Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

Whether you already like to meditate, are thinking about trying it, or are unsure of why it's useful, here are 5 reasons that taking the time to practice meditation, even for a few minutes a day, can have a profound impact on your quality of life and benefit your well-being.

What is it about being ambitious by nature? I am always playing with the prospect of somewhere else, or something else, something new. Seeking it has always been my mindset, for as long as I can remember. Until now. Finding balance between my self-determination and so much my brain space can handle? I have to work on getting my life sorted, get a health check, or my goal of drinking more water in this moment, and I can write a list of 20-something things I want to do, or I can try to schedule (more like squeeze in) back-to-back yoga classes into my daily schedule, and I can try to become a better photographer or writer or whatever it is yet all I’d like to do is sit still.

How do you energize? There isn’t a shortage of energizing yoga classes or sequences, but I often wonder what we are actually asking of our students and ourselves when we practice with this goal. Often an energizing yoga class is just fast and hard. When done a bit more mindfully, it can focus on poses or breath patterns that stimulate and excite the nervous system into a more focused, instead of frantic state. My essential energizing poses, which find their way into my energizing classes, tell the chest to expand and invite an empowered inhalation. They connect me to the ground but suggest a rise of vital energy or prana upwards.

This week we’ve got some great new classes designed to help you unleash your inner Shakti energy. Activate your connection to Shakti by mixing up your usual routine— change is good!

There are lots of benefits to exercise—improved muscle mass, better balance, higher metabolism. And certain specific kinds of exercises bring their own specific benefits. Take yoga: For people interested in a low-impact yet intense way to build strength and flexibility, yoga may be key. But there’s a subset of specific actions in yoga that offer even more benefits.

One of the most powerful benefits of practicing yoga is that it creates space for you to work through negative emotions and the drama that might be weighing like an anvil on your shoulders. We all have samskaras or karmic tendencies and energy patterns and often we can get stuck in obsessing about the same few thoughts. Over and over again. Usually the thoughts that hold us back—you know those with self-doubt and self-pity? By practicing yoga with an emphasis on flow, vibration, dissolution, you can fire up your tapas and alchemize all that sh*t into positive energy.

At first, the idea of writing might seem as daunting as yoga is to some people- How do you start? Are there any rules? What exactly do you do? There are always these unsure moments when you try something new. Think back to the first time you were given a mat to unroll onto the ground and step onto bare feet. The setup that once felt so foreign might become a native part of how you begin your yoga practice now.

For many, it is has become important to distinguish between “asana,” or the performing of postures, and yoga. Both those who are inclined towards yoga as a fitness regimen, and those who embrace it as more than just exercise, find it necessary to clarify the intent and purpose behind their practice. This compartmentalisation, while convenient and often useful, brings with it a dilemma, the resolution to which determines what is actually possible with yoga.

You are not one big backbend away from enlightenment. I hate to break it to you, but it is really the unglamorous work of getting up a bit earlier to do a daily practice, most of which probably isn’t instagram-worthy, that will keep you sane and healthy. It’s the accumulation of consistent practice over months and years that puts you on a path towards joy and freedom and not just one rockin’ class with a Coldplay soundtrack. If the experience of subtle energetics is part of your practice, then of course big poses have the possibility to connect you to transcendental states. But they can equally throw you off balance and out of the continual practice of balancing the energies that compose your physical, emotional, and spiritual states.

As a beginner, among the many confusions of learning yoga, is figuring out your stance for standing poses (meaning Warrior II, Side Angle, Triangle, etc.). How long from the front foot to the back foot? How much width between the heels? What are the angles the feet are turned? Is there an absolute right way? And it’s also highly probable you haven’t given this a second thought and just step your feet apart and do your best to make the shape. Here’s a step by step guide to keep it simple and increase the power of your postures.

One day during savasana (the relaxation pose at the end of a yoga class) I basically ‘woke’ up. In that moment, I felt completely content, possibly for the first time in my life. I began to clearly see the suffering I was putting myself through in relationship to my body and eating.

I love teaching beginners. Here are seven easy tips to help you survive your first yoga classes.

The absolute pressing question to me right now is “What am I willing to sacrifice?” This isn’t about some self righteous asceticism but rather about prioritising my yoga practice. I’ve been at it long enough to know that yoga, which for me means postures, flow, study, and meditation, makes me feel sane and happy. But I also work a lot, try to have an active social life, and need some sleep somewhere between all that. My schedule is often irregular. I say all this not because I think I’m exceptional, but rather because I think I’m just like everyone else.