Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

The holiday season is a busy time for everyone. There always seems to be so much rushing, stressing, planning, and preparation to do, which may lead to feelings of being overwhelmed, tired, and stressed. That’s why it’s so important to stay stress-free over the holidays, otherwise, you run the risk of feeling worn out and tired. We’ve got 10 tips for everyone to try and keep calm and as stress-free as possible over this festive season. Let go of high expectations

You might think that big, sweeping lifestyle changes are the only way to improve your health drastically. Think of all those huge promises we make ourselves, especially at the start of the year- quitting smoking, losing weight, working out every day. While bigger health goals are important, some of the biggest changes come from the small steps we can take to improve our health. There are numerous smaller steps you'll take that will help progress your general wellbeing and quality of life - and they’re all things that are easily incorporated into your day-to-day life, so you can keep them up in the long term. Some will only take a few minutes each day but have a huge impact on your health. 1. Destress

All of us, even the most motivated of people, can feel unmotivated from time to time. All the amount of planning and thinking about doing things can’t help if you’re feeling in a slump and finding it difficult to make positive changes in your life. However, there’s a few small ways you can help yourself find motivation and get started with positive changes. Stick to One Goal

Anyone who has experienced a jolt in their back when trying to get on with their day to day life understands how bad lower back pain can be and how it can debilitate us.If you’re not careful it can become a chronic problem that will lead to serious issues in life. But you don’t have to let it become an issue that ruins your life! Here’s some tips to protect your lower back and protect your spine Movement is Medicine You might think that resting is best and that exercise is counterproductive to help prevent back pain, but regular exercise can help - although don’t do it if you’re in pain already!

Working out every day to get toned can be hard, and not everyone's first priority in life. However, doing yoga can be a great, low-impact way to tone your body and look fitter. And there are a few ways that you can complement your yoga practice to help you get toned up. Mixing it up Most fitness trainers agree that you should add variety to your workout routine. Doing the same things day after day won’t help you to get toned any quicker. Listen to what your body needs and mix up yoga and stretching with more intense workouts and lifting to create a good balance between your workout. This will help you develop a more well-rounded fitness base, and prevent injuries from overuse, as well as keeping things fun and less boring!

Holding on to negative emotions like pain, stress, and anxiety sometimes can’t fix anything. Remembering the past and bad things over and over can’t change what has happened, and wishing things were different can’t make it so. Most of the time, especially when it comes to past events, the best thing to do is to accept what you’re holding on to and let go. If you hold onto the past, you are hindering yourself from growth and creating a stronger sense of self, based on who you want to be. Painful emotions can be strangely comfortable if you are used to holding onto them and letting go of pain and negative emotions can be hard and uncomfortable. However, there are some things you can do to help yourself let go and move forward. Accept other people for who they are

According to eastern health sciences going back decades, every living being is alive and functions because of the life force (or pranic) energy that is circulating throughout their bodies - through channels known as Nadi channels. Nadi channels follow the same path around the body as our sympathetic nervous systems. There are so many energy channels that are flowing around our body, connecting every part of our bodies to each other.

Yoga is an extremely popular practice around the globe, and that’s because it was made to be accessible to everyone, to heal, strengthen, calm and empower whoever wants to try it, regardless of age, gender, race, size, shape, background and fitness level! Everyone should try yoga at least once in their life, and here are just a few reasons why this practice is for everyone. Stress Relief Yoga relieves stress for everyone from any walk of life. Yoga helps to bring attention to our breath, which is the quickest and easiest way to change our mindsets and emotional states. Deeper, fuller breaths help to relax our parasympathetic nervous systems, which in turn helps to alleviate anxiety and tension. Whoever you are, once you try connecting and controlling your breath through yoga, you will notice your stress levels reducing. The mind-body practice of yoga allows for meditation and relaxation and gaining some knowledge of how your mind works is a great long-term stress management technique.

