Practice Pages: Meditation I don't know about you, but when I meditate, my mind does not go blank. It’s an inner wilderness adventure. I close my eyes and blam, it’s wild in here. There is a whirl of thoughts and feelings, a hundred sticky notes of things to do. When I tend to each thought, [...]
Psalm Isadora photographed by Amir Magal The Inner Journey From Pain To Bliss, The Outer Journey From Practice To Giving Back Psalm Isadora's exposure to Yoga took place fifteen years ago when a friend invited her to a Yoga class at a gym. At the time, she was suffering from back pain due [...]
Bhakti Fest Rocks “The Woodstock of the kirtan movement ;” this was the tagline organizers used to describe Bhakti Fest. This weekend didn’t have the mud, the nudity or the crowds, but the idea of Woodstock was conjured up (on the fortieth anniversary, no less) and it had to do with the christening of an [...]
The Cove Reveals Injustice With a Meaningful and Suspenseful Story When the documentary The Cove was released, people were talking about the film and urging each other to go see it. For good reason. One of the primary messages of the film is that injustices can be perpetuated when they are hidden. When they are exposed, [...]
Attending the Dalai Lama’s teachings in Dharamsala, India, is quite a different experience from doing so in the West. Trade comfortable cushioned seats in a temperature-controlled environment for seats on a concrete floor under a covered rooftop exposed to the wild fluctuations of the Himalayan weather. Trade state-of-the-art bathrooms with the most basic plumbing alternative [...]
Around The World And On The Stage ONLY FIFTEEN MINUTES into the practice and we knew we were in over our heads. Guru Kal, (short for Kali), a powerful lion of a man, was barking out commands in a rapid and incomprehensible (to us) dialect of Malayalam. Following his direction, we awkwardly threw ourselves to [...]
When it comes to health, digestion is where the process all begins. If there is anything off-balance, it can affect not only how we feel before, during or after we eat, but also throughout the entire day (and beyond). Balance is affected both by the food we eat and by how we feel. Our digestive [...]
From the perspective of Ayurveda, seasonal junctures can be times of vulnerabilities. Throughout the hot pitta summer, heat has been constantly building. Then in the fall, the fire of summer meets the wind of the vata fall season. This is a time when paying attention to our digestion and our vitality are both [...]
PERHAPS YOU’VE HEARD SOME of the astounding claims surrounding kombucha: it helps the body fight cancer, detoxifies and alkalizes the system and reduces cholesterol. Though relatively new in the States, kombucha’s Far Eastern folklore stretches back 2,000 years. First mentioned during the Chinese Tsin Dynasty of 212 BCE, it was then called “The Elixir of [...]
Desi Bartlett Practice Pages: English Finding A Style Of Practicing Yoga Which Speaks To You DISCOVERING WHICH STYLE of Yoga speaks to you is largely a matter of taste. In Sanskrit, the word rasa means essence. When you are describing something’s rasa, you are talking about the qualities it has, the feeling behind those [...]