has been turned upside down, we’re more grateful than ever for our families. We realize that health is not something we can guarantee and that the simple, everyday moments are the times we will look back on most fondly as our children grow up.
Planting a tree together in the backyard, walks with our families, story time, cooking projects, bouncing on the trampoline and tickle wars fill our houses these past months. This forced pause has allowed us to have more connection at a slower pace and we want to honor that this Mother’s Day.
And we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge our own mothers who have given us the strength, patience, and perseverance to be the best moms we can be. Thank you. We love you.
While looking for other activities to turn into quality family time, we’ve been spending even more time in the kitchen and this recipe is one that we knew we wanted to share for this occasion.
We’re kind of chocolate obsessed and this chocolate-y recipe is healthy, easy and delicious. It’s also super easy to modify; you can substitute ingredients based on what you have in the house.
Our Vanilla Cherry Raw Truffles are sweetened with cherry and vanilla flavor on the inside and coated with dark chocolate on the outside, and are sure to be a major hit with the moms in your life.
A box of these yummy truffles makes a great upgrade to the traditional chocolate covered cherry cordials, which are full of added red dye and processed sugar. Pair a box of these bad boys with some flowers or a bottle of low-sugar wine, drop them off on the doorstep of the moms in your life, and you’re good to go!
We also see YOU, fellow mamas!
Why not treat yourself with a batch of these decadent truffles (you deserve it!).
They also make a fun indoor activity to do with the kids – rolling and shaping the truffles makes a great job for little hands.
Have a favorite Mother’s Day tradition or sweet treat? Let us know in the comments below. We love hearing your stories!
With love and cherry truffles,
Vanilla Cherry Raw Truffles
Yield: 16 truffles
Ingredients:
1 cup raw cashews 1 cup dried unsweetened cherries ½ cup dates, pitted 1 tsp. sea salt 1 tsp. vanilla 9 ounces dairy free dark chocolate chips such as Enjoy Life Dark Chocolate Morsels 1 TB. coconut oil Shredded coconut, for garnish (optional)
Instructions:
In a food processor, process the cashews until finely ground. Add the dried cherries, dates, sea salt, and vanilla. Blend until the mixture is well combined and sticky.
Using your hands, form the mixture into 16 balls. Put balls onto a plate and place in the freezer for at least 2 hours or until firm.
Remove balls from the freezer. Place the chocolate chips and coconut oil into a double boiler and melt until smooth. Using a skewer or fork, dip the balls into the chocolate mixture, tapping against the side of the bowl to remove the excess.
Place truffles on a sheet of parchment paper to set. Sprinkle shredded coconut (if using) over the truffles while chocolate is still melted. Keep chilled in a covered container in the fridge. Serve chilled.
If you liked this recipe and would like to learn more about the Conscious Cleanse, we invite you to join our online community! As a welcome-gift, we’ll send you our Taste of the Conscious Cleanse Free eCookbook, a collection of more of our favorite recipes!
We’ll also be sure to share new recipes and healthy lifestyle tips. Welcome! We’re so glad you’re here.
Cleanse with Jo and Jules!
Jo Schaalman and Jules Peláez are co-authors of the book The Conscious Cleanse: Lose Weight, Heal Your Body and Transform Your Life in 14 Days, a best-selling, step-by-step guide to help you live your most vibrant life. Together they’ve led thousands of people through their online supported cleanse through their accessible and light-hearted approach. They’ve been dubbed “the real deal” by founder and chief creative director Bobbi Brown, of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, beauty editor of the TODAY show.
Enjoy this FREE short yoga class before indulging in your dessert.
Head Up, Heart Strong with Christen Bakken
Alongside insecurity, anxiety and self-centeredness, one of my greatest emotional challenges in life has been anger. And while it was much worse in my teens and twenties, it still tests me.
Even just a couple of years ago, when I was living in Hawaii, there were days when I just woke up with an unshakable and debilitating irritability and animosity towards everyone and everything, for no immediately obvious reason. This was particularly disheartening because, at the time, I felt that I had everything for which I could ever wish; I was living where I had always dreamed of living and had a wonderful partner, all the time I desired for investing in my practices, meaningful and successful work that generated more than enough income to support our modest but very comfortable life – not to mention surfboards, paddle boards, hiking shoes, climbing gear, and the perfect environment in which to use them all, every single day.
Here I was though, waking up exasperated and resentful of a life that was failing to fulfill me, compounded by all the guilt and shame that resulted from judging myself for feeling this way. It was a horribly difficult time, but it did teach me at least one important lesson: anger won’t disappear at some point in the future, when external conditions are perfect. More on this later.
Eventually my life went through some incredible and intensely painful revolutions that shook me to the core of my being and ultimately led to some of the most consistent and stable periods of happiness in my life to date. Of course, there have still been easier and harder days, and sometimes whole weeks went by with intense challenges – but even then there was an unshakable sense, deep in my gut, that there was really nothing to lose, and that since I had overcome worse times, I will certainly overcome these.
Then, a couple of days ago, almost a month into the strict confinement of Spain’s emergency lockdown, I was overcome by anger that overwhelmed me, and for that very reason terrified me as well. Oh no, not this again.
One thing, at least, was different – my reaction. Back in Hawaii, my poor partner would see me suffering, but eventually learned to just give me a wide berth, because when she would try to help, I would bite her head off. Imagine the intensity of guilt that results from responding aggressively towards the very person who tries to help. Perhaps you don’t need to imagine it. I suspect that most (if not all) of us have been guilty of just that. And then on top of it all was the fact that I had writings and videos out there teaching people about transcending emotionality. At times I felt like a complete fraud.
At least this time I managed to be gentle with my partner though it all. Aside from the insights of non-duality and some of the teachings of the Buddha, one system into which I have gained significant insight over these last few years is the Three Dosha Theory of Ayurveda.
According to Dosha Theory, everything in reality manifests in order, from subtle to gross, represented (to simplify a bit) by the metaphors of wind, fire and earth. Emotional reactivity is no exception, and can also predictably evolve from “windy” anxiety and insecurity to “fiery” anger and aggression, which then leads to a kind of “muddy” wallowing in guilt and shame (vata, pitta, kapha).
Empowered by years of consistent immersion in these Ayurvedic insights, as well as by lots of time spent listening to teachings from Buddhism and Advaita, this time I was gifted with the remembrance that comes from familiarization with, and mindfulness of, the laws of consequence: if I didn’t want the misery of guilt and shame, I must allow myself to feel my anger, rather than acting out or suppressing it.
Then, by some grace, two more elements manifested to help me through the challenge. The first was that one of my best friends (who also happens to be my nephew) called to ask for my help and guidance with a dilemma relating to his business and personal life. Just trying to help him began to uplift me almost right away, and at least one of the insights that he later told me had indeed helped him emerged directly from familiarization with the teachings.
I reminded him of the insights of Plato and Aristotle thousands of years ago (not to mention the Buddha another half a millennium before them) that nothing but happiness is desired for its own sake, and thus all that we ever desire is for the sake of happiness (in the sense of contentment, well-being, peace and freedom from suffering).
This also relates to the realization that anger won’t disappear at some point in the future, when external conditions are perfect.
Like freedom from anger, happiness too is not a result of some ideal external conditions, but rather a state of mind that expresses a clear realization of the nature of reality.
The second timely occurrence was that I happened to read a post about managing difficult emotions by another old friend and wonderful teacher. I could particularly relate with her realization that her emotions were not a direct and linear outcome of her immediate choices and actions. I identified with and took solace in her pointing out that sometimes we can do everything “right” and still feel heavy at heart.
We can exercise, meditate, work, study, connect with friends and family, and still wake up depressed some days.
Of course we can use this fact as justification for losing heart and giving up on ourselves or on good effort; but I took it as she did – as a disburdening of guilt and of a sense of heavy responsibility for our feelings. Emotions, like the weather, are of course not entirely random, but they do come and go independently of our immediate control and influence; and thus the only sane response to both is surrender and acceptance.
There is a Zen koan about a master who was asked for his opinion on anger and replied: I agree. I agree.
Psychologist Marshall Rosenberg has argued that anger is an emotion that arises from unnatural thinking. At the heart of his non-violent communication system is the insight that thinking in terms of “right” and “wrong”, or in terms of what I or anyone “deserves” (for better or worse), reliably leads to misery. In fact, without an idea of right and wrong, anger is impossible.
We find an even deeper expression of the same insight in the Buddhist teaching about the Three Poisons at the root of all suffering: clinging, rejection and confusion. In fact, clinging and rejection are just mirrors of each other, two sides of the same coin, as clinging to anything is necessarily also a rejection of its opposite, its absence or its expiration – and this of course leads inevitably to suffering, in a reality where the only constant is impermanence. So we can cluster clinging and rejection together as preference, and say that without preference there is no suffering. And, according to the Buddha, the clinging/aversion dyad (aka preference) is itself rooted in confusion: the very notion that I know what will make me happy or miserable.
As the great master Shantideva wrote: we hate suffering but love its causes.
We all cling to the choices, actions and objects that lead to suffering, because they are temporarily pleasant, and avoid those that lead to happiness because they may be difficult. In Buddhism this mechanism is labeled as a kind of laziness, but fundamentally it is rooted in confusion – delusion, ignorance, even madness if you will.
Now, to be perfectly honest, there was a third piece to my mercifully swift transition from anger to joy this time: after speaking with my nephew and reading my friend’s post, I also hung upside down in my yoga swing and listened to funny songs by Bad Lip Reading, which definitely helped put a smile on my face.
But, to paraphrase Pema Chodron, entertainments are of little comfort when the doctor tells us that we have cancer, or when we lose a loved one to the inevitable jaws of death. There is nothing inherently wrong with activities that are pleasant in the moment, especially if they don’t harm us or others; they can be temporary salves to our sores. But if we sincerely wish to be free of suffering, we ultimately need more reliable medicine.
Caring about and helping others is one reliable medicine. As the Dalai Lama has observed, when we set ourselves aside and put others first, we are the first to benefit. Compassion brings us reliable joy right now, regardless of the outcome of our actions – as long as we think and act with the sincere intention to help others. Even if we fail or have limited success, compassionate intention already brings us joy at the very moment in which we cultivate and express it.
Another remedy is the intention to cultivate an attitude of unconditional friendliness towards ourselves and to everything, in every situation. In Buddhism this friendliness and the sincere wish to develop it are called Maitri, perhaps the most emphatic word for Love in Sanskrit. We can extract the antidote to preference, whether it appears as clinging or rejection, from the Zen master’s enigmatic response to anger: I agree. I agree.
And then there is the humility to recognize that our moods and emotions, as well as our thoughts, come and go like the weather, independently of our immediate control, and that we really have no idea whether obtaining the objects of our desire will result in actual, lasting happiness. When we realize that we do not control the future, that we do not “command the dawn” (in YHWH’s words to his martyr in the Book of Job), we can relax into living for right now.
We can take to heart Krishna’s words to Prince Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita about the essence of yoga. In Mukundananda’s translation: “You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.” Like the camel driver in Coelho’s The Alchemist, we can practice directing all of our attention to our current action, be it practicing meditation, eating a meal or driving a camel. We can develop discipline and even enthusiasm towards the choices and actions that bring us lasting joy – not with our eyes set on some future reward, but with the joy of performing this one action in this very moment.
And lastly, we can take heart with the medicine of being courageously realistic. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that there are most likely still numerous more painful experiences ahead of us. We are human, we are here, we love and we fight, and therefore we will almost certainly know more pain. If it is true that the sense of self with which we (falsely) identify disassociates itself from the body after death and clings to a new body, through karmic consequences that we do not entirely grasp, then there might be a near eternity of pain ahead of us.
Being courageously realistic means to say: bring it on. Let me at a near eternity of pain, so that I have all the time I need in order to learn how to transcend my preferences. And since, without preference, suffering has no teeth and no weight, bring on a near eternity of pain, so that I may do my best to fulfill the Bodhisattva Vows: the cravings of living beings are endless – I vow to end them all; living beings are innumerable – I vow to help them all. Bring on an eternity of carrying a weightless load, so that I may learn how to carry the weightless loads of all others – and since, until they themselves have realized, they will keep breaking under the weight of those burdens.
With these timeless elixirs ever ready in our medicine cabinets, we can work even with crumbling bodies, meditate even with incurably busy minds, and love even with broken hearts full of anger. We do not need to abolish anger in order to be free of the suffering of preference, aggression and confusion. We need only say to our anger: I agree. I agree.
