The Sport of Yoga On power yoga teacher Mark Blanchard’s website, Cincinnati Bengals player TJ Houshmandzadeh describes his yoga practice, “It’s like lifting weights and stretching at the same time.” When in LA, Houshmandzadeh trains with Blanchard and the football star appears in Blanchard’s newest DVD series. These types of testimonials may well inspire a [...]
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 [...]
The Importance of Resting and Breathing Fitness buffs and everyday gym-goers often work out with the mindset of “more is more.” Many Type-A people who attend yoga classes are often seen leaving before final relaxation (savasana), stripping themselves of the most important part of the overall experience. Savasana is the gold nugget, the eye in [...]
Learning From Injury to Find New Points of Balance There was a moment during my first week post-knee surgery that I noticed something dramatically different in the way my body felt and responded than what I had been accustomed to my entire life. The combination of coming up against an injury and taking my first [...]
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 [...]
Ayurveda has been practiced in the U.S. for only about 30 years, yet it is a 5,000-year-old Indian system of medicine and yoga’s sister science. Readers are invited to submit questions for “Ayurveda Q & A” to ayurveda@layogamagazine.com. Q: My husband suffers from chronic fatigue, a condition that started six years ago when he was in [...]
12 Step Spirituality At Yoga Works on Main Streettreet in Santa Monica, CA, a didgeridoo dub-mix whumps in Vinnie Marino’s filled-to-maximum-capacity vinyasa flow class. You really gotta get here early to get a spot where the mats are squeezed close together and even the space on stage is packed. Among his students are [...]
During the Beijing Olympic Games, Tibetans and supporters around the world staged prayer vigils, hunger strikes, and protest marches to focus on China’s inhumane treatment of Tibetans. In Beijing, despite the government’s establishment of so-called free protest zones, there were at least 53 pro-Tibet activists detained, 77 rejected protest applications, approximately 15 Chinese [...]
With Tina Malia, Larisa Stow & Shakti Tribe Shakti means forceful feminine energy that has the potential to transform and purify. Shakti inspires us to have faith, to love and forgive – and this is precisely the kind of powerful transformation that Larisa Stow & Shakti Tribe seek to inspire through their music and their [...]