Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

Salads don’t have to be boring. In fact, they should blow your socks off and keep you coming back for more. With all the textures, flavors and hardiness of a full meal, this salad puts all other salads to shame. It’s packed with protein from the hemp hearts, chickpeas and quinoa; loaded with phytonutrients and crunch from the leafy greens and veggies; and just the right amount of flavor from the crispy, spicy, tangy Buffalo cauliflower. Cheers!

The Gemini new moon this month is a fantastic time to plant seeds in terms of some new, fun travel plans, taking a new course and up-leveling your learning, and making sure your speech and communication is clearly directed and coming from your most authentic place. Gemini always encourages us to speak up, and this New Moon is no exception. It is a good time to focus on speaking the truth about what is important to you, especially when it comes to your intimate relationships. 

What’s your favorite benefit from your yoga practice? Flexible hamstrings? Strong shoulders? Steady balance? Peace of mind? How about healthy, supple joints?

Mental health is a serious subject to take into consideration, particularly as there are so many conditions associated with changes in this area. When speaking about this subject, no one takes into consideration potential lifestyle changes, which could greatly improve one’s mental health. To come to your rescue, we have gathered no less than seven lifestyle changes, destined to boost your mental health and improve your overall quality of life. Keep in mind that these changes can help you deal with conditions such as depression, anxiety or even bipolar disorders. Take action today and be healthy not only tomorrow but for the rest of your life.

I Love Saturdays. Part of the reason is because it marks the start of my weekend. However, there’s something particularly relaxing about waking up on a Saturday morning and knowing that you have absolutely nothing to do! This morning I jumped out of bed at 7:30 (I’m in the process of ‘reseting’ my internal clock because I’m really not a fan of sleeping in) and thankfully the sun was well and truly shining!

When is the last time you experienced a breakthrough on your yoga mat or meditation cushion? Yesterday? Last month? Never? If you feel stagnant with your regular yoga practice, we’re here to offer you options to break through and deepen your physical asana practice or the quality of your meditation time. Consider different ways you can amplify your practice.

Whether you’re in hyper-drive, ticking your way through the holiday to-do list or you’re feeling too depleted to get off the couch and do yoga, the sequence here is invaluable to have in your back pocket during the winter months. It’s not a high-intensity practice – it’s a healing, nurturing, immune boosting yoga practice. The poses encourage relaxation, reduce stress, and facilitate circulation throughout your whole body. These are the three most effective things that yoga asana can do to help support your immune system.

The full moon on May 10, 2017 lights up the sky…and our embodiment of sacred sexuality. While Scorpio is known for those two unavoidable principles in life: death & taxes, it is also known for the depth of connection we feel through spiritually-driven intimacy. On a soul level, Scorpio demands that we use our intimate relationships as more than just a way to satisfy lustful energy, or as an ego-boosting activity. Scorpio wants us to use our sexuality as a way to deeply connect on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level in order to transcend consciousness. 

Transformation is often touted in the yoga world as an aim for which we practice. In fact, the phrase “transformation starts here” is written on the door of one of the yoga studios where I teach. But what does that word really mean? What does the process of transformation look like? How do you teach it or guide that experience for someone else?

As a yoga teacher, there may come times where you would use Sanskrit terms during class, whether you like it or not. This is because it is often the case where most Sanskrit words don’t have an English equivalent that fully explains the meaning of the terms.

From your fingers to your toes, the Nadis are making connections in your body. In the yoga tradition, Nadis are the energy superhighways running through the body – and depending on the lineage you have anywhere between 72,000 to 350,000 of them.

By this point in late January, most people have long forgotten about their New Year’s resolutions. In fact, last Tuesday was declared Ditch Your New Year’s Resolution Day by one source. No big surprise there! Real change doesn’t miraculously happen just because you declare it so! It doesn’t happen overnight, or even in a 14-day cleanse. Long-term sustainable change happens slowly, over time, as a result of practicing new healthy habits. The key is to take action! To DO something everyday that moves you closer to your goal.

Have you ever signed up for something with 100% knowing that it was the best choice you ever made? Don’t you wish you could have that kind of clarity all the time? This is one example of how raising your vibration will serve you. Your choices and the energy behind them creates our energy structure and our vibration-and when all is aligned you have the clarity that makes your choices feel divinely inspired.

The New Moon in Taurus on Wednesday, April 26th, invites us to plant seeds in the areas of life that support, sustain, and nourish us; most particularly, our finances, personal values, relationships, and sensuality. Any new moon period is an opportunity to take stock of what you would like to cultivate in your life, and this moon is a perfect time to retreat, take stock, and indulge in some self-care.

Lotus Pose (Padmasana) is one you were likely familiar with before you ever set foot in a yoga studio. Surely you’d seen sculptures of Siddartha or photographs of Indian sadhus with their legs tightly folded together in a pretzel shape. It’s a pose that’s associated with serene states of meditation — and the shape of the pose really does encourage quiet.

My first internship when I got out of culinary school was in the kitchen at the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, where they had an entire wall filled with dozens and dozens of spices. I swear that wall looked like a piece of art—in the form of a jigsaw puzzle that I had to figure out. The way you knew you had earned your stripes in the kitchen was when the executive chef finally let you make their famous dahl.

If your hips aren’t happy, odds are you won’t be happy either. In order to stay pain and injury free, you need to keep your hips open and stable. Yoga Sutra 2.46, Sthira Sukham asanam states that the posture should be stable and comfortable. Often, this principle is described as seeking the balance between strength and softness or effort and ease.

Both you and the Earth could really use some love right now. So we wanted to send you into the weekend, and into Earth Day, with 6 ways to bring in the values and actions of your yoga practice to the planet.

Are you tired of pushing a plateful of delectable food away from you? Is the dieting getting on your nerves? Do you feel deprived? I feel you. In the quest to shed a few kilos, we all try things we might not necessarily enjoy. From gulping down bitter juices to munching on tasteless greens, weight loss is more of a task than anything else.

My most memorable and doable resolution for 2016 has been to eat more fat. Yes, you read that right: Eat. More. Fat. Decades ago, fat became the villain of the America diet and carbs were king. Now the low-fat approach to eating is being blamed for the rise of processed carbohydrates and high-sugar foods — think sweetened low-fat yogurts and splenda-sweetened Starbucks bevvies.

Hey guys! It’s Jules! Today’s recipe was inspired by my sister who has a strong aversion to bananas, but for years has asked me for a deliciously creamy green smoothie sans fruit! As a self-proclaimed fruit lover and full-blown banana addict myself, to say that I’ve been resistant to ditching fruit from my diet would be putting it lightly. After all, fruit is as natural as it comes. I have thrived on a high-fruit diet for months at a time (one of my many food experiments)! Plus fruit is a whole food that comes from the earth and has been known as one of the most healing foods we have on the planet. How could it be bad for us?

Are you wondering how to improve your yoga practice? It’s one of the most common questions I get from my students and clients. It’s also one of the hardest questions to answer because there is no one answer. Improving your yoga practice is not about learning how to do the postures the “right way” or learning how to hold a handstand and master arm balances. Improving your yoga practice starts with shifting your perspective, keeping an open mind, and committing to stepping on your mat, literally or figuratively, as often as possible.

"Few things are so pressing that they cannot wait for a moment of breath." - T.K.V. Desikachar

The energy of this extraordinary Full Moon in Libra propels us to create radical transformation in the areas of relationship, creativity, and artistry. Libra’s essential qualities of love, harmony, and diplomacy are rocked by its close association with the most powerful astrological event in the sky involving three great planets: Jupiter, Pluto, and Uranus. 

As I reflect on my humble beginnings this Spring, I give thanks for my inspirational teacher-trainer, Trevor Tice who passed away suddenly in December 2016.