Psychiatrist and intuitive Judith Orloff is simultaneously passionate, endearing and down to earth when she talks about how to navigate the often rocky bramble patch that is our emotional processes. In all of her books, she offers practical suggestions on how to tap into our intuitive abilities and to negotiate the emotional journey of [...]
My daughter was sitting on my bed when I returned home from a Yoga class. “What’s that on your pants?” she asked. I did a quick scan for food stains. I couldn’t find anything. She pointed. “That thingie on the back of your pants...” I looked in the mirror and saw what she was referring [...]
Meditation Is A Sport. What? I know; I can hear your mind saying, “That’s ridiculous, meditation isn’t a sport!” But if you look at the overall characteristics of the practice of meditation and compare it to sports and athletics, I’ll bet you can see some striking similiarities. Practice makes perfect. The first time that any [...]
The Role of Proprioceptors In Joints and the Brain This is the third in an ongoing series on the therapeutic applications of yoga to appear in LA YOGA Ayurveda and Health Magazine. As Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 1.2 says, “Yoga is the mastery of the activities of the mind-field;” or “Yoga is about controlling the fluctuations [...]
Talking About The Heart Of An Athlete In Every Body When Matthew Sanford was an athletic thirteen-year-old, one devastating moment when his family’s car slipped off an overpass changed everything. His father and sister died in the car accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. At the age of thirteen he lost the [...]
My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat I’ve always been kind of embarrassed by how much I need my yoga teachers to tell me what a great job I’m doing. It’s not a job after all, it’s yoga. Not that I don’t love to be challenged, corrected, adjusted, egged on, pushed or even [...]
A few days before my first yoga New Year, my teacher asked us to make yoga New Year’s resolutions. Instantly, and uncharacteristically not even taking the three dark days till New Year’s to mull it over, I resolved to get good at jump ups. And I have been resolving to get good at jump ups [...]
Sitting In The Fire Of Our Experience A fire ignited near our Rustic Canyon retreat, and the racket, smoke and ashes floating through the window reflected the scattered states of our consciousness. It seemed fitting that helicopters and sirens would interrupt our meditation, since even the most disciplined meditators are experiencing some fear about the [...]
Swami Veda Bharati gave the opening address at the International Association of Yoga Therapists conference in March, 2008. In his talk, he stated that the most important yoga therapy text is the Charaka Samhita. The Charaka Samhita is a Sanskrit tome generally believed to have been compiled two thousand years ago and is a work [...]
Elements of Jyotish, The Science of Light. At difficult times the universe feels alive with signs and symbols pointing to our good discernment or poor judgment surrounding a decision or event: driving home after ending an unhealthy, draining relationship and feeling as though a luminous rainbow in the sky and remarkably clear traffic mirror a [...]