There must be thousands of banana bread recipes out there in the world, but I still feel the need to share another one. I have been looking for a good plant-based recipe for a long time, but all the recipes I found always contained a load of added sugar or preparing a flax egg or something third I didn’t like, so I figured out that I don’t follow any recipes and figure out my own recipe instead.
This is not the first time I just decide to wing it, and I must admit that I am not very good at following other peoples’ recipes anyway. Even if I choose to follow a recipe, I still somehow manage to switch up half the ingredients and change all the amounts.
This is also, why I decided to get blogging years ago, to keep track of the recipes that work for me – with all the changes I always made I wasn’t able to remember anymore which changes I had made and which ones actually worked. Because not all the changes work, especially when baking.
Back to winging it – this doesn’t necessarily always work either. Some things look and work perfectly in my head, but do not work out at all. Sometimes I have tested the recipe for 15 times to make it perfect. Sometimes I have only tested once and then gave up on the recipe because it is just so hopeless. And then there are recipes like this banana bread, that worked out exactly how I imagined it the first time. And the second, and the third. Because this is how many times I baked it in the first two days!
Also, the recipe is boyfriend-tested. He does not like to cook. Like not even a tiny bit. But he tried out this recipe for mother’s day, and he succeeded. Sure, it did take him longer than 10 minutes to prepare the batter, but the result was perfect, so this should be proof that the recipe really is good.
Let me know in the comments how long did it take you to prepare the batter and how did the recipe work out for you!
Vegan Banana Bread wtih Chocolate Chips
Yields: 1 loaf
Cooking time: 10 minutes prep time + 40 minutes cooking time
Ingredients:
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 tbsp coconut sugar
3 + 2 ripe bananas
2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup unsweetened almond milk
1 ½ cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
A pinch of salt
½ cup dark chocolate chips
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 180C/360F, cover the loaf tin with coconut oil and sprinkle with coconut sugar. Keep the tin in the fridge until you prepare the batter.
Break 3 bananas to pieces, add the cinnamon and mash with a fork. Add the almond milk and mix.
Sieve the flour, baking powder, baking soda and a tiny bit of salt to the wet ingredients, also add the chocolate chips. Mix, but do not overmix!
Cut up the remaining two bananas and place them to the bottom of the loaf tin. Pour the batter on top of the bananas and bake for 40 minutes.
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/.
Want to get moving after too much Banana Bread? Try yoga from the comfort of your home, even if you're brand new to it!
Glass half empty or half full. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Life is what you make it. A silver lining, a blessing in disguise.
Seeing the positive in life has been a constant struggle for me. I was that melancholic child, that broody teenager, and that unpredictable young adult. With an artistic temperament, even as an adult, I’ve appreciated the existential tenderness of darkness and despair.
And it’s true that there’s much darkness in our experience on earth. A lot of shitty things happen to a lot of people. We can’t change this fact. But we can change the meaning about what happens to us and others. This is called reframing.
Reframing is about changing the meaning of an event or experience, essentially putting a new frame around it. Reframing causes a perspective shift, and the practice can lead to greater empowerment over a situation that once felt disempowering.
When we see an event from a different perspective, even understanding it’s positive intention or gift, we move from being a victim to being at choice. When we change the meaning of something, we simultaneously change our feelings and emotions about it, too. Something that once felt negative and restrictive now can feel positive and freeing.
To find a positive reframe, we ask: “How can I return to love, appreciation and respect?”
As healthy, evolving adults we can begin to reframe by getting curious: “I wonder what my role is in creating my problems? Could these challenges be opportunities and have something to teach me? How can I be inspired by others to live my brightest life?”
Our thoughts become our beliefs, our beliefs shape our experiences, and our experiences become our reality. With reframing, self-limiting thoughts such as “life is hard, I have so many problems, I never get it right, everyone is better than me,” are replaced by more life affirming and self-loving thoughts. When we are stuck in a place of self-judgement, it’s near impossible to make positive changes in our lives.
Radical personal growth is a top priority for me and it’s becoming clear that having a glass-half-empty Eeyore mindset is no way to thrive in the abundance and good of the universe. Reframing is key to liberation. Reframing equals choice and growth.
By Elise Fabricant
Elise is a life coach and teacher on YogaDownload.com.
Want some more support on getting enough quality rest? Elise's online course REVIVE: 30 Days to Vitality, Health & Ease dives deeper sleeping rituals and other yogic lifestyle habits. I’m also always at your service for one-on-one coaching. If you’re ready to make big changes in all aspects of your life, sign up for a complimentary clarity session here.
Practice yoga with Elise right now, for your own instant reframe.
Awaken Your Generous Spirit
Mindful Movement
Yoga twists can have a wealth of benefits for your core, posture, and organs. These yoga poses can vary from the simple to the advanced variations, and although advanced twists can be difficult to work up to, they’re worth it for the health benefits alone.
Twists are yoga postures that move the shoulders to face the opposite direction of the hips.
Different twists target different areas, such as the upper, middle or lower sections of your torso, and each advanced twist has their own benefits.
Here’s a low down on the benefits of advanced twists:
Improves Digestion
All twists, including advanced twists, have the result of compressing your digestive organs and placing them under weight. Compression causes a lack of circulation - but don’t worry. When you release your advanced twist post, there is a rush of blood to the compressed digestive organs. This fresh blood delivers more oxygen and nutrients to your digestive organs, increasing their ability to function and helping to aid digestive issues.
Detox Organs
Another benefit of this compression and release, and delivery of fresh blood to your digestive organs, is a detox effect. When you release new blood supply into your digestive tract, you can help to cleanse your cells of any waste products and toxins. This is due to cellular detoxification, caused by the increase and improvement of your circulation.
Increase Spinal Range of Motion
Our spine is worked hard every day keeping us upright, and without proper exercise, the muscles that keep the spine surrounded can become stiff and inflexible. Overtime this will lead to a decreased range of motion, and can cause pain and discomfort. Advanced twists keeps the spine moving, and increases your spinal range of motion to decrease the risk of this.
Reduces Back Pain
We put our backs through a lot, and a lot of the causes of bad posture also lead to back pain - slumping over chairs and drooping our shoulders. Yoga twists, especially the more advanced ones, can help to strengthen your back muscles that you use every day, and help improve your posture - leading to less back pain!
Release Stress and Anxiety
If you suffer from anxiety or are feeling stressed, add some twists into your yoga flow. As these postures open up your upper torso and back, the release pent up tension on your body. This in turn can relieve stress, help to decrease anxious thoughts, and generally improve your mental state.
As with any poses, you shouldn’t go straight into advanced twists. There are a few things to keep in mind when going into a yoga twist, and here’s our tips to help you improve, and move to more advanced variants of twisted poses.
Tips for practicing advanced twists:
Lengthen Before you Twist
It’s important to create space and freedom within the spine and torso before a twist. Make sure to lengthen your body and your spine by pulling your crown up towards the ceiling and your tailbone down towards the floor. Really create space in your spine, and maintain this length throughout your pose.
Breathe Properly
It’s important to breathe through the poses in yoga, but this can be tricky with advanced twists as they compress the diaphragm. Try to lengthen the spine some more when you inhale, and use your exhale to twist and revolve deeper into the pause. If you continue breathing and moving in this pattern, you can get deeper into the pose in a more relaxed way.
Stabilize your Lower Spine
To protect your back during a twist, make sure you stabilise your lower spine as you move your upper spine. This helps prevent injury in advanced twists as it anchors your lower back while your upper back twists. You should also try to stabilize areas that are prone to injury like your neck. These areas move more easily than your other parts of your spine, and can sometimes take on strain when doing advanced twist. Try to be careful not to over revolve these ares, and focus on the areas of the spine that are less mobile.
Twist Both Sides
You should practice each advanced twist twice, one on each side, so you don’t become imbalanced. Twists are asymmetrical poses, so try to spend an equal amount of time on both sides. However, if you feel tight or stiff on one side of your body, it’s okay to focus a little more on that side, to help balance out.
Take Care when Combining Poses
Advanced twist poses often incorporate forward bends. These are advanced poses that you should ease yourself into, but if you’re ready, be aware of the strain that can be put on your back. If you have lower back issues, or are new to twists and folds, progress slowly, and take the advice of an instructor who can help you on form.
Finally, enjoy the benefits of twists! If you want to take advantage, take a look at this weeks classes of twists, which will rejuvenate you, letting you release the old to make space for the new!
By Amy Cavill
Practicing twisting right now, to experience the benefits for yourself!
Anytime Detox Flow with Jackie Casal Mahrou
Get Long and Twisty with Elise Fabricant
What does it mean to live your life in alignment with your own truth, your soul’s purpose, and the world around you?
When you’re truly living in a state of alignment, it means you’ve taken the time to slow down and pay attention to how you are experiencing life. Really pay attention. If you’ve examined how you are feeling in all aspects of your life, you’ll know if you are living a life disconnected from the real you. Living in alignment with your authentic self means you feel comfortable in your skin. It means you feel energized and excited about the work you’ve chosen to do, about the people you’ve populated your life with, and about the way you inhabit the world.
Close your eyes and tune into how you’re feeling right now. Well, close your eyes after you’ve read this paragraph, that is. Ask yourself: are you surrounded with people who inspire you or people who drag you down? Are you in a career that lights you up and fulfills you or do you dread going to work? What about your personal relationships with others and yourself? Signs like anxiety, boredom, lethargy, and even anger point to living your life for reasons other than your fulfilling your desires. If you can’t honestly say you’re living your best life today, take a moment to explore how you can achieve it.
Of course, we believe yoga and meditation are excellent pathways to awareness and will not just help you become more aligned in your spine and physical body, but in your mental and spiritual life.
Yoga encourages you to hit the pause button and check-in with yourself in the present moment. When you cultivate a sense of stillness within, you can truly assess if you are living a life that aligns with your values and your desires. This week, we have a fabulous program from Patrick Montgomery to help you move into a state of alignment.
When you are in alignment, you make decisions from a place of truth, even if it’s uncomfortable. Take the time this week to listen to your inner voice and create the life that has you living in alignment with your dreams. The possibilities are endless!
