Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

If you are a yoga teacher, coach, or leader in your field you might be interested in taking your clients and students into more intimate and deep experiences, such as a retreat. If you're a student who enjoys yoga retreat vacations in beautiful places around the world, or have always wanted to treat yourself to one, there are so many benefits for these kinds of getaways. 

Retreats are amazing because you get the opportunity to really dive deep and really connect with people. They can be however you want them to be, from super intense, workshop heavy, 8-hour per day session retreats, to relaxed, go with the flow, do whatever you want style of retreats with delicious food and wine. 

The cool thing about hosting retreats is as the host, you get to be the creator of every aspect, and as the retreat-goer, you get to choose what kind of retreat you want to experience.

As the host, you get to decide the schedule, the curriculum, and what the flow is going to look like. And, you will get paid for your time organizing and curating the event! If you’re a leader and looking to either begin hosting retreats or you’re an experienced retreat leader and you’re looking for some new destination ideas, here are some of the best places in North and Central America to host or enjoy your next retreat. 

Nicaragua

I put this at the top of my list because I’ve recently fallen in love with this country. It’s absolutely beautiful, with beaches and jungles that compete with those in Indonesia and Hawaii. But unlike Hawaii and Bali, Nicaragua is still totally untapped. Unfortunately for Nicaragua, they got a bad reputation back in 2018 during a short period of political unrest. Even though now the country is now very safe, the conflicts which occurred years ago are still making some hesitant to go to this magical country.

In a way, it’s lucky for us who are visiting as tourists. We get the opportunity to visit one of the most stunning countries in the world while there’s still minimal tourism, which likely won’t last for long. So definitely get down to this country while it’s still quiet and charming!

If you’re looking for jungle and gorgeous beach and surf vibes, I recommend staying at Treecasa. They’re nestled in the trees of San Juan del Sur -- with close and easy access to some of the best beaches in the world. If you’re looking for rustic, mountainous vibes, I recommend Nimaya Institute. 

Guatemala

Just north of Nicaragua, Guatemala comes in with a close second place. Guatemala, like Nicaragua, is still very much untapped. While there is a coast with beaches in Guatemala, I recommend taking your retreat up into the stunning volcanoes, nestled upon beaches on the giant and gorgeous lake, Lake Atitilan. 

This has been an up-and-coming place to host yoga retreats and for good reason. The lake is absolutely stunning and is surrounded by magnificent volcanoes. Those who have been here will agree that there’s just something about it. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but the energy feels electrifying, in the best of ways. 

There are multiple places to host your next retreat. Eagles Nest is large and beautiful -- perfect for hosting larger retreats. If you’re looking for something more quaint and mystical -- definitely check out The Mystical Yoga Farm. It’s charming and absolutely magical. 

Costa Rica

While there’s nothing unconventional about hosting your yoga retreat in Costa Rica, but there are some specific spaces that are super unconventional, which is why I included them in this list. 

It’s nestled at the very most southern point of Costa Rica, two hours south of the closest airport, only accessible from a very rocky, dirt road at a place called The Yoga Farm. The farm itself is only accessible by 4 wheel drive, (four-wheeler preferred!) as it sits at the top of a steep, crumbling hill. 

Sounds treacherous? Well, it’s quite the mission to get here, but once you do, you’re nestled in the most magical and rich jungle you’ve ever seen. The Yoga Farm is a permaculture farm and community living space that accommodates volunteers who want to learn more about permaculture, communal living, yoga, and oh yeah -- did I forget to mention there are some of the best waves in the world out front? 

I’ve spent the last couple of years teaching yoga in this space and while it’s an absolute mission to get here -- it’s totally worth it. If you’re open-minded to a more rustic style of living with things like compost toilets and all sorts of jungle creatures -- this place is for you.  

Mazunte, Mexico

The desert meets the ocean. Imagine cactus and desert flowers on white-sand beaches, with the most turquoise water you’ve ever seen. It’s absolutely stunning and unique sight to see. 

Settled down south in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mazunte is a magical, small little town nestled on some of the most gorgeous beaches I’ve ever seen. 

The town only has a couple of roads with shops and restaurants, and this desert coastal town is still very much undiscovered. While there’s no surfing here, there are gorgeous hikes, beaches, and vistas for you and your retreat guests to feel absolutely inspired by. 

I can recommend hosting your retreat at Hridaya. Here they are built to host retreats -- and they do all the time! They also offer really cool events, yoga teacher trainings, and accommodation for people who want to live and stay in a yogic atmosphere. 

Southern Utah

Last, I’ll list Southern Utah because it’s my home, and it’s absolutely stunning and definitely unconventional. While Utah has been growing a lot over the last 5 years, it’s still one of those states where people go “Utah? What’s there?”. 

Utah (specifically southern!) is absolutely stunning -- it’s a dry, red desert with red rock canyons, bright blue skies, desert sage, and plenty of outdoor activities to partake in through their 255 sunshine-filled days a year. With stunning National Parks such as Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Arches, there’s plenty of reason to take a visit to Southern Utah. 

Your yoga retreat could include various activities such as canyoneering, mountain biking, hiking, rock climbing, or practicing yoga overlooking incredible desert vistas. 

I 100% recommend hosting your retreat with Nama-stay. They’ve got beautiful accomodation close to Zion National Park, and they’re also an experienced guiding company, so if you want to do any tours within the park -- they’re your guys. 

By Brooke Nally

Brooke Nally (@brookenally) is a traveling yogi and writer currently based in Bali. She is the community manager for www.YogaTrade.com, with her personal goal being to help yoga teachers find their dream yoga jobs around the world.

JOIN AN AMAZING RETREAT ELSEWHERE IN THE WORLD IN EUROPE, WITH YOGADOWNLOAD, HERE!

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. 

Unfortunately, modern technology has impacted the way we hold ourselves - and not for the better. 

Sitting in front of a computer or phone for even a couple of hours, forces your muscles and ligaments to pull your spine up to an erect position. Because of this - these muscles and ligaments send messages to our brain to stimulate a response to change our posture.

Consider the scenario where we sit in front of our computer or tablet for 2 hours, our ligaments and muscles are straining to pull our spine back into an erect position.  As a result, the tissues start sending impulses to the brain, to stimulate a voluntary response to change our posture. When the brain eventually receives it all, our perception of back pain is triggered.

Poor posture due to technology can also lead to depression. A study on depression found that depressed subjects often keep their heads down due to low self-esteem and lack of energy. The solution was basketball! As well as having a goal to focus on - standing tall and looking up throughout the game forced their spines to straighten, improving breathing and oxygen flow around the body - and eventually improved the symptoms of depression.

Your phone can also cause poor posture which can lead to wrist problems. More and more of us spend more time on mobile devices, sometimes for hours at a time - and this is in addition to us spending too much time sitting at our desks. 

When we hold our phones, we’re rotating our wrists and stretching our thumbs out - making them perform rapid and repetitive movements, without necks and heads looking down at what might be an awkward and uncomfortable angle. Did you know that for every 2cm you lean your head forward, you are putting 5kg of extra strain on the joints of your spine - after a long time, this can actually do some serious damage to your upper back and neck.

As well as this workout our thumbs get on our phone, computer games, and typing also give our wrists, hands, and fingers a lot to do! Pain in these areas is a common occurrence to those who use a lot of technology, due to the repetitive movements that these devices encourage. What’s worse is that inventions like social media and video games are designed to keep you distracted so you might not realize the pain your body is in until serious damage is done.

In addition to all these posture difficulties and repetitive movements that cause strain, it’s also really easy to have accidents that can affect our bodies and our postures while using technology. People can sometimes be so engrossed in what they’re looking down at in their hands that they can’t see what’s literally going on in the world around them. Walking into lamp posts, doors, windows, dropping phones on their faces or feet - and worst of all car accidents and collisions. This is a seriously damaging way that technology can have a fatal effect on our bodies. While not necessarily a problem that can be resolved by better postures - it's still important to keep this issue in mind to avoid bumping into things!

With all the above-mentioned dangers on our bodies at large, there are a few solutions and preventative measures you can take to reduce the effects of stress on your body caused by all this tech.

A stand-up desk is a great solution to help ease the stress on your neck and back, and also helps you to avoid sitting too long, as you can stand up while you work on your computer or laptop. This might seem weird to start off with but you’ll notice the benefits in no time! If you can get a stand-up desk - make sure your screen, desk, and chair height are all set up in the optimum position for working. This will reduce the damage sitting down looking at a screen will do to your back and neck.

Having lots of breaks from using your technology - your computer, your tv, your mobile phone or your games console will help to break the repetitive cycle and reduce the stress on your hands, wrists, and necks. Try to get up and walk around for a few minutes at minimum every half an hour to give yourself and your body a break.

Stretching can also help to keep your blood flowing around your body and lengthen out those regularly contracted muscles. Try to stretch whenever you feel tightness or discomfort in your body.

In conclusion - while technology has aided our lives in so many different ways, we need to remember the importance of good posture and how our bodies were designed to stand and sit. Above anything else, remember, stand tall and look up.

By Amy Cavill

Want to get better posture with yoga? Try this program!

Mark your calendars for the sixth annual International Yoga Day! This relatively new holiday, established in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly in 177 member countries, celebrates the value of yoga for physical, emotional, and mental health. In 2021, June 21st is also the solstice - the longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere and the shortest in the Southern hemisphere. This day is a turning point for the entire planet and a sacred day in many cultures. Perfect to celebrate yoga!

Each International Yoga Day features a different theme. As the world begins to emerge from the pandemic, the chosen theme for 2021 is Yoga for Wellbeing, stressing the benefits of yoga for stress relief and overall mental health. The emphasis on mindful movement and deliberate breathing patterns in yoga benefits not just your physical body, but enhances mood, relieves stress, alleviates insomnia, and aids in managing situational depression. Even if your intention is centered on increasing physical strength, mobility, and balance, you garner the mental benefits too. 

Our lives are forever changed after this past year. It’s a simple fact. Many of us experienced enormous levels of anxiety, stress, fear, loss, and anger. When we react from these emotions, our breathing becomes shallow, our heart works overtime, and the stress hormone cortisol skyrockets. When our physiological system is out of control, it’s tough to remain grounded, clear, and balanced. Yoga helps positively impact our nervous systems, which in turn helps us step out of the fight or flight response. We can stop simply reacting and start operating from a more stable place. 

