Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

Our core is our center—physically, emotionally and mentally. It’s vital to keep our spine healthy, our abs strong, and cultivate our prana from our navel center. Learn to utilize the wisdom of yoga to become your most confident, decisive, and happy self. Diving into subtle body anatomy, specifically balancing your Manipura or navel Chakra can empower your life. This week, we’ve got four new classes and a previously released class to get you started.

Today’s recipe was created by culinary master Leslie White from Zeal Food here in Boulder. This decadent sweet treat was the closing morsel of yumminess that completed our cleanse-friendly meal last week, and people have been talking about it since.

The novelty of yoga has been worn down to almost nothing by a multi-billion dollar industry that cares little for its tenets, like the crumbling shreds of a shoddily made pvc mat from China. But from out of the ashes of craven images and advertising schemes, a new discipline is emerging.

A full moon in Sagittarius on June 9, 2017 encourages us to explore the realm of the religious function of our psyche. Often overlooked, or pushed aside in favor of science and certainty, this mystical heart of our being is bereft of attention. Because of a lack of connection to a personal mythology, we suffer from constant overwhelm of life’s circumstances, and an unknowing of how to make sense of them. 

High Intensity Interval Training—often just called HIIT for short—is working its way into fitness enthusiast’s workout schedules everywhere, and not without good reason. In fact, Dr. Axe shares many different benefits of HIIT in addition to better physical fitness, a couple of which include its anti-aging effects and support of healthier levels of hormones like ghrelin (which affects your eating patterns) and leptin (the hormone responsible for making you feel full).

Denelle Numis composes an authentic experience on the mat where each student can immediately connect with the rhythm of their body and their breath. With a background in modern dance, Denelle builds her Vinyasa classes through a progression of dynamic sequences to stimulate energy and vitality throughout the body. She infuses her classes with eclectic music and inspiring peak postures. Even though her classes may be challenging, Denelle’s vibrant and gregarious personality motivates her students to stay playful in their practice.

As humans, we blame ourselves for various perceived shortcomings in life. But some of us really get stuck there. We blame ourselves for not being more disciplined or not being able to do it all. We blame ourselves for not being there for a loved one. There’s an easy tool I use to practice forgiveness, but I’d like to first speak about what happens when we blame ourselves.

If you’ve been chained to a desk since New Year’s Day, your body’s in need of a liberating vacation, and your mind is ready for a cozy staycation. How do you escape, but stay still at the same time? Well, you could binge watch Netflix or you could try these 5 tips to kick off summer with a sense of adventure and peace.

It is common for people to go through dry spells or feel burnt out. We all have, at one point of another, felt uninspired, overworked, wanted to check out and just plain exhausted from the humdrum of life and the prevailing idea of not ‘being enough’. We don’t always have time to go to cook healthy meals, go to yoga classes, stick to our budget or just do things ‘right’. One might wonder what it would be like to have more hours in a given day to do the things we want to do to live a more fulfilling and happy life. Yet if your evenings and weekends are spent in the same couch potato or indulgent fashion, it may be time for you to check in and recognise this as a sign that you’ve been making excuses for yourself.

Salads don’t have to be boring. In fact, they should blow your socks off and keep you coming back for more. With all the textures, flavors and hardiness of a full meal, this salad puts all other salads to shame. It’s packed with protein from the hemp hearts, chickpeas and quinoa; loaded with phytonutrients and crunch from the leafy greens and veggies; and just the right amount of flavor from the crispy, spicy, tangy Buffalo cauliflower. Cheers!

The Gemini new moon this month is a fantastic time to plant seeds in terms of some new, fun travel plans, taking a new course and up-leveling your learning, and making sure your speech and communication is clearly directed and coming from your most authentic place. Gemini always encourages us to speak up, and this New Moon is no exception. It is a good time to focus on speaking the truth about what is important to you, especially when it comes to your intimate relationships. 

What’s your favorite benefit from your yoga practice? Flexible hamstrings? Strong shoulders? Steady balance? Peace of mind? How about healthy, supple joints?