Practice Patrick Montgomery's Focus on Form: Alignment Intensive classes, to get your body and mind in optimal alignment!
Summer is here and we’re well into the growing season here in Colorado, and we LOVE all the amazing fresh veggies we can find locally at our farmer’s market and CSA. Signing up for a CSA (community-supported agriculture) is a great way to eat based on what’s in season and try new fruits and veggies you might not be familiar with.
Most CSAs provide their members with a weekly or bi-weekly selection of their most recent harvests, so you know you’re getting the freshest veggies available. Plus, the selections are solely based on what’s in season right now, so you might discover a new favorite veggie!
That’s how we ended up creating this recipe! Our most recent CSA box included these beautiful Japanese Hakurei turnips, and we knew we needed to come up with a recipe to feature them. This turnip has a much lighter, sweeter taste than your traditional turnip and it’s actually much closer to a radish in texture – crisp and crunchy. It’s perfect paired with fresh bok choy in this fresh veggie sauté. This recipe is root-to-stem: you can use all of the plant. Leave the tops of the turnips on or chop them up with the bok choy for extra green goodness. This dish is cleanse-friendly, and can be easily adapted for purification by substituting water for the oil.
Now we want to hear from YOU! What’s your favorite summer veggie? Have you found any new favorites from your local farmers market or CSA? Let us know in the comments below!
With love and sweet turnips,
Sautéed Japanese Hakurei Turnips with Bok Choy
Yield: 2 servings
1 bunch Japanese Hakurei turnips, trimmed and quartered 1 to 2 small bunches bok choy, sliced into 1/4 to 1/2 inches 2 TB. fresh green garlic, thinly sliced 2 to 3 TB. avocado oil Sea salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions: In a large cast iron skillet over medium-high heat, add avocado oil and heat. Add turnips and sauté until starting to brown on the sides, about 8-10 minutes. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Add bok choy and garlic and sauté for about 3 minutes. Serve with a sprinkle of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.
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.
Practice Yoga for Detox, Cleansing & Vitality, now!
Pregnancy is one of the most amazing experiences women go through. However, it is also an experience that takes a huge toll on your body as you go through drastic changes that no one could prepare you for.
Having a healthy pregnancy and delivery is dependent on how well you take care of yourself during the nine months you carry your little one in your belly. Staying fit and active is one of the ways that pregnant women are advised to try in a bid to have a healthy pregnancy.
Truth be told, there will be days your fitness game will not be on; either because you don't feel so well or you simply don't feel like it. Also, you may not want to engage in any exercises out of the fear that you could harm the baby in your tummy.
If this is you, then yoga is for you. Yoga is one of the ways through which you can stay fit and active and be safe from any injuries that could happen while working out. If you are still skeptical, keep reading as the following benefits of prenatal yoga may persuade you to try it out.
1. Allows you to Sleep Better
Are you suffering from insomnia? If yes, then it is time you joined a prenatal yoga class. Studies have shown that women who begin to practice prenatal yoga while in their second trimester, sleep better. Pregnant women who did not practice prenatal yoga were reported to have woken up multiple time throughout the night and stayed awake for a longer period of time before they could finally fall asleep.
Poor sleep has been associated with long duration of labor and a higher probability of going through a cesarean birth. If you find that you are still having trouble sleeping, it may be the pillow you are using. Getting a comfortable night’s rest paired with the light exercise of prenatal yoga will help you get your beauty sleep throughout your pregnancy.
2. Makes your Core Muscles Stronger
Prenatal yoga helps you build stronger core muscles which in turn, prepare your body for the physical stress brought about by the birth and delivery process. Yoga strengthens the spine and back muscles which carry the weight of the baby growing in your tummy. Yoga also makes your pelvic floor muscles stronger which in turn helps you push your baby during birth and delivery.
3. Helps you Learn Proper Breathing
Prenatal yoga will also involve breathing exercises that help pregnant women relieve their tension and stress. This, in turn, helps alleviate pain and also get rid of headaches which are quite common during pregnancy.
When you are due to give birth, the breathing exercises will get you through labor and delivery as you will be able to stay calm by the use of the controlled breathing techniques.
4. Allows you to Connect with Like-minded Moms
If you were yet to find a community group with fellow pregnant moms who would encourage and support you throughout your journey, look no further. Joining a prenatal yoga class is like joining a support group of some kind as you get to connect with other pregnant moms who share similar ideas, lifestyles, and choices.
Walking the pregnancy journey with fellow women who understand your highs and lows will help get rid of the anxiety you may be going through.
5. Provides a Cure for Common Pregnancy Complaints
Many are the times' pregnant women will complain of feeling nauseated, back pains, headaches, breathlessness, insomnia among other common pregnancy complaints. If this has been the order of the day for you, then it is advisable that you try out prenatal yoga as it could provide a cure for all these discomforts.
Prenatal yoga poses to stretch and tone your body improve blood circulation in your body. The yoga breathing techniques also ensure that your entire body and little one get adequate oxygen. Also, the meditation practice in yoga also offers relief for the stress that comes along with pregnancy.
However, it is important to note that there is no guarantee that all the pregnancy discomforts will disappear all at once but yoga will help your body and mind deal with the situation much better.
6. Reduces the Likelihood of Intrauterine Growth Restriction
Studies have found that babies born to women who practice prenatal yoga are rarely born prematurely and more often than not have a heavier weight than they would at their gestational age.
This is proof that prenatal yoga reduces the occurrence of intrauterine growth restriction which is often the end result after a series of pregnancy complications.
Scientists have also suggested that women who practice prenatal yoga are less likely to suffer from preeclampsia. Prenatal yoga is believed to greatly support the development of the placenta as the arteries in the reposition themselves and allow the placenta to position itself in the inner parts of the uterus. This inner positioning ensures that the growing fetus gets adequate nutrients. Poor placenta development has been linked to conditions such as preeclampsia and low birth weight.
By Natalie Michelle
Hello, my name is Natalie and I am the owner of MaternityatHome. In the day I am a General Physician and at night I am a devout mother of two. I am always busy but I do love sharing all my knowledge and experience with other mothers or mothers-to-be out there!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Maternityathomeblog/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/MaternityAtHome/
Practice Prenatal Yoga right now to have a more enjoyable pregnancy!
Depending upon where you live, breaking out into a sweat when you step out your front door may happen regularly or never. If you reside in a hot, humid climate, you probably are accustomed to glistening and glowing. Sweat’s primary purpose is to help you maintain your body temperature as close to 98.6 as possible. Put another way, sweat is your body’s built-in air conditioning system.
Sweating is beneficial for many reasons above and beyond cooling you down. When you engage in a vigorous workout or power Vinyasa class like the ones featured this week, one of the benefits is kick-starting your circulation and ensuring efficient blood flow to oxygenate and fuel your muscles and organs. Increased blood flow and heart rate work to maintain a healthy metabolism and optimal level of fitness. When your vital bodily functions are moving efficiently, your immune system gets a boost.
Often, sweating is touted as a method of detoxification. In other words, if you happened to drink too much last night or you succumbed to a craving for a big fat cheeseburger, you might think you can sweat out all the negative calories and heaviness. Actually, waste can only truly be removed through your digestive and elimination systems.
So, while you may feel like you’re sweating out that margarita through your pores, you’re still simply sweating. Sweat is composed of 99 percent water and 1 percent potassium, carbs, and salt. Working up a sweat through exercise will make you feel better and help kick-start your internal waste removal system, so go for it.
Sweating regularly helps you look better too!
Perspiring helps bring the blood to the skin’s surface, which gives you that healthy glow. Arguably the best benefit of working up a sweat through exercise is boosting your endorphins to feel happier. You’ll release stress and tension and move your way to a more positive outlook.
Check out these excellent new classes to sweat:
1. Pradeep Teotia: Sweat Sweat Sweat
2. Robert Sidoti: Power Functional Vinyasa
3. Jackie Casal Mahrou: Flow Your Heart Out
4. Becca Riopelle: Rock Hard Body Blaster
Many people aren’t aware that sweating is actually good for you. Working up a sweat can release built up tension, refresh your skin, boost your endorphins, and release toxins from the body! There’s also other more unknown benefits such as health benefits and decreased recovery times. We’ve put together some of the scientific benefits of sweating to encourage you to build up a sweat this week!
What is Sweat?
The human body contains around 4 million sweat glands! These excrete a mix of water, salt, proteins, amino acids - aka sweat. The composition of this can change based on a number of things, such as hormones, bacteria and viruses in the body. Sweat can tell us a lot about our health, and how our sweat glands function. We sweat mainly to regulate temperature, to cool the body in heat and in stressful situations. This can be triggered by anxiety, elevated body temperature and working out. Sweat also detoxes the body.
The Benefits of Sweating
Detox the Body
The secondary function of sweat is for detoxification. There’s a lot of evidence that shows that detoxing through sweat is a real thing. For example, in one study, sweating sessions reduced levels of mercury toxicity to a safe level. With modern living and industrial pollution, detoxing is an important part of our bodily functions. Exercising more and building up a sweat can help eliminate heavy metals and toxins from the body.
Clear Skin
Did you know that your skin has its own microbiome balance? These are trillions of microbes living on the skin. Sweat can act as a prebiotic to help healthy skin bacteria grow - just like drinking prebiotics to help bacteria in your gut. Sweating also stimulates skin cell turnover and can remove unhealthy bacteria that leads to acne.
Reduces Stress
The de-stress response, or parasympathetic response to give it it’s proper name, allows us to relax and recover and its activated by sweating. By breaking a sweat, we allow our bodies to boost endorphins, the happy hormones which relieve anxiety, stress and depression. Sweating also reduces cortisol, a stress hormone, and adrenal hormones are active to maintain this de-stressed reaction.
Strengthens the Heart
Sweating can increase circulation and strengthen the cardiovascular systems. A study following a group of people who had weekly sessions in a sauna found that this group were the least likely to have heart problems.
