Every yoga practice must have purpose, order and meaning
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[…]
I noticed that when I start my day with news, social media or to-do lists, the whole day is marked with a tinge of urgency and mild agitation. But if[…]
When you plan to use your yoga practice to aid digestion, images of deep twists might begin to crowd your mind. We’ve been conditioned to believe that twists are great[…]
Your immune system is complex and multilayered. It includes seemingly unrelated parts of your body, like skin, mucus and tears; a range of organs and tissues, like bone marrow, thymus,[…]
The beginning of a new year always gives us an opportunity to organize our thoughts about what we plan to focus on in the upcoming year. What is most important[…]
This year certainly turned out to be like no other. At times it felt like it was dragging on, yet it’s somehow surprising that it is almost over. Faced with[…]
I used to have a student who would quickly bounce his knee up and down when seated. The first time he caught me looking at his knee, he said: “I[…]
I did my first 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training course at Mt Madonna Center in Santa Cruz, California twenty years ago. Mt Madonna center is a residential community that was established[…]
In yoga, breathing is closely linked with the concept of prana, or life force. Prana is said to be the force that animates all living things. Prana is a manifestation[…]
With COVID-19 still wreaking havoc around the world, the race for the treatment is on. Different organizations use different strategies to combat the virus. Just last week a biotechnology startup[…]
Do you hold your breath while typing, emailing or texting? Apparently, this is such a common occurrence, that Linda Stone, a writer and speaker, had coined a phrase “screen apnea”,[…]
Time and time again I see new yoga students being confused about whether to do a certain movement on the inhale or the exhale. “How does it go?” – they[…]
The normal unconscious exhalation is a passive process, as one simply relaxes the muscles that were engaged on the inhale. However, in our yoga practice we purposefully augment the natural[…]
Many of your body’s physiological processes have a rhythmic nature: your heartbeat, blood pressure, digestive peristalsis, breathing rate and many others proceed in pulsating (or wave-like) fashion. Each system has[…]
Two years ago, my family and I went to the beautiful San Juan Islands. The San Juan Islands are an archipelago of about 170 islands in the Pacific Northwest between[…]
In college I majored in Russian literature, and I remember being fascinated by the sheer number of heroines in the Russian classics who would faint at the slightest sign of[…]
A diaphragm is the primary muscle of inhalation; it is responsible for about 75% of the air movement in normal breathing at rest (external intercostal muscles are responsible for the[…]
The last time I went to visit my mom, she asked me to show her some yoga moves because she wasn’t feeling too well. Once we got down to the[…]
Yesterday morning I was trying to do my pranayama practice, as my 9-year old was bouncing on furniture around me, my puppy was chasing his tail knocking over everything in[…]
