By Veronica King, The Yoga Nidra Project As a tantric yogi I have always enjoyed saying yes to life, all of it! For years I’ve had boundless energy to work, play, practice and party. All in equal measure. But over the last few years I noticed a significant shift, my tank that was always full, was not topping up and suddenly I had a completely empty tank. I was depleted, exhausted, facing a health crisis. So I sat with the questions: what depletes me, and what nourishes me? I … [Read more...]
The Difference between Practicing Yoga Postures and Having a Yoga Practice
by Kara-Leah Grant There are many people doing yoga poses today, but there are far less people who have a yoga practice. Postures are everywhere - Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, advertising, magazines, yoga classes, yoga retreats, yoga teacher trainings. However, postures do not make a yoga practice. A yoga practice requires at least two other important elements before it can serve its purpose - that of self-realisation, or of waking the practitioner up from the dream of Maya … [Read more...]
The Release of Yoga and Body Image: 25 Personal Stories About Beauty, Bravery + Loving Your Body
By guest author Melanie Klein, Yoga and Body Image Coalition. Anna Guest–Jelley, founder of Curvy Yoga and the co-editor of Yoga and Body Image: 25 Personal Stories About Beauty, Bravery + Loving Your Body, and I both struggled with a distorted body image, our perception of ourselves, from early childhood on. In the process, we tried countless diets and experimented with a variety of fitness trends – all of which left us feeling shame, guilt and punishment for the bodies we lived in. Our … [Read more...]
How to Calm an Overactive Mind with Yoga
by Kara-Leah Grant There are days when I spend too much time commuting, too much time on my computer, and have far too many balls in the air. My mind feels like it's going a million miles a minute, flitting first from one thing, then to the next. Sometimes this monkey mind is shadowed by anxiety or fear, lurking deep in the belly and driving me out of my body and up into my head. It's exhausting. And on days like that, I know exactly what kind of yoga I need to do - yoga to still the … [Read more...]
Five things a yoga instructor should never say in class
by Vanessa Roberts I love me some yoga, and have loved it (albeit sometimes a little inconsistently) for a good solid ten years. While I always seem to learn something new – a new posture, technique or way to relax into my poses – I have also been privy to some cringe-inducing, nose-scrunching phrases muttered by an instructor (or five) of mine. Though most of them can be shrugged off with a simple “ew”, others have left me questioning my instructor's reasons and shaking my head in … [Read more...]