Yoga

One of our greatest challenges as Westerners practicing yoga is to learn to define progress through signs that are not often acknowledged by the culture at large.

While the ideal situation is to practice within a community, it’s not a deal breaker if you can’t. Or, I don’t know, happen to be living during a pandemic. The internet is loaded with free videos. Read on to discover Kerry’s favorite FREE online yoga classes!

The soul is quite clever in its endeavors. It has mad skills that lures us to paint, sing, dance, build sanctuaries, plant gardens, raise children, write poetry, climb mountains, and all the other things humans do to discover themselves in life.

Yoga has been around for a long time and those who practice don’t need the benefits to be validated by science. Still, there is kind of warm comfort in the research.

Yoga studios are crawling with raving lunatics. I should know. I was one of them and looked every bit the part: a rail-thin-rubber-bandy-raw-vegan-meditating-twice-a-day-yogi. While I could twist myself into a pretzel, it was only after tumbling off my mat that I began to embody what yoga truly means.

There are many reasons for developing a yoga practice, spiritual growth is just one of them. How yoga can assist us spiritually depends greatly on which path we are following. Not everyone’s spiritual practice is affected in the same way through yoga, though everyone can benefit physically, mentally and emotionally from yoga.

The connection between stress and modern aliments is becoming increasingly clear thanks to scientific research that validates the mind/body connection. We know food plays a powerful role in both physical and mental wellness. Understanding our bodies’ natural rhythms and learning how to listen to our bodies gives us are the key to self-empowered health.

A long time ago a wise, old yogi named Patanjali wrote a text called the Yoga Sutras. The sutras outlined eight different ways to live in alignment with our highest nature. Like a gentle guiding hand, the Yoga Sutras warn you of the inevitable pitfalls on this journey called life. According to Yoga, we suffer because we are blind to our true Self.

Yin yoga was born from Taoist philosophy. The postures are more passive, occur mainly on the floor and are held for longer periods of time. It’s unique in that you let gravity do the work. There is no efforting. We surrender and release.

Your body is amazing. There is nothing like it. How you feel in it is less a question of years but a tally of habits, choices and chance. It’s the law of nature and the journey of being human that our bodies are aging and…