Tiny Buddha

Tag: yoga

  • From Injury to Insight: A New Kind of Yoga Practice

    From Injury to Insight: A New Kind of Yoga Practice

    “Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you—all of the expectations, all of the beliefs—and becoming who you are.” ~Rachel Naomi Remen

    For years, yoga was my safe space—the place where I felt strong, grounded, and whole. My practice wasn’t just physical; it was my sanctuary, my moving meditation. So, when a shoulder injury forced me to change the way I practiced, I wasn’t just in pain—I was lost.

    At first, it seemed minor. A nagging soreness, nothing I hadn’t worked through before. I convinced myself that more movement would help, that yoga—my forever healer—would fix it. I stretched, I modified, I doubled down on my alignment. But the more I tried to push through, the worse it became.

    Eventually, even the simplest tasks—getting dressed, washing my hair—became difficult. That’s when I finally sought medical help. The diagnosis: shoulder impingement and frozen shoulder. A combination of overuse, aging (a humbling realization as I turned forty), and factors no one could fully explain.

    I asked the doctor how to prevent it from happening again. The answer wasn’t clear. There was no perfect formula, no guarantee. That uncertainty unsettled me.

    Surrendering to the Process

    Healing wasn’t linear. It was slow, frustrating, and at times, disheartening. I cycled through physical therapists, reluctantly took medication, and spent months modifying my movements. But the hardest part wasn’t the pain—it was the mental and emotional struggle of letting go of what my practice used to be.

    I grieved the loss of my old yoga practice. I felt betrayed by my body, resentful that the thing I loved most had, in a way, turned against me. And yet, somewhere in the frustration, I realized—this was part of my practice, too.

    Yoga isn’t just about movement. It’s about presence. Acceptance. Surrender.

    I started leaning into the lessons my injury was trying to teach me:

    • Ahimsa (Non-harming): I had to stop fighting my body and instead extend it kindness, just as I would for a loved one who was struggling.
    • Satya (Truthfulness): I had to acknowledge that my practice would change—and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
    • Aparigraha (Non-attachment): I had to let go of my rigid expectations and open myself to a different, gentler way forward.
    • Santosha (Contentment): I had to find peace with what my body could do, rather than mourning what it couldn’t.

    The moment I stopped resisting, something shifted. My body didn’t heal overnight, but my perspective did. I started seeing healing as an ongoing relationship rather than a destination. I gave myself permission to slow down, to listen, to trust.

    Rebuilding with Compassion

    As I modified my practice, I discovered new ways to move that honored my limitations rather than fought against them. My yoga practice became softer, more mindful. I focused on breathwork, grounding postures, and gentle movement. I let go of the idea that I had to push myself to prove something.

    I also realized something deeper: healing isn’t just about getting back to where we were—it’s about growing into who we’re becoming.

    We all face moments where we’re forced to slow down, to reevaluate, to shift. And in those moments, we have a choice. We can resist and suffer, or we can soften and grow.

    If you’re navigating an injury, a setback, or an unexpected change, know this: Your healing doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. You are allowed to grieve. You are allowed to feel frustrated. But you are also allowed to find joy in the process. To discover new ways of being. To trust that even in the slowing down, there is wisdom.

    Healing is not about returning to what was—it’s about embracing what is and finding beauty in what’s possible now.

  • How One Simple Change Transformed My Life

    How One Simple Change Transformed My Life

    “It’s the small habits. How you spend your mornings. How you talk to yourself. What you read and what you watch. Who you share your energy with. Who has access to you. That will change your life.” ~Michael Tonge

    It was a Tuesday morning like any other. The alarm clock mercilessly blared, abruptly ending my peaceful slumber. Groggy and disoriented, I dragged myself out of bed, my mind already racing with the countless tasks that awaited me.

    I wearily stumbled down the stairs, desperately yearning for the comfort of my morning coffee. But as the aroma filled the air, I knew that a storm was brewing within our household.

    As always, time was slipping away faster than I could catch it. I hurriedly prepared breakfast, threw lunches together, and rushed to get my kids and myself ready.

    Amidst the frenzy, there was always someone in tears, usually one of my children, overwhelmed by the chaos and the sense of urgency. I lamented the lack of time and the never-ending pressure to keep up with the demands of daily life.

    Surrounded by the mayhem, a tiny voice within me whispered, “What if there was another way?” Determined to find a solution, I started to explore the possibility of reclaiming mornings for myself before the chaos ensued.

    It was a daunting thought, knowing that I would have to sacrifice precious moments of sleep, but I had convinced myself that it was worth a try.

    And so, the next morning, my alarm rang a bit earlier than usual. As I stumbled into the kitchen, I brewed a fresh cup of coffee and settled back into the comfort of my bed in an upright position.

    Sipping thoughtfully, I allowed myself the luxury of simply being present in the moment. It was in this newfound stillness that I experienced something truly remarkable—a sense of calm and clarity that had eluded me for far too long.

    As I sipped on my coffee, I began to reflect on all the things I was grateful for—my loving family, good health, and the opportunities that each new day brought.

    This practice of gratitude shifted my focus from the rushed chaos to the abundance of blessings that surrounded me. It reminded me that even amidst the challenges, there were reasons to be grateful and find joy in the simple moments.

    Moreover, this intentional time allowed me to set clear intentions for the day ahead. I identified and visualized my goals, both big and small.

    By setting my intentions, I found that my actions aligned with my aspirations, propelling me toward personal growth and a greater sense of purpose. This simple act of mindfulness in the morning became a powerful catalyst for positive change in my life.

    As the days turned into weeks, I gradually introduced other self-care practices into my morning ritual. I made space for meditation, journaling, stretches, and deep breaths, nourishing my body and mind before diving into the demands of the day.

    These small acts of self-care not only set a tone of self-love and respect but also allowed me to approach challenges with resilience and grace.

    By prioritizing my well-being in the morning, I found that I not only had more energy and patience to support others throughout the day, but I also felt more prepared and focused.

    Taking this time for myself allowed me to tackle tasks with a clear mind and a sense of direction, eliminating the feeling of overwhelm. It helped me feel awake and ready to embrace the day ahead.

    Rushing through my mornings without pause was no longer an option. Instead, I established a new habit that filled me with anticipation for the day ahead, creating a sense of excitement to wake up each morning.

    This shift in mindset transformed my experience from one of feeling drained and overwhelmed to becoming a source of calm and stability, both for myself and for my family, helping us weather the inevitable storms of daily life together.

    Through my journey, I realized that a morning ritual is not merely a checklist of tasks to be completed. It is an opportunity to set the tone for the day, to consciously choose how we show up in the world.

    Mornings can often be a battleground of chaos and stress, leaving us feeling overwhelmed and drained before the day has even begun.

    For many years, I found myself trapped in this cycle, rushing through my morning routine and sacrificing my own well-being for the sake of everyone else’s. It was only when I discovered the transformative power of a morning ritual that my life took an unexpected turn towards balance, clarity, and personal growth.

    By dedicating time for self-reflection and self-care in the morning, we build a solid foundation upon which the rest of our day can flourish.

    It is important to recognize that everyone’s morning ritual will be unique, tailored to their individual needs and preferences.

    The key lies in finding practices that cultivate balance, clarity, and a sense of purpose. Whether it’s meditation, journaling, exercise, or simply taking a quiet moment to enjoy a cup of coffee, the magic unfolds when we carve out space for ourselves amidst the chaos.

    If you’re thinking about starting a morning ritual, here are some tips to help you get started.

    Begin by setting your alarm just a few minutes earlier each day, and use this time to do activities that bring you joy and peace. You can expand your routine gradually as you find what works for you.

    Creating a sacred space in your home can help you escape from distractions and noise. Designate a quiet corner and fill it with items that inspire and uplift you, making it a perfect environment for self-reflection and relaxation.

    Incorporating mindfulness practices like meditation, gratitude journaling, or deep breathing exercises into your morning routine can help foster a sense of calm and set a positive tone for the day. It can be as simple as sitting quietly with your thoughts for a few minutes.

    Make self-care a priority by engaging in activities that nourish your body and mind, such as stretching, yoga, or enjoying a nutritious breakfast. Starting your day with self-care can set the stage for a day filled with vitality and positivity.

    Finally, finding support in your journey can be incredibly helpful. Consider partnering up with an accountability partner or joining a morning ritual group to stay motivated and inspired. Sharing experiences and insights with like-minded individuals can enhance the transformative power of your morning practice.

    The power of a morning ritual lies in its ability to transform our lives from the inside out. By carving out time for self-care and reflection, we set the stage for a day brimming with balance, clarity, and personal growth.

    My journey toward reclaiming my mornings taught me invaluable lessons about the importance of prioritizing self-care, cultivating mindfulness, and honoring my own well-being.

    As you embark on your own morning ritual, remember that it is a fluid and evolving process. Be patient with yourself as you experiment with different activities and observe what resonates with your soul.

    Embrace the calm and the stillness, and allow the transformative power of a morning ritual to guide you toward a life filled with purpose, clarity, and joy.

  • How I Gained Self-Confidence and Self-Love Through Nude Yoga

    How I Gained Self-Confidence and Self-Love Through Nude Yoga

    “Growth is uncomfortable; you have to embrace the discomfort if you want to expand.” ~Jonathan Majors

    Click, the camera lens shutters as I stand barefoot in mud, waist deep in cold river water with lilies all around me, wearing nothing but a lace cloth draped across my body. I’ll never forget how nervous I was the first time I was professionally photographed nearly naked. Something greater than my fear had called me to do it.

    When I was growing up, my father was determined for me to model or act. I went to several model castings and auditions and was even in a beauty pageant. But those paths led me nowhere. It was as if I was completely unnoticed.

    I remember several times, after having photos taken for agencies, my father wouldn’t let me see the pictures. He would say, “They didn’t turn out good,” and I believe, to this day, that he was right and was protecting me. I was not photogenic in my youth. I was definitely a “late bloomer.”

    Those experiences gave me the belief that I clearly was not the girl people were looking for. That I couldn’t model, and I wasn’t pretty enough (no blame here on my father; it was the entire experience as a whole).

    In my adolescence I was far from confident; in fact, I was extremely judgmental of myself and engrossed in comparing my life to the popular girls. This made me feel and act even more awkward, and I really grew to dislike myself.

    Fast-forward a decade later, when I was avidly practicing and teaching yoga. Over several years I started to learn to be in my body, to accept my body for how it was that day, in that moment. I also started to heavily meditate and learn to detach from my judgments and harsh critical thoughts.

    During this time, I heard a woman talking about doing naked yoga. I couldn’t believe this… what?! Naked yoga!? It sounded so intriguing. I had to try it!

    So, one day in my own home, completely alone, I undressed and stepped onto my mat. Seeing my naked body in the poses I had practiced hundreds of times, but now naked, was so intimate. It was like seeing my naked body for the first time. I’ll never forget how much I cried while moving from pose to pose and reciting the words “I love you” to the different parts of my body.

    From there it all unraveled. During this time, several girlfriends who were photographers asked me to model for them. It was then that I really started to come face to face with all the parts of myself that I was so insecure about seeing, let alone someone else seeing!

    I remember the day I was asked to pose nude for the first time, I rose to the occasion. It really added a deeper layer, or actually, it took all the layers off in my self-love journey!

    I felt shy, timid, judgmental, and quite frankly, I had no idea what I was doing. But this feeling of awkwardness forced me to get grounded, to breathe, and to tap into the environment around me. I had to let go of what I looked like, and then I started to be playful and have fun!

    When I first saw the photos, I was so embarrassed. It made me want to shrink and fade away. In time, as I continued to model, it became an ongoing journey of building confidence and learning to accept and love myself. I was drawn like a moth to a flame because I was embarking on something beyond my past experiences of fear, and it was transformative.

    I went on to model nude several more times, in various settings: the forest, the lake, the desert, the hot springs, and indoor studios. It became an act of freedom to have my body turned into art. A wild woman was born!

    I felt so free while modeling nude that it became a literal quest to overcome my insecurities and radically step into self-acceptance. To love my imperfections, to expose the raw and the unpolished parts of me.

    Now, all these years later, I see that these photoshoots are much bigger than just me being naked. It’s alchemizing shame into confidence, hatred into self-love. It’s about being a seed of inspiration for others to express freedom and the power that’s found through vulnerability.

    Naturally, we humans are creatures of comfort, but we do not grow and evolve when we stay in these zones. The power and healing that is on the other side of the familiar is immeasurable.

    If you feel the burning heart’s desire to step into greater leadership, share your talents with the world, take the leap in your life, and step into the best ever evolving version of you. You can extract what I have talked about above and implement it into your life. This doesn’t mean you have to get naked too, although that’s one way to get radical about it!

    Here are seven practices that you can implement into your self-care routines, morning or evening, to create greater self-love and boost your confidence.