This week, focus toward on the mental health benefits of your practice. Feeling good in your body is the first step to feeling happy in your mind. When you step onto the mat and set your intention for the day, choose to direct it toward finding that intangible feeling of freedom and softness and strength within. Remind yourself that your breathing patterns are a tool. Your physical movement is a tool. Your gaze, intention, and thoughts are powerful tools for living in the present moment. Yoga works. 

Yoga Sutra 2:46 Sthira Sukham Asanam translates to the posture should be stable and comfortable, a balance of effort and ease. When we find that balance in a physical pose, we find the corresponding mental state as well. This week, we celebrate International Yoga Day by featuring some traditional breathing practices, a yoga philosophy talk, and some feel-good asana practices. Enjoy these classes and feel healthier inside and out. 

1. Pradeep Teotia - Nadi Shodhana: Alternate Nostril Breathing

2. Bhavani Maki - Introduction to the Patanjali Yoga Sutra

3. Mark Morford - Surya Devotion Flow

4. Jack Cuneo - Asthanga Modified Primary Series

Reusing the food from last night's dinner is a regular thing for me, but often I don’t feel like having exactly the same thing several days in a row. So sometimes I get a little creative and many of my recipes are developed this way. Today's featured leftover – quinoa. I used black quinoa, but whether you have a white, red, or mixed one – they all work well, and I am sure the recipe would also work with leftover barley, bulgur, or any other grains. 

I always use onion and celery in all sorts of patties, and these are not an exception. In case you don’t like them, just omit and feel free to add some garlic, for example. I am not a garlic lover and this is why it is almost never used in my recipes, but since we all cook for ourselves, it makes sense to trust our own tastebuds. 

To serve, I used some other leftovers – marinated red onions and as an extra element, I roasted the outside leaves of cauliflower with salt and a little oil. Roasted cabbages are so so delicious. Probably most people have had kale chips but maybe roasting the outer leaves of cauliflower is not as common. I assure you, it is worth a try. As the leaves have stalks, they will not be as crispy all the way through as kale chips, but the stalks stay rather chewy while the thinner leaves are deliciously crispy. To roast the leaves I preheated the oven to 400-degrees with the fan on. I massaged the leaves with a little oil and salt and placed them on the baking sheet in a single layer. After about 7 minutes in the oven, I flipped the leaves over and cooked for another 5 minutes. Yum!  

Cauliflower-Quinoa Patties

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Yields: 16 patties

Ingredients:

1 cup of cooked quinoa (I used black)

1 head of cauliflower

1 onion

2 stalks of celery

3 tbsp chickpea flour

1 tsp ground cumin

½ tsp ground coriander

Salt and pepper, to taste

Oil for frying

Instructions:

Cook the cauliflower until soft.

In the meantime, chop the onion and celery and mix with the quinoa and spices.

Drain the cauliflower, mash up and mix with the quinoa mix.

Add the chickpea flour and mix well.

Heat a little oil on a frying pan.

As the mixture is still warm, be careful and form little patties between your hands. 

Fry until golden, 2-3 minutes, flip over and fry from the other side.

Serve hot or cold.

By Kadri Raig

Kadri is a food blogger and yoga teacher from Estonia. She loves to spend time in the kitchen, but most of her recipes are simple and don’t take more than 20 minutes of active cooking time. She thinks that everybody can find time to cook healthy food at home, it is just a question of planning. "I work in an office full time, teach yoga 7-8 hours a week and write a blog. So if I manage to cook most of my meals, then so do you!" Connect with Kadri and enjoy many more of her delicious healthy recipes on her website here: www.kahvliga.ee.

Enjoy this FREE 25-Minute yoga class from home, before your delicious plaintain nachos!

25-Minute Full Body Yoga with Keith Allen

"The more you open your heart to others, the more your life becomes joyful." One who is open and balanced in their chest area and heart space is more open to freely give and receive love to others and have a more loving relationship with yourself. When we are depressed or closed off, our posture reflects it with a more hunched over and closed off posture. 

More of us are increasingly spending hours upon hours every day staring at our mobile phones, with our heads bent, eyes down, and our posture like a croissant. This is a similar stance we adopt when we are sad, depressed, or disappointed. We make ourselves appear small because we are sad – yet it’s also true we can feel sad because we’re making ourselves appear small. Social psychologists call it embodied cognition. This basically means our mind influences our body, but our body – especially our stance – greatly influences our mind too.

Fortunately, embodied cognition works positively as well, which is essentially what yoga asanas are in their essence, ways to use our bodies, to make our minds feel a certain way. We put our bodies into strong, empowered, open-hearted confident shapes on the yoga postures, our minds will feel these qualities increase as well. 

To bravely open your heart, these 5 common postures are powerful and can undo all the time staring down at our phones, have us standing proud, tall, and be open to giving and receiving love. It's recommended you spend at least 5 deep breaths in each of these poses to 

Here are 5 yoga poses to make your heart happier:

Cobra

This posture is simple and effective in opening your shoulders and chest while alleviating and lengthening your lower back. Keep your legs strong and neck long and let breath into the front of your heart.

Upward Facing Dog

This posture is a layer deeper than Cobra and more advanced. Note that Cobra is still powerful and to avoid Upward Facing Dog if you have any issues in your lower back. Otherwise, in this pose, keep your legs strong, heart-lifting, and breathe into the center of your chest.

Bow

This pose works against gravity, which means that even while you powerfully open your heart and shoulders, you also strengthen your back. Kick strongly and let your legs be the driving force in this posture.

Wheel

This is a reset for all of the time we spend hunched over. Wheel pose not only lengthens and stretches your entire spine, but it is also a particularly wonderful pose to lengthen and open your neck.

Camel

Gravity helps open your heart in this posture, which means you can deeply open the space around your heart. Continue to lift your heart toward the sky, while you lengthen out of your lower back.

If you're feeling closed off or depressed, remember that you can work your body to help uplift your mind. Backbends in yoga open your heart and in turn, open you up to love more. Enjoy these five, as well as many other heart-chakra opening postures.

By Nicki Mateo

Nicki Mateo is an independent artist and author, who enjoys pushing boundaries, yoga and meditation, creative energy, and breaking down stereotypes. 

Kristin Gibowicz - Healthy Backs: Nurturing Hope Through Backbends

Cicily Carter - Heart Chakra Yoga: Backbend Flow

“Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point,” which translates to: the heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart." - Blaise Pascal

This quote by famous mathematician Blaise Pascal is from 1669––talk about ancient wisdom! Even a genius steeped in reason and mathematics recognized that often the answer lies in listening to the heart and emotions, as opposed to relying solely on the brain. This week we’re focused on balancing your heart energy.

In yoga, we emphasize opening and balancing the Anahata (Heart) chakra as being vital to feeling our best. The seven main chakras are energy systems running along our Sushumna Nadi, in our subtle body, the blueprint of our physical body. The fourth chakra, Anahata, is the recognized seat of love and compassion and translates to “Unstruck.” Its essence is selflessness, expanding beyond your ego, and learning to release fear and forgive those who have harmed you. 

The heart houses the two primary emotions of love and fear. When Anahata is out of balance, physical issues may arise in the chest region, including problems with the heart and arteries, lungs and respiratory system. Sometimes a heart attack or lung disease can stem from emotional pain. Fear of pain manifests in a protective posture of rounded shoulders, which further closes off our heart within our chest. 

Emotional issues manifest when we cannot forgive the people who caused us the most hurt. Our human experience includes love and pain. When you’ve been hurt, part of the healing process is self-protection. But if we aren’t careful, fear supersedes love, blocking our emotions, and disconnecting from our hearts. Taking the time to tune into your feelings and listen to your heart will help fortify your connection to yourself and to others.

Releasing old resentments and hurts which may be blocking us from expressing our emotions isn’t easy. Courage and love are often used interchangeably––being vulnerable is one of the greatest acts of strength. We face the choice to act from a place of bravery or operate from a place of fear countless times every day. To step into our strength, we need to take the risk and be vulnerable. 

By practicing heart openers and strengtheners as well as learning to breathe deeply and fully, we create an open heart. Take time to strengthen your own heart and forgive yourself for what may be blocking you from being your most free and compassionate. This week, use these specially designed practices to balance your heart center. 

Kristin Gibowicz - Healthy Backs: Nurturing Hope Through Backbends

Cicily Carter - Heart Chakra Yoga: Backbend Flow

Happy Good Flow with Pradeep Teotia

Pleasure Flow with Kylie Larson

If you know us here at the Conscious Cleanse, you know we love our green smoothies! We believe that there’s no snack more versatile and nutritious than a freshly blended smoothie.

Ranging from the protein-packed peanut butter and banana smoothie to the light and fruity blueberry & lemon smoothie to the palette-awakening cilantro & lime smoothie, these blended beauties are a simple, delicious, and customizable way to chug nutritious foods.

Above all, however, is the smoothie’s unmatched ability to help reduce food waste in your kitchen. While you may not delight in munching on strawberry tops or lemon peels on their own, tossed in a blender, they keep your smoothie healthy and your compost empty.

So we’ve teamed up with our friends at Abeego to offer you a delicious round-up of zero waste smoothie recipes!

We love Abeego and their commitment to creating a product that’s good for you, for your food, and for the planet. Their products are designed to help your fresh foods breathe and last longer, in addition to being 100% plastic-free, reusable, and biodegradable.

Whether you’re after breakfast smoothie recipes, smoothie recipes for kids, or simply looking to up your blended fruit game, we’ve put together a list of some yummy waste-free smoothie recipes to help you reduce your food waste.

Conscious Cleanse’s Blueberry Lemon Smoothie Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups cashew milk
1 TB. chia seeds
3 large romaine lettuce leaves
1 cup spinach
small handful of fresh Italian parsley (flat-leaf) – stems and all!
¼ tsp. lemon zest
Juice of ½ lemon (wrap the other half in Abeego for safekeeping)
2 cups frozen blueberries

Instructions:

Combine all ingredients in a high-speed blender and blend until smooth.

*This is one of the many delicious recipes in our new cookbook, The Conscious Cleanse Cookbook! Grab your copy.

