We’ve all been burned out and exhausted and not sure how to cope at some point in our lives. Whether it is looming deadlines, emotional demands, climate change, political battles, family drama––the result is the same. Sometimes juggling all the challenges and all the wonderful gifts in our lives can feel overwhelming and we’re not sure how to feel better.
Here’s how: Yoga can help lower your stress levels and your blood pressure because it’s an excellent practice to calm your nervous system.
By combining physical asanas or postures with Pranayama or controlled breathing techniques, yoga can have a profound impact on your nervous system. When we are stressed out, our adrenal glands are working overtime and we’re often in a state of “fight or flight,” which doesn’t allow for adequate rest and recovery. Over time, if we fall into this type of pattern of constantly being in heightened over-active mode, our bodies and minds begin to suffer.
As you’ve heard over and over, yoga offers a three-pronged approach to improving your life: physical, mental, and spiritual. While taking your usual sweaty Vinyasa or Power class will definitely impact your mind and heart, sometimes slowing down a bit and taking a more mellow class can give you more of the mental stress relief you’re craving.
Our parasympathetic nervous system is designed to soothe and lower our stress levels. Certain styles of yoga, like Yin and Restorative, emphasize postures that can reset your nervous system in minutes. Gentle Hatha classes also focus more on unwinding and relaxing you. Of course, you’re releasing tightness and tension from your muscles, but you’re also soothing your brain.
Asanas like Vipariti Karani (Legs up the Wall) and Paschimottanasa (Seated Forward Fold) are effective in creating a relaxing effect. Any poses where your legs are extended up overhead or where you’re in a forward fold, encourage not just self-reflection, but also quiet your mind quickly. Signals travel to your brain and impact your body, mind, and heart.
This week, we’re bringing you four classes designed to help you unwind, relax, and reset. These slower classes will give you your yoga buzz and also help you sleep better, manage anxiety and stress throughout busy days, and allow you to shift your system back into balance. Remember, rest is just as important as work!
1. Josey Prior - Settling into Pigeon
2. Keith Allen - Evening Stress Relief Yoga
3. Tana Pittman - Kundalini: Be Radiant & Stress-Free
4. Kylie Larson - Yoga to Unwind
I love mushrooms. LOVE!
All kinds of mushrooms, but especially those I can pick myself from woods. In Estonia, we have a lot of forests, and unless the area is marked as private property, we are allowed to forage for whatever you like, as long as you act responsibly and do not leave any rubbish behind. I know that this is not the case all over the world, so I consider myself extremely lucky.
For this year, the season of fresh mushrooms is, unfortunately, over, but simple button mushrooms work just perfectly for this recipe.
This delicious soup takes very little time to prepare and does not contain any fancy ingredients, so it is a perfect dinner for busy evenings. I kept in very simple and entirely plant-based, but if you like, then you can also add some cream cheese or heavy cream to the soup.
For serving, I always slice up some extra mushrooms and fry them until crispy, and I also love crispy barley instead of croutons but feel free to choose whatever toppings you like.
Plant-Based Mushroom Soup
Serves: 2
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
1 small onion
1 stalk of celery
1 tbsp oil
15 oz button mushrooms
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 cups vegetable stock
Salt and pepper
To serve: crispy barley, croutons, fried mushrooms or toasted sunflower seeds
Directions:
Chop up the onion and celery and sweat them off for 5 minutes on low heat.
Until the veggies soften, cut the mushrooms to quarters, then increase the heat and add the mushrooms to the pot. Sautee, occasionally stirring for 5 more minutes.
Season strongly with pepper, add soy sauce and stock, let it come to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
Take the soup off the heat and blend it until smooth with a stick blender. Careful, it is hot!
Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.
Serve with whatever crispy toppings you like.
By Kadri Raig
Kadri is a food blogger and yoga teacher from Estonia. She loves healthy food and cooking and for her, these two are often the same thing. Cooking meals from scratch, you know exactly what goes in it and even without holding back with sugar or fat we end up using a lot less compared to ready-made frozen stuff from the supermarket.
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: http://www.kahvliga.ee/.
Practice this rejuvenating FREE 25-minute yoga class, suitable for all levels, before or after eating this delicious soup!
Head Up, Heart Strong with Christen Bakken
Those that have office or desk jobs may have to spend much of the day in the same position sitting at a desk. It can be too easy to ignore our bodies’ need to move regularly and experience stress and tension because of how we have sit to work. Repeating the same cycle for weeks, months, and years can lead to more serious responses from the body, causing the immune system to continually be on defense and increasing poor posture. This pattern worsens as time passes unless you are proactive and take preventative measures, like yoga.
The best way to break this cycle is to start making small changes. While there are several ways to start having a healthier and more positive routine at the office, this can be done from the comfort of your desk or chair. Below, you will find 4 of the best poses that you can do while at work and create a more stress-free workday and future.
These poses can be done alone, targeting more specific areas as needed or done together for a quick in-office practice. Choose your desk or an area of the office that is quiet or further away from others.
Standing Seal Pose
This is a great stretch for both the spine and the legs. Doing this pose is ideal for those that sit a lot throughout the day, giving the back, shoulders, spine, and legs a chance to stretch. This pose is also known to increase the connection between the heart and the mind, making it the perfect stretch to do when you can feel the stress coming on at work.
How to do it at work:
Stand straight with your legs a little wider than hip-distance apart. Clasp your arms behind your back and interlace your fingers together. Take the gaze up and then dive the heart forward bending over the thighs and bringing the arms up as high as comfortable. When coming up, do it slowly to prevent any dizziness that may occur.
Chair Pigeon
We carry emotions in our hips. Stresses at work can lead to more tension in the hips. Pigeon is a deep hip opener and chest opener, giving you a chance to let those emotions go and continue on with your day feeling lighter.
Sit straight up in your chair, place one leg at a 90-degree angle above the other. Be sure to keep the foot flexed to avoid knee injuries. You can stay here or opt for a deeper stretch by reaching through and gripping your thigh, shin or ankle. Stay here as long as you like and breathe.
Desk Upward Dog
Upward Dog is an amazing chest opener, helping you thrust forward your heart and is a good antidote to the posture of prolonged sitting at a desk. Use this pose to get a quick burst of energy as it lengthens your spine and brings blood and oxygen to the brain.
Clear off a spot on your desk keeping your arms, hips, and chest forward. Step your feet, balancing your weight between hands and feet. Breathe in deeply and extend the head, neck, and chest upward, while keeping your gaze on the ceiling.
Eagle Arms
This pose has a lot of good benefits, especially for those that do a lot of typing. This is a deep wrist and arm stretch helps tendons and ligaments stay strong and flexible.
In your chair, make sure that enough space is cleared in order to fully stretch your hands around and above the head. Starting from the center of your heart, breathe hands up and around swinging one elbow under the other. Breathe deeply and lift the elbows as far up your face as you can; deepening the stretch the further up you go.
For all of these poses, breath is the most important thing. Make sure that while you are doing any of these poses you are taking really deep inhales, then emptying the lungs for the next big breath to enter and nourish the organs.
It can be best to try and make these moves a routine, attempting to create a more positive mindset at work. By doing these moves even once a day at work you may see a big decrease in stress levels. Most of these poses are targeted to deliver oxygen and blood to the brain; clearing mind fog and helping you be the best and most productive version of yourself at work. Put your best foot forward, smile, and make your way through your workday positive and happy, with the help of yoga.
By Akash Bhowad
Akash is a Content Writer at Diet Chart which is a leading Nutrition, Diet, Health and Fitness Blog. He is passionate about connecting human hearts through words and sharing resourceful knowledge, health and wellness tips. Through his work, he aspires to serve people, educate them and help them understand the significance of Diet, Yoga, Nutrition and Exercise to lead a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle.
Want to experience the benefits of yoga at your desk for yourself? Try YogaDownload's Yoga for Desk Jockey's program.
If you have more time and space to move, the 2-Week Lunch Break Yoga Challenge can also improve your workday.
Those who practice yoga often know the importance of balance on the mat, be it balance in the body, balance in tree pose, or balance between the breath and the movements. But not many of us transfer this balance into our day to day lives, especially our work-life balance.
Yoga can help us practice so much more than the physical movements and poses. It helps us practice things like our breath, calming our minds, pushes us outside our comfort zone and allows us to grow and self reflect. This self-reflection will ultimately help in maintaining a strong work-life balance, as understanding patterns, strengths and weaknesses are essential in setting the boundaries we need to balance our lives. In layman's terms, a work-life balance is how you maintain the time you dedicate to working vs having fun and living your life.
Finding a balance that works for you requires work and self-reflection. There are many ways yoga can help you improve your work-life balance.
Yoga helps you study yourself
Yoga practice turns your mind and back in yourself, and helps you in the practice of self-study. This is vital in finding that balance in your life, especially to help you find your work-life balance. While you practice yoga, you often think a lot about who you are, and calm your mind, letting you discover what your priorities are and what work-life balance means for you. Over time, once you self reflect more and more, you can start to shape your life based on your needs, wants, and the type of person you are.
Yoga helps you discover your habits
Your daily habits and the patterns you repeat every day can have a big effect on how you achieve a work-life balance. Things like unconscious behavioral patterns shape our days, such as getting into the habit of a morning coffee, or a mid-afternoon snack. Sometimes these habits and patterns are healthy, sometimes they are not. Yoga helps to increase self-awareness and gives us the time to think about these patterns, and helps us to establish good habits - giving us time back to maintain that work-life balance.
