Oil Pulling or Kavala-Gandusha – What Is This Ayurvedic Therapy?

Kavala oil pulling
Oral health is thought to be a mirror of one's overall physical health. So it makes sense to be particular about looking after oral hygiene and health. Among the many ancient Ayurvedic therapies that are now being rediscovered is oil pulling for dental and oral hygiene. Though it sounds like some sort of new and strange sport, it is actually an oral health therapy that has bee...
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Forgiveness or the Importance of Not Holding Grudges

I once read somewhere that holding a grudge is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die. The analogy seems a little extreme, but do think about it for a minute: nursing grudges isn't only just completely futile, it actually harms the person who refuses to forgive. In the yogic lifestyle as well, forgiving is a vital aspect of wellness and is vital for achie...
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The Importance of Introspection & How to Look Within

introspection - look within
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom, said a wise soul once. I continue the train of thought I expressed in my last blog post… another thing that we had time for during the lockdown was to introspect and really think about life. As we slowed down, literally and figuratively, we had the time and the inclination to examine ourselves and our lives. So why and how shoul...
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The Art of Slowing Down and Living in the Present

Slow down in life
There is so much that the pandemic lockdown of 2020 taught us. We all suddenly realised how it was possible to be self-reliant without expecting others to do all our work for us. We realised that it was possible to live perfectly happy and complete lives with a lot less – there is so much that we do and own that is actually superfluous. Many of us simply got to know and apprec...
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Forward Bend Yoga Poses and Their Many Benefits

Forward bend yoga poses benefits
Today I would like to speak about forward bend yoga poses in general and one specific yoga pose – the uttanasana or the standing forward bend pose. This is a seemingly simple and very widely used pose; one that is routinely performed in numerous yoga classes around the world. However, the forward bend has many positive impacts – for the body as well as for the mind. So what is...
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Backbend Yoga Poses – Physical and Emotional Benefits

Backbend pose benefits
Yoga is something that one does with one’s body as well as one's mind. There is an emotional and spiritual component to the practice that some mistakenly think of as just a series of exercises. So, for instance, the shavasana or corpse pose is about relaxing completely physically and letting go, and surrendering in the emotional sense as well. The backbend yoga poses also have...
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How Offering Gratitude Is Important In Yoga Therapy

Gratitude
I read somewhere, look at your troubles through a telescope, not a microscope. This made a lot of sense to me. I find that many of the problems in our lives tend to be a matter of perspective. They manifest when we look at our lives too closely. In reality, there is so much to be grateful for in our lives – if only we would shift our perspective. This is something of an Aha mo...
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What Is Fascia & What Does It Have To Do With Yoga?

Fascia health
Have you ever wondered why stretching one part of your body makes another part of the body feel better or experience relief? There is an entire branch of complementary medicine devoted to the way that some parts of the body correspond to others. Reflexology, for instance, applies pressure to specific points on the hands, feet and ears to relieve pain in other parts of the body...
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How Yoga Helps You ‘Lift Weights’

L Handstand
I sometimes hear people say that they go to the gym even though they have been practicing yoga. They believe that going to the gym where they can lift weights is necessary for resistance training. It may be news to some, but it is possible to perform yoga poses that effectively have the same impact on the body as weight training --- using little except the body’s own weight. Y...
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How Therapy Yoga Helps Maintain Good Mental Health

Feeling lonely
In the recent past, I have had more and more people approaching me for therapy yoga and not just for my yoga classes. These are individuals looking not just to improve fitness, achieve weight loss or to improve physical health, but for mental wellness as well. So while I am approached for hormonal issues, chronic pