Yoga is for
Every Body
From our new book-- Laughing can be a kind of nutrient in its own right. Have a five-minute hearty laugh break, taking a longer class or internet session, choosing comedies, or whatever makes you laugh regularly can help you take a deep breath! It can be an important...
I was in a junior in high school when Betty Freidan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, was first published. Little did I know that I was living the struggle for emancipation from that mystique. When I went to college, I took a stand for my creativity and...
Did you know that playing a musical instrument makes you smarter? And not just for children! It's never too late to start taking music lessons. Studying music helps to improve cognitive abilities--things like language based reasoning, short-term...
I've been eating a lot of sugar. At Holiday time, I love to bake Christmas cookies, and this year I really overdid it. After a while, I began to notice my teeth hurting, my bones aching. Sugar is known to leach calcium out of teeth and bones, and I certainly don't...
This is the time of year we are more likely to overeat, which can bring on the hiccups. And once they start--even if we can stop them, they often come back shortly. It's caused by an involuntary contraction of the diaphragm that repeats several times a minute. It can...
Well, yes, I am getting older. You can see it in my eyes. But, that means I'm getting wiser too. I'm getting smarter about what I spend my time doing. Someone I admired once told me "Whatever you say 'yes' to, you're saying 'no' to something else. And recently I...
My family has a summer cottage in Southwest Michigan, right on the lake, where I’ve been spending summers since I was a child. It’s an idyllic site, private and serene, and I think I started meditating on the beach when I was very young. Swimming was my saving grace...
To the reviewer on Amazon who ridiculed my "tree" pose--with love
Yoga is famous these days for helping combat the stresses of modern life. How the ancient yogis of old knew all the particularities of the benefits of Yoga is still mind-boggling, but they knew. It wasn't haphazard. Either by Divine inspiration, or revelations from...
There have been some spectacular sunsets here in Michigan along the lakeshore. This is a photo of the South Haven pier and lighthouse taken by Tom Fouts. The image aptly evokes that sense of wonder that we feel when looking at something so beautiful. The whole nature...
One of the tools we use to deepen our practice of yoga is simple concentration. Maybe I shouldn't say "simple!" If you've ever tried to meditate, focusing the mind on one thing without interruption is extremely difficult. That's why we begin with a practice that's not...
Around 5,000 years ago, the ancient yogis began to lose their capacity to memorize the scriptures by word of mouth, and there became a need to write things down for future generations. The sage, Sri Patanjali, began the process of articulating the basic ideas about...
Prana--the life force of the universe. In the far east, they say "chi". Hawaiians call it "ki". And, Yoda calls it "The Force". We are all born with a finite supply of chi which gets depleted over time through aging, overexertion, bad habits. But there is an infinite...
What is it about Big Yoga® that makes it different from other yoga styles? How did I come up with the name? How long have I been teaching Big Yoga? I thought you might be interested in these questions. Big Yoga is a spin off of Integral Yoga®, a yoga school started by...
Think you're too old for starting up with Yoga? No way! I'm really grateful that I started learning yoga in the 60's when I was still in my twenties, but that doesn't mean folks my age can't start now! There are so many adaptations we can learn when our bodies are a...