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• Your One Mantra: Being Powerful Beyond Measure

  

  How would you feel if you allowed yourself to seek all that you wanted? What would it feel like to want, free of societal filters and expectations? What would happen if you stopped the incessant cycle of self-sabotagement?

• The Pressure to teach hard poses

  

  There’s so much pressure on local teachers to fill their rooms, be authentic, and sell studio memberships, that it’s a wonder anyone can remember why they wanted to teach in the first place.

• Exposure

  

  I’m having a really hard time adjusting to this “default-world” that you hear Burners talk about. What a flipping default world it is. That phrase holds so much meaning and makes me laugh out loud now. And as I transition myself from an existence where people hug, connect, love, kiss, share infinite time, help each other, share truths, and fly by their intuition, into this “default reality” of schedules and work and kids and sports and “to-do’s” really has this recovering Type-A annoyed.

• Love Your Body & Stop Obsessing Over Your Weight

  

  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?

• Understanding the Pelvic Floor: What No One Tells You About Kegels

  

  I want you to come on a journey with me. Let’s travel to a yoga class, one in which you’re in your flow, landed in your body and breath, inseparable from your intention. Ready for that next exhale to move deeper into your practice, you hear: “exhale, contract your pelvic floor.” What do you do? Do you scratch your head? Look up at the ceiling and squeeze the living bejesus down there? Does a circus of interrupting thoughts arrive? Like, “How?” “What the hell is that?” “Am I doing it right?” Maybe you’ve actually been here before. I have. And as a pelvic floor specialist, I wanted to facepalm. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had women come into my office after reading they should do 100 kegels a day with their kegel weights, arriving with new symptoms of pelvic pain, urgency, and even incontinence. Many women are completely unaware that they already hold tension in these muscles.

• It’s All About the Nervous System: Try Yoga to Relieve Stress

  

  We’ve all been burned out and exhausted and not sure how to cope at some point in our lives. Whether it is looming deadlines, emotional demands, climate change, political battles, family drama––the result is the same. Sometimes juggling all the challenges and all the wonderful gifts in our lives can feel overwhelming and we’re not sure how to feel better. Here’s how: Yoga can help lower your stress levels and your blood pressure because it’s an excellent practice to calm your nervous system. By combining physical asanas or postures with Pranayama or controlled breathing techniques, yoga can have a profound impact on your nervous system. When we are stressed out, our adrenal glands are working overtime and we’re often in a state of “fight or flight,” which doesn’t allow for adequate rest and recovery. Over time, if we fall into this type of pattern of constantly being in heightened over-active mode, our bodies and minds begin to suffer. As you’ve heard over and over, yoga offers a three-pronged approach to improving your life: physical, mental, and spiritual. While taking your usual sweaty Vinyasa or Power class will definitely impact your mind and heart, sometimes slowing down a bit and taking a more mellow class can give you more of the mental stress relief you’re craving. Our parasympathetic nervous system is designed to soothe and lower our stress levels. Certain styles of yoga, like Yin and Restorative, emphasize postures that can reset your nervous system in minutes. Gentle Hatha classes also focus more on unwinding and relaxing you. Of course, you’re releasing tightness and tension from your muscles, but you’re also soothing your brain.