The Sweet Release: Meeting Our Tension

The Sweet Release: Meeting Our Tension

I have long used the practices of breath-based yoga practices, restorative yoga, conscious relaxation, and meditation to awareness of where and how I harbor tension, to befriend myself and my tension, and create conditions for my tension to soften and to feel more spacious and at ease.

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Anxiety SOS.

Anxiety SOS.

Anxiety separates you—it makes your neighbor seem like the other. It makes you build walls instead of bridges. But when we meet ourselves with care, warmth, and presence, we can change our neurology. We release oxytocin, the hormone of love and connection. Our anxiety is not a personality trait. Neither is our connectivity. Yet the more we practice the latter, the better we get that feeling of love and connection. 

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Expanding in the Heart Of Winter: A Restorative Practice Can Create Inner Space While Winter Contracts Around Us

Expanding in the Heart Of Winter: A Restorative Practice Can Create Inner Space While Winter Contracts Around Us

According to yoga and Ayurveda, like qualities increase like. We want to ensure that winter’s contracting elements do not weigh down our body and mind. We may wish to equalize by creating warmth, lightness, and openness. Our yoga practice, spiritual practice, and lifestyle should also keep things bright, fluid, and moving inside.

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Our Life Partner, The Breath. A Love Story.

Our Life Partner, The Breath. A Love Story.

Stressful situations will always arise in our life, and sometimes it will feel as if there’s no solid ground to support us. Each time we pause and replace our attention on our breath, our mind comes “home” to our body. Each time we replace our attention on our breath, we grow more grounded. For a moment, we stop thinking about the future or replaying the past. For a moment, we can stop zipping around trying to make things better. 

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Reducing Every Day Stress

Reducing Every Day Stress

In my past 25 years of teaching, I have never met a person who isn't harboring some level of habitual tension. Tension has a psycho-neurological component. Every time we don’t feel okay about something, we tense up in our body and it doesn’t release until we feel grounded, slow down, take a deep breath, and soften our body.

Eventually, stress can manifest in the body as tension. Tension, IS the stress response finding a home in the body.

When we relax areas of habitual tension, we send a message to the body that we don’t need to be armoring ourselves and defending ourselves from a threat.

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