Friday Q&A: Can You Change Your Blog Format?

Q: Dear Editor, 
I got so used to the previous website that the present one is a bit of a challenge to navigate. I have a couple of comments that can make my (and other's as well) experience more easy.
 1) Can you provide a direct link on this site to the YFHA's Facebook page URL as well? 
2) Your scroll bar overlaps with the Right tab keys (subscribe, labels, archives etc). So when I have to scroll down, I invariably hit the right tab keys which...

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More Short Meditations from Mexico

by BaxterIf you are up for it, I'd like share some new meditations with you that I’ve been teaching this week at my retreat in Yelapa, Mexico. Now, if Tuesday’s theme is a good one for you right now, then by all means continue to use "strength and stability" for a while. But if you’d like to experiment, here are two more possibilities.Flexibility MeditationFor the second day of my retreat, I was thinking of how to incorporate the concept of flexibility...

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Decide Each Day What to Do

by NinaLast Hike by ShitaoIn a recent NY Times article about weight loss The Empty Diet Claim Season, Jane Brody said something simple that I just loved:“Make physical exercise a daily activity. Decide each day what to do rather than whether to do it.”To me that’s not only good advice for people who are concerned with losing or managing their weight, it’s also good advice for people like us who are concerned with staying healthy as we age. In his...

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Short But Sweet: 10-Minute Meditations for Healthy Aging

by BaxterEven though I'm away leading a retreat this week, I'm thinking of all our readers at YFHA (kinda' wishing you were here!), as I'm focusing a good portion of our practice time here on developing a home yoga meditation practice. Since we have two yoga practice sessions a day here, we begin and end each if them with a 10-minute seated meditation practice. Monday was our first full day of practice together and the overriding focus was on the...

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Medical Yoga Symposium at the Smithsonian

by TimothyGreetings from India! I've come to Kerala once again to study with my Ayurvedic doctor and to get some treatments. It is so nice to be back in this lush, semi-tropical setting and to see my teacher and many old friends. But just before I left the States, I had the privilege of taking part in a weekend symposium on modern and medical yoga at the Smithsonian, in Washington, DC. The symposium was held in conjunction with their groundbreaking...

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Friday Q&A: How Do You Keep Fit?

Newberry Crater by Melina MezaQ: How do you & other writers keep fit? I was wondering what a typical week of yoga/aerobic exercise would look like in a week (or, spread out over a couple of weeks)? I am curious how others build in other activities in their week besides yoga. A yoga session for half an hour with walking for an hour?How does one keep fit? I'm in a slump and right now I just want to do some gentle exercise but know I need to do...

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Winter Ice, Fear of Falling and Yoga

by BaxterDespite the fact that I have lived in California near the temperate ocean for the last 14 years, I still vividly remember the scary, slippery winter days when I lived in the Midwest in icy conditions. And I remember slipping and falling on more than one occasion. Perhaps because I was younger at the time, I avoided significant injury (except for that one ice-skating party my freshman year in college that started at midnight, when I fell...

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Stress Eating and the Healthy Eating Meditation Practice

by Baxter Breakfast of Champions by Melina Meza Recently I had the good fortune to present an all-day workshop on Yoga for Healthy Eating at the Yoga Journal Conference in San Francisco. The workshop was in many ways a distillation of all of the ideas and information we have presented here at YFHA over the last 2+ years. And as I prepared for the day, and while I was presenting the workshop, the stories my students and workshop attendees shared...

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Yoga for Healthy Eating: An Overview

by NinaBoth Baxter and I have already written a number of posts exploring the topic of Yoga for Healthy Eating. But seeing that it’s the beginning of a new year—when people often make resolutions regarding their health—I thought now would be a good time to provide an overview of the topic. Basically, between the two of us, we’ve come up with a four-pronged approach to support healthy eating:Understand your digestive system
Practice stress managementCultivate...

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Sleep: A Pillar of Life

by RamSiesta by John Singer SargentAccording to the Ayurveda philosophy, there are three supports or pillars of life. Sleep is one of the pillars, with the other two being good digestion and sexual restraint. These pillars endow the body with strength, complexion and healthy growth that can continue until the full span of life, provided the individual does not indulge in activities that are detrimental to health. According to the Charaka Samhita,...

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Friday Q&A: What is Slow, Gentle Yoga?

Seaweed by Melina MezaOne of our readers left the following question on the post Degenerative Disk Disease and Yoga:Q: I wonder what you mean by 'gentle, slow yoga'? Could you give some examples?A: In the post in question, I was reviewing a study that looked at the spines of experienced yoga teachers and observed that the discs between the bones of the spine—the vertebrae—were healthier than a control group who did not do yoga. The teachers, who...

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Lowering Your Blood Pressure

by NinaIf you have high blood pressure—or even high blood pressure that is being controlled with medication as Timothy wrote yesterday—there are certain anti-stress poses that you should not be doing. Although inverted poses can lower blood pressure due to the interaction between your baroreceptors and your nervous system (see Why You Should Love Your Baroreceptors), going upside down initially raises your blood pressure before feedback from the...

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Keeping Yoga Safe for People with High Blood Pressure

by TimothyMonterey Cyprus by Melina MezaI recently taught a course on Yoga for High Blood Pressure on Yoga U Online. During the program I suggested that doing certain inverted poses such as Headstand (Sirsasana) may not be a good idea, even for some people whose blood pressure (BP) is “well controlled” by medications. But one listener had heard during her teacher training that inversions were okay in this situation. Her instructors had consulted...

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How Yoga Affects Breathing

by BaxterJellies by Melina MezaAs I was reading an interview in my latest yogauonline.com newsletter with physician and yoga therapist Loren Fishman, MD and his collaborator Ellen Saltonstall called Can Yoga Preserve Freedom of Movement? (hell, yeah!), a short statement from Dr. Fishman about how physical movement and the breath are connected caught my eye:“…something that is really very poorly recognized in the medical or the yoga literature: that...

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