Restlessness, one of the Five Hindrances, is a state of mental agitation that keeps us from being present in the moment. When I am experiencing restlessness I know the best thing to do is to sit and meditate. Yet when my mind seems like a...
Hot yoga seems to be ‘hot’. When I look at yoga class schedules I often see hot yoga and warm vinyasa on offer. And then, of course, there is the chain of Bikram Yoga studios in which yoga is practiced in a room heated up...
A few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the world’s first Inner Peace Conference. Two days of yoga, meditation and lectures with a focus on creating - and maintaining - inner peace, offered in four churches and the former stock exchange in Amsterdam....
I like to repeat these wise words to myself whenever it is time to move on. Whether it is something mundane as throwing away an old super comfortable t-shirt that really has too many holes in it to wear, or saying good-bye to a dear...
I find food to be fascinating. No one can do without, yet I don’t think there is anything as controversial as food (ok, maybe politics…). Should food be vegetarian, gluten-free, kosher, halal, GMO-free, sugar-free and/or fat-free? Ask ten people and they will probably all give...
“The best advice I can give you is to not resist the schedule” my mom said when I talked to her on the phone while driving up to IMS in Massachusetts for a 4-day silent meditation retreat. And she could know, as she has attended...
"So you're going all the way to the city to meditate for 45 minutes?" my husband asked me this morning. He was referring to a meditation session with Sharon Salzberg at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. It would take me 2...
I’d like to believe that the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, the United States congress voting for a bill to ban Syrian and Iraqi refugees from the US, and another mass shooting in California earlier this week, happened for a reason. If nothing else, maybe...
Recently I was asked whether I have a special morning routine and, if so, if I would like to share it. I do have a morning routine that I recommend to everyone. My customary wake-up method hovers between good (the short version) and ideal (the...
It was Thursday afternoon. I was getting ready to teach a yoga class when I received text messages from my two best friends. They both had a similar message: “x was on the flight…” The flight was MH17 that crashed in the Ukraine after it...