Toni Desrosiers’ Strawberry Mint Smoothie Recipe

Yields: 1 smoothie

Ingredients:

2 cups your choice of milk
1 TB. hemp hearts or chia seeds
1 cup kale
small handful of mint leaves – stems and all!
1 cup frozen strawberries – tops and all!
½ banana

Instructions:

Combine all ingredients in a high-speed blender and blend until smooth. 

More Ingredients to Reduce Food Waste With Smoothies:

Celery leaves
Cauliflower stalk
Kiwi skins
Cucumber skin
Kale Stems 

Climbing aboard the smoothie train means purchasing heaps of greens and fruits on a weekly basis. With Abeego food wrap, you can enjoy the same freshness of your precious smoothie ingredients on Friday as you did on Monday. 

Burrito-wrap your bundles of kale or spinach in a large or giant Abeego food wrap to keep them spirited and nutritious for this Brain Boosting Smoothie Bowl. Grab your Abeego food wrap and wrap your halved lemon, apple, or leftover strawberry tops for an amazing Apple & Strawberry Smoothie.

With love,

Jo & Jules

Jo Schaalman and Jules Peláez are co-authors of two books The Conscious Cleanse: Lose Weight, Heal Your Body and Transform Your Life in 14 Days, a best-selling, step-by-step guide to help you live your most vibrant life and their brand new The Conscious Cleanse Cookbook! Together they’ve led thousands of people through their online supported cleanse through their accessible and light-hearted approach. They’ve been dubbed “the real deal” by founder and chief creative director Bobbi Brown, of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, beauty editor of the TODAY show.

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."

Card's solution is a daily walk. He writes, "Don't spare any time for an hour's walk before work. You'll probably write a little less in the time you have left, but you'll notice that you've improved.

Card is not the only one praising the benefits of walking. Read on to learn about several famous writers who were also lovers of walking, and how daily walks can enhance your creativity.

In antiquity, there was a proverbial expression reminding us of the importance of walking - Solvitur Ambulando. It means - the solution in walking. An expression supposedly authored by the Greek philosopher Diogenes, when asked if the action was real, and then got up and went. The phrase was soon picked up as a variant of the description that walking energizes us and helps us think through problems.

For many, walking is an integral part of a healthy workday or any creative process. Charles Dickens loved hiking. He writes “So much of my traveling is done on foot, that if I cherished betting propensities, I should probably be found registered in sporting newspapers under some such title as the Elastic Novice, challenging all eleven stone mankind to competition in walking. My last special feat was turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise, and walking thirty miles into the country to breakfast… My walking is of two kinds: one, straight on end to a definite goal at a round pace; one, objectless, loitering, and purely vagabond.”

In 1851 Henry David Thoreau gave a delightful lecture on walking at Concord High School. He noted: “I think that I could not have maintained my health and good spirits if I had not spent four hours, and sometimes more, a day walking through the forests, hills, fields, feeling completely free from all obligations...”. When the traveler asked William Wordsworth's servant to show the master's research, he replied “Here is his library, and he does his research on the street”.

Despite single cases of praise from these creatives about the benefits of walking, scientific research has also proven their claims to be correct. Daily walks are a wonderful way to improve your health and get inspired.

How walking will fuel your creativity

A recent study conducted by Cambridge University in England with 334,000 men and women from across Europe showed that brisk walking or a regular 20-minute walk was sufficient to minimize the risk of premature death. Walking also helps relieve stress and alleviate symptoms of depression. To put it another way, taking a brisk morning walk leads to a longer and healthier life, as well as creating the mental space to spend more time in creative endeavors, doing good for the world, and with the people you care about.

But besides the obvious health benefits, walking can make us smarter. In 2011, scientific research showed that people who walked 40 minutes a day three times a week during a year increased the activity of the hippocampus (a part of the brain) and also improved memory.

An interesting study by Stanford University found that creative thinking is activated during walks and is active even for some time afterward. A study found that walking indoors or outdoors equally improves creative inspiration. Walking itself, not the surroundings, is the main factor. The level of creativity in people who walked was significantly higher than in those who sat all the time. People walking indoors on a treadmill in front of a bare wall and those walking outdoors solved twice as many creative problems as people just sitting down.

The study also found that the "creative juices" continue to work even when a person returns to a sitting position after a walk.

If you're struggling with feelings of apathy or procrastination, a good brisk walk will be a great stimulus to your brain activity and get you back in the flow. This is another one of the helpful life hacks that can help boost your creativity.

For those who have a busy life, it can be difficult to set aside time for creativity, let alone time for the daily half-hour walk. But these thirty minutes may well be broken up into shorter intervals: for example, fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen in the evening. 

Regardless of how much time you have to walk, know that there are benefits and inspiration from simple going for a little stroll. Enjoy!

Helen Wilson is a professional writer and her main topics are about self-improvement, and education. She studies psychology and health.

PRACTICE MEDITATION FROM HOME BEFORE OR AFTER YOUR WALK!

While yoga originated from India with suggested regions, including the Indus Valley Civilization around the 3300-1900 BCE, it has expanded and grown all over the world.

Today, you will find yoga practitioners worldwide, and as a group of mental, physical, and spiritual disciplines, yoga has incredible diversity to offer to all those who desire a healthy lifestyle. For some, yoga goes even deeper, and avid practitioners would tell you that yoga is not just exercise but also a way of life.

According to a recent yoga study, over 55 million people around the world started practicing yoga for the first time in 2020. Furthermore, around 44% of all yoga practitioners spend time doing yoga at least 2-3 times per week and spend an average of $90 per month on yoga. Moreover, 37% of yoga enthusiasts have children that also enjoy practicing yoga with their parents.

Simply put, more and more people are rolling out their yoga mats, and it doesn’t seem to just be a passing trend. More people are realizing there are vast benefits to a regular yoga practice, and making it a priority to practice.

That said, for newcomers, there are still a lot of untrue myths about yoga. Let’s take a look at some common yoga myths and debunk them.

All Teachers and Styles of Yoga Offer the Same Thing

Yoga is too broad and comprehensive a body of knowledge to be mastered completely by a single yoga specialist. In fact, many yogi experts often focus on several types of yoga types and not all of them have the same teaching method. Hence, if you think a single guru could offer you all the knowledge of yoga, it's not really true or possible. Some of the common styles include these below, but note there are countless styles, with new ones being born each year:

Anusara Yoga – modern yoga, focus on mind-body-heart connection

Ashtanga Yoga – Eight Limb Path, linking breath to movement

Bikram Yoga – sequence of set poses in a sauna-like room

Hatha Yoga – focuses on physical postures and holding the physical postures of yoga

Iyengar Yoga – focuses on alignment with detailed and precise instruction

Jivamukti Yoga – infused with Hindu spiritual teachings

Kundalini Yoga – equal parts spiritual and physical

Prenatal Yoga – tailored for women who are moms to be

Restorative Yoga – focuses on body relaxation

Vinyasa Yoga – one of the most athletic types of yoga

Yin Yoga – slow-paced style yoga with seated postures and long holds

Yoga is Bound to Religion

There are people out there who consider yoga as only appropriate if you are bound to a particular religion. While there is no doubt that yoga shares a wide variety of practices and goals found in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, yoga is more akin to science that unites everyone under the banner of wellbeing.

Yoga is, therefore, free from all sorts of discrimination of caste, creed, color, race, or ethnicity. It offers the means to attain wellbeing and integrate the human body with the mind and the spirit. 

Flexibility is a Prerequisite

A lot of social media for yoga makes people think that yoga is only for flexible people. This is far from the actual truth. While social media feeds these days about yoga are overflowing with incredibly athletic-looking people in hard to try poses, this isn’t what yoga is all about. 

In fact, yoga is for everyone, and especially for those who consider themselves inflexible. The entire focus of yoga is to help you accomplish flexibility in your body and your mind and soul. Plus, there are various asanas out there that you can readily try while simply being seated. 

Yoga is not a Workout 

This happens when people know too little about something or are simply quick to judge a book by its cover. Yoga can actually be a rigorous workout, that will have you covered in sweat, and challenge you. Plus, yoga does more than burn calories, it also tones to your muscles. It is a full body, mind, and spirit workout.

Yoga is Not for Asthmatics

Some people believe that yoga can be bad for those who have asthma. However, there are many styles of yoga that actually help people suffering from asthma.

There are numerous asanas and pranayama practices out there that can truly assist people with asthma to overcome their ailments and gain incredible physical and mental strength from the practice of yoga. This myth is hurting those who can actually benefit from yoga practice. 

Yoga is Only Physical  Postures

While it’s quite hard to deny that yoga postures do look incredibly beautiful, the true practice of yoga is about the mind and elevating your consciousness at a much deeper level. Yoga is a unifier of your mind, emotions, and body. It helps you find happiness and contentment in life, reduces stress, and clears your mind to realize your goals. It is great for unwinding and enabling you to find peace and tranquility in yourself. While it is a mainly physical practice, meditation and breathing exercises are yoga also.

Yoga is for the Young

Yoga is not just limited to any particular age bracket. In fact, there are many yoga for seniors classes that focus specifically on the health and wellbeing of older people. When someone only thinks about the asanas in yoga, this misconception is bound to rise. Yoga is for everyone, irrespective of age. 

There are examples of people more than 60 years of age start practicing yoga who find their way to perform complex asanas, including the likes of Shirshasana and Sarvangasana with relative ease and perfection. Practice does make perfect, and yoga is not different in that aspect.    

Yoga is Only for Women

Lastly, there is this misconception that yoga is only good for women. While predominantly yoga is practiced by women more however men are quickly debunking this claim. In the US, around 25% to 35% of yoga practitioners are men, and their numbers are growing every year. Plus, you also have yogis and yoga experts who teach yoga classes for men.

Yoga is a worldwide phenomenon, and by the 1980s, it became widely popular in many western societies. However, as things become popular and well-known amongst the masses, myths and misconceptions about the practice grew as well. 

The above are some of the common myths of yoga that are actually not true at all. With any luck, I wish that you see yoga as a complete system for all of humankind that is not bound by race, creed, or gender.

