Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

Yoga can be a magnet for you to attract the things you dream of. Unfortunately, it is not a fairy dust you can sprinkle on your mat. The shifts do not come overnight. And, you cannot simply mutter a Sanskrit mantra for your hopes to manifest. It is a journey of work, of love, and of intense self-reflection. It takes tapas - the yogic ethical concept of discipline and austerity. For many people yoga is nothing more than a fancy workout, or maybe a few calm moments of de-stressing or elaborate stretching. However, yoga is much more. It is a science, a wellness system, a lifestyle, a philosophy, and more than anything a path to clarity and joy. The beauty of yoga is that is flexible to your life and needs. There is an infinite number of ways to practice as there is to interpret the meaning of the word. The word yoga is derived from a word meaning to yoke or to unite. One encompassing way to conceptualize this is to think of uniting the self with all - to connect with the source of all possibilities. The true magic of yoga can happen with the sincere realization of the concept "Namaste" - the light in me recognizes and honors the light within you."

This lunation marks the next phase in divine evolutionary development. The Full Moon moves the collective forward into the next level of divine will and alignment of plan after the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 20th. The physical realm is being broken down and reshaped. This moon will work to move the soul forward, to aid in materializing forces by concretizing previous experiences and aiding to provide more gusto in creative impulses. There will be a surge of cosmic lifeforce uniting with individual lifeforce (prana) to aid in divine plan to materialize along this next evolution. At the Full Moon the Sun, Moon, and Mars will enter specific archetypal points which will highlight the planetary energies working through this Full Moon. Venus and Sun will combust in Aquarius. This energy is working for creative processes of divine will, and not for interrelational love, but will require more self-love, and love within presence. It is union with divine will for soul manifestation.

If you’re familiar and like to play with the manifestation and the law of attraction, make sure to dedicate time and energy into manifesting how you want to feel, who you want to be, and how you aspire to carry yourself, as much, if not more, than solely focusing what kinds of external things you desire. If you’re not familiar with manifestation, it's essentially using visualization techniques to attract experiences into your life. This article and this program will give you a greater understanding of what this is, and how you can use the power of your mind to attract what you want into your reality. And while it's wonderful to use the power of your mind to attract things that can enhance your life, like a beautiful home, a loving partner, nice clothes, or a car you love, lasting happiness always comes from something within.

It’s the time of year when many of us will be thinking about the year ahead, and setting some goals and resolutions to achieve in the next twelve months. It can be easy to just think “I want to achieve…”, but if you want to actually succeed in your resolutions, you need to set achievable goals. If you don’t have a goal to work towards, you can lose focus and direction, and be further from achieving the challenges you set yourself. Goals also help you set a benchmark for determining your success! There are steps you can take to help you set and achieve your goals. It takes some careful thought into what it is you want to do, and how you’re going to go about achieving it. Here’s our top tips for setting and achieving your goals. 1. Set yourself a motivational goal It’s very important that your goals are motivational to you.

“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep! You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep! People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep!” -Rumi The snooze button being pressed repeatedly, breakfast on the go, and a general feeling of racing against time to get to where you need to be. Does this sound like your morning everyday? Many people associate the morning with an anxiety ridden mad dash. A mad dash to the finish line that’s ironically the beginning of the day. As easy as it can be to fall into a habit of doing everything on auto-pilot to make it out the door on time, could this be negatively impacting you more then you realize? If you think about it, isn’t the way you start your day going to set the tone for everything that follows? If you begin with chaos and disorder, can you expect to be as connected, productive and happy as you want to be? If you feel like you need to start off the day in a more peaceful and relaxed way, adding morning rituals can be the answer. The sunrise symbolizes new beginnings and beneath all the busyness, the morning holds a special kind of magic that’s always there to connect with. Begin to test out morning rituals and see which ones feel right. Choose morning rituals that make you want to get out of bed in the morning. Make sure you decide on ones that you can make into a habit without dreading. Maybe you can’t dedicate 30 minutes or more of your morning time to rituals, but even 5-10 minutes can make a world of difference. Here are 8 Morning Ritual Ideas for you to Start Your Day with a Clear Mind and Open Heart:

We all have that one place we dream about and long to go back to, whether it is home, for those of us that live life away from home, or maybe just be an unexpected place that stole your heart. For me it is definitely the latter, a tiny little island called Koh Phangan in Thailand known for its crazy full moon parties (which I still have not attended), vast jungle, beautiful water, warm people, great food, and all things yoga. It's been the most inspirational travel destination I've been fortunate enough to experience. The island place stole my heart when I first unexpectedly ended up there in 2016 before my big move to Singapore. I stayed there for a month and quickly fell in love with the community and the infinite love and ability that existed in this retreat to have whatever you desire.

There is such excitement in imagining opportunities manifest themselves. When opportunities arise and we truly believe we deserve them and our ability to create them, we can even start to see and feel ourselves experiencing them. We have the ability to imagine the things we want unfolding. We may even start to communicate to our friends that it is “happening!” Often, this approach works. However, sometimes things don't turn out exactly or even close to how we wanted them to. It feels disappointing. To move through disappointment without allowing an undesired circumstance to cause us low self esteem or despair is challenging. How did this happen when we believed in what we wanted to happen. When we were already planning our future around this! WTF?! How to overcome disappointment is possible, even when it's challenging. With a focused perspective we can accept whatever challenges life throws at us, as important, and valuable in the long run. Challenge teaches us our capacity, our boundaries, our resilience, our passion. There are many possible disappointments life can provide us; job loss, feeling rejected in a relationship, failing a test, losing our ground, death, participating in an unhealthy behavior, etc.

I was first introduced to the sankalpa during my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training program during a Yoga Nidra practice. This practice forever changed the trajectory of my life. By listening to my teacher guide me into a state between consciousness and unconsciousness, I was able to create my sankalpa by crystallizing what my heart’s true desire was and begin to allow it to manifest and unfold in my life.

People ask me all the time, “How do you do it? How do you manifest every single thing you say you are going to do?” And I laugh because although I’ve gotten really skilled at manifesting the ‘good’ things, I’ve also been witness to patterns that create less than desirable outcomes time and time again.