Someone’s in the Kitchen With Ahimsa In yoga class I caught myself beating myself up about beating myself up. I took it as a sign to start focusing on ahimsa (nonviolence). In classical yoga, ahimsa is generally given as the first yama (ethical precept), and defined as the non-harming of others by thought, [...]
We may look around at our friends or family members and complain to ourselves and each other. Why does our best friend, brother, wife or son get to eat so much more than we do? Why is it that one person gains weight on fresh air when another person can’t seem to hold onto extra [...]
Cultivate energy, boundaries and develop intuition. Whether you’ve always known that you’re an empathetic person, or only discovered this gift quite recently, you deeply sense and resonate with the emotions of others, which often results in you being connected to a wide variety of people, personalities, and situations. As a subject, empathy is rarely discussed [...]
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: I am a 39-year-old overweight man with allergy symptoms (itchy eyes, dry throat, sinus congestion with [...]
Remembering Love My first encounter with Sufism was in Pune on the banks of the Mula River, where I used to meditate at the tomb of Saidullbaba, a Sufi mystic. Sitting beside the white marble tomb, draped in green brocade and scattered with rose petals, I felt a wonderful energy of peace. At the time, [...]
At the International Yoga Festival, the sun had yet to rise over Rishikesh, as more than 300 yogis from around the world unrolled their mats along the banks of the Ganges River. Ma Ganga whispered an eternal ohm as she rushed over the rocks, reminding us that she flows from the feet of Shiva and [...]
Gentle Jewish Yoga Five years ago, Avivah Winocur Erlick was married, held a job as a newspaper editor at the California Real Estate Journal and was attending the same Jewish services and having the same experiences since her childhood, where she grew up practicing Reform Judaism in a secular household. Yet she was simultaneously and [...]
According to Ayurveda, seasonal changes are times of both vulnerability and opportunity, when we can release the past season’s accumulated buildup. Cleansing can jump-start our health: body, mind and spirit. I’ve wanted to do a cleanse for years, and considered joining some friends for the mutual camaraderie of a group master cleanse (lemon juice, cayenne [...]
Religion provides the big story that allows people to make sense of their often chaotic lives. And universality has been the goal of nearly all religions since the start of recorded human history. The core message of Christianity, universalist in tone, proclaims love and forgiveness as the means to create heaven on earth. Through God’s [...]
Exploring the tastes of addiction through understanding the doshas In the not-too-distant past, people struggling with addictions would likely be sent to an asylum or subjected to an exorcism, taken to a priest or seen as having a character flaw. But from the perspective of Ayurveda, an addiction is a disease in which a person [...]