Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

My first yoga class was in the NYU gym. I was 18 and on the bagel, pizza and cereal diet of a student. Holistic wellness wasn't necessarily on my radar and I went to class mostly because I wanted a bohemian experience that would fuel my assumed New York artiste persona. That was the same year I pierced my ear, wore yellow tinted glasses, and sported a beret on occasion. Yoga was to be another fashionable accessory.

Happy 2017! A new year full of new possibilities! Are you feeling inspired? Or just a bit hungover and groggy from celebrating? Either way, we’ve got just the thing to help you start the new year right!

Last week, we discussed the Winter Solstice and how when we align with nature, we settle into a rhythm that honors our own inner being. It’s easy to get off balance this time of year when the world seems focused on the holidays, and your usual schedule flies out the window. How we can maintain our self-practice or Sadhana!

Your life… akin to a hands-on interactive museum with multi-sensory opportunities. A vast space with large walls ready to display and enjoy a life you choose. A potential challenge for many of us to curate our lives of desire when our DNA, upbringing, perceptions, and expectations seem to be locked into our current life’s mural seemingly unable to modify.

During the holidays and at an year’s end, it’s normal to get off track from routines and our daily practices of yoga and meditation. We go into unfamiliar spaces in airports and places where we can’t bring our meditation cushions or altar. While traveling is exciting, it is easy to feel out of touch with our spiritual practices.

Is there a difference between loving your body and being in love with your body? We are presented with this notion that we need to love ourselves-- that our love must exist as this unquestionable force of worship, one that sustains and thus bestows wholeness upon us. This approach has always felt flat to me. As a surface stripped bare of footholds. A richly rough and complicated concept made smooth by the dogmatism of devotion. Love yourself.

I love all kind of condiment, I'm talking sauces, pickles, chutneys you name it. I feel like it's those kinds of things that take dishes to the next level. I've made pickled vegetables before, but have yet to create a recipe that I think really stands out from the rest. I never made a chutney until a few days ago. After throwing in seemingly random quantities of each ingredient, I ended up with (what I honestly believe) is the best tomato chutney I've ever had.

Overbooking my schedule since returning to California has left me tired and overwhelmed. I can never turn down an opportunity, so now I never stop-- I leave the house at 8am and come back at 10pm. What have I done to myself?! It’s in these moments that I appeal to my yoga values. Yoga, in its non dogmatic form, is the only philosophy whose moral codes I was able to identify with and slowly make my own.

Can you feel the change in the air? December 21, 2016, marked the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. What exactly is a solstice? “Solstice” comes from Latin: sol meaning "sun" and sistere meaning “to stand still.” The Winter Solstice is the perfect time to pause, reflect, and create our dreams and intentions.

The final new moon of the year gives us a perfect opportunity to set clear intentions for 2017 and start fresh. It is through the new moon that we cultivate what we wish to bring into our lives, to grow and develop, and to nurture into fullness. With the new moon so close to New Year’s Eve, it’s is a perfect opportunity to tend to your goals, particularly in the areas of your career, responsibility, growth and maturation and discipline. Have you been skimping on a regular spiritual practice? Do you find yourself procrastinating? Are you not stepping up to the responsibilities that life is handing you? Now is the time.

Tune into your heart and find joy in settling into Camel pose. Camel is a deep heart-opening posture that strengthens your back while freeing your neck, chest, lungs, abdominals, and thighs. Explore how good it feels to open up through the heart by breathing into the space surrounding it. Because Camel pose directly links to the Anahata, or heart chakra, practicing it allows us to tap into our energy center to foster more genuine self-love, trust, compassion and forgiveness.

Over the past six months, due to personal and professional reasons, I found myself traveling and moving from one place to another— from point A to B then to B to C then C to A or B. And it feels like I’m still going and coming to unknown destinations.

We had amazing food at this year’s retreat to the Lumeria Maui. And when you’re on a yoga retreat, doing many hours of yoga each day you really need a great dessert. This Avocado Chocolate Mousse was, hands-down, the group’s favorite, because hello, chocolate?