By Liza Brooke

Liza Brooke currently works as a devoted Lifestyle Counselor at CrowdWriter UK. She is quite fond of indulging herself in popular culture, including anime, movies, music, and video games. During her free time, she likes to doodle, create wall art, and practice mindful yoga.

Who is ready for an excellent fitness bootcamp program with all the guesswork and decision making handled for you? Wedding season is upon us and if you’re getting married, you want to feel and look your best for your special day. Whether you’re a bride-to-be or simply someone who is ready for a challenge for your body, mind, and spirit, this week we’re here to deliver.

We all want to feel our best, but sometimes it can be overwhelming deciding what workout to do when and what is the most impactful way to get stronger, more flexible, and emotionally balanced. It’s easy to start off with the best of intentions and then other commitments and responsibilities knock you off your path. This fitness bootcamp is specially crafted to give you excellent results in an efficient manner, while also making it easy to stay on track.

Here’s how:

Physically: Each day you’ll strengthen your muscles, enhance your mobility, and sweat out toxins. You’ll challenge yourself with everything from Pilates to Barre to Yoga and Fitness Fusion workouts, which creates something fitness experts call “muscle confusion.” 

Our bodies are smart and grow accustomed to the regular practices we do every day which can cause results to plateau. To progress and continue garnering benefits, it’s vital to mix up your workouts. We’ve organized the classes in a specific order to maximize your results in a short period of time. Whether you’re walking down the aisle or just looking for a fun challenge, you’ll feel confident and empowered.

Emotionally: Yoga and physical exercise release endorphins, which are the “happiness” hormones your body produces in response to stress. Endorphins are an excellent natural pain reliever and some medical experts compare them to a shot of morphine to the body. If you’re planning a wedding, you know that all the planning, family dynamics, and reality of a major life change can add up to a sense of overwhelm. Daily movement helps you process and release emotions. No need to stress over what workout to do: we’ve done it for you! 

Mentally: Your thought patterns will benefit too. Yoga Sutra 1.2: Citta Vritti Nirodha, defines yoga as the practice of learning to control the direction of our thoughts. If you have a meditation practice or are working on establishing one, you know how challenging it can be to sit still and focus. Physical asana or postures were created in part to calm the mind enough to be able to sit still and be present. This special program utilizes that philosophy to help keep you focused on the now instead of worrying about the future. 

Ready to try it? We’ve assembled classes from many of your favorite YogaDownload.com teachers. All you need to do is press play. 

My secret to inventing new recipes – being lazy and not having certain food groups at home. I realize that for most people baking bread does not qualify as being lazy, but if you ask me, spending 20 minutes on bread baking requires less energy compared to running out to the store to get bread. So this recipe was invented on one of those Saturday mornings when I was all out of baked goods, was in the mood for bread, and simultaneously I needed to use up some coconut milk in my fridge. 

The two main ingredients here are coconut milk and plain flour. The recipe is also extremely easy to remember because flour and coconut milk are required in equal amounts. Add in a dash of baking powder for extra fluff and some seasonings and you are almost done!

On this particular Saturday morning, the coconut flatbreads were a part of breakfast, but they are also awesome sides for curries, stews, soups – whatever you usually eat with a side of bread as they are really good for mopping up the sauce. And feel free to play around with the seasoning – my favorite combo for many dishes is green onion, coriander, and chili flakes and I use them here too, but feel free to go crazy and invent your own combinations – turmeric, lemongrass, caraway seeds…..options are endless!

Simple & Easy Coconut Flatbreads

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Yields: 4

Ingredients:

5 oz all-purpose flour

5 oz coconut milk

½ tsp baking powder

Salt to taste

Extras – chopped green onions, coriander, chili flakes

A tiny bit of oil

Instructions:

Chop the herbs you are using and mix all the ingredients to a rough dough. No need to knead the dough, only mix until it comes together.

Heat the pan to medium-high heat.

Divide the dough to 4, roll one piece at a time to a ball, and squeeze it flat with oily hands.

Bake for about 2-3 minutes on each side.

Keep warm under a kitchen towel until you are ready to eat them.

By Kadri Raig

Kadri is a food blogger and yoga teacher from Estonia. She loves to spend time in the kitchen, but most of her recipes are simple and don’t take more than 20 minutes of active cooking time. She thinks that everybody can find time to cook healthy food at home, it is just a question of planning. "I work in an office full time, teach yoga 7-8 hours a week and write a blog. So if I manage to cook most of my meals, then so do you!" Connect with Kadri and enjoy many more of her delicious healthy recipes on her website here: www.kahvliga.ee.

Enjoy this FREE 25-Minute yoga class from home, before your delicious plaintain nachos!

25-Minute Full Body Yoga with Keith Allen

Besides being the “butt” of many jokes, the gluteus maximus is the largest and most superficial of the three gluteal muscles. It makes up a large portion of the shape and appearance of the hips. Its size is unique to humans; no other mammal has such an expansive rear area, as pointed out in the classic Trail Guide to the Body. Perhaps this is why we are apt to laugh about it?

All jokes aside, it’s important for us to give attention to this major muscle in order to maintain healthy posture and a happy lower back. When the gluteus maximus is unhealthy, adhered or possessing swarms of trigger points, it can start a game of tug-of-war with the lower back muscles, especially quadratus lumborum (QL).

The gluteus maximus is often referred to a “the sleeping giant” due to the fact that this large muscle, which has the potential to be the strongest in the body, is usually weak and misused. Let’s get familiar with some of the specifics of the gluteus maximus (GM) to understand why this is.

The GM originates on the outer surface of the ilium behind posterior gluteal line and posterior third of iliac crest lumbar fascia, lateral mass of sacrum, sacrotuberous ligament and coccyx. It inserts into the gluteal tuberosity of femur and the iliotibial (IT) band. Its most powerful action is to cause the body to regain the erect position after stooping, by drawing the pelvis backward, being assisted in this action by the biceps femoris (long head), semitendinosus, semimembranosus, and adductor magnus. The lower part of the muscle also acts as an adductor and external rotator of the limb. The upper fibers fire up to abduct the hip joints.

Therefore, a tight gluteus maximus can also create the too common “duck feet” that present along with the extreme external rotation of the hip. The GM, so helpful when walking, standing or running, gradually loses tone when sitting too much, especially with poor posture. Or modern chair-laden lifestyle causes inhibition and delayed activation of the gluteal muscles which in time leads to weakness. When the GM is weak the hamstrings and low back muscles must compensate.

Just because a muscle is tight and short does not mean that it is strong. As a massage therapist in the exercise-obsessed state of Colorado, I see many clients with overly tight and adhered gluteus maximus. Many tight GMs are still weak because they haven’t been trained properly, or they have been inhabited by the aforementioned curse of the chair. Even strong and properly utilized gluteals are too often bound tight, restricting the optimal range of motion of the surrounding joints.

It wasn’t until I heard Jill Miller teach the use of Yoga Tune Up® balls to create “fluffy butt” that I understood that we can have gluteal tissues that are both super strong AND relaxed and hydrated. To the Rocky Mountain athletic set who are convinced that “buns of steel” is the ideal; I am here to tell you to trade in your buns of steel for “fluffy butt.” In the end, your rear end will thank you!

By Elise Fabricant

Along with teaching for YogaDownload, Elise works one-on-one with clients around the globe to help them up-level their energy, turn their new healthy behaviors into habits that last, and discover how best to express their gifts to the world. Elise nurtures her creative streak by producing online courses on a balanced, purposeful lifestyle. Along with giving massage to Denverites, Elise also teaches group yoga classes in central Denver. Elise feels blessed to be able to combine her love of travel with her work by taking yoga and health coaching to workshops and retreat centers around the world. Connect with Elise on her website.

Explore the meaning of yoga with one of Elise's amazing yoga classes now!

Open Your Heart to Gratitude with Elise Fabricant

Listen to the Full Audio Reading.

This moon and lunar eclipse will be a spark of lightning from the depths of the unknown. It is both the Tower and the World card in Tarot. Sudden shifts to bring completion and awakened fulfillment. Intuition will be lit, and the energy is ripe to find divine within current realities. This moon will illuminate how we can create our own liberation from within the moment and what is in existence. 

This eclipse will reflect the eclipse from December 14, 2020. It will bring into light the depths of the worries, concerns, and aspects of desire from that period. This is a very revealing lunar eclipse occurring in Scorpio. The very nature will show secrets revealed and will call upon greater opening within the collective consciousness as it pertains to materialization of the self from the self.

The moon will eclipse in Saturn's Nakshatra of Anuradha, with Saturn in retrograde in it’s own sign; this marks a heavy unveiling of illusion. There is a strong mercurial energy occurring on the back end and the aim is to create harmony, peace, and stabilize from the depths of being.

The themes that challenge your security will naturally be brought to light. It will also reveal what order and stability must be altered to achieve liberation and harmony within the inner self.  As I mentioned in the New Moon, be mindful of creating conflict, and unnecessary stirring. This is a natural unconscious effect of loosening the energy that lies within current structures of relations that have already manifested. Be mindful with your words as Mars is in Gemini’s house at a strong position it can create endings from verbalization. It can also create endings into new wisdom and expansion of the heart.

Choose your fire wisely. An important aspect of this lunation is the placement that shows unconditional love.

Saturn in essence is non-conditioned. It is working to alter how manifestation is known from the inner self and will reveal what lies beyond our prescribed thoughts.

This full moon lunar eclipse will pull Saturn’s influence to show inner restrictions and outer implications that stand against the fullness of love. It is a creative realization within and from the self, that will rework beyond the mind and realms of time. This offers immense healing and transformative potential to recreate, self, world, and desires to be boundless and rooted in love. An important aspect of this lunation will play on relationships, there will be mirroring and the ability to see what projections are being mirrored throughout all relationships. An important aspect to note is any longing outside oneself will show here. Either needing from another, or needing for conditions and aspects to be a specific way to define love, inner self, or outer world. 

This will further awaken into what has been created within the relationship structures within self, love, divine, and how we see others in our created reality. This placement offers revelations throughout many ways of relating. It will work to open the purification and lead us individual and collective to greater harmony, the natural state. It will stir the collective into higher consciousness.