    6 Self-Love and Confidence Boosting Tools

    1. Do mirror work with affirmations.

    Speak affirmations—positive “I am” statements”—into the mirror. I am joy. I am fierce. I am beautiful. I am ready.Notice and allow. What emotions, thoughts, physical sensations, or memories come up? Tuning into what these statements trigger inside you can help you identify areas for healing.

    For example, if you don’t believe you’re beautiful, why? What does beauty mean to you? When did you first start believing this? What happened, and who else was involved? What proof do you have that this is just a belief, not fact?

    2. Practice naked yoga.

    Roll out your mat at home, turn on music, light candles, and enjoy!

    You might feel uncomfortable doing this. You might focus on all the parts of your body you dislike and how you imagine you look while doing the poses. Embrace the fact that it’s just you—there’s no one to impress or please—so you truly can just be in your body, without judging it. Connecting with your body is the first step to accepting it, and accepting it is the first step to loving it.

    3. Seek discomfort.

    Do things that feel (just a little) scary, intimidating, and unfamiliar to you. If you’re naturally shy, start a conversation with a stranger. If you don’t usually speak in meetings, offer a suggestion. Put yourself in situations to stretch and impress yourself. There’s nothing that will create confidence faster.

    4. Try something new.

    Take a class, join a club, try a new hobby. Do something you’ve always dreamed of trying, or something you envy other people for doing.  Even if you’re not “good at it,” the fact that you tried builds courage.

    5. Pamper yourself.

    Get your hair/nails done, have a spa day, wine and dine yourself. Every time you take care of yourself or do something nice for yourself, you reinforce that you deserve it.

    6. Try a nude photoshoot.

    This can be done completely privately, photographed by you, or it can be as adventurous as you want. The choice is yours! Just be sure to choose a photographer you trust, someone who understands you’re doing this for self-empowerment and won’t pressure you into doing anything that you don’t feel comfortable with.

    Not only have these steps helped me cultivate a lifetime partnership of love with myself, but they are also proven practices of transformation!

    I could have easily stayed in my comfort zone instead of stepping into that muddy, cold river naked, but I was so inspired it beckoned me to step into the unknown, because I knew it meant stepping into greater power.

    This is your sign to lean into those juicy discomforts, to find power in vulnerability, to say yes and live fearlessly!

  • How I Found Forgiveness and Compassion When I Felt Hurt and Betrayed

    How I Found Forgiveness and Compassion When I Felt Hurt and Betrayed

    “I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.” ~Haruki Murakami

    I’ve always felt like someone on the outside. Despite having these feelings I’ve been relatively successful at playing the game of life, and have survived through school, university, and the workplace—although, at times, working so hard to ’survive’ has impacted my emotional well-being.

    I have been lucky enough to have healthy and supportive relationships with a few loved ones who have accepted me as I am (quirks and all). To anyone else I’ve come across, I suspect I’ve been perceived as inexplicably normal and inoffensive.

    Like many of us who have suffered with our mental health, I’ve always been curious to learn more about who I am beyond the surface level experiences of life. Spirituality is a big umbrella, and in my quest for truth I explored various modalities. I eventually found a home within a small yoga community.

    I find many of us seekers feel deeply and have a tendency to overcomplicate things that just are. In my mind this style of yoga worked; quite simply, I followed the practices and life felt a little bit easier, I felt more acceptable as I was, and I believe it made me a better human being to people around me.

    The deeper I went into the practice, the more I began to observe its pitfalls. As is common in many spiritual lineages, it’s quite often not the methods and the teachings that are fallible, but how humans interpret and relate to them.

    In my particular lineage, the leader was found to have physically and sexually assaulted students over a period spanning decades. Those who were brave enough to come forward were silenced, and it took many years before the evidence became so undeniable that the community (by and large) finally acknowledged the truth.

    The revelation and realization that the leader was fallible caused significant pain to many during this time, and is sadly an experience not unique in spiritual sanghas.

    At this time some conversations were had regarding the student-teacher dynamic, and the propensity for abuse in our lineage, but no cohesive and collective safeguards were established or defined. Small fringe communities developed during this time in an apparent greater commitment to change; however, it was by no means the status quo.

    The leader, at this point, had left his body, and it appeared as if many felt it was this man alone who was the problem, and therefore the problem was no more.

    I loved the practice, and I felt my knowledge of the history of the lineage equipped me with an awareness of the propensity for harmful power dynamics to occur. I was fortunate in the early years of my journey to have teachers whose only objective appeared to be to support students by sharing what they knew.

    For the first time ever, I didn’t feel like I was an outsider—I felt acceptable as I was. Sadly, however, due to a teacher relocating, I joined a new community with a new teacher, and this is where my story of pain begins.

    My new teacher must have been suffering. The specifics around my experience are not relevant for this article, but I understand now I was bullied, belittled, and manipulated. Maybe it was a misunderstanding? Maybe I asked too many questions? Maybe I was too direct? Maybe I wasn’t obsequious enough? I went over and over in my head to try to understand, why me?

    I still loved the practice and wanted to be welcomed like everyone else. Throughout my experience I remained respectful to the teacher, but it was a confusing time. Eventually, I can only assume, the teacher got bored with playing with me and played her final card, banning and ostracizing me from the group. I was also labelled to the community as abusive and an aggressor.

    And, oh boy, did that bring up a cycle of emotions. Written down on paper like this they are just words, but I can promise you they felt intense and consuming and relentless. I felt…

    -Humiliation: I have been misrepresented. I can’t show my face ever again. People don’t believe me that I did nothing wrong.
    -Shame: Why am I the person who has been ostracized? There really must be something really wrong with me.
    -Rage: How dare someone cause me this much hurt? How dare they claim to be a spiritual leader?
    -Resentment: No one else in the community has stood up for me; none of them can be good people to let this happen.
    -Grief: I have lost a practice I really loved. My heart is broken.
    -Depression: My path gave me purpose, now what?

    Subsequently, my life unraveled, and I can honestly say the period following was the darkest of my life. Family, friends, and my therapist allowed me space to explore and accept my pain.

    We all experience the world through our own lens, and I appreciate I may have personal defects that clouded my experience of the situation. However, I do see now that I was wronged. No teacher will perfectly match my personal disposition, and that’s okay. However, they should offer a safe and inclusive space for spiritual discovery. I wasn’t given that, and that wasn’t good enough. 

    So many times, well-being supporters would tell me, “You need to move on, forgive, forget, find another yoga space.” I understood but I didn’t know how to go about that.

    At the time, a good friend was going through recovery from alcoholism and working the twelve steps. She told me that she was praying every day for people who had harmed her.

    “How can you do that?” I remember asking her. “I couldn’t wish well for those who have harmed me.” My friend told me that, to begin with, she didn’t believe what she was saying, but that over time she began to feel compassion and forgiveness toward those people.

    So that’s what I did. I made a commitment to myself to start practicing daily forgiveness meditations.

    To begin with, I worked on forgiving the teacher. I learned more about this teacher’s past and learned about a significant life event that I believe may have caused great pain. We all have shadow sides, and I spent time reflecting on the occasions where I may have hurt people to project my own suffering. With time, I was able to see and accept that her actions towards me came from a place of hurt.

    I also spent time reflecting on the positive things the teacher gave me. I acknowledged how she’d held virtual space for our community through covid lockdowns, which undoubtedly helped many of us during those isolating times. I appreciated how she had introduced me to several authors whose words I continue to find great richness in, and whose books I have since recommended to others. The teacher also helped me to advance my physical asana practice, through encouraging me to find possibility in movement which felt impossible.

    It didn’t happen overnight, but I was gradually able to find space in my heart for compassion toward this teacher. However, I wasn’t fully healed.

    I began to understand that there lay deeper hurt and anger directed at other community members, some of whom were aware of this abuse and either denied it or chose to do nothing, believing it had nothing to do with them.

    It was through those interactions that I began to understand the pain of victim denial and gaslighting. I felt angered by the lack of collective action by the community to hold harmful teachers accountable, and to enforce better safeguards to ensure greater student safety. I knew there were others who, like me, had been hurt, and that broke my heart.

    So that’s what my current practice is focused on—healing and forgiving institutional betrayal.

    I am lucky to have joined a new community that feels much kinder. It has taken time, but I am now able to separate my feelings toward yoga from the hurt I felt from individuals in the yoga community.

    I recognize now that many of those who silenced me when I tried to speak up about my teacher were just ignorant; they weren’t cruel. There is still pain, but with time I can see how this experience is a gift; it has taught me how to find forgiveness and reminded me of the importance of compassion toward all beings.

  • How Yoga Helped Heal My Anxiety and Quiet My Overactive Mind

    How Yoga Helped Heal My Anxiety and Quiet My Overactive Mind

    “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you really are” ~Carl Jung

    Yoga is often celebrated for its physical benefits: greater flexibility, increased strength, improved circulation, and so on. But nothing could have prepared me for the transformational effect that yoga has had on my mental health and well-being.

    I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression when I was fourteen, and I have struggled with both for most of my life. My mind was my worst enemy, constantly worrying and criticizing to the point where it became hard to do anything. Even the things I really wanted to do became too overwhelming.

    I knew about the positive impact of exercise and healthy living on mental health, and I had dabbled in yoga classes at the gym for years in an attempt to drag myself out of this hole I was in.

    I did notice some small changes in my mood and energy levels. I couldn’t explain it, but I would always feel a certain buzz after a great yoga class.

    So, in 2022, I decided to take this yoga thing seriously. I began practicing daily and even studied for a yoga teacher training qualification.

    Since then, I have noticed significant changes in not only my physical body and well-being but in my mental health too. Most notably, my anxiety levels have significantly decreased. Of course, I still have moments of anxiety, but I feel better equipped to cope with them and less likely to allow them to pull me into a downward spiral.

    Disclaimer: This is not medical health advice; it is simply my own experience. If you are struggling with your mental health, please seek a medical health professional.

    How Yoga Can Help with Anxiety

    Yoga helps you recognize your emotions and triggers.

    The first thing to know about yoga is that it is not a series of complicated poses used to make you look a certain way or increase your flexibility.

    Instead, it is an inner practice where we unite our body, mind, and spirit and become one with the universal life force energy that sustains all of life.

    Meditation and breathwork are just as important parts of yoga as the poses (known as asana).

    With this knowledge, yoga has the power to transform your mental state from a place of stress and anxiety to complete peace with yourself and the world around you.

    It allows you to notice how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking without judging yourself. It allows you to understand your body, how it works, and what messages it’s trying to communicate to you about your health and your needs.

    By learning to recognize when I felt anxious and why, yoga provided a safe space to release those triggers and emotions that I would ordinarily suppress.

    Yoga regulates your nervous system.

    When we experience high levels of anxiety, we are constantly living in fight-or-flight mode. The fight-or-flight response is designed to switch on in moments of danger and stress to protect you and then return to homeostasis once the threat has gone.

    However, in this day and age, many people are experiencing an overactive fight-or-flight response due to an increasingly stressful lifestyle. And many live in a constant state of hypervigilance as a result of trauma or abuse.

    Living in fight-or-flight mode takes up an enormous amount of energy, and our bodies cannot keep up with the demands long term. Over time, the body and mind begin to shut down and we get illness and disease as a result.

    This is what happened to me. My body could not cope with the pressure I was putting it under daily, so my mental health suffered.

    Practicing yoga allows you to calm your nervous system and creates a space where the mind and body feel safe to exit fight-or-flight mode and actually relax.

    One way to do this is through practicing breathwork, also known as pranayama.

    Yogic philosophy believes that the breath is how we can harness our energy and the energy of the universe. We can alter our emotions, energy levels, and even physiological responses, such as the fight-or-flight response, with just the breath.

    When I notice I am starting to feel anxious, I breathe deeply into my stomach for the count of four, hold it for four, and then slowly exhale for the count of four, also known as belly breathing.

    While this may sound trivial, it really helps me to feel calm in moments of stress and anxiety.

    Breathing slowly and deeply activates our parasympathetic nervous system. This sends signals to the brain that there is no danger here and the fight-or-flight response does not need to be activated.

    Yoga teaches you new coping mechanisms.

    Yoga taught me different techniques to cope with my anxiety and panic attacks.

    Firstly, yoga teaches that you are not your mind. You are not your thoughts, your beliefs, or even your body.

    When we study the five koshas (layers of the self) we can see our physical being is just a vehicle to navigate this world in; it is not who we are as a whole. For example, the koshas teach us that our essence cannot be entirely in our physical body because physical bodies are subject to change, yet who we are remains.

    This mindset applies to our thoughts too. Once I started acknowledging that my thoughts did not always come from me, they began to hold less weight. Most of our thoughts are just ‘re-runs’ of things we are told as a child or things we repeatedly hear from society that get internalized. They are not necessarily representative of who we truly are.

    This knowledge allowed me to distance myself from my anxious thoughts instead of letting them consume me.

    Secondly, through pranayama and meditation, both essential aspects of yoga, I learned to recognize how I was feeling and allow those feelings to exist within me, without trying to change them or distract myself from them.

