I’ve just started seeing a great Ayur Vedic doc, based out of Kitsilano. If you’re frustrated with your other doc’s lack of preventative action or holistic health focus, I’ve found Ayur Veda to be the solution. A Woman’s Best Medicine is a great resource for anyone wanting to learn more before anteing up. OrPacific Institute…
On the Mat: We find ourselves struggling in a pose. Our legs are too weak, our arms aren’t quite strong enough, our hamstrings or hips are too tight. Our mind waves a white flag: “You should surrender, stop fighting, just stop. Take child’s pose. Or just stand there. Do anything else.” Instead, we draw our…
I have a new friend. He used to be this terribly grumpy older man, stomping around the blocks near my apartment, with the deepest scowl I’ve ever seen. I avoided him. Then, one day, I decided to send him some love through a great big, dopey smile and chipper “Good morning!” He turned into a…
Ahhhh sleep. Wonderful, rejuvenating, restful sleep. Unless, of course, you can’t sleep. Which happens to about, say, 100% of us, from time to time. (This is just a guess, but I bet we could find a scientific source to back it up.) Which is caused, say, 100% of the time, by an overactive mind. (Yet…
Ugh. I was tired, tired, tired. It had been a late night. We’d been in the car for over four hours that morning, and had an hour and a half still to go before we could crawl into our beds. Energetic, happy, chipper? Not so much. We were stuck in stop-and-go construction traffic. The drive…
Hour-long meditation? Check.Hour-long asana practice? Check.At least twenty minutes of pranayama? Check. So, that’s about two and a half hours of yoga every day. No problem, right? Yeah, right. You don’t have to change your life to improve your life. Five minutes of yoga (asana/postures, pranayama/breathing, or meditation) is enough. Some people like to do…
For today, a quotation from US Airborne Ranger-turned-yogi Rolf Gates’s book Meditations from the Mat: “The obstacles in the path are the path.” I can struggle with this one, rankling under what I might first interpret as an injustice, some unexpected delay in my happy planning. But if I remember this quote I begin to…
“No, I don’t mind at all. I’d love to help out at your daughter’s bake sale.”“Of course I can have that to you in an hour.”“Sure, I can lend you the money.”And, in the words of SJP, “Stilettos are comfortable.” (No disrespect to the queen of Manolos intended.) The fibs we tell others and ourselves…
Breathe. It sounds so simple. After all, we do it all the time, without even trying. But yogic philosophy teaches us we barely manage to do it. Essentially, we take in just enough breath to keep us alive. It’s sort of like giving a houseplant just enough water, so some of the leaves stay on–while…
To Keep The Yoga Going Off The Mat On The Mat: Especially in a challenging Kundalini class, we can find ourselves tensing up, as our mind resists the action, telling us “You’ve never done this before. It’s too hard. You should stop.” And, absolutely, if continuing means hurting ourselves, we need to to pull back–maybe…
