Do you have health and fitness goals and resolutions? You need both. A goal is the finish line. Once you’ve accomplished it, it gets crossed off your list. It’s done; You lost 10lbs, hit that PR at the gym, or completed a race. Resolutions, on the other hand, are the intentions that drive you to […]
Do you have an over-arching theme for this year? I summed up my goals and resolutions in one word: ENERGY. This is the year of ENERGY. For me energy means mental focus and attention, physical strength and endurance, and prana or vital life force. My resolutions are centered around cultivating, protecting, and healing […]
Do you want to know the secret to having great days, to having more time and energy to workout, to being more productive, to making healthy choices all day long? The secret is: A great day starts the night before. Here are my 10 tips to make tomorrow amazing! Sleep (quantity). Like it or […]
I don’t have visions or hear voices when I meditate. I can’t really say I’ve felt a “sense of oneness.” I’m not striving for enlightenment or trying to achieve a state of perpetual euphoria. And I’ve yet to empty my mind (my favorite misconception about meditation). My reason for meditating is much more practical: I […]
Your chronological age is the number of birthdays you’ve celebrated. You can lie about it, but you can’t change it. Your biological age, your REAL age, is more malleable. It’s influenced by lifestyle, nutrition, exercise, stress management, sleep hygiene, and other factors all under your control. If you want to know how old you REALLY […]
In Real Happiness, Sharon Salzburg says that meditation is like “trying to split a huge piece of wood with a small ax. You hit that piece of wood ninety-nine times and nothing happens. Then you hit it the one hundredth time and it splits open.” She adds that it wasn’t the hundredth hit that […]
Stress has a bad rap. The right amount of stress at the right time, however, is key for our survival, our growth, and our happiness. A stressful event triggers our body’s stress response. The response ranges from jolting us into action in a life-threatening emergency to driving us to reach our goals and tackling our […]
Ishvara Pranidhana, surrender, is the last of the Niyamas. It means having faith that everything will always turn out exactly the way it’s supposed to. Faith is not an excuse to sit idly by and let life happen to you, nor is it a fatalist “nothing I do matters anyway” philosophy. It’s about balance: striving […]
Svadhyaya, self-study is the forth Niyama. This is the process of knowing ourselves, our true selves. We practice Svadhaya by reading, learning, meditating, and reflecting. As we study various subjects, from spirituality and philosophy, to science, art, and history, we understand ourselves better. A meditation practice helps us uncover the ego that is blocking us […]
Tapas, self-discipline, is the third Niyama. Tapas literally means heat. Transformation requires heat. Dough is baked in the oven to form bread, clay is fired in the kiln to create pottery, iron and glass are passed through the flames so that they may be molded and shaped. So too must we hold ourselves to the […]