Harness your power, this eclipse possesses strong Kundalini energy stirring within Earth and our collective consciousness. What is within you is also arising around you. This Kundalini power has incredible healing powers, but also marks the way inner potentials will be fed with divine shakti.

How you allocate your energy, your inner resources will come to light. Many will experience stark shifts in consciousness and personal resolve will be challenged so you may discern what truly matters most. In addition, this shift will move out that which shakes your inner resolve.

Turmoil must be managed, and honesty owned. If you have created inner turmoil or conflict within your inner and outer world it will be revealed. Transmute this with love. The reflective aspects from the December 14th, 2020 eclipse are working to complete a cycle. It will illuminate the mental impressions at that time, and offer immense healing.

Timeless healing, meaning the ability to reorientate memories, experiences that have impressed upon current experiences and self-awareness. Mars has a special role in this Saturn heavy eclipse. He will reflect through relationships the bond tethered through time, and beyond time. Mars will carry courage, and wisdom into action. It is important to note that the planetary placements are heavily emphasizing heaven on earth in real time. Higher planes of existence into earthly life. As in many eclipses Mars and Saturn influences will cause swift shifts and tower moments to awaken self and bring forth more fulfilling embodiment of self as the creative power and more fulfilling relating within life. 

This lunation is awakening not the form or what the form symbolizes, but what is awakened, evolved, and realized within the self during the manifestation process. Godliness-divine creator and divine love as the source. Assimilation is key. Assimilation on all levels, will sustain naturally what serves and transforms. You must go beyond the present view.

Scorpio’s hidden meaning, is the unseen realms, the energy and creative power before form, and embodying form. When this is understood, the energy of the eclipse will work to unfold the potency of Kundalini, of divine feminine, and the higher potentials that are within. 

The eclipse is urging us to understand the mentality, the vibrations beyond form, and equally the self beyond desire, and personality. The unconditional love that lives within, but also to become closer to the unconditional self. This eclipse will warp us beyond time, this point reconciles past and future from within. Dispel ignorance is to own your true self. Emotional ebbs and flows will be high for a week before and after the eclipse. Any physical changes, alterations to a personal goal, plans, and how to organize things will become clear during this time. Polarity in emotions must be released.

Sorrow and happiness must be treated with the same equanimity. This will work with Martian energy to bring heaven on earth, and open one up to their true unconditional nature. It will aid in owning self and work with deeper spiritual forces that are occurring during this moon. Emotional stirring will aid in releasing attachment dependent on external satisfaction. This creates more room for divine grace to flow. Illusions of the mind must be exposed. See the truth.

Release natural blocks within the mind tethered to seeking and unrealistic expectations. This is reflected in all relationships. Lean into all that is being shown, hold nothing, and know all shades of emotions, and thoughts are leading the self back to truth. Remember to see beyond expectations, so you may learn from disappointments. They are showing where attachment lives, and where equanimity needs to be applied. 

Be well my loves,

Geenie (Gemma) Celento
For a personal astrology reading, book here.

Geenie, also known as Gemma, is an Ayurvedic Practitioner, astrologer, and student of the Sri Vidya Tantric lineage. Her classes on YogaDownload are often inspired by astrology and aimed to guide each student to unfold a deeper connection from within. Her diverse knowledge and continued studies in the spiritual sciences can be felt in her class offerings. With humble devotion Gemma weaves the wisdom of yogic practices into accessible and impactful mat experiences. 

Practice the Yoga & Astrology series with Geenie now!

We’ve all faced the dilemma: you have a limited amount of time to move your body and relieve stress. Do you practice yoga or do strength training? Problem solved: Yoga sculpt. If you’ve never tried a yoga fusion class, here’s your chance to garner all the benefits of a strength workout blended with the mindfulness of yoga. 

These hybrid workouts can combine yoga with weights, barre, Pilates, HIIT, cardio––the variety is part of the fun! In these special classes, the emphasis is on getting stronger and sculpted, but also staying mindful and maintaining mobility. It’s one of the most efficient and effective ways to ensure that you prevent injury and enhance your strength, balance, and flexibility.

Here are a few reasons we love these yoga fitness fusion classes: 

Yoga Sculpt Workouts Boost Your Mood and Elevate Your Energy Levels. 

We’re all emerging from what may arguably be one of the most challenging period of our lives. Over the last year you may fallen into a rut with your yoga practice and your workouts. Trying something new helps stimulate your brain and gets your heart pumping and muscles singing. These classes move non-stop, stimulating your feel-good hormones or endorphins. Simply put, they are fun! 

Fusion Classes Save Time 

As the world opens up, suddenly our schedules are busier and our time to reset and recharge is becoming more limited. If you don’t want to miss out on your yoga or your fitness routine, a Yoga Sculpt class will allow you to stay on track. You won’t sacrifice dedicated strength work or lose out on maintaining flexibility. It’s truly the best of both worlds. In addition to all the physical benefits of strength and suppleness, you’ll receive the mental and spiritual benefits of yoga all in one class.

Yoga Sculpt Classes are Excellent for your Overall Health.

One of the greatest benefits of strength-focused classes is that weight training and weight-bearing yoga poses strengthen your bones. Once you turn 35, you start losing bone and muscle each year. By ensuring you keep your skeleton strong, you’re basically making sure you can stay active for many more years to come. Of course, muscular strength and balance are vital components to longevity and play a major part of these hybrid classes. You’ll also boost heart health by working at a higher intensity level. Yoga Sculpt truly gives you the best of both worlds in one empowering class. 

This week's classes are a blend of yoga sculpt, barre, and yoga and fitness fusion. Get ready to sweat and strengthen in this week's uplifting classes.

Dawnelle Arthur - Age Defy: HIIT & Yoga Sculpt

Erin Wimert - Grin & Barre It

Blair Bradley - Strengthen, Tone, & Stretch

Spring is cool and in my case, it is literally cool, because the temperatures here are still mostly chilly. Still, we already seeing some green outside, and of course, the first things that start to grow are all kinds of weeds. We usually want to get rid of weeds, but did you know that many plants we consider weeds are actually edible and good for you? That is if you live somewhere far away from the big roads and pollution, of course. I happen to live in the city center, but Tallinn, our Estonian, capital is small enough to go to the nearest forest by bicycle, and still be able to pick fresh greens from the forest! 

In my smoothie today, I used goutweed and stinging nettles. Both are extremely unpleasant friends in your flower garden, as they easily take over everything, but both are healthy and good for you if you pick them while they are still young. 

Goutweed is rich in vitamin E and C. It is crucial to pick the leaves if they are small and still vibrantly green and use them as quickly after picking as possible to get the most nutrients out of them. The dark green leaves of stinging nettle that burn when touching them, and often even cause a rash and a burning sensation if you touch them with bare hands, can be used in smoothies to give it an extra anti-inflammatory boost that helps to fight eczemas and dermatitis. By the way, if you don’t have fresh nettle available, you can also purchase it freeze-dried from the health stores. Many other edible greens are considered weeds, so if you have a garden and some unwanted plants growing there, I recommend finding out what they are and maybe you can use them in your smoothies!

This one here is a very green smoothie; you might want to start by adding fewer weeds to your smoothie and then build-up to this version.

The Greenest Smoothie Ever

Cooking time: 5 minutes

Serves: 1

Ingredients:

100 g of different edible weeds from the garden

1 frozen banana

1 dl oat milk

Instructions:

Make sure you know that the weeds you collected are edible!

Roughly chop up the greens. Wear gloves if you are working with stinging nettle. 

Add all the ingredients to the blender and blitz until smooth. Drink cooled.

By Kadri Raig

Kadri is a food blogger and yoga teacher from Estonia. She loves to spend time in the kitchen, but most of her recipes are simple and don’t take more than 20 minutes of active cooking time. She thinks that everybody can find time to cook healthy food at home, it is just a question of planning. "I work in an office full time, teach yoga 7-8 hours a week and write a blog. So if I manage to cook most of my meals, then so do you!" Connect with Kadri and enjoy many more of her delicious healthy recipes on her website here: www.kahvliga.ee.

Enjoy this FREE 25-Minute yoga class from home, before your delicious plaintain nachos!

25-Minute Full Body Yoga with Keith Allen

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. 

This session is with Kadri Raig, a Tallinn, Estonia-based recipe blogger and yoga instructor. 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 into an online yoga studio for the time being and teaches most of her classes online. In addition, she helps small businesses to be visible in digital media.

Two of her current passion projects are Cork Yogis - a UK based social enterprise who in addition to using only sustainable materials (cork and recycled tree rubber) to produce awesome yoga mats also supports girls and women in India who have managed to escape sex trafficking. The other is Green Bite - an Estonian company producing superfood bars that are sustainable and use cricket flour as their main protein source.  If you wish to follow her personally,  the best way to do so is on Instagram @kadriraig. 

What are you passionate about sharing with the world and how does this inspire you?

I wear many hats (I hope this is an expression in English too). I am a yoga teacher, I cook, and I write recipes. I am a freelance marketing consultant for many small and very inspiring companies. Very rarely, I call any of those things work. Since marketing has been my “real job” for many years, this is something I still call work sometimes out of a habit, but since I choose my clients very carefully, all the companies I work with inspire me in return, so work does not refer to something unpleasant here. 

In my 36 years on Earth, I have been lucky to have reached the point where I mostly only do things that inspire me. Well, I am not very fond of cleaning my bathroom or washing the floor, but these are just small inconveniences I can live with and everything else I do inspires me. 

I hope I am able to inspire my students, clients, and people tasting my food in return because life is the constant circle of energy. I have figured out that my goal in life is to make people happy and feel good about themselves. Whether it is through food, yoga, or the success of a small company – all these things are about being happy in essence. 

How does your at-home yoga practice benefit you?

It benefits me big time! I practice pretty much every day and still every time I get on my mat, 3 minutes in I am thinking - why didn’t I do this sooner. Especially if I have been lazy and skipped a few days of practice.

But, I would like to mention here how my life as a yoga teacher has changed in the last year. I was mostly teaching face to face, so everything digital was not even a consideration in my classes before March 2020. However, we all know what has been going on and Estonia is unfortunately not an exception. All classes canceled, contacts minimized etc. Lucky since we live in times of internet I had to and was able to move my yoga classes online. Easy? No. Not at all. But I have been growing in many directions, so I still find positives in these difficult times. 

