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5 Tools To Achieve Inner Peace NOW

Do you want to levitate your way to the supermarket? Do you want to handle problems with a smile on your face and a skip in your step?

Ancient Yogic wisdom tells you how to do it with the Niyamas- the 2nd limb of ashtanga (8 limbs) yoga and the last 5 Living Principles of Yoga. Per usual, the ancient gurus have got our back.

The Niyamas

The observances, internal disciplines, codes to live soulfully and relate to our own inner world.

• Saucha- Purity. Stay clean! Not just hygienically, but in thoughts and actions and food. Don’t weigh yourself down with unnecessary baggage.

• Santosa- Contentment. Not to be confused with complacency, contentment is appreciating the present moment for what it is, while still having ambition to improve.

• Tapas- Self-discipline, training your senses. Sometimes negative patterns need a little fire to burn through them. Hard-work can be fantastic medicine to blast through limitations.

• ...

YOUR KULA IS YOUR COMMUNITY OF THE HEART.

The people you turn to when you’re happy, sad, a little frustrated, or anything in between. They are the crew that makes you feel validated in your oh-so-human experience, a social space where you can feel seen as the greatest, largest, most phenomenal version of yourself, the one that is ever-present and waiting to be recognized.

Kula’s can appear in various stages of life and you can collect them as you go. They can be groups with whom you have a shared understanding of a shared experience, philosophy, education, or job. The stronger the ties, the more more likely you are to be happy. Across the world, The Blue Zones of Happiness indicate that one of the strongest corollary factor between the worlds’ happiest places is the sense of community.

Find your Kula by following your own desires. The more true you are to yourself, the better you will be able to find a Kula you resonate with. What are you...

SMILE AND SINK IN

Are you looking for easy ways to enjoy savasana? Although shavasana (or corpse pose) might look like the most effortless thing in the world, many yogis struggle to find comfort in this challenging posture. Whether it’s a racing mind or a fatigued body, dropping into enlightenment can seem impossible. Have you found yourself impatiently waiting for the instructor break the unending silence? The crew at OM has a few suggestions to make stillness a little more accessible.

Grab a Bolster

It isn’t uncommon for yogis to experience lower back pain in shavasana – especially if they’ve been performing a lot of backbends. Although taking the time to warm up before performing backbends and learning to backbend safely can help ease lower back pain, sliding a bolster under your knees can do wonders to treat the occasional ache. Give the instructor a wave and they’ll bring you a bolster if you forgot to grab one at the beginning of class!

Snuggle up...

The Doshas

Pitta, Kapha, and Vata may be terms you’ve heard about here and there, but what exactly are they? How do you know what you are? Do you pick your own? Does someone else choose for you?

The Doshas are are different combinations of the five elements which create three different mind-body types. Dosha is loosely translated as “energetic force”.  These elemental combinations express unique characteristics or blends of physical, emotional and mental patterns for each being.  This is a principle concept of Ayurveda, yoga’s sister science.  In understanding the Doshas better, we can gain insight into ourselves and our natural states.  We can also learn to develop yoga classes that are dosha specific and even begin to recognize certain characteristics in our students in order to provide the most effective sequencing possible. The main elements of each dosha are as follows…

Pitta: fire and water

Kapha:...

Let’s tackle some heart salutations! The beginning of a flow class typically starts with some kind of comfortable seated position. We are asked to tune into the breathe and focus our awareness. From here, the teacher will guide us into some gentle warming postures.

From my experience, almost every class uses cat/cow tilts on the hands and knees to begin to wake up the back body and the heart and chest. This combination of movement softly stimulates the abdominal organs and starts to connect your movement to your breath. The mind begins to calm down and balance and awareness are enhanced.

Everything sounds great, and is! However, if you are a teacher or regular practitioner and are craving some variety in your warm up, heart salutations could be your next cat/cow.

This variation of heart salutation is designed to give a similar warming of the back, chest, neck, and shoulders. The movement is centered more around the heart and the shoulders as opposed to the hips and the...

A singular journey through a universal experience

Yoga Teacher Training: (Day One) 

8:00 a.m. – As I walk up to the lower entrance of Cashew Hill to meet the other girls, it feels reminiscent of all those summers I spent in camp. Nervous excitement, and quiet chatter can be felt and heard before we all walk in and head up the stairs. We’re gathered to take part in a non-immersive yoga teacher training through the Caribe Yoga Academy (CYA) that will take place every second weekend, over the course of the next three months.

Some of the girls have never seen the space before, because in all actuality, it’s only a few days old. We are the first group to be training at the CYA’s brand new facility here on Cashew Hill. We all take in the site together, along with the main attraction; the enormous wooden platform perfectly positioned to offer a clear view of the Caribbean Sea. The studio space is surrounded on all sides by the lush, green jungle and...

Everything contains both yin and yang energy. We have all seen the popular swirling black & white “yin-yang” icon, which symbolizes the importance of balance and harmony between light and dark, hot and cold, masculine and feminine etc. We are constantly in a state of both yin and yang, however, we can place ourselves in states where one or the other is dominant. Often times in our hectic daily lives, Yang energy dominates our bodies and minds. In order to remain balanced, increasing Yin in our lives can be highly beneficial.

Yang energy is masculine, fiery, dominating, aggressive, hard, and hot. It represents fast and loud, movement and light, aggression and strength. This is the energy that takes over when we are in an intense hot yoga class, slipping in sweat with a strong focused mind. We feel the internal fire building with heart racing and muscles contracted, burning up all of our impurities. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Yin energy. This...