The Keys to a Wonderful Yoga Experience – by Denise Hopkins “You’re starving yourself in your yoga practice. I want you to feast!” These words were whispered in my ear as I stood in Warrior 2, legs tremoring, breath number fifth-teen, sweat pouring. This was in August of 2005 during my first yoga teacher training. [...]

As we move into April, we transition from the end of winter into the beginning of spring. Myself, I am much better with starting than completing a project, better with “hellos” than “goodbyes.” Sometimes endings are seen as a death and therefore hard to accept. According to Swiss psychiatrist/writer Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, there are five stages [...]

Earlier this year I completed a month-long meditation retreat in the mountains of Colorado. This was my third such undertaking, as you may already know. Hillary Stout, a writer for the New York Times, featured my retreat in an article entitled “Getting far, far away from it all” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/fashion/solo-retreats-for-urban-professionals.html?pagewanted=all) . In the course of explaining [...]

What turns you on? – by Amanda Manzagol Recall a time in your life when you felt so totally alive that your skin tingled with a heightened level of sensation, your heart swelled with an unbridled passion for life and you were consumed with an overpowering sense that anything was possible. In that moment in [...]

Recall a time in your life when you felt so totally alive that your skin tingled with a heightened level of sensation, your heart swelled with an unbridled passion for life and you were consumed with an overpowering sense that anything was possible. In that moment in time, you were completely present and reveling in [...]

As we let go of the illusion that someone or something is going to fix us, we are liberated.  The hand-carved Ganesh is not going to leap off the altar and fix our lives any more than 108 Sun Salutations.  In my experience, what does work is infusing our respective practices with intention, breath and [...]

Authentic Decision Making..It has been on my mind for a few years to go to Rwanda.  Why you might ask?  I’m going because I have a clear feeling in my gut that this is what I need to do next and that it should be now.  I wish I could say that I had this [...]

Leave an impression this holiday!  It was once believed that the earth was the center of the universe.  Once Copernicus proved his heliocentric theory that our planet actually revolved around the sun, just like any other in our galaxy, our collective attitude shifted as to how we fit into the larger picture.  The sun’s weight [...]

I often ask myself this question as I’m on my mat, sweating, sometimes dragging myself through my yoga practice.  I wish I could say that I rush to my mat each morning with vigor and enthusiasm, eager to ‘meet’ myself and all that practice forces me to face.  To be honest, sometimes I would rather [...]

  Radha and Krishna.  Parvati and Shiva.  Sita and Ram.  Deeply ingrained into the culture of yoga is the idea of spiritual partnership.  Yoga, as you have likely heard before, is literally translated as union.  This can be interpreted many ways, but one of the ways in which we seek union is by uniting with [...]