Helps Recovery
If you’re a regular exercise bunny, sweating lots can help you to reduce your recovery time. Sweating stimulates and increases blood flow to your skeletal muscles. This helps you bounce back quicker from illnesses, injuries or strains. Sweating also boosts the body's growth hormones, which helps it to repair itself from damage.
Reduces Eisks of Kidney Stones
When you sweat, you expel salt from your body, and retain calcium in your bones. This will limit the amount of salt and calcium that can accumulate in your kidneys and in your urine. It’s this build up of calcium and salt that causes kidney stones. Also, the more you sweat, the more you drink, and drinking water is also a great way to prevent kidney stones. Something as simple as working up a sweat with a brisk walk can reduce the risk for developing kidney stones.
Prevents Colds
Sweating can reduce the risk of catching a cold or the flu by a third. This is because our sweat contains antimicrobial proteins, which help to flush out toxins, bacteria and viruses in the body, and attack germs. These proteins attack the bacteria and viruses, and break them down., Sweating can also help you fight certain illnesses. Our sweat composition can change depending on what toxins and diseases are in our body. For example, a study following people suffering from tuberculosis found that their sweat contains proteins that are key to improving their immune system to fight the disease. These natural proteins are effective in fighting off illness long term, as bacteria cannot develop resistance to them.
Reduce Risk of Alzheimer’s
As mentioned, sweating detoxes the levels of heavy metals in your body, which in turn improves the blood flow to the brain, which is a great tool to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. One study showed that a group of men who used a sauna more than once a week saw a reduction of risk of Alzheimers by up to 65% compared to those who didn’t.
Hair Growth
Did you know sweating can help your hair grow? Sweat from your scalp will unclog your hair follicles, letting new hair grow through. It also opens up pores, which further allows your hair to grow more. However, it’s important to keep your head clean and not allow sweat to build up. This can eventually cause damage to the hair follicles, so sweat away but make sure you wash your hair after working out.
How to Gain the Benefits of Sweating
If you want to reap the above benefits, that’s great! Get your sweat on. It’s important to allow your body to sweat, so using less antiperspirant is the first step. These can contain the heavy metals you’re trying to detox, and also can block your pores. Natural deodorant can be a great alternative to chemical antiperspirants.
Try and fit in a workout a day, just something that's active enough to get you sweating. You’ll also reap the benefits exercising has on your health, both physically and mentally. Try our classes this week - all designed to get you working up a sweat.
Finally, you can relax and head to a sauna. Your body will sweat more in a sauna, and you’ll notice the positive benefits immediately.
Work up a sweat with power yoga right now!
Have you ever met somebody who does not like chocolate? I remember meeting one girl who was not fond of it years ago, but this is also the only time I have seen anybody who does not like it. As a general rule, every dessert that has chocolate in it vanishes from the table within minutes.
Chocolate in itself is not unhealthy at all. Having a little square of dark chocolate a day even has proven health benefits. However, the chocolate really needs to be dark to be healthy. Most of the chocolate bars, loaded with sugar and different additives, do not qualify as healthy. I usually choose the chocolate that contains at least 75%, sometimes even more than 90% of cocoa!
The chocolate mousse, usually, is full of everything unhealthy – heavy cream and white sugar. But here is good news – the recipe I share with you today only contains ingredients good for you and I let you be the judge of the taste, but in my humble opinion, it is just perfect.
A secret ingredient that makes the mousse extra light is something that you would otherwise throw out. The liquid from the tin of chickpeas is called aquafaba, and it resembles egg whites when whipped up. This is what gives this mousse its incredible lightness, just be very careful while folding it through the chocolate mixture as it collapses pretty easily.
So anyway, next time you prepare hummus, keep the liquid and use this up in a dessert!
Light Chocolate Mousse
Serves: 4
Cooking time: 15 minutes + 3 hours to set
3 ½ oz dark chocolate
5 oz very ripe avocados (cleaned weight)
15 ½ oz tin of chickpeas (You only need the liquid, use the chickpeas in a different recipe)
Melt the chocolate.
At the same time start whipping up the aquafaba, it takes about 10 minutes and you want to get very firm foam.
Once the chocolate is melted, add the avocado and a tiny bit of salt, and mix with the stick blender.
Now it is time to mix everything together. At first, take about half of the foamy aquafaba and mix carefully in the chocolate mixture. Then add the other half of the foam and really gently fold. You want to keep as much air in the mixture as possible.
Divide the mousse between 4 serving bowls and glasses and let them set for at least 3 hours in the fridge.
Enjoy some enlivening yoga before your delicious chocolate mousse!
I recently bought myself a new computer and became so caught up in the frustration of trying to transfer information from the old to the new that I almost found myself in tears. I am mostly a calm and balanced person, who does lots of yoga and uses breathe to get through life’s tougher times and yet when a little piece of technology doesn’t play according to plan, all that practice seemed to go out the window. Feelings of frustration and lack of control ruled as I did what the manual said to do, waited hours, and the desired effect never came. What did come, was clenched fists, shoulders around my ears, a sore jaw from clenching, back stiffness from sitting too long and a very agitated mind and mood. I felt jumpy as I lost connection with my breathe. I then got annoyed when I tried to breathe perspective back in and moments later lost the awareness. Does this sound familiar to any of you, when technology seems not to work how we want it to?
I was so far from the grateful girl I try to be. Hours spent scratching my head from my computer malfunctioning, certainly was not going along with the idealistic plan that I had created of my perceived future. Rather than being present, letting go of the ideals and attachments and accepting the truth of the situation, I was going into a tailspin of frustration.
Then, I started to see things began to work technologically, and I started to have lightbulb moments about what computers can teach us as humans.
Similar to computers, we don't always work optimally, but there are always simple things we can do to function better. Hitting buttons in frustration does not make us or computers function better and get us what we want.
I ran a computer clean up on my old laptop and was in the process of virus scans, duplicate file finders, uninstallers and more. It was then that I had an epihany about life. In the simple press of a button and a moment of time, your computer is analyzed, problems are identified, rectified, deleted and restored.
What if you could do the same in your life? What if in the moment of highest agitation at my tech problems (which let’s be honest are first world problems and so insignificant in the scheme of life and love and world peace), I could have pressed a button, waited all but a minute, completely let it go and return to the task at hand with higher efficiency?
Then I started to think of more unique functions of computers, and how they can symbolize actions we can take as humans, to function better and thrive more.
What if the things that stress us out the most and make our blood boil, could be deleted with the press of a button? The good news is we can do this. While these are metaphorical, these lessons I learned from my computer reboot, are lessons on how we can re-program ourselves and our lives to live optimally. We all possess an in built virus scan called awareness.
Negativity can have a detrimental effect and corrupt our highest efficiency, but awareness allows us to scan ourselves, find these pockets (or thought patterns) of negativity, and clear them out. The practice of meditation or yoga, is simple and similar to the way your computer does it. Technological devices close all other applications and then look at every file to identify any that are affecting the optimum performance of the machine.
Likewise, sit in stillness and look at every cell to recognize anywhere that is hindering your performance. Notice tight and tender areas and offer expansive space on your breathe. Use your exhale like the trash bin on your computer and move any unhelpful stored data out with your breath. The duplicate finder, is another computer function I appreciate. If my laptop finds any files that in my laziness or haste, have been saved more than once, it can delete them to stop taking up unnecessary space. Do you have old tendencies, repeating behaviours, repititive habits that are chewing up storage in you? Grudges and anger can actually be erased in an instant if we want them to be.
Another favorite feature of the computer clean up is the archive feature, in putting things behind us, from the past, that don't need to take up space as we move forward. Rather than being tainted by the past, we could live with more connection to the moment. Old experiences shape our perception, and are valuable, but they don't need to weigh us down, and it's more important to stay open to the present and future.
In yoga, the direction of your gaze represents your viewpoint and where you are going. Taking your drishti to aim behind you like in Half Lord of the Fishes pose (Matseyendrasana) is gazing into your past. When you look forward like in Warrior II (Virabhadrasana II) you address your future. To archive your attachments, before you release a twist, bid the past farewell, redirect your drishti and gaze bravely forward. Take a fresh new breathe here and then release the twist. The memory booster feature on a computer scan manually improves the systems memory. What a lucky computer! As humans we scatter our attention on multiple tasks, sometimes failling to truly concentrate on the present. To boost your memory, fuel your body well with thoughts, experiences and people that nourish you and be right there in every moment. Removing junk files optimizes your systems speed and is so simple to do the same for yourself. One can easily fill up on junk food, but does it actually nourish and nurture your body? For the same amount of calories, you can consume whole foods with real nutritional benefit to maximize your potential.
Finally, the crash log can help troubleshoot performance and stability problems. From this the inference is that stability is more efficient than highs and lows, mood swings, tantrums and energy crashes. Pay attention, maybe even keep a journal of situations, people and foods that trigger a metaphoric crash in your life, minimizing exposure to these spikes, to improve balance and stability.
While technology doesn't always work how we want it to, if we learn how to use devices for our favor, they are more fun, effective, and efficient to work on. Same goes with our thoughts, habits, and emotions.
If we can adjust and fine tune certain reactions, we can live as happier, more free and grateful people. Sure, we are not as simple as computers and much more complex beings with more of an array of emotions. However, if we're able to see ourselves and our struggles as simply as possible, it can give us a clearer path forward in how to thrive.
By Amy Booth
Amy is a yoga and pilates teacher and personal trainer in Brisbane, Australia, where she runs a cute riverside studio and a personal training business. In addition each year she runs a yoga retreat (Bali, August 2018) and hiking retreat (Australia, 2018). To find out more: Website: www.ambertreeyoga.com.au Instagram: @ambertreeyogaandretreats Facebook: Amber Tree Yoga and Retreats
Give your mind a reboot with the 14-Day Meditation Program, suitable for all levels!
What is the solstice?
If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, the solstice is the first day of Summer, the longest day of the year, and the days will begin to get shorter for the next 6 months until the winter solstice. If you are in the Southern Hemisphere, the solstice is the first day of Winter, the shortest day of the year and the days will slowly start to get longer. When is the solstice?