By Shy Sayar
Shy Sayar (ERYT-500, YACEP) is a senior yoga therapist and a registered yoga teacher & continuing education provider at the highest level offered by Yoga Alliance. Well into his third decade with yoga, Shy has tens of thousands of hours of experience bringing yoga to students of all levels, treating patients, and training yoga teachers and therapists around the globe.
Want to practice working on your emotions? Listen to this inspiring and insightful talk with Shy, right now!
Transcending Emotionality with Shy Sayar
We all want to celebrate Mother’s Day with our mothers, grandmothers and children. But this year, it’s not the case for many families due to the COVID-19 and social distancing measures. This might be the first time you’ll have to celebrate Mother’s Day from afar, and not spend it with your loved ones. However, there are many ways to feel close to your loved one’s this Mother’s Day, without being physically with them. This can also apply to any motherly figure in your life, even if they’re not your biological mother. There are so many ways to celebrate and show your mother appreciation without being in the same place.
From planning a virtual party or surprise for your mother, to sending a thoughtful gift to show your love, there are so many easy ways to do these things. Now we live in an online era, you can be miles away and still be able to show your love to your mother.
Host A Video Call Lunch
You can send your mother a delivery from her favorite restaurant, and have a virtual lunch date via Zoom, facetime, or other video chat providers. It will be a welcome treat for her to not have to cook or wash up dishes, and will make her day feel special and different from the rest. Find out what her favorite dish and restaurant is, and order in advance to make it a real surprise for her. You can always order the same thing to share the experience with her!
Send Flowers
You can still send some sunshine in the post by organizing a flower delivery to your mom’s house. It’s the easiest way to show your appreciation for all she’s done, and it’s certain to brighten up her day, and make her feel extra special. Think about her favorite flowers, and try to organize a bunch of those.
Send a Goodie Bag
If you want to send something more unique, why not take some time and get creative? Consider putting a surprise goodie bag together full of her favorite things. You can include pamper treats, like bubble baths and soaps; her favourite foods and sweet treats like chocolates and sweets. Maybe even include her favorite books, or an activity like a game or puzzle to help keep her occupied while you can’t spend time together.
Send Family Photos
Reminder her of brighter days, and send her a family photo, or photobook full of special moments and favorite family photos. Maybe even frame a photo, or send a digital photo frame containing lots of photos and videos, of your lives together. This is a really simple way to cheer your mother up when you can’t spend time together.
Write a Letter
Mother’s Day is the ideal time to write a letter to your loved one and remincince over the special memories you both share, as well as express your gratitude for everything they’ve done for you over the years. This is a great way to tell your mother the things you’ve always wanted to do in person, but perhaps were too shy or emotional to do so. It’s a great way to let her know how much she means to you, and she’ll be able to look back and reread it again over the years.
Make a Coupon Book
You might have used to do this when you were little, and make a book of in person coupons, perhaps of chores to do for your mom, or full of special moments for you both to share together. Now’s a great time to get crafty, and make your mom a coupon book of things you can both do together once social distancing is over. Or perhaps have some things she can enjoy now, like a video coffee catch up together.
Make a Handmade Card
Another throwback to when you were little - why not make a handmade card for Mother’s Day this year? Get crafty and make something special from bits and bobs around the house, and put some love into it. If you have kids, you can even get them involved, for a fun activity to make cards for grandma!
Take a Yoga Class Online Together
This holiday is a beautiful reminder to appreciate and show love to your mother or someone in your life that is a source of love and support. Want to think of a fun creative way to celebrate? Do yoga together! This week on Yoga Download, to honor mother's day, we're focusing on yoga for parents and child, and yoga that can be enjoyed with loved ones. If you're stuck at home, you can practice these together!
These are just a few easy ways to make your mother feel special this mother’s day, but don’t forget that the most important thing to remember is that it’s the thought that counts. Make sure you call her, send a card or note, and make plans to see her in the future, when you’re able to. Whatever you do, your mother will appreciate it and feel loved.
By Amy Cavill
Practice this yoga class virtually, at the same time as your mother!
“Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.” - Harriet Goldhor Lerner
Every day is a perfect one to foster your connections with the world around you. Many places in the world, including the United States, Australia, Canada, China, and Germany, celebrate Mother's Day on May 10th––we know our community of yogis in the UK celebrate in March, but why not celebrate again? It’s a great way to show appreciation and love for your mother or anyone that is a source of support in your life. Practicing yoga together is a wonderful way to spend time with loved ones, whether it is in honor of Mother’s Day or just any given Sunday.
Yoga is centered on creating connection or union––with yourself, with others, and with the universe around us. Through our yoga practice and mindful attention to breath and sensation, we become more aware of who we really are. We tune into our heart and our deepest desires and operate from our authentic selves. When our interactions with others are grounded in this type of truth and meaningful connection, we are nurturing intimacy in our closest relationships.
Of course, yoga practice is an individual endeavor, but practicing yoga with a loved one, whether that’s a partner, parent, or child adds an element of deeper connection to the experience. Flowing through a yoga sequence is a form of play and fosters a sense of fun and laughter, which are excellent tools to help you feel close to each other. Shared commiseration of not being able to balance on your head or not be able to wrap your foot around your head makes challenging postures funny instead of frustrating. Simply breathing and moving together creates a sweet memory.
Join us this week with some special classes to honor mother's day! Check out yoga for parent and child, yoga for best friends, acroyoga, and some restorative practices to enjoy with a partner. If you're stuck at home, you can practice these together. Remember––we are all connected even if we aren’t together.
Practice these yoga classes together with your loved ones!
1. Casey Feicht - Parent & Toddler Yoga
2. Michelle Marchildon - BFF Yoga
3. Shy Sayar - Therapeutic Acroyoga Basics
4. Kristen Boyle - Partner Restorative Yoga
We’re in 80:20 mode! Who’s ready for a refreshing and delicious drink?!
Be sure to check out La Paloma Rosa recipe below.
Known as one of Mexico’s most popular cocktails, La Paloma is a perfect combination of sweet and tart with grapefruit, lime, and a pinch of salt. We’ve given this a Conscious Cleanse 80:20 spin by adding one of our favorite sugar-free sweeteners, Lakanto, plus a touch of mint.
YUM!
You can also leave out the tequila for a delicious mocktail.
For more deliciously conscious spirits, be sure to check out our library of 80:20 Conscious Cocktails HERE.
Until next time, be safe and healthy.
Cheers,
La Paloma Rosa
Serves: 4
1 cup fresh grapefruit juice 1 cup organic blanco tequila ¼ cup fresh lime juice 1 ½ TB. Lakanto Handful of fresh mint, crushed Pink Himalayan sea salt Ice cubes 1 cup club soda
Instructions: In a cocktail shaker (or quart-sized mason jar) combine the grapefruit juice, tequila, lime juice, and Lakanto. Crush the mint leaves in your hands releasing the essential oils while keeping them whole. Add the mint leaves to the same container. Stir, wait five minutes, and stir again. To prepare each drink, run a lime wedge along the edge of half of each glass, and dip rim in salt. Pour ½ cup of the grapefruit mixture into each glass filled with ice. Top off with about ¼ cup of club soda. Garnish with any extra mint you may have. ¡Salud amigos!
Cleanse with Jo & Jules!
Enjoy this free short yoga class before indulging in your delicious cocktail!
As I sit here and think about this blog post, I can hear in the back of my head, "I will finally be happy when this post is written." Here I am placing conditions on my happiness and I know that I am not just doing it here, but I am guilty of it in many other area of my life.
Thinking about this thought, I ask myself, “am I really going to be happy and content long term when this blog post is written? Or will I be seeking the next goal to place my conditions of contentment on?”
Conditions on contentment was never something that I ever gave much thought to, I just assumed that they came with the process of being content, however, fleeting it may have been. However, true contentment does not lie in reaching the destination, but rather in enjoying the process. Something that I would come to learn through my personal yoga practice and the trials and errors of seeking lasting contentment.
How many times have you said to yourself or others, "If only I had the perfect job, then I will finally be happy." Or "Once the weekend comes I can finally enjoy myself and relax." Or " Once I can get my weight down those last 10 lbs I will finally be able to love the way I look."
I know that I have said those things plenty of times. However, each time I reached one of those destinations, I was rarely happy long enough to actually enjoy it before I was placing the next condition for my happiness.
Why do we do this? Why do place these burdens on ourselves just so that we can achieve a perceived contentment or happiness?
I am sure that there are hundreds of reasons why. It was what we saw growing up. It is the way of society. It's the commercials and advertisements we see in our face telling us to believe that happiness and contentment is just around the corner if only we do, buy, or be a certain thing. For each of us it is going to be a little different, but the results are still the same, we are happy or content for the short term, but we are always left searching for that next thing to get or achieve in order to attain that happiness or contentment again.
Contentment, however is not something that comes and goes, it is constant and eternal. It is always with us because it is within us, we just have to make that realization.
I clearly remember one the very first big conditions I placed upon myself. I was 12 turning 13 and I was blowing out the candles on my birthday cake. It was my wish. If only I could be normal again, then I will be happy. Just a few months earlier while I was enjoying being a kid and experiencing contentment of just growing up and having fun, a single moment changed my life. It only took a blink of an eye. One solitary event, and my whole life and mindset shifted. I blew out the candles and waited. And waited some more.
I waited for 8 years. I missed out on so much waiting for my wish to come true. There would be pockets of moments where I could push my fears aside and make the best of it. There were moments where I would smile and seem happy. But it was fleeting and never real.
Then one day, I stumbled upon a a yoga practice that would open my eyes to a whole new reality. A practice that would come to shape and create the normalicy that I craved and had wished for. Just as I did not give much thought to that fleeting moment back in my teens when my life and mindset shifted, I did not give much thought to the benefits of this practice. I did it to get my exercise in, but what I got out of it was so much more. It was a glimpse at contentment.
For the first time in a very long time, I experienced what it was to be awake again, to be aware of what was not serving me. It was the practice of yoga that gave me a taste of the "normalcy" that I had spent almost a decade seeking and learning and that in that moment, I found that it was within me all along.
What is contentment and how can we start to cultivate this as a regular part of our life?
Contentment or in yoga, also known as Santosha, is a practice of appreciating what you have, where you are and those you love without placing conditions on it. When you are content, you are not comparing yourself to others in a way that puts you or what you have down. It is a feeling of ease within ones self regardless of our current situation. We know that we are enough as we are and that we give thanks for each moment we are given.
Here are 5 ways that you can start to cultivate contentment in your life right now!
1. When you set priorities do so without conditions or pressure. “The I will be finally content when or if….
When we set priorities we are able to handle the task at hand with our full attention. When priorities are set without conditions there is no worry about the outcome or racing to the destination. We are able to enjoy the process. It gives us an opportunity to be present, proactive and less reactive. When we are less reactive we are less likely to place stressful conditions on ourselves. When we are fully present we are not thinking about the past or future, we are in the moment. Have you ever just set your mind to something because you wanted to no strings attached, just because?
After experiencing my first yoga class and the feeling of ease that came with it, for me, I decided that first things first - every morning I would do yoga. I could release the energy and focus my attention inward. What this gave me was silence and an awareness to the moment. I was able to start to see the bigger picture and make choices from a place of calm. It gave me an opportunity to ask myself, is fear and worry going to take away from my experience or will it fulfill me? It was from this place that I was able to choose joy and ease and navigate life with an open mind. I was awoken to a glimmer that contentment was not just externally driven.
2. Stop comparing yourself to others and their circumstances.
Comparison has a sneaky way of creating discontent. I say sneaky because not all comparison is negative. Sometimes comparison can be good. It can foster a sense of sameness and present an opportunity to meet people or engage in a situation that we feel connected to because we are similar to them or their causes. However, comparison can lead down a rabbit hole of devaluing our own worth, making us feel inferior.
In my instance I looked around me and I saw all these people laughing and smiling and doing things they enjoy. What I failed to see was that everyone has their own personal hell that they are going through, but how they chose to show up and be was just different than me. I allowed my fear to sit on my sleeve. I allowed my fear to stop me from interacting and taking leaps of faith that my peers did with what seemed like ease to them. I found myself saying things like if only I could be like him or her, then I would be happy. This just sent me spiraling and left me feeling worse than if I had ever even made the comparison in the first place.
By setting the priority of taking time each day to wake up and become aware of these thoughts, I was able to see that the comparisons that I was making was like comparing an apple to an orange and it was not serving my greatest good. I was able to see that if I wanted to be content, then happiness had to come from within me because everyone's ideal of contentment is going to be slightly different than my own.
But how do you do that?
3 . Change your inner voice, your personal message.
I just recently heard a quote by Jessie Itzler. If you don't know who he is, he is an entrepreneur.The co-founder of Marquis Jet, a partner in Zico Coconut Water, the founder of The 100 Mile Group and an owner of the NBA's Atlanta Hawks. He gave a talk that I had the privilege of hearing and he dropped some amazing knowledge, but the one thing that really stuck out in my mind was this, "Pay attention to the words that you speak. The words we speak are powerful." Simple yes, easy to do daily, not so much. Especially if it is something that we are not aware of.
Think about the last thing you uttered in your mind? Was it positive? Did it carry conditions? Did it leave you feeling empowered? Then think about how many times you have said that to yourself throughout the day, once, twice, one hundred times? How much do you believe it? A little? Or A lot? Has it influenced your choices, the judgments you've passed, the way you feel?
More than likely the answer to this is yes. I too, have been down this road. Things like, “You are so dumb to believe this.” “You are not any good at that anyway.” “You are so ugly,” that play so often in our minds that it is no longer conscious.
Yet these thoughts that play on repeat in our subconscious without us even truly being aware that we are even doing it. By practicing yoga, I was given an opportunity to be quiet and confront the negative thoughts that infested my mind on a daily basis. I had a choice, I could continue to go down this road and avoid the feelings or I could feel the feelings and allow them to be brought out of the dark so that I could question them. I became aware because I had the opportunity to weed through the noise and hear what I was saying.
How can you do this? Take time to become quiet, maybe after a yoga practice, rather than rushing through Savasana (final resting pose) you take the time to get quiet and listen, wake up to the mental tape playing in your mind. Like me you might be surprised at how you are comparing yourself negatively to those around you and even those closest to you. Once you have caught yourself in this cycle, its time to stop it. You can do that by questioning it, rephrasing it, and practicing it. It sounds cheesy I know, but it works.
Try it sometime. Think about the last thing that you said to yourself, question its reality and ask how you would feel if you did not feel this way. Take the time to rephrase your old thought to something that is more positive. Say it to yourself til you believe it, share it with someone you care about so that they can help you reinforce this new way of thinking.
Other ways that you can shift your inner voice is to:
Focus on having an attitude of learning no matter the outcome or situation. What can you gain from what did not go the way you had planned.
Reward your actions not you and your traits. It is easy to reward what goes well, or how well we did something. It is not as easy to find the positive in an effort that did not go the way that we wanted. It is easier to put the blame on ourselves. It's easier to think we are not smart enough, that we are not good enough, that we must be out of our league. What if instead, we praised ourselves for taking a leap of faith, for trying something new and for learning something we did not know before we had started?
Value your efforts. Congratulate yourself for trusting yourself to go for your goal. Honor yourself for pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. Recognize and praise the strength and courage it took to go after something that you wanted.
Forgive yourself. Like saying the saying "Pay attention to the words you speak, the words we speak are powerful." It seems like a no brainer, but often we are more likely to forgive and move on for someone else but not ourselves. Take the time to remember that you too are human and you too deserve to be forgiven for your mistakes, and perceived failings.
4. Start to cultivate gratitude to help you move towards Santosha, contentment.
Gratitude is the ability and quality of being thankful for what you have and a readiness to show appreciation for those things and people around you.
I had another opportunity to hear another great speaker and author of the book Life Without Limits by Nick Vujicic. He was born without arms or legs. He was truly inspiring to listen to not only to learn about his journey, but the words of wisdom that he spoke in regards to the power of gratitude.
He said his biggest lesson was learning an attitude of gratitude and “that, it’s the disability of the mind and heart that is more debilitating than the physical ones.” That he was not going to focus on what is happening to him but rather to be thankful for what he has, and who he IS.
I found this absolutely profound because, how often do we take for granted all that we have both tangible and intangible? How often do we say thank you for giving us an opportunity to grow through a challenging situation?
I know that through some of my most difficult times, that instead of being grateful for the support that people showed me, I dwelt on the misery that I was feeling. Instead of seeing the light in given situation, I automatically felt that life was happening to me rather than for me. I did not see the bigger picture. I had yet to recognize the power of gratitude. Once I found it, it opened my eyes to seeing my challenges from a different perspective. I was able to appreciate and acknowledge not only that I could be better, but that I was not alone in my journey.
Why should you work on cultivating an attitude of gratitude to feel content? When we are grateful for what we have and for the people in our lives it shifts the chemicals in our brain to help us see the positive especially in stressful or challenging situations. It helps us to connect to something bigger than ourselves which enhances our feelings of connection and quality of life.
How can we cultivate this gratitude:
Take a moment to think of all the things that you have in this moment.
Find gratitude in something that challenges you.
Spend time with loved ones.
Share with others how grateful you are to have them in your life.
5. Live simply to find contentment.
With all the things and the thoughts and the experiences that inundate us this is another one that is easier said than done. Think about a moment in time where you are not being consumed by social media, friends and family opinions, television, advertisements, news, etc. It’s not easy to escape the noise. However, it is essential in gaining the freedom from the binds of grievance, complexity and emotional turmoil.
Confusious says: "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."
Living simply is not just giving up the physical things although that does help, but it is also about the mental clutter that takes up precious space in your mind. Yoga gives you an opportunity to sift through the though weeds in your mind to get to a clear plot where you can plant fresh seeds and make room for the flowers to bloom. When your mind is filled with weeds the beauty the truth gets hidden.
There was a time when my mind fed off of complexity. It was easier to let my mind hoard information. I was always looking for “the answer” to get my life back to feeling “normal” I would fill my days with activities and get lost in the shuffle of doing. I would do anything other than to sit with my fear and face it. I preferred to get caught up in the complexity of my fear and life which stole more from me then taking time out to just be quiet and still. I truly believe I did this because I feared that what was on the other side was even more ugly than what I was currently facing. I also believe that we do this because fear that we are going to miss out, good old, FOMO (fear of missing out). What if we did miss out though, what if we saw it as an opportunity of what we could gain rather than what we could lose?
Issac Newton said, "Truth is ever to be found in simplicity and not in multiplicity and confusion of things."
When I practiced yoga there was nothing complex about it. I moved, I would breath and I would be quiet. I was able to weed the garden of my mind. I became aware of the extravagance of thought things I lacked presence. I allowed the weeds to dominate and steal space from my truth.
I remember so clearly staring at my ceiling in Savasana and there was nothing. Not a thought passed through my mind. I remember walking to class my body felt light. I felt like I had discarded a hundred pounds of trash from my shoulders. I felt amazing. I was grounded. I noticed the little things, the things that over time, I had walked by a million times, but never noticed.
So how can you cultivate simplicity to find contentment?
Take out more than you accumulate. Think about everything you do in a day, do you truly need to do it all? Is there something that you can let go of?
Choose to be present, notice the little things, enjoy your life right now rather than when you hit a destination.
Ask yourself, do I really need this.
Go slowly and with full attention. Stop multi-tasking when you multi task you accumulate a lot of stuff both physical and emotional and you get nothing done, This further complicates things rather than simplifying things. Decide what is important. Does what you do, have or think bring you joy? does it allow you to enjoy your life to the fullest? Examine your commitments.
Simplifying my life and getting rid of the emotional and physical baggage that held me down, allowed me to gain a new perspective. The space that was in my mind was then able to be filled with truth. It was able to fully comprehend how my fear was stealing my contentment, my happiness and my joy.
In conclusion: As I sit here and finish this last paragraph of this post, I feel content. Not because I finished it and I reached my goal. But rather, I feel content because I have gotten my words on to the page. Because I trusted myself to just write and allow the words to be written.
I feel content because I am grateful for the time I gave myself to do this work and I am continuing to practice the mindfulness not only of my yoga practice but my every day life. It is in this daily practice that I can bask in Santosha, contentment. I have finally been able to touch true happiness, not at the price of missing out on anything, or out of fear. I did this by setting my priorities, and I stopped comparing myself. I shifted my inner voice, I cultivate gratitude and I chose to live simply. By doing these 5 things I have found contentment, and in essence I finally got my birthday wish.
By Julie Shapiro
Julie is a certified 200-hour yoga teacher, certified personal trainer and mother of two. Julie believes that yoga found her and was presented to her at a time when she needed it the most.
In fact, it was after her first yoga class that she finally experienced a quiet mind - no more mind chatter! Julie has been in the health and wellness space for 15+ years she currently teaches yoga in the online space. You can find Julie on Facebook www.facebook.com/enhanceamplifyelevate1 & Instagram.com/jsyogafit
Practice yoga for Santosha and contentment right now!
A Practice of Contentment with Christen Bakken
The question isn’t whether you’ve experienced back pain, but whether you are one of the lucky ones who haven’t. Millions of people around the world suffer from aches and injuries to their backs on a regular basis. The good news is that yoga helps with more than the muscles and ligaments, which may be strained, sprained, or simply unbalanced. Often, the root of the pain is grounded in emotional or mental issues and yoga addresses the physical, emotional, and mental causes.
When you are hurting, ranging from a mild inconvenience to complete incapacitation, it is important to distinguish between acute pain and chronic pain. Acute back pain is intense and lasts from a few days to several weeks. It’s generally due to a fall, lifting a heavy object improperly, a car accident, and resolves within six to eight weeks. During this stage, rest and apply heat and ice to ease inflammation until you are ready to perform gentle exercise. Walking is an excellent option.
Chronic pain lasts longer than three months and is more complicated. Yoga can provide temporary and potentially permanent relief. Our mind and body work together and cannot be separated. Only yoga restores harmony on every level.
Physically, in addition to stretching and strengthening the spine, yoga helps you:
Strengthen the core muscles, which include your abdominals, back, and trunk. The core provides a girdle for the spine.
Elongate and open up the hamstrings, which when tight can directly tug on the lower back, creating or exacerbating pain in the lumbar region.
Stretch and lengthen the psoas or hip flexors at the front of the hip. The psoas is the only muscle to originate in the front of the body and finish in the back. Sitting too much tightens the hip flexors and results in lower back pain.
Emotionally and mentally, yoga helps you:
Address and help alleviate emotional issues, which have built up in the body and created pain. Often, frustration, resentment, and stress create physical tension and contribute to muscular imbalances.
Upper Back: Upper back and neck pain is often tied to lack of emotional support from loved ones or work worries, not just an unsupportive pillow.
Middle Back: Pain in the middle back comes from feeling guilty about ‘stuff’ from the past. Perhaps you are afraid to explore your past or are hiding from difficult memories and tension results.
Lower Back: The lack of money, fear of not having enough, or fear of material loss may trigger lower back pain. The fear of your own survival amplifies the pain.
Yoga helps us tune in to our emotional body and examine the true cause of physical pain. Our dreams and fears are likely what is triggering the crick in your neck or the stabbing in your back. Even if your back pain stems from an accident, the underlying feelings often have been causing strain you didn’t recognize until it manifested. For complete relief, yoga will help you get stronger inside and out to keep your spine healthy for good.
Try these four classes today!
1. Erin Wimert - Low Back Love
2. Desiree Rumbaugh -Strengthen, Protect, & Heal the Lower Back
3. Elise Fabricant - Yoga for Back Pain
4. Michelle Marchildon - Relieve Your Back Pain
We’ve been seeing lots of people using this time at home to bake, so we knew it would be the perfect time to share this awesome recipe from one of our amazing cleanse community members – Susan of Nourish & Charm!
Susan is a long-time cleanser and also one of our good friends! She runs an amazing blog where she posts healthy recipes and entertaining tips (she is a fabulous host!). So when (eventually!) you’ll be able to entertain friends and family again, make sure to check out her tips for hosting on her blog.
These muffins are the perfect, easy home-baking project. They’re free from most common allergens, plus they’ll make your house smell like cinnamon spice and everything nice.
Read about Susan’s blog, health journey and more below:
Nourish & Charm is my healthy eating and entertaining food blog that came to me from my love of bringing family and friends together through food. I love to promote a clean diet (nourish), and I love to entertain (charm), so this platform brings these two intentions together in one mission. Cooking for others helps bond us to our loved ones. Not only does it provide nourishment, but it also encourages a sense of community, belonging and purpose.
I adopted a healthy eating lifestyle several years ago after confronting a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis. This change had a positive impact on my mind and my body, and it also influenced how I cook for my family and my loved ones. Gratefully, I live in the beautiful state of Colorado, which I consider to be a wellness mecca. Jo and Jules from the Conscious Cleanse have had a significant impact on this wellness community! They provide structure and a wealth of information for the cultivation of a healthy lifestyle.
Cooking for others nourishes the body and soul, and creates a sense of harmony and intimacy that we can all use more of these days. I love to entertain, but it is important to me that my gatherings incorporate a clean and healthy, but delicious menu! What does a clean recipe look like to me? It is always gluten free, it uses whole, real foods and natural ingredients, it avoids refined sugars, has a dairy free option and most importantly, is prepared at home! I built my Nourish & Charm platform as a way to share my recipes and entertaining menus with our community.
I have learned that we do not have to limit our menus just because we want to provide a clean and healthy meal. And yes healthy and guilt free sweet treats and even clean but fun cocktails are possible! Whether you are planning a dinner party, hosting a special event, cooking a meal for your family or just looking for new recipes, check out my website at nourishandcharm.com. Go through the various celebrations or just browse the recipes. Feel free to sign up for the weekly newsletters. I also encourage you to follow me on Instagram @nourishandcharm or like me on Facebook. You don’t have to derail your health to eat and serve delicious food.
One fan favorite recipe is my Sweet Potato Pecan Muffins. They are grain free, refined sugar free, dairy free, gluten free and super delicious. Have them for breakfast, as a snack or even for dessert! Get some veggies, fruit and protein all in one tasty treat!
Sweet Potato Pecan Muffins
Yield: 10 Muffins
1 cup almond flour ¼ cup coconut flour ¼ cup arrowroot flour 1 tsp. baking powder 2 tsp. cinnamon ¼ tsp. nutmeg ½ tsp. salt 1 cup sweet potato puree* ¼ cup maple syrup 1 tsp. vanilla 2 eggs ½ cup shredded carrots ½ cup diced apples ½ cup chopped pecans
Instructions: Preheat oven to 350°. Line a muffin pan with 10 muffin liners. Combine the almond flour, coconut flour, arrowroot flour, baking powder cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a mixing bowl and mix well. Place the sweet potato, maple syrup, vanilla, and eggs in a blender and blend thoroughly. You can also use a food processor or a hand mixer. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix together. Fold in the carrots, apples, and pecans. Fill each muffin liner to the rim. Bake for 30 minutes. Makes 10 muffins.
*NOTE: I use canned sweet potato puree. Sometimes these cans are hard to find in the store outside of the fall season. I cook with sweet potato often so I buy these cans by the case. Also feel free to bake and puree your own sweet potato. If the batter is too thick, you can add a couple of tablespoons of almond milk.
Practice this 30-minute all-levels yoga class for free now, before or after your delicious muffins!
I am 100% on board with respecting and adhering to the CDC, WHO, and NIAID’s suggestions for staying home, maintaining social distancing, wearing masks in public, and washing hands. I am choosing to abide by the suggestions made by my governor as well as all of the medical professionals offering guidance, but as a psychic and energy worker, I will admit that I even take it a step further.
I have found there are ways I can actually work the energy of my body and its energetic field to improve my feelings of safety, security, and well-being during a time like this, and I wanted to share those methods with you.
Everything is energy, everything.
Just because we don’t see all energy, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Also, the brain doesn’t know the difference between what it sees when the eyes are closed or open, so I do believe that by developing an awareness of the energy around and within your body truly can help improve your health physically, mentally, and emotionally.
The basics are Grounding, Aura, Center of the Head space (third eye/sixth chakra), and Replenishing Energy.
Grounding
I love using the description of a buoy when I am describing grounding. A buoy is a rubber ball floating on water. It is tethered to the earth in order to serve its purpose. If the buoy lacked its tether it would just be a rubber ball floating around; with the tether it creates a boundary between boaters and safety zones in the water that are no wake or for swimming. It remains centered (for the most part).
To imagine grounding you want to visualize a cylinder of energy that connects to you around your hips on the top end with a vacuum tight seal and then the bottom of the cylinder creates the same seal but to the core of the earth. It’s as if you are visualizing a straw connecting around your hips and to the center of the earth. Then for added effect visualize the suction tight sound effect sealing both ends up. Schluuuuuup!
You have now created and visualized your grounding. This is a visualization technique I learned through meditating at Boulder Psychic Institute many moons ago. There are billions of ways to ground, this is just the method I have found effective for myself and when doing energy work with clients.
I do believe a lot of work is done based upon intention. So maybe grounding is done when you walk barefoot on the earth, or sitting on the yoga mat from a space of feeling centered, digging your toes in the sand, or fingers in the earth, maybe It is just a moment of conscious deep breaths; there is no wrong or right, there just is.
I see grounding as a means to connect ourselves to the Earth, our mother planet, our home, back to ourselves, as well as to recycle energy and recharge, as if plugging in a battery. You can then set the intention that whatever act you do to ground your body, be it the one I described, or one you do already that works for you, that this grounding is intended to release energy no longer serving you, or energy that is not yours trying to process through your body.
I know it helps me when I visually watch energy releasing from my body and aura in a meditative space.
Aura
The easiest way to describe an aura would be to visualize a soap bubble or a bubble as if you were blowing from a bubble wand. I like to visualize my aura about two feet around me in all directions and two feet below my actual feet in a sitting position.
To take it a step further I visualize that same suction, vacuum tight seal of my aura tucked in completely to my grounding cord, a couple feet below my feet. I like to silently own this space as mine.
I used to teach this technique to teens I worked with in a residential treatment center. They were often times annoyed by their peers or other people working at the center, and felt like they had no space. I would teach them how they could develop their awareness around their aura, own it, and maintain it, to keep their control and accountability over their space energetically, which lets be honest, has very real abilities to help you physically feel like you have more space from others or allow you to control your internal environment to a certain degree.
The next step would be to then set the intention release energy is releasing from that aura that is no longer serving you, or that is not yours. The only energy we want in our auras is ours. Other people’s energy in our aura is recognized as foreign and ends up having us feel pretty funky or off.
The aura is something we can moderate ourselves and check in with throughout the day. Maybe you want to set different vibrational tones to your aura or maybe you prefer translucent colors or images in the aura. It is fun to experiment with.
I know for myself it depends on what is going on for me. Today I chose to imagine a blue and pink hydrangea bush with the backdrop as a New England coastal view for my aura, and I added the vibrations of freedom, gratitude, limitless space, rose quartz vibes, self love, and wholeness.
I know for myself during the pandemic I will imagine a gold or neon blue energy layer surrounding the outside of my aura if I must go to the grocery store, or be in public if I am feeling particularly triggered, other times I don’t find it necessary. I just assess based upon where I am that day, or how I am feeling.
The trick is, feel free to explore, maybe for you it is pink, red, or nothing at all. There is no right and no wrong, intention with this work is where the magic lies.
Center of the Head: Sixth Chakra (Third Eye, Ajna Chakra)
I like to close my eyes, imagine a natural environment, and then observe as if I am sitting in the director’s chair to myself. That space between the ears and behind the eyes. While it might seem like a small space within your physical head, it is actually a space of unlimited and infinite energy if you let it be that.
I imagine that space as If I was on my own private beach looking out at calm turquoise water, sitting in warm sand, a sunny day, slight breeze with salty air, and I allow myself to energetically bathe in this, because I have found this to help my nervous system greatly. Again, our brain doesn’t know the difference between what it is experiencing with eyes closed and opened, so be mindful of that analyzer that might want to trick you into overthinking.
I make sure there is nothing disturbing feeling or looking in that center of head space, and make adjustments accordingly. I most certainly make sure there are no other people in that space. If I notice someone in there or maybe a few people, I set the intention of watching them dissipate from the space like smoke or I visualize a gate and watch them gently and kindly leave through the gate, and then remove the gate from that space when that feels complete. Once that space is people free and feeling good for me, I own this space for myself, just as I do my aura.
You are the in the drivers seat. You get to decide what that center of the head looks like, feels like, and I highly encourage experimenting with different settings and seeing what works and feels good for you there.
Replenishing Your Energy
This can be done through self care and billions of ways, in terms of basic and simple energy maintenance, the method I am guided to describe and share is using the bubble technique. Imagine large bubbles of energy as big as you want, and fill them in with golden light, or whatever translucent colors work for you. I typically choose gold when replenishing because that is just what works for me, and I like that color as a high vibrational healing color for my own work. I then imagine popping the bubbles. When popping the bubbles Imagine that energy from the bubble is restoring, refilling, and nourishing my aura and body on an energetic level, as if you’re watching the battery on your cell phone fill up, it is a similar concept.
Another thing you could do is fill the bubbles with vibrations you are desiring to feel. So for instance, maybe you want to fill in with relief, clarity, certainty, feeling safe, comfort, etc. Put all of those vibrations into a bubble, pop the bubble, and fill in. I like to challenge myself to fill in with 10 or 50 or 100 bubbles of vibrations or just the color gold and really fill up.
If I am having a day I feel particularly triggered around my past, or notice I keep wanting to analyze future scenarios because present time feels uncertain, then I will ask for my energy back from the past and the future and fill in bubbles with that energy and bring it back into my preset time body. I also like to ask for bubbles to be set to optimum health and fill in with that as well.
I am not a doctor, nor can I assure you this is a fool proof method to keep you safe, I just know it is something I have been choosing to do for myself, and it has truly helped me feel better on many levels any day, let alone during a global pandemic.
I have noticed how this has helped me as a sensitive and empathetic person to release a lot of the collective energy that I have been noticing more of during the time of COVID-19. It is fun to experiment with, and if you are looking to try something new, why not? I do not suggest this as an alternative to the suggest guidelines put in place by medical professionals or government officials, I just see this as an add-on to the pre-existing public health suggestions.
Treat yourself to some grounding right now, with this free yoga class, suitable for all levels.
Earth day is celebrated on the twenty second of April each year, and has become the largest non-religious observance around the world. Earth day had humble beginnings as a day to preserve the environment in the United States, and has now become the largest push for a cleaner and healthier planet - and is celebrated across the entire world. Earth Day is important to show that everyone can make a difference to the planet in a positive way.
History of Earth Day
During the 1970’s, the United States was experiencing a period of division, both economically and politically. During this time, the country was divided over it’s participation in the Vietnam War, and at the same time the economy was experiencing a boom. This boom however, had an adverse effect on the environment. Industries such as automobiles, chemical plants and oil were seeing huge growth, but that also went hand in hand with the production of air pollution and waste. Back then, the health of the environment wasn’t at the forefront of our minds like it is today, and many people were unaware of the damages this economical growth could have on the planet.
Some people were however, and as they became aware of the effects on the environment around then, began to inform the public, and get the message across. Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson was one of these individuals, who was spurred on in 1969 after a devastating oil spill in California caused even more damage to the environment. His idea was for a national teach-in on the environment, which he introduced in 1970. He created a team of 85 people, including congressmen and academics to help to promote his ‘Earth Day’ across the entire country, and on April the twenty second in 1970, the very first earth day was celebrated in the United States.
This celebration included over 20 million people around the entire United States gathering together to hold demonstrations, rallies, protests and other activities with the goal of promoting a cleaner, safer environment for us to live in. This first Earth Day gathered people of all ages, from children, students and adults, who all pushed the government for legislation that would protect the Earth.
Surprisingly, opposing political parties, and everyone from different social and economic backgrounds showed unity during Earth Day, and came together to spread the message of protecting the planet. After this first Earth Day, the United States Environmental Protection Agency was founded. As well as this, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act were all introduced and passed. This was the start of major changes to help improve the environment.
For the next few decades, Earth Day continued to be celebrated across the United States, and it’s main aim was to find practical ways to protect the environment. However, in the 1990’s, the movement took on a global scale. In 1990, more than 200 million people across 141 countries across the planet came together on April 22nd to celebrate Earth Day, and push for more environmental improvements across the entire world. This global event eventually paved the way for further events, including the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit.
So why do we celebrate Earth Day?
Since 1970, Earth Day has been growing and growing to become a now global phenomenon, one event to promote clean living and a healthier planet, for people and animals alike. Annually celebrating Earth Day is a conscious reminder of just how fragile the planet can be, and how vitally important it is to protect it. Thanks to the first Earth Day in 1970, we are so much more actually aware of the implications of our actions on our environment, and are aware of what actions we can take to protect our planet in our everyday life.
Earth Day is the day of the year that is dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding about the planet. Last year, over 1 billion people participated in Earth Day in some way, which made it the largest observance in the world. The significance of Earth Day has grown each year, as we witness more and more of the effects of climate change and environmental damage on both our day to day lives, and the planet. We’re witnessing things like food shortages, fuel price hikes, increased global warming and weather changes. Earth Day helps to inform the public about the causes of these things, and helps everyone to be conscious about the ways they can have an impact on them too.
Earth Day brings about ideas like more ways to recycle and conserve energy; to events like tree planting; or spreading knowledge about reducing air pollution. There are so many ideas, both big and small that are presented during Earth Day celebrations that can help to improve our planet - and that everyone can get involved and onboard with.
It’s not just individual - even big companies are getting involved with Earth Day, and encouraging their employees to help be more environmentally friendly. Earth Day can help inform business owners about things like car pooling, using renewable energy, and being mindful of electricity usage. There’s lots of initiatives that companies can learn about and take on that Earth Day will help to inform about.
Why don’t you celebrate Earth Day this year, and find out the ways in which you can make changes, both big and small, to help improve the planet we live in for everyone?
Practice some grounding Earth Yoga and treat youseft to an online yoga membership, for 40% off!
Earth Yoga with Denelle Numis
On April 22, 2020, the world unites together to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day. This celebration of a universal commitment to protecting the earth can be embodied in the yogic concept of Ahimsa or Non-harming. Yoga practice, comprised of the earth’s elements of earth, air, fire, water, and ether, naturally honors our planet. Use Earth Day to remind yourself of your connection to it.
Fifty years ago, Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator, was shocked at the damage from an oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. The event ignited a fire in him for action to protect our environment. Once people saw how smog and oil spills left rivers so polluted they burst into flames, and damage from corporate waste were destroying the Earth, they joined the cause. On April 22, 1970, 10% percent of the U.S. population took to the streets in hundreds of cities to protest environmental pollution and demand change for our planet. Earth Day is the result.
2020’s Earth Day theme is climate action––considered to be the most pressing issue for preserving our planet. In order to preserve our planet for future generations, adopting efforts to protect and renew the environment are key.
Because we are in unprecedented times with Covid-19, instead of the usual gatherings held to celebrate Earth Day, most of us are celebrating at home.
What can you do to commemorate and honor our planet? If you have a yard or a space to practice yoga outdoors, dig your toes into the grass. If you’re in an urban environment where getting outside isn’t viable at the moment, open the windows and enjoy the kiss of fresh air.
Here are four yoga poses that will help you tune in and connect to Mother Earth and our global community wherever you are:
Balasana (Child's Pose).
Press your third-eye center against the mat and tune into your connection to the earth.
Ustrasana (Camel Pose).
Open your heart up toward the sky and find a sense of expansiveness.
Tadasana (Mountain Pose).
Stand with your feet firmly planted to the earth and take comfort in its support beneath you. Always.
Vrksasana (Tree Pose).
Root down into the earth and extend up toward the sky and find the balance between solidity and lightness.
This week’s yoga classes are earth-themed classes centered around animals, getting grounded, practicing poses inspired by nature, and simply focusing on your connection to the planet.
1. Jeanie Manchester - Saraswati Flow
2. Caitlin Rose Kenney - Tree Meditation
3. Lindsay Gonzalez - Vinyasa: Hamstrings to Hanuman
4. Denelle Numis - Earth Yoga
I love risotto. All kinds – mushroom, seafood, peas, and asparagus – if prepared well, I love any kind. It is incredibly simple to make at home too. All you need is about half an hour, good rice, a little cheese and a good bottle of wine. If you don’t have wine at home, you can substitute it with apple cider or just omit it altogether.
You might need to add a little more lemon juice, but you can adjust the taste right before serving, so don’t stress about it too much at first. If you do have wine and enjoy a few glasses now and then, then use the same whine you drink in the food too. For this recipe, any good white wine or bubbly will work. I used a nice crémant that I also enjoyed afterward next to my risotto.
Today's version of risotto tastes like a spring to me. Spinach gives it an amazing green color, and lemon adds brightness to the taste. It would be amazing to add fresh grilled asparagus to the dish or seared scallops if you eat fish. This time I enjoyed it just plain as it is and truth to be told – I did not miss a thing!
Spinach-Lemon Risotto
Cooking time: 35 minutes
Serves: 2
1 small onion
2/3 sticks butter
1 cup of risotto rice (I use Arborio)
1/3 cup white wine or prosecco
2 cups of hot vegetable stock
10 oz of spinach, both fresh and frozen will work
1 ½ oz parmesan or grana padano cheese
1 small lemon
Salt and pepper, to taste
Chop up the onion rather fine and add it to a medium saucepan with about 1/3 of the butter. Add a little salt and leave the onions sweat for a few minutes. The onion needs to become translucent, but not brown. Cut only the yellow part of the lemon rind off and add it to the pot.
Add the rice to the pan and increase the heat a tiny bit. Stirring with a wooden spoon, toast the grains for about a minute.
Pour the wine to the pot and keep stirring until it is absorbed. After that, start adding the stock, one ladleful at the time. Always wait until the last ladle has almost fully absorbed before adding the new one.
At the same time, prepare the spinach. If you use the frozen one, just thaw it. If you use fresh, then blanch it in boiling water for a few seconds, then dry and blend to a puree.
If 17 minutes have passed from adding the wine, have a taste of the rice. It still needs to have a little bite to it. You might not need to use all of the stock. And if it happens that you need more liquid, just use boiling water.
If you feel that the rice is 2 minutes from being perfect, mix in ½ ladle of stock, spinach, grated cheese, rest of the butter, and the juice of ½ lemon. It needs to be somewhat loose at this point. Have a taste and add salt or more lemon, if you feel like it.
Cover with lid and leave to rest for 5 minutes. After that, remove the lemon rinds and serve as immediately.
By Kadri Raig
Kadri is a food blogger and yoga teacher from Estonia. She does love to spend time in the kitchen, but most of her recipes are simple and don’t take more than 20 minutes of active cooking time. She thinks that everybody can find time to cook healthy food at home, it is just a question of planning. "I work in an office full time, teach yoga 7-8 hours a week and write a blog. So if I manage to cook most of my meals, then so do you!" Connect with Kadri and enjoy many more of her delicious healthy recipes on her website here: www.kahvliga.ee
Try this all levels yoga class for FREE from the comfort of your home right now!
Morning Quickie 2 with Elise Fabricant
To start living the life that you want, you need to work on healthy habits every day. This requires patience because you have to learn new things. The younger you are, the easier it is to do, but the truth is, we are all able to change our habits and ways of living.
Now, in a life of quarantine, you have to make a decision between falling into unhealthy habits, or doing things that are more beneficial for your body.
Sometimes it is difficult to change daily routines, and this is being forced upon all of us right now, so it's important we all decide what our ideal routine will be.
If you're unexpectedly stuck at home, here are some simple healthy habits you can implement.
These eight inspiring ideas will keep the body and mind healthier during quarantine.
Yoga
This practice can be the beginning of a new way of living for you. Yoga brings relaxation not only to the body but to the mind as well. You'll learn breathing techniques and meditate.
A good time for yoga is the morning, when your body is calm, but you can practice yoga at anytime during the day. With yoga, you can fill yourself with energy without extra vitamin pills or exhausting exercises. Yoga also improves focus and clarity. and will make you a better student.
Morning Journaling
This habit is a great tool to develop your gratitude and improve the quality of your life. To bring more aesthetic to your journaling process, order a beautiful pen and notebook will help you to enjoy spending this time. This kind of therapy will help you to overcome anxiety, avoid negative thoughts, remember the values of life, and raise your motivation for the day. Writing is a great opportunity to find inspiration and new creative ideas.
Drink A Lot Of Water
This habit seems to be very simple, but it is not so easy to follow in practice. Drinking water is essential for your body. Keep yourself hydrated and track the number of glasses of water you drink.
Workouts for your Brain
When you are concentrating only on the body, you naturally forget about your intellect. Don’t ignore games for your brain that can inspire you and develop the way you think. Rubik’s cube, puzzles, and table games are great to spend time alone or with your family members. Meditation and new meditative techniques are also exercise for your brain.
Keep a Healthy Sleep Schedule
Even if you have enough time to watch dozens of your favorite movies and read the books that interest you, please pay attention to the time when you go to bed. Remember these essential rules to have healthy sleep and sweet dreams: turn off your devices an hour before you are planning to go to bed, organize a comfortable and clean place for sleeping, ventilate your room, create your unique bedtime ritual, and avoid bright light.
Positive Thoughts
Repeat calming and life-affirming phrases to yourself in your mind. When bad thoughts are attacking you, try to imagine that they are birds sitting on the branches of a tree. Just wave your hand and let them fly away. This is one of the simplest techniques to cope with negativity.
Healthy Nutrition
We are what we eat. This is a popular saying, and we have to learn from it that food has a great impact on our health. In quarantine, we have a lot of time to improve our cooking skills and learn new healthy recipes.
Learn Something New
This can be a new language or drawing techniques you never tried before. Also, you can watch paid or free online courses about crafting, such as candle-making, papier-mâché, or scrapbooking. If crafting isn't for you, turn on your favorite online yoga classes or sign up for a yoga challenge.
We hope that these eight simple tips will help you to enrich your days of quarantine with meaningful activities and healthy habits. They can help you to save and replenish your energy and learn to live in the moment, not only for the current period but for the future as well.
By Michael Fowler
Michael Fowler is a specialist in content writing for different online sources. He is a passionate writer that helps students to improve their academic writing skills. At the same time, Michael Fowler is interested in topics related to business, marketing, healthy lifestyle, and travel.
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If you’re getting stuck in a rut these days, and need something to boost your spirits, it’s tempting to lean into back habits and pick up fast food or a pint of beer. But before you head for the bad vices, try yoga for just 15 minutes. 15 minutes of yoga practice a day can help to improve your mood and your health.
Whatever space or time you have, it can be easy to fit in 15 minutes of yoga a day and help to boost your health and make you feel better. Here’s some of the benefits of just 15 minutes of yoga a day.
Better Fitness Levels
You don’t have to do loads of cardio or lift loads of weights to improve your fitness. But these aren’t the only ways to work out. Yoga can do this too, and also make you feel peaceful and zen. Yoga combines cardio, stretching and strength training in one - and it can be done at your own pace at home.
Lose Weight
A gentle 15 minute yoga practice can help you lose weight. Yoga fuels the metabolic system, and helps to burn fat which leads to weight loss. Did you also know that yoga can balance the hormones in your body, which in turn also normalises weight? Practicing yoga daily will also help to curb overeating. Yoga lowers the cortisol levels in the body, which is the hormone that causes stress. It can also help to boost your mental health, which can help you appreciate your body more.
Improves Strength and Posture
Practicing yoga once a day will help to stretch, tone and strengthen your body muscles. You can incorporate strength building exercises such as planks to build muscle. It can also help to improve your flexibility. You don’t have to be the most flexible to start practicing yoga, all levels of ability can practice it. Even 15 minutes daily can make a huge difference in your strength and flexibility, and you’ll soon be able to feel the difference - and notice the difference in your posture. You’ll be sitting up straighter, and you’ll notice aches and pains caused by incorrect posture less and less.
Increased Mindfulness
When you practice yoga, you can also work on your mindfulness. Yoga helps you be in the moment, and focus on the thoughts and sensations you get in each pose. This awareness will help to bring your mind into the present, which is the main aim of mindfulness - to help you feel focused. Mindfulness will help you to feel calm and chilled, and reduce anxious thoughts. Mindfulness also paves the way for you to feel more self confident and accepting of yourself.
Less Stress
It’s been proven time and time again that yoga is one of the best ways to relieve stress. Even a short daily practice can help to reduce the stress levels in the body. You should include poses, breathing and meditation. If you incorporate these elements, you will be able to regulate your heart rate, and your body will be able to respond to stress in a better way. Yoga can also help reduce stress to let you sleep better at night. Forward folds and relaxing poses will help to calm your mind, and allow you to feel relaxed before sleep.
Breathing Deeper
Practicing yoga for just 15 minutes each day will help you breathe deeper and better. Breath work is essential in yoga practice, and yoga breathing techniques will focus on slowing down the breath and helping you breathe fully from the bottom of your stomach to the top of your lungs. Breathing deeply helps you feel relaxed, as well as improving your lung capacity. You can take these breathing exercises into your daily life to help you cope with stressful situations.
Increase in Energy
You may be feeling more lethargic than usual, but a few minutes of yoga everyday can help to give you a boost of energy. Yoga combines body and breath and gives a unique energy kick to your body and mind. Daily yoga can wake up the energy chakras in your body. Poses that extend and stretch your spine can help to circulate energy throughout your body, and poses that open up your chest will help you breathe deeper, bringing more energy into your body.
Improves Your Mood
A few yoga poses each day can help to boost your mood and make you feel happier. Combining a daily yoga practice with meditation can result in higher levels of serotonin, which is the hormone that makes you happy. It’s also been shown that the brain's GABA levels are higher after practicing yoga. High GABA levels in the brain are associated with lower levels of stress and anxiety.
Longer Life
Finally, thanks to the above benefits such as increased fitness, regulated heart rate, reduced stress and improved mood - you can add years to your life. Yoga also decreases the risk of things like heart disease. Generally, the health benefits of yoga improve your physical and mental state, which gives it an increased benefit than other exercise methods. Why not try a quick online yoga class today, and start reaping some of the benefits?
Take a short and sweet yoga class, right now!
We all want to enjoy the benefits from a regular yoga practice, like a better mood, vibrant energy, and a stronger more supple body. And a consistent daily practice, however brief, can change your life in profound ways you may not have contemplated. According to the Yoga Sutras, practicing yoga is also considered the path to avoiding future suffering.
Yoga Sutra 2.16- heyam duhkham anagatam, in the second chapter of the sutras on Sadhana or practice, loosely translated means, “pain yet to come is to be avoided.” What exactly does Patanjali mean in this thread of yogic wisdom?
Essentially, we do have the ability to avoid or minimize future pain and suffering through our routine yoga practice. In other words, what we do today can help alleviate our future suffering. Our human experience includes pain, but through yoga you can shift your perspective and what you may have perceived as pain changes.
By practicing yoga every day, we tune into our true thoughts and feelings. When we pay more attention to our values and desires, we begin to make better choices in all areas of our lives. Consider the analogy of a yogi being like a gardener or a farmer. Today, you are planting seeds and cultivating your garden with hope and intention for the future.
Sometimes, if we aren’t connected with our own thoughts and desires, we can unintentionally create futures that don’t truly resonate or represent what we desire.
These unintended or careless actions now can manifest as challenges in the future that could have been avoided by paying attention to what we create each and every day. By practicing yoga, we become more aligned with our true selves and more mindful of how our current actions impact our futures. In other words, we make better choices.
Yoga practice isn’t optional––you cannot nurture your desires and the life of your dreams if you don’t practice. Period. To cultivate awareness takes effort.
The good news is that even when you’re really busy, you can still squeeze in a quick yoga practice and garner the benefits. Don’t be hard on yourself if your schedule is full––consider quality over quantity.
Release any pre-conceived notion that you’ve got to practice at a certain time every day for a minimum period of time to receive the gifts of yoga. Of course, to have a truly well rounded practice including pranayama (breath work) and meditation, you’re going to need more than ten or fifteen minutes. But if you’re flexible, you can squeeze in a quick class some days and balance with longer classes on others. Consistency is key. Choose to feel better today and all your tomorrows.
1. Elise Fabricant - Morning Quickie 2 (FREE CLASS)
2. Robert Sidoti - 5 Poses for Flexibility
3. Pradeep Teotia - Alternate Nostril Breathing
4. Jackie Casal Mahrou - Anytime Sun Salutations
I am going to share my favorite recipe from last summer with you. This simple mix of toasted nuts and spices is just incredible sprinkled on top of all kinds of dishes – avocado toast, hummus, creamy soup, or just a sandwich, but most of all, I find it just incredible for dipping veggies in.
I developed the recipe when my garden was producing more radishes than I was able to eat in salads and other dishes. I grew all kinds – red, yellow, white, and purple. Can’t wait until its getting warmer again, so I could start with my garden projects again – this time is not far away anymore, only a few more months to go… Anyway, soon after I made this dukkah for the first time, I needed to head out to farmers market for more radishes because I could just keep eating them this way forever.
In addition to radishes, the olive oil + dukkah mix works well on other vegetables too – cucumbers, kohlrabi, and carrots are all just amazing with it.
This is a perfect healthy party food for me – interactive because everybody can dip their own veggies and a million times more exciting (and healthy) compared to your usual potato chips + dipping sauce combination.
By the way – dukkah means ‘to crush’ in Arabic, and there are many versions of this spice mixture. Very often, coriander seeds and pinenuts are added too, and I imagine they would be beautiful in it. I have also substituted cashews for pistachios a few times, and it has been nice, but most often, I still use the recipe that is given here. Feel free to experiment to find your favorite combination of nuts and spices and get dipping!
Simple Dukkah (that brings your veggies to the next level)
Cooking time: 10 minutes
½ cup pistachio nuts, unsalted, shelled
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp freshly crushed black pepper
1 tsp salt flakes
Optional:
Chili flakes
Extra virgin olive oil
Other veggies to serve
On a dry pan, toast the pistachio nuts for 3 minutes on medium heat. Shake the pan for a few times during cooking to make sure they toast evenly.
Add sesame seeds, fennel, and pepper to the pan and continue toasting for 3-4 minutes until they are beautiful and fragrant. If it seems that the seeds start burning, reduce the heat.
Transfer the content of the pan to mortar and using the pestle crush the nuts and seeds to the consistency you like. I quite like to leave some bigger bits in too.
If you don’t have mortar and pestle, feel free to use the food processor
To serve, cut up the veggies, pour some olive oil to a little bowl, and let everybody dip their veggies first to olive oil and then to dukkah mix.
Practice this 25-minute yoga class for FREE before or after eating these delicious healthy burgers!
Not an All or Nothing Practice with Christen Bakken
To improve our level of health and fitness, many athletes and nutritionists emphasize on the importance of cardiovascular and strength training exercises and can easily overlook flexibility training (the yogis know the importance of flexibility). Flexibility is a critical component of health and fitness and an overall balanced body.
A series of studies support the short and long-term benefits of different forms of stretching such as dynamic stretching, static stretching and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation commonly known as PNF.
So, why should you stretch every day? Here are a few reasons you need to make stretching part of your daily routine.
Remember, you don’t have to spend a lot of time doing it and that a yoga practice can give you the stretching you need, and also increase your strength in the process.
Benefits of daily stretching include:
Stress Relief
It can be to get stressed out and frustrated in a faster speed world (or in times of a global pandemic). Chronic stress has several negative effects on the body which include fatigue, anxiety, and tension. By stretching for a few minutes every day, you’ll reduce muscle tension and help alleviate anxiety and depression. Consider combining your flexibility exercises with breathing techniques, like in yoga.
Decreases Blood Pressure
The majority of people think that stretching affects your muscles only. This is not true because research shows that it enhances the flexibility of your arteries and veins. A study conducted by the Japanese found that people who could bend over and touch their toes had very flexible arteries, unlike their counterparts who couldn’t. Relieving tension also helps people with hypertension. Another way to reduce your blood pressure is by practicing yoga.
Reduces the Risk of Injury
Stretching helps in reducing the risk of injury. All bodybuilders and gym enthusiasts know the importance of a warm-up before lifting weights. Increasing the body temperature before exercising helps the body make adequate preparations for what is about to happen. That’s why stretching has always been considered a critical part of preventing injuries. Cold tendons and muscles are more likely to strain and rapture.
Enhanced Range of Motion
Various stretching exercises and other supportive strategies like self-myofascial using a foam roller, usually help in enhancing the range of movement of the major body joints including key mobile areas such as shoulders and hips. An enhanced range of motion allows you to do more things with ease in everyday life.
Minimizes the Wear and Tear of Joints
When muscles become tense and tight, opposing muscles usually get weakened and this leads to wear and tear on various structures and joints in the body. By stretching regularly, you’ll ensure that all the muscles surrounding a joint maintain a uniform degree of pull. This enables the joints to move freely and effectively in all directions. When you do this, you not only enhance the range of motion but also relieve stress on the body.
Reduces Pain and Stiffness
Excess muscular tension increases discomfort in the body. However, several studies show that performing flexibility exercises regularly helps in relieving pain and decreasing stiffness especially if the individual is experiencing chronic pain on the neck or back or frequent muscle cramps. Stretching increases blood flow and supply of nutrients to the muscles to relieve muscle soreness.
Better Posture
Stretching helps in correcting one's posture by increasing the length of tight muscles throughout the body. Tight muscles usually pull several areas of the body into misalignment, so more flexible muscles allow for more space for the body to find it's intended and optimal position.
For instance, spending countless hours behind a computer screen leads to tight chest muscles that pull the head and shoulders forward leaving a hunched look. When you start doing flexibility exercises, you’ll keep your chest, shoulders and spine muscles aligned, and this will also help eliminate body pains.
Better Athletic Performance
If you fail to stretch after a hard fitness workout session, your muscles will start contracting instead of expanding. And this will make your exercises ineffective in the long run. By stretching regularly, you’ll relax your muscles and they’ll be more available during your next workout session. When this happens, you’ll easily make the most out of your workout sessions.
Tips to Stretch Safely and Effectively:
• It’s important to relax and breathe normally when doing yoga or any flexibility exercise • All flexibility exercises should be slowly. Avoid bouncy or jerky movements as this can lead to muscle tightness and injuries in the long run. • Be patient. As you stretch frequently, you’ll become more flexible. At times, you’ll experience a pulling feeling but this is normal. If you experience a sharp pain or joint pain, you should stop immediately to avoid injury.
Regular exercising and stretching play a critical role in our lives. As we continue aging, it’s very important to include flexibility exercises in our workout programs to enjoy the benefits listed above. Stretching not only reduces the risk of injury but also improves the quality of life.
By David Collins
David is a professional essay writer at professional essay writers and essay writing service. He is also a blogger from Virginia who publishes for assignment help and best dissertation writing service.
Ready to stretch? Try YogaDownload's Beginner Yoga 101 program, to learn how to breathe and stretch effectively.
Staying at home? In the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic, many people are wondering what they are going to do during this lockdown or social distancing period, and how they will stay active. If fitness is important to you, you may be trying to find the new normal in indoor routines. The idea of being isolated during these stressful times can be daunting. Fortunately, taking care of ourselves and our health doesn't need to go to the bottom of the to-do list just because we’re indoors. In fact, the World Health Organization encourages movement and self-care during quarantine. Take care of your body, mind, soul, and family with our indoor health tips.
Staying Healthy During Isolation
Experiencing isolation in extended periods can take a toll on our physical and mental health. A disrupted routine can cause us to be unmotivated and lethargic. Dealing with the unknown can also affect our mental health and increase our stress levels. This is why during isolation, people are encouraged to do all they can to stay healthy, sane, and fit.
Working out can help alleviate the pent-up stress and anxiety brought about by the COVID-19 situation. Cardiovascular activities have been shown to stimulate the brain to produce “endorphins” - aka, happy hormones.
Ensuring that our mind is also healthy during this uncertain period can help us focus on the present, and take our worries away from the news reports.
Don’t let the stress of the COVID-19 isolation prevent you from taking care of yourself. Here are some things you can do to be happy and healthy physically, mentally, and spiritually.
For Your Body:
Practice Yoga
Yoga is one of the best at-home, indoor workouts for all ages. All you need is a yoga mat! Whether you are a beginner looking to get into it, a seasoned yogi, or a parent looking for a way to keep kids active, yoga is your answer.
Join Free Workouts & Yoga Online
Even fitness class instructors are making the most out of the situation by offering free online workout classes.
Check out YogaDownload's schedule of daily live streaming yoga classes.
Make Some Time for “Grounding”
Grounding involves doing a set of activities that allow you to “connect” to the ground. This often includes enjoying activities barefoot. One study points out that through grounding, we can feel calm, and our body can prevent inflammation.
Take a break from the indoors, remove your shoes, walk to your yard and feel the ground on your bare feet. Grounding is believed to be a great remedy for stress as it lowers cortisol levels.
Have a Dance Party
Don’t let boredom get in the way of having fun with your family. Turn on the music, blast your favorite tune, and dance the night away! This is fun for the whole family - especially little ones who will love getting to move their bodies to the music.
For Your Mind:
Meditation
Meditation is one of the best ways to calm an active mind. If you are new to the practice, there are tons of resources available for you and apps to choose from.
Take Advantage of Free Online Classes
A number of e-learning websites has released free learning resources for anyone who wants to develop new knowledge and skills during the quarantine period.
Check out Class Central’s free Ivy League courses - you have more than 450 free courses to choose from. Udemy also has thousands of online courses on a variety of topics. Emerge from this social distancing period with new skills!
Explore Virtual Museums
Craving new adventures? Virtual tours have got you covered. Thanks to virtual museums, you can continue exploring without leaving your home. Discover the British Museum in London, The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and Musee d’Orsay in Paris with Google Arts and Culture virtual museum tours.
Read a New Book
Time to brush the cobwebs off our minds with a book or two. Instead of getting hooked on scrolling your social media feed, use the extra time to learn something from a book. You can always check out a bestseller’s list for some awesome book recommendations!
Learn a New Language
Come out of isolation screaming “Bonjour Le Monde!” because you can. This time of quarantine is the best time to learn a new language. Study French, Spanish, or Cantonese with the many language apps available.
For Your Soul:
Destress with Music
Music can do wonders for your soul. There are so many ways to listen to free concerts or jam sessions – from YouTube to Spotify, you have endless options. Or find live music streams and virtual concerts here!
Try Your Hand at Cooking
Have you always wanted to improve your cooking skills? Now is the perfect time! Take an online cooking class. Cooking is the perfect activity for social distancing – you can practice now and impress your guests once the quarantine is over!
Connect with People that Matter
Take time to connect with your family and friends over FaceTime or phone calls. Staying connected is important for you and them, especially if you have elderly loved ones who are facing this alone. Check-in with them at least every other day - talking to others helps combat depression and loneliness.
Host a Virtual Happy Hour
Invite your friends and jump on FaceTime to celebrate happy hour. Mix up some new martinis, share recipes, and do it all over again tomorrow! Or host a wine and painting party – and share your new piece of art with a loved one once this is all over!
Netflix Time
Luckily, you can still Netflix and chill. You can even invite your friends via Netflix Party. Just pick the show or movie you want to watch and send it to your friends with Netflix accounts. Then you can use an online chat room to make comments during the viewing.
For the Kids
Most of the ideas above can also be enjoyed with kids, and the rest are some other ideas specifically suited for the youngest members of the family.
Indoor Games & Exercises
No recess or gym class may translate into pent up energy for your kids. Indoor games and exercises can still get the kids moving. From headstands to obstacles courses and pillow fights, these are fantastic ways to get the whole family moving and having a blast while doing it.
Board Game Night
Pull out those board games and play like a kid again, with your kids! You may be surprised how much fun you have, and many games, like Scrabble, also help your kids learn in the process.
Arts & Crafts Night
Keep the kids busy and interactive with one of these 50+ arts and crafts ideas. No special skills or tools required, and most use regular household items that are easy to come by.
Staying indoors during this quarantine period can be everything but boring. Plan ahead and use some of these awesome ideas for healthy, active social distancing that everyone will be looking forward to.
By Julie Singh
Julie Singh co-founded TripOutside with her husband Reet out of a shared enthusiasm for outdoor adventure. TripOutside.com is an easier way to research top outdoor destinations, find adventures and gear from the best local outfitters, and book it all online. You can find her biking or hiking the nearest mountain, advocating for the earth & its animals, and cooking delicious vegan food.
Practice yoga and meditation for free, right now, on YogaDownload.com
Meditation: Release Reactivity with Geenie Celento
The world is a delicate balance between light and dark. Yin and yang.
At this moment in time, most of us are experiencing a weight we’ve never shouldered before. Feeling overwhelmed with the constant bombardment of news, the new reality we’re living in, and the sense our world is forever changed doesn’t exactly encourage a feeling of well-being. Although many events are outside of our personal control, we do have the ability to manage our personal reactions and find balance.
Yoga is an excellent tool to help us lighten the emotional and mental impact of all these changes and shift our perception. We all see the world through a unique lens shaped by our life and personal experiences. Sometimes we need a little polishing of the lens when it appears cloudy or dark. When we move energy through our bodies with certain asanas and breathing techniques, we can release stuck energy and alleviate patterns that aren’t serving us. This week, we’re here to offer some classes to help you lift your spirits.
Our yoga practice acts as a reset button and is constantly changing, just like the world around us. So we adapt and practice in different ways according to how we feel in any given moment. If you’re feeling a preponderance of heaviness or darkness, this means you’re holding onto too much Tamas, the universal element or guna representing solidity and inertia. Dedicating some time to asana, pranayama, and meditation directed toward a more sattvic state of harmony and light will help lift the weight.
Heart-opening poses like backbends, increase your energy, your oxygen levels, and your heart chakra, and are excellent for your spine. Emotionally and mentally, expanding the front of your body helps lift your mood and relieve anxiety. Our perspective on life is shaped from the inside out. Spending time to lighten your psyche and to simply feel good will build a reserve of inner-strength and enhance your ability to navigate through uncertain times. These classes are all about a more positive head and heart space.
1. Caitlin Rose Kenney - Backbends for Dusting of the Heart
2. Kristin Gibowicz - Metamorphosis Flow: Taking Flight
3. Alanna Kaivalya - Leaning Toward the Light: The Power of Discernment
4. Christen Bakken - Flow for a Grateful Heart
All fast food does not need to be unhealthy, and this recipe here is a perfect example of a quick, delicious recipe that satisfies our junk-cravings (I still have them sometimes) without being loaded with unhealthy crap. I do love vegetable burgers, and I often use them in my burgers, but today I opted for halloumi cheese instead, because it is so incredibly salty and chewy that I just love it. Especially with avocado! If you are fully plant-based, I would recommend substituting it with tempeh.
For the buns, I always choose dark whole wheat buns. I am sure you find something nice from your local stores. For my own burgers, I toast the buns, so they are a little crispy. My boyfriend does not like crispy and crunchy food (weird, if you ask me, but oh well), so I usually just add his buns to the pan on top of the halloumi slices for the last few minutes, so they warm through.
The mayonnaise is not mandatory here, but I like to use some for more moisture. I use a very light mayonnaise that is locally produced here in Estonia, so sharing a brand with you here would not make sense, but choose whatever you like or just omit it entirely and add more avocado if you feel like it.
The recipe itself is a straightforward and quick one – a real fast food, and even the most inexperienced chef will have it on the table in 15 minutes.
Healthy Avocado & Halloumi Burgers
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Yields: 4 burgers, but we usually have 2 burgers each
7 oz halloumi cheese
4 whole-grain buns
2 small ripe avocados
1 lime
Pickled jalapeno, to taste (I added heaps)
½ onion, thinly sliced
1 large tomato
Salt
4 tsp mayonnaise
Slice the halloumi to about 1-cm slices and fry or grill on medium heat until golden on both sides – it takes about 5 minutes
Sprinkle the thinly sliced onion with a little salt, squeeze on the juice of ½ lemon, massage it between your fingers, and set aside to wait.
Mix the avocado with the rest of the lime juice, tiny bit of salt, and chopped jalapeno.
Toast the buns and slice the tomato.
To serve, divide mashed avocado between the buns, top with marinated onion, halloumi, and tomato. Add the mayonnaise and top with the other half of buns.
Enjoy!
Have you ever watched a small child learn to do something for the first time?
I was watching a little boy put a brand new puzzle together, and this was the largest puzzle he had ever built. As he was arranging the pieces, I noticed some of them were backwards or upside down, and he was trying to put pieces together that wouldn’t fit. I just sat there silently, internally laughing at the dialogue my ego was having that instantly saw this scenario was just another playfully packaged, yet somehow intrinsically deep life lesson.
I wanted so badly to help, but knew better, and so I observed him fumble, force, and get frustrated; and then eventually he asked for help. I smiled, and told him I would love to.
I proceeded to ask if we could flip all of the pieces so they were right side up, and then slowly started fitting some of them together. After a few pieces were in a row, I would ask, “would you like to try and put this piece on?” He smiled, placed the piece on slowly, and in a slightly fumbled manner, and got it to fit perfectly. We proceeded to do this for the next couple of rows until the puzzle was finished. Naturally, I left the last piece for him to proudly place down.
After the puzzle was complete, I sat there and it dawned on me that within the next year and a half that puzzle will be a far more simple task for that young boy to complete entirely on his own. In a matter of five years, that boy will be able to look back at this puzzle, and find it silly to think it was something he found as a great challenge.
Thinking about this perspective, where was I once challenged that I am now able to look back and feel accomplished?
Where do I feel most challenged and grappling to understand or apply wisdom of experience, and new ways of thinking and doing to present time life? How effortlessly can I ask for or receive help?
I also know, that as the years change, so do the "puzzles," and if I can hold space and have patience for this small child learning something entirely new, then I can do that for myself and others too. I can be compassionate for the way I find myself fumbling, forcing, being scattered or unorganized at times. I can also choose to see this child as a guru, by watching him have the ability to take a step back when it becomes overwhelming, ask for help, and lovingly receive assistance.
By Angela Droughton
Angela Droughton is a Spiritual Counselor, Mindfulness Educator, Psychic, Minister, and the creator of Mother Sparkle. Find out more by visiting her page at www.mothersparkle.com.
Practice yoga with your kids right now, here!
If you’re thinking about starting yoga, but a lack of flexibility is holding you back - don’t let it stop you! The idea that you need to be flexible to do yoga is a huge myth, and flexibility isn’t essential to get on the mat. In fact - yoga practice can actually improve your flexibility, and you can see this improve over time the more yoga you practice.
Every yogi started somewhere, and even the most flexible people didn’t start out being able to bend their bodies into difficult poses. Yoga can improve your flexibility if you’re not very bendy - as well as improve your posture, balance and strength, if being flexible isn’t one of your goals. Even bodybuilders didn’t start off being able to carry the heaviest of weights - they trained and started from the bottom, and the same is true for yoga and flexibility. Progress comes with effort and hard work, and starting from scratch.
The practice of yoga can help to tone and lengthen your muscles, through working on basic poses and stretches - which means you won’t be perfect on day one. It’s the repetition of yoga that helps to increase your flexibility. The more your practice, the more flexible you become, and you can go deeper into each pose, further increasing your flexibility. So, repetition makes for a more flexible body!
Props such as blocks, straps, bolsters can help to support your body if you’re feeling pain or discomfort during yoga practice. You shouldn’t push your body beyond what it can do - instead increased flexibility occurs over time. Props can also add more length to your body to stretch your body further.
This is why it’s important to put in regular time for yoga practice when you’re first starting out. A class here and there may be a nice relief for sore muscles, but it's not going to do anything for your flexibility levels. You might think you need to be immediately flexible, especially if you're looking to more advanced yogis for guidance, but what you don’t see is the time, effort and journey everyone goes through to get to those advanced stages. Just one class a week can lead to increased mobility and flexibility.
You don’t need to be initially flexible to start yoga, and in fact, your body may have its limits when it comes to flexibility. Keep this in mind, and remember your body will set its own limits, so you might not be able to achieve the same poses as other people. It’s important not to fall into the trap of comparing yourself, especially with social media showing images of flexible yogis in complicated poses!
You can set flexibility as a fitness goal, alongside things like strength, endurance and balance. But remember what your body is capable of and remember yoga is about so much more than flexibility. Yoga can also improve strength, make you more connected to your body, reduce stress and helps you quiet your mind and practice mindfulness too. It’s about that mind and body connection, and allowing your body to sink into each pose. You can start with beginner classes that will ease you into your practice, then advance to more challenging classes as your journey continues.
If you’re still worried about not being flexible, remember that yoga is a controlled and disciplined exercise that requires a lot of control and strength. Actually, most injuries come from pushing your body to be too flexible, whether through hyper extension or relaxing too far into a posture.
Flexible people are actually more prone to injury as they can be used to letting their body relax in full range. This can actually be more dangerous! Even if you may be stiff, you can use props and proper guidance from a qualified teacher to help you feel more comfortable and get in the right position to feel the stretch. This can help you to not force your body into positions it can’t achieve.
When you work on your flexibility, you might find that your progress after a while starts to stop. This could be due to just needing more time and patience on a tricky pose - or it could be your bone structure. When we talk about flexibility and range of motion, it’s not just muscular, your bone structure plays a huge part in determining what your body is capable of. Everyone’s bone structure is unique, giving each of us a strong base for our movement. If you’re working on a pose, but you get to a point when you cannot go any deeper, and no longer feel the stretch, this can be down to compression of your bones. This can impact your hips and shoulders the most. Basically, if you can’t go any further with your flexibility, it could be down to your bone structure, which is totally okay! Yoga is about exploring what your body is capable of, and creating space and stretching in a comfortable way.
To summarize, yoga builds not only flexibility, but strength, endurance and balance - as well as mental benefits, so if you’re worried you’re not flexible enough, there’s heaps of other reasons to get on the mat. If you’re still worried, remember that with regular practice, your flexibility will improve, and you’ll find it easier!
Are you ready? Sign up for Beginner Yoga 101 program or join YogaDownload's upcoming Live challenge, suitable for all levels.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life." -Prince
Life as we know it is different in ways you may never have imagined. At this moment in time, it feels like Mother Earth has hit the pause button for all of us. Nobody is immune to this unprecedented challenge we are facing. Just like Prince sang––we are all here to navigate through this together! And we will make it through to the other side.
Yoga teaches us that everything is temporary. Everything. We are facing a choice now: choose to see this moment in time as an opportunity for reflection and growth or as a time to be frustrated and defeated. It’s all a matter of perspective.
We’re in it, so why not make the most of this enforced seclusion, which is basically a virtual cocoon? Chose to emerge as a butterfly.
This period in time is a perfect chance to focus on your health and strengthening your immune system. Whether you’re busier because you’re homeschooling your children and working from home or you’re feeling adrift because you can’t work at all, carve out a few minutes for yourself. At YogaDownload.com, we’ve built a global community and even if you’re practicing yoga in your living room or back yard, you’ve got the knowledge that thousands of other yogis are doing the same thing. We’re in this together.
As you reflect during or after your practice, remind yourself of all your blessings. Perhaps with everything else in your life on hold, you can redirect your attention to appreciate all you do have. We cannot control external events, but we can control how we react to them. Focus on how lucky you are to have your health, to have a roof over your head, to have friends and family, even if you can’t be with them physically right now. Remind yourself that there’s always someone who could benefit from a call or an email or a letter––someone who needs some extra love directed their way.
Challenge yourself to consider all the things you’ve procrastinated on because you didn’t have time to do them. Here you go! Take that online language course, re-read your favorite books, learn how to do a handstand, clean out the dreaded closet(s), or binge watch every single show on Netflix if you want. You’ve got the time now, so choose where you want to spend it. Don’t forget yoga!
We’re thrilled to offer a new three-week challenge starting on April 6th to help you stay focused on your yoga practice.
Our vast worldwide community will participate and you’ll have the chance to share your experiences and support one another each day, and feel a real sense of connection. We’re all in this together. You can do this.
Sign up for this challenge, now!
I usually don’t share smoothie recipes because smoothie is a very creative and simple food and what goes in my blender mostly depends on what I have waiting in my fridge or fruit bowl. I don’t remember a bad smoothie, so as long as your ingredients are fresh, I would say go for what you have. But since I have been adding raw beetroot to my smoothies for a few months now, and before I did it for the first time I did not even think about it, I figured it might be worth sharing.
Raw beetroot in smoothies is fantastic! Like truly amazing. Especially with red berries in a supporting role.
At least with my nutribullet, the smoothie is worth its name – smooth and velvety, so no reason to worry that raw beetroot will be grainy – it is not.
Another thing I added to the smoothie is raw cacao – this matches so well with raspberries and beetroot. It will not be strongly chocolaty, but just a hint in the background to deepen the flavor. I also added vegan protein powder, but this is entirely optional. What weird ingredients do you like to add to smoothies?
Beetroot Raspberry Smoothie
Serves: 1
Cooking time: 5 min
1 small beetroot
3 ½ oz frozen raspberries
1 ripe banana
1 tbsp raw cacao
(1 tbsp vegan protein powder)
½ cup cashew milk
Toppings if you wish to serve it in a bowl
Wash your beetroot thoroughly and cut to cubes. I usually don’t even bother peeling the beetroot, because many vitamins are directly under the peel, it does not influence the flavor, and I hate food waste, so triple win in my book. Quadruple win even, because not peeling the beetroot saves time too ;)
Throw all the ingredients to the blender and blend until smooth.
If you wish to serve it in a bowl, then top with coconut flakes, granola, or extra berries. In case you prefer to drink your smoothie, I recommend adding some extra milk or water.
Practice FREE 25 minutes of yoga before or after your delicious smoothie!
25-Minute Full Body Yoga with Keith Allen
So, I won’t be the first to suggest that some good might come of the lockdown and social distancing enforced upon many of us by government action over the spread of Covid-19. Social media is not only full of political rants and tyrades of fear, but also of heartfelt encouragements, expressions of kindness and solidarity, and even beautiful poetry about us members of the great human family who are stepping up to take care of each other in difficult times, about the benefits to the environment and ecosystem of the planet from the forced cessation of destructive human production and transportation activities, and even about the psychological and spiritual benefits of just withdrawing from the world a while and spending time with ourselves.
Yet, when it comes down to it, how do we handle the many hours and days (possibly weeks or even months) alone, or – possibly even more challenging – in close quarters with our family and loved ones?
Could there be ways to spend these times that are better than filling them with social media and entertainment? And what kind of mindset is necessary in order to benefit, rather than go crazy, from all this time with ourselves?
Enter: the yogi’s guide to surviving lockdown.
First of all, let me explain what I mean by “yogi”. While most of us today associate yoga with physical exercise – and indeed, I practice yoga asana and think it is a great complement to spiritual practice – body postures and movements are not our main concern here. As vipassana teacher S. N. Goenka put it, “a yogi is one who has made contact with ultimate reality”. There are plenty of exercises, physical and mental, to help us begin to connect with this “ultimate reality” of the yogi, but first it is useful to understand what it is, and how it can be particularly helpful in helping us cope with – and even profit from – prolonged isolation and forced cessation of our normal activity.
Imagine that you are having a very stressful experience, full of anxiety and violence. You struggle heroically against both the unfavorable nature of the situation and the emotional turmoil and fear that floods your own mind. Things don’t go your way, everything and everyone seems to be conspiring against you – and then, all of a sudden, you wake up. When the initial confusion dissipates, you realize with great relief that it was all a dream. But, though it may seem obvious, what exactly is it that is so relieving about discovering that your recent difficult experiences all took place in the dream state?
Is the relief a function of realizing that the dream experiences were not real? Well, what do we actually mean by “not real”?
Is a dream not a real experience?
To the brain, there is no difference – and, anyway, what would an “unreal experience” even be? Waking and dreaming experiences are both experiences, distinguishable from each other only by the labels that we give them. You would only need to be plagued with recurring nightmares for a few nights to recognize the real suffering you experience through the damage to your sleep quality and the negative emotional impressions of the dreamed experiences, spilling over into waking life.
Perhaps we could say that the relief is more due to the fact that the experience ends upon waking; but, again, the psychological effects of a dream can transcend the boundaries between sleep and waking. On the other hand, we usually do have an easier time letting go of a painful memory from a dreamed experience than one from waking life. Why should that be so?
The real reason that we experience relief upon waking up from a difficult dream is the same as the reason that we usually have an easier time detaching from the memory of a dream; it is the realization that, while our experience of the dream was a real experience like any other, all of the meaning of the dreamed events were assigned to them by our own minds. When we realize that all of the images and symbols of a dream did not actually mean what we thought they did (that is, that we were in some sort of danger or would suffer some grave consequences of the events that unfolded in the dream), we become relieved and are better able to surrender those experiences to the past and move on with our lives.
And the fundamental insight of the yogi is that waking life is precisely like a dream in this one important manner – that upon “waking up” (itself a metaphoric synonym for spiritual enlightenment or realization), we can permanently let go of all suffering through the irreversible understanding that all of the meanings we thought inherent to our lives were actually figments of our own minds.
This is Yoga in the ultimate sense, in the sense that Goenka referred to as making contact with “ultimate reality”. Ultimate reality is not some parallel universe, extra dimension or spiritual plane – at least not in a literal sense. It is the same reality proposed by quantum physics: all that really ever “happens” is the arising and passing of subatomic particles. String theory, one of our most promising and elegant quantum theories, suggests that all that ever really “happens” is the fluctuation of strings that both arise from and comprise spacetime itself, with their distinct vibration frequencies determining the kind of particles that manifest in apparent reality.
From this micro perspective – as well as from the macro perspective of the orbits of solar systems, galaxies, clusters and superclusters – it is easier to see that all the meaning that we give to the events of our lives and our human experience are arbitrary projections of mind. My marriage didn’t fall apart – spacetime fluctuated as strings vibrating in particular frequency combinations. My loved one didn’t pass away – spacetime fluctuated as strings vibrating in particular frequency combinations. This may sound cold or heartless, and also like a remote philosophy that is of no practical use to us in daily life. But it is simply an observation of reality as it is; and far from precluding the possibility of love and compassion, it gives us the best possible reasons to cultivate love and compassion – which is also precisely the best way to apply these realizations in our daily lives.
Upon waking from the dreamlike stream of projection and interpretations that we call “life” (and that the buddha called “samsara”, the endless cycle of illusory experience that marks the unawakened mind), the most meaningful purpose of all is to help all those around us to awaken as well and become free of the suffering created by their own minds. This is the deepest meaning of love and compassion, which has nothing to do with our usual, conditional and possessive ideas about relationships. But even if we can begin to wrap our heads around the idea of this great love and the irreversible bliss of enlightenment, the question remains – how do we even begin the journey to get there? The answer to this question is also the essence of this heart advice for surviving (and even benefiting greatly from) difficult times, such as many of us are experiencing today under lockdown. And it begins, perhaps counterintuitively, by turning directly towards and diving into our own suffering.
Just as a recurring nightmare of being chased by a monster may continue to plague our minds until we develop the courage to stop running from the monster and turn to face our fears, liberation from samsara requires the courage to completely face up to and be with ourselves, naked and exposed without any of our distractions, entertainments and coping strategies. The journey to unconditional freedom begins with a headlong dive into the mud of our suffering.
In times of isolation, whether we choose it as when we go on silent meditation retreat, or when it is forced on us by viral outbreak and government policy, can we realize that our boredom and restlessness are not the problem, but the greatest opportunity?
Can we see that these discomforts are the gateway to the greatest freedom? It takes real guts, in fact it might be the greatest courage of all to face ourselves, our minds and emotions, without the shield of endless activities and distractions; but if we can be steadfast and unflinching in remaining with our uncomfortable feelings, we will gradually but reliably be rewarded with increasing freedom from suffering. To put it in practical terms: we can take this opportunity to make friends with ourselves and our minds by simply being with our experience without trying to change it.
As frequently as you can, and for as long at a time as you can, put away all forms of distraction and entertainment and just let yourself become bored or restless, or whatever kind of experience arises. Feel exactly what it feels like to be you in this moment, to be in your body and experience your mind and emotions, without reacting in any way whatsoever.
That’s all there is to it – no fancy postures or breathing techniques (or even visualizations or chants) necessary. Just feel the real and actual sensations that arise and pass in the body, and the images and impressions that arise and pass in the mind. If you are persistent and steadfast, it will not be long before you are rewarded with the insight that all experiences are like a dream: impermanent, substanceless and ultimately meaningless, carrying only the meanings that we assign them in our own minds. The insight that we don’t have to suffer in reaction to any experience, that we can just act when action is required and surrender when it is not, is not the distant province of some illustrious buddha – it is right around the corner, available and applicable in the lives of any of us who are willing to simply observe our experience without distraction or reaction.
In addition to all the positive ways that we can spend our time – caring for our bodies, as well as for any loved ones that may be under lockdown with us – we can care for our minds in this generous and courageous way. Let yourself do less and observe more. Let yourself react to nothing and feel everything, whenever and for as long as possible. Then these challenging times may reveal themselves to be the greatest opportunity of our lives – the doorway to freedom from our self-imposed prisons of emotional reactivity and the suffering created by the projections of meaning unto open, empty reality by our own minds. That is what it truly means to practice yoga.
Practice yoga and dreaming with Shy, right now.
Tibetan Yoga Nidra with Shy Sayar
Water Flow Yoga with Shy Sayar