    When we don’t allow our emotions space to be there, we are instead rejecting that aspect of ourselves. We push these feelings deeper and deeper down as a way to avoid dealing with them, without realizing we are actually ingraining them deeper into our psyche.

    By giving our emotions space to be felt, we can release them from our mind and body so we don’t have to carry them with us through our life.

    Yoga helps you be more present.

    To practice yoga, you need to be focused and in the present moment. To hold balance poses like tree pose or to get into the correct alignment of warrior 1, you need to be paying attention to what is happening around you right now.

    If your mind drifts while you’re holding a balance pose, you can bet your body will lose all balance too.

    Yoga forces you to be in the present moment, to be fully engaged in what you are doing, and doesn’t allow room to think about anything else.

    For me, this is exactly what I needed to get out of my anxiety-ridden head. One of my main struggles with anxiety was that I could not stop myself from thinking. The incessant noise of my own mind was exhausting to live with.

    However, when I am in a yoga flow, the noise stops. The mind chatter about future scenarios that will probably never happen is no longer there, as I am using all my focus to get into the proper alignment of the pose.

    The more you practice focusing, the easier it is to apply this in your daily life. I can now notice when my mind is overactive and instead re-direct it to the task at hand. By giving our full attention to the thing we are doing, we can quieten that anxious voice within and begin to enjoy the present moment.

    —

    Yoga has so many incredible benefits physically, mentally, and spiritually. Since sticking to a consistent yoga practice, I have noticed my anxiety decrease dramatically and I am able to live a full and happy life without my mind controlling me.

  • Tips from a Former Addict: How I Made a Change for Good

    Tips from a Former Addict: How I Made a Change for Good

    I was a drug addict. Yes, I did it all. No, my childhood was not full of abuse, I was actually a pretty lucky kid, and I had it no worse and no better than anyone else, except for maybe some “daddy issues.”

    I am not much for blame. I know who was smoking, sniffing, and popping, and it wasn’t the bad angel on my shoulder who made me do it, it was just me.

    I can give you the exact reason why I started doing drugs. I was afraid to just be myself, simple enough. Everyone else’s thoughts of who I needed to be or what made me cool was more important than embracing my authentic self.

    Drugs were a huge part of my life, and they influenced the places, people, and pain I endured, but again, this was still all a choice.

    I had wonderful opportunities at my fingertips but let them go for a long-term abusive relationship.

    I lost jobs, burned bridges, and hurt my family.

    I stole, lied, and fought.

    Had random sex, lost respect, and wanted to die.

    On a good note, I still maintained a relationship with my higher power. Even though I checked out on him, he was always there to check in on me, and I always had my mother’s, sister’s, and best friend’s support. This is major because we are not meant to do this alone.

    Change Is a Brewin’

    Before any change happens, most people need something extreme to take place, like a near-death experience or hitting rock bottom.

    Unfortunately, I had to hit rock bottom—a couple of times.

    The first time, I had started doing heroin for a good three weeks, and as my whole world was spiraling out of control—like breaking my boyfriend’s hand for what looked like a piece of black tar heroin… only to find out it was just a piece of stepped-on gum on the floor—a glimpse of light still managed to show through, and I made a decision right there.

    I quit… for good. Yes, it happened that fast. Turns out I’m not about that life.

    The second time, I was homeless with my sister. My mom was tired; who could blame her? She had two daughters she loved with all her heart who continued to make the worst choices, despite what she taught us. So, she kicked us out.

    Subconsciously, I was desperately seeking a better path. My actions would say otherwise, but deep down we all know what we really need. I was finally ready to make the choice to make a change.

    Change for Good

    “No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.” ~Buddha

    If you want change, if you truly want it, it will be so. Don’t say I’m “trying.” That implies you are still holding resistance, and as Buddha also says:

    “Change is not painful, only resistance to change is painful.”

    A drug addict, or anyone who has ever been addicted to anything in their lives, knows they will stop when they want to. This is at no one else’s will but their own. That doesn’t mean it will be easy or they won’t need help. Just that it starts with a choice—their own.

    If you have ever seen the show Intervention, you know it is very rare that someone who was brought to rehab by the petition of their family ever stays away from drugs for good.

    This is a dire truth, but I can tell you from experience that when you don’t make this commitment for yourself, the decision loses its empowering effect, and you won’t know the feeling of having sovereignty over your own life.

    Whether you are a drug addict or just know you need something to change, accept that you need change and start searching (like you’re doing now, and luckily it brought you to me).

    I am not perfect now… or am I, since I am finally being me? There are days I still get stuck in a mood, but the difference now is I have learned to acknowledge it.

    Acknowledge It… Whatever You’re Feeling

    After I stopped doing drugs completely, and I mean completely, I realized my anxiety was at an all-time high every day. What I needed to do first was acknowledge it, but I kept trying to hide it. Like I was trying to convince myself that I didn’t feel the way I was feeling. I guess because I hadn’t realized yet that I really didn’t know who I was without drugs.

    Say it out loud, even if it’s weird, “I feel so anxious right now” or “I am feeling sad”—it dissipates faster, and maybe if you say it to someone you trust, they can help dig up what the issue is. My boyfriend and I do this with each other and found that sometimes a hug does the trick.

    Once you start admitting that you’re not feeling okay—right when your body is signaling you—you can search deeper into why and find out by paying attention to patterns.

    First, I started acknowledging that I was feeling crappy. I began to also pay attention to the thought patterns that led up to the feeling, or what happened just before the feeling commenced.

    This gives you glimpse into the type of thoughts you are ruminating on. Is there something you have not let go? Is there an irrational thought that keeps coming up? Is your self-talk demeaning?

    When you suppress it, it comes out in lots of different ways, trust me.

    I am the queen of looking crazy because I blew up randomly at a co-worker, overreacted completely to a joke (and made it awkwaaaard), yelled at my boyfriend when he wasn’t giving me the right responses to a story I was telling, and my favorite phrase as the broken girl was, “No one gets me…” Acting like a victim is not the same as admitting what you are really feeling, though it may be easier.

    Find the Good, and Self-Love Will Follow

    During your search, you will find an abundance of “ways to make yourself happy” and outlandish claims of instant happy pills or whatever.

    The important thing right now is to adopt good habits—go toward good and good things will follow. The key is learning to love yourself. The hard part is finding ways to apply this.

    There are two main ways I’ve learned to be good to myself: yoga and meditation.

    This dynamic duo is popular for a reason, guys.

    I recommend Yoga with Adriene, all day. She is amazing. She always says, “Find what feels good.” To a drug addict like me, I/m like, that’s what got me in this mess, Adriene, but if you insist.

    All joking aside, if you have ever done something like drugs, impulse buying, or even eating a donut, it makes you feel good for a short period of time, right?

    And then you seem to need more, feel guilty, or crash (maybe all three). Finding what feels good, in Adriene’s terms, is listening to your body, not your impulses.

    For example, you know when you stretch after you’ve been sitting down for a while, you just seem to know exactly how and which way to move because you know what feels good? Start there. If you practice both yoga and meditation, take all your expectations and trash them. Just listen to whomever is teaching you and follow their guidance.

    Turn Those Good Habits into a Ritual

    After I found yoga and meditation, I started to enjoy taking care of myself. This was more than an addiction; it soon became second nature.

    I recommend you start with:

    • Yoga in the morning. Yoga with Adriene has a ton of beginner videos I started with
    • Mediate whenever you can. I recommend Dr. Tara Brach, who teaches mediation and emotional healing so you can learn easily to do it on your own
    • Make time to do something you really love. Mine was drawing and painting.

    You would think eating healthy would be on the list, right?

    Stopping drugs cold turkey made me lose my appetite, so I was proud if I ate anything at all. But, before I knew it, the chemicals in my brain changed and I started to crave healthy food, and in abundance.

    I didn’t just jump into some random diet because I was “doing everything good for me” now. I knew I needed to take things step by step when making such a big life change and let healthy habits naturally build on top of each other. When we try to do too much at once, and try to form new habits without intrinsic motivation, we often fail.

    Inc.com explains about 60% of us make New Year’s resolutions but only about 8% of us actually achieve them. We are humans, not technology; we can’t click on a software update and “you are now equipped to achieve your goals”—in my best Google Home voice.

    Give yourself some time and be kind to yourself. Once you start making healthy choices, you will naturally want to make more. Honestly, I was proud of myself for already achieving what I had, and my soul couldn’t get enough. I was treating myself with respect, then came love, and then came a deep connection to everything and everyone around me.

    Though you might start feeling happier with yourself and your life, this doesn’t mean you’ll be happy all the time.

    If you need to cry, let the tears flow. There were some days I would ball my eyes out non-stop but feel so cleansed afterward. Actually, there are even some days now when I feel I need to cry and I just do it. And you know what? My anxiety disappears when I didn’t even realize it was building up in the first place.

    Learn Your Triggers and Avoid Them for Now

    During my transformation I had to start identifying my triggers and avoiding situations I knew would start the cycle all over. I realized this meant the difference between change for now and change for good.

    Whatever you are struggling with, identify what triggers you the most into doing it. This will involve you really being honest with yourself, and not judging yourself for what you find out. Right now is not the time to be your own worst critic.

    I hope you know that just reading through this shows how strong you are and how capable you are of living life as yourself and truly at peace.

    I am the first to call myself out, beat myself up, and feel guilty as hell. Don’t do this to yourself.

    This is a vulnerable time, and you need all the love you can get—giving yourself love is the only way to conquer what is causing you pain.

    So instead of going out when everyone else was, I stayed home because I knew that social scenes would make me want to grab a drink; I would start smoking a cigarette (which I also quit), and then who knows what I would want to get my hands on once I was on a roll.

    I waited months before I trusted myself to get out and hang. The power you attain when you realize you can say no—without FOMO—is greater than any feeling you are chasing by giving in.

    If I can do it, so can you.

    You have a whole support system available to you, and yeah, maybe it’s full of strangers in a meeting. But once you get in touch with yourself, you will realize we’re not really strangers at all; we all come from the same energy, and we all mean way more to each other than you’ve ever thought.

    If you ever need support from somewhere, you can always get it from me. The real me. Without drugs. Finally unafraid to be myself, because I finally love myself.

    **This post represents one person’s personal experience and may or may not reflect your unique situation. Especially f you’ve experienced trauma or abuse, you may need professional help to address the root cause of your addiction. There is no shame in getting help, or in struggling as you work toward recovery. Be good to yourself, be patient with yourself, and keep reaching out if you’ve yet to find the right people to help you!

  • 7 Morning Mindfulness Practices to Help You Have an Awesome Day

    7 Morning Mindfulness Practices to Help You Have an Awesome Day

    How often do you feel energized, grounded, and excited for the day when you finish your morning routine?

    And what is your morning routine?

    Are you one of those people who sleep as late as possible, pound some coffee and a processed breakfast, and then rush to get into work on time? (No judgment—I’ve been there! Gas station java and pop tarts for the win!)

    Or do you leave yourself a cushion of time so you can ease into your day feeling centered and invigorated, through some combination of self-care activities?

    In recent years I’ve leaned toward the latter because I know the way I spend my morning sets the tone for the rest of my day.

    Admittedly, it’s easier on some days than others. When things are going well, and I feel good about myself and my life, it’s not too hard to do things that are good for me, even if I only have a few minutes.

    But it’s when we’re not feeling our best that we need self-care the most. Especially in the morning, when our choices have immense power to shape the twenty-four hours ahead.

    For me, the most important choice is to practice mindfulness.

    Mindfulness is essentially non-judgmental present moment awareness. It’s simply being where you are. Grounding yourself in your body and choosing to let thoughts naturally pass instead of getting caught up in them.

    It’s a great practice any time of day, but particularly in the morning, since it enables you to create the kind of energy you want to take into the tasks and interactions ahead of you.

    There are limitless ways to practice mindfulness, but here are some of my favorites:

    1. Mindful check-in

    I imagine a lot of us hop out of bed and get into the morning without really checking in with ourselves to see how we’re feeling.

    Check in to see how your body feels—if you’re holding tension anywhere or if any part of your body needs a little extra love, whether that means stretching your legs or giving yourself a hand massage.

    Check in to see how you feel mentally and emotionally—if you feel anxious about anything that’s coming or you’re holding onto any thoughts or regrets about yesterday and could maybe work through them with a little journaling.

    And most importantly, ask yourself: What do I need? It might not be the same as what you needed yesterday. You might need to chug some water, or connect with someone you love, or listen to a song that always makes you smile. None of these things takes that long, but they can all make a huge difference.

    2. Mindful morning mantra

    Because I want my son to feel excited about his days, and to know that he’s a valuable human being, I’ve gotten into the habit of telling him, right after he wakes up, “Welcome to the day, the day is lucky to have you!” (I probably sound like the teacher from Peanuts right now, cause, you know, he’s one and a half, but in time he’ll understand!)

