4 Steps for Shoulder Stability in Weight-Bearing Yoga Poses

Once you understand the anatomy and actions of the shoulder girdle, you can delve into making its parts work together more intelligently.

 FIRST STEP Get acquainted with the anatomy of the shoulder girdle and the actions of its muscles by starting with Tiffany Cruikshank’s Guide to the Shoulder Girdle + Its Actions

Eka Pada Koundinyasana Variation

I moved from the yoga mecca of Los Angeles where yoga classes are virtually offered 24-7 to a small town in central Florida. My practice went from easy and accessible to, “am I really in the mood to do a home practice?” Needless to say, the move did leaps and bounds for my soul but didn’t care much for my yoga practice.

Summer Sports Guide

Maxine Bahns got hooked on the exhilaration of athletic competition in 2000, when she entered her first triathlon at age 30 and finished third in her age group. "It fired me up like nothing else," says the Los Angeles-based actress. But as she entered more and more races, she grew increasingly uncomfortable with their physical and mental toll.

Play Ball

When Melody Parker, a former professional volleyball player and the coach of the Santa Barbara City College men's volleyball team, first introduced her athletes to yoga, they were skeptical. But Parker, who has been practicing for 15 years, persevered.

Joy Ride

It's early in her morning practice when Gillian Gibree takes a familiar asana: Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose). To start waking up her arms and legs, she presses evenly through her hands and feet. She lifts her sitting bones skyward as she relaxes her neck and finds extension in her long spine.

Yoga Takes a Hike

It's summer, and a hike in the sunshine beckons—but so does the yoga class that starts in 15 minutes. Fortunately, opportunities to mix a session of invigorating trail hiking with focused, mat-free asana practice are everywhere these days.

Play it Forward

If you love sports you know that injuries come with the territory - caused by repetitive motion, imbalances in your biomechanics, or in many cases both! But if you practice yoga, you have a great tool at your disposal for preventing injuries. A yoga practice encourages you to take inventory of your body as you practice.

How To Look Good Naked

Come on. Admit it. You want to look good naked.
Everyone does.
Is that enough to make you set up an exercise regiment and STICK TO IT? Or take what you eat into consideration? If not, why not? Laziness? Too much on your plate? Don’t feel like dealing with it? How important to you is it?
I’m going to put it out there. Call me crazy, but...

How To Get Your Sex Drive Back

Most women don’t even know they’ve lost their sex drive until they get it back full force. When asked, most women say they would prefer an evening in the bedroom over a night on the couch, but let’s get real, when’s the last time you had your man naked and covered in chocolate? 

In truth, how bad you want it (and how creative you are in the bedroom) is directly influenced by birth

Straight to the Heart

When former president Bill Clinton mentioned in a CNN interview that he'd adopted a near-vegan diet for the sake of his heart's health, the media went wild. Once known for his love of hamburgers and junk food, Clinton—who had bypass surgery in 2004 and an angioplasty in 2010 to remove blockages from a clogged artery

Western Science vs. Eastern Wisdom

t's 7:30 a.m. at the Vivekananda ashram - Prashanti Kuteeram, or "the abode of peace"- situated on a bucolic hundred acres outside the city of Bangalore, India. The third "Om" from the crowd assembled for morning Bhagavad Gita chanting is starting to fade when a familiar melody rises from

Diet For A Healthy Planet

Kat Saks grew up in Montana, where meat was always on the table. In fact, she had never considered not eating meat. But when she began yoga teacher training at Laughing Lotus Yoga Center in Manhattan and her instructor mentioned that vegetarianism was one way to practice ahimsa, the yogic principle of nonharming, she decided to try it for the duration of the program.

Healthy Heart

Drinking a couple of eight-ounce cups of coffee a day may protect against heart failure, according to a recent study at Harvard University. But there's a sweet spot, since drinking too much coffee (four or more cups a day) appears to increase your risk of heart problems. "Moderate consumption of caffeinated coffee was associated with an 11 percent lower risk of heart failure," says study author Elizabeth Mostofsky.

Magic Touch

Wheel Pose first brought Stacey Rosenberg face-to-face with her body's limitations back in the late 1990s. She was a serious yoga student then, with a good five years of practice and a Sivananda teacher training under her belt. Still, every time she pushed up into Urdhva Dhanurasana, she experienced resistance in her lower back and pain in her knees. Thinking more practice was the answer, she practiced more.

Soak it

Increase your exposure to morning light and you may slow the onset of common aging-related illnesses such as insomnia, cognitive slowdown, and depression, according to a growing body of research. When your eyes take in bright light, especially the blue-spectrum light found in sunlight, nerve cells in the retina send messages to the brain's internal clock. This helps set your body's circadian rhythm, the synching of physiological processes with the 24-hour solar cycle.

Flight Risk

Air travel may be more than just uncomfortable; it could be the cause of a serious medical condition referred to as deep vein thrombosis (DVT). DVT occurs after periods of prolonged immobility when a blood clot—usually formed in the lower leg, but sometimes beginning in the thigh or pelvis—blocks a major vein. Typically, such a clot dissolves once a traveler reaches his or her destination and walks around.

Why Yoga Works When Diets Fail

Lanita Varshell is a round, vibrant woman with a zest for life, a joyful smile, a gentle voice, and a passion for teaching yoga to women with weight issues. But Varshell wasn't always this spirited or committed to yoga. Six years ago, she was incapacitated by fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome and could barely care for her two young children.

Less is More

Many yogis are reminded of their excess when they are attempting a twisting pose and a roll of flesh on the hips or abdomen gets in the way. And while most know the importance of reducing unnecessary fat for health reasons, they may not realize how excess weight can hinder their practice by reducing vitality and restricting range of movement.

Allergy Antidote

At least 35.9 million Americans annually are plagued by seasonal allergic rhinitis, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. And the number of sufferers has doubled in the last 20 years, due to factors such as environmental pollution, poor diet, and increased stress, which make our immune, nervous, and respiratory systems hypersensitive. Allergies aren't just annoying; they can affect sleep, concentration, and productivity and put you in a bad mood.

Happy Feet

They hold us up all day long, they get us everywhere we need to go, and they connect our bodies to the earth. Some yoga teachers even call the feet the "roots" of the body.
Yet for all that our feet do for us, we don't do much for them in return. We cram them into tight shoes, pound along on them all day, and generally ignore them unless they're giving us serious trouble. The result is that at some point in their lives 7 of 10 people will suffer from foot problems, many of which are entirely preventable.