Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

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

“You are what you eat,” we all have heard it, know it, and most of us believe it. But are we aware of it and the aspects related to the effects of food on our minds? We need to take care of what we are eating and what is eating us. We know the effects food has on our bodies and have basic knowledge about what food contains what kind of nutrients and in what quantities, also what kind of nutrients we need to get healthy to lose fat, etc. But we have probably not given importance to the effects of food on our minds and personality. Does the food we eat really affect our minds and thoughts?

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!

Arthritis sucks. It is the most common ailment in the USA. But just like any ailment, there are ways to ease the symptoms by eating foods that reduce inflammation. Here is a list of seven that just might help: 1. Green tea. Contains a natural antioxidant which may prevent cartilage from breaking down. 2. Foods with Omega-3 fatty acids. Fish oils. flaxseeds, walnuts and other good fats may help build strength and reduce fatigue.

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

A high heel shoe puts your foot in a plantarflexed (foot pointed downward) position, placing an increased amount of pressure on your forefoot. This causes you to adjust the rest of your body to maintain your balance. The lower part of your body leans forward and to compensate for that, the upper part of your body must lean back to keep you balanced. This is not your body’s normal standing position. The normal s-curve shape of the back acts as a shock absorber, reducing reduce stress on the vertebrae. Wearing high heels causes lumbar (low-back) spine flattening and a posterior (backward) displacement of the head and thoracic (mid-back) spine.

Every person needs to rest. Even the computer, at which you many eight hours or more per day, periodically needs to be recharged. It is important and valuable to know which are the best ways for you to switch gears switch between work mode to and rest and leisure. With many working from home, the lines between work and home life are blurring. Smartphones that allow us to be in touch 24 hours a day and constantly trying to notify us can make it more challenging to switch out of work mode and into leisure mode. Do you still remember those distant days when the work was not urgent? While work can seem urgent and like the top priority, it's important to remember that friends, family, children, hobbies and your life is urgent and important too.

Depression is not easy to live with, but there are things you can do in order to feel better about yourself. Depression makes it hard to do what you need to do to start feeling better, though. It can drain your energy, drive, and hope. Overcoming depression is not quick or easy, but it is possible. Don't listen to sad music: Listening to sad music won't help you fight depression. A lot of people are drawn to sad music when they're depressed because it validates their thoughts. This can be good for a short time but can keep you in a depressed state if overdone. Ditch the sad music and you'll find yourself feeling better.

Stress in the 21st century is seemingly normal. It can seem present everywhere – demand from work, family challenges, economic concerns, world news, natural disasters, relationship dramas, etc. This can take its toll on our mental health if we allow it. You might have no control over the outer world, however, you can take positive steps to protect your mental health and prevent the effects of stress. Understanding Stress Stress is the pressure that comes from occurrences and experiences of everyday life. Interestingly, humans might benefit from small doses of stress. It helps keep you alert, energized and triggers a positive reaction in all situations to protect yourself. The stress hormone tells you to flee and take cover when there is a shooter on a rampage.

Developing positive habits in your home life can impact your mood and overall well-being. Here are some positive household habits that will help you build a framework for a happier life. Building and maintaining good habits can provide our lives with a positive framework, but these habits don’t simply happen by chance. It’s pretty easy to fall into bad habits that impede life around the house. A happy routine can support a happy mood, so if we stick to positive routines around our homes, we stand a good chance of keeping negative slumps at bay.

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.

Want to know my new secret to success and well-being? Hot and cold contrast showers! Yep! Contrast showers, or hydrotherapy, are actually not a new trend, but rather have been used around the world for centuries as a healing modality. This technique, generally used by athletes to improve recovery between training sessions or post-competition, involves alternating between hot and cold water multiple times. I always start my shower with warm water for a couple minutes, then switch to icy cold for a couple more minutes. I do about three intervals of switching back and forth between hot and cold, always ending with water as cold as I can stand. (And learning about what I can “stand” is a meditation in itself. Hint, it helps to breathe!)

For many of us, taking time and doing things that help to clear out the stress and tension is essential to feeling vibrant. Most of us carry a lot in our minds every day, more than we might realize or give ourselves credit for. Every single human is balancing some combination of work, relationships, finances, emotions, in their minds. It can be a lot of keep track of or feel relaxed about. It can be easy to forget that things can be simple, life can feel good and there is so much wonder and beauty in this temporary human experience. It's vital to have experiences and practices that help you embrace life more fully. If we don't give ourselves time to go inwards to recharge, reset, and clear things out, we can accumulate tension, burn out or not feel so excited about life.

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.

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."

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 to an online yoga studio for the time being and teaches most of her classes online.

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

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 it with daily writing practices. Here is how to open your throat chakra using a pen and paper:

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

This meditation is a natural vitality booster. You can do this meditation anytime and anywhere. It’s nice to spend some time with it in your formal meditation practice, but you can also invite the energy of the golden sun with you at anytime, commuting, working, or even while eating or walking. To enjoy this simple meditation, simple do the following steps. It only takes a few minutes. 1. With eyes open or closed, visualize a bright, golden sun above your head.

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. Ria Pereira is a yoga instructor from Karachi Pakistan on a mission to help people love themselves and lead them towards a healthy lifestyle. She also has a passion to bake cakes and brownies to add more sweetness to one’s life. What are you passionate about sharing with the world and why? How does this inspire you?

Our homes and our minds both have the ability to be our sanctuary and personal prison depending on what we may be experiencing in a given moment. As we enter into our 1 year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic I personally have experienced the highs and lows on a daily, weekly, or moment to moment basis. A lot has come up in as I am sure it has for you, and the feeling I notice bubbling up lately is grief. We have been facing uncertainty at an extreme level for about a year now, on top of the organic uncertainty we face by simply having the human experience. Some of us are grieving connection, how we thought work would look or feel, life prior to the pandemic, loved ones, births where limited people were able to be there and you were masked (because there was a deadly pandemic in the same building you were birthing a child), first years of college, high school, or elementary school, canceled or delayed weddings and funerals, jobs, a big move, putting yourself on the market to start dating, your first year as a teacher and you’re doing it virtually, you name it, and the list goes on and on. Your grief is extremely valid.

We all need to take a moment of the day to make a pause and release all the stress that we accumulate in our daily lives. A great way to do this is by introducing a meditation practice into our schedules; for that purpose, it would be ideal to have a designated space at home that you use only for meditation. There are a few things that you should consider in terms of creating the ideal space to support relaxation, focus, and concentration during meditation. If you want to know more about this, continue reading because we gathered some great tips and advice from the experts to achieve this vibe at home and succeed in your meditation practice. What do you suggest for setting up a meditation space at home? Determine the purpose of your space.

I have struggled with perfectionism my whole life. If you’re anything like me, your ego carries a dialogue within you that charges up your desire to be the best or do it best. I have noticed in my own shadow work that words my ego creates around this energy that is essentially draining, impossible to achieve, filled with loads of effort, and yet like the dangling carrot in front of my face meant to be endlessly chased. One of the key insights that came about as I looked within myself to work with this energy was a simple yet profound exchange of energy I could create within my body, most especially my fourth chakra, the Anahata or Heart Chakra, which I see as a space that holds shape for the energy that codes my self-esteem. This is the energy center where many of us hold the keys to our self-esteem.