    Recently it occurred to me that I could just easily say this to myself, either looking in the mirror or just in my head when I first open my eyes. So I tell myself this, then take a few deep breaths and let these words marinate in my brain.

    It’s a much nicer greeting to the morning than a bright screen in my face. And it’s a way to proactively and mindfully nurture what I want to feel: excited, valued, and confident.

    3. Mindful shower

    Our morning shower is a perfect opportunity to engage with our senses, clear our mind, and visualize our worries washing away down the drain.

    Whenever we engage our senses we’re pulled into the present moment, and there’s no sense more powerful than the sense of smell. The part of the brain that processes smells is linked to the part of the brain associated with memory and emotion. Which means the right scent can provide comfort, calm, and healing. And lavender in particular isn’t just relaxing, it’s also scientifically proven to help with anxiety and a number of physical ailments.

    You might find a different scent appeals to you. You might prefer hot showers, or cold showers, or a combination. What’s important is that you allow yourself to be fully present with the experience—to feel the water cascading down your back, to tune into the sound of the drops hitting the floor, and to give yourself this time to simply be, in this moment of solitude.

    4. Intention-setting practice

    Many of us go into our days with lengthy to-do lists, and it can easily create a sense of overwhelm.

    I like to set a morning intention based on both something to do and something to be, because this reminds me of what’s truly important, and takes the focus off productivity.

    For example, you could set the intention to do an act of kindness and be gentle with yourself. Then you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment when you complete the act of kindness, and you’ll not only feel good about having done it, you’ll feel good about yourself no matter what else you do, because you’ll be honoring your intention to be gentle with yourself.

    5. Mindful breakfast

    Particularly in the morning, when we have a lot to do, and perhaps get into quickly, it’s easy to scarf down our food without even really tasting it. And it always occurs to me how silly this is. It’s not like savoring our food takes much time. It literally adds seconds to the experience—a few extra minutes at most.

    In my family we joke that we don’t chew our food, we just kind of gulp it down. So this is where I start. I chew more. I fully taste what I’m eating. I close my eyes as if it’s a super decadent chocolate.

    Choose to eat without multitasking—no phone or TV on in the background. And give yourself permission to just enjoy eating. Like when you were a kid and finally got an ice cream cone after begging for an hour. You took big, long licks, you let it drip down your hand, maybe you snarled when someone asked if they could try it because you were just that into it.

    You could also imagine this is the last time you will ever get to eat this particular meal. I find that always mindful eating far easier!

    6. Yoga or stretching

    If I could take an hour-long yoga class every morning, I would, because nothing feels as good for my mind and body as yoga. It’s like a mental cleanse and a really good full body yawn-stretch all at once. (Do you that too—yawn-stretch?) It releases tension both in the mind and body and creates a feeling of lightness all over.

    If, like me, you don’t have the time for a full class, you could instead do a few energizing poses, while focusing on your breath. Yoga Journal has a great list of recommendations here. Or you could simply stretch in whatever way feels good to you, breathing deeply as you move your body.

    7. Gratitude journaling

    You probably see this suggestion a lot, and for good reason: identifying our blessings boosts our mood, increases our overall life satisfaction, and makes us feel more optimistic. When you find things to appreciate, even when life feels hard or stressful, it’s like shining a spotlight on all the reasons life is worth living and deemphasizing everything that hurts.

    But you don’t need to put pen to paper to reap the benefits. You could write one thing down and put it in a gratitude jar so you can pull a random blessing out any time you need a pick-me-up. You could share a morning blessing on social media, to connect with other people in the process. Or you could try the email approach I recently adopted with my sister…

    Though we didn’t keep it going long, for a brief time we emailed each other daily one thing we were grateful for, one thing we were excited about, and one thing we were proud of ourselves for. I found it was a great way to help each other be our best selves and nurture positive emotions.

    —

    Let’s face it: Every day is different, and some mornings are harder than others.

    Sometimes we wake up wishing yesterday was a dream and hoping today will be over fast.

    Sometimes we wake up feeling indifferent about the twenty-four hours ahead because we’re just not excited about our day.

    And other times we wake up feeling eager and motivated, thrilled about the upcoming day and ready to make the most of it.

    That’s life, for all of us. That’s the full range of human experience, all kinds of days mixed up together like white specks drifting around in a snow globe.

    We can’t control that our lives are always in flux, and that we won’t always wake up feeling happy or positive. But we can choose to do something every morning that enables us to be and do our best with what is, whatever it is.

    And it all starts with mindfulness. Coming home to our body. Giving ourselves permission to simply be. And then, when we feel a strong sense of stability within us, going out into the world to do. Whatever it is we do. Ready to find the joy in our day and knowing we can handle whatever’s coming.

  • How Yoga Gave Me the Courage to Stop People-Pleasing

    How Yoga Gave Me the Courage to Stop People-Pleasing

    “Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.”  ~The Bhagavad Gita

    Growing up, I couldn’t have been further from my ‘self.’ Early childhood experiences taught me to focus all of my energy externally. To put everyone around me first and to be insatiably attentive to their needs. This kind of thinking instills you with an incredibly low sense of self-worth, disconnects you from your own feelings and desires, and ultimately leaves your happiness pinned to other people.

    When you have low self-worth, you mostly want to contract away from the world like a turtle. Hiding in your protective shell becomes a way of life because you fear that by revealing who you truly are people will leave, reject, or mock you.

    A common response from those around me was “Don’t worry! Just be yourself!” When you have low self-worth, “being yourself” isn’t just something that worries you, it’s not something that simply makes you feel uncomfortable. It is quite literally something your brain deciphers as high risk. The act of “being myself” was unbelievably terrifying. I had my guard up all the time and a face for every occasion.

    In my early twenties, I started to analyze my unhealthy thought patterns and tried three different therapists. Each one encouraged me to give a monologue about my life while they vacantly nodded and asked questions such as “How did that make you feel?”

    It did nothing for me. What I desperately needed was to cultivate a loving relationship with myself. I needed to get to know the girl I had been and the woman I was becoming. To be there for her, to soothe her, and to cheer her on.

    That’s where yoga came in.

    There was no single defining moment. My first yoga class didn’t change my life. Neither did the second, the third, or the fourth. Yet, little by little, as I went to more classes and read ancient scripture, I began hearing one important message reiterated over and over again—the importance of looking inward for validation, love, and support.

    Years of looking outside myself for these things had left my worth precariously hinged to other people, yet once on the mat, with only myself, I was challenged to connect with it all—my own fears, my own desires, and my own needs. Without this step, I couldn’t have moved forward in my life.

    My yoga practice went deeper when I found yin and restorative; branches of yoga which emphasize gentle support, nourishment, and mindful movement as opposed to any kind of striving or precision.

    Unlike the sweaty sequences of fast-paced flow classes, yin is a soft, intuitive practice that slowly guides you toward opening up, both physically and emotionally. Poses open your heart and your hips—places where those with low self-worth are often most closed off.

    Positions such as supported twist and swan can be held for over five minutes, encouraging a deep tissue release whereby tension dissolves out of your body and onto the mat. Meanwhile torso opening poses like butterfly and camel can make you feel totally vulnerable.

    As you sprawl out across the mat, the urge to close up can be powerful and it’s not unusual to feel emotional. It left me with no choice but to surrender, despite resistance from every cell in my body.   

    Many of the poses in yin yoga are named after animals and insects we associate with peacefulness. The gentle movement of a swan emits a blissful sense of inner peace. The slow-moving ways of a camel and the flutters of a butterfly convey the kind of quiet strength you feel when you finally reach a solid sense of self-worth. When you know you are enough, the need to prove yourself gradually begins to subside, being replaced by a lightness in both the body and the mind. It is this lightness which yoga instils.

    Similar to yin, restorative yoga aims to center you through both stillness and slow movement. It took all the energy I was relentlessly giving out to the world and brought it back to me. It felt like the first time I’d fully, and completely, focused on my own experience. It felt good.

    I went to restorative classes on Thursday evenings. I remember the first class I went to vividly because it felt so unnatural. Away from the pace of everyday life, where there are so many opportunities to numb out—with work, TV, socializing—this session involved just four restful poses each held for five to seven minutes.

    Poses included reclining hero, where you relax your entire body onto a supportive cushion, and bend your knees gently back, and Supta Baddha Konasana—lying with your legs open, feet together and arms left flat to the side. Whatever the pose, the purpose of it was comfort for the body, rest for the mind, and replenishment of the spirit.

    At the beginning I found this practise excruciating. My body was tense and my muscles were contracted. After years of avoiding myself, I simply couldn’t relax and let go because I was scared.

    The teacher noticed and he often came over to lightly press my back down onto the mat. Other times, he’d swap the hard cork block I’d picked to hold up my head for the softness of a folded blanket. As with many other yoga teachers, his non-judgemental support provided the safe, gentle push I needed to finally relax into my own body.

    These simple yet nourishing acts reflect the philosophy of yoga so well, in that the practice has little to do with who can stretch the furthest, the longest, or the most elegantly. Instead, one of the key tenants of yoga is union with yourself. If a pose feels painful, you adjust. If you’ve reached your edge, you pull back.

    This mantra has been repeated throughout every class I’ve been to, and it’s the most tangible evidence I have of the effect yoga has had on my life. If something feels painfully uncomfortable, out of line with my true nature, I now ask “Why am I doing this? Is it for me, or to please other people?”

    Chronic people pleasing, in order to gain a sense of self-worth, always felt excruciating to me. It put me at the whim of just about everyone I met. But it was only when I found the teachings of yoga that I realized why it felt so bad and found the courage to change.  

    When you’ve been so far away from yourself and finally connect to your inner being, it can feel overwhelming. The discovery that, I too, existed in the world, and not only that I had needs and feelings that deserved to be heard, but that who I was really, really mattered, was profound. In this way, yoga worked to highlight how prolifically I’d been neglecting myself in a way that talk therapy never even touched upon.

    I began to engage in radical self-care, I started a soothing inner dialogue, regularly asking myself if I was okay: how did I feel? (as opposed to how others felt). Albeit daunting and uncomfortable at first, I gradually stopped doing things to please others and started revealing every part of myself—the goofy side, the quiet side, the intelligent side. Why? Because my self-worth was inherent, it was within me rather than outside of me, and therefore, I had the safety to be exactly who I was.

    If you’ve ever struggled with low self-worth, you’ll know that the path to true acceptance is long, tedious, and never linear. It is a one step forward, two steps back process. One where you must wake up every single day and commit to building yourself up rather than down. One where you must silence your inner critic and instead begin to accept every part of yourself—even those which you find unpleasant.

    By practicing yoga and learning from the principles that underpin it, that path can be made easier, and a whole lot brighter, too.

  • 5 Practices That Helped Me Reclaim My Spark for Life

    5 Practices That Helped Me Reclaim My Spark for Life

    “Sometimes what you’re most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free.” ~Robert Tew

    In 2014, I was drowning in unhappiness. I had moved to Palestine five years earlier, later met my husband, and decided to remain in one of the most conflicted countries in the world.

    There I was, living in a different country far from the comforts of home that I had always known. My marriage was rife with conflict and pain, and I had nobody to turn to.

    I had no family nearby, and with the high turnover of internationals in the country, many of the friends I’d made had left to go back to their home countries, leaving me behind.

    My fear and shame around the difficulties in my marriage kept me from sharing my struggles with the few friends that remained. My friendships felt shallow, and I felt more and more isolated and alone.

    In that time, I looked back at myself in college and wondered where that carefree girl who was so sure of herself had gone. Not only did I feel like I had lost everything I held dear, but somewhere along the way, I’d lost myself.

    I pretended everything was okay, not only to others but also to myself.

    I distinctly remember the day I woke up to my own reality. I was attending a four-day yoga workshop with my teacher, David Sye. As I moved my body to the music, I felt alive!

    It was the best I had felt in years. Maybe even the best I had felt my entire life.

    I realized then and there that I was unhappy. Something was keeping me from feeling that energy in the rest of my life.

    At first, I was terrified that if I admitted I was unhappy, my life would fall apart. Instead, I embarked on a journey into the body-mind-emotional connection that led to true and lasting healing.

    This journey led me to discover the root pain that was really behind my unhappiness at this time: I had an addiction to perfectionism and a fear of failure that stemmed from a deep feeling of not being good enough.

    As I delved deeper, I found out that this fear stemmed from my early childhood relationship with my parents and the Midwest Christian community in which I grew up.

    Although there were many wonderful things about this community, there was also a lot of pressure to do what you “should”—to not make mistakes and lead the perfect life.

    This attitude found its way into my family. We rarely talked about negative things in our own lives or between us. Instead, we addressed difficult emotions through sarcasm rather than an honest acknowledgement of the needs behind those emotions.

    Since certain emotions were labeled as negative and not addressed, I grew up feeling that I was only good enough if I didn’t feel negative emotions such as anger, guilt, and shame. Therefore, I developed a need to be perfect and a constant fear of failure.

