Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

The summer is quickly approaching, and that means it’s time to take a relaxing and accessible vacation to your favorite domestic or international destination. If you’re a person with a disability, you may need to make some extra arrangements to ensure that your trip is fun and successful and that you can stay healthy along the way.

The way you present your body has a massive impact on your mental health and overall well-being. Even subtle changes to your wardrobe can help you feel confident and content in your own body. A positive body image can help you appreciate your flaws, too. This is important if you’re trying to better manage your weight or are partaking in yoga to improve your overall health. Wearing the right clothes at the right moment will allow you to breathe deeply into your poses without worrying about what other people think.

Loving yourself means embracing and accepting who you are, including all of your strengths, weaknesses, and imperfections. It means recognizing your worth and valuing yourself as a person. Feeling self-love is essential to our overall well-being and happiness, as it provides a positive foundation for our relationships with ourselves and others.

Muscle knots can hit you at any point after a workout. For example, after a strenuous upper-body workout, you might wake up feeling a tightness in the back of your shoulder blade. Upon investigation, you may feel a small knot, which is tender to the touch, and slightly painful when you move it. If you recognize this situation, you might be wondering how you can avoid muscle knots in the future.

According to the AAFP, about 4-6% of people struggle with seasonal depression. Another 10-20% have mild cases of Seasonal Affective Disorder. If you tend to get the “winter blues” or feel down this time of year, it’s important to know the difference between depression and SAD, and how you can combat either one. Let’s take a closer look at some of those differences, as well as the common symptoms of SAD. When you have a better understanding of what you’re dealing with, it’s easier to take charge of your well-being and fight back against it.

Do you have a mantra that guides your thoughts and actions? If you do, great! If you’ve heard the term but weren’t quite sure what it meant or how to utilize mantras, we’re here to break it down. The concept isn’t complicated but like most traditions, some guidance and explanation can help you personalize and integrate mantra into your daily life.

Morning rituals set the tone for the rest of the day. How do you begin yours? Do you bury your head under your pillow and hit the snooze button a few times? Automatically pick up your phone and start scrolling? Or do you have a morning routine designed to help you feel your best? Practicing yoga in the morning is one of the greatest ways––yes, we’re biased––to start the day how you intend to live the day. No matter what happens after you’ve stepped off your mat, you’ve done something positive for your well-being.

Who is ready for a boost of energy into the new year? It’s time to wipe the slate clean and inject all your enthusiasm for life and growth potential into moving forward with a positive mindset. A new year is a milestone for all of us to not simply pause and reflect on the past but to commit to living our best life. It doesn’t matter if you’re starting from Square One or you just need some simple tweaks to feel your best, yoga can help!

While you’re reflecting on everything that’s happened over the past year, you can start to think about the things you are grateful for, maybe making a list. Gratitude can help to increase your life satisfaction, as well as help you feel more positive. It can help you to feel more positive about the year ahead, and help you to feel excited too!

Who is ready to kiss 2022 goodbye and welcome 2023 feeling your best? The end of the year is a great time to sit down and review the last twelve months and decide what to keep and what to let go. It’s an opportune time to release all that’s no longer working for you, like stagnant energy, unhealthy relationships, and negative behavior patterns. A strong, dynamic yoga practice can free emotions trapped in your physical body and help you feel lighter and brighter.

As the pace of modern life continues to accelerate, it can be difficult for busy people to find the time to take care of themselves properly. One way to prioritize self-care is by incorporating yoga into your routine, even if you're short on time. Here are some tips for practicing yoga on the go...

Can you believe we’re closing in on the end of 2022? December is a time where we’re managing the holidays on top of tying up loose ends at work or school, traveling…doing all the things. With the added busy-ness of the season, some days it’s tough to find time for your yoga practice. If you feel overwhelmed and are tempted to throw in the towel on your yoga or fitness until January 2023––don’t! It's more important than ever during this stressful time of year to carve out time to step onto your yoga mat. No matter if you’re away from home or juggling life’s demands, squeeze in a quick class––quality over quantity is what matters. In as little as ten minutes, like in Claire Petretti Marti’s new Quick Yoga Break, you can feel more clear, flexible, and calm. It only takes a few minutes to shift your mood and quiet your mind.

The holiday season brings with it all sorts of fun and good times, but it's also important to rest yourself for the year ahead. This time of year is always fun and exciting, but it can sometimes be hard to switch off and relax when so much is happening. But it’s important to take some time out to rest in preparation for the year ahead. Over the holidays, there are always plenty of parties and people to catch up with while you take time away from work. But it’s also a time to step back and unwind, which can be hard to do if you find it difficult to switch off. Here are our top tips to take some time to rest over the holidays...

“The holiday season is a perfect time to reflect on our blessings and seek out ways to make life better for those around us.” –Anonymous No matter what holiday(s) you’re celebrating this December, this time of year can stir up mixed feelings and create stress and tension. It’s the perfect time to step back and reflect on all you appreciate in your life and spread some joy to the people around you. We know it’s busy, busy, busy, but it’s even more important to refill your well to manage the hectic pace. If you love this time of year, perhaps you’re going to parties and indulging in tons of sugar and cocktails. If you’re not a big fan of the holidays, perhaps heavy emotions are weighing you down. Either way, you may miss your regular sessions on the mat.

