Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

Do you long to perform better on your yoga mat? Maybe you’ve seen an impressive peacock pose on Instagram and feel shameful that your pose doesn’t look nearly that graceful? Well, I know the feeling; I’ve been there, too. But listen up, y’all. Contrary to popular belief, yoga is NOT about how flexible you are, your cute leggings, or your ability to stand on one hand. Everybody is built differently, and in an ideal world, each pose would be specifically instructed to fit each body. For example, the shape of my particular hip sockets will never ever – not even after twenty MORE years of practicing yoga – allow me to come into a safe lotus pose. And currently, my massage practice takes all I’ve got out from my wrists and leaves nothing else for arm balances.

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine, it is lethal.” ~ Paulo Coelho While nestled in the mountains near Granby, Colorado on the YogaDownload.com retreat this August, a student called her week away a “pattern interrupt.” (That’s us in the picture, having a coaching session “al fresco”). And indeed, unless one’s regular life consisted of camping in teepees, being served three colorful vegetarian meals per day, receiving Thai massage in a tent in the meadow, hiking to waterfalls, outside yoga twice daily, sipping fine whiskey at the state’s smallest bar, and throwing an impromptu dance party with new friends, then the experience surely interrupted the daily routine. We all need such breaks in the routine.

Like many children of the mid-70s, Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, has been one of my all-time favorite picture books. As a kid I really identified with the main character, Max, who "makes mischief of one sort and another" and gets sent to bed without his dinner only to journey off into imaginary lands of monstrous wild things. Of course this got me thinking about my own wild things, my own shadow sides. While navigating the course of a new relationship these undesirable sides of myself have been "roaring their terrible roars and gnashing their terrible teeth" a little more than usual. My personal wild thing has been becoming easily offended and overly imaginative in a dooms-day sort of way. Needless to say, this childish, primitive, and undeveloped side of myself is nothing I am proud of.