    I was able to cover this up most of my life. Whatever I was good at, I focused on and excelled at. My success gave me confidence. My confidence, however, did not come from being true to myself but came from doing what I thought would look good to others and make me feel special.

    My shaky confidence all fell apart when I was out of my comfort zone in a new country and didn’t have access to all the things I had attached to my identity. To make matters worse, these childhood issues came up in my relationship with my husband and resulted in poor communication and anger. Moreover, I felt great guilt and shame for not having the perfect marriage.

    When I finally admitted to being unhappy, this facade of perfectionism lifted, and I could open up to seeing these wounds and discover the five practices that would heal them.

    I was able to forgive my parents, knowing that they did the best they could and could only teach me what they knew themselves when it came to dealing with emotions—those labeled both negative and positive.

    I was finally able to be vulnerable with others and try new things because I was free of the fear of failing.

    Two years later, my life had turned around. I had healed many of these wounds and felt freer than I ever felt before.

    I thought I had lost myself and who I used to be. I thought I was trying to find the person I was before. I didn’t know that in the end, I wouldn’t find myself. Instead, I would free myself from all that was holding me back.

    The five key practices that helped me do this and get my spark for life back were.

    1. Yoga

    Although I had practiced hatha and vinyasa yoga for several years, I mostly focused on the physical practice of asana. At this point, I added kundalini yoga into my practice a couple of times a week, and this helped me learn the connection between the body and emotions.

    I discovered that our emotions are simply physical reactions in the body. Without movement, these emotions can get stuck in the body and actually block our innate energy. In fact, emotions from our whole life can get stored in our body’s memory, meaning experiences we had as children can affect our daily lives now.

    Eventually, I learned how different poses can not only help me release emotions I am feeling now but how they can be a map to healing any of my struggles in life and freeing up my energy to live my fullest life.

    2. Guided meditation

    When I first started meditating, it was difficult to get myself to sit down even for five minutes. I was always afraid of how I would deal with nothingness.

    I found that having a guided meditation recording made me feel safe in knowing that someone would be there to help me through. I practiced mindfulness meditation, chakra meditations, and yoga nidra.

    Mindfulness meditation was the door into meditation for me. It helped me finally be able to sit and become more aware of what was going on in the present moment.

    Chakra meditations and yoga nidra allowed me to connect deep inside myself. They took me on a journey through the past experiences that were blocking my happiness and connected me to my true inner joy that was there no matter what was going on in life.

    3. Journaling

    Years before, I read The Artist’s Way and discovered the practice of morning pages. In the book, Julia Cameron recommends writing three pages of stream of consciousness writing every morning in order to release thoughts from the mind that are blocking creativity.

    I picked up this practice again and wrote three pages each day in my journal. Only this time, I wrote about my experiences in yoga and meditation. I wrote about the emotions that came out after I did certain yoga practices. I wrote about when I had experienced these emotions before. I wrote about the insights I had during my meditations.

    Journaling about my discoveries helped me to really process my thoughts and emotions and finally let go of past experiences and heal.

    4. Connecting with others

    A big part of the reason that I was unhappy was that I wasn’t open to sharing my struggles. I was afraid to show my vulnerabilities, and, therefore, I felt like nobody knew the real me. I felt alone and isolated.

    I took a baby step when I shared with my friend that something was wrong in life and I needed to turn it around. Then, I finally overcame my fear and shame and opened up to a couple other friends about the problems in my marriage.

    These two steps opened up a floodgate of people coming into my life that I could share with openly and honestly. Fortunately, these people were all proponents of taking care of your mental health, and I finally got counseling, both personally and as a couple.

    Having the support of others gave me strength to make big changes in my life. It also meant that I stopped pretending everything was okay and finally let people see the real me. They saw all my struggles but also all my beauty.

    5. Bringing creativity and pleasure back into my life

    I was always a musical person. During my childhood I’d played piano and sung in the school choir. Finding myself in a new country, suddenly I no longer had easy access to my usual outlets for creativity.

    When I realized how unhappy I was, I decided I needed to prioritize creativity and pleasure in order to feel that spark for life I once had felt. So I reached out once again to those friends I had newly opened up to and told them I had always wanted to learn to paint but was afraid that I wasn’t good enough.

    We then came up with the idea to have art nights together. There was only one rule: it didn’t matter how good we were, we would embrace our inner child and just play with colors and materials.

    These art nights reconnected me with the joy I had been missing and opened the doors for me to allow pleasure back into all areas of my life.

    —

    Through my daily yoga and meditation practice, I discovered more about who I truly was and what was essential for my happiness. I found myself surrounded with deep friendships, people with whom I could explore creativity and share all of my struggles and triumphs. I fulfilled one of my deepest dreams of becoming a yoga teacher.

    Most importantly, I learned that a true spark for life comes from a place of deep acceptance of oneself and the ability to find contentment and joy with life as it is now.

    These five practices became essential for me to continue to come back to my true self and deepen my self-acceptance. They are practices I come back to each day. Especially when stress and difficulties start to build, I know these practices will help me regain my spark for life—that feeling of deep joy and gratitude for all that life has to offer.

  • There’s More to Life Than Work: Goodbye Hamster Wheel, Hello Balance

    There’s More to Life Than Work: Goodbye Hamster Wheel, Hello Balance

    “Most of us try to do too much because we are secretly afraid we will not be able to do anything at all.” ~Rick Aster

    I’m standing in my art studio. My palette is loaded with paint. My canvas has been prepped and ready. There is a paintbrush in my hand, but I can’t move. I don’t know what color to pick or what shape to make. I start questioning my color selection, the size of my canvas… and everything else under the sun.

    A few months ago, I wrote myself a reminder to allow my art to flow through me. Making art is a refuge for my mind—a mind that struggles with anxiety, depression, and “Hamster Wheel Syndrome.” You’re not familiar with that malady? Let me explain it to you with an example of what my brain sounds like when hamster wheel syndrome kicks in:

    “Do people really like pinks and greens together? Is it too feminine? Should I make my shapes big and bold to contrast against the girlie palette? Maybe I should do a test on a smaller canvas first? Maybe I should just pick a different pallet. It’s cold in here. I’ll get a hoodie. I think I need more coffee… Man, this art table is messy. I’ll organize it first… I only have three hours until my dentist appointment… The grocery is near by the dentist. I’ll plan on going there too…” And on and on it goes.

    According to UrbanDictionary.com, hamster wheel syndrome is “when someone just keeps running in circles (and making the same mistakes) in their life instead of progressing.”

    I believe that this only really scratches the surface about what it truly means to feel my wheels spinning, with no break in sight, for days at a time.

    When I’m in my studio, brush in hand and ready to go but I can’t move forward due to my brain throwing ten different options at me every three seconds, I feel paralyzed.

    I am a highly efficient person with a creative mind. I’m an abstract painter, essay writer, and fastidious business owner. I can get more done in two hours than many get done in a day. And I’m not saying this to brag. It is a blessing and a curse.

    If you’re like me, you know how exhausting this type of hamster wheel efficiency can be. IT NEVER STOPS. If I’m not checking things off my to do list, I’m compiling them into spreadsheets, using new methods of organization that I thought of while I was trying to sleep at 3am.

    I am addicted to efficiency. It makes me feel productive and useful. But as there can be too many cooks in the kitchen, there can also be too many ideas and tasks to process at once.

    When the multitude of ideas leads to overwhelm, paralysis is the result, and for a person like me, when I’m stagnant, I get even more anxious. If I stay in that state for too long, depression kicks in. Then I’m really in trouble.

    I begin to feel guilty that I’m not getting enough done; like rest is a failure. Sometimes it’s hard for me to sit down at the end of the day, so the pace continues until bedtime, even though I know where it will lead.

    Now I’m no psych major, but I believe hamster wheel syndrome is a compulsive disorder that at first makes me feel efficient, but then yields the same negative result every time—an inability to move.

    I’m so addicted to coming up with things that will keep me busy in order to have a feeling of accomplishment and, more importantly, for others to see me as accomplished. I put a lot of pressure on myself!

    I am a wonder of time management and productivity. I get up early in order to exercise before making breakfast and getting everyone off to work and school. Then I’m in my office at 8:00am, checking off tasks from my to-do list, and yes, I’m the type that if I’ve done something not on the list, I’ll add it just so I can cross it off.

    Then, when I’m nauseated because I forgot to eat, I shove food down my throat and move to the art studio where I now have to flip into thoughtful and creative mode, and there I stay until 5:00pm.

    The problem is that when I’m not moving at that horrendously cray cray pace, I’m comatose, lying on the sofa, binge watching Law & Order and denying the fact that I will, indeed, have to get up and be productive again. And if I get to this point I’m happy, because it means that hamster wheel syndrome hasn’t reduced me into a tornado of indecision, just that it has made me too tired to function.

    I have two speeds: To-Do List Annihilator and DEAD.

    After just coming out of about a four-month depressive period due to over working myself, I realize that this pace isn’t healthy or sustainable. So, what do I do? Well, I’m way too fired up about my art and my business to slow down. I think the solution is to be rigid about both my work time and my relax time.

    I work with a business coach and recently, she has put us into three-people “accountability groups.” These groups are meant to help us stay on task. I realize that a common problem for artists is that they just can’t get themselves out of the art studio to give their art business attention. This is not my problem.

    At first, the others in my accountability group were proposing only evenings and weekends for our weekly meetings. Since diving into my own business, I’ve heard many people say that I’ll now be working twenty-four hours a day and through the weekends. That entrepreneurs have to work longer hours to yield any sort of progress. That we are supposed to eat and breathe our work all the time.

    I have one thing to say about that: SCREW THAT.

    I didn’t start my own business to hamster wheel myself into a constant, walking panic attack.

    I am passionate about my art and I want it out there, but I also love my family. I love to surf and hike. I love to watch movies and lollygag at coffee shops. What I don’t like is the exhaustion that hamster wheeling causes and the expectation that in order to be successful, I don’t have a choice in the matter. I’ll say it again: SCREW THAT.

    So, in an effort to calm the rodent, here are five ways to slow the hamster wheel down:

    1. Exercise, yoga, get outside and play

    This really is on every single list I write. It is so important for me that when I don’t get up to do something active four or five days a week, I can feel myself getting wound up internally and eventually depressed. Just moving my body releases the bound-up thoughts and allows more grace to seep into my day-to-day life.

    It’s easy to get caught up in our heads when we spend all our time staring at work or screens. Getting outside and being active transfers all that energy from our brains to our bodies so we can feel energized and balanced.

    2. Meditation

    I would think that due to my hamster wheel, seated meditation would be hard for me, but it’s not. I relish in the fifteen minutes when I sit, breathe, and be still. I’m pretty good about being consistent with it, but I’m also human, so I try not to be hard on myself when time goes by and I haven’t been active in this practice. I’ll start to notice that wound up feeling after a few weeks and start a daily meditation practice again.

    The beautiful thing about meditation is that we can do it many different ways. If not seated meditation, try walking meditation or deep breathing exercises, even painting or gardening.  Any mindfulness practice can help pull us from big picture overwhelm to a present state of calm and relaxation.

    3. Lists, lists, and more lists

    It helps me go into my day with less anxiety by simply knowing what I would like to accomplish in the next eight hours.

    I have a huge master to-do list that I update on Mondays. Each morning when I get up, I make a daily list from that list.

    Now, before you roll your eyes at me, hear me out: My daily to-do list is only time-sensitive items that need to be accomplished that day and pieces of larger projects that I’ll give some attention to knowing that it won’t be completed as a whole. The result is a slow and steady progress.

    It’s so easy for us to get overwhelmed by the litany of to do’s associated with the big picture.  By breaking it down into smaller pieces, we are able to look at projects in more manageable baby steps.

    4. Stick to a realistic work week.

    My workday is from 8:00am to 5:00pm. I put everything down at 5:00pm, with few exceptions. My weekends are my own. I shut down the computer on Friday evening and don’t turn it back on until Monday morning.

    I simply refuse to allow my business to take over my whole life. My art is my work and I’m lucky I feel so passionate about it. When I stop on the weekends, it allows excitement to build for Monday morning. Plus, playtime is an important recharge!

    Being passionate about our work is a gift, but when that passion takes over everything else, our self-care, family, and friends tend to get neglected. Playtime is important to recharge and we should all prioritize it as much as we prioritize our work.

    5. Judge progress in years, not weeks.

    For a while, I was thinking about growth in terms of what I’ve accomplished in the past month or two, and I felt a need to cram as much as possible into my days because it didn’t seem like much. As a result, I was living in a constant state of fear, overwhelm and a feeling of failure.  It wasn’t until I compared my current situation to where I was at this time last year, that I realized how far I’ve come.

    We don’t need to work ourselves to the bone to see progress. Slow and steady wins the race, and it’s much easier to see accomplishments built over long periods of time than in the seeds planted over just the past couple of weeks.

    —

    I think that the above can be applied to anyone, in any type of work.

