Yoga Philosophy

There’s a lot of debate in the blogging/social media world about what yoga is and is not. Popular yoga is often seen as a sped-up version...

Not long ago, I found a link to a short autobiographical account of B.K.S. Iyengar’s journey into yoga. He began his journey into yoga at age...

I come from a musical family. My parents were both classical singers and my sisters and I all grew up playing piano and other instruments. I...

The yamas and niyamas give us guidance about living our daily lives. But they can also provide a framework for our asana practice and teaching. A...

When I was in college, my roommates and I listened to music non-stop. We studied to Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and cleaned house to the...

    Every living being breathes. This includes all animals—even single-celled ones—and all plant life. Human beings take an average of 23,000 breaths each day. Our...

Asana, the physical practice, is the most recognizable of the eight limbs of yoga. If you mention “yoga,” most people will automatically picture a person in...

Many years ago, I read an interview with Rajiv and Swati Chanchani in Yoga Rahasya, an Iyengar Yoga publication from India. In the article, they shared...

In a recent post, I wrote about the Eight Limbs of Yoga. The Eight Limbs are a framework for practicing all aspects of the system of...

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog that sketched out a very basic outline of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Of course, the sutras can’t...

What is yoga? A couple weeks ago, I attempted to summarize the different aspects of yoga. But I stated the caveat that yoga is not so...

What is yoga? Good question. And you’re not likely to get a concrete answer. When a philosophy has been around as long as yoga has, perhaps...

Walk into almost any yoga asana class and the first thing you’ll notice is that the overwhelming majority of students are women. For at least some...

If you engage at all in social media, you’ve probably noticed a pattern. There seems to be permission for reckless abandon in the way we engage...

Mindfulness for a New Year I want to say at the outset that I’ve never been big on New Year’s resolutions. It’s not that resolving to...

How Practicing Santosha Can Bring the Magic Back I’m not sure when the winter holidays began being equated with stress, but I think I know why....

Most who practice yoga these days have heard of the word ahimsa. We might have even read some of the in-depth literature on it, or practiced...

’Tis the Season of Generosity One of my clearest, most nostalgic memories from growing up is that of the excitement of Christmas morning. Our parents would...