I am a rather hands-on teacher – I love physical adjustments and often I feel I can help my students with a simple physical nudge better than with only words. Teaching through the screen means that often I can't even see my students, and even if I can see them, I still can't give them little physical nudges of support and encouragement. It is a challenge, but at the same time, it helps me to grow. I needed to figure out how to explain all the little details that I always fixed with a simple touch before. And guess what? I can use these little tricks in real-life classes too! 

Some students only started practicing with me last spring during the first lockdown. Many of them still practice with me today and find some peace and quiet during their busy everyday lives. Yoga does not care where you are and the distance is not really an issue either. The last year has been proof that all you need to do is show up on your mat and everything is coming.

We’ve all heard meditation is good for your brain, and with the rollout of meditation apps and courses over the past few years, it’s becoming more and more well known that meditation can benefit us vastly. With this increase in popularity, also comes scientific research into the positive effects of meditation. Now, we can actually see the various neurological benefits that meditation has on the brain, including actual changes in gray matter - or increased activity in certain areas of the brain. Looking at these benefits alongside the psychological effects of meditation on our well-being, it’s easy to see exactly how meditation can change your mind and brain. 

Meditation Can Help Preserve Aging Brains

Meditation on a long-term basis can help to preserve our brains as we age, more than people who don’t meditate. A study by UCLA researchers discovered that those who meditated for around 20 years had more grey matter volume throughout their brains than those who hadn’t meditated before. This is significant because the researchers only expected to find small effects located in one part of the brain - instead, they saw a widespread effect of meditation on the entire brain!

Meditation Reduces Mind-Wandering

We all know that meditation requires us to be present - but did you know that there’s a scientific reason for this? A study carried out by Yale University has found that meditation decreases brain activity in the default mode network - which is the brain network responsible for that mind-wandering. This network is on when we’re not thinking about anything specific, and our minds are running from thought to thought. This activity is linked to rumination and worry.

Meditation Reduces Symptoms of Depression

A recent study looking at the relationship between mindfulness meditation and the symptoms of depression and anxiety found that meditation has a moderate effect on the symptoms - the same level of effect as anti-depression medication can have. This is due to the way meditation works as an active form of brain training, to increase awareness. 

Meditation Can Affect Volume in the Brain

A team of researchers at Harvard University in 2011 found that meditation can actually change the structure of your brain! After completing 8 weeks for mindfulness-based stress reduction, participants were found to have increased cortical thickness in their hippocampus - this is the part of the brain that controls learning and memory, as well as some areas that control emotional regulation. As well as this, they also saw brain cell volume decreases in the amygdala - the part of the brain that is responsible for fear and anxiety.

Meditation Can Improve Concentration

Millions of people have trouble concentrating or paying attention to things for a long period of time, it’s not just kids who are affected! But, you guessed it, practicing meditation can improve your attention span and concentration levels. A recent study found that over just a couple of weeks, meditation training can help people’s focus and memory - proving that there’s an increase in concentration levels. The increase in score was up to 16 percentiles, which is a significant amount! 

Meditation Can Reduce Anxiety and Stress

Meditation can have amazing benefits for stress reduction, and there’s a lot of scientific evidence to back this up! A genre of meditation known as mindfulness-based stress reduction was developed at the University of Massachusetts’ Center for Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn, which aims to reduce a person’s stress levels. Studies into mindfulness-based stress reduction meditation have shown that it has beneficial effects on reducing anxiety even after the 8-week long initial course. 

There is also research to show that mindfulness meditation can reduce anxiety and stress in the self-referential brain regions - a Stanford University research team found that mindfulness-based stress reduction meditation reduced symptoms of social anxiety

Meditation Can Help Addiction

A vast number of newer studies have shown that meditation has an effect on the areas of the brain which control our self-control. Meditation can be effective in helping people who are recovering from addiction. For example, one study found that people who practiced meditation and mindfulness were more likely to quit smoking than those in more conventional treatment. Theories are out there that meditation can help distance the mental state of craving with the act of smoking, so one doesn’t lead to the other. 

Meditation Helps Control Pain

Our perception of pain is connected to your brain and your state of mind. There’s research out there that suggests that meditation can help our brains control pain. One such study showed that mindfulness meditation improved the pain in people diagnosed with chronic pain. This could be because meditation can improve your ability to cope with pain.

Meditation Can Release Hormones

Your brain will naturally release neurotransmitters that help to regulate the balance of vital hormones, which influence systems throughout the body. Studies show that practicing meditation can impact the levels of neurotransmitters in your brain, and can affect chemicals such as serotonin, cortisol, endorphins, and melatonin. 

If you want to start reaping some of the benefits of meditation, this week's classes give your mind some love and nourishment, through meditation practices. Yoga philosophy says that the whole reason for the yoga practice is to clear your mind and make your body open enough to sit for prolonged periods of time in meditation.

By Amy Cavill

Quick check in: does your mind feel laser-focused and steady? Ready to handle any challenges in a reasonable, calm manner? 

If your answer, like ours, was to throw your head back and roar with laughter because you’ve got countless distractions bouncing around your brain, we’re here to help. This week, we’ve got four meditation classes to help you feel clearer and more grounded. If you are new to meditation or it has been a while since you meditated, read on for some insight into why it can have such a profound impact on your life.

Meditation is the practice of learning to quiet the monkey mind or as Patanjali delineated in Yoga Sutra 1.2: citta vritti nirodhah: Yoga is learning to direct the attention of your mind where you wish it to go. Meditation encourages you to quiet the distractions in order to create space for clarity. It is the art of letting go and bringing the mind to the present moment. Meditation is a practice that takes time and effort, but it is worth every minute. 

In Patanjali’s 8-Limbed Yoga path, he outlines Pratyahara, Dharana, and Dyhana as the three stages necessary to meditation that precede Samadhi or enlightenment. Each one takes us deeper into our seat of awareness within. 

Pratyahara is defined as the “withdrawal of the senses.” Consciously tuning out smells and sounds and sights helps us tune in to our inner vibrations. Closing your eyes takes care of visual distractions, but not being pulled out of focus by the squeal of a fire engine or the scent of a skunk takes practice! A disciplined focus on your breath works well to filter out the external and turn inward.

Dharana:  The sixth limb means concentration on a single-pointed focus. By intentionally focusing the mind on one thing, there’s no space for anything else. In a traditional Dharana practice, the focus is a mantra, “a tool for the mind” but you can also focus on an object like a candle or a flower. 

In Dhyana, the meditator becomes one with the object of meditation and can maintain this oneness: in other words, you stop trying to concentrate and just concentrate. In that stillness, clarity or discernment has the chance to take root.  

Distraction is easy. Focus is a challenge, but it is worth the effort. Presence can equal freedom because you’ve released any attachment to future results and accepted what is right now. Discipline, commitment, and patience are essential tools in developing a meditation habit. This week’s classes offer you support on your path! Enjoy.

Chocolate and cherries are a match made in heaven. I made this cake a few months back when it was still freezing outside, so my choice of cherries here were frozen sour cherries. Using frozen cherries instead of fresh ones might even be a good idea if you do have the fresh ones available as it saves you time on taking out the pits! But using fresh cherries for decoration makes a lot of sense if you happen to have cherries – sweet or sour, available. 

The cake has three layers but even so, it is not a difficult cake to prepare. The most difficult part of this cake is waiting for it to set. In a perfect world, it would be good to leave it in the fridge to set for 2 hours. If your guests are already waiting, feel free to just pop the cake in the freezer to speed up the waiting time. Another thing that needs to set is the glaze, but as we use agar-agar as a setting agent, and agar-agar starts to set around 110F, this does not take long at all.

Just a warning ahead to all the sweet tooths out there, that the recipe with given amounts is not sweet. Make sure you taste all the layers and feel free to add sugar whenever you feel it is necessary. This cheesecake is gluten-free and vegan!

Cherry Chocolate Cheesecake (Vegan and Gluten-Free)

Cooking time: 30 min active, 2 ½ waiting time

Serves: 12

Ingredients:

For the base:

2 ½ oz dark chocolate

4 ½ oz almond flour

For the filling:

6 oz dark chocolate

17 oz silken tofu

1 cup oat-based whipping cream

Optional: up to ½ cup powdered sugar

For the glaze:

10 oz frozen cherries

2 ½ oz sugar

½ tsp agar-agar

2 oz cocoa butter

Instructions:

For the base:

Melt the chocolate and mix in the almond flour. 

Lay on the bottom of an 8-inch cake pan and push down firmly. Feel free to wet your hands if it feels sticky.

Keep the base in the fridge until you prepare the filling.

For the filling:

Melt the chocolate, add the tofu and blend with a stick until you get a smooth mix.

In a separate bowl whip the cream until stiff peaks.

Fold the two mixtures together carefully.

Have a taste and add powdered sugar if you feel like it. I generally prefer cakes that are not sweet, but make sure that you are happy with the sweetness level!

Pour the mixture on top of the base, smooth out the top and leave to set in the fridge for 2 hours or so. If you are busy, use the freezer instead.

For the glaze:

Bring the cherries (without the pits, of course) and sugar to boil, add agar agar, and boil for a minute. This is necessary because agar agar needs to be activated.

Add the cocoa butter and let it melt.

Blend everything with a stick blender until very smooth, let it cool down to about 100F, then slowly pour over the cold cake and let the glaze drip down the sides.

Decorate with fresh cherries if desired, and leave to set for another 15 minutes in the fridge.

By Kadri Raig

Kadri is a food blogger and yoga teacher from Estonia. She loves to spend time in the kitchen, but most of her recipes are simple and don’t take more than 20 minutes of active cooking time. She thinks that everybody can find time to cook healthy food at home, it is just a question of planning. "I work in an office full time, teach yoga 7-8 hours a week and write a blog. So if I manage to cook most of my meals, then so do you!" Connect with Kadri and enjoy many more of her delicious healthy recipes on her website here: www.kahvliga.ee.

Enjoy this FREE 25-Minute yoga class from home, before your delicious plaintain nachos!

25-Minute Full Body Yoga with Keith Allen

If you’re trying to get healthier and improve your body image by losing weight, you might know that the struggle of weight loss needs you to stay motivated and confident across a long period of time. But if you’re trying to lose weight, it can be hard to keep confident and feel happy about yourself if you’re not happy with your body image.

