Pausing when you feel anxious takes takes incredible courage. Returning to Ease Anxiety, depression, and heightened stress levels are widespread in our society. Globally, anxiety and depression have reached their highest recorded levels in history. Here is a speedy step-by-step method to help you come out of discursive thoughts and return home to yourself: (this is a small excerpt from Returning to Ease series that starts Jan 20, 2026) Here at the main faculties of a mind in

When I have a student come for yoga or a Private Session, whose intake form and file shows they have osteoporosis, I ask them one question: " Do you have a sense of what exercises to do and what to avoid?" Here is a "safer" way to spinal twist when you have osteoporosis. For most people who have been diagnosed with osteoporosis or osteopenia, they wonder what yoga poses they are allowed to do. Here is a comprehensive article from osteoporosis.ca At the end of the article y

Why are we osteoporotic? How to live freely with osteoporosis and osteopenia. My mother had osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. My Mom laughing--standard behaviour for her!--with her brother-in-law. To begin, a few facts. Osteopenia is the precursor to osteoporosis. A T-score between -1 and -2.5 indicates osteopenia, a condition of low bone density. The T-score compares your bone density to that of a healthy young adult of the same gender; a score of -1.0 or higher is conside

Poses that open the chest and shoulders help with anxious or depressive emotions. Practice poses outside to enhance the breathing aspect, here I am in High Park finding a quiet spot during the Cherry Blossom Festival! A Quickie Primer to introduce how I teach the ability to experience anxiety or depression without being defined by it: A crucial method to assist yourself when feeling anxious or depressed (as both anxiety and depression manifest similarly in the brain) is to e

Friends in the studio opening the front ribs and lungs helped them release anxiety. After looking at all of the speculation about the causes of the rise of anxiety and depression in society, one could look and see that we are malnourished. We are separated from each other, living in a world that is experiencing scarcity. Whether it be scarcity of touch, scarcity of face-to-face contact, scarcity of breathing together, scarcity of beauty, or scarcity of silence. The scarcity s

Poses that lengthen the low back and twist into the kidneys may help raise energy levels during perimenopause and menopause, I found they truly made a huge difference. Perimenopause: Instead of being able to chart her regular monthly menstrual cycle and know when her levels of progesterone and estrogen will affect her mood and energy, during the perimenopause a woman’s hormone levels will fluctuate unpredictably in peaks and troughs.   The levels can change on a daily basis

Legs up the wall poses and opening the hips to help alleviate anxiety Menopause   What is The Menopause? Before I introduce and outline this stage of life, I would like to offer some notes I have collected from my students and clients:   Here are some comments from women in menopause and perimenopause: ·      More sensitive to stress, before could do more and it didn’t have the same affect. ·      One student who is helping herself through the hormonal shift says she is prone

In the studio with wonderful sound artist (I'll find her name and put it in soon!!) For today's blog I borrow from our wonderful Joni Mitchell, about how love, real love is lived. “I don’t know if I’ve learned anything yet! I did learn how to have a happy home, but I consider myself fortunate in that regard because I could’ve rolled right by it. Everybody has a superficial side and a deep side, but this culture doesn’t place much value on depth — we don’t have shamans or soot

INTRODUCTION “The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” ~ KAHLIL GIBRAN (1883–1931), LEBANESE POET To live in joy is to live exactly as yourself. You feel alive and free no matter what happens in your life. The experience of constant joy is so completely who you are that how you feel doesn’t fluctuate . You say what you have to say, you feel what you feel, and you do what is important

When Constant Joy Began: The Wizard of Oz of Bodybuilding When I stepped on stage, my sense of being alive and complete absorbed into one moment. I filled in. I became all I am and all that I am here to do. And I was doing it. It was the Wizard of Oz moment; I went from black and white to full colour. At the age of twenty-one I came to know what life was for. It was for this feeling. The joy I felt was full on cellular. I was connected to, and in absolute harmony with, the wo

In my eight week series Returning to Ease, to help work with and manage emotions, I outline the difference between the brain and the mind.  Here is a Cole's Notes summary of the difference between the brain and the mind. When we realize that the mind is not simply the thoughts in the brain, we can use the mind to change the brain. Now, for a speedy review: BRAIN:  is part of the extended nervous system that’s distributed throughout the body, about a 100 billion neurons in th