You Are Beautiful Exactly As You Are

You Are Beautiful Exactly As You Are

I am telling you this because we all have things we’re embarrassed about. Maybe it has to do with our shape, or our voice or a part of our body. Each and every one of us has something we wish we could change. Modern medicine has made it possible for many of us to "fix" these things but at what cost? Do we ultimately feel better once we've undergone these corrective surgeries? Does it really improve our sense of self? 

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How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Don't Freak Out

How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Don't Freak Out

Getting ready for an impromptu camping trip this weekend in Hocking Hills. Went to Whole Foods for organic eats for camping and when I get home, I heard this hissing noise coming from my car. Of course just my luck, I had a nail in my tire. Made a mad dash to the tire place without even unloading the groceries. It always seems that when I'm crunched for time, something throws a wrench in my day.

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Developing Self-Compassion

Developing Self-Compassion

How can we be compassionate with ourselves on and off the yoga mat? I chose this heart opener or Urdhva Danurasana because it is a pose I need to have a lot of compassion for myself when practicing. Backbends are tough for me. I see very little progress with these poses and often wonder why my back isn't more flexible. I remind myself that this is my journey and to not get caught up in trying to achieve some advanced version of a pose. Maybe one day I'll have a beautiful curve in my spine but then again maybe I won't and that's perfectly fine. In the end it doesn't determine how good a person I am or even how dedicated to my practice I am.

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The Importance of Developing a Positive Mental Attitude

The Importance of Developing a Positive Mental Attitude

One of the big things I've taken away from all this solitude and time to reflect is that it benefits me to stay positive and in almost all cases, negativity and getting upset, angry and worked up, actually make the situation worse and more unbearable. What a simple thing. So common sense.

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Mindful Eating

Mindful Eating

So many of us rush through eating. We watch TV, we stand up, we don't pay attention to the act of eating. Ayurveda, yoga's "sister science" stresses the importance of mindful eating because when we don't eat mindfully, our body can't digest properly.

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How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Conquering Fear

How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Conquering Fear

When we’re children it’s so much easier to conquer certain fears and in general many fears don’t even exist yet because you haven’t become jaded. You still look at the universe as benevolent and good. You haven’t allowed heartache and disappointment to overtake your worldview. You’re blissfully unaware or conversely you’re only aware of the brighter side of life.

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How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Dropping the Victim Mentality

How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Dropping the Victim Mentality

For a while I was asking myself, "why does this always happen to me?" It was easy to fall into this victim mentality like everything was happening to me rather than with me. However, when I began looking at it through the lens of what it could teach me, I realized I hadn't recognized what I needed to learn.

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How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Prajnaparadha

How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Prajnaparadha

Prajnaparadha - incorrect belief, believing in separateness, duality, "other", forgetting our divinity, that we are a soul having a human journey, that we are a human 'being' living on this earth feeling pain, love, happiness, regret, grief and all the other emotions that are part of every human journey.

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Finding Balance in my Yoga Practice

Finding Balance in my Yoga Practice

Balance is such a central tenet of Ayurveda as well. When I describe Ayurveda to people, the word I always come back to is balance. Ayurveda teaches us to find balance in all that we do. The path to health and overall wellbeing is by finding balance.

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How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Change Your Thoughts to Change Your Reality

How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Change Your Thoughts to Change Your Reality

"Whether you think you or you think you can't, you're probably right." It's my favorite quote and Henry Ford couldn't be more right. I can decide how I feel about something and I can change the way I feel just by changing my outlook.

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How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Stop Expecting to Win

How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Stop Expecting to Win

“Sometimes when you no longer see yourself as the hero of your own drama, you know, expecting victory after victory, and you understand deeply that this is not paradise. Somehow we’re, especially the privileged ones that we are, we somehow embrace the notion that this veil of tears is perfectable that you can get it all straight. I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. I tried to put that into the song 1,000 kisses deep, where you understand that you abandon your masterpiece and you sink into the real masterpiece.” - Leonard Cohen

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How to Develop Positive Habits

How to Develop Positive Habits

I’ve been cultivating new daily sadhana practices since my return home from Panchakarma. Each morning I awoke before sunrise and meditated. This is something that I’ve been wanting to cultivate into my daily life since even before I began my Ayurvedic journey. It’s taken me some time to make this a daily practice, but a shift has taken place at Panchakarma, as it always does, and I’m starting to feel the roots of change take hold in the soul.

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How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Tell Yourself You're Awesome

How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Tell Yourself You're Awesome

It’s hard for me to proud of myself. It’s hard for most of us to be proud of ourselves. And I’m not perfect, I mess up lots of things. We all do. But we’re all good at something and we shouldn’t be afraid to give ourselves props when props are due.

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