Mental health is a serious subject to take into consideration, particularly as there are so many conditions associated with changes in this area. When speaking about this subject, no one takes into consideration potential lifestyle changes, which could greatly improve one’s mental health. To come to your rescue, we have gathered no less than seven lifestyle changes, destined to boost your mental health and improve your overall quality of life. Keep in mind that these changes can help you deal with conditions such as depression, anxiety or even bipolar disorders. Take action today and be healthy not only tomorrow but for the rest of your life.

I Love Saturdays. Part of the reason is because it marks the start of my weekend. However, there’s something particularly relaxing about waking up on a Saturday morning and knowing that you have absolutely nothing to do! This morning I jumped out of bed at 7:30 (I’m in the process of ‘reseting’ my internal clock because I’m really not a fan of sleeping in) and thankfully the sun was well and truly shining!

When is the last time you experienced a breakthrough on your yoga mat or meditation cushion? Yesterday? Last month? Never? If you feel stagnant with your regular yoga practice, we’re here to offer you options to break through and deepen your physical asana practice or the quality of your meditation time. Consider different ways you can amplify your practice.

Whether you’re in hyper-drive, ticking your way through the holiday to-do list or you’re feeling too depleted to get off the couch and do yoga, the sequence here is invaluable to have in your back pocket during the winter months. It’s not a high-intensity practice – it’s a healing, nurturing, immune boosting yoga practice. The poses encourage relaxation, reduce stress, and facilitate circulation throughout your whole body. These are the three most effective things that yoga asana can do to help support your immune system.

The full moon on May 10, 2017 lights up the sky…and our embodiment of sacred sexuality. While Scorpio is known for those two unavoidable principles in life: death & taxes, it is also known for the depth of connection we feel through spiritually-driven intimacy. On a soul level, Scorpio demands that we use our intimate relationships as more than just a way to satisfy lustful energy, or as an ego-boosting activity. Scorpio wants us to use our sexuality as a way to deeply connect on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level in order to transcend consciousness. 

Transformation is often touted in the yoga world as an aim for which we practice. In fact, the phrase “transformation starts here” is written on the door of one of the yoga studios where I teach. But what does that word really mean? What does the process of transformation look like? How do you teach it or guide that experience for someone else?

As a yoga teacher, there may come times where you would use Sanskrit terms during class, whether you like it or not. This is because it is often the case where most Sanskrit words don’t have an English equivalent that fully explains the meaning of the terms.

From your fingers to your toes, the Nadis are making connections in your body. In the yoga tradition, Nadis are the energy superhighways running through the body – and depending on the lineage you have anywhere between 72,000 to 350,000 of them.

By this point in late January, most people have long forgotten about their New Year’s resolutions. In fact, last Tuesday was declared Ditch Your New Year’s Resolution Day by one source. No big surprise there! Real change doesn’t miraculously happen just because you declare it so! It doesn’t happen overnight, or even in a 14-day cleanse. Long-term sustainable change happens slowly, over time, as a result of practicing new healthy habits. The key is to take action! To DO something everyday that moves you closer to your goal.

Have you ever signed up for something with 100% knowing that it was the best choice you ever made? Don’t you wish you could have that kind of clarity all the time? This is one example of how raising your vibration will serve you. Your choices and the energy behind them creates our energy structure and our vibration-and when all is aligned you have the clarity that makes your choices feel divinely inspired.

The New Moon in Taurus on Wednesday, April 26th, invites us to plant seeds in the areas of life that support, sustain, and nourish us; most particularly, our finances, personal values, relationships, and sensuality. Any new moon period is an opportunity to take stock of what you would like to cultivate in your life, and this moon is a perfect time to retreat, take stock, and indulge in some self-care.

Lotus Pose (Padmasana) is one you were likely familiar with before you ever set foot in a yoga studio. Surely you’d seen sculptures of Siddartha or photographs of Indian sadhus with their legs tightly folded together in a pretzel shape. It’s a pose that’s associated with serene states of meditation — and the shape of the pose really does encourage quiet.

My first internship when I got out of culinary school was in the kitchen at the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, where they had an entire wall filled with dozens and dozens of spices. I swear that wall looked like a piece of art—in the form of a jigsaw puzzle that I had to figure out. The way you knew you had earned your stripes in the kitchen was when the executive chef finally let you make their famous dahl.