I know there are so many strains of yoga - and for the yoga purists it might seem overwhelming, daunting and just plain hokey. Well not to thousands of practitioners and students who take some of these more untraditional practices and call it there own.

Enter Laughter Yoga. Laughter Yoga (LY) is a relatively new style of yoga (more…)

Many in the yoga community tend to use natural or homeopathic cures, or turn to Ayurveda or Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) before turning to over-the-counter prescription drugs. The general consensus being Western medicine treats the symptoms but doesn’t get to the cause or the root of the problem. However, I completely recognize and thank the pharmaceutical companies (more…)

While teaching yoga in New York City these days, at the end of class during our closing mantras, I’ve been asking my students to turn their attention to the destruction that has occurred in Myanmar and China. No matter your politics, there’s no denying that in Myanmar, a cyclone has taken the lives of, at last count, 134,000 according to Reuter’s leaving 2.5 million (more…)

Dan Buettner’s,The Blue Zones: Tips for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest is a great read — informative and inspirational. Having a 75 year old mother that defied the odds after a major stroke and lives every day to the fullest, I found this book so on the mark regarding the combination of mental activities, family involvement, spiritual involvement and food choices that have kept the subjects showcased in this book reaching 100 years of age and beyond! Mr. Buettner’s street creds are impressive.

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The following is part two of my Q & A session with New York and Paris based Feng Shui and Yoga Consultant, Jade Dressler.

Michelle Barge, beYOU.tv:
That’s so deep and profound, Jade (re: the Ba-Gua). How does color and placement play a role?

Jade Dressler:
Think about what happens when you enter a park, (more…)

Q & A with New York and Paris based Feng Shui and Yoga Consultant, Jade Dressler

I’ve always been fascinated by Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese system of balancing the energies in your work and living environments to insure health, wealth and prosperity. As a yogi, I toyed with it a bit and have a few tips I’ve learned (more…)

Many of you might think I’m on a sexual tear or afflicted with spring fever after writing on the Orgasmic Diet and now how yoga can benefit your sex life, but the book on the market, Better Sex Through Yoga by Jacquie Noelle really got me thinking seriously about the topic, and after Googling the phrase, “better sex through yoga” I’m not the only one thinking about it. (more…)

It starts as a dull sensation in the back of your head, nothing to worry about, but it keeps growing, louder and stronger, until you can’t ignore it anymore. You’ve got a headache and you need relief! Traffic, people, noise, lights, smells and daily angst seem almost unbearable. You have to stop this headache, cold in its tracks; otherwise nothing else will get done. You dash towards the closest rifling through a stash of pills before you stop – in this day and age why can’t you find natural headache relief? (more…)

Every morning upon waking, I make coffee and sit in silence for a few moments, gather my mala and begin saying, aloud or silently, a mantra. I say different mantras throughout the day, as well, and my yoga practice has made me more aware and conscious of using mantras. But I think that the average person thinks that mantras are either just for monks or devotees. Not at all!

Mantra is simply a group of words that have a phonetic significance repeated over a over. Mantra, first and foremost, is sound. And the use of sound and repeating words, with spiritual significance or not, help to relieve stress, lower blood pressure and bring calm and focus to the body. (more…)

If you’re on Facebook like me (and let’s be honest, millions of us are), odds are good that you’ve been invited to bite, rate, vote on, compare or buy & sell your friends on a almost hourly basis. Most days, it can become down right annoying. True, I can also send them some good Karma (and who can’t use that), but without sounding too much like Andy Rooney, how is sending my friends another fruitless application going to shift the cosmic flow of the universe to reward me? I almost feel as if I’m going to receive bad Karma for such behavior.
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