Notice what is true for you.
Yoga helps reduce suffering ... and one of the ways it does this is by changing our perspective of the suffering, which includes recognizing that our greatest pain in life often becomes our greatest wisdom, motivator and pathway to loving others.
When I was 13, my father caught me off guard with his video camera in hand and a pretend microphone. I still cringe a bit as I remember watching it later. He asked me "So, Julie, tell me how are you enjoying basketball?" He followed this question with 4 or 5 more questions about my life.
My answer, again and again, was "I don't know."
I had lost my sense of my Self. I was so externally focused on getting approval and succeeding in the eyes of others that I didn't even know what my own thoughts and feelings were. My mantra might have been "What do you want me to say?"
We know from research that this happens to a lot of girls, typically between the ages of 11 and 13. They begin to raise their hands less in class. A playful confidence and joyous outburst of thought turns into a self-conscious fear of saying the wrong thing, and not being liked. Any inner knowing gets stifled as attention moves outward to how we look and how others perceive us.
Enter Yoga. Though not a quick fix, yoga is founded upon the idea of 'Realized Knowledge' or 'Inner Knowing'. Rather than teaching, we are often asking questions of our students. How does this feel? Notice your body. How is your breathing today? What does it feel like to imagine you are in nature? What brings you great joy? What helps you feel strong? What brings you stress?
Had my first experience of Yoga happened at a younger age, perhaps I would have been connected to my sense of 'self' during those difficult years. But my own first experience of Yoga came when I was in college, and I will never forget the very first time I did a guided relaxation where we were invited to scan our body from our toes all the way to the top of our head. We were then instructed to walk around campus in a more mindful way. I had never before experienced my internal landscape in this way and I still remember how if felt different...stronger and peaceful...to walk around in my new sense of Self.
May we all take a deep breath, notice what is true for us, and trust that our unique understanding and expression of life is what is most beautiful.
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For the teen girls in your life in need of support and guidance through this challenging time, we are offering Yoga for Teen Girls: Tools for managing stress and anxiety, with Leigh Sloss. A four week series beginning Sunday, February 10 from 5:30-6:45 pm. For more information please click here.
We all know that music is powerful. It can inspire you, open your heart, bring you peace and touch your soul. But how does music do all of this? What exactly is it about this medium that makes it such an amazing and essential part of our lives? As a musician and a board-certified music therapist, I’ve spent many years researching these questions and applying the answers to my work. 
One of my first yoga teachers told me that dogs spend the entire day meditating. That seemed like a strange comment at the time, and I didn't really understand it. But I wanted to seem like an enlightened yoga student, so I gave him my most contemplative look and nodded my head in agreement, utterly dumbfounded. I forgot about that comment for a long time, until recently, during a discussion on meditation practices at YogaLife. That seemingly indecipherable comment took on an entirely different meaning. 
The five branches of Yoga seek to decrease the control of the Ego so that we can connect with something greater than ourselves and be guided by a virtuous intention.
While writing my last two novels, I had a very specific morning routine: I got up, did my yoga practice, and then went to work on the most recent manuscript, writing between 1,000 and 2,000 words.
