The Grace Of Oil Massage On Straw Mats Awakens The Circulation Of Prana Nearly naked, sitting a straw mat in a sparsely furnished room in Kannur, Kerala, simultaneously vulnerable, curious and expectant, I waited for my first treatment session to begin. I had traveled half-way around the world to Kerala to receive Kalari treatment, the [...]
A Personal Reflection on Kalari All is quiet inside the Kalari practice space. I enter the space slowly, first touching the red clay earth and then my heart as sign of respect. My teacher’s voice echoes in my mind, “When you enter the Kalari, leave everything behind.” I head to the Puttara, the main altar, [...]
The Sanskrit word santosha means contentment. Contentment is a slippery idea: If we say that we are not content, or feeling discontented, there are those who will look upon us as being ungrateful, or needing to work harder. If we say that we are content, there is sometimes the illusion of complacency. How can [...]
A Discussion Sparked By Dr. Mark Singleton’s Yoga Body At any given moment in Los Angeles, from pre-dawn into the evening, from the beach to the Valley, and all across the basin, people are striking a pose. Surfers are standing on the shore doing Yoga-inspired moves to warm up for the waves. Runners, dancers [...]
Free Yoga For Children With Special Needs What have I been put here to do? It’s a question I asked after recently seeing Wayne Dyer speak. It has become clear that I am here to inspire and to heal, through teaching Yoga, and even more importantly, through giving back. Through seva. My sister wrote the [...]
Chronic pain is a condition that affects tens of millions of Americans and countless others around the world. Many people living with chronic pain are left with little hope when medical treatments cease to bring relief. Loolwa Khazzoom and Anna Tostrup Worsley are two outspoken women suffering from chronic pain who were among those left [...]
Deborah Donohue: How does Reconnective Healing differs from the other healing modalities? Reconnective Healing Practitioner Kelly Woodruff: The first and most important, is that unlike other healing modalities, the Reconnective Healing practitioner does not send energy. What we do with Reconnective Healing is to access this new larger broader bandwidth of healing frequencies, not just [...]
When I started coming to Yoga Works in 1993, I’d already been practicing Yoga for close to ten years, but as an athletic pursuit thrust upon me by my hippie high school teachers. I could do most the poses with ease, but because of this ease, my practice required very little consciousness. So it was [...]
Through the art of listening, we learn to attune to the sensations and perceptions that arise in the body and mind. In the postures – the asanas – this listening involves observing the pulsation of blood and nerve as the flow of blood and the impulses of the nervous system travel through the body. [...]