Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

Chaos. For as long as I can remember, my life was fundamentally altered and eventually comforted by chaos. If chaos did not physically surround me, it was ever present within my thinking. Experiencing trauma at a young age, I survived by internalizing my pain. I had no tools nor advocate to validate my experience. This shifted my thinking into total victimization. I was engulfed with symptoms of complex PTSD and I was a tourist in a foreign city with no map. Through my adolescent years, up into my early 20’s, I had no coping skills and avoided all discomfort. My mother passed away unexpectedly January 10, 2010 and my life was forever changed. Crippled by grief and overwhelmed by the inability to face the permanence of the situation, eventually lead to my full blown addiction. After years of self medicating, unfathomable consequences, and self sabotaging I finally accepted help and chased after recovery.

When someone mentions meditation to a very active student, this is the usual reaction: “I could never sit still and do nothing.” If that’s how you feel about meditation, then that’s exactly why you need it! Throughout your studies, you can be subjected to more stress than you ever anticipated. You get one class to take after another and one paper to write after another. In between studying and friendships, it could feel like you can’t get time for yourself. Meditation will give you that time. Even if it’s just for 10 minutes per day, meditation helps you calm down and learn more about yourself. There are tremendous benefits of meditation for students. Still not sure? Check out this list of 7 real benefits you’ll get from meditation, especially for students!

The advantages of meditation are plentiful. According to one recent article, there are 76 different benefits to meditation. Now that’s a lot of advantages! The thing is, it could have a million advantages and that wouldn’t make any difference if you didn’t actually know how to meditate. And the truth is, very few of us do know how to meditate. I don’t know if it’s because our modern lifestyle, or that as people we are just naturally disposed towards it, but a lot of people who are beginners and try meditating give up because they don’t have the right mindset. That’s a shame – especially considering how useful it is. For that reason, here I’ll detail five different ways that you can get into the right mindset for meditation, so that you can succeed and make meditation part of your life, or even simply feel more present and meditative while moving throughout your day.

So many of us feel stressed, fatigued, rushed and short on quality time. There are consequences for living in an overstimulated society. Sensory overload can negatively affect our physical and mental well-being. It’s vital to practice methods to reduce overstimulation when possible. Meditation can help your brain get away from the habit of excessive multitasking. For many, learning how to meditate, and where to start if you're a beginner, is the ideal next step in giving your brain some relief and vibrancy. First, it’s important to understand what meditation is. You will find many definitions but they all have a common theme; meditation is what you do with full awareness. You do not have to be seated a certain way in silence to learn how to meditate in a correct or perfect way. You might be walking or engaged in a task or hobby. If you're a brand new beginner, you don’t even need to involve of whole new set of skills, do something that is familiar to you that requires your full attention. I must also address what meditation is not. It is not about stopping all thoughts or creating a “blank mind.” Thoughts will arise and the key is to allow them to come and go without judging or clinging to them. You are actually observing the activity of your mind.

Greatness can be achieved through dedication and daily meditation. Highly successful people are doing it so why won’t you? Each of us has different reasons for meditating. Don’t worry though, as all possible outcomes are always positive. Practicing meditation in the morning might be much more beneficial for you than in any other time of the day.

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.

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.

In our day-to-day lives, it’s all too easy to get caught up in what others want for us. Well-meaning or not, these “other voices” can stick in your head, and if you’re not careful, you won’t be able to recognize your own, at least not as readily. By now you probably know that yoga is about the process of listening to your wisest self. It starts by hearing our bodies— hearing the knee that is out of alignment, stopping yourself from forcing a joint that just won’t bend that way. But eventually, that act gives way to a deeper listening, one where you can hear your own, deepest wants.

A sedentary person also termed a couch potato, is someone that leads a lifestyle with irregular or no physical activity. Couch potato's spend most of their day sitting watching TV, working on a computer, reading or playing video games. Excessive sitting contributes to many chronic health issues including anxiety and preventable causes of death.

Whatever you thought about 2016, this year is a fresh start. We’re here to help you take your life to the next level with new programs and classes to make sure you can put your best mind, mood and foot forward. While some big-picture new years resolutions are ‘head-in-the-clouds’ plans that will soon fade, this is about creating attainable daily routines and results through yoga and meditation classes that will restore, revitalize, and sustain you throughout the year.

Gratitude is an essential part of mindful living. The practice of gratitude is something that can be cultivated all year round, although there are times of the year that especially call for it more. We can use these times of cultural observance and family gatherings as a reminder to fill our cups with gratitude ALL the time, not just during the holidays.

Meditation teaches us how distracted we really are. We just don’t usually notice because we are so distracted. Most of us generally have the same series of redundant thoughts circling around in our mind, over and over and over again. In our society, we are so focused on getting somewhere, getting what we want, the “if only” syndrome so to speak. If only we can just get this job, this house, this person, fill in the blank, then we’ll be happy. When we are operating from this mindset, we aren’t focused on the here and now.

Meditation? Seriously? I know what you're thinking, but yes, seriously I am going to talk about meditation for athletes. I consider myself to be a very practical person so my approach to yoga has always been from a real world perspective. Meditation has always seemed like a bunch of new age hokum. OK, so I was wrong, it happens.

When I am speaking to a large group and introduce the idea of meditation, I can see the immediate look of disdain in the audience. They are not just surprised, but visibly uncomfortable and sometimes even borderline angry. But after they spend five minutes in stillness (as I often call it), I see their look of discomfort replaced with relief, relaxation, and even gratitude. They have discovered a new practice that brings them an immediate peace and calm most of them have not known before.