You may not have realized this, but your favorite yoga poses are also the key to bringing more love, warmth and fa-la-la to your holiday season. This time, we’re not talking about using your practice for a deep and introspective personal journey toward self discovery, we’re talking about a joy break right on the surface. Keeping spirits bright, we’ve identified the very best poses for your favorite holiday activities. Enjoy the jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell bhakti and the most wonderful time of the year will be exactly that.

No need to play off of false pretenses here. This is a safe place. I’m no dainty flower. I am, in a lot of ways, mostly talking about gluten and caffeine consumption. But in how I present myself - decidedly less dainty. And you know what, sometimes a lady wants to feel sophisticated and flowery and perhaps a hint of dainty. Hence why I love to add lavender to anything and everything.

I’ve been practicing yoga for a few years, and have learned an awful lot about myself through my practice. Mostly about parts of me that haven’t healed. It’s been a process of taking down the walls I have built around my heart during my life – most notably, emotions and fear.

I know back pain. I’ve dealt with varying degrees of back pain—from mild to severe—for more than 20 years. I’ve also worked with hundreds of students that have similar challenges. In fact, many students turn to yoga when they’re facing lower-back problems.

The super moon in Gemini on December 13, 2016 illuminates our communication and learning. It encourages us to make connections, and stay close to our siblings, friends and relatives. Gemini’s most notable attributes are all highlighted, but this is also a good opportunity to let go of what doesn’t serve you in the realm of chatter: mental, verbal or spiritual. If there is too much in the way, it obstructs clarity, and for our path to be pure, we need to be clear.

“Ditch social media and my T.V. for a week... What?” Depending on who you are, and how much you use technology in your daily routine, a digital detox might seem either insane or too easy. It’s not until you begin to experience the highs and lows of a digital detox rollercoaster that you realize just how addicting social media and television really are. No matter who you are, if you’re living in this developed, 21st-century country, chances are you probably need a digital detox.

The recent Harry Potter yoga class took the Internet by storm, with participants pictured holding a wand as they practiced different yoga poses. They also had a sorting hat and listened to passages from the Deathly Hallows! While we might find it hard to find or attend a Harry Potter class, we can certainly bring some magic into our own home yoga practice. The Griffyndor wizards at BooKYogaTeacherTraining.com have just the right tips for you to work your magic into your own practice!

Flexibility, balance, strength, and equanimity—you’ve probably heard of all those reasons to practice yoga, right? Not just benefits for the body, but for the mind and soul as well. How about combating stress and delving into spirituality? Absolutely! The list goes on…

Heavy Metals. We’re not talking about Def Leppard or Metallica today, ladies and gentlemen! We’re talking about toxic heavy metals such as mercury, aluminum, copper, cadmium, nickel, arsenic, and lead, that we’re all exposed to on a daily basis. How are we exposed? Surprisingly we come into contact with heavy metals in everyday life – through the air we breathe (think vehicle emissions and other environmental pollutants), in the food we eat (non-organic foods that have been treated with pesticides and herbicides), if you have dental fillings made from mercury-containing amalgam, and certain types of large fish (such as king mackerel, swordfish, orange roughy, marlin, tuna steaks, and canned ‘white’ albacore).

How do you energize? There isn’t a shortage of energizing yoga classes or sequences, but I often wonder what we are actually asking of our students and ourselves when we practice with this goal. Often an energizing yoga class is just fast and hard. When done a bit more mindfully, it can focus on poses or breath patterns that stimulate and excite the nervous system into a more focused, instead of frantic state. My essential energizing poses, which find their way into my energizing classes, tell the chest to expand and invite an empowered inhalation. They connect me to the ground but suggest a rise of vital energy or prana upwards.

How’s your state of mind? We here at YogaDownload.com know how hectic life becomes this time of year. We’re right in the stretch between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve when many of us could use a shot of adrenaline or a warm blanket and a teddy bear to make it through to 2017. At the very least, we could use a rejuvenating yoga class or a calming meditation practice.

Fitness trends come and go all the time. Crossfit had its time in the spotlight, as did rail running and P90X. However, as studies are published across the fitness and medical industries, telling us which exercises will really get us into the best shape of our lives, there is one form of fitness that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Which one is it? You guessed it: yoga.