    In the end, we all want the same things: success in our work life and a healthy, happy home life. I have absolutely no doubt that stay-at-home moms, lawyers, restaurant workers—really anyone—can fall prey to hamster wheel syndrome. We must take care of ourselves, mind, body, and soul. Otherwise, we fall out of balance and fall prey to anxiety, depression, and a host of physical ailments.

    I yearn for the day that I don’t have to give so much attention to being a balanced person. However, I also want a career, to spend time with my loved ones, to go surfing and skiing, to cook my own meals, and to be able to tend to all the errands that come with life. That’s a lot to want, and so I have to put equal attention to the activities that will feed my energy.

    I have to remember that the hamster is not in charge! The wheel doesn’t have to spin twenty-four hours a day. In fact, it isn’t reasonable to think that it can. The hinges that support that wheel will burn out quickly if they don’t get a break and some oil.

    While I like to burn bright, I must remember that fires need to be fed. And with that, I’ve just reminded myself that I’m hungry, and so I stop. To be nourished so I can nourish.

  • Introducing Buddha Groove: Meditation, Yoga, and Inspirational Gifts

    Introducing Buddha Groove: Meditation, Yoga, and Inspirational Gifts

    Hi friends! I hope you’re all enjoying the holiday season so far. Since I know a lot of us spend the beginning of this month looking for the perfect holiday gifts for the people we love, I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to Tiny Buddha partner Buddha Groove.

    A family-owned business, Buddha Groove was one of Tiny Buddha’s first sponsors many years back.

    Buddha Groove partners with artists all over the world to offer products that feed the spirit, inspire the mind, and revive the body. Many of their designs originate from artisan traditions in places such as South America, India, Indonesia, Tibet, Nepal, Thailand, and several other world regions. Buddha Groove also partners with many independent artists across the U.S.

    Their wide assortment of spiritual and wellness items and meditation gifts include…

    Buddha statues, like this:

    Translucent Blue Buddha Statue

    Cold Cast Bronze Medicine Buddha Statue

    Meditation malas, like these:

    Chakra Wrist Mala

    Knotted Amethyst Meditation Mala

    Singing bowls, like these:

    Blue/Gold Tibetan Singing Bowl

    Blue/Gold Tibetan Singing Bowl

    Spiritual jewelry, like these pieces:

    Breathe Pendant

    Abstract Chakra Figure Pendant

    Books and coloring books, like these:

    Inspirational Quotes Coloring Book

    Mindfulness Guidebook for Kids/Parents

    Yoga gifts, like these:

    Namaste Blessings Card Set

    Yoga Frog Figurines

    Although I consider myself a minimalist, I know that creating a tranquil environment can go a long way in fostering a sense of inner peace. And I also know that it’s much easier to be mindful and consistent with my meditation practice when I have lovingly chosen tools to support me.

    The same is true of the people we love. What better gift to give than a gift that aids in creating calm and comfort?

    Buddha Groove offer free shipping within the continental USA and ships internationally through a third party company. They also offer no-hassle returns within 30 days on all items except media, books, cards, and products containing plants.

    You can browse their full collection here and read a long list of reviews from happy customers here.

    I hope you’ll enjoy browsing through their site, and also hope you find something that speaks to you for the spiritually inclined individuals on your holiday gift list!

    **This is a sponsored post containing affiliate links. That means that a small percentage of each sale supports Tiny Buddha and helps keep the site going.

  • How to Change Your Life Without Doing Anything Big or Scary

    How to Change Your Life Without Doing Anything Big or Scary

    Victory

    “Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” ~Jim Rohn

    We’re human.

    Every single one of us participates in behavior that we know has a negative or adverse effect on our well-being.

    We also know that at some point we are going to have to stop these negative behaviors, because ultimately, they create bigger problems for us. However, most of us choose to wait until something breaks before we decide to take any action toward fixing a problem.

    I waited to change my diet.

    I waited until things got really bad and I was forced to react drastically in order to change my outcome.

    Difficult?

    Ummm, that would be an understatement. Let’s just say the list of what I had to give up was so extensive, it was easier to tell people what I could eat rather than what I could no longer eat.

    It was an extremely difficult transition, and I’m not going that route ever again. No ma’am.

    Everything you do to improve any area of your life, no matter how small, matters.

    Why?

    Because change is a process, and it’s an undeniable fact that a lot of tiny successes add up to bigger ones. If you make small steps consistently over time, it is impossible for your momentum to not shift in your favor.

    Consistency is key.

    If you add a marble to a glass every day, just one marble, eventually it’s going to fill up, right?

    It’s exactly the same with change, but somehow, somewhere, we got it in our mind that change was an all-or-nothing proposal.

    This mindset has left many of us completely paralyzed and incapable of instituting new behavior, because we only see the end result. Then fear paralyzes us because the process involved in getting to our end goal just feels like too much work.

    I tell people all the time to “chunk it out.” I don’t care what it is, just chunk the task out into smaller, doable, reasonable bites, and eventually you will feel the shift in momentum and make the final push toward achieving any goal.

    As I age, I know if I want to have a good quality of life, there are more changes in my future. There is no getting around it.

    Instead of waiting for things to break (as I have previously done), I’m taking an easier route. I’m going to be proactive rather than reactive. I’m taking my own advice and chunking it all out now, before another problem presents itself. I got the wake-up call.

    Here’s what I know for sure.

    I want to be strong going into the second half on my life.

    I do not want to wither away and die o-l-d. In order to reach that goal, I need to take consistent action toward changing my overall heath and integrate some new behaviors into my weekly routine.

    In the last four months I have started activity in three areas that I am certain will help me achieve my long-term goal of overall better health. Hopefully, my actions will inspire you to make small changes in whatever area of your life you’d like to improve.

    Meditation

    Our culture has us running around with our hair on fire trying to be overachievers.

    I have known for a long time that meditation would be a gateway to a lot of good things in my life, but my biggest draw for meditation was stress-reduction. Somehow I convinced myself I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have an extra forty-five minutes a day to sit and learn to quiet my mind.

    I have no idea why I thought it would take that much time, but it doesn’t much matter. I used this excuse to talk myself right out of participating because it would require time I didn’t have. If I were completely honest, I’d admit I just didn’t want to do the work.

    As my stress level grew, so did my awareness that I needed to take action.

    I took my own advice and chunked it out. I searched “guided five-minute meditation” videos on YouTube. Five minutes a day, twice a week. That’s where I started.

    Then I bumped it up to seven minutes…then ten…then fifteen.

    There are thousands of guided meditations on YouTube. You’ll never run out of options. I found a variety of lengths that suit me and I integrate them as I can.

    Now I’m going to hour-long meditations outside my home once or twice a month, and I love them.

    It took me months to get up to where I’m at now, and I’m still not doing it daily, but I am patting myself on the back for what I am doing instead of beating myself up for still not taking action.

    The whole point is to create the habit in a way that is doable, not overwhelming, and I’m very hopeful.

    Cardio Exercise

    The bane of my existence has always been routine exercise. I have probably joined the gym eight times in my life, and actually showed up and worked out maybe twenty times in total. The thought of getting on a machine to exercise makes me want to throw up, no joke.

    Run? Not unless someone is chasing me.

    Walk? Routinely, not so much. Every now and then yes, but I have to have a destination. My brain can’t embrace walking for walking sake. I keep trying, but have great difficulty in maintaining it as a routine practice.

    So what’s a gal to do?

    I decided to try cycling.

    I bought an inexpensive beach cruiser to test the water, installed big baskets on the rear, and now I do a vast majority of weekly errands on my bike. Cardio exercise, sunshine, and vitamin D, along with an opportunity to easily stop and chat with people during my ride, make this a huge win.

    I love the idea of having a task or a destination. It totally changes my perception of the activity in my head. I’m no longer exercising, I’m getting stuff done.

    I live two miles from the heart of a beautiful coastal city of about 60,000 people. We’re not small, but we’re not large either. The downtown area is speckled with lots of mom-and-pop operations, as well as places I regularly visit like my bank, the post office, the library, coffee shops, museums, and my local food co-op.

    As I ride my bike to and from any errands or meetings here’s what I’ve discovered…

    Endorphins.

    Serotonin.

    I had completely forgotten all about them. They make me feel really good. My brain has made that new association and is inspired.

    Winning!

    Yoga

    The healthiest older folks I know practice yoga. The benefits for the mind and body are life-changing. I have known for a long time that I would benefit greatly from yoga, but in my mind this fell into the “gym” mentality I had about exercise, and I was hesitant to grab this bull by the horns and take action.

    What’s a gal to do?

    Chunk it out.

    I didn’t sign up for a six-month package at a yoga studio. Nope. Once again, I turned to YouTube and decided what kind of time commitment I was up for (fifteen minutes), and got cracking.

    I started with targeted shoulder/back/relaxation stretching for newbies. I did this once a week for several weeks. Once a week.

    Then I expanded a little bit to a twenty-three-minute sitting yoga video for the same targeted area. I did this once a week for several more weeks.

    The next step was attending free classes that were held at the community center at my local food co-op. I found one that I liked and went a few times. Then found another. Now I go twice a week every week and will continue to so.

    –

    As expected, these changes have had an incredibly positive impact on my day-to-day life.

    Mostly, I’m proud of myself for finally taking action, and I love the sense of satisfaction I have from doing so.

    Self-empowerment through change is inspiring!

    When we prove to ourselves that we can successfully institute a new behavior, it encourages us to move toward more.

    In my opinion, zero to hero is not a recipe for success.

    Chunk it out.

    Make it doable.

    Proactive behavior has had a snowball effect in my life. The more positive changes I see and feel, the more I want to experience.

    Still winning!

    Winner pose image via Shutterstock

  • A Relaxing Yoga Practice for People with High Stress and Low Energy

    A Relaxing Yoga Practice for People with High Stress and Low Energy

    Childs Pose

    “We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.” ~Goethe

    Nine years ago after I had my twins, I was eager to get back into a routine of a weekly yoga class and daily home practice. However, I didn’t account for the soul-sapping fatigue I felt as a new sleep-deprived mum!

    I simply did not have the energy or ability to leave the house for a satisfying active class. And truly, I did not want to venture far from my precious babes.

    That’s when I discovered a soothing style of yoga that met me exactly where I was. I could do it at home, using equipment that I already had, and it made me feel refreshed and pampered.

    I fell in love with restorative yoga—a deliciously yummy practice where I could gently move my tired body, but with the support of comfortable props to help me feel completely supported, beautifully nurtured, and best of all, deeply rested.

    As soon as my babes slept, I would clear the floor, gather some props, and sink into a few slow, rejuvenating poses.

    As an avid yoga practitioner and instructor, I had a variety of specialty yoga props at hand—cork blocks, bolsters, and blankets. However, not wanting to miss my chance for some downtime, I would often improvise with whatever lay around, grabbing sofa cushions and towels to use as a bolster, a stack of small books wrapped in a pillowcase for a block, and a clean sock to place over my eyes.

    Even if I could spend just five minutes in a pose every other day this time became invaluable. It was time just for me. With every melting moment I could feel some of the resentment from having so little time to myself slip away. I would emerge rested and (mostly!) ready to begin again, feeling great at having moved my body.

    Restorative yoga is the super chilled-out member of the yoga family. This slow, passive practice combines the elements of time, warmth, comfort, support, and soft light to create a sequence accessible to most bodies and trigger the body’s natural healing responses.

    Just as an active yoga practice, a good restorative sequence aims to mobilize the spine, moving it backward, forward, laterally, and in a twisting motion.

    What make restorative yoga poses different to its more vigorous cousins are the longer holds (five to thirty minutes) and the use of props to cradle and hold the body in position.

    There’s no physical effort required; instead, blankets, pillows, bolsters, and blocks serve as a nurturing landing pad into which tired, achy bodies can dissolve.

    The longer timings and supports encourage tight muscles to let go and mental tensions to ease. Warmth is also important; as the body relaxes it cools down, so it’s a good idea to cover up with a blanket in the poses. Soft lighting also encourages relaxation. Draping an eye-pillow or washcloth over the eyes can further soften tensions around the eyes and reduce visual stimulation.

    When we’re relaxed, the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system switches on and begins the job of healing and restoring the body. In this rest-and-digest mode, the heart and respiration rates slow, busy thoughts subside, and a wonderful pause descends over body and mind.

    This delivers a much needed mini-break from the usual busy-ness of life, where the sympathetic or fight-and-flight mode of the nervous system can be habitually stuck in overdrive. Too much time here can cause stress, which could lead to negative states such as anxiety, sleeplessness, or adrenal fatigue.

    Ready to sample a restorative a pose or two?

    Start by gathering your props. Here’s what you’ll need, plus some “DIY” tips to make your own!

    Mat – A yoga mat is helpful, as it provides a non-slip surface, but it’s not essential. Substitute with a towel, blanket, or a carpeted floor space.