It’s really important to give yourself confidence boosts along the way of your weight loss journey. We all know that you’ll feel better about yourself when you meet your weight goals, but if you feel more confident while you’re losing weight, you might find yourself more motivated to stick to it, and finally reach those goals. Here’s some ways to boost your self confidence when you’re losing weight.

Be Kind

The world can be an inherently negative place when we look out for it, so there’s no point in being negative towards yourself too. Be kind to yourself, and give yourself a lot of self-love to get yourself in a positive mindset, which can do wonders for your confidence. Things like positive affirmations in the mirror, reading body positive articles, surrounding yourself with positive people can all be good starting points to get your mindset positive. Remember that it’s not a negative thing to be losing weight, and there’s nothing wrong with you for it! 

Being positive and kind to yourself can help you to stay motivated. If you believe in yourself, you’re more likely to reach your goals, and if you think you’re going to fail you’re more likely to quit. 

Set Realistic Goals

There’s nothing worse than setting yourself up for failure. This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make when you’re losing weight, by either not setting goals, or setting unrealistic goals. Goals are the roadmap to any journey, including weight loss. The goals you set can influence your entire journey, so it’s important to make sure they’re smart - that’s Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound.

While you’re at it, don’t restrict yourself too much when it comes to diet. This can make you feel even more hungry and likely to break your rules. Making smaller, healthier recipe choices to start, and adding more in is an easier way to lose weight rather than strict diet choices.

Ignore the Scale

Weighing yourself can be a good way to track your smart goals - but remember that these numbers can be influenced by time of day, clothes you’re wearing, muscle gain - even if you need the bathroom! Obsessively checking the scale is a sure fire way to kill confidence, instead, focus on how your feeling, if your clothes fit, and the changes you can see in the mirror.

Limit Social Media 

It’s easy to get drawn in by social media, especially other weight loss accounts. While it can be great to post your progress and have people cheer you on, social media can also affect your confidence by making you compare yourself to other people. Remembering that everyone’s journey is different, and limiting the time you spend scrolling through social media will help you to keep your confidence up.

Find the Right Exercise

If you don’t like dragging yourslf to the gym everyday, there’s an easy solution - don’t! Going to the gym or certain types of exercise arent the only way you can lose weight. There’s so many different ways to work out, and many of them are actually fun! Swimming, hiking, yoga, or dancing are just some alternatives to hitting the gym.

When you get started working out, give yourself a boost of confidence by treating yourself to some new workout clothes, or doing a fun class with friends. You could even get a personal trainer to help you with your techniques before you try it solo.

Accept Yourself

While losing weight can improve your body confidence and health, you won’t magically become happier when you lose weight. Start by accepting yourself for who you are, and your weight lose journey will start from a place of acceptance rather than negativity. Remind yourself that there’s nothing wrong with your body as it is now, and also remind yourself of all your positive traits that don’t have anything to do with looks!

Remember to Focus on Other Things

Centering your life around weight loss, food, and dieting can be unhealthy and damaging to your mental health and confidence. While you are on your weight loss journey, it’s important to make healthy choices while also focusing on other areas of your life. If you put too much pressure on weight loss, and only focus onthat, you will be more likely to to fail, which can affect your confidence.

Stay Energized

If your energy is low, you’re unlikely to feel confident about your weight loss. Eating less and working out more can initially make you feel tired and unenergized, but trying to keep yourself upbeat and motivated will help to boost your confidence and your energy! Positivity can have a great impact on your energy levels, as well as surrounding yourself with positive, energetic people. Staying tired and low energy can also mean that you’re less likely to stick to your fitness and diet plans. 

Fake It 'Til You Make It

The easiest way to get confidence fast? Fake it! Act as if you have already met your goals and are your target weight, and make yourself look fabulous starting today. This will massively boost your confidence, and help you to boost your weight loss progress in the process. Don’t dress in baggy oversized clothes, wear clothes that you feel sexy and confident in, which will make a big difference in your self confidence.

By Amy Cavill

Practice Yoga for Weight Loss right now from home!

 

Listen to the audio reading

This New Moon will create a new shift in desires and ask for clarity. She is shifting the way life moves through you. The moon goes into apogee at an archetypal point on the 11th. She will carry forward 4 archetypal positions from Venus, Sun, and Mars in addition to her own. This is a strong moon and her message will carry much into our external world.

The last Full Moon marked ‘go time’ a lot of forward moving energies, with the forward surge of energy this lunation is about refinement and will show what we want is always what serves. It’s important to see that the chase isn’t fruitful, it’s the dance that is fulfilling. The planetary energies will shake up inner creation, inner realization of creative powers, and yes shake away the chase. Be mindful of your play in the worldly. The moon will highlight disillusionment, wasted energy, and for many of you lead you to fulfillment by the way of dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction being the causation to pivot to what matters most. 

Let’s start with the planetary players in the background. Mercury will retrograde at the end of this month and is currently sitting in conjunction with Rahu, the North Node and Venus in Taurus. He’s moving quickly and also communicating that life and what you desire is moving just as quickly. Stay on your heels, all that glitters isn’t gold. His job here is to aid in relaying desires, communicate the soul’s intentions, and ensure that Venus is birthing what is worthy. If things get lost in translation, let it go.

You will have an opportunity to see the real intentions of others. People and situations are showing their truth, and your BS meter is STRONG. Do not pass judgment it’s simply a reflection point to see where hidden expectations and desires are misaligned, (i.e. inner self not communicating with outer self). Use this openness from others and situations to get clear.

This moon is all about clarity.

If you don’t like what’s being presented to you, go within and ask what you are communicating that is not aligned with your goals. This point within the cosmos is changing the subjective and objective reality. We have a few of these shifts each year as a part of the personal evolutionary alignment. This one is working on how manifestations and dreams are being created. Mercury’s swift movement and exposure of guise will aid you in working with the upcoming retrogrades at the end of the month. Remember to hold reality lightly, things aren’t as they completely seem. This moon is prepping for a worldly flip. How and why you think things come together or are the way they are is shifting. Don’t worry, it’s all working out for you. This energy is really expediting dream fulfillment and personal alignment onto the next level. 

Mercurial communication is pivoting the created reality of the ‘world’. The Moon will allow the conduit of divine reception to be stronger. What lies hidden will be revealed. This can be deep within the conscious mind. A severing that allows new ways of receiving divine impulse, directive. Many will work to create new methods of nurturing divine energies. This lunar placement emphasizes powers of manifestation. The moon will come into the pinnacle point of feminine manifesting energy. Divine energy will be primed for creative realities, this will especially highlight stability and foundations. Wealth and manifestation. The aspect with the Sun is indicating the end of the soul journey.

It’s time to move from inspiration. Support what you desire not iterations of it. This point is heavily working with polarizing energies through manifestations of the attraction and repulsion forces to create. So clarity and removal of unwanted expectations are imperative. 

This energy is electrifying and magnetizing. The power to draw unto you is strong. Get clear on what you are recreating, creating, wanting, giving birth to, and attracting. Equally this moon will work with the new reality. So beliefs and wants inner realities are reflected and magnetized in real-time. Don’t pass judgment, just pivot as needed. Cut away desires that are not in alignment with the highest goals. This will draw new energy towards the creative forces of what you do want. Remember this energy is strong in creation. It is working to hone in on how energy is distributed, especially eliminating aspects of over distribution to what isn’t serving.

Define, refine, and attract are the forces at play.

This will bring more cosmic life force to what you seek. Energy will fructify only what is in alignment. Expect miracles and blessings. Do not hold onto what moves out of your life. Stay faithful as aspects of life and self transition. Desires are evolving and this juncture will look different by the next New Moon. Logic cannot be trusted, don’t try to think through ways of attachment or attainment. Allow it to flow. Magnetic energy is strong at this lunation. What is in accordance will be drawn unto you.

Be well my loves,

Geenie (Gemma) Celento
For a personal astrology reading, book here.

Geenie, also known as Gemma, is an Ayurvedic Practitioner, astrologer, and student of the Sri Vidya Tantric lineage. Her classes on YogaDownload are often inspired by astrology and aimed to guide each student to unfold a deeper connection from within. Her diverse knowledge and continued studies in the spiritual sciences can be felt in her class offerings. With humble devotion Gemma weaves the wisdom of yogic practices into accessible and impactful mat experiences. Her website is here.

Practice the Yoga & Astrology series with Geenie now!

If you have a consistent yoga practice, you’re aware of the myriad of internal and external benefits you receive, like balance, strength, flexibility, and equanimity. But did you know yoga can also help you feel more confident and lose weight? We’re not talking treating yoga like an exercise regimen to burn calories. Instead, yoga can help you cultivate a powerful mind-body connection that supports weight loss or any other physical goals you might have.

When you move through a physical yoga practice, whether it is a vigorous Vinyasa flow or a mellow restorative practice, you focus on how you are feeling. Is your breath deep and steady or shallow and erratic? Are you angry, depressed, or at peace? Do you feel stagnant and heavy or light and vibrant? By taking the time to become more aware of your feelings, you can begin to process them fully instead of burying them. Emotional eating is common and many of us have made unhealthy choices like consuming fast food or too much sugar, which only masks the underlying issues for a short time. 

Experts in Eastern philosophy and Western medicine agree that yoga relieves stress and tension. Yoga lowers cortisol levels––the “fight or flight” stress hormones that play a key role in everything from heart attacks to high cholesterol to insomnia. By providing a positive outlet for difficult emotions, yoga offers us a healthy way to manage the day-to-day stress we all experience. If we can soothe our nervous system and quiet our overactive minds, we are more likely to live in the present moment and treat ourselves with love.

Another way yoga can keep you feeling your best is by helping digestion, elimination, and enhancing metabolism. Whether you’re in a gentle Hatha class or sweating through Power Yoga, you create different shapes for your body that keep your physical systems running like a well-oiled machine. Twists and forward folds stimulate and compress your digestive organs, which helps prevent bloating and stagnation. 

