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Riddled with Wonder: How to Incorporate Koan Meditation into Your Practice and Your Life

Riddled with Wonder: How to Incorporate Koan Meditation into Your Practice and Your Life

By Dr. Kaiya Ansorge What is a koan? A koan is a phrase or word that is used in meditation to train the mind. Usually, the koan is somewhat puzzling in order to invite the mind to open in unusual ways. In fact, the term is often translated as “riddle.” Koan literature involves enigmatic sayings or questions that, when meditated upon continuously, are meant to resolve in specific ways that…

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Out of the Darkness and Into the Light: How My Military Transition Helped My Yoga Practice in the Pandemic

Out of the Darkness and Into the Light: How My Military Transition Helped My Yoga Practice in the Pandemic

By Alicia Dill Starting in 2013, I’ve been practicing regularly at the same hot yoga studio two to three times per week. Hot yoga gives me intensity, focus, mindfulness, and dripping heat you feel in your bones even in the dead of winter. While holding a complicated pose well past your comfort zone, you start to comprehend all those buzzwords you’ve heard tossed around. The point where you are…

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Lessons in Love: Practical Advice from the Yoga Mat

Lessons in Love: Practical Advice from the Yoga Mat

By Melissa Bryan Lead With Love Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.May all beings be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and freedom for all. Valentine’s Day 2021 recently passed, and as I sit on the opposite side of that holiday having just taught my high school students to create heart maps to identify the parts of…

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3 Ways Finding My WHY Helped Me Grow

3 Ways Finding My WHY Helped Me Grow

Yoga can provide you with techniques to teach you how to, at any moment, step into the eye of the storm. – Find Your Why Foundation Let me ask you something…are you confident enough to step into the eye of the storm? Probably not. Let me ask you this…why would you want to step into the eye of the storm? Because that is where the growth is. Or how about this – do you know your WHY? Maybe…

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Growing Medical Recognition of Yoga as a Treatment for Anxiety

Growing Medical Recognition of Yoga as a Treatment for Anxiety...

By Dr. Sat Bir S. Khalsa Perceived stress and anxiety can be a normal and healthy response to life circumstances. But for some, the fast pace and uncertainty of modern society causes debilitating levels of stress and anxiety. Chronic, unmanaged stress hurts our quality of life and is responsible for an increase in health issues and disorders across the world. It is a psycho-social crisis that…

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How to Build Strength with Your Yoga Practice

How to Build Strength with Your Yoga Practice

By Kyle Shrivastava When people think about yoga, strength isn’t always the first thing that comes to mind. But this doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t be a part of your practice! Traditional asana practices often feature long holds (which build endurance) and passive stretching (which increases passive flexibility). However, as yoga evolves we’re seeing a shift towards building power and…

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How Yoga Reshaped the Game of Tennis

How Yoga Reshaped the Game of Tennis

When you see the likes of Rafael Nadal battering the ball around a tennis court, it might not be immediately clear how yoga and tennis fit together. However, yoga has been a key ingredient in improved tennis fitness, and it’s changed the way the game is played.

Over the last 15 years, professional tennis has become a much more physical sport. Gone are the days of serve and volley and part time…

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Find Peace During Pandemic Uncertainty with Kundalini Yoga and Meditation

Find Peace During Pandemic Uncertainty with Kundalini Yoga and Meditation

By Shanti Kaur Khalsa

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the world far more uncertain. It’s impacted our work and finances, our relationships, and of course, our physical and mental health. Finding the sense of surety we all crave is almost impossible, which leads to stress, anxiety, and powerlessness that drains us emotionally. These feelings of helplessness can be traumatic, putting our body and…

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5 Ways Meditation Makes Us Better at Yoga

5 Ways Meditation Makes Us Better at Yoga

Meditation. Yoga. The two go together like Batman & Robin (though with less capes… usually).

As spiritual health practices that have both found popularity in the West over the past 50 years, we tend to lump yoga and meditation together. Whenever we read of one, the other usually isn’t far behind. And when we’re shopping for yoga pants it’s no surprise to see a meditation mala in the vicinity.

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How to Support Your Student’s Wellbeing During COVID-19

How to Support Your Student‘s Well-being During COVID-19 #mentalhealth

Approximately 1 in 4 people (in the UK) suffer from a mental health condition. Couple this with recent research suggesting that 300 million peoplepractise yoga worldwide, and it is reasonable to assume that someone in your yoga class has experienced, is experiencing or will experience an episode of poor mental health. Given our current circumstances, this likelihood is significantly higher, as…

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Why You Should Consider Fasting & 4 Tips to Prepare for Your First Fast

Why You Should Consider Fasting & 4 Tips to Prepare for Your First Fast

By Ram Jain

People have been practicing fasting for many years for religious, spiritual or health reasons. Yogic philosophy also approves of fasting as a way to cleanse the body and to control both mind and body. 

When you practice fasting you learn to control the senses and not to react on the tendency to eat food out of habit or routine. 

Fasting allows the intestines to take a rest.…

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5 Foods to Incorporate into Your Yogic Diet

5 Foods to Incorporate into Your Yogic Diet

By Simone de Villiers

Travelling from Australia to India for my first 200hr yoga teacher training course, I felt nervous about my belly. So I drank all the kombucha before I left and stocked my bags with probiotics and Imodium to make sure I’d be able to cure any “Delhi Belly” I may encounter. Who knew that I was going to leave my school, Gyan Yog Breath in Rishikesh, feeling healthier (and…

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Top 10 Benefits of Yoga

Top 10 Benefits of #Yoga...

By Jen Doyle

Yoga is the suppression of the activities of the mind” – Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, c. 4th century CE.

Yoga is a mental and physical practice of exercises, poses, and meditation techniques that originated in ancient India about 5,000 years ago. Many individuals turn to yoga to switch up their fitness routine because it is a great workout and strength builder, but there is so much more…

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3 Mantras to Build Your Self-Love

3 #Mantras to Build Your Self-Love...

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” Buddha.

Self-love. We all need more of it.

The teachings of yoga are big on self-love because of one spiritual truth: you cannot fully love others until you fully love yourself.

And why should we love ourselves? That’s what our ego so often asks. So much of the time we have very little…

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4 Easy Steps to Help You Get Back Into a Workout Routine

4 Easy Steps to Help You Get Back Into a Workout Routine...

By Dr. Natasa Brasik

Some things are easier said than done, especially if your fitness routine falls by the wayside. If you haven’t worked out for a while, here are some useful tips and tricks to help you get back on track.

1) Start with Visualization. Sometimes the first step can be the hardest. This is why the power of visualisation can be the key in the first step to taking up a…

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Why Compassion in Community is Important

Why Compassion in Community is Important... latest guest post by @inspiredyogagal

By Silvia Mordini 

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” Dalai Lama

I’ve practiced yoga for over 15 years. I’ve taught more than 12,000 hours and since my very first teacher training, my goal has always been to teach what I practice and to practice what I teach. Through the years of practicing with different teachers, it has become…

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Happiness is Contagious

Happiness is Contagious...

Guest post by Silvia Mordini

In 1948, scientists and doctors began the most comprehensive study on heart disease ever conducted. Over 60 years later, the Framingham Heart Study still continues. Because the study involves so many people and spans such a long time period, there are many different aspects that scientists continue to study. One of their key findings relates to the happiness theory.