Yoga for Back Health: The Many Benefits of Locust Pose - Salabhasana
Locust Pose, Salabhasana, is a simple backbend that strengthens the entire back of your body, from the nape of your neck to the backs of your heels. Salabhasana has benefits for a wide range of problems, including lower back pain, postural
The Fifth Limb of Yoga: Pratyahara
Pratyahara is confusing to many students of yoga philosophy. This fifth limb on Patanjali’s eight-limbed path of yoga from the Yoga Sutras translates as “withdrawal of the senses,” which initially might seem like the opposite of awareness—and yoga is, first
Supercharge Your Health - 4 Tips for Forming Healthy Habits
My daughter wants to work out more, but she has a hard time forming the habit (many of you might be familiar with this problem). From having to get dressed to go to the gym, to actually going to the
The Subtle Body Part 2-Reclaiming the Tantric Chakras
The medieval tantrics had some substantially different ideas about the chakra system than those that are currently popular in the West today. This is partly because much of today’s perspective was largely influenced by a cluster of books that were
The Subtle Body Part 1-Uprooting How We Think About Chakras
A couple of years ago, while browsing in Barnes and Noble with my son, I noticed a table piled with exotic book-shaped boxes. A sign read: “Chakra balancing kits, $12.99.” The kits contained essential oils, some polished stones, and a
Yogic Tips for Safe Living -Finding Balance in a Go-Go World
In our busy lives, many of us struggle to find balance, harmony or peace of mind. If you, like many, function at a high energetic frequency (go-go-go) slowing down to “smell the roses” often necessitates conscious and gradual down shifting.
Yoga and Meditation Keep Your Brain Resilient Study Shows
Can yoga and meditation stave off cognitive decline and increase your brain’s efficiency and resilience? A study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuorscience suggests that the answer may be yes. An international team of researchers examined the brain functioning of
4 Great Gratitude Practices
Over the past two decades, much of the research on happiness can be boiled down to one main prescription: give thanks. This is no shock to veteran yoga practictioners. Across hundreds of studies, practicing gratitude has been found to increase positive
Subtle Yoga: Opening to the Wordless Experience of the Extended Body-Mind
In this interview, Kristine Kaoverii Weber explains how subtle experiences and practices in yoga, which focus on the wordless, micro-sensory experiences of the extended body-mind, are finding parallels in the descriptions of enteroceptive and interroceptive awareness of modern neuroscience. Accessing these modes of awareness,
Sound Therapy for General Pain Relief
Yoga stress management practices, including meditation, focused relaxation, and relaxing asanas, help manage stress, which can have a feedback effect on improving pain. Yoga (asanas, meditation, and pranayama) can help alleviate pain in the following ways: Triggers increased flow of
Refining Cobra Pose (Bhujangasana): New Alignment Tips for an Old Standby
Few members of the animal kingdom elicit more passionate reactions than snakes. Mostly known for their stealthy, slithery sinews and the venomous bites of some species, snakes have largely gotten a bad rap over the centuries. The truth is that
How Tight Hamstrings Can Affect Your Lumbar Spine in Yoga
Here's a quick update from the science literature on your hamstrings... Biomechanically speaking, tight hamstrings can affect the position of your pelvis, especially in forward bends. This can, in turn, affect your lumbar spine because tight hamstrings produce a pull
The Origin of Misalignment in Yoga Postures - Common Kinetic Chains
How do we deal with physical limitations holding us back in our yoga practice? One approach is to push through them - keep training until you've overcome the limitation. Kinetic Chains: How to Safely Address Limitations in Our Yoga Practice
Stay Cool This Summer: 4 Ayurvedic Tips to Balance Pitta
Summer is nature’s time to ripen and mature, create and destroy, metabolize and transform food into calories, and turn heat into action. In Ayurvedic terms, Summer is the season of Pitta. Include some of these basic Pitta-reducing steps in your
Choose a Yoga Style to Fit Your Intention
Yoga is the practice of intention. That doesn’t necessarily mean that your intention has to be enlightenment or world peace (although excellent choices); your intention—or rather your reason for doing yoga—can be anything you’d like to cultivate. Whether that’s to