YogaRejuveNation

self-care, healing, & health at every age through yoga, meditation, and healthy living.

Thoughts

The Art of Self-Healing

The Art of Self-Healing

December 21, 2022 No Comments

After 25 years of practicing yoga, I feel compelled to share what I’ve learned along the way with you. The physical practice has brought me strength, flexibility, and health; and the lessons I’ve learned, through facing and overcoming obstacles that once seemed so insurmountable, are much deeper than the physical. False assumptions that I once made about myself have been proven wrong, time after time. I have been continuously surprised and amazed by my ever-evolving journey through yoga. The story is still being written, and each day when I step onto my mat, new revelations await. I will always be a student. Approaching this practice with a beginner’s mind and an open heart, letting go of judgment, comparison, and self-criticism, has allowed me to experience the bliss and joy of healing. Each day I experience more calm, more ease, more openness, more stability, more balance, more peace. Each day I

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Now Is The Time

December 1, 2022 No Comments

Friends,  Now is the time to prioritize our health — physically, mentally, and emotionally. More than ever, we are understanding quite starkly that breath is Life.  Drawing attention to our breath in the present moment has immediate health benefits for our respiratory, circulatory, immune, digestive, and nervous systems.  Yoga, a moving meditation united with the conscious breath, is a powerfully calming, stress-relieving tool for self-care, immune protection, and healing. So no matter what age, body type, flexibility, or lack thereof — Let’s all take a daily time-out from the madness, a chance to come together to learn and practice coping skills and strengthen bodies, minds, and spirits in a safe, communal space. Join me online from your home, for gentle and relaxing breathing, stretching, & meditation sessions, as well as invigorating, endorphin-enlivening workouts. (I prefer the term “work-ins”, as you’ll also be listening to what’s going on inside).  Everyone is

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Moving Through Injury

November 8, 2022 No Comments

It’s very natural to run from pain. The human condition is to seek that which feels good, and repel that which feels bad. There is a common misconception in today’s commercialized Yoga climate that Yoga is supposed to take away all your pain. It’s true that Yoga alleviates the discomfort of stiffness, and so yes, on a certain level, it does take pain away, over time. But in the process of transformation, when you are moving beyond your comfort zone and into the edge of discomfort, there will inevitably be uncomfortable sensations. If we react to these uncomfortable thresholds with anxiety, hold our breath, force, resist, or push in order to get deeper into a posture, we will come up against pain. If we surrender via our breath and drop a bit further in, perhaps just a hair beyond our perceived boundary, we may be surprised to find we create

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Yoga: A life-long journey

October 23, 2022 No Comments

No matter what age we are — we must resist the temptation to assume that we are fixed, static, and unchangeable. We are in fact in a constant state of flux; we are not the same from one moment to the next, let alone one hour, day, month, year, decade. We must not assume that when we hit a certain age, we are “who we are”, and that it’s “all downhill from here” — time to give up, get depressed about life, and stop growing. We grow and learn and thrive and evolve until the moment we die; and for all we know, continue to, afterwards. We must embrace the different forms that this change takes — physical, mental, emotional, spiritual — and welcome the unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable feelings that may accompany this transformation. This is a big part of our yoga practice, as well as hopefully of our

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Practicing With Gratitude

September 26, 2022 No Comments

Today on my mat, it came to me in a flash that I take my practice — and myself — way too seriously. I’ve wrestled in my life with being what you might call a “type A” achiever. From an early age as a little ballerina and straight A student, I’ve tended to put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed and excel. This of course has resulted in some achievement, and that’s not necessarily a “bad” thing; but this attitude of pushing myself ever harder has resulted in a chronic, persistent stress; the stress of always striving to be something better. No matter what rung of the ladder I would climb, there was always one above me to reach. The practice teaches me that paradoxically, the more I can learn to relieve myself of that burden mentally, the more my physical body will relax and cooperate. The intensity

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Smile-asana

September 21, 2022 No Comments

Next time you step onto your mat, try this experiment. Make the focus of your practice the art of “Smile-asana”: in which the outer edges of the lips curl upward, the eyes relax half-open and half-closed, the wrinkles of the forehead melt away, and the heart surrenders and glows. Sometimes Smile-asana is quite challenging. When you feel anxiety in your practice start to mount, draw your attention back to it, and begin slowly counting your breath: Inhale: one, two, three. Exhale: one, two, three. Above all other asanas, practice Smile-Asana. Prioritize it, along with your deep, consistent breath. Find the bliss in forgiving yourself. Allow yourself a chance to learn from mistakes. If you fall out of a pose, laugh, and get back up. Give yourself a break. In our materialistic, consumer-driven society, so many forces conspire to make us feel “lesser-than”. Everything around us is based upon striving, achievement,

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