Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

What is it about being ambitious by nature? I am always playing with the prospect of somewhere else, or something else, something new. Seeking it has always been my mindset, for as long as I can remember. Until now. Finding balance between my self-determination and so much my brain space can handle? I have to work on getting my life sorted, get a health check, or my goal of drinking more water in this moment, and I can write a list of 20-something things I want to do, or I can try to schedule (more like squeeze in) back-to-back yoga classes into my daily schedule, and I can try to become a better photographer or writer or whatever it is yet all I’d like to do is sit still.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! This week we celebrate how to capture those feelings of good luck and happiness and bottle them up for the entire year. It’s just like the leprechaun finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, right? Check out Mark Morford’s latest class: How to Get Lucky Vol. II: Get Luckier.

Yoga postures that can be practiced during pregnancy depend on the mother's physical condition and pregnancy stage. To determine whether it is appropriate for pregnant women to yoga, it is recommended that you first consult your obstetrician. During pregnancy, it is advisable to practice private prenatal yoga in the second trimester (from the fourth month to the eighth month) and consult your doctor in advance. Under the guidance of professional teachers, pregnancy yoga is safe. It enhances the overall flexibility of the body and strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, which are all vital in the delivery process. What’s more is that practicing these poses increases the body's blood circulation, stimulates the various organs and glands, and improves blood flow.

Now with this recipe I really cannot take most of the credit for it! I've always been a serious fan of Jamie Oliver - I find his entire approach to food to be completely inspirational (and very similar to my own)

Yoga and meditation can be used as a healthcare tool for healthy living. You have heard that yoga meditation is helpful or good for health. But how it is good for health or it works really? There are also many controversial stories about yoga. So, you should know scientifically about yoga meditation. There are a lot of studies shows you the proof behind the every benefits of yoga meditation. These are the 100 benefits based on the available researches.

The full moon in Virgo shines light on our body image, our self-talk, and our relationship to health and service. We see, by the light of this full moon, opportunities to refine the way we move, think, and speak. This is only impacted more fully by close relationships to Chiron, the wounded healer, and Mercury, the messenger, who have co-rulership of the sign of Virgo.

When your back hurts, everything in your life is impacted. If you’ve ever experienced spasms or intense pain anywhere along your spine, you know what we mean. We’re here to help break down a few of the reasons back pain manifests and also to suggest how incorporating yoga can keep your spine healthy and prevent future back pain.

When I bumped into a friend at my favorite local coffee shop a few weeks ago, I was excited. I hadn’t seen this friend all summer long. What’s been new in his world, I wondered? What has he been solving, moving toward, creating? How are his kids? Yet what unfolded between us was humdrum, socially-polite, and altogether boring.

As a kid, I remember the Ladies Who Lunch coming over to the house regularly to play canasta or mah-jongg. On these occasions, my mom showed me how you could use a fruit as a bowl for salad: she’d serve the pearled grand dames tomatoes stuffed with chicken salad, and that was the inspiration for this dish. I’ve gone for a different mode of transport—an avocado boat—and jazzed up the salad as well. No mayo here, but lime juice, cumin, coriander, jalapeño (za-zing!), olive oil, and avocado provide the diving pond for the shrimp. I think the Ladies Who Lunch would’ve approved.

Do you dread attempting full splits or Hanumanasana? Physically, it’s an intimidating yoga pose and could be one you avoid for that reason. We’re here to share the story behind the pose. Once you appreciate the myth behind the posture, you may be inspired to approach it differently with the power of the meaning fueling you.

With so much information out there about nutrition it’s nearly impossible to sift out the genuine truth. Find something you think you can trust that even has citations and studies to boot, and guaranteed there’s some website out there that fundamentally disagrees with what you just read and somehow, magically, has the same amount of evidence backing it up. Either that or the advice it gives you is to sacrifice all of your beloved foods and basically rearrange your entire life around digestion.

A solar eclipse gives us insights into the psyche of the world. When the light of our sun is hidden by the moon, the shadows it casts reveal the hidden activities of the collective unconscious. What are we all working on? What do we all need to reveal? Where can we all grow? This particular Pisces new moon and solar eclipse comes just two weeks after a lunar eclipse, and five months after a similar back-to-back solar and lunar eclipse duet from September of 2016. Essentially, this is both the ending of that long eclipse pattern, and the beginning of a new one. For the next six months, we will be basking in the shadowy light of this Pisces eclipse, as we let the energies of the previous eclipse cycle energies wane.   