The solstice occurs on Friday, June 21st.
Why does it symbolize?
Beyond just daylight hours, the solstice is a powerful time for reflection, intention setting, and feeling your place in the natural world as the seasons change.
It is a moment to pause, and take a step back from the routine that the day to day grind can bring, and zoom out to look at the bigger picture of our lives. It is also a potent moment in the yearly cycle to get clear on what it is you want to call in, during the next season.
How to honor the solstice?
Taking a moment to honor this turning point in the year and seasons, that the solstice represents, does not have to be overly involved or time consuming. Simple gestures can go a long way, and have ripple effects for the next 6 months.
You can get creative with how you'd like to honor this occasion also, as there is also no correct way to salute the solstice. This could be a day where you simply feel more connected to nature and the cosmos, or a pivot point where you get clear and serious about your goals and intentions.
Whether you're simply putting your feet in the grass, or taking the day to journal and cast spells, the mere recognition on this day of our place in the solar system, can have profound benefits for your life, or simply make for an enjoyable day.
Here are 6 fun, simple, solstice ritual ideas for you for a happy and healthy season ahead.
Don't feel confined to just these 7 ideas, and you can even use these ideas as inspiration to come up with your own.
1. Honor the sun.
If nothing else, the solstice is a reminder of our relationship with the sun, as residents of the Earth. Without the sun, we would not be here. It is what gives us life, the different seasons, and our energy.
This simple solstice ritual idea will take no more than 1 minute and connect your entire being to the sun's magnificence.
1. Go outside. 2. Face the sun (you might want to close your eyes). 3. Take 3 deeps breaths, and feel the energy of the sun connecting and charging your heart. 4. Feel gratitude and appreciation for the sun, and send good energy back to it.
2. Reflect on the past 6 months' successes and room for improvement.
Take time today to look back for a moment. What has gone well since the last solstice, 6 months ago?
Have there been breakthroughs and areas where you've made positive change and progress? Have there been new challenges or ways you could have done better?
Without beating yourself up about anything, look at the successes and setbacks over the past 6 months, as neutrally as possible. Use these reflections as powerful information, for where you want to put your time, energy, and focus, over the next seasons and months ahead.
This idea, can be combined with idea #3 (but you can also do this one by itself).
3. Create your ideal vision for the next 6 months.
This idea is perfect to combine with idea #2 (reflecting on the past 6 months).
Tell the story of your future, more than you tell the story of your past. There's no better day to start than on the solstice. The solstice is a potent time to set new intentions you'd like to have manifest over the next cycle. Take time today, and create your ideal vision for the next 6 months. If you're newer to law of attraction, the idea is we attract what we focus on.
Take time today to focus on what it is that you want. Dream big and set goals that excite you.
4. Go barefoot in nature or lay in the grass.
Simply taking the solstice to be more with the natural world, is a special way to appreciate the solstice. The beach and sand count here too.
It's easy to forget that we are animals on this Earth, susceptible to it's change in seasons and rhythms. Take time today to be outside.
You could commemorate the solstice by going somewhere new, or one of your favorite places in nature you might not get to regularly. Or, if it's more ceonvenient, you can do this in your backyard, or at the nearest park.
The essence is the same though. Get outside and feel the Earth. There's no easier way to do this, than taking your shoes off, and feeling the Earth beneath your feet! You can even combine the first 3 ideas, with your outdoor time.
5. Make a vision board.
A powerful, fun, and artistic way to get creative, is to create a vision board. While the benefits of intention setting on the solstice have been outlined, if writing is not your thing, you can channel these intentions into an artistic activity.
Making a vision board is simple, creative and fun. Simply go through a stack of magazines, and cut out images of things, feelings, and experiences you'd like to have manifest in the seasons ahead, cut them out, and glue them to your vision board. Have fun arranging everything.
Collaging usually takes a few hours, with some clean up time. All you need to create a vision board collage, are scissors, glue, some magazines or books you're okay with cutting up, and a piece of paper (preferably strong paper) to glue the cuttings onto.
6. Organize a get together.
There's a number of ways your can go about this. If you want to make the gathering intentional, you can bring people together for any of the 5 ideas above, such as a group vision board making night, a solstice ritual of honoring the sun, or journaling together.
Otherwise, solstice does not have to be about ritual or intention setting and can simply be a good excuse to gather your favorite people. Especially in the spirit of summer, it's good to re-connect with people you love that you may not get to see as much as you'd like.
It can be harder to connect with people during the winter also, which is a more introverted time for many, so it's good to spend time with those important to you, before you go into hibernation mode.
Enjoy this day, the constant change of seasons, and planning something special, to honor the sun, your vision for the future, or those you love!
By Keith Allen
Keith is a teacher on YogaDownload.com and teaches yoga internationally. Connect with him by practicing his yoga and meditation classes on YogaDownload, or connecting with him on Instagram or his website.
Practice yoga or meditate to visualize your ideal season ahead, with Keith, now!
Manifestation and Visualization Meditation
Humble Warrior Flow with Keith Allen
Did you know that the first sense we become aware of as babies is touch? More than sight, smell, taste, and sound, touch is what helps us feel a true sense of connection with the people around us. There’s nothing quite like a hug from a friend you haven’t seen in a while, holding hands with your partner or child, or simply receiving a pat on the back.
In certain cultures, kissing on the cheek is a common greeting, while other countries might frown upon even a handshake. Within your family or group of friends, touching could be common or non-existent. No matter the environment, many of us can go through an entire day or days without touching anyone at all. Lack of touch correlates with feeling disconnected, and we’re here with some new ways to change that.
Touch is vital for overall health and wellness on a long-term basis.
Even if you are regularly practicing yoga and have developed a strong mind-body connection, you may still not feel as happy and fulfilled as you wish to be. Yoga helps us quiet our minds, connect with our emotions, and tune into our body’s signals. Sharing how we feel with others via touch takes it a step further.
Ample research exists from psychiatrists to massage therapists, documenting how even a hug or pat on the back can lower anxiety levels, increase serotonin levels in your brain, and increase your mind-body connection. When you feel good, you are in the position to share your positive energy with others. Of course, we’re not suggesting you run up and hug everyone you see whether you know them or not! But if you’d like to learn some different ways to get closer to those you care about, we’re here for you.
This week, we’re offering exciting new classes of Thai yoga massage techniques from yoga therapist Shy Sayar. Acquire new skills to harness all the benefits of the power of touch and see how you can become more connected with those around you. Treat yourself and the people you love will benefit from you practicing on them!
1. Shy Sayar Therapeutic Yoga Massage: Lower Body
2. Shy Sayar Therapeutic Yoga Massage: Upper Body
3. Shy Sayar Therapeutic Yoga Massage: Harmonics
4. Shy Sayar Therapeutic Yoga Massage Techniques
Sometimes the simplest meals are the best, and this bowl full of goodness is a perfect example. The recipe is even simpler to prepare when you have cooked your soba noodles in advance. I often cook a larger batch of chickpeas, lentils, or rice over the weekend and then use throughout the week for my meals. I would never consider cooking pasta in advance, because pasta cooked yesterday…. well, it is just not very nice.
Soba noodles, on the other hand, work very well cooled down and in fact, I sometimes deliberately cook soba in advance for chilled salads on hot summer days. It is important not to overcook the soba and mix it with a drop of oil, so the noodles would not stick together. For this recipe, however, you do not need to chill the noodles – they are just as good warm.
The rest of the dish is also as simple as it can be – just some slicing, mixing and searing and you are good to go.
Make sure you do not overcook the salmon. Most of the cooking should be skin side down because you do want this crispiness. After flipping over it takes no more than 2 minutes cooking and the fillet should be ready. The salmon filet should still be moist and dark pink, just starting to flake away.
Simple Soba Bowl with Seared Salmon
Serves: 1
Cooking time: 10 minutes
½ portions of soba noodles (they usually come tied together with a cute ribbon, but 1 ½ oz in case yours are loose)
1 salmon fillet
Oil for frying
Salt
½ fresh cucumber
1 spring onion
A handful of fresh cilantro leaves
Fresh chili, to taste
½ tsp sesame oil
2 tsp soy sauce
The juice of ½ limes
Black sesame seeds and lime wedges, to serve
Cook the soba noodles following the instructions on the package, but definitely do not overcook! You can also use leftover soba noodles from the previous day.
Heat up a drop of oil on the pan and sear the salmon, seasoned with salt from each side, skin side down, for 4 minutes until the skin is crispy. Then flip it over and fry for 1-2 more minutes. The exact cooking time depends on the size of the fillet and the temperature of the pan, but the goal is crispy skin and nice juicy fish.
Slice the cucumber and chop the spring onion and chili.
Mix the sesame oil, soy and lime juice, have a taste and adjust if needed.
Once everything is cooked, mix the noodles with the sauce, serve in a bowl and add all the other components on top.
Enjoy some enlivening yoga before your delicious Salmon Soba Bowl meal.
Having a peaceful mind despite a sometimes chaotic environment while driving, is a hard job. But, with the right techniques, you can gain composure more than you realize. A yoga practice and pranyama can help you to stay calm and focused on the road.
Getting stuck in traffic is one of the most displeasing situations to find yourself in, especially, if you’re late. In such an occasion, at the slightest provocation, you can easily insult your fellow drivers, or even raise your middle finger at them, or at the least, feel stressed, stuck or frustrated. Yoga can help alleviate such stressful moments and work to get back into a place of love and compassion, to replace any negative feelings the arise because of traffic and road rage.
Yoga and pranyama are recommended as remedies for stress in general, and can help with car related stress. With practice, you can be in a position to be elevated, and the stress caused by traffic experience can be transformed into a joyous and healthy driving experience. While being in a state of joy and love while driving or stuck in traffic, might sound impossible, it is possile, and feels much better than feeling mad or stressed in your car.
Here are 5 tips to help stay calm and focused on the road.
1. Get Rid of Your Disruptions
As you drive, you need to abolish any form of distractions and remain focused on the road. Make sure that you have cleared all disruptive tasks before embarking on your journey. An example can be your playlist; make sure that it is well updated before driving so that you can avoid shuffling through your phone for your radio.
Cell phones in this modern age, have become gadgets that are both useful and dangerous when it comes to driving. They are distractors, and for you to stay focused, ensure that your phone is far away from you as possible. In case you need to make an urgent call, ensure that you do it before you begin driving.
2. Take Deep Breaths
Deep breathing and pranyama techniques are excellent for drivers, especially when they are stressed out because of various conditions. According to research, breathing consciously can be used as a remedy to stay calm and improve your alertness on the road. In case of a traffic jam, not all techniques of yogic breathing are helpful but here, are some of the practices which are considered safe behind the wheel.
These two are well designed to soothe your nerves and calm your brain by enabling you to refocus your frustration to calmness.
Ujayi (Triumphant) breath
Dirga (Three-part) breath
3. Be Kind, Compassionate and Loving
Through the teachings of yoga, we learn to be kind to other people, even when you are in a vehicle. This can be quite simple to forget when you are interacting with other humans in the comfort of your car, battling with other cars to get where you're going as quickly as possible.
Practice love and compassion with your fellow drivers, adhere to the rules of the road and be courteous to other drivers, just like how a friend is polite to you. Give it a try and you may find yourself feeling better behind the wheel.
4. Sitting Posture for Safe Driving
As you are driving, you need to be aware of your sitting position, as it may affect your calmness and focus. An example can be when you are leaning forward; you might strain your spine and shoulders and put your body in a more stressed position. Postures that subtly make you take shallow and short breaths are not ideal for relaxed driving
By sitting upright with your head parallel to the roof, you can feel your ribcage widen and contract with ease, allow for deep breathing, and generally feel more calm and focused on the road.
5. Kapalabhati Breathing
This breathing technique is so effective in blowing off steam, it deserves it's own category. This is technique is designed to remove toxins in you body and either create or release internal heat (exhaling out of the nose creates heat, while exhaling out of the mouth releases heat). This type of breathing involves an inhale that is natural and passive, followed by a forced, quick exhale.
When you are in traffic, if your tension builds up to levels that you begin to get angry, try this. You may start to notice that your anger slowly gets replaced by calmness.
By doing this procedure for about 30 seconds, you will begin to feel a change in your body and a lessening of stress. If this method causes you to feel dizzy, it is best not to try it while driving and you can do it briefly before you get in the car. For most, it will be safe.
Conclusion
Yoga is mainly meant for calming the mind regardless of life's circumstances. Driving with a calm mind is quite difficult, but with yoga, things can be more peaceful and joyous. With the right methods, even if the road is boring and stressful, your mind will remain focused and surprisingly calm. In case you lack sources for yoga and pranyama practices, you can use helpful yoga apps, like YogaDownload's app, that you can use just before embarking on your drive.
Have you ever lost focus or experienced stress while driving? How did you handle the situation? Feel free to share with us in the comments.
By Scott Pine
Scott Pine is a teacher and a writer who loves to explore absolutely new areas of writing about yoga, travel and lifestyle. Scott is also the owner of AutoExpertGuides. Follow him on Twitter.
Busy and stressed? The 2-Week Yoga Challenge for Busy People will help, featuring classes that are all 30-minutes or less.
Yoga is well known as a calming and relaxing practice, so if your fitness goals are more performance and aesthetically based, you might have dismissed yoga as not being useful to you. There is a common misconception that yoga is purely for those looking for spiritual or relaxing exercise practice.
However, more and more gyms, studios and trainers are incorporating yoga into their everyday fitness practice, as it’s a great exercise to add to your regime to see results.
Yoga is a very important part of strength training.
When used in combination with other more high impact exercises, yoga can help you to increase your endurance, increase your strength, improve your posture and technique, and improve your balance as well as your flexibility. Adding yoga to your strength training will help you achieve your peak performance, as well as calm your mind and improve your mental balance. Still need convincing?
Here’s our top reasons why you should add yoga to your strength training.
1. Increased Flexibility
A lot of the muscles you use in strength training are agonist and antagonist muscles groups. These muscle groups come in pairs. The agonist muscles are the muscles that cause movement, the muscle that provides the force to move. For example, in a bicep curl, the biceps muscle is the agonist. An antagonist muscle is the muscle that opposes the agonist. AGain, in a bicep curl example, the tricep muscle is the antagonist. The antagonist muscle relaxers or creates tension to allow the agonist muscles to move.
These muscles require flexibility to help increase their strength, which will then improve your performance. Yoga will help you stretch these muscles and increase their flexibility. You’ll soon find it’s easier to get a full range of motion in exercises like pull-ups.
2. Quicker Recovery
Muscles actually don’t grow and get bigger while you’re training but rather during rest and recovery. Strength training is tough on your muscles, and so you need to give them a thorough rest and rehabilitation after working out. This is the time that they will grow.
Yoga is a perfect way to rest and rehabilitate your body, and it will actually improve your recovery process. This is because yoga allows your muscles to stretch and relax, increasing the blood flow to the muscles. In turn, this allows more oxygen to the body, which lets it heal. Through deep breathing in yoga, you’ll allow your body to relax and balance out your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, which lets to body heal more quickly.
3. Reduces Injury
Strength training can actually hinder your range of motion, especially in your shoulders and hips. Reduced range of motion can lead to tight and shortened muscles, reduced muscle functionality, reduced joint functionality and loss of joint alignment. All of this can add to the stiffness and tightness you feel after working out. If you practice yoga you can improve this range of motion, helping to reduce injury when you work out.
4. Improves Balance
If you only work out certain muscles, your body can actually become really imbalanced. The shorter, stronger muscles you’re working out can start to overcompensate for your longer and weaker muscles. This can create further imbalance left unchecked, and actually be the cause of a lot of injuries and pain.
Yoga is great to help you identify which parts of your body are unbalanced, which muscles feel tight and which feel weak, by allowing you to be in tune with your entire body. You can then start to correct your imbalance, and bring your body back to a perfect balance. Practicing yoga can address the muscles that are underdeveloped, restoring balance and creating full body strength.
5. Improves your Form
If you lift weights, you’ll know that correct posture and form is essential. Bad posture and form can lead to serious injury. Yoga can help you become aware of your posture, and improve it over time. This will help you to be aware of your form and technique when weight lifting, and will reduce your risk of injury. Keeping yourself aware of your body is a key skill you gain in yoga, and one that will improve your technical form off the matt too. The more you practice, the less you’ll find yourself slouching, and you’ll transform your strength training ability.
6. Improves Breathing
Lots of people tend to hold their breath while strength training, even without realising. This is especially common when you’re struggling or lifting heavy. Focusing on your breathing in yoga can help you become more aware and present in your breathing for other exercise. Learning to breathe deeply will also help you to reduce your recovery time between sets, and clears your mind, as well as bringing oxygen to your body and muscles.
Practice a 3-week regimen yoga and strength training bootcamp, now, to get your body into top shape!
Are you ready to feel revitalized?
When we feel our personal best, we are more confident, have more energy, and have a clear calm mind. When we exercise vigorously, we release bloating, heaviness, and stagnant negative energy. The lighter we feel physically, the more free we feel in our minds and hearts. Check out our new 3-week bootcamp if you are ready to take your health to the next level.
What: If you are nodding your head in agreement, join us for a 3-week bootcamp specially designed for you. Challenge yourself and commit to daily yoga and fitness for 21 days. This boot camp program is physical with classes intended to make you stronger and more supple. But don’t mistake this plan for simply a physical one. It is less about what you look like and more about what you feel like. We’ll participate as a community and blast through your personal barriers to ultimate fitness.
Why: You can transform your life when you feel your best on every level. A lifestyle change is often started on the physical level, which is a great launching point to achieving vital health. We know you are disciplined and dedicated: you’re already practicing yoga and fitness at home or on the road with us. In order to progress to the next level in your personal mind-body fitness, use the power of your online community to boost your motivation.
How: Committing to this quest to find your personal best, will help you stay focused because you know the benefits are real and you’re capable of achieving them. Leave comments to inspire other yogis around the world taking part in the bootcamp, to know that you are all experiencing obstacles and triumphs, but it feels easier knowing others are supporting your efforts.
Working out consistently as part of a program will help keep you motivated, especially on those mornings when you’d rather hit the snooze button or those evenings you’d rather hit happy hour. You have the power to achieve your fitness goals.
We’re excited about this program, which is full of varied, fun workouts designed to challenge you and keep you motivated. So, hop on the YogaDownload train and discover just how strong and powerful you are.
All you need to do is press play every day!
When you’re looking to build muscles, strength training is the first thing on the list. When you’re looking for a six pack or bigger arms, you’ll go straight to the weights. But even if you’re not looking to bulk up, strength training can still massively benefit your health.
Many people avoid strength training because they don’t want the bodybuilder look. However, if the only exercise you do is aerobic, you might be missing out on huge health improvements.
1. Reduces belly fat
In 2014, a study published found that strength training was far more effective at reducing and preventing abdominal fat than aerobic exercise. Strength training not only burns your calories, but it also increases the amount of lean muscles, which then stimulates your metabolism. This will help to prevent increase in belly fat. Muscle mass will also help your body burn more calories, in your basal metabolic rate.
2. Improves your cardiovascular health
Another benefit related to abdominal fat is an improvement to your cardiovascular health. Abdominal, or visceral, fat sits around the vital organs. So by reducing the levels of visceral fat, you can improve the health of your heart. Additionally, a study published in 2013 showed that regular strength training can improve cholesterol levels in young men.
3. Controls your blood sugar levels
If you suffer from type 2 diabetes, strength training is something you should definitely incorporate into your regime. As well as building muscles, strength training also improves muscle ability to take in glucose. Muscle cells contain transporters that collect glucose from the blood and deliver it to the muscles. Strength training improves the ability of these transporters and allows them to collect higher levels of glucose, decreasing the blood sugar levels.
4. Reduces risk of cancer
Visceral fat can not only affect your heart health, but can also increase the development of cancer. Visceral fat has been shown to produce high levels of a protein called FGF2, which can trigger cancer. Additionally, muscle wasting can be complication in cancer treatment, and can be associated with chemotherapy toxicity, tumour progression and low survival rates.
5. Lower risk of injury
A strong muscle base is vital for all movement and to help prevent injury. Weak muscles can put stress on connecting tendons, resulting in tendonitis. Strength training also increases collagen fibrils in tendons to increase their strength and to help prevent injuries.
6. Improves mental health
Like most exercise, strength training has been shown to improve the symptoms of depression and anxiety. Uniquely, strength training helps to increase mental resilience, through overcoming obstacles in a controlled environment.
7. Improves your flexibility
If flexibility is something you're working on, you can incorporate strength training to help you achieve your goals. A specific type of exercise called eccentric exercise will provide the biggest improvements in flexibility - up to double what static stretching can do! These exercises are any that will focus on lengthening the muscles, instead of shortening. For example, the movement you make when you are lowering during a squat. Flexibility is important to give you a full range of motion. This will improve your fitness and quality of life, and you can keep on top of it with strength training.
8. Protects bone health and muscle mass
As we age, we lose our muscle mass. In fact, as early as age 30, we start to lose up to 5% of lean muscle mass per year. However, if you incorporate strength training into your schedule, you can combat this loss. Just 30 minutes twice a week of strength, high intensity, resistance or impact training can help to improve performance, and increase lean muscle mass and bone health. This muscle mass and bone health is vital for our health and ease of life as we age. Any weight bearing exercise will strengthen your bones, by stimulating your cells to produce structural proteins. Squats and lunges in particular will help with increasing bone mineral density.
9. Helps chronic disease
Many studies have shown that strength training can help people with certain chronic diseases. In fact, strength training has been shown to be as effective as medication in people suffering from the pain associated with arthritis.
10. Increases brain power
While strength training can improve anyone's brain power, the effects are shown the strongest in adults suffering from cognitive decline. A 2016 study showed that men and women who were aged fifty five to eighty six and also had mild cognitive impairment significantly improved when training twice weekly over six months.
This could be due to the way strength training increases blood, oxygen and nutrient flow to the brain.
If you want to incorporate more strength training into your regime, this weeks classes are focused on building up power and strength through yoga. While the flexibility of yoga sometimes earns more attention, the power and strength of this practice is what makes it truly special. Without strength, yoga poses are missing an important ingredient. Yoga makes you more toned, strong, and powerful. The metaphor of this powerful practice, is that if you find inner strength and power on your mat, you can tap into your strength and power off your mat and into your day to day life as well. Enjoy this week's 4 classes that emphasize strength in the practice.
Make yourself stronger, with these yoga classes for strength, right now!
Happy (almost) summer for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere! We’re so excited for the sunny weather and all the fresh veggies coming into season this time of year. One of our favorite warm-weather treats is sushi, so we’ve made a cleanse-friendly version to share with you all!
People ask us all the time what kinds of foods they’ll be able to eat on the Conscious Cleanse. The answer is lots and lots! We have a wide variety of recipes you can enjoy while cleansing, from bison burgers to vegan curry, and even dairy-free, egg-free gelato if you want dessert. The possibilities are endless!
This vegan sushi hand roll is the perfect recipe to switch up your menu this week. It’s grain-free (bye bye, belly bloat!) and ready to eat in minutes. Plus, it’s easy to eat or pack on-the-go and easily customizable – you can substitute any fresh veggies you’ve got on hand. It’s a great way to add variety to your Conscious Cleanse meal planning!
With love and veggie sushi,
Veggie Sushi Hand Roll
1 avocado, mashed 2 nori sheets 1/3 english cucumber, cut into matchsticks 1 carrot, cut in matchsticks 1 daikon, cut into matchsticks 1 cup purple cabbage, shredded 2 green onions, trimmed and sliced in half Handful of your favorite sprouts ¼ cup Gomasio ½ cup coconut aminos Sriracha (to taste, optional) Lemon or lime juice, to taste Sea salt, to taste
Mash your avocado in a bowl with a squeeze of lemon or lime juice and a dash of sea salt. Cut your nori in half. Place the shiny side of nori sheet down on a flat work surface. Evenly divide cucumber, carrots, daikon, cabbage, avocado, green onions, and sprouts among nori sheets, sprinkle with gosemo and roll. Seal nori sheets by taking a wet paper towel across the inside edges. Serve with coconut aminos and a splash of sriracha to taste (if using).
If you’re looking for a healthy start to the summer season, join us for our LIVE June 12 Cleanse.
People have been drinking infusions of tea for many years, starting in China and India. Today, tea is devoured more generally than some other beverage on the world aside from water. Billions of people drink tea and an extensive number of studies show tea have numerous medical advantages.
Green tea is one of the most advantageous drinks you can consume.
It's without sugar, doesn't have any calories, and is loaded with antioxidants prevention agents that give plentiful health benefits. Examine the infographic underneath to recognize why you should start drinking this remarkable green tea right now.
Defining Green Tea and Understanding Its History
Green tea is made by lightly steaming leaves from a plant called Camellia Sinensis, which is a similar plant used to make black and oolong teas. Tea-drinking is a ritual people have been rehearsing for quite a long time, going back to 2737 B.C. in Asia. Even in those days, people perceived the healing properties of tea.
What's in Green Tea? A Look at Its Nutrition Facts
Brewed green tea is principally water-based, which implies it's free of the typical macronutrients found in different foods and beverages. It doesn't contain any fat, carbohydrates, or protein, and there aren't any calories in unsweetened tea. It gets its solid notoriety from mixes called catechins, explicitly epicatechins, epicatechin-3-gallate, epigallocatechin, and EGCG.
Caffeine and Health Benefits of Green Tea
There is a ton of buzz right now pretty much all the health benefits of green tea, and the lower caffeine levels. At this moment it is too soon to capably say that cutting edge logical investigations demonstrate the health benefits being guaranteed. Because green tea grows in such a significant number of districts and can be prepared in such a significant number of various courses, tests on one tea do not prove the effects of all tea. Indeed, even your brewing method will change the chemical compounds implanted, and their rate of retention.
How to Brew Green Tea
The best green tea on the planet is rich, sweet and full in flavor with waiting for lingering aftertastes. Sadly, many people try green tea first when it is either no longer fresh, or when it is brewed improperly. This prompts the recognition that green tea bitter or extremely grassy.
Precautions
Green tea contains tannins, which can decrease the retention of iron and folic acid. In that capacity, it might be better for ladies who are pregnant or breastfeeding to avoid. Individuals who are weak should be cautious drinking tea around mealtime. Those taking anticoagulant drugs, for example, warfarin (Coumadin, Jantoven) should drink green tea with alert because of its nutrient K content, which is necessary for blood coagulation.
By Soveet Gupta
Soveet works for Udyantea. They are based out of Darjeeling district, the homeland of all-things-tea. They bring the high-quality tea from their lands, sourced out directly from the best gardens, directly to you by cutting out all middlemen, and in the process, reducing the timeframe between production and consumption. Every week, their expert tea tasters sample a variety of teas collected from different gardens and choose the top quality tea for you.
Treat yourself to yoga or meditation, from the comfort of your own home, before enjoying your green tea!
Meditate and Cultivate Calm with Keith Allen
Freedom Flow with Jackie Casal Mahrou
Did you know that practicing certain styles of yoga is an excellent way to build not only flexibility and balance, but also strength? Hatha yoga, specifically styles of Vinyasa, Power, and Ashtanga work like a functional fitness program with your own body weight. In a well-rounded yoga practice, you work your body in all planes of motion and utilize not just the large muscles, but the small ones too.
When you feel strong physically, there’s a direct correlation to how you feel emotionally and mentally as well. It’s all connected.
Let’s focus on the physical aspect and how yoga builds strength. Many of the standing postures you know and love are weight-bearing exercises, like Virabhadrasana (Warrior) I and II. By practicing them regularly, you are building strength in your glutes, thighs, and calves, as well as your bones. When you add in balancing postures where you stand on one leg or on your hands, you’re also incorporating your core stabilizer muscles. Think Vrksasana (Tree Pose) and Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand.)
In Vinyasa classes, you generally begin with Surya Namaskara (Sun Salutations), which are a flowing full body strength workout. Moving through Uttanasana/Forward Fold to Chatarangua to Urdhva Mukha Svanasana/Upward Facing Dog to Adho Mukha Svanasana/Downward Facing Dog engages every muscle in your body in a balanced, integrated way.
You aren’t just getting stronger; you’re also becoming more flexible. This combination is excellent for preventing injury and also enhancing your performance for sports and everyday life.
Creating a strong stable core through yoga will protect your spine and help alleviate or prevent back pain. Strengthening your center is key for excellent posture and also helps keep your digestive system moving freely and effectively. Many poses require a balancing element and your core works directly to assist your stability. And who doesn’t love Navasana (Boat Pose) and Phalakasana (Plank Pose)?
Building physical strength will boost your confidence because you’ll feel invigorated and ready to face any challenge. Working to get stronger requires discipline or tapas and stokes your inner fire. Because everything is connected, whatever you do for your physical self directly benefits to your inner self.
Try any or all of our new classes this week for a power boost!
1. Dana Hanizeski - Core strength the Iyengar Way (FREE class)
2. Claire Petretti Marti - Pilates Yoga Fusion Express
3. Keith Allen - Yoga Fix: Healthy Backbends
4. Pradeep Teotia - Deep Like Pradeep
If you ever need to change somebody’s opinion about cauliflower, then this is the recipe for it. It is crispy, spicy, sticky, and delicious. Of course, you can adjust the spiciness level according to your taste, but I love the spice, and I have listed the amounts of chili I used.
The sauce is one of the things that makes the dish enjoyable and gives it a lot of flavor, but the most essential part is the crispy-battered cauliflower itself. The secret in the batter is vodka!
Don’t worry, there will be no alcohol left after frying, but it gives the batter extra crispiness that can stand the sauce and will not be soaked within 5 minutes. In fact, since I had some leftovers the last time I cooked this dish, then I had it for breakfast the next day, and it was still crispy in some parts, even after standing in the fridge overnight.
I always love to serve steamed rice with this cauliflower, but it is also good on its own as a snack.
Crispy Cauliflower in a Sweet & Spicy Sauce
Serves: 3-4
Cooking time: 40 minutes
For the cauliflower:
1 medium cauliflower
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup cornstarch
½ tsp baking powder
½ cup water
½ cup vodka
Oil, for frying
For the sauce:
1 tsp grated ginger
1 red chili, chopped
1 tsp sesame oil
½ cup soy sauce
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
¼ cup mirin
2 tbsp coconut sugar
2 dried chilies
1 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp water
Spring onion, to serve
Cut the cauliflower to bite-sized pieces.
Heat the oil in a bottom of a small saucepan. The oil should be about 2 inches deep and very hot, so that the cauliflower wouldn’t absorb too much of it during cooking time.
Mix the cornstarch, flour, baking powder, and salt, then add water and vodka and mix everything to a batter. It will be quite runny, don’t worry about it.
Dip the cauliflower pieces into the batter, let the excess drip off and fry the pieces for 5-6 minutes. Do not overcrowd the pan while cooking and turn the pieces around occasionally, so they would cook evenly. Using the slotted spoon, transfer the cauliflower pieces to drain on paper towel.
At the same time, you can already start preparing the sauce. Fry the ginger and onion in the sesame oil on the medium heat. After 5 minutes add soy, rice wine vinegar, mirin, and sugar straight to the pan, also crumble up the dried chilies.
In a small bowl mix 1 tbsp cornstarch with 2 tbsp water, add it to the sauce and stir until the sauce thickens.
If all of the cauliflower is fried and the sauce ready, then mix them and sprinkle with chopped spring onion. Serve just like that as a snack or as a main with steamed rice.
Practice Yoga for Detox, Cleansing, & Vitality now to complement this healthy recipe!
Cannabis-enhanced yoga is a thing. Whether popping up in classes across the country, being mentioned alongside other forms of athleticism in articles about CBD-fuelled fitness, or made into fashion with weed-themed yoga leggings, the pairing of the ancient practice and healing plant has become quite the conversation topic in yoga studios across the world.
Many people are enjoying the anti-inflammatory, relaxation, and creative benefits of cannabis on yoga. As the first moderner to offer public enhanced-yoga practice, I am so happy to see the marriage of humanity’s oldest methods for relaxation and spiritual insight gain momentum and increased acceptance. Ten years ago, when I started offering a yogic setting for people to get high and do yoga, I googled and found no other mention of the two, other than Chris Bennett’s insightful writing on the history of yoga and cannabis in ancient spiritual practice in India.
We’ve come a long way baby! (five thousand years or more, to be exact...).
As more people turn to THC and CBD to enhance their yoga, it’s important to know a few things that people often get wrong. That way, you you can make sure you are getting the most of out this sacred, awesome pairing, no matter if you’re going to a canna-yoga class in your city, doing my ganja yoga videos online, or smoking up and doing your own stretching at home.
Myth #1 - Yoga is athletics, hard, and only for certain bodies.
It’s been awesome to see all these articles about weed-fuelled fitness coming out. Ganja Jogging, Weed Weightlifting, and Marijuana Muay Thai are the talk of the town, (okay, I made that last one up…). With former NFL athlete Ricky Williams and other professional sports stars talking about how going green making their work-out even better, it’s all about the athletic advantage that cannabis can offer.
I have nothing wrong with this of course, except when the articles mention yoga alongside all the other workouts, and show images of fit-AF people doing very hard yoga poses, perpetuating the idea of a hard practice and a specific type of “yoga body.”
In our culture, we unconsciously run an internal, unconscious program of contraction as we go about our busy lives. Many of us are more rushed, tired, stressed, distracted and unsatisfied than we know we should be. Everyone knows that stress the leading cause of premature death, yet anxiety disorders, depression, frustration, and feelings of disconnection (the symptoms of stress and disconnection), - are all too common.
Yoga can be, should be, a balm to soothe all that.
It’s a place for letting go of our mass cultural contraction, … a time for surrendering and softening the muscles, an occasion to drop the mind and all the grasping and depleting over-thinking we do.
Yoga wasn’t really meant to be a work-out in the way we think of workouts. It certainly doesn’t have to be something you dread, or something you think you should do after eating too many carbs. Yoga doesn’t even have to make you break a sweat.
And, while we’re on the topic, yoga is about so, so much more than the poses.
So, knowing this, your weed-yoga class will probably (if the teacher knows what’s up as most weed-yoga teachers, do) be a lot easier than most yoga-studio yoga. And that’s a good thing.
I hear the real athletic types out there yawning in boredom at the thought of doing low-dub grandma-friendly yoga. If you like yoga classes with the word “power” in the title, and find the softer version of the ancient practice boring, see if you can be up for the internal challenge. Not of working your muscles, but of tapping into a more relaxed engagement with your body. Be still. Relax. Especially when high. Instead of brutalizing your body in yoga, see if you can you just be with it, - where it is now, - in simpler, more basic poses.
Evoke yogic sensitivity, which cannabis engenders, by doing less on your mat, not more. No grunting, no punishment, no contraction, just bliss and yummy relaxation, which is available to anyone who has a body.
Myth #2 - Cannabis-Enhanced Yoga is Dangerous
When people think Ganja Yoga is a bad idea, usually it’s because they think something about it may be dangerous. Often that’s because they don’t smoke pot all that much, saw a Cheech and Chong movie once, and assume me and my students will be hot boxing the room and then stumbling around like intoxicated goofs on our sticky mats.
A few things: First, you don’t have to get super baked to practice cannabis-enhanced yoga. It’s always an option, but sometimes it feels right to do a smaller dose before a practice (or even a microdose, where the effect is only-barely-felt). CBD and topicals are a way to use cannabis and not get high at all.
Second, weed doesn’t actually make you all that clumsy. States with legal cannabis don’t have higher cannabis-related car accidents. Sometimes balancing postures might become slightly harder when under the influence, but my students actually tend to report greater embodiment and awareness.
It really depends on how much you consume. Start low and go slow, you can always add more as you go.
My last point on the potential dangers: A good cannabis enhanced yoga teacher is not going to instruct you to do something that may be dangerous to fall out of. A good yoga teacher, - enhanced with cannabis or not, - doesn’t make the mistake of taking a mixed-level class into poses that aren’t safe.
So, you won’t be doing any potentially-dangerous inversions with me, stoned or not, unless we’ve had a few private sessions and I’ve known you for a good long time. Your teacher (and your common sense) should make sure what you get up to in your yoga practice is safe, relaxing, and fun. In that order.
Myth #3 - Certain Strains or Consumption Methods Are Better For Yoga
I often get asked what strain is best for Ganja Yoga, and this is a tricky question. In the age of a quick-fix solution, people want a few strains, not a long diatribe about how each strain works individually with one’s unique biochemistry...
However, I can’t not. Cause when you combine the various cannabinoid constellations with the various terpene profiles, you can get easily thousands of different strains to choose from.
The best strain for yoga is the one that serves you in that moment.
Perhaps you’re sluggish for yoga today, so a strain with a lot of the terpene (aka - aromatherapy oil), called “myrcene” (which brings about relaxation), might not be the best for you. Better to get a pick-me-up with a strain containing the terpene limonene, which is like a zesty lemon to wake you up.
Lots of strains of limonene though, so do you want one with high-THC to help with pain and get you trippin, or one with more CBD to reduce anxiety? Keep in mind that THC and CBD are only two of dozens of cannabinoids to consider. Like I said, strains are a lot more than meets the eye.
What strain you choose today might not be the strain you choose tomorrow. Play around with both strains and methods so as you begin your daily yoga routine, you can start to have a sense of what works best for you, depending on the time of day, your yoga practice, and your health needs and goals.
I recommend keeping a journal so you can refer back to the strains that really brought the “Mmm” to your Om.
On top of strains, there’s the vast array of consumption methods. Edibles give the best body-buzz so I often recommend them for yoga. However, the onset is rather slow, so you need to consume about an hour before you hit your mat, and it’s easy to over-consume, so be sure to go slow and eat more later if needed.
Tinctures are faster-acting than edibles, and can be placed under the tongue so they get absorbed into the bloodstream. Smoking is an ancient practice that connects you to the spirit of fire, but consuming burnt particles of any kind may not keep those yogic lungs happy for long. Vaping is a safer alternative, though it can sometimes be hard to tell just how high you are from a vape, and it doesn’t feel particularly sacred in the way smoking does. Lastly, topicals are great for rubbing onto sore muscles before stretching them out, but of course don’t change your state of consciousness.
Each method has its pros and cons for yoga and for life.
There you have it, the top three misconceptions about weed-inspired yoga, and how you can beat them: Don’t think of yoga as a workout, keep your practice safe, and be open to various strains, - and you’re well on your way to making the most of the pairing that got ancient Indian yogis flying high thousands of years ago. Whether you get high and watch easy yoga videos online, toke before making up your own stretches and dance moves, go to a regular yoga class baked, or find a teacher in your city that offers classes where you can get high together, keep it chill and customize it to you, modify and rest as needed, and, most awesomely, know that you’re part of a movement of hundreds, if not thousands of yogis, - all across the world doing the very same thing.
Bom Shiva!
By Dee Dussault
Dee Dussault is the yoga first teacher to offer public cannabis yoga classes. Over the past decade, she’s brought her classes, which she calls Ganja Yoga, to thousands of students in over a dozen US cities.
A seasoned yoga practitioner of twenty-three years, Dee is also an international speaker and the author of the Harpercollins book by the same name. Ganja Yoga has been featured in publications like The New York Times, Business Insider, Newsweek, and LA Yoga, as well as major International media from India to France.
A lover of bliss, Dee also works as a sex coach who specializes in tantra yoga and cannabis-enhanced intimacy. She works with singles and couples in Los Angeles and San Francisco, helping them tap into their radiant embodied selves. Her training was in the Tantric tradition of Swami Satyananda Saraswati.
www.ganjayoga.com @ganjayoga on Instagram
Practice yoga now to feel amazing, whether or not it's infused with cannabis!
Evening Relaxation Yoga with Jackie Casal Mahrou
Feel Amazing Flow with Keith Allen
Practicing yoga at night or morning- which is right for you?
Yoga, like any exercise, gives you the greatest benefits when you regularly incorporate it into your routine. However you might be wondering which is better, yoga in the morning or the evening.
With yoga and getting into a regular practice, it’s important to practice at the time that is best to you. There’s no perfect time that suits absolutely everyone the same, but there’s one golden rule - find a time where there’s no distractions between you and your yoga mat.
Whatever time of day is the time that you’ll be the least distracted is the best time of day for you to practice - regardless of whether it’s in the morning or in the evening.
Try to practice when you are still feeling awake however! Sleepiness and tiredness will hinder your ability to reap the benefits of your yoga practice. You should also wait a while after eating to work out, just like any activity, to avoid any discomfort.
The time that you practice is ultimately not as important as practicing yoga regularly and consistently. The more you practice yoga, you will notice the benefits and changes take a hold of your body and your daily life. With consistent practice, you’ll be able to progress deeper into the poses, and take on harder variations over time. Disciple and determination are key in taking on a regular yoga practice, so finding a right time where you’ll be able to focus on your body and movements is very important.
Choosing the time you practice yoga depends on a lot of different external factors, such as your schedule, your space, class timings.
The time of day you practice can affect which postures you practice, so it’s important to consider what’s right for you. For example, everyone has different body clocks and schedules. If you are a morning person, you may need certain asanas to stimulate you and get you ready for the day ahead, while if you are a night owl, you may want to use your practice to unwind before bed.
Is morning yoga right for you?
Generally, morning yoga practice consists of gentle movements to start to ease you into your day after you’ve woken up. They might have a few more long stretches at the start, such as forward folds and cobra to help ease you into the day.
Morning asanas might also consist of a lot of sun salutations, to help wake up your body, so you might want to incorporate some inversions and heart openers such as camel and wheel. These poses will wake you up and make you feel rejuvenated for the day ahead. It’s also good to add a head or shoulder stand to help send oxygen into your head, helping you to face the day ahead of you.
The time before the sun rises is considered a very spiritually charged time of day, and it is a great time to start your practice, if morning yoga is for you. Practicing yoga the first thing in the morning can help you to clear your mind and boost your body for the day, as well as warm up your body if you’re prone to waking up feeling stiff. This is why energizing poses like sun salutations are ideal for morning practice.
It’s also good to take advantage of the coolness of the morning, so you don’t overheat in warm climates. If you practice your yoga before eating your breakfast, you’ll also benefit from having an empty stomach, and you might find challenging poses a little easier when your body is not digesting any food.
Ultimately, morning yoga is ideal if you wake up early and like to set your tone for the day. It gives you the space and quiet to reflect on the day ahead of you and set any goals you may have for your day. If you practice yoga in the morning, you’re also more likely not to skip your practice and get it done for the day. Throughout the day other distractions and conflicts may come up, meaning you miss your yoga time.
Is evening yoga right for you?
Yoga at night is ideal to soothe and relax after a hard long day. Try to resist big heart openers and inversions that you might practice in a morning yoga session, as these are energizing moves and not idea for just before heading to bed.
Surrender poses are great to soothe you in your evening practice, with poses like half pigeon. Twists and other relaxing poses can help you unwind after a heavy day. Yoga in the evening helps you unwind and process the day just gone, so choose poses that will help you destress such as child’s pose, which will aid digestion and help you get a good night’s sleep.
If you just can’t get up in the morning, evening practice might be for you. It can help you wind down after a busy day, and you might be able to spend more time on your practice as you don’t have anywhere to be after (apart from your bed!).
If you incorporate it into your nighttime routine, yoga can help you fall asleep quickly by getting your mind and body ready to rest. You might even want to add in a meditation to your practice to help you further de-stress.
When it comes down to it, the time you practice is up to you. Thankfully, if you’re struggling to find a routine that works, this week's classes are all selected, to help you create healthy routines for yourself to stick to. Whether your best moments for routine, are in the morning, middle of the day, or the evening, this week's classes have you covered.
Ready to explore which time of day is right for you? Try these classes, designed either for morning or evening time!
Get Your Day Started with Robert Sidoti
Yoga Ritual: Evening Practice with Mark Morford
These days, life seems to only get busier and often it’s easy to let your yoga practice fall by the wayside when work deadlines, family obligations, travel, or fill-in-the-blank, get in the way.
Staying healthy physically, emotionally, and mentally can be a challenge when you feel pressed for time. What’s important to remember is a consistent yoga practice will keep you healthy. When you feel your best, everything else falls into place.
We’re here with a few tips and tricks to help you solidify your yoga habit. Remember there isn’t a one-sized fits all method––what’s key is having a game plan. Whether you prefer practicing first thing in the morning, later in the evening, or anytime you can squeeze in a yoga break, creating an individualized schedule will make the difference. Once you feel the benefits of a clear mind, supple and strong muscles, and a softer heart, sticking to your yoga practice becomes second nature.
Here are 4 effective ways online yoga can make yoga a natural part of your routine!
1. Write it Down
One of the most powerful tools in creating a routine is writing it down. Schedule your yoga in your planner at the beginning of your week. Commit to practicing yoga daily. When you take the time to make yoga an official part of your day and your week, you’re setting yourself up to create a habit that becomes as second nature as brushing your teeth with many more benefits.
2. Consistency
Worry less about how long your yoga session is and focus more on making time for some yoga each day. You don’t always have to practice for an hour or longer. Some days you might only have fifteen minutes and we’ve got a class for that! Consistency is key and it’s better to do a little yoga every day than only practice once a week.
3. Mix it Up
Many of us have varied schedules and no two days are the same. Don’t worry if you can’t always practice at the same time. We’ve got classes suited to Monday Morning, Tuesday lunchtime, Wednesday on the road, Thursday evening, and Friday whenever the heck you want. Mix it up!
4. Set Up Favorites
One of the beauties of an online practice is you can practice when and where you want. One way to make sure you fit in your yoga is to have favorite classes saved. This way, you don’t have to browse through to find something that fits your mood and schedule. Prevent the possibility of losing steam and motivation. If you find a class you love, take a second to save it and you’ll be able to return to it quickly.
There’s no need to get stuck in a rigid schedule if that isn’t the right fit for you. But if you don’t have a game plan set up to get your practice in each day, often you can miss it. And missing one day can snowball into losing your practice.
To make it even easier this week, we’ve got four new classes arranged by time of the day to get you started. Go ahead and hit ‘Play’ today and see how powerful you can be with a regular, consistent practice.
1. Mark Morford - Yoga Ritual: Evening Practice
2. Robert Sidoti - Get Your Day Started
3. Kylie Larson - Qi Yoga Lunchtime Flow
4. Bhavani Maki - Suryanamaskara C: Moving Meditation
As you probably know by now, we at the Conscious Cleanse L-O-V-E green smoothies. They’re the perfect, nutritionally-dense breakfast that takes less than 5 minutes to make and can even be enjoyed on the go! For a collection of our favorite green smoothie recipes, be sure to grab our Green Smoothies eCookbook here.
Part of what make green smoothies so amazing is they can be easily customized to fit your individual health needs by adding superfood boosters! Whether you need to add extra protein and healthy fats to your diet, or you’re looking for help with detoxification or blood sugar regulation, we’ve got a booster for you! Check out our list below for some of our top superfood picks to boost the health value of your green smoothie.
Here are 9 of our favorite smoothie boosters and their individual health benefits:
Maca Root
Maca is a Peruvian root known for its ability to help balance hormones and stabilize mood. It’s also an adaptogen, which means it can help manage stress levels, enhance strength and stamina, and increase energy and endurance. Add 1-2 TB. of maca powder to your smoothie to enjoy these health benefits.
Chia Seeds
Chia seeds are a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, which support heart and brain health. They also contain fiber, which supports gut health, and energy-sustaining protein. For best results, soak 1-3 TB. of chia seeds in water for at least 15 minutes before adding them to your smoothie.
Hemp Seeds
Hemp seeds are nature’s perfect protein powder. They’re also one of the only plant-based complete proteins, meaning they contain all 9 essential amino acids. Add 3 TB. to your green smoothie for 14 grams of plant-based protein.
Coconut Oil
Coconut oil is rich in healthy fats, which support energy levels and healthy skin. Adding healthy fat to your diet can help reduce cravings, too! Use 1 TB. of oil to give your smoothie a boost. Olive oil is a good alternative if you are allergic or sensitive to coconuts.
Spirulina and Fresh Cilantro
Spirulina, which comes from algae, and fresh cilantro both help the body detoxify, especially from heavy metals like mercury or lead. Add about half a bunch of cilantro and/or 2 tsp. of spirulina powder to your smoothie to aid in detox.
Ceylon Cinnamon
Ceylon cinnamon is a specific variety of cinnamon that has been known to aid in blood sugar regulation. If you are sensitive to sugar or have other blood sugar-related issues, 1-2 tsp. of this booster is a great addition to your daily smoothie!
Avocado
Avocados are a great source of healthy fats to help increase energy and reduce cravings, fiber to help digestion and gut health, and contain more potassium than a banana! Add ¼-½ of an avocado to your smoothie for these great health benefits.
Ginger Root
Fresh ginger can help with mild indigestion, and also helps support a healthy immune system. Plus it adds a great spicy flavor to any smoothie recipe! Use a 1-2” piece of peeled fresh ginger root to your morning smoothie.
Flaxseeds
Flaxseeds are super high in fiber, which aids in healthy digestion and can help relieve constipation. They also contain the omega fatty acids that specifically aid in skin health. Add 1-2 TB. to your morning smoothie for glowing skin and smooth digestion.
What’s your favorite smoothie booster? Let us know in the comments below!
With love and superfood smoothies,