Vigorous practices like Ashtanga, Vinyasa, and Power Yoga move at a faster pace and require physical strength. You build muscle by using your body weight and the more muscle you have, the more efficient your metabolism is at burning calories. One pound of muscle burns about three times more than one pound of fat. So yes, you can skip a gym workout and practice yoga instead if you’re interested in the physical aspect. But those emotional and spiritual benefits will come with it too! Triple bonus! 

These classes are more than just about how you look. They're about feeling good about your body, loving yourself, and working up a sweat. Enjoy!

Kristin Gibowicz - Yoga for Weightloss: Celebrate the Skin Your In

Kylie Larson - Yoga for Weight Loss: Bun Burner

Becca Rioppelle - Rock Hard Body Blaster

I love green food in the springtime. It just calls to me and so most of my food has been green for the past few weeks. I already have many little plants growing on my windowsill and wishing to be planted outside soon, but it is still slightly too early for them. Luckily, my windows face south, so they have plenty of light to enjoy. So, the greens for today’s recipe are still store-bought, but very soon I hope to use my own herbs and salads!

The pasta today is green too. Or, to be precise, the sauce is green and you can choose whatever your pasta preference is for the actual pasta part. My choice is usually whole wheat, but there are so many different gluten-free pasta varieties out there as well – lentil pasta, quinoa pasta, oat pasta, and even a buckwheat one.

But the sauce is as green as it gets. I used green peas and fresh arugula and added toasted sunflower seeds for this extra e-vitamin kick of goodness. The whole recipe takes around 15 minutes and is full of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. Instead of the rocket, you can also use all kinds of other greens – spinach, basil, maybe even dill. Go green!

Pasta with Arugula Pesto and Green Peas

Cooking time: 15 min

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

7 oz pasta (I always use whole wheat, but feel free whatever your preference from gluten-free to extra white)

2 oz sundried tomatoes (I use the dry ones. If you use the marinated ones, add these last)

2 oz sunflower seeds

7 oz zucchini, sliced

7 oz green peas

3 ½ oz rocket

The juice from up to 1 lemon

1 tbsp olive oil

Salt, to taste

Instructions:

Bring a big pot of water to a boil, season with salt, and cook the pasta to desired softness. If you use dry tomatoes add these to the cooking water too.

At the same time, toast the sunflower seed on a dry pan. If these are done pour them into the blender and at the same pan cook the zucchini slices in a drop of oil.

Add almost all the rocket and peas to the blender (leave a few for decorating purposes), squeeze in the juice of ½ lemon and oil. Whizz to a paste and have a taste. You might wish to add in extra lemon or salt.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain it loosely and mix in the pesto and fried zucchini.

Decorate with the rest of the peas and rocket leaves and enjoy while hot!

By Kadri Raig

Kadri is a food blogger and yoga teacher from Estonia. She loves to spend time in the kitchen, but most of her recipes are simple and don’t take more than 20 minutes of active cooking time. She thinks that everybody can find time to cook healthy food at home, it is just a question of planning. "I work in an office full time, teach yoga 7-8 hours a week and write a blog. So if I manage to cook most of my meals, then so do you!" Connect with Kadri and enjoy many more of her delicious healthy recipes on her website here: www.kahvliga.ee.

Enjoy this FREE 25-Minute yoga class from home, before your delicious plaintain nachos!

25-Minute Full Body Yoga with Keith Allen

 

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

Making a gratitude list is one of the easiest ways to practice gratitude. This technique is as simple as it sounds; all you need is a pen and paper! You can incorporate this beautiful ritual at the end of your day by placing a notepad beside your bed, or first thing in the morning as part of a journaling ritual. Your list can be as long as you want it to be, but try to write down at least three things that you are grateful for. They can be as simple as a cup of coffee, or your bicycle, to things that are incredibly important to you like your a beloved family member or friend in your life. 

A special gratitude journal is a wonderful way to keep your daily gratitude list going over time. It can be just a simple daily gratitude list, or it can be an opportunity for you to write more in detail about why you are grateful for these things and to explore your emotions or thoughts. 

Gratitude Meditation

Gratitude meditations are mindful practices of focusing your mental energy on the feeling of gratitude. There are many different ways to practice a gratitude meditation, but one of the most common ways is by focusing on gratitude for your body and health in the present moment, as each breath moves in and out of your body. By focusing on gratitude for these simple functions that we so often take for granted, you can discover the essence of gratitude in your greater life.

Another method of meditating on gratitude, similar to the gratitude list, is to mentally list off things you are grateful for, in your mind instead of writing them down. As each thing comes to mind, take a moment to breathe and reflect on why it makes you feel good and how much you appreciate it.

Make Gratitude Your Intention for Your Yoga Practice 

Yoga is a spiritual and mindful practice, but you can further enhance the mental and physical benefits by adding gratitude into your practice. If you like to set an intention (or Sankalpa) at the start of your practice, try setting it on gratitude the next time you step onto your yoga mat. Taking moment to express gratitude for your body, breath, or any other thing in your life at the start of class, will add a nice touch to your practice. 

Express Gratitude to Others 

Perhaps the most essential gratitude practice of all is to actually share your gratitude with those around you. It can be easy to take friends, family, and loved ones for granted, but verbally expressing gratitude towards others is a great way to deepen your relationships and create lasting bonds of love and compassion. Pretty much everyone loves to know that they are appreciated. Sometimes we forget to tell people how much they mean to us, so do your best to let tell people you love that you’re grateful for them. It doesn’t have to just be close friends and family either. A waiter who makes your dining experience special, the grocery checkout person, or anyone you cross paths with, deserve appreciation sometimes. Not only will it put you into a more grateful vibration, but it’ll also give a boost to someone who might need it, in the perfect moment.

Gratitude is a simple but highly effective way to improve your mental health and overall wellbeing. Do one of the above practices today to feel more grateful. It doesn’t have to take more than a minute, and consistency is key, so try to make this part of your life to increase the benefits of gratitude even more. What are you grateful for today?

By Emily Ye

Do a 10-minute gratitude meditation right now!

Meditate with Gratitude with Pradeep Teotia

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 your throat chakra with journaling with daily writing practices, whether you like to journal in the morning, afternoon, or evening.

Here is how to open your throat chakra using a pen and paper:

Writing skills will definitely come in handy when trying to open the fifth chakra. If you are not confident enough to voice all your thoughts, then the notebook’s pages will become that sacred place where no one will be judgemental of you and your opinions. The beginner’s starting point would be journaling.

If you are a more advanced writer then forming your ideas into a psychological novel is what you may find more appealing. But journaling might be reasonably the best option as far as it promotes your personal accountability, the ability to explore your inner self, which can sometimes be absurd and preposterous, but you still have to accept it.

Why a Pen and Paper Are Better Than a Keyboard and Screen?

Handwriting prevents you from editing your own thoughts. We can not use backspace in real life, hence we can not reverse something that was already said. What is more, while many people in their 20's and 30's are attached to their devices all the time, the activity of using something material has a calming and relaxing effect. But if it brings you real discomfort, you shouldn’t torture yourself with an option you are comfortable with.

The beginners usually have a common mistake of believing that everything they write must be deep and sensual. But that delusion prevents you from keeping a diary for yourself and nobody else. True depth comes naturally, by itself, even by accident. This is how journaling will help bring out information that is stored deeper than consciousness. A journal can help us explore pathways that we cannot consciously discover.

These days, the case of burning out is quite common, and people forget who they really are. That is why many practice yoga to heal their chakras. When we write in a diary, we create more space and time for what is inside of us. It enables us to spend time with ourselves and to recognize and perceive our thoughts and feelings.

Writing is also a creative process. As soon as we get into a flow, the words will flow out of you and you will notice that you think less but feel more for it - you write from the heart. Reading through it again enables you to dig deeper into your heart and you have the chance to see more clearly and understand better what is going on with you.

These Types of Journals Can Help You Clear the Throat Chakra

There are several types of journals that suit different people. However, do not limit yourself to those boundaries, maybe you are going to invent your own type of diary in the process of daily writing.

A Positivity Diary

In this diary, you write down only the positive things that happened to you today. Think about whether you want to make whole sentences or just bullet points. Always write down your 3 to 5 positive moments in the evening before going to sleep. Use this exercise as part of your daily reflection by letting your day pass by in your mind's eye, identifying the positive moments.

You may find it difficult to find something positive - on a normal weekday ... then think carefully! A positive moment doesn't have to be anything spectacular! Perhaps the sun shone particularly beautifully in your living room in the morning. Or did your lunch taste surprisingly good? Or was your colleague especially funny today?

Learn to appreciate the little things in life and to notice them in the first place! You will sharpen your perception and find the little things to be much more valuable and important. This will enrich your life and make you happier because you are simply more positive. Your energy level will increase, you will gain new strength from it and increase your awareness. Ending your day in this way will also have an extremely soothing effect on you.

A Gratitude Diary

Gratitude is one of the most beautiful feelings ever! Gratitude comes from abundance. It is the perception of having. You can only feel gratitude when you acknowledge what you already have and don't focus on what you don't have. A gratitude journal can be powerful. Again, it can be the smallest things, moments, or situations - only your feelings count. Try to write something different every day and think a little bit - you will train your gratitude muscle particularly well. After a short time, you will feel how much this new awareness has strengthened you, and your life will become fuller.

A Freeform Journal

In journaling, you have no specific topic, but reflect the day, the moment, the week, the vacation (whatever) from the perspective of your feelings and perception. This will expand your awareness extremely and you will learn a lot about yourself. Once immersed in this method, you will want to feel further inside yourself. You can also integrate journaling into a routine or you can take your notebook with you everywhere and as soon as you feel the urge to write something down, just do it!

Conclusion: Overall, one can heal their throat chakra by recording their feelings in a diary, for example, but the most important thing is to express your true thoughts with ease. You have no one to be ashamed of on the pages of your diary, except yourself. It can be a difficult experience, but voicing your feelings, emotions, desires, and experiences is the first step to accepting yourself and opening your true self to the world.

By Ana Mayer

This article was written by Ana Mayer, a project manager with 3+ years of experience. While projects can do without her participation (which means almost never), she likes to read and create expert academic materials for the Online Writers Rating, Best Writers Online review website. Such work gives her the opportunity to write articles on the most relevant topics of today.

Practice yoga for your chakras now!