I was recently interviewed on the Listen for LIFE Aphasia Podcast (Apple, Spotify) by the brilliant and caring Genevieve Richardson, because she felt like the blog post I wrote about 20 second yoga would be super helpful to her busy, caretaking audience. It was such an honor and delight to share with her and her people how little yoga it takes to feel better.

So I have another one for ya: Ujaii pranayama.

Many or most of you are probably familiar with this ocean-sounding breath. We use it during yoga practice to heat up, slow the exhale, and tone the inner body. But it can also be done as a little brain break whenever you like.

Hold on...I'm doing it now

Ujaii pranayama (which means "triumphant uprising") is done by toning the back of the throat while you breathe. Usually, we do this on the exhale, although there are times toning on the inhale can be useful as well. When you need to rest your mind for a moment, take a break for peace and quiet, or just reset between...

The baby would not, could not, stop crying. She was a sweet little thing of only two weeks old, and her tummy just wasn't having a good flight. Neither was her poor mother, who had only had the job for two weeks.

Boy, do I remember those days...

We were on the flight home from a weekend in Iowa City, Iowa, where Havia (my high school senior) was checking out the University of Iowa. (She, and we, LOVED it, and she's already been accepted to the pre-nursing program there, so go Hawkeyes! We're in!)

Anyway, after listening to the new mom try her best to calm her baby, I just couldn't resist helping out a bit. I could tell it was gas, and I knew she couldn't. How could she? She's new at this! After introducing myself, commiserating a bit, and telling her how well she's doing with the toughest job ever, I suggested she try baby face down with some back rubs. She was grateful, and it worked...for a while. Thankfully, once baby had ramped back up to the ear-piercing...

I'm so happy to say that the Tuesday blog is back! I know I've been posting with some irregularity, and I realized I much prefer regularity and consistency than sporadic communication and haphazard scheduling. Which actually brings me to the theme of this blog, which is yoga tools for navigating change. (You’re going to want to save this one–it’s packed with helpful info.)

The Northern Hemisphere is now in a transition to Fall, and with that comes a change of season in Ayurveda (the sister science of yoga which means "the science of life.") as well. We move into vata season, which has the qualities of cold, dry, windy, and change. This means dry skin, cold wind, and fluctuations in many aspects of life.

The fluctuations and agitations of vata can bring with it changes in digestion, sleep disruptions, and increased anxiety. But thankfully, there are things you can do to mediate these issues! For each of these areas, I'm going to offer you a yoga tool and a lifestyle...

 Another school year has begun here in Austin. Whether you are tethered to the schedule of a young person, you work in the school system, or neither of these things, you can likely feel the electricity in the air as students, teachers, staff, and administrators head back into the classroom for a fresh start and a new beginning. 

Right now in Online Yoga Membership, we are doing a series called “In One Word.” In this series, the whole supporting theme is one word. Often I use stories, affirmations, quotes, or text as the inspiration for our heart theme, but this is much more concise. It’s one word. How does each word reveal itself through repetition? How does it feel to embody that word? What are the layers of the word as we delve deeper into it through breath, movement, contemplation, and sound? 

The first word was ONE. 

The second word was GRACE.

Tuesday’s word was BEGIN.

It has been a really profound experience to...

It’s finally arrived! The time to take our first born off to college. Needless to say, this has put quite a load on this week’s to-do list. But I didn’t want this week to go by without giving you a yoga to-do list. Not all tasks need to be drudgery!

First,

This week’s podcast episode is the culmination of our “season of delight” on Jess on the Mountain, and the message is essential to your health and wellness. In it, I explore how an open and blooming sahasrara, the crown chakra, involves being part of a community, how as yoga therapists we’re trained to make sure our clients are connected to one, and why it makes such a difference to our overall well being, and a life that is healthy and delightful.

“Sahasrara is where we open to that deep sense of connection to a greater power–whether that’s god, humanity, consciousness, whatever. I’m saying that in many ways, it’s the combination of those present that...

Do you have a practice around the way you see the world? Are you a glass half full, half empty, or overflowing glass kinda person? Because the way we see things is what dictates how we respond to situations, how we feel about situations, how we think and how we engage with others, it is exceedingly important to investigate, and hopefully improve, the way we see the world. 

When I was doing my yoga teacher training back in NYC in 2003, it was in the lineage of Anusara Yoga, developed by John Friend, who came out of the Iyengar tradition. In this particular way of teaching, there is a great importance placed on the theme of the class. It was a heart-based practice that also had a very strong alignment component. Basically, we were to facilitate awakening the hearts of our students to beauty and grace, and help their whole body, mind, and spirit come into alignment with that awakening. It was a really beautiful style of teaching and learning. 

And it changed the...

Have you been keeping up with the Summer Olympics this week? Once again, I’m completely enamored, impressed, and inspired by these amazing athletes from around the globe. Their heartwarming stories of trials, failures, injuries, successes, and true dedication light me up and make me want to do and be better! 

And, of course, I see in these athletes something we yogis are always going for in our postures and daily lives: 

The balance of effort and ease, or sthira and sukha. 

It seems counterintuitive to look at the high level of effort and discipline it takes to become an elite athlete (or an elite anything) and think there is some ease there, but I believe there is. Just watch the swimmers. They are ALL IN with their physical and mental abilities. They are pushing to their absolute edge. At the end, they are panting and red. And yet…

There is such grace and beauty as they move through the water. There is no flailing. There is...

I'm happy to report I'm easing back into all the parts of my teaching that I love, including my podcast. This season we are focusing on the theme of delight, and it was truly a delight to get back to recording. Please allow me to share with you about this week's episode of Jess on the Mountain: A podcast about yoga, chakras, and becoming your own guru. 

In the journey of traveling up the mountain of chakras, from base to top, this week we are moving through the heart, where we ask the question,

How do we delight in love?

How does the quality of delight, that rises from the pleasure principle in the second chakra, make its way to the heart so we know that we are loved, are worthy of love, and can love others well?

To love is also to lose, to risk heart ache, to be vulnerable. We have to let go of a lot in order to let love in. I’m not the first to say it: Love is hard. And it’s such a big topic to tackle, I’m going to a trusted...

Are you living “within human scale?” This phrase has been dancing around in my head since I first heard it on Brené Brown’s podcast, Unlocking Us. She tells a funny story about getting her hair done and working on her computer at the same time. It provoked a thoughtful conversation between her and her stylist, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  Listen on Apple. Listen on Spotify.

It seems to me that we are indeed living beyond human scale right now. Between our social media feeds, the 24 hour news cycle, podcasts, and online news outlets, we are bombarded with world events and everyone’s opinion of them. 

But we’re not meant to take all that in. 

And if we try, we’re living beyond our capacities to consume, digest, assimilate, and release. We can only overwhelm our systems for so long before anxiety, sleeplessness, agitation, digestive distress, and depression creep in and make us feel less than...

As I was sitting in my meditation this morning, I got to a nice, quiet place, and then suddenly I was flooded with ideas. I was bombarded with thoughts of how this can work, and that can change, and this problem get solved, and ideas just kept interrupting my quiet. I tried to say to the thoughts, “Good, let's think about that later… Let's think about that later.” And then I thought, “Hey! I'm having a creative impulse. Let's just sit with it! Let's let it percolate, because apparently that's what my system would like to do right now.” (I'm convinced there's a difference between distraction and inspiration, and I am trying to discern the difference between the two.)

After my inspiration-filled meditation, I started thinking about creativity itself. If you believe you're not a creative person, perhaps that's because we usually think of creativity as the creative arts. Maybe you don't paint, or sing, or write music.

But believe me when I...