Iyengar Yoga is a style of yoga that was developed and named after someone called B.K.S Iyengar, in the 1960s. This style of yoga is very meticulous and places importance on precision and alignment. Iyengar yoga is about breath control and posture and is great to build strength and flexibility, as well as teaching the correct alignment of the body. B.K.S Iyengar was born in 1918 in Bellur, India. He studied and practiced yoga for over 85 years. He studied under T. Krishnamacharya - who is often referred to as ‘The Father of Modern Yoga’. He brought his style of yoga to the west in the 1970’s and wrote his book: Light on Yoga, which has been a source for yoga students all over the world. B.K.S Iyengar taught for over 75 years in the 5 continents, bringing yoga to many people around the world. He even invented a lot of the yoga props we still use today and helped explore how yoga can treat medical conditions.

Around the world, COVID-19 restrictions are lifting in various stages, and in some places, they're getting tighter again as the pandemic continues. In some parts of the world, people are coming out of lockdown and recent months have been a time of being allowed to see family again, to go out for dinner, and even festivals and nightclubs. This can be quite overwhelming after months of restrictions in place. While you might be excited for some sense of normalcy, feeling uncertain and anxious is a normal reaction to the world changing once again.

Bad days can happen to anyone, even the most positive of us. Anything from a stressful day at work, something you love breaking, getting caught up in traffic - somethings, things go wrong and we feel like life just well, sucks. While we can’t manage absolutely everything in the world to ensure we never have a bad day, we can do some small things everyday to boost our mood, no matter what life throws at us. Start the Morning Right If you don’t start you first 20 minutes of the day by getting up and doing something, it’s been said it can have an impact on the entire rest of your day. To avoid your whole morning, afternoon and evening being an uphill battle, try and do something productive in those first 20 minutes, if its meditation, going for a walk, making a healthy breakfast, or catching up on some positive news, it will boost your mood and start you right for the rest of the day. Drink Water Drinking water can help to energise your body, support healthy weight, improve your brain function and also improve your sleep. Sounds great! Try and drink between 2-3 litres of water a day, and try and drink some first thing in the morning - yes this means before your morning coffee! Top tip - try to drink room temperature water to help it be absorbed more quickly to rehydrate you faster.

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.

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

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.

If you’ve done even one yoga class, you’ve probably already done at least one twisting pose in your practice, probably more. Twisting has a large number of benefits to the body, however, it’s important to do them safely for the best yoga experience. Here’s some of the benefits of yoga twists, and how to master them. Back Health When we do twists in yoga we rotate the spine and stretch the back muscles, which in turn helps to restore and keep the spine’s range of motion. Not having a strong range of motion can run the risk of our joints becoming hard and inflexible, and the supportive muscles surrounding the spine can shrink. Stretching the muscles regularly with twists can prevent this. Boosting Energy

Earth Day found its beginnings in 1970, in the United States, and years later the environmental movement has gone global. Over a billion people worldwide get involved each year with Earth Day activities and trying to make the world a better place. Here are some small ways you can get involved and give back this earth day. Recycle One of the essential things we need to do to protect the Earth is simply recycling. An easy thing to do is try to reduce the amount of waste you produce by recycling and reusing materials that don’t need to go into the bin. Simple things like recycling cardboard and paper, reusing glass and plastic materials can help, and you can also do things like buying second-hand rather than new. Reduce Meat Consumption

In today’s busy modern world, yoga has evolved over the years to fit into our jam-packed schedules, the most notable of these being - practices are shorter. The traditional yoga class and used to last 90 minutes, which was a standard practice. Nowadays, we see 60, 30, even 5 minutes yoga practices, which while they still have their uses, sometimes can’t compare to the benefits of a longer practice. The main benefit of a longer practice is more time to focus on mindfulness, breathing techniques, and to generally help you relax. Here are 10 ways these benefits can positively impact your life.