Yoga helps you establish your limits
Everyone has their limits, especially when it comes to being overworked. Yoga can help you to explore your limits by practicing physical poses and movements and tracking your progress. Through your yoga practice you can learn the ability to recognize and acknowledge your limits, as well as finding ways to grow. It’s important to recognize and stick to your limits and keep them in balance.
Yoga helps to beat stress
If you’re stressed out and can’t relax - maybe you’re even so stressed out you can’t sleep - your work-life balance is sure to suffer. Mental and emotional stress are some of the highest reasons that can affect your health as well as your productivity, and it can also make you sick by aggravating illness and health conditions. Yoga can help to alleviate stress, by practicing poses daily, regulating your breathing and releasing tension in both the mind and body. Less stress = more productivity, which is sure to improve your work-life balance.
Yoga helps to improve your concentration
Staying focused at work is a great way to improve your work-life balance - if you get your work done, it’s easier to leave on time on focus on fun things. Yoga can help to improve your concentration, by allowing you to practice meditation and deep breathing exercises, which are helpful if you ever feel overwhelmed. Yoga helps to regulate your oxygen in your blood, making you more alert and able to handle your workload.
Yoga helps your physical health
If you’re in good physical health, it’s easier to fully enjoy your time off work, and enjoy the ‘life’ part of a work-life balance. These days, work can have an impact on your health, especially if you work a desk job which doesn't keep you physically active. Starting at a screen hunched over a desk can affect your posture, your eyesight, and your physical health - which can not only affect your fun time but also your productivity. Yoga can help to keep these physical ailments at bay, by allowing you to move your body.
Yoga helps to increase energy and helps you feel positive
If you have more energy, you have more time to commit to the activities you like to do. Working every day can lead to fatigue, which can build up over the days and weeks. Taking some time out to practice yoga and some mindful meditation can help to decrease fatigue and give you higher energy levels. Yoga also helps you feel your best, in more ways than one. It can help you feel better physically, mentally and emotionally. This can improve your confidence and help you in setting your boundaries for a healthy work-life balance.
By Amy Cavill
Want to reap the benefits and improve your work-life balance? This week's Lunch Break Yoga Challenge, will help you improve your work-life balance, so take some time out from your busy work schedule during your lunch break, to enjoy practicing yoga.
Eggplant is one of my all-time favorite vegetables. Added to curries, baked to moussaka, in baba ganoush or filled with all kinds of things from goats cheese to vegetables. Bring it on!
I love it in any shape or form! Today I am sharing one of my favorite eggplant recipes with you. The recipe is vegan, but it is loaded with protein – both chickpeas and peanut butter help out here, and the spices add a nice kick too.
Not all people love eggplant. In fact, at home, I have one vegetarian who does not like this vegetable at all. In fact, he doesn’t like most vegetables, but that’s a different story!
Anyway since I am the one who does the cooking, we are still using eggplant quite often, and this recipe here is one of the approved ones. The creaminess from the peanut butter and tanginess from the tomato sauce are just so delicious together.
One thing worth mentioning with eggplant is that it soaks up everything it touches, so it makes sense to act as quick as possible when brushing it with oil – otherwise, you might end up adding too much of it and load the dish with unnecessary calories.
Chickpea Stuffed Eggplant
Cooking time: 35 minutes
2 smaller eggplants
1 tsp oil
13 oz canned chickpeas
1 spring onion
½ tsp turmeric
½ tsp paprika powder
1 red chili
1 tbsp smooth peanut butter
1 cup tomato sauce (I used homemade one, but feel free to use store-bought)
Salt
Preheat the oven to 400 F.
Slice the eggplants to half, brush lightly with oil and season with salt. Bake for about 20 minutes.
In the meantime, mix the rest of the ingredients – chickpeas, chopped spring onion and chili, spices, peanut butter, and tomato sauce.
As soon as the eggplants are tender, take them out of the oven, carefully scrape out the soft inside, and mix it with the rest of the filling.
Fill up the empty eggplant halves and bake them for about ten more minutes until they are warmed through.
Practice yoga before enjoying this delicious and healthy dinner recipe very quickly with this shorter class, here:
25-Minute Full Body Yoga with Keith Allen - FREE Class
We’ve got an invigorating new yoga program designed to fit in during your lunch hour. This collection of 10 short, dynamic classes will give you the structure to stay consistent in your practice. Here are 3 reasons why you should take the challenge to not just improve your strength and flexibility, but also achieve peak performance at work.
1. Improve your mental focus and clarity all day: After a busy morning working or studying, your brain can feel foggy and dull. When you’ve got another several hours at work, you need to reset and find a way to hone your focus and be productive. By shifting your attention to breathing and moving on your yoga mat, you give your busy mind time to rest and settle. Even a short class will provide you the opportunity to feel refreshed. You’ll return to your project with increased clarity and focus and maybe even finish up early!
2. Boost your confidence: When you take the time to step away from whatever is happening at work and reset your thoughts, you are reinforcing your inner strength and confidence. No matter how your day began, pausing to take time for yourself and reset gives you the confidence to proceed with the rest of your day. Time on your yoga mat is an opportunity to look within and recognize just how powerful you already are. By choosing to practice yoga each day, you are choosing to be the best version of yourself and others see that as true confidence. Enhance your self-worth by recognizing that taking time for yourself will make you stronger and more effective at whatever you do.
3. Manage Stress and Anxiety: Many of us struggle to cope with stress at work. Whether you’ve got a tough boss or co-workers, a project that doesn’t want to cooperate, or whatever issues pertain to your particular career, anxiety can hinder your performance. Getting out of your head and into sensation and breath for a short period can soothe your nervous system, release endorphins, and calm you down. After some vigorous movement, often the looming stresses don’t seem so formidable. Add in some mindful breathing or Pranayama and you’ll shift into a feeling of calm.
If you already have an established yoga practice, you recognize all these benefits. Try shifting to a mid-day practice for a few weeks and see how it impacts your day in a different way. We believe you’ll love the results!
Yoga has long been known as an effective means of increasing mental and physical well-being. The focus on breathing and poses help increase one’s mindfulness and focus. Yoga has seen a recent surge of popularity in the West due to these mental and physical benefits.
However, some are saying CBD can increase the benefits you can get from yoga. CBD yoga has become increasingly popular in recent years and combines the therapeutic effects of yoga with the therapeutic effects of CBD. Several anecdotal stories from users recount how CBD dosing has made their yoga experience more effective and beneficial.
However, there is still a lack of clinical scientific evidence on the matter, so it's very important to educate yourself to understand if trying this combination is right for you. In this article, we will talk about how CBD and yoga can work together to relax the mind and body, precautions, and what CBD is.
First off, what is CBD?
CBD (also known as cannabidiol) is a cannabinoid compound that is found in the cannabis plant. CBD, along with THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) are the two main active ingredients in marijuana and industrial hemp. Unlike THC, the chemical that makes you feel high from smoking marijuana, CBD is not known to produce any psychoactive effects.
CBD merely stimulates the activity of cannabinoid receptors in the body and brain, instead of fully bonding to them like THC, so it is associated with a different profile of physiological effects. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests CBD plays an integral role in regulating many important processes in the body, including hormone production, fertility, pain signaling, and sleep.
Also, unlike THC, the manufacture and the use of CBD compounds are generally not regulated and CBD is more or less legal in all 50 states, under certain restrictions. This means that you can legally buy and use CBD without fear of legal repercussions. CBD can be administered by several methods; smoking, vaping, ingestion of tinctures and edibles, as well as topical lotions and salves. Lastly, CBD has not been shown to create any physiological dependencies, so it is safe to use. How Are Yoga and CBD Similar?
Although yoga is a practice and CBD is a drug, the two are more similar than one may think. Specifically, yoga and CBD are similar insofar as the effects they produce on the body. Both yoga and CBD have been independently shown as an effective means of reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression and for managing nociceptive and neuropathic pain from injury or neurological conditions.
Moreover, CBD consumption has been shown to increase brain activity in areas associated with emotions, goal-setting, self-control, and motivation, while the practice of yoga has been shown to have similar effects on cognition and emotional awareness.
So it should come as no surprise that many people claim the combination of yoga and CBD have a reciprocal effect and can increase the benefits of both.
How do CBD and Yoga Work Together?
In short, CBD helps the practice of yoga by making it easier to get into the mindset necessary for effective yoga practice. On the flip side, yoga can help get acclimated to CBD by teaching one to be more in touch with their body and mind.
Let’s give a simple example of this positive feedback loop. It is well known that CBD is an effective anti-inflammatory agent. CBD interacts with the T-cells in the body’s immune system to reduce the production of lymphocytes, the things that cause swelling and redness surrounding the site of an injury. Likewise, the physical exercise of yoga is effective at working out kinks in the body and reducing pain. So the cycle works like this: CBD reduces pain, which makes it easier to get deeper into yoga poses. Similarly, yoga itself is effective at managing pain, and CBD makes it easier to reap these yoga benefits.
This positive feedback loop applies to the mental benefits of yoga and CBD. CBD can reduce anxiety, which in turn makes it easier to cultivate the qualitative state of awareness necessary for effective yoga practice. Yoga itself can also reduce symptoms of anxiety, which compounds the anxiolytic effects of CBD.
In other words, yoga and CBD usage can feed into each other as the physical and mental effects symbiotically influence each other. While each method is effective on its own, the combination of the two can increase the benefits of each.
What Does Combining CBD & Yoga Look Like?
A CBD yoga practice can begin by each participant taking some CBD drops and initiating meditation for a few minutes.
We recommend you try gentler classes when trying to combine CBD and yoga at first. If it feels good you can move into more physically intensive yoga styles.
CBD yoga is not necessarily focused on physical fitness, but physical and mental unity. There is a strong focus on relaxation and becoming attuned to the body’s senses, emotions, and thoughts. You can also use CBD salves and lotions to treat strained muscles after your yoga practice.
Are There Any Downsides to CBD & Yoga?
Despite its professed benefits, CBD is not for everyone. First of all, there is not enough evidence to show that CBD is safe for pregnant or breastfeeding women. Second, taking CBD can cause a drug test to come back positive, so people who are drug tested for work should probably abstain.
Additionally, CBD does have a mild blood-thinning effect, which can affect physical performance, especially in people who have blood pressure issues. As with any new medication, make sure to consult your primary care physician before taking CBD.
Is CBD Yoga Right for You?
The combination of CBD and yoga can be an excellent way to augment the benefits of both. To be clear, CBD is not a cure for anything and is best used to manage symptoms of conditions. However, a consistent regiment of CBD and yoga can go along way towards promoting mental and physical well-being if it is a good combination for your unique body and mind.
By Kimberly Torres
Kim Torres is one of the voices behind SundayScaries blog. At the same time, she handles content partnerships. She wants to inspire people to be actively fit and be the best version of themselves. Her tip is to avoid stress and anxiety, and only focus on life’s wonders.
If you want to practice yoga to reduce anxiety, try one of this FREE, relaxing yoga class!
Slow Yoga Reset with Jackie Casal Mahrou
"Feel the fear, and do it anyway." - Susan Jeffers
Sometimes fear actually works in our favor and motivates us, however, most of the time things that scare us are based on nothing more than a story of thoughts. However, we have the ability to ignore, quiet, and overcome any fears if we're brave enough to and yoga can help.
Sometimes fearful, made up stories of the future can hold us back from experiencing some of the magic that life has to offer. We have to be brave and get out of our comfort zones to take chances, have new experiences and greater satisfaction. It can be easier to stay and feel stuck and safe, instead of choosing to be brave though. For most, the familiar is more comfortable than the unknown, and it's preferable to stay within the boundaries of what you know, instead of diving into unknown possibilities.
While there are no guarantees, some examples of being brave that could pay off are: leaving a stagnant or dysfunctional relationship and feeling liberated and happy afterward in your single life, or in a more harmonious relationship. Taking a chance and moving to a new city or country because you've always wanted to experience life outside of your hometown at least once. Overcoming your fear to come out of the closet and live as your authentic and fabulous gay self, instead of pretending to be someone you're not. Quitting a dead-end job and starting your own lucrative business doing work you love successfully. Being brave enough to finally speak up and let someone know that thing they always do or say actually bothers you, and never having to deal with it again.
You get the idea. While there are never any guarantees, often when fear beats bravery, the liberation, joy and relief that result from your courage to make changes, are so much better than staying scared in unsatisfying, but familiar circumstances. Usually, when we're able to be brave, the previous fears that held us back seem ridiculous in retrospect as well.
Fortunately, being brave is not an inherent trait that some are born with and some are not. It's something that can be practiced and we can get better at. It's a choice and a skill that can be strengthened.
To become braver, it's important to do things that make you feel courageous. There are different activities for everyone that invoke these feelings, and for many, yoga can strengthen this bravery muscle.
While many physical benefits are well documented, you might be wondering how yoga can make us braver?
Here's 6 reasons why yoga helps you become braver!
1. You went to your first yoga class once
It might seem second nature now, but walking into a yoga studio for the first time takes courage. It's a reason that some people never try yoga.
It's easy to feel self-conscious and like an outsider the first time going to a class, with no idea what the normal etiquette in a studio is, what to do, or how to practice the poses. Over time, the fear disappears, and the benefits of yoga win out and get to be experienced.
Imagine never getting to enjoy the array of benefits yoga brings, because you chose to stay scared of walking through the door?
2. Some of the poses are naturally brave shapes
Think of Warrior 2 for example. There is nothing about the human body in that shape that says, "I'm scared." The warrior poses are common and obvious examples of expansive and brave postures. The energy of a warrior, is confident, centered, and strong and you embody that when you put your body into such a shape.
The body and mind are connected, and the idea in yoga, is that putting your body into symbolically brave shapes, also makes your mind more brave. We get good at what we practice, and if you practice being courageous on your mat, you'll gradually start to feel more courageous in the world.
3. You meet your perceived limitations (and move through and past them)
Achieving a big posture in yoga, is great and all, but why? Being able to stand on your hands, or put your leg behind your head, does not make you a happy, successful, or brave person.
However, putting your body into a position that at one point you probably felt would never be possible, has mental and emotional benefits that, surpass the physical benefits of the poses, in teaching you to move past limits in your mind. Doing a yoga pose you once thought was impossible, keeps you in the energy of believing that anything is possible. When we are in the headspace of 'anything is possible', it's much easier to take chances, believe in yourself, and be brave.
Take handstand, or wheel pose as examples. These poses, believe it or not, are attainable with consistency and practice (and a sense of humor helps too). For someone who once saw these poses and thought 'no way I'll ever be able to do this', getting there one day can make other perceived obstacles in life feel smaller and attainable.
4. More Confident Body Posture
When you're scared, the body gets small physically and your body language closes. When you feel brave and steady, you hold yourself in a different way. If your body has been in patterns of being tense and maintaining poor posture, yoga helps us to become open, grounded, and strong.
The body and mind are connected and when you practice yoga you open your body, release stress, and get stronger both physically and mentally.
5. Calmness is confidence
Yoga helps us chill out when we need to. It's easier to be courageous when we have a sense of steadiness and are better able to stay in the present moment instead of giving into any scary stories of what could go wrong.
If you get stuck worrying about the future, and that's what holds you back, the calmness a yoga practice can bring, can help you find your center when things feel scary. Certain yoga poses also activate Manipura chakra, the confidence energy center in the body.
6. Yoga makes you leave your comfort zone
Growth often happens outside of the comfort zone. Yoga poses, also physically put your body outside of your comfort zone. When you get comfortable in exploring uncomfortable shapes on your mat, you can start to feel more comfortable putting yourself in situations outside less familiar situations in life. Of course, this doesn't mean you put yourself in situations that are harmful, but the ones you've desired and may have felt too scared or small to experience.
Wherever you are on your journey, feel gratitude for where you're at. If you know there's more you desire, but feel scared to try, be brave and go for it.
By Keith Allen
Practice these classes with Keith and another yoga teacher Kristin Gibowicz teachers, to feel braver right now!
25-Minute Full Body Yoga with Keith Allen: FREE CLASS
Courageous Flow with Kristin Gibowicz
Humble Warrior Flow with Keith Allen
What scares you? For some people, it’s heights or public speaking or spiders. Halloween celebrates thrills, chills, and things that go bump in the night.
While Halloween tends to be a fun holiday defined by disguising our true identity with make-up and costumes, it echoes how many of us deal with our fears the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year - hiding behind a mask. Yoga provides a safe space for us to examine our fears and offers tools to become more courageous.
The Yoga Sutras state that the fear of death is the biggest fear we face and is the basis for all other fears. In the second pada, Patanjali refers to this concept as abhinivesha. Learning to live in the present moment is a powerful way to stop worrying and being scared of the future. Fear can only exist in relation to what you anticipate happening.
Fear doesn’t exist when you are in the moment. Every minute of your day is an opportunity to move from a place of courage or from a position of fear.
Often in our lives on and off the mat, our primary desire is to protect ourselves from pain. If your heart has been broken or you’ve suffered physical or mental pain––and who hasn’t––you could be holding yourself back.
Of course, you don’t want to be dangerous and reckless, but are you restricting yourself too much?
Yoga can help by giving you space to examine your thoughts and feelings on the mat and encourage you to step out of your comfort zone in a safe space. When you recognize what feels scary to you, you may realize your fears aren’t as deep as you assumed.
Through the process of self-analysis, you develop a stronger sense of your strengths and weaknesses. The more we understand ourselves, the more comfortable we are shedding the masks we’re accustomed to don for protection.
This week, in celebration of Halloween, we invite you to four classes that might scare you for their intensity, or encourage you to be fearless and courageous.
1. Carson Calhoun - Rocket Yoga 1: Yogi Leg Day
2. Keith Allen - 25-Minute Full Body Yoga (FREE class)
3. Rob Loud - Birds of Paradise
4. Kristin Gibowicz - Courageous Flow
One of the foods our cleansers struggle with giving up most is SUGAR. Added sugar is everywhere, even hidden in your favorite salad dressings or condiments, which makes it particularly hard to avoid, and the more you eat it, the more you become reliant on it.
Sugar can lead to health issues such as chronic weight gain, an overgrowth of candida, blood sugar imbalance, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and more. It’s also been linked to an increased risk for more serious health concerns like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
During the Conscious Cleanse, you’ll give up added and refined sugars completely, but if you think you might have a sugar sensitivity, you may need to do even more to tame your sugar cravings (take our Sugar Sensitivity Quiz here). Many fruits, grains, and other healthy foods still have naturally occurring sugars that can sabotage your health if you’re sensitive to sugar.
We both know how difficult it can be to give up sugar; Jo went from snacking on chocolate candy to “healthier” sugary treats like dried dates and other fruit, while Jules loved high-sugar fruits like bananas in her smoothies every morning. After having kids, not sleeping, and our hormones having changed, we realized that we needed to cut out even the natural sugars if we wanted to feel our best.
That’s why we’ve included a Low-Sugar plan as part of our Conscious Cleanse On Demand program to give you even more support in giving up sugar for good. You’ll have access to a daily Meal Planner of low-sugar recipes to help with meal prep, a Resource Library full of helpful tips for cutting out all types of sugar, and a Food Journal where you can track your food choices. You can reach out to one of our expert health coaches at any time with any questions or concerns, or send us your Food Journal so we can look for patterns and help you identify a sugar sensitivity.
When we realized we needed to cut out high-sugar fruit and other sources of natural sugars from our diets, we weren’t sure how that would affect our morning smoothie ritual. But with a little tinkering, we were able to come up with a way to enjoy green smoothies without the extra sugar – low-sugar green smoothies! Some of our favorite low-sugar green smoothies include our Lemon Blueberry Smoothie and our Fruit Free Green Smoothie. If you’d like to make your own low-sugar smoothie, here’s our go-to guide for making the perfect low-sugar smoothie.
How to Make the Perfect Low-Sugar Green Smoothie
Choose a liquid: 2 cups of unsweetened nut milk or water.
Add 1 piece or about 1 cup of low-sugar fruit (optional): blueberries, raspberries, ½ of a lemon, 1 pear, cherries, cranberries are all great low-sugar options.
Add lots of greens! About 2 cups of spinach, kale, collard greens, Swiss Chard, Romaine lettuce, or other leafy greens.
Top it off with 1-2 superfood add ons: 2-3 TB. hemp seeds for protein; 1-2 TB. unsweetened raw nut/seed butter, 1 TB. chia seeds, or olive or coconut oil for energy from healthy fats, 1 tsp. Ceylon cinnamon to help stabilize your blood sugar and add sweetness – all these can help with sugar cravings.
Blend in a high-speed blender and enjoy!
With love and low-sugar smoothies,
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.
Turmeric, the powerful golden root that makes our favorite golden milk lattes, is most commonly known for its anti-inflammatory properties. Since I was a young child, my mom taught me how to replace taking ibuprofen and other pharmaceutical anti-inflammatory drugs by instead drinking turmeric tea, or even soaking the desired body part in hot turmeric water. What I didn’t know my whole life, was that turmeric does so much more for the body than simply reducing inflammation and making delicious lattes.
Here are 8 benefits of turmeric you might not have known before:
Cures and prevents some cancers
Could Turmeric be a new cure for cancer? Although there aren’t too many studies out there yet, Curcumin (the active ingredient in turmeric) has been shown to inhibit proliferation, invasion, angiogenesis, and metastasis of different cancers through interaction with multiple cell signaling proteins. Additionally, Turmeric has been shown to prevent the growth of cancerous cells and prohibit growth as seen in different testing. Increases breast milk supply
Turmeric has been used in India and other Eastern countries as a galactagogue, which is a substance that helps increase milk in breastfeeding moms. While it is not scientifically proven, many moms swear by supplementing their diets with Turmeric to increase milk flow as well as milk quality. Strengthens your immune system
Good news! Drinking golden milk lattes can be your new go-to cold medicine. Turmeric has antibacterial, antiviral, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties that help boost your immune system and prevent future sickness. Makes you happy
For sure sipping golden milk lattes does make me happy, but turmeric increases your mood because it also acts as a natural antidepressant. In fact, Chinese medicine practitioners have been treating depression with Turmeric for thousands of years! Turmeric is thought to contain compounds that increase dopamine and stimulate the nervous system. Studies also show Turmeric may even ease depression by relieving inflammation and oxidative stress in the brain.
Reduced risk of mastitis
Turmeric’s anti-inflammatory properties may help prevent swollen breast tissue and clogged ducts, which can lead to mastitis.
Improved digestion
Turmeric can help get your digestion back to normal by helping stimulate the stomach to produce more gastric acid, which is needed for proper digestion.
Natural painkiller
Turmeric can help reduce inflammation that causes pain, especially in joints. Like I mentioned earlier, you can replace your ibuprofen with Tumeric tea, or even soaking the inflamed area in warm turmeric water. I have used this technique multiple times, specifically for sprained and swollen ankles. Watch as your inflamed joints reduce as if by magic!
Helps with Arthritis. Due to its anti-inflammatory properties as I said above, it makes natural sense that turmeric helps with arthritis as well. According to a study, Curcumin was found to be more effective for people with rheumatoid arthritis than an anti-inflammatory drug,
Improves Brain Health
BDNF is a growth hormone in the brain that when decreased, can lead to brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and depression. Interestingly, curcumin has been shown to increase levels of BDNF, reversing brain diseases and improving overall brain function.
As we study more and more about turmeric, the more amazing things we find out about this herb. There is still so much we don’t know about turmeric, but what we do know is it helps us feel amazing, and it’s delicious too! Add turmeric to your daily diet, whether in tea, curry, or (obviously my favorite by now) a golden milk latte. Cheers!
By Brooke Nally
Brooke is a freelance writer who has been living internationally and traveling the world for about two years ago, teaching yoga everywhere she lands.
Ready to get into optimal health? Try one of these yoga programs whether you're experienced or a brand new beginner!
Many people shy away from fear and see it as a negative, a danger and something to be avoided. However, fear can sometimes be good for you! Fear can keep you on your toes and help you experience new things.
Here’s our top 10 reasons why a dose of fear every now and again can be good for you.
Fear keeps you safe
The fear instinct is the bodies’ internal danger alarm. The feelings of fear compel you to take action against danger. Without the fear instinct, you wouldn’t have an awareness of threats around you - so you wouldn’t be around very long! Fear gives you the flight or fight reaction to make decisions when you may be unsafe - such as if a car drives towards you when you’re crossing the road. Without fear - you wouldn’t be able to make a decision to help you stay safe.
Fear keeps you fit
Feeling scared and fear can help you burn more calories than when you are relaxed and not afraid. This is because when you feel scared, your pulse quickens, and your body receives a huge surge in adrenaline. This kick starts your metabolism into high gear, burning sugar and fat in your body, and your heart beats faster to get energy to your muscles. In fact, one study found that people watching horror movies burned 113 calories during the viewing!
Fear keeps you healthy
As well as keeping you fit, a dose of fear can also boost your immune system. Another study that utilized scary movies found that after watching a horror film, participants had a higher white blood cell count. This was proven by taking blood samples both before and after the film, and the physiological fear responses caused the film watchers to experience a lift in white blood cells. These cells enable your body to fight disease and infection, and boost your immune system.
Fear is exciting
A healthy dose of fear can be fun! Just like people love to watch scary movies, or ride roller coasters - or even do something a little more daring like skydiving - this is because that feeling of adrenaline can be exciting and makes you feel alive. When you feel fear, you generate excitement which can help to relieve depression - by increasing adrenaline. This also increases arousal and energy. A small dose of fear is a great way to inject some fun into your life!
Fear empowers you
Feeling fear can give you a natural sense of empowerment. As well as adrenaline, other chemicals are released when you feel scared, such as endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine. These chemicals actually help your brain work more efficiently. This is partly due to the fact that when you’re facing something scary, it's unknown and your brain has to work harder and focus. Coming through these challenges creates a natural biological high and feeling of empowerment.
Fear relaxes you
It may seem counterintuitive but feeling scared can actually relax you. Stress is fundamentally fear based. As you worry and stress, your body physically bombards you with adrenaline and dopamine, speeding up your heart rate and increasing your blood pressure - this activates the fight or flight response and floods your muscles with oxygen - helping your brain quieten down and helps you feel calm.
Fear helps you focus
Fear can stop you getting distracted and help you to focus. If you’re feeling scared or anxious about something in the future or something unknown, you can use that fear to help you focus on the present. When adrenaline is released through feeling afraid, another hormone called norepinephrine is released, which helps you to focus instead of panic. This hormone allows you to think clearly under stress, and it’s used in antidepressants.
Fear socializes you
When you’re afraid, the body releases oxytocin, which is a hormone that makes you seek out comfort in other people. This is due to the brain’s survival instinct, which is to pair with other humans to increase survival chances.
Fear opens up your life
When you’re fearful of something, sometimes the best approach is to face it head on and overcome your fear - rather than letting it stop you and limit you in life. Being afraid of something and overcoming it can expand your life to so many more opportunities. When you notice a fear, you’re altered to something in your life that could be limiting you - and it gives you the chance to expand your life.
Fear alerts you to the important things in life
If you’re fearful about something important to you, feeling afraid can alert you to the priorities in your life, and help you to understand how to nurture these aspects of your life.
Want to face some fears? Practice some arm balance and inversion yoga classes and learn to be braver!
Michelle Marchildon - Balance your Way to Bakasana
Kylie Larson - Tittibasana Flow: Balance and Fly
Need to make a major shift in your perspective or boost your confidence?
We’ve got you covered this week with poses designed to help you feel strong, focused, and humble. Whether you love to balance on your hands and take flight or if you fear falling on your face, this week we’ve got four classes for you to get engaged and turn your world upside down. These practices are empowering and invigorating.
Regardless of how you feel about inversions, these postures are excellent for your circulation, mental focus, and overall mood. It’s helpful to use your full yoga practice to keep your spine flexible, your hips open, your core and upper body strong, and your attitude positive. You may have heard yoga called the 'fountain of youth', and often going upside down is what helps keep your skin glowing with the boost of fresh blood from the heart to the head.
If you’re one of the students who avoid inversions, we challenge you to wipe the slate clean and try again this week. Arm balances are accessible, as long as you’re physically healthy and listen to your body. Usually, our reservations revolve around our fear of falling or looking silly. As long as you can perform chaturanga, you’ve got the upper body strength. A strong core is important for playing with gravity. A willingness to be playful and view the postures as an opportunity to have fun helps immensely. Also, don’t be afraid to use props like blocks, straps, or a wall.
For those of you who wish every class was full of handstands and dragonflies and flying pigeons, good for you. Sometimes we fall into a rut of repeating our favorite postures in exactly the same way or not practicing others at all. We challenge you to try these classes for variety and to enhance your current knowledge and either confirm what you know or learn a new or different method of entering or exiting a pose. Try your beloved arm balances with a beginner’s mind.
Each of this week’s classes offers a different take on these powerful and graceful postures. We've picked four of our top arm balance classes, each highlighting a different arm balance, to keep you engaged in your practice this week. Get ready to boost your endorphins, gain a new perspective, and have fun!
1. Kylie Larson - Tittibasana Flow: Balance and Fly
2. Kristin Gibowicz - Fly Like an Eagle
3. Kristen Boyle - Staying Power: Flow into Eka Pada Koundinyasana II
4. Michelle Marchildon - Balance your Way to Bakasana
I have had a problem for a few months already, but it is one of those good problems – how to eat all the beautiful produce I get?!
In Estonia summers are rather short, which means that most of the crop is at its best at the same time – zucchini, tomatoes, cucumber, kale, you name it! And, even if I have my rooftop garden, my mother’s garden, and my grandmother's garden, I still also like to go to the farmers market too, because, well, I love going to the market to look at the abundance of produce. I do need to hold myself back with shopping, though.
I hate throwing away food and always try to eat everything from root to leaf, so I always try to make the most of everything I have. Oh, I wish I could somehow spread the harvest over the whole year! But I can’t, so this time of year my 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day is easily 15 or 20 portions of fruit and veggies, and everything else has to wait until I run out (although I do miss lentils and pasta already).
This soup here is a wonderful way to use up tomatoes. I used ripe sweet yellow tomatoes, but you can do this soup also from the underripe storebought tomatoes because cooking turns them more delicious anyway. I love the spices in my tomato soup, and adding these makes it a perfect autumn soup. Imagine the pouring rain and then you enjoying your hot bowl of soup inside. It's nice!
Oh and by the way – tomatoes are even healthier once they are cooked because the lycopene content in them increases once cooked!
Lightly Spiced Tomato Soup
1 large onion
1 tsp ground coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin (I used whole, but ground is ok too)
6 large tomatoes
7 oz (vegan) cream cheese
Herbs to serve
Peel and chop the onion, heat oil in a bottom of a saucepan and sweat the onions with a tiny bit of salt for 5-7 minutes on low heat.
Then add spices to the same pot and heat a few more minutes until the whole kitchen is fragrant.
Chop the onions. I used beautiful ripe yellow tomatoes from my grandmother's garden, but use whatever you happen to have – even slightly under-ripe vegetables work for this recipe. Add them to the pot with the rest of the ingredients, cover with the lid and forget about them for 10 minutes.
Turn down the heat, add cream cheese, and blend with a stick blender. If you happen to have a blender with a glass jug that takes the heat, you can use a normal blender too. Anyway – be extra careful since this is one of the hottest things on earth.
Once blended season with salt and pepper, have a taste and adjust the seasoning if needed.
Serve with your favorite herbs. I used cilantro, but parsley, basil, and even spring onions work well too.
Want some yoga to enjoy before or after your delicious tomato soup? Practice some of these top-rated FREE yoga and meditation classes, now!
Intro to Yoga Nidra with Erin Wimert
Sweat, Sweat, Sweat with Pradeep Teotia
Addiction is a threefold disease. It affects the mind, body, and spirit in various ways. While there are many traditional methods of treating addiction with behavioral therapies, more and more programs are beginning to incorporate holistic methods into their treatment programs.
By taking a holistic approach to treating addiction, the healing process occurs on the mind, body, and spirit. As a result, individuals in recovery are given tools to achieve and maintain lasting recovery.
One holistic method that is becoming increasingly popular in the treatment industry is yoga. It is a safe, healthy, and natural medicine that can greatly enhance the recovery process. Since addiction affects the whole person, the whole person must be treated. Yoga allows people to learn how to connect the body, mind, and breath to focus their attention inward and gain self-awareness.
Why Yoga?
With all of the different holistic methods of therapy available, you might be asking, “why does yoga in particular aid in addiction recovery?”
There are many reasons. One of the wonderful things about this practice is that it doesn’t require expensive equipment, it can be done nearly anytime, anywhere. The connection with the body and breath in yoga encompasses the mind, body, and spirit, to bring them into unison.
In addition, many 12-step recovery programs encourage spirituality. Although these are not religious groups, some members struggle with the idea of spirituality or a higher power. Yoga can help those who struggle with their spirituality, as it helps promote and enhance spiritual growth by increasing the connection of mind, body, and soul.
One aspect of recovery is taking care of one’s health. After all, many people who suffer from addiction will neglect their physical, mental, and emotional health before making the decision to get sober.
Some health benefits that yoga carries include:
Higher energy levels Better sleep Stress relief Anxiety relief Increased strength and physical stamina Healthier eating habits Improved self-confidence and self-image Pain relief Emotional healing
Yoga and the Brain
If drugs and alcohol are abused for an extended period of time, the communication pathways of the brain are altered. The ways in which people feel pleasure, make decisions, regulate emotions, and control impulses are all affected. When a person stops taking substances suddenly, they will often feel immense stress and anxiety. However, after a period of sobriety, these pathways begin to heal and it becomes easier to regulate emotions.
Yoga can aid in this healing process by helping to regulate the stress response. Yoga helps balance the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline, which cause heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and body temperature to increase when elevated under stressful situations. Similarly, yoga helps increase levels of GABA in the brain which is the chemical responsible for managing stress and anxiety. With lower levels of stress hormones and higher levels of GABA, stress and anxiety can be more effectively managed.
Mind-Body Connection
Yoga is a natural method of balancing parts of the brain that are often impacted by drug or alcohol abuse. When practicing various postures, individuals become more attuned to their own bodies. They also learn how to regulate their breathing while listening to the demands of their bodies. This can help heighten self-awareness in a nonjudgemental way by increasing understanding of how certain circumstances make a person feel.
When energy is focused inward, individuals are able to take responsibility for the way they feel, think, and act. By gaining this awareness, individuals have an opportunity to become more self-confident and self-reliant. Being able to recognize emotional triggers and cravings is important in recovery - and yoga can provide the skills needed to observe these thoughts without judgment and allow them to pass. As a result, yoga can become a crucial coping mechanism for emotional reactions and triggers.
Energy levels, eating habits, and quality sleep are often disrupted during early recovery while the mind and body are adjusting to a life without substances. However, yoga is known to improve these aspects by boosting energy levels, promoting better sleep, and encouraging healthy eating.
When people take care of their bodies by eating right and getting enough sleep, they feel better overall.
This means less irritability, a clearer head, and lower stress levels. Without these unpleasant feelings, individuals are able to focus more on their recovery than on stress or agitation.
Lastly, yoga helps improve the mind-body connecting by incorporating mindfulness into the lives of practicing individuals. Breathing techniques and mindfulness meditation can help quiet down racing thoughts, anxiety, and external influences so that individuals can spend time in self-reflection. Although these techniques take time, many people may gain insight into what needs to be changed in their lives in order to find inner peace.
The Healing Power of Yoga
When it comes to addiction recovery, yoga is so much more than stretching. It helps repair damaged neuropathways, raises self-awareness, and promotes spiritual and emotional growth. As a practice of self-reflection, mindfulness, and overall wellness, yoga helps heal the mind, body, and soul that is ravaged by drug and alcohol addiction. When used simultaneously with traditional treatment methods, yoga can be a beneficial asset to those seeking to achieve long-term sobriety.
By Cassidy Webb
Cassidy Webb is an avid writer who works with JourneyPure to spread awareness around the disease of addiction. Her passion in life is to help others by sharing her experience, strength, and hope.
Practice yoga now for healing and recovery. Even if you've never tried it before, with this program for beginners you can practice anywhere at any time.
Love, it makes the world go round. All you need is love. It’s so simple right?
Actually, maintaining and nurturing loving relationships in our lives can take effort and practice. However, showing your love to others, as well as yourself, can make a huge positive impact on our lives. Love comes in many forms, from our significant others to family, to friends and even pets.
Feeling loved can harbor a sense of caring, and inspires you to make others in your life feel good. It’s really quite contagious, so here’s our top ways to help you show love to others (and a few to show some love to yourself too).
Listen to others
People have a need to be heard. It makes them feel like what they have to say is worth listening to, and like their voice is important. When you listen to the people you love, you make the other person feel seen and understood, which helps them feel loved and appreciated.
Keep your promises
Promises you make to the people you love are important, and you tend to go above and beyond to keep promises you make to those you love. Show your love to people you care about by keeping your promises and working hard to show them that they’re a priority for you, and deserving of your time and resources.
Try new things together
Even the most love-filled relationships can benefit from a change in routine, and trying new experiences together is a great way to spice things up and do something exciting with people you love. Doing new things creates excitement, and can take you out of a monotonous routine, letting you discover new things about each other, which can create a feeling of being loved by one another.
Do something useful
One of the simplest ways to show your love for someone, is to do something useful for them. This can be doing something when they are asking for your help, taking this opportunity to be useful and help without complaining or seeing it as an inconvenience. You can also offer your assistance when you haven’t been asked, but your loved ones are struggling and may need your help regardless.
Keep eye contact when they are talking
When you don’t keep eye contact when someone is sharing something with you, you could be sending the message that what they’re saying isn’t important, and that your attention isn’t fully on them. If someone feels they are not important to you, you become less important to them. Keeping eye contact is an easy way to express that you care about that person and what they have to say.
Ways to show yourself some love
Accept and appreciate yourself
Showing love to yourself always starts with acceptance. If you accept yourself, you’ll be on the way to loving yourself. When you realize that you are enough, and give yourself value it’s a great way to accept yourself and show some love. You don’t need to do anything to give yourself this value - remind yourself that you are enough as is! A good way to do this is to stop comparing yourself to others. This can foster feelings of not being good enough.
You can also start to appreciate yourself, by thinking about the qualities you admire in yourself, and expressing gratitude for these things.
Set Boundaries
To have a good relationship with both yourself and others, you need to set boundaries and respect yourself to keep them. Healthy boundaries are a good thing that stop people taking advantage of you, and help you to love yourself by maintaining the level of what is and isn’t okay for you. Don’t be afraid to say no if you mean it, or call people out if they’re crossing a boundary.
It’s important to give yourself trust to look after your own best interests, and this means not sacrificing your own needs for the needs of others around you. Prioritize the commitments you make for yourself, and enforce your boundaries in a healthy way.
This can also mean to set some boundaries in order to have some quality time to yourself. Time and space to yourself is a simple way to show love to yourself - take some time to enjoy the things that really feel good to you.
Communicate with yourself
Take time to check in with yourself and listen to what you really want and need. You can’t give yourself the things you need if you don’t know what they actually are. Stop and think about what it is YOU really want, without thinking about other people ahead of yourself. Speak to yourself in a loving way, and listen to the answers that come up.
Meet your own needs
Once you know what your own needs are, it's important to meet them, and not disregard them. You must make sure your needs get met in order to show love to yourself, whether that's more time to yourself, a secure job, a holiday. Think about the ways you can give yourself what you need.
Be kind to yourself
Finally, make sure you’re kind to yourself. Treat yourself with compassion and appreciate the ways you show love to yourself. Kindness is one of the ways to show love - so be kind to yourself every day!
Show some love to yourself and others by practicing these partner yoga classes from your own home, right now!
BFF Yoga with Michelle Marchildon
Partner Restorative Yoga with Kristen Boyle
One of yoga’s most beautiful benefits is how it can shift your emotions in a pure, positive way. Even if you come to the practice for other reasons, your emotional makeup will transform, whether you’re trying to or not! Our subtle body, which is a blueprint of our physical body, contains our emotional energy. Through targeted practice, we can enhance how we feel.
The subtle body contains the chakras or emotional energy centers. To feel more loving, we want to make sure our energy is balanced from the base of our spine or Muladhara (Root) Chakra to our Sahasrara (Crown) Chakra. In order to tap into your own heart and open to more love in your life, you’ve got to be willing to release fear. Yoga practices that create more space in the Anahata (Heart) Chakra will create space in your physical body to experience joy and love.
The Anahata Chakra contains the essence of compassion and selflessness and symbolizes when we rise above our egos to care more for others than ourselves. Anahata is associated with the element of air, the color green, the sense of touch, and the thymus gland.
Often, when physical issues arise with the heart and chest region, lungs and breathing issues, and circulation, it is tied to an imbalance in the chakra. Poses to balance the energy include all types of backbends and also arm balances. Also, learning to shift emotional and thought patterns helps.
Another source advocating focusing on practices of the heart is from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Practicing Maitri or loving-kindness helps keep the mind open. Yoga Sutra 1:33 discusses cultivating virtuous feelings and what yoga philosophers refer to as the four mind locks.
I-33: Maitri karuna mudita upekshanam sukha dukha punya apunya vishayanam bhavanatash citta prasadanam.
To paraphrase: there are four locks in our minds and in the character of other people: happy, unhappy, virtuous and non-virtuous. To confront these attitudes – whether others’ – or ours, Patanjali suggests: “Befriend the happy; have compassion for the unhappy; delight in the virtuous; be indifferent toward the non-virtuous.”
To break it down further: be happy for others’ joy, be empathetic for others’ sadness, be happy for others’ good fortune, and don’t allow the suffering of the world to overwhelm you. These practices go right to the heart. Being compassionate towards ourselves is also key. Try this loving perspective throughout your yoga practice on and off the mat.
We’ve got beautiful offerings for you this week. Whether it's an acro yoga class to connect with another person or a Vinyasa class with a loving intention, add some love to your yoga practices.
Nourishing Slow Flow - Caitlin Rose Kenney
Therapeutic Acroyoga Basics - Shy Sayar
Pradeep Teotia - Practice with Love
Jeanie Manchester - Sita, Rama & Hanuman: Unconditional Love
We thought this was the perfect time to share a Conscious Cocktail recipe! Since we eliminate alcohol during the cleanse, this recipe is a great way to transition into your 80:20 eating plan. For more information about our 80:20 Lifestyle Program, click here.
This recipe features a spirit that got a lot of attention this summer – mezcal!
Mezcal, like tequila, is a distilled spirit made from the agave plant. While tequila is only made from blue agave plants, mezcal can be made from any agave plant. When making mezcal, instead of steaming the agave before distilling as is customary for tequila production, the agave is cooked in large earthen ovens with charcoal and lava rocks. This is what gives mezcal its signature smoky taste.
We’ve created a cocktail that combines the smokiness of mezcal with the tartness and sweetness of grapefruit. Add to that the kick from the jalapeño, and you’ve got a margarita that’s sure to impress your guests.
Do you have a favorite cocktail you’d like us to give a Conscious makeover? Let us know in the comments below!
With love and smoky cocktails,
Jalapeño Cilantro Mezcal Margarita
Yield: 1 cocktail
1/2 grapefruit, juiced 2 limes, juiced 2 oz Mezcal 1-2 jalapeño, sliced ⅛ cup cilantro 1 tsp agave (optional, omit for low sugar) Pineapple slices, for garnish (optional) Ice
Instructions: Pour ¼ cup lime juice into shaker. Add jalapeño and cilantro. Muddle jalapeño and cilantro in the lime juice. Add remainder of lime juice, grapefruit juice, mezcal and agave (optional) and ice into the shaker. Shake to mix the ingredients thoroughly. Fill your favorite glass with ice and pour contents into shaker. Garnish with a slice of pineapple, a sprig of cilantro or jalapeño for extra spice. Enjoy!
Practice Yoga for Detox, Cleansing, and Vitality, if you need to detox after these cocktails. This program features a class from Jo of the Conscious Cleanse.
Being “nomadic” - the idea of traveling the world, bouncing from place to place doing as you’d like, exploring culture, exploring untapped parts of the world, and most importantly, better exploring yourself is quite a popular trend these days.
Often I get asked “how do you do it? How do you travel the world so much? What are you doing for work?” When my answer to them is: "I teach yoga", most people question how I do it.
After all, teaching yoga isn't a job that is known to make you rich, nor fund you the needs to travel long-term. One part of the shorter answer in how I travel and teach yoga, is finding jobs on Yogatrade, which is one of several platforms that allow people to find teaching jobs all over the world.
But to be honest, it takes a lot more than just finding a job to take a risk, leave your friends and family, and move across the world. If you've been playing with the idea of teaching yoga abroad, here are a few small steps to mentally prepare yourself:
1. Start Practicing Being Fearless
Being brave is like a muscle that you can strengthen. Start a new hobby that scares you, ask that cute guy out, and start the practice of moving into fear. Fear is just the unknown.
What we don’t know, scares us. But the only way we can expand is by doing what scares us, (ironic, isn't it?). Start with the small stuff — then the big scarier stuff becomes easier.
2. Follow the Smallest Sign
If your mind doesn’t know where to go, your soul already does. There’s probably a place, or an opportunity that has been calling your name. If you want to take off to some part of the world, but you don’t know where — then follow the first and smallest sign. I’m talking about overhearing a conversation on the subway - or seeing an Instagram post of a location that makes you feel excited. Follow the whispers of your heart. It always knows what your mind doesn't.
3. Don’t Travel - “just to travel”
Don’t travel ‘just to travel’ - this will get boring. Wherever you go, go with a purpose. Trust me on this one —- sipping cocktails on beaches and partying at hostels can only amuse you for so long before you start to feel purposeless and unfulfilled. Go to India for that yoga teacher training you've been wanting to do, or go volunteer at a school in Vietnam. Go somewhere for a calling that is deeper than selfies and checklists -- here you will find your purpose.
4. Work / Trade your Skills Abroad
As a yoga teacher, the internet has become my best friend in helping me find opportunities to live and work all over the world. I've been able to teach yoga at a cool surf hostel in Sri Lanka, a boutique hotel on the east coast of Bali, and at a permaculture farm in the south of Costa Rica.
Not a yoga teacher? Check out sites like workaway for opportunities in any work field, from nannying, to gardening, to construction. If you think that money is the only thing holding you back from traveling, then this is your solution to traveling without spending a single dime.
5. Get your Shit Together
Finally, the adult stuff. Just because I'm nomadic doesn't mean I don't have responsibilities and cares in the world. If you're seriously thinking about moving towards a nomadic life, make sure you cross your T's and dot your I's. I still invest in important items like travel insurance, identity theft insurance, and of course, an international phone plan so I can phone home to ensure my parents I am still alive.
My last piece of advice for you is simply to go for it! Quit the job, dump the toxic boyfriend, change up your life if you’re not currently satisfied, and make the leap of faith into the unknown. If people think you’re crazy, then you know you’re on the right track.
Brooke is a freelance writer who has been traveling the world for about two years, teaching yoga everywhere she lands.
Want to get better at teaching? Take your practice with you, by joining YogaDownload.com with over 1600+ classes, including these, specially designed to help yoga teachers.
If you’ve never tried this invigorating and fast-paced practice of power yoga, you might be wondering what it’s all about. Here’s our rundown on what power yoga is, where it came from, and how it might improve your health!
What is Power Yoga
Power Yoga - it sounds daunting, but what actually is it? Power yoga is a sequence of postures that are specially designed to build on strength, stamina and flexibility, all while being fast moving. Power Yoga is derived from the Ashtanga yoga tradition, which can be equally as physically demanding, but works through building heath in your body, and moving through the vinyasa sequences in a fast paced way.
Unlike Ashtanga, power yoga practice doesn’t have a set sequence of postures, and any class can be different from the next. However, it will usually start with Sun Salutation poses, to build heat within your body, and will often feature a strong focus on yoga poses that will build up strength and get your heart pounding and body sweating - power yoga can be a full on cardio workout!
Power yoga is growing in popularity, and it is a class prefered by the more hardcore gym goers, due to it’s aerobic style. Power yoga is predominantly fitness based, and is often referred to as ‘gym yoga’.
History of Power Yoga
Power yoga is fairly new and recent style of yoga, that came onto the scene in the mid 1990’s. The style of power yoga was founded by Beryl Bender Birch, in New York, and Bryan Kest in LA. Birch started practicing yoga in 1979, in the style of Ashtanga yoga - this is where the roots of Ashtanga and Power Yoga connects.
Bender Birch loved the traditional and dynamic ways of the Ashtanga Yoga practice, and wanted to take it to make it a little more accessible to western students - she wanted to achieve this by moving away from Ashtanga’s set sequences and allowing more freedom in the classes she taught.
To help differentiate between the intensity of her classes, and it’s fast paced style, and the more relaxed, meditation based yoga styles of the time, she named the practice Power Yoga.
Kest, who studied under Ashtanga guru Sri K Pattabhi Jois, also wanted to make Ashtanga more accessible to western audiences, and almost simultaneously adopted the practice - just on the other side of the USA!
Benefits of Power Yoga
Being a very intense form of exercise, there are a lot of benefits of practicing power yoga, which include, but not limited to:
Improved strength and endurance
Strong muscles are not only aesthetically pleasing but also help to support your body during day to day life. Improved strength and endurance can help to reduce your risk of injury in both exercise, and help to improve your cardiovascular abilities.
Improvements to your pulmonary function
Your lung function can have the best benefits on your overall body health. More oxygen getting around your body helps you to enjoy greater energy levels, and also reduces the risk of illness and disease. One study on the benefits of practicing faster paced sun salutations showed that pulmonary functions were improved. Additionally, breath work is vital when practicing yoga - so by breathing deeply and fully during a harder class like power yoga, you can increase your oxygen intake and use the full range of your lung function.
Better flexibility
Power yoga, as well as yoga in general, can help to improve your flexibility. Holding postures that force you to stretch and twist, especially in a fast paced and dynamic way can help to build up your flexibility levels in your body. Being flexible helps to reduce the risk of injury, lubricate your joints, helping to keep your body healthy.
Boosts your mood
A happy mood and relaxed mind go hand in hand with yoga practice. The focus on your breath while moving through poses creates a moving meditation and allows your mind to quiet. Studies have proven that yoga affects your mind - decreasing anxiety and depression.
Better fitness
As power yoga is more aerobic, there’s no surprise that it will improve your fitness. The fast pace and hard poses have an undeniable impact on your overall fitness levels.
How is it different from other forms of yoga?
Although power yoga is heavily inspired from Ashtanga, there are a few key differences. Ashtanga will allow follow the same set sequence, which never changes - while Power Yoga can vary from class to class. It consists of a combination of varied postures practiced quickly. Power yoga is also a lot more relaxed, and offers more creativity, but Ashtanga has a heavy focus on breath and focus.
Power yoga is also similar to Hatha, in the way they both place emphasis on the physical side of yoga - but it’s much more passive. Hatha is a slower practice that holds poses for longer, while power yoga flows from one posture to the next quickly.
Want to give it a try?
Power yoga is invigorating and electrifying. This faster, more physically challenging style of yoga makes you sweat and push yourself. If you enjoy a challenge, this week's classes are perfect for you. If you've never tried power yoga, give it a try!
Fast & Furious with Celest Pereira
Ready to Sweat with Pradeep Teotia
Are you ready to feel empowered, strong, and challenged this week?
Power Yoga is a sweaty Vinyasa flow class with increased intensity, usually through a faster pace or an emphasis on strength. Or both!
While Power Yoga does focus more on the physical body than some more spiritual classes, you’ll still gain all the emotional and mental benefits too.
Here are 5 reasons you should try these invigorating Power Yoga classes this week.
5 REASONS TO PRACTICE POWER YOGA
1. Build Stronger Muscles, Bones, and Joints
Power yoga works the entire body and challenges all muscle groups for a fit, toned body. Because much of the practice is a series of standing postures, you receive the benefits of weight-bearing exercise, which strengthens bones and joints.
2. Increase Stamina
This energetic fast-paced practice can be an excellent cardiovascular and muscular endurance workout. You’ll strengthen your heart muscle and develop more stamina from the challenge of flowing quickly between poses and holding some poses for longer periods of time than in other styles of yoga.
3. Boost Mood
Like other vigorous forms of exercise, like running or cycling, Power Yoga releases endorphins, which give you a natural high. Stress and anxiety is also reduced, leading to more balanced moods and emotions. The focus on flowing breath to movement calms anxiety and calms the mind.
4. Improve Quality Of Sleep
Your sleep will improve because after a well-rounded power yoga session, you’ll have worked yourself thoroughly from head to toe. Your muscles will be loose and relaxed and your mind will be quiet.
5. Hone Concentration and Focus
One of greatest benefits of Power Yoga is the emphasis on tuning out distractions and being in the present moment. With the intensity of the strength-building postures and vigorous pace, you won’t have the energy to think about anything else on the mat. After practice, your mind will feel more clear and able to concentrate on whatever you need to do for the rest of your day.
Check out these four sweaty, fast-paced classes and see how wonderful you feel.
1. Pradeep Teotia - Ready to Sweat
2. Mark Morford - Yoga Alchemy: The Doomed
3. Christen Bakken - Head Up, Heart Strong (FREE CLASS)
4. Celest Pereira - Fast & Furious
Pumpkin pesto? Most of you probably think I am nuts since surely pesto is made out of basil, right?
Well – yes, and I LOVE traditional pesto, but since I have grandparents who grow pumpkins and there always seems to be too many of them I need to get creative, and I promise you, pumpkin pesto is the next big thing!
If possible, then I always recommend choosing smaller pumpkins, since they tend to have more flavor. My favorite is Hokkaido pumpkins, which in addition to being ultra-tasty is also extremely high in protein.
Just as the traditional pesto, my pumpkin pesto contains parmesan cheese. My diet is strongly plant-focused, but I am not vegan or even vegetarian, so I go for parmesan in this recipe, but if you prefer a vegan option, it can be substituted with nutritional yeast. I have replaced the ridiculously expensive pine nuts with pumpkin seeds, and in addition to being just a very logical choice (pumpkin seeds in pumpkin pesto, right!), they also work exceptionally well in pesto.
Occasionally I even use them in basil pesto. Sometimes I also love to add some chili flakes. To be perfectly honest I like to add them to most of my meals, but if you are making the pesto for the first time, I recommend you omit them at first and then add later – this way you will get a better idea how the pesto tastes like without the extra chili.
Talking about multifunctional, you can use the pesto everywhere. Some examples – on a toast, on a pizza, just straight from the jar or as a pasta sauce, like I did today. Delicious!
Healthy & Delicious Pumpkin Pesto
Cooking time: 50 minutes
10 oz pumpkin (choose a smaller one, if you can – these tend to have more flavor)
1 ¾ oz parmesan cheese
1 ¾ oz pumpkin seeds
The juice of 1 lemon
Chili flakes (optional)
Good quality extra virgin olive oil
Slice the pumpkin (no need to peel), remove the seeds, lightly brush with olive oil and bake until the flesh is tender. It usually takes around 30 minutes, but have a look a little earlier, because the ovens and pumpkins can be very different.
About 2 minutes before the pumpkin is fully cooked add the pumpkin seeds to the pan to lightly toast them.
At the same time, grate the cheese.
Let the pumpkin cool, and then remove the flesh with a spoon – it should be quite simple to do.
Using stick blender mash together pumpkin and pumpkin seeds, mix in the cheese and lemon juice. Have a taste and add salt, if needed. If you wish, you can also mix in chili flakes.
Enjoy with whatever you fancy!
Want some yoga to enjoy before or after your delicious pumpkin pesto? Practice some of these top rated FREE yoga and meditation classes, now!
Surya Namaskar, also known as Sun Salutations, is a set of helpful yoga asanas that can open up a world of benefits for your physical and mental health.
As the name suggests, Surya Namaskar means bowing in reverence to the sun. The sun is the source of all life forms on our planet. Solar energy is the most nourishing life force, without which all living beings (plants, animals, and humans) would cease to exist. In yoga, the Surya Namaskar is a practice that seeks to pay homage to the sun and show gratitude for the importance it holds in our daily lives.
While Surya Namaskar is a healthy exercise for your body whenever it is practiced, early morning hours are popularly considered the best and most auspicious for these asanas. Early morning is usually when it is calm outside, helping your mind to also be at its most peaceful and still. This meditative state is beneficial when practicing Surya Namaskar. It allows you to awaken your body, focus your mind, and experience a feeling of gratitude as you begin a new day.
Surya Namaskar is, at its core, a formal bow of gratitude to the sun. So, it makes sense to do it in the morning, facing the rising sun. The rays of the sun emit positive energy that can recharge your mind and body, as well as improve your overall health.
In the absence of external demands and distractions, the early morning hours are ideal for practicing Surya Namaskar in a state of meditation, which helps to energize you mentally.
Read on for 5 incredible benefits of doing some form of a Surya Namaskar yoga sequence every morning.
It helps improve the flow of 'Prana' or energy in your body.
Surya Namaskar is a set of 12 consecutive asanas. Practicing the various movements, especially in the early morning, opens up the pathways in your body that allow for the flow of energy. After lying in bed all night, it is essential to open up your mind, body, and spirit each morning, to set a positive tone for the rest of your day.
It balances you spiritually.
Yoga is a complete workout that affects your body and your soul. The three primary constitutions of the body are Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Surya Namaskar helps maintain a balance between these three. If you can attain this spiritual balance every morning, before you begin your day, it will give you strength and immunity against all kinds of stress. So take that yoga mat out and find your balance through Surya Namaskar before you head out for the day!
Sun Salutations have a positive effect on your digestive system.
Modern lifestyle has punished many people with chronic indigestion. Surya Namaskar is particularly helpful as the forward bends involved in each sequence can prevent constipation and promote better digestion with regular bowel movements. It helps release trapped gases from your stomach, while also secreting more digestive enzymes. Practicing this sequence regularly every morning can help take care of any digestive ailments you have, including piles and constipation.
Early morning Sun Salutations help fight stress and anxiety.
Mornings are the best time to focus on your mental health. Doing yoga in the morning, especially Surya Namaskar and the attached deep breathing techniques, help relax your nerve cells significantly. Relaxed chakras have a positive impact on your brain function, especially balancing the right and left sides of the brain. With regular practice, Surya Namaskar can make you more emotionally stable while also boosting your mental strength, memory, and creativity. It also calms you during stressful times by helping to ease your anxiety.
It stretches your muscles before intensive workouts.
Starting your day with Surya Namaskar can be an excellent way to warm up your body. If you are used to gymming or running in the morning for exercise, Surya Namaskar can help you avoid nasty muscle pulls. As the 12 asanas in the sequence put the focus on various parts of the body, each set can be used as a full-body stretch before moving on to more rigorous asanas or cardio exercises. Regular practice will also bless you with greater flexibility and toned muscles.
Apart from the above five benefits, Surya Namaskar is helpful to your body in many other ways. The full-body workout can help you lose weight if done regularly and correctly. It improves blood circulation in the body, which lowers cholesterol levels, keeps your heart healthy, and enables you to live longer. And guess what – the healthy body that you'll get from regular Surya Namaskars will also show up on your face in the form of a radiant glow!
So stop looking for more excuses and start saluting the sun every morning. It will do you a world of good!
By Nisha Baghadia
Nisha has a great passion towards writing and loves the idea of sharing. She has written many articles on yoga, fitness, wellness, remedies, and beauty. She keeps reading articles on different blogs that gives a kick to her passion and provides her with different ideas. She is growing day by day and mastering herself in writing appealing articles. She is a regular contributor to StyleCraze.com & Other few websites too.
Practice Sun Salutations to start your mornining with yoga and give gratitude to the sun, right now!
Surya Devotion Flow with Mark Morford
Anytime Sun Salutations with Jackie Casal Mahrou
Want to make morning yoga a regular habit? Commit to the Rise and Shine Morning Yoga program, now!
We’re excited to share a unique new program, which is the perfect fusion of Pilates and yoga, from Claire Petretti Marti. While Pilates and yoga have some similarities, in practice, they are quite different. The fusion of these two practices offers unparalleled benefits for your body, mind, and spirit. The two modalities complement each other and adding Pilates to your current routine can help you take your yoga practice to the next level.
What is Pilates?
Pilates is an exercise method created by Joseph Pilates and documented in his 1945 book, Pilates Return to Life Through Contrology. In Pilates, the core is called the Powerhouse and the emphasis is on strengthening the deep abdominals, the obliques, and the back in order to create a resilient support system to protect the spine. Joseph Pilates believed that age isn’t gauged by years, but by the suppleness of the spine.
The traditional Pilates method is a series of thirty-four exercises, with five to ten repetitions each, performed in a flowing routine on a mat. The focus on deep rhythmic movement, with increasingly challenging exercises, builds a stable center, helps lengthen the lateral body, and creates a strong and supple physique. While flexibility is a key component of the practice, the focus on strength is excellent for people who need to remedy hypermobility. The focus on deep consistent breathing is also a key element of the practice.
Several pieces of apparatus, like the Universal Reformer, Wunda-Chair, and The Cadillac utilize springs and pulleys for additional resistance. Regardless whether you perform Pilates on the mat or in a studio with different equipment, the purpose is the same: to strengthen your center. And strengthening your center in this precise disciplined way will enhance your yoga practice.
5 Ways Pilates Improves Your Yoga Practice:
1. Strengthen your core and use it consciously throughout your yoga practice to aid in balancing poses, both on one foot and upside down.
2. Improve alignment from working on creating greater symmetry and length to the side body. This translates into better alignment in all your yoga poses.
3. Increase body awareness from the focus on precise, mindful strengthening exercises and see how your awareness improves on your yoga mat.
4. Enhance your pranayama abilities with the disciplined focus on mindful breathing with every Pilates exercise.
5. Prevent injury: if your core isn’t strong enough and you aren’t using your center properly during yoga practice, you can be overcompensating with other areas of your body and get injured.
Are you convinced yet? Claire is excited to share her knowledge from teaching Pilates for the last decade with you in this fun format. Try the new Pilates Yoga Fusion Intensive this week and check out the differences in how you feel on and off the mat.
If you practice yoga, Pilates can help to complement your yoga practice. Yogis who practice pilates as well, can create greater stability, better alignment and have stronger cores. This deeper strength can give greater control over your movements, allowing you to move between poses and hold them for longer.
Pilates is an 85 year old system of body conditioning, which can complement asana practice. It’s focus is on building and engaging a strong core - essential for advanced yoga poses. It was developed by Joseph Pilates, who studied a number of forms of exercise including yoga to come up with the practice.
Similarly to yoga, the focus is on connecting the mind and body to create the movement, but the movements themselves are very different. How Pilates and yoga are different is that while yoga holds each pose for a while, or flows through in vinyasas, Pilates is a practice which one repeats precise movements up to ten times in a rhythmic flow. The method to pilates is an emphasis on the controlled flow of movement.
This focus on targeted movements that develop core strength in Pilates, can help yogis to build a strong and stable center, lengthen the body and increase your awareness of your alignment. Pilates can help you get stronger, avoid injury and advance into trickier poses that you may be struggling with.
The emphasis with Pilates is the proper use of the core, to support the spine and back, and create stability in the core. Your core muscles are the deepest layer of your lower abdominal muscles, including your pelvic floor or the lower back muscles closest to your spine. Strengthening these muscles will allow your spine to move safely without causing pain or injury and improve flexibility - which are essential in yoga.
Pilates also helps to improve posture and correct any imbalance in your body. It can help to strengthen the weaker and unused muscles in your body, and relieve tension in thigh muscles.
Pilates also helps you to become aware of any imbalances you have between the sides of the body. Bringing balance to the body is very important in yoga, as incorrect posture and imbalance can lead to injury, pains and aches in the body, as well as joint problems.
Pilates can help your yoga practices, as a strong and well engaged core helps you hold you balance better - which is useful for poses such as Tree pose and Headstand. This in turn helps your mind calm, allowing you to reap the mental benefits of a yoga practice.
Having that core strength that Pilates builds up can also prevent strain on your body and joints. Poses like Child's pose can put stress on the hip joint, if you don’t have any core strength to support your joints.
However, it’s not just your core. Pilates is whole body fitness, which trains your body as a whole. Pilates workouts promote balanced muscle development and increase range of motion in your joints. It’s hard to find a whole body workout quite like it.
You can also try the practice whatever your level and needs. The foundations of Pilates can be picked up by any age or fitness level. There are thousands of exercises and modifications, with pilates being able to be tailored to your individual needs.
Pilates helps to create long and lean muscles which are useful in yoga and more difficult asanas. Instead of creating bulk muscles for show, you are working to build toned muscles that work together in the body, cultivating functional fitness needed for all sorts of activities. Pilates uses a type of muscle contraction and eccentric contractions to create these lean and strong muscles. This works towards a safer stretch of the muscles and helps increase the range of motion in your joints, helpful to all yogis on the mat.
Posture is also improved by practicing pilates. Good posture is a sign of good alignment and a strong core, and it’s essential in all movements, especially during yoga. Pilates trains your body to have good posture through its movement and repetition through the exercises.
Finally, Pilates can increase awareness and improve the mind and body connection that’s essential in yoga. Joseph Pilates created the practice to be about the complete coordination of body, mind and spirit. Practicing each movement with total precision helps to connect the mind and body, and increase awareness - similarly to how yoga helps connect both aspects.
Why not try it? Our 5 Day Pilates Yoga Fusion Intensive with Claire Petretti Marti will help you reap the benefits of both practices to improve your time on your yoga mat!