Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

Bad days can happen to anyone, even the most positive of us. Anything from a stressful day at work, something you love breaking, getting caught up in traffic - somethings, things go wrong and we feel like life just well, sucks. While we can’t manage absolutely everything in the world to ensure we never have a bad day, we can do some small things everyday to boost our mood, no matter what life throws at us. Start the Morning Right If you don’t start you first 20 minutes of the day by getting up and doing something, it’s been said it can have an impact on the entire rest of your day. To avoid your whole morning, afternoon and evening being an uphill battle, try and do something productive in those first 20 minutes, if its meditation, going for a walk, making a healthy breakfast, or catching up on some positive news, it will boost your mood and start you right for the rest of the day. Drink Water Drinking water can help to energise your body, support healthy weight, improve your brain function and also improve your sleep. Sounds great! Try and drink between 2-3 litres of water a day, and try and drink some first thing in the morning - yes this means before your morning coffee! Top tip - try to drink room temperature water to help it be absorbed more quickly to rehydrate you faster.

Want to know my new secret to success and well-being? Hot and cold contrast showers! Yep! Contrast showers, or hydrotherapy, are actually not a new trend, but rather have been used around the world for centuries as a healing modality. This technique, generally used by athletes to improve recovery between training sessions or post-competition, involves alternating between hot and cold water multiple times. I always start my shower with warm water for a couple minutes, then switch to icy cold for a couple more minutes. I do about three intervals of switching back and forth between hot and cold, always ending with water as cold as I can stand. (And learning about what I can “stand” is a meditation in itself. Hint, it helps to breathe!)

For many of us, taking time and doing things that help to clear out the stress and tension is essential to feeling vibrant. Most of us carry a lot in our minds every day, more than we might realize or give ourselves credit for. Every single human is balancing some combination of work, relationships, finances, emotions, in their minds. It can be a lot of keep track of or feel relaxed about. It can be easy to forget that things can be simple, life can feel good and there is so much wonder and beauty in this temporary human experience. It's vital to have experiences and practices that help you embrace life more fully. If we don't give ourselves time to go inwards to recharge, reset, and clear things out, we can accumulate tension, burn out or not feel so excited about life.

A lot of us suffer from bad posture, but having good posture is extremely beneficial to our health and general wellbeing. A good posture can help do a number of things such as prevent back and neck pain, decrease wear and tear on your joints, increase your energy levels, and increase your spine’s durability. So quite a lot of benefits from having a good posture! Our posture is so important as our other bodily organs, tissues, nerves and bones rely on it as our spine absorbs shock, leverages movements and protects the spinal cord - an extension of your brain and the way your brain sends messages to the rest of your body. Having a slumped posture curves the spine, and puts a lot of stress onto the spines supporting body parts, which can degrade the strength of the spinal cord.

People in many professions in today's world typically spend the majority of the day at their desks in front of the computer. We can quickly slip into the pit of the monitor screen and look at it for days on end if we don't keep track of time. This is harmful not only to our well-being but also to imagination and creativity. In regards to staying healthy to stay inspired, writer Orson Scott Card once said about inspiration for writing, "Take care of your body. Writing is a sedentary activity, so it's easy to become fat and inert. And since the brain is dependent on the rest of the body, it is impossible to get work done when you are weak or sick."

Kadri is a marketing expert, food blogger, and yoga teacher from Estonia. She has been contributing recipes to YogaDownload for over a year and most of her recipes are simple and don’t take more than 20 minutes of active cooking time. The time spent outside of the kitchen is often spent right next to the kitchen as she has turned her living room to an online yoga studio for the time being and teaches most of her classes online.

Adopting a mindset of gratitude and infusing this energy into your daily life is a simple and amazing way to improve your mental and physical health. Gratitude is essentially giving thanks for all that you have in your life, whether it is small or big. But besides simply expressing thanks, there are many other fun and unique ways to practice gratitude on a daily basis as well. Here are 5 simple ways to feel more grateful, right now. Make a Gratitude List

Clearing and opening the throat chakra solves issues related to the inability to find and speak any truth. The results of the healed throat chakra are authentic and vivid self-expression. You naturally stand in your highest self, and your speech expresses the real need of your whole being. When this cycle is broken, you will talk through your head and not from the core of your existence. Your speech may be weak, crooked, or you may verbally dominate others when your Visshuda chakra is out of balance. The defensive debate is a common symptom of an unclear throat cycle. Being able to connect with your heart is essential to know your truth, and a clear Vishuddha chakra will help you express yourself in a smooth, beautiful, flowing speech. Here is how to open it with daily writing practices. Here is how to open your throat chakra using a pen and paper:

Earth Day found its beginnings in 1970, in the United States, and years later the environmental movement has gone global. Over a billion people worldwide get involved each year with Earth Day activities and trying to make the world a better place. Here are some small ways you can get involved and give back this earth day. Recycle One of the essential things we need to do to protect the Earth is simply recycling. An easy thing to do is try to reduce the amount of waste you produce by recycling and reusing materials that don’t need to go into the bin. Simple things like recycling cardboard and paper, reusing glass and plastic materials can help, and you can also do things like buying second-hand rather than new. Reduce Meat Consumption

This meditation is a natural vitality booster. You can do this meditation anytime and anywhere. It’s nice to spend some time with it in your formal meditation practice, but you can also invite the energy of the golden sun with you at anytime, commuting, working, or even while eating or walking. To enjoy this simple meditation, simple do the following steps. It only takes a few minutes. 1. With eyes open or closed, visualize a bright, golden sun above your head.

The Inspiration Download interview series features different people who are bringing ideas to life and sharing something with the world that they are passionate about, whether it's through teaching yoga, creating a business, doing work in their community, creating art, hosting events, bringing to life new wellness products, or more. These interviews highlight real people who have brought ideas to life and give real-life insight and inspiration on their processes and journey. Ria Pereira is a yoga instructor from Karachi Pakistan on a mission to help people love themselves and lead them towards a healthy lifestyle. She also has a passion to bake cakes and brownies to add more sweetness to one’s life. What are you passionate about sharing with the world and why? How does this inspire you?

Our homes and our minds both have the ability to be our sanctuary and personal prison depending on what we may be experiencing in a given moment. As we enter into our 1 year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic I personally have experienced the highs and lows on a daily, weekly, or moment to moment basis. A lot has come up in as I am sure it has for you, and the feeling I notice bubbling up lately is grief. We have been facing uncertainty at an extreme level for about a year now, on top of the organic uncertainty we face by simply having the human experience. Some of us are grieving connection, how we thought work would look or feel, life prior to the pandemic, loved ones, births where limited people were able to be there and you were masked (because there was a deadly pandemic in the same building you were birthing a child), first years of college, high school, or elementary school, canceled or delayed weddings and funerals, jobs, a big move, putting yourself on the market to start dating, your first year as a teacher and you’re doing it virtually, you name it, and the list goes on and on. Your grief is extremely valid.

We all need to take a moment of the day to make a pause and release all the stress that we accumulate in our daily lives. A great way to do this is by introducing a meditation practice into our schedules; for that purpose, it would be ideal to have a designated space at home that you use only for meditation. There are a few things that you should consider in terms of creating the ideal space to support relaxation, focus, and concentration during meditation. If you want to know more about this, continue reading because we gathered some great tips and advice from the experts to achieve this vibe at home and succeed in your meditation practice. What do you suggest for setting up a meditation space at home? Determine the purpose of your space.

I have struggled with perfectionism my whole life. If you’re anything like me, your ego carries a dialogue within you that charges up your desire to be the best or do it best. I have noticed in my own shadow work that words my ego creates around this energy that is essentially draining, impossible to achieve, filled with loads of effort, and yet like the dangling carrot in front of my face meant to be endlessly chased. One of the key insights that came about as I looked within myself to work with this energy was a simple yet profound exchange of energy I could create within my body, most especially my fourth chakra, the Anahata or Heart Chakra, which I see as a space that holds shape for the energy that codes my self-esteem. This is the energy center where many of us hold the keys to our self-esteem.

Now that 2020 is behind us and we're settling into 2021, it’s time to start looking ahead to the future, even though we're still living in a pandemic. Given how difficult the past year has been for all of us around the world, if you’re having a hard time thinking positively, you’re not alone. There’s no guarantee 2021 will be perfect, but with the right attitude, you can still make the most of the year ahead. Here are 6 simple tips to foster and maintain a positive outlook throughout the year: 1. Commit to Positivity Life is full of challenges and the only thing that really matters is how you respond to them. Instead of reacting to difficult situations with negativity or fear, embrace the opportunity to rise above.

The yoga sutras say “Through transgression of the original rules there is non-attainment of the goal.” So what are the rules—or even the goals-- in life as we know it and live it now in the midst of a pandemic? Many of us are still looking back at how it was a year ago, putting everything in our lives on lockdown as we wait, and wish and hope life will be ours again in three months, six months, or a year. Even our friendships are affected and changed. Suddenly they feel distant, uncertain—practically unknowable.

The Third Chakra, Solar Plexus (also called Manipura Chakra), relates to the region of the body that goes from the navel to the lower third of the rib cage. If the physical body were a cell, the third chakra would be the mitochondria. The solar plexus creates our relationship with what we are physically able to achieve. The third chakra may also correspond with our to-do list and the expectations we have on ourselves for what we want, or may not want to get done on a physical level. While anxiety and burn-out may have a way of creeping into any chakra, I often see those frequencies manifest within this region of the body. We can do energy work on “burn out” until the cows come home, but often the body desires much more than meditation to refresh, restore, and transform the body’s longing for relief, space, and nourishment.

Around the world, the current global pandemic has changed our lives. Although we might be getting used to this new normal way of living, we are all still affected in 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation, social distancing, and ill-health can all be tough on our mental health, and many of us might be feeling anxious, scared, and lonely. It’s important to have some ways to manage any negative mental health effects the pandemic might be having on you, to help keep feeling positive when things get tough. Here are some ways you can try to keep your head afloat during the pandemic, to give you a boost of positivity. Allow Yourself to Feel Anxious

The irony of reading this on a screen and possibly linked from a social media post is obvious. Social media is not all bad, and in fact, allows us to access a vast array of useful information and connection with one another. However, many of us have become unknowingly addicted to social media, our devices, and endless browsing, to which there are real downsides. Like anything else, the key is balance. The purpose of these tips is not to villainize social media, or torture ourselves by abstaining from things we like or disconnecting people we love. It's about leaving room to be more present, and in the moment, versus always thinking ahead to how you're going to share something with your audience, being distracted by your phone all the time, or stuck in loops of comparison.

Here is a novel idea – What if we measured our weight by laughter and contentment instead of pounds and kilos? If we stopped obsessing about how much we weigh and lived more by our worth as a person. If the saying – you are worth your weight in gold became a marker of our potential to live to. Wouldn’t our world be a better place and wouldn’t we each live a brighter existence? In a morning conversation about how we did not value our bodies when we were younger, I was thinking how can we instill value to our youth, where they grow up loving and appreciating their bodies for what they do and feel, over how they look. How can we gift this to our sons and daughters, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren?

Can I be honest with you? Sometimes I get burnt out, grumpy, and in a funk. Just like many of you, I fall into the trap of the glorifying of busyness. Subconsciously I believe that I’m not doing a good enough job if I’m not running from one thing to the next, crossing things off my list, working late into the night and then rising in the wee hours of the morning to work again. As much as it benefits others, my career of massage and yoga education is not immune to stressful deadlines and schedules. Today a friend innocently asked me “so, how are you?” When I paused long enough to bypass the automatic answer of “fine,” I realized that I don’t know how I truly am doing. I haven’t made enough time to check in and listen lately.

"One hundred actions are not worth as much as one moment of stillness" - Xiang Zhai Standing still is perhaps the most contradictory activity in which we can engage. While we are seemingly doing “nothing” in fact we are challenging ourselves both physically and mentally, using every muscle in our bodies, strong, deliberate breath and an iron-willed focus. All to do that which our culture regards with little respect. To many, to stand still is to stagnate. To lose momentum. Not to keep up with progress. The truth is, many consider standing still as actually falling behind. Yet standing still has taught me valuable lessons. It allows me to be inside myself. Instead of always wanting to be the busy one, the active one, the catalyst, standing still allows me to watch.

2021 is around the corner, and not a moment too soon. It’s been a tumultuous year for many of us, so New Year's resolutions probably haven’t even crossed your mind. Big changes and new challenges may be a little too much to take on after the year that we’ve had, but there are plenty of small changes you can make that will help bring you a little more joy in the year to come. Here’s our list of small changes to make for a happier 2021. Start reading Many of us would have spent more time than ever this year watching shows or movies at home.

We are all manifesting our realities all the time, whether we realize it or not. Conscious manifestation, though, takes some understanding and practice. These techniques are 100% testable. I encourage you: don’t just take my word for it, try it out for yourself! Step 1: Get clear on what you want Conscious manifestation requires your imagination. And to imagine something, you must get a clear picture of what you want. This can be a stumbling block if you are unsure of exactly what you want, or you just don’t even know where to start. Plus, it’s common for some to fear wasting time and making the wrong decision.

The ancient yoginis understood the concept of time and cycles they called yugas. Presently, we are living in a time of great intensity: the Kali Yuga. The Kali Yuga is a period of hundreds of thousands of years, and it shows a progressive decline in true spiritual connection. We see this readily in many yogic myths where the feminine (Shakti) embodied conscious-ness is repeatedly disrespected and, as a result, leaves her human form. When she goes away, the demons take over the world creating environmental degradation as they pillage the Earth without a care or sense of responsibility. The world falls apart; the oceans fill with plastic; the air is unbreathable, and the respect for fellow humans is diminished.