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new” -Socrates How about a little ancient Greek philosophy to start manifesting change and creating the life you desire? If you’re ready to leave 2022 in the rear view mirror and start 2023 with a powerful foundation, we’ve got the perfect solution for you. Our New Beginnings–January 23 Day Yoga Challenge is designed to assist you on your path for your best year ever. December is a busy month with holidays and end-of-the-year deadlines but it’s not too busy to begin mentally preparing to launch your 2023. In fact, it’s a great time to tap into your intentions for the future. In order to move forward, it’s vital to release what’s weighing you down, so you’re free to create your ideal life. Carve out a little time and journal about this year to clarify what worked and what did not. Plant the seeds for your future by focusing on gratitude.

If you work as a manager, firefighter, nurse, police officer, or anything that is fast-paced and comes with high stakes, then you know what it is like to have a stressful job. While you may be honored to have your career and know that you are making a difference, it can still be hard to wake up every day and face another tough shift. Instead of turning to unhealthy behaviors to put your mind at ease, you should consider practicing yoga. Yoga is a great way to settle your mind and get the exercise that you need to take on each new day with gusto. To help you out, we will talk about the effects of stress at work and why you need to make a change today.

Much like for a balanced diet you need a range of different foods and vitamins, for a healthy exercise regime you should try and add variety in what you do to workout. Yoga has many benefits and is a great practice for your overall health, but it can be easy to forget the many other exercise options out there. You may want something more intense, with a higher calorie burn and work up a sweat, or maybe you’re just looking to change it up and do something that feels different from yoga. Here are our top fitness activities that will be able to provide you with anything you feel you’re not getting from yoga - as well as help you hone down your skills on the mat and make progress.

Physical healing is often very straight forward, we rest, we take medications, and follow doctors orders. Emotional healing on the other hand, can be a tricky journey that can be hard for many people. People look for emotional healing after all types of trauma, and growing after these types of trauma can be hard, in fact, we might never be the same as we were before.

Do you ever feel like you are losing focus or having trouble thinking clearly? If so, it may be the result of stress and burnout, and these factors can contribute to the condition often referred to as brain fog. This mental fuzziness can be frustrating, especially when your focus needs to be on your life, work, and family. The good news is that you can remedy this issue by staying active and practicing yoga. Today, we will talk a bit about the reality of brain fog and how you can use yoga to clear your mind and get back to life as you know it.

Worrying happens to the best of us. We all will endure stresses in our lives, whether it's through work, our personal lives, our relationships, or even just irrational intrusive thoughts. This worry can get into our brains and can make our day-to-day lives and daily tasks that little bit harder. It would be great if there was some kind of off switch we can press to turn off these worries, but stopping or reducing worry is a little bit harder than that. However, there are habits that you can bring into your day-to-day life that can help your worries to slip away, freeing you to focus on the positive and productive things in life. Set Yourself Worry Time

Your routine in the morning can set the tone for the rest of your day. It’s important to set good habits that you can use to help create a morning routine that will eventually set you up for success. If you start your day off stressed, and do things like snooze your alarm, skip breakfast and rush yourself to start your day, the rest of your day can seem chaotic and stressful as well. Your morning sets off your day, so when you form healthy morning habits, you’re setting yourself up for success.

Sometimes in life we can feel a little lost and misguided, and it can seem like nothing good is ever happening. It can be easy to feel very overwhelmed and powerless when times like these come around, and we can get stuck in bad moods and bad habits. This is why it's so important to take on healthy habits to nourish your mind and body, to help you get out of bad situations and overall make your life a lot easier in the day-to-day. Here are some of the best ways to nourish your mind and body:

There sometimes can be a stigma to doing things alone. Going out for dinner or catching a movie, you can sometimes feel like people are watching you or judging you for being anti-social or lonely. But that is totally wrong! Spending time by yourself is really important - after all, the relationship you have with yourself is the most important and long lasting one you’ll have in your life. Having more me time has benefits like increased productivity, happiness, empathy and gratitude. It doesn't matter how you do it, but here’s some of the benefits of me-time.

“Our life is shaped by our mind, for we become what we think.” - Buddha The way that you start your day can determine how the rest of it unfolds. Getting up in the morning can be challenging, and finding ways to get motivated and excited for the hours ahead isn’t always easy. If this resonates with you, know that it’s completely normal and you're not alone. But there are ways to change the way you feel for the better. One of the most effective ways to bring the right energy into your morning routine for a calm, happy, and flowing day is through mindfulness.

We’ve all experienced stress in our lives, when the unexpected happens and we can’t control it! That’s when our brains decide to send out stress hormones - the hormones which trigger our ‘fight or flight’ response. This can cause heart racing, quicker breathing and tense muscles. Our stress responses are designed to protect you in an emergency by getting your body ready to react quickly. But, when our stress responses are triggered too often, it can cause some serious health problems.