If we pay attention to what are we connecting to throughout the day we find sometimes it's social media, or TV. Other times we might be connecting with another human. At other times we might find ourselves lost in thought. However, unless you have a practice that involves the body, you likely don't spend a lot of time connecting to your body.

It seems most of us take the body for granted. We only really pay attention to it when it starts to scream at us. Most of us rarely even know what the feeling of hunger is and very few people go to sleep when they are tired. We have become disconnected from our bodies and spend most of our time in our heads, or focused on the outer world.

We live by a schedule and override our bodies messages to conform to the demands of our busy days. We are more connected with outside pressures and expectations and rarely tune into our inner world.

This week in our practice, in my classes we were asking ourselves to pay attention to what we were connected to....

This week the theme in my classes was about differentiating our experience of mind, body and spirit.

I was asking my students if they could get clear about when they are experiencing MIND; thoughts. Just to acknowledge this is the part of me that thinks.

To be able to clearly see: this is thought; thinking.

Then, can we pay attention to the BODY. Can we take our awareness and feel the foot for example. And what does the foot say? I suggest the body does not speak in English. The body speaks in sensations. If it were to say anything at all, I think it might be “oh, hey, thanks for noticing me.”

Our practice gives us the chance to pause and go inward and pay attention to the different aspects of Self. There is thinking and there is the body. If we choose, we can pay attention to the experience of either; both.

To have the capacity to notice what we are paying attention to is liberating. It gives us the ability to create some distance from the monkey mind or the pain in the...

Developing a daily practice is a game changer if you want to experience whole health.

Developing the discipline can be tough. It isn’t easy to get out of bed and get to your mat, until you make it a habit.

That is what my deep dive program is all about. Teaching people how to prioritize their practice. It is about helping people carve out that time. It is a chance to work through limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging patterns.

Doing it alone can feel impossible. With a group and a framework it becomes easier.  

I love providing people with support and encouragement as they work through the obstacles. Everyone runs into challenges as they choose to take care of their health. Over a lifetime we have developed excuses and habits that get in our way.

I have no judgement. I have been through it myself.

I have helped hundreds of people break through what is holding them back. It is exciting to watch people get clear and committed.

I get to see all kinds of reasons people create...

Yoga is an ancient art. It is a vast science.

Often today, when we say 'Yoga', what comes to mind are the Asanas, or postures.

With consistent practice, Asanas bring physical health, but they are so much more than exercise and only a tiny part of what Yoga encompasses.

Exercise is typically done with physical fitness goals in mind. We move our bodies because we know it is good for us. It improves circulation and it keeps our hearts strong. We might do exercise to keep our body weight in check or to build muscle. We may turn to physical fitness for stress relief and to clear our mind. Moving the body is good for us on many levels.

In Asana practice we move the body from one posture to another. There are MANY different styles of Yoga. You can practice a flow of demanding and dynamic sequences. Or you can approach a practice with a restorative or gentle focus.

Many people come to Yoga with physical goals in mind, but inevitably a practice leads one to access deeper levels of the Self.

When I first learned Yoga I was under the impression it was important to ‘counter-pose’. This means if you did a back bend then you would do a forward bend to follow up. If you did a backbend then you should do a forward bend to balance out that movement.

At the time it made logical sense. I was stretching in one direction and then my body needed to stretch in the other direction. At one point on my journey, someone told me this was a bad idea because it was like bending a credit card back and forth; implying that it would cause weakness and we would break in half.

In that moment, I thought it was a ridiculous analogy because we are nothing like a credit card!

However, over the years I have come to see there is no need to counter stretch. I also now see why pushing and pulling our bodies has a detrimental effect.

As a matter of a fact, in the approach to Yoga which I practice and teach now, we don’t do any stretching at all!

What!? Yoga that doesn’t involve...

In one of my classes this week, someone asked a question about the abdomen.

Often when I teach, it is the students that are guiding the inquiry and together we discover something really insightful. During this particular class, we spent a lot of the class paying attention to the area around the navel.

As I tune people into their body, I also pay attention to myself. When I tuned into this area, it was abundantly clear to me how powerful and important this place in our body is. I was looking for words to articulate this place we were focusing on, and 'solar plexus' came to mind.

Despite knowing the body well, I don’t have an overly educated knowledge of the technical terms of our anatomy. After class, I wanted to understand better what exactly is the ‘solar plexus' so I sat down to do a little research.

And wow! What I read was fascinating and worth sharing.

 Here is a formal definition:

"The solar plexus, or celiac plexus, is a complex network of nerves located in the...

Last night I hosted a Zoom meeting with many beautiful women from our online Yoga community. We came together to discuss pelvic floor health, and other ideas around women's health.  None of us was an expert on the topic, but we all had some experience to bring to the table.

With this topic comes a certain sense of shyness and even embarrassment. This issue involves personal and intimate details and sharing in a group is a courageous act. It seems that talking about these issues amongst ourselves is how most of us become educated and I am grateful this group came together and shared.

I want to share my take-aways with hope that other women might benefit from the discussion. Many of us grew up with too much taboo around this subject and our questions never got answered. I hope this discussion and this Blog will open up the conversation so we don't feel alone in our search for information and knowledge about this part of our bodies.

Why is it we feel so shy to discuss our vaginas?...