Every yoga practice must have purpose, order and meaning
According to the yoga tradition, there are three qualities, or three energetic forces, that are always present (to various degrees) in all things and beings in the world. Those qualities[…]
I love it when Eastern and Western approaches to health and wellness overlap, even if they speak entirely different languages. For example, the Ayurvedic tradition is based on the concept[…]
I recently read an article about some major employers closing down their operations for weeks at a time to make sure that all their employees could get a break. The[…]
How’s your yoga practice going this summer? Do you have an opportunity to luxuriate in your practice, or does it fall by the wayside of other activities? If it’s the[…]
Last week we discussed how to set long-term goals for your work with yoga students. Once the student (with the teacher’s help) gains clarity on what they wish to accomplish[…]
When we work with yoga students one-on-one, we always begin by identifying each student’s unique needs. The first question we always ask our new yoga students is, “What do you[…]
Yoga teachers and therapists often handle student information that is considered private and therefore bear certain responsibilities under the HIPAA. It is the personal responsibility of every yoga teacher and[…]
About ten years ago, I ran a wellness center that housed different types of practitioners, including yoga teachers, massage therapists, acupuncturists, and movement therapists. One day a laptop belonging to[…]
After a year of keeping our interaction circles and our travel routes intentionally small, we are now starting to venture out into the world, only to discover that our bodies[…]
We live in a busy world. The householder stage of life is weighted with responsibilities at work and home and being a citizen of the world. Wonderful, but complicating, is[…]
I will never forget the description of the experience my yoga teacher Gary Kraftsow shared with us about his recovery from brain surgery many years ago. As I remember it,[…]
Our digestive systems are in charge of breaking down food into its basic components, which are then absorbed into the blood and transported throughout the entire body. Food is the[…]
How do you start your morning? In a given week, do you create space to begin your day with intention, peace of mind and a connection to something bigger? Or[…]
Humans have used body movements and hand gestures to tell stories and facilitate particular psychological states since the beginning of time. For example, Hawaiian hula dance was meant to promote[…]
Nyasa is a symbolic gesture of placing the mantra onto one’s body so that the body becomes the seat or temple of the Deity. One of the most potent and[…]
Mudras are specific hand gestures that are meant to have symbolic, energetic and healing qualities. Most mudras are static gestures, but you can also make them dynamic when the actual[…]
In our home yoga practice and in our work with our students, we always seek to make the yoga practice personal and relevant to the practitioner. This can only happen[…]
Last week we discussed how you can organize an entire practice around a mudra, if you give your mudra a leading role in your yoga practice. A mudra can also[…]
Since most mudras are simple hand gestures, they are pretty easy to integrate into one’s yoga practice. What we try to avoid is making a mudra an afterthought, something that[…]
The word “mudra” is most often used to describe a particular hand gesture, but there are also face mudras and whole-body mudras. According to the yoga tradition, mudras have multiple[…]
