How to be in the life that you’re living. This is not an essay about living life to the fullest. I won’t be recommending cliff diving or living each moment like it’s your last. This essay is about experiencing the life that you are already in. As someone who has used “busy” as a numbing
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Take a break from life for a few days and feel re-energized, restored, and renewed Daily life is hard. There are demands on your time and energy, from work, family, and the state of the world. It can be difficult to take a break from the 24 hour news cycle or the notifications in a
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Feet. Different people have different relationships with their feet. Some people love them, some hate them, some don’t think about them unless they hurt. Here is another perspective: our feet are the foundation upon which we stand. If you have a faulty foundation, the whole tower will tumble down. Giving your feet some love will
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Pranayama and connecting breath to movement in yoga When I started practicing yoga, I started with Iyengar yoga. This is a wonderful yoga practice that is incredibly specific when it comes to alignment and understanding how to practice the poses in the body that you have. The physical practice (asana) is done separately from the
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I first encountered Metta meditation, or LovingKindness meditation in the late 1990s in a tiny ashram in Monroe, NY. The then less known Krishna Das was leading Kirtan at the yoga retreat I was attending for the weekend, a form of call and response devotional singing that I was exploring early in my yoga practice.
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What you practice on the mat, you take with you off the mat and into your life When I first started practicing yoga in my 20s, I was in it for the physical benefits. I wanted strength, flexibility, and to stand on my hands with ease. What I wasn’t expecting was how much my life
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Moving meditation is still meditation If you’ve ever struggled to meditate (and really, who hasn’t), you might want to try movement as meditation. Sitting still, while incredibly powerful, isn’t for everyone. I came to meditation through practicing yoga, but even before that, I experienced meditation every time I swam. The rhythmic breathing combined with repetitive
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A monthly series to explore individual yoga poses to make them doable in the body that you have. Many people who used to practice yoga often blame their shoulders for giving it up. Yogis who practice Vinyasa or Ashtanga Yoga styles flow through many poses that can be taxing on the shoulders. One in particular
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Practice Heart opening yoga poses to cultivate love and kindness toward yourself When I was younger, I was a Type A, overachieving perfectionist. I held myself to incredibly high standards that were usually completely unattainable. As with perfectionism in general, I often felt paralyzed by the need to be perfect, leading to procrastination, imposter syndrome,
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Have you ever woken up one morning and felt like your body was falling apart? Sadly, as we age, that can happen. In addition to losing strength and mobility, our balance also wanes. Unless you work on it regularly, one day, you’ll find yourself falling. It creeps up on you slowly. The best time to start working on balance
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