If your friend, sibling or significant other is a yoga bunny (or a yoga reindeer, to make it more in tone with the festive season!), it only takes a ‘best yoga gift’ search on the web to make you feel overwhelmed with all the options, especially if you’re not usually a yoga…elf yourself (rhyme intended).
The search for the best yoga mat thickness can take you from the extra thick yoga mats that give you extra protection for your joints to the ultra thin, travel mats made for convenience on the go. It’s easy to get confused on which is just right for your daily practice.
One of the fundamental teachings of yoga is about staying connected with ourselves, with each other and also with our planet as a whole. It’s only natural to expect that yoga mats would be made of materials that leave as small of a footprint on our planet as possible. Ideally, yoga mats should be made by using sustainably-sourced natural materials, like natural rubber yoga mats, cotton, cork or even wool or jute. These materials would then be made into yoga mats by using eco-conscious manufacturing processes that don’t create toxic waste. Unfortunately, this is often not the case for some yoga mats you can find online or in stores. Materials that are not eco-friendly are actually the ones that are most often used when making yoga...
We take time to clean our rooms, desks, e-mails and schedules – yet we often overlook cleaning the most valuable tool we have – our minds. When it comes to meditation, getting started is the hardest part - just like with any new habit. What’s very helpful is that you get to see its benefits after just a short while; just a few sessions in and you’ll notice that setting aside as little as 5 minutes every day to sit still with your body and mind goes a long way. Meditation clears your mind of any stress, fear, anxiety, worries, repetitive thought patterns or any other bugs flying around your head, and this makes it so worth the effort!
You know when you’re in this wobbly, difficult pose in your yoga class, feeling you’re going to lose balance in a few seconds? But then you focus your vision on one tiny point in front of you to calm your mind and – switch! - you’ve entered a whole new mental state of stillness and mindfulness that channels your focus inwards. It is in this state of mind that it is possible for your body to achieve more than it did when you had all the thoughts roaming in your head. Think about it – all this new-found concentration came from focusing on that little still point in front of you. But what if you could draw that point yourself,...