    Block – Store-bought yoga blocks can be made from solid cork, bamboo, wood, or foam and measure 9″ long x 6″ wide x 4″ thick. Make your own by making a stack of books to approximate this size, then secure with rubber bands or wrap in a pillowcase.

    Bolster – Bolsters are long, oval, or round firm pillows measuring about 26″ long, 7″ wide and 3″ high. DIY by folding a firm blanket or two into this shape, or substitute sofa cushions.

    Blankets and towels – use what you have around the house.

    Roll – roll up a bath towel, blanket, or space yoga mat until it’s around 31″ long and 6″ in diameter.

    Eye-pillow – these block the light and provide a subtle, soothing weight over the eyes to promote relaxation and sense withdrawal. A folded washcloth works well.

    Constructive Rest Pose

    A great place to start, this basic pose rests the spine, head, and limbs symmetrically. The neutral position invites us to check in with breath, body, and mind before moving on to more poses.

    What to do: Lie down on your back, with the head and neck supported by a folded towel or blanket. Bend the legs, space the feet hip-width apart, and ground the feet into the mat. Rest the arms beside you, an even distance from the mid-line, palms facing up. Let the head be heavy; relax the eyes, face, and neck.

    Descend the shoulders and allow your weight to drop into the floor. Notice how your body feels; notice the activity of the mind, notice the emotions, notice the breath. Stay five minutes or more. To come up, hug the knees to chest, roll to the side and press yourself up to a seat.

    Upper Back Booster

    This refreshing backbend helps to counter rounded shoulders and a slumped chest. It lifts the heart and encourages full, easy breathing. The entire front body receives a nice stretch.

    What to do: Place a roll across your mat. Take constructive rest pose again, this time with the roll underneath the nipple-line. Do any wriggling and adjusting till you feel comfortable, with a sense of lift at the chest. Straighten the legs, if desired.

    Stay five minutes or more, then remove the roll and revisit constructive rest pose again for a few moments. Hopefully, you feel like you have a brand-new back! Exit the pose as for Constructive Rest Pose.

    Legs Up the Wall

    Try this pose for a full body/mind refresh. The reversed blood-flow from toes to torso particularly benefits tired legs and the back is positioned nicely for rest and length.

    What to do: Clear some space and sit side-on to a wall. Take the outer shoulder to the floor, then gently roll onto your back and swing your extended legs up the wall.

    Rest your head on a pillow/folded blanket for extra comfort, and cover your eyes if you like. Stay for five minutes or longer. When ready to come out, bend the knees to chest, roll to the side and press up to a seated position. Observe how you feel.

    Child’s Pose

    This is a beautifully grounding, nurturing pose perfect to counter busy-ness and over-stimulation. It also helps to soothe a cranky lower back.

    What to do: Rest one end of your bolster on your block. Kneel at the other end with the bolster between the knees. Bend from the hips, fold forward slowly, and lay your whole front body along the length of the bolster. Turn your head to rest on one cheek.

    Place your hands and forearms either side of the bolster. After a few minutes, rest on the other cheek and stay in the pose for an even amount of time.

    When you are ready to come up, ground your hands either side of your bolster and slowly lift up. Come to a seat and see how you feel.

    Savasana – Corpse Pose

    This is a simple way to complete your practice and allows the mind and body to soak up all the goodness from your sequence. You can also take this pose anytime as a stand-alone pick-me-up.

    What to do: Rest your entire back-body along the mat. Insert a bolster or roll under the knees to take any pressure from the lower back, and a position a support under the head and neck.

    Pop an eye-pillow or cloth over the eyes, and cover up with a blanket to keep warm. Once warm and comfortable, make a commitment to be still. Give yourself permission to let go of physical tensions and mental chatter. Simply rest and enjoy the gift of relaxation. Stay in Savasana for ten minutes or more.

    When you are well-rested and calm your whole family will feel it too!

    Child’s pose image via Shutterstock

  • 10 Simple Ways to Ease Your Anxiety Today

    10 Simple Ways to Ease Your Anxiety Today

    Peaceful Woman

    “Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    As an almost recovered anxiety sufferer I know what it’s like to feel stressed, out of sorts, desperate, and unlike yourself. I know what panic attacks feel like; I’ve had many. I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy.

    Anxiety can be debilitating and affect every area of your day-to-day life.

    I remember about four years ago, when I was feeling so overwhelmed and anxious I could barely leave my house. I had three young children at the time. It was all I could do to get through each day.

    Just making meals for my little family felt like more than I could handle.

    I remember at lunchtime I was putting together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for probably the seventh day in a row and I stood there thinking, what on earth is wrong with me? This is not the Hannah that I know! I’m not this person. How did I get here!?

    I slinked down to the floor and broke into tears, as I was filled with guilt about how I wasn’t being the wife and mother I should be. The light was streaming in the window, shining onto our tile floor, filled with crumbs and ants. I couldn’t remember the last time I had swept.

    As the days, months, and years passed by I have learned many lessons, and I continue to learn lessons on a daily basis. I’m human. I still have anxious days but I now realize that they will pass.  

    I accept them.

    They don’t quite sting as bad as they used to.

    You have to keep going. You have to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and know that it won’t be like this forever. Remember that about one in five people feel the same way you do.

    Thankfully, I have gone through this, because it has pushed me to learn about so many facets of health that I never would have been interested in otherwise. I’m stronger in the long run. You will be too.

    I’ve learned that we need to make self-care a priority. Sometimes it can feel really uncomfortable to take time for us. To say no to others and put ourselves first, but we must.

    If we are to be able to give to others, we need to have something to give, whether that is time, love, or patience.

    Our society is so fast paced, hurried, and often stressful. We need to make every effort possible to slow down, take time to relax, and rejuvenate. We don’t naturally build these moments into our day enough, and if you don’t currently, now is the time to start.

    I would love to share ten simple ways you can ease your anxiety today. These are a few of the strategies that I personally practice daily.  

    1. Cut sugar from your diet.

    Sugar can wreak havoc on your health. It adds to the overall burden of stress to your body. Anyone who struggles with anxiety doesn’t need to be adding any extra stress. Sugar is also void of nutrients; during stress, your body needs whole, unprocessed food full of vitamins and minerals.

    2. Use lavender oil.

    Lavender oil has been used for centuries and it’s the most versatile essential oil. With a pleasing aroma and calming properties, it has a relaxing scent that calms the mind and body.

    Use lavender safely on your skin, rub on wrists, behind ears, a dot on your neck, and enjoy its scent. You can use a few drops in the bathtub or in the shower. At night I love to add a few drops to an Epsom salt footbath.

    3. Get to bed by 10:30.

    When you have anxiety, your stress levels are high and your nerves are frazzled. Lack of sleep just adds to the problem. Going to bed by 10:30 will give your body ample time to rest and repair itself and help calm your nervous system.

    By getting enough sleep you reduce cortisol levels and the overall burden placed on your body. Sometimes sleep alone can be the biggest help when it comes to healing anxiety.

    4. Practice yoga.

    As I’ve practiced yoga I’ve noticed a reduction in anxiety symptoms. Now I can’t live without it!

    Through yoga, you learn how to breathe deeply and effectively, which is great for stress reduction. You move your body gently and get some exercise without overexerting your body and stressing it out more.

    Yoga has also been the perfect beginning step to learn how to meditate. Through yoga, you learn to be still, move more slowly and intentionally throughout your day, and you learn to recognize where tension is in your body so you can work to relax those parts.

    5. Go for a walk/jog.

    Getting outside and taking a walk can work wonders for our moods by boosting serotonin, the good mood neurotransmitter. It also allows you to soak up some vitamin D, clear your brain, and get a fresh new perspective on life.

    If your body is up to it, you can go for a quick jog or run. Those who have dealt with long-term anxiety may notice that their body isn’t quite up to jogging or running yet.

    If you feel more depleted, frazzled, and stressed after you jog, especially if that feeling lasts for a couple days, be kind to yourself and don’t push yourself to that point yet. Take a step back and just allow yourself to move gently. Yoga, Pilates, and walking are all great alternatives.

    6. Journal.

    Writing in a journal can be very therapeutic. Just like venting to a good friend or a therapist, you can vent right onto the pages of your journal. But don’t forget to write down the positive too.

    Jot down a few things each day that you’re grateful for. Write about good things that happen. Write down things you want to see in your life that may not be there yet, but write them as if they’ve happened. Don’t worry that it isn’t technically true; it just isn’t true yet, but it can be!

    7. Keep track of your thoughts.

    We don’t always realize how much our thoughts affect the way we feel and how often we even think these negative damaging thoughts. For one day write down every negative thought you have, then flip them and write down the positive version.

    If you think, “I’m so tired, I never get enough sleep,” switch the thought and think, “I may be tired, but I won’t always feel this way, and I can get a good night’s sleep tonight.” This exercise can be very enlightening.

    8. Eat fermented foods.

    Research shows that the microbes in our guts communicate with our brains, and vice versa. Most of our digestive systems have been depleted of beneficial bacteria through repeated use of antibiotics, a poor diet of processed foods, environmental toxins, and stress.

    By eating fermented foods that are high in probiotic bacteria like kefir, fermented veggies, and kombucha, we are adding good bacteria back into our guts and improving our physical and mental health in the process. A recent article published talks about how sauerkraut can even help people with social anxiety. Very cool!

    9. Eat protein at every meal.

    People who struggle with anxiety can benefit from the blood sugar stabilizing effects of protein at each meal. According to some doctors we should be getting fifty to seventy-five grams of protein a day.

    Protein helps fill you up so you don’t have crazy blood sugar spikes throughout the day that can trigger anxiety and panic attacks. Start your day with protein (kefir, cottage cheese, eggs, full fat plain Greek yogurt topped with nuts and fruit) and continue the habit at each meal and snack.

    10. Read positive books.

    When you feel like you just can’t muster a positive attitude on your own, lean on someone else’s positive vibes. Books like, You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay, and Mind Over Medicine by Lissa Rankin are among my favorites.

    Journal your favorite phrases from these books so you can look back at them daily. Never underestimate the power of a positive book.

    I hope these simple suggestions can help you in your recovery process from anxiety. Try them all and see which ones work best for you, and implement them daily.

    Peaceful woman image via Shutterstock

  • 5 Vital Lessons for People Who Feel Like They’re Not Good Enough

    5 Vital Lessons for People Who Feel Like They’re Not Good Enough

    Sad Woman Behind Bars

    “What if I fall? Oh, my darling, what if you fly?” ~Erin Hanson

    Like most people, my life has had its share of ups and downs.

    My household growing up could be best described as a roller coaster. There were times of excitement and happiness, then there was the plummeting into darkness, shame, and self-loathing.

    Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I felt that I was a mistake, unloved, and unwanted by my father. His mood swings and verbal abuse would come raging like a storm without any warning, and without any end in sight.

    He often told me that I wasn’t good enough and that I was the reason for all of his problems.

    I was often frightened to go home and face him. When my mother would have to go out of town, I would insist on staying with a friend because I didn’t feel safe being alone with him.

    I was extraordinarily lucky to have such a warm and loving mother that provided me the love and support I needed to keep going. Despite all of her good intentions and love, though, I still found myself falling into a deep hole of depression and severe anxiety.

    Some of the happier times that I remember from my childhood were the years that I was in gymnastics. It made me feel alive and free to express myself.

    However, that too slowly led to destruction, as soon I began competing. My obsessive need to please others caused me such significant levels of anxiety that I decided to quit. I was only twelve, and my dreams of becoming an elite gymnast were over. 

    Though it was a good decision to move on from that life, I was still left with this feeling of shame because I couldn’t mentally handle the pressure. I felt that I had let everyone down, including myself.

    Also, without this release, my anxiety levels continued to increase, leaving me feeling on edge and awkward in my social interactions.

    As I entered adolescence, I found it harder and harder to put myself out there, in fear that others would judge me. I worried that they would think I wasn’t good enough, cool enough, skinny enough, smart enough, or pretty enough.

    I eventually created this hard exterior to prevent people from getting in and knowing the real me.

    I believed for a long time that this wall was there to protect me; however, all it did was prevent me from building relationships with others, or even a relationship with myself.

    For many years I self-medicated in various ways to deal with the pain and to allow myself to let my guard down just enough to find a solid, small groups of friends.

    It wasn’t long before I became so depressed and anxious that my family doctor put me on medications to “fix me.” They numbed me so much, though, that I medicated myself on top of that to feel alive, which of course was a recipe for disaster.

    After years of taking these medications, I couldn’t function without them. I’m became so desperate to feel alive that I took myself off of them cold turkey. This was not a pleasant experience. I went through a period where I secluded myself away from my friends and family and fell back into old habits.

    I eventually managed to pull myself out of that hole after some intense therapy and self-reflection; however, I still struggled daily with my depression and anxiety.

    Fast forward several years, after I graduated from my Masters program, and I found myself happily married, spending time with my close knit friends again, and working daily on myself.

    I had finally cut out everything negative in my life except for chain-smoking cigarettes, and then I became pregnant with our first child.