We all know that working out can improve our sex lives, as exercise can boost both your energy levels and your self-esteem, but did you know that yoga not only gives those benefits, but lots more? If you’re looking to yoga as your new form of working out, read on to discover how it can also give a boost to your sex life. Yoga Improves Pelvic Floor Muscles When you practice yoga, you can use up all of your muscles in one pose or another, including your pelvic floor. When doing standing poses and supporting your own body weight, you’re also working out your pelvic floor muscles. In an average yoga class, this can add up to half an hour of pelvic floor exercises. If you didn’t know, strengthening these muscles can help to improve your orgasms - a great incentive to get on the yoga mat!

Yoga practice may not necessarily make you think of the word ‘strong’ - but it’s a common misconception that the practice is all about getting bendy and flexible. Yoga can actually be a great addition to strength training, and can make you more powerful and strong both in the gym and your day-to-day life. Combining yoga with strength training can not only make you stronger - it can actually help reduce your risk of pain and injury. Read on to find out how. Yoga is a form of bodyweight training If you’re working on a specific set of muscles, perhaps to increase strength in these areas, or for aesthetic reasons, it can be easy to neglect the other muscles in your body - which can hinder your progress. Yoga as bodyweight training can help to even things out in your body.

Handstands are one of the more impressive poses that you can have in your arsenal, however they can be difficult to pull off. This is a pose that you need to work up to, building the muscles needed and mastering variations of the pose before tackling an unaided handstand. There are lots of ways you can prepare to master the handstand, but they mostly come down to strengthening your core and arm muscles, as well as improving your general strength and flexibility with regular yoga practice. We’ve listed some of the key poses and exercises you can do to help you ace your handstands.

Getting up and on the yoga mat regularly is great for your health and mind, but if you work at a busy desk job, your regular practice still might not be enough to combat the stress and pressure you are putting on your body - and your posture! However, there are many ways to alleviate this pressure, but the easiest ones don’t even involve getting up from your chair - perfect for those days when you’ve just got too much work to do. There are many yoga poses you can practice at your desk, and we’ve put together some of the best to help the areas that get the most strain sitting down, to reduce back pain, posture issues and stress. Seated Crescent Moon

Around the world, the current global pandemic has changed our lives. Although we might be getting used to this new normal way of living, we are all still affected in 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation, social distancing, and ill-health can all be tough on our mental health, and many of us might be feeling anxious, scared, and lonely. It’s important to have some ways to manage any negative mental health effects the pandemic might be having on you, to help keep feeling positive when things get tough. Here are some ways you can try to keep your head afloat during the pandemic, to give you a boost of positivity. Allow Yourself to Feel Anxious

After a indulgent Christmas, you might be thinking about rolling out your yoga mat and getting back into your fitness routine for 2021. Some of us, however, might be finding it daunting after taking time off. A detoxing yoga routine can be just what you need to feel refreshed and ready to take on a new year. Here’s our top poses to detox after indulging. Twisted Chair This pose is great for detoxing the digestive system, ‘twisting’ the body to wring out toxins and negative energy. It also helps to increase flexibility and tones your internal organs - perfect for if you’ve overdone it over the festive season.

2021 is around the corner, and not a moment too soon. It’s been a tumultuous year for many of us, so New Year's resolutions probably haven’t even crossed your mind. Big changes and new challenges may be a little too much to take on after the year that we’ve had, but there are plenty of small changes you can make that will help bring you a little more joy in the year to come. Here’s our list of small changes to make for a happier 2021. Start reading Many of us would have spent more time than ever this year watching shows or movies at home.

Giving something back, aka philanthropy, isn’t a new concept. Being generous has been a part of our everyday lives for decades, and is an integral part of our modern society. However, giving back doesn’t have to be hard. Yes, there are those that dedicate themselves to philanthropy, but you can also do something as simple as carrying groceries for a neighbor. Any act of kindness, big or small, can have a positive impact on social issues, wellness, and community spirit. Isn't that the world we want to live in in 2020? Here are some small ways you can give back. 1. Volunteer Your Time