Do you pride yourself on your ability to juggle several balls in the air at once? If you’re dispersing your energy by multi-tasking, by being glued to your smartphone, by working overtime for your career, your family, and your friends, you’re going to burn out. When all your energy goes outward without the requisite focus on recharging your inner light, disconnection results.

This post will be a savory one, and its a damn good savory one at that. I hadn't planned on posting this recipe on my blog, in fact I didn't even know what this dish was going to turn out like until it was finished. I decided this morning, it was time to give myself a bit of a cleanse (and no I'm not talking about a juice cleanse, fasting, or anything like that). Rather it's purely about filling my body with really great wholesome food, cutting out refined sugars, reducing the amount of processed food I eat, drinking a heap of water, and getting enough sleep.

It is widely known that yoga helps us conquer a long list of health benefits. Yoga eases anxiety and relieves symptoms of depression. It helps with back and neck pain and it reduces stress levels; it helps us be more in the moment and so much more. Despite knowing that yoga is good for us, it can still be hard for us to do yoga, especially when we have an already overpacked schedule. You don’t need a full hour to incorporate this exercise into your daily routine, however, and the following tips will show how you can do yoga every day, no matter how busy you are.

A growing hyperbole around the visible and miraculous benefits of detoxification has many of us reaching for cooling juices even in the dead of winter's cold, resulting in ailments and plummeting energy levels. Each season has unique impacts on the human body, which in many ways resembles their distinct impacts on the overall environment. For example, the blooming spring season replenishes our vitality; summer fires up our energy levels, fall gently subdues our bodily functions and winter cascades them to a near halt to ensure survival.

The soup we’re sharing today is a not your average soup. We call it a Supersoup (as well as lawn mower pulp), and it’s one of the soups we most recommend during Purification. During our 14-day cleanse, we have two weekends (or two other consecutive days of your choice) where we offer a deeper cleansing process. During this time, we encourage lots of rest and relaxation, and we only take in vegetables and fruits, with no more than 2 tablespoons of oil each day.

Since I sold my Yoga One studios in California back in 2015, I've been focusing more on my personal studies, especially in Dharma, meditation and Ayurveda. In fact, I have not offered a single Tantravaya 200 Hour training in all of 2016, after directing at least a couple each year for nearly a decade. So during this time I have been asked the same question from students around the world: which training should I pick?

Ayurveda is a complex discipline based upon Vedic spiritual tradition, and is a powerful system of mind-body health. Learning to work with its principles will aid you in maintaining vibrant health or in achieving health if you are in a state of dis-ease. This sister science of yoga integrates beautifully with your asana, pranayama and meditation practices.

By now, winter has long been settled into many parts of the world bringing colder temperatures. Winter can be hard on the body as it works overtime to keep your body warm and you may find yourself craving hibernation. Do you ever find your energy levels lower during the winter? Or do you always catch a dreaded cold every winter? You may be wondering how you can stay healthy to promote more energy, boost your immune system to fight sluggish energy and beat the winter blues so that you're ready to fling into spring.

Some people have told me not to talk about it. That it’s my place as a yoga instructor to spread peace and harmony. That my message must be about love and fairies. That I must ignore reality. That’s not yoga at all. That’s a continuation of the mess that got us here in the first place. Yeah, I get it. We’re all sick of it. There’s a lot of anger and resentment and fear. Encouraging people to escape to yoga is a disservice to students.

Eric Paskel teaches yoga to inmates at San Quentin, creating a “prison break” without ever leaving the prison. It was not a hard sell when my teacher, Swami Parthasarathy, told me during one of our first meetings, “The whole world is a prison, and your only job in life is to get the hell out.”

One of the things I love most about my mom is that she was never one to follow a recipe. If she didn't have a particular ingredient that a recipe called for, she'd sub for something similar, get creative and put her own little twist on it by adding a completely unrelated ingredient or just skip it. There were definitely some duds in the mix but more often than not, she came up with some awesome dishes.

Roses, chocolates and teddy bears aside, you don't need another person to validate love this Valentine’s Day (though we’ll take the box of chocolates). Today, we challenge you to roll out your mat and write a love letter to yourself. Take fifteen minutes to celebrate everything that makes you whole, even the messy parts. Write them down and see them for what they are: regular human qualities worthy of love. Then, through today’s asana practice, celebrate that self-understanding. Embrace your shaking legs, sweaty mat and experience the fullness of who you are.

I’ve had anxiety since college and have been lucky enough to use therapy as a tool for managing it. As such, I’ve learned a lot about how anxiety manifests in my life and how to recognize as well as soothe it.