    My husband and I were ecstatic, but making that final step to quit smoking so suddenly threw me for a loop. Since it wasn’t just me now, I made the decision to try something new, yoga.

    At first it was hard, boring, and frustrating. I didn’t get it. I kept going, though, and about the time I was six months pregnant I was finally getting the hang of it.

    I didn’t just like it; I loved it! It has been just over five years since I walked into that first yoga class, and I am so thankful for everything it has taught me.

    Here are the top five ways that I believe yoga has saved my sanity. It taught me that:

    1. Practice makes progress.

    For someone that struggles with perfectionism, this mantra has been a lifesaver.

    When I first started my practice, I felt frustrated because I couldn’t make my poses look like the advanced yogis in the room. The reality was that those yogis didn’t accomplish those moves in their first class. It took time, patience, and self-acceptance to get there, and those poses could continue to progress from there.

    There is no such thing as perfect but rather always room for growth. Striving for perfection is a no-win battle in all aspects of life, for perfection is a defining wall that we create in our own minds.

    2. We have to acknowledge our own successes.

    I have never been one to take compliments well. I doubted them and worried that they were insincere.

    Even as I became stronger in my practice, I didn’t feel secure enough to attempt difficult poses in a class full of people. I feared that someone would find flaws in them or think I was a show-off.

    It wasn’t until about a year ago that I finally decided to just go for it. Since I made that leap, I have been able to grow so much more in my confidence and praise for myself.

    If you can’t be proud of yourself, how can you expect others to be?

    3. We need to surround ourselves with positive, happy people.

    Ever heard of the phrase “You become who you surround yourself with”?

    The yoga community is filled with joy, support, and kindness everywhere you turn. Although I am still not the most outgoing or social person, I embrace the positive energy every day when I am in a yoga class.

    Everyone there has come there for a purpose—to better themselves. We all have our own stuff going on in our lives, but have taken a moment to come together and to take care of ourselves.

    4. We can conquer our fears.

    The first time I saw someone in crow pose, I convinced myself that I could never do something that difficult. I just knew I would fall on my face and everyone would laugh at me. I resisted even attempting it because I was scared of failure.

    The thing is, though, sometimes we have to fall to then pick ourselves back up and try again.

    Once I started practicing and finding success, I become braver every day on my mat and found that I could, in fact, accomplish much more than I ever believed I could. We are stronger than we think we are.

    5. It’s okay to let ourselves be vulnerable.

    There is a moment at the end of every yoga class when you lie on your mat in shavasana, with your eyes closed, and just breathe.

    The idea of surrendering yourself in a room full of strangers is terrifying. This pose has taken me forever to feel comfortable in. It taught me that it is okay and actually good for the body and mind to let it all go and just be. This is when you can find peace within yourself.

    —

    It has now been twenty years since I quit my gymnastics career, and I have finally found something that has allowed me to get that same sense of freedom that I once felt as a child.

    I know that every day after I finish my yoga class, I have let go of the enormous amount of tension that I constantly carry with me, and I feel content, relaxed, empowered, and proud of myself for what I have just accomplished.

    I truly believe that yoga has saved my sanity and taught me how to love and respect myself. But you don’t need to go to a yoga class to learn these lessons. You can make the choice to let go of the pressure, tackle your fears, and celebrate yourself for being bold, brave, and vulnerable.

    Sad woman image via Shutterstock

  • Embracing Change When It Challenges Your Identity

    Embracing Change When It Challenges Your Identity

    Arms Up

    “The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.” ~Ralph Blum

    During the worst years of my life, yoga saved me.

    My life was a wreck. I was working seventy to eighty hours a week at a job that took everything from me and made me a monster. My relationship was disintegrating. I was hopped up on espresso shots and sugar. I paraded myself as the self-appointed queen of happy hour.

    But the hour a week I spent on my mat put it all into perspective.

    That single hour turned into several, and somewhere, somehow, I found myself again. I learned to quiet my mind and really listen to what I wanted and needed. I connected with my body in a way I never had before. I learned to slow down and identify what was truly important to me.

    My yoga practice gave me the strength to quit not just a job, but a career that was destroying my life. I felt strong and powerful—like nothing could stand in my way.

    I enrolled in a year-long yoga teacher training program, with the intention of sharing the gift of yoga and everything it had taught me with others.

    That year I learned about asanas, pranayama, and the history of the eight-fold path, but more importantly, I learned about myself.

    For the next three years, I stayed fiercely dedicated to my practice. I taught here and there, but mostly, I was a student. That just felt right.

    But something in me started to change.

    I began to feel disconnected from my practice. I was bored, just going through the motions. There was no heart, no fire, no excitement.

    Yoga had been a good counterbalance for my Type-A go-getter attitude, but perhaps it was just too much of a good thing or maybe I just needed to shake things up.

    My yoga practice had left me passive and stagnant, with a little too much of that “go with the flow” energy and not quite enough of that “get up and go” stuff.

    At the same time, I was feeling stagnant in my life. I’d recently made (another) career change; I took a gap job, one I’d intended to be in for six months, max. But seven months in, I was no closer to leaving than the day I started. I needed passion, purpose, and drive. I needed a real change.

    A yoga studio where I was a sub was looking to partner with the Crossfit gym across the street to offer yoga classes.

    Crossfit? I’d never heard of it, but a quick Google search revealed that these Crossfit people were clearly insane. Totally not my bag. I was a calm, collected yogi, but…

    My interest was piqued. I started paying attention to what went in on the “box” across the street. I’d walk by on my way to yoga and hear grunting, yelling, and the clang of metal hitting the ground. I’d parade by with my husband, “Look at this—isn’t this nuts?”

    I was fascinated, excited, and terrified.

    It took six months, but we signed up for our first class. I conveniently masked it as wanting to do something to support my husband in getting back in shape, but when he went out with an injury, it was clear that I was in it with or without him.

    On the surface, Crossfit is nothing like yoga. It’s brutally physical and it has a reputation for being competitive.

    But in other ways, my yoga experience prepared me well for the transition. Sure, I wasn’t “strong” and I wasn’t particularly fast, but I had awesome body awareness, I was able to focus on my breath when lifting, and each day I learned to focus on just that: how I’d do today.

    Crossfit provided a new outlet for me. For so long, I’d felt like pushing myself was bad, but Crossfit showed me that pushing myself could be good and healthy, if done with awareness and control.

    I’m still learning all the lessons Crossfit has to teach me and I’m sure I’ll never be done learning all the lessons yoga has for me, but here’s what leaning in and letting go of yoga has taught me so far:

    1. It’s okay to focus on yourself.

    As a woman, I was always taught that focusing on myself was bad. But I’ve learned there is nothing wrong with taking time to nourish myself, however that looks. In fact, it has made me a better woman, wife, coach, and friend.

    When I graduated from my yoga teacher training program, I had grown so attached to my own practice that it was hard to share it. I tried teaching classes, but it pulled me away from myself. So I decided to focus on me.

    It was hard for other people to understand, but it really didn’t matter what they thought. I quickly learned to disregard the comments and do what I needed to do for me.

    It’s okay if no one agrees with you. If it feels good to you and it doesn’t harm others, it’s okay to do it.

    2. Be open to the person you’ll become.

    If you’d asked me two years ago if I’d be a crossfitter, my answer would have been an emphatic “No!” But, life has changed in ways I could never have imagined and my needs changed, too. I’m grateful that yoga taught me to embrace changes.

    It’s important to be open to the possibilities that exist for us, whether it’s yoga or Crossfit, vegan or cheeseburger, corporate exec or stay-at-home mom. There’s no right or wrong answer to where our paths will lead us; the important thing is to make the right choice for ourselves right now.

    3. Act on the signals for change.

    I’ve come to recognize there are two types of people: the ones who wait for change to happen to them and the ones who seek change. In my experience, seeking change is where the real growth happens and where true happiness starts.

    Yoga taught me to laser in on how I was feeling and how it manifested in my body. When my practice didn’t feel right, I was prepared to find something to fill the gap, something that gave me exactly what I needed.

    4. Yoga is a way of life.

    When I say I quit my yoga practice, that’s not really true. I stopped attending classes and I stopped practicing poses (asana), but through my years of studying yoga, it was ingrained in me as a way of life.

    For me, yoga is about opening my heart fully to each new experience, wholeheartedly embracing change, connecting to nature, to people, to a higher power, and to my true self, and slowing down to listen and appreciate everything around me.

    Without yoga, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Above all, yoga has taught me to embrace all that I am—the expected and the unexpected—and all that I might be.

    What change do you need to embrace in your life?

    Photo by Nikola F

  • Inspiring Video from a 93-Year-Old Yoga Master

    Inspiring Video from a 93-Year-Old Yoga Master

    Sixty-one. That’s how long Porchon Lynch has been teaching yoga. And now in her nineties, she’s still at it, still inspiring others to live healthy, happy lives. If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re too old to get up and make this day count, this short video may change your perception of what’s possible for you.

  • Interview & Book Giveaway: Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi

    Interview & Book Giveaway: Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi

    Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi

    Note: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha for free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

    The Winners:

    Yoga, road trips, and personal stories that border on TMI—these are all things I enjoy, which might explain why I was drawn to Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi.

    In this engaging self-help memoir, author and yoga teacher Brian Leaf shares his experiences healing Colitis and ADD through yoga.

    Including anecdotes from a cross-country journey during which he tried many different studios, Brian provides a window into his spiritual journey and shares how he established his own personal formula for happiness.

    Honest, entertaining, and insightful, Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi shares how one man healed himself from within and inspires us to access our own personal power.

    I’m grateful that Brian took the time to answer some questions about himself and his book, and that he’s provided three copies for Tiny Buddha readers.

    The Giveaway

    To Enter:

    • Leave a comment on this post sharing one thing that made you smile today.
    • For an extra entry, tweet: RT @tinybuddha Book Giveaway: Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi – Comment and RT to win! http://bit.ly/XMFo9t

    You can enter until midnight PST on Monday, February 4th. (more…)

  • 6 Tips to Find Your Bliss So You Can Follow It

    6 Tips to Find Your Bliss So You Can Follow It

    Searching

    “Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” ~Dalai Lama

    I’m betting you’ve heard the advice to “follow your bliss.” While I find there to be much value in those words, I submit that this mindset can become a trap.

    It’s not the bliss I have an issue with. It’s the part about following.

    If you are going to follow your bliss, the supposition is that you already know what it is. Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t. Yet.

    When I was in my early twenties, my mother invited me to join her for an evening yoga class she was taking to be followed by dinner. Yoga wasn’t as popular then as it is now so it was something of a mystery to me.

    I imagined a half hour of simple stretching. To be honest, I was more interested in the free dinner than I was in “exercise,” but mom had just started a 6-week yoga intensive class and was very enthusiastic about it. Wanting to be supportive, I accepted her invitation.

    I met her at the yoga studio, thinking easy stretches would be a good way to work up an appetite, and then off to dinner we would go. We removed our shoes, and I padded after my mom as she handed me a mat and showed me where to spread it out on the floor, next to hers.

    The teacher was a pleasant young woman who smiled warmly as she welcomed us and lowered the lights, suggesting we sit quietly and relax. As the last few students straggled in, she walked over to the close the door and invited us to “just let go of the cares of the day for the next two hours.”

    Holy Toledo! Two hours! Two HOURS? I hated P.E.—I’d never done any physical activity for two hours. This would never do. Two hours? I panicked.

    How to escape? I could excuse myself to the bathroom and wait it out there. Maybe I could feign a stomachache and take a taxi home. I was freaking out inside.

    The teacher’s smiling eyes met mine, and I fake-smiled back. Panic turned into paralysis. I froze. It took every ounce of willpower (and a fair amount of respect and love for my mother) to keep me from bolting out that door. I swallowed my panic and got ready to endure the torture. (more…)

  • Be a Master of Where You Are Now

    Be a Master of Where You Are Now

    “Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion.  With these, you can handle anything.” ~Jack Kornfield

    I hadn’t taken a yoga class in a while, and in the midst of my busy schedule I finally gave myself permission to go. Needless to say it had been a few months since I found myself in a downward dog position.

    Something was different about my participation in two classes I recently took. I wish I could say I was able to go deeper into the poses, but it was actually challenging because my flexibility is not where it used to be.

    What struck me were the many great metaphors that these two women, Michelle and Debbie, were sharing in their yoga instruction.

    I confess, I’m a metaphor junky and look for them everywhere. I can probably blame my dad for that since he spoke to me in metaphors while growing up.

    What I noticed and appreciated about my instructors was that they were both very passionate about the practice of yoga. They were cognizant in educating us about position names and consistently reminded us to breathe.

    I also loved that there were so many other rich messages to be heard, metaphorically of course, being that I was paying attention to them.

    There were some gentle reminders that could be related to many different areas of life—career, relationships, wealth and finances, material purchases, and health. As I share them with you, I‘m curious as to how you would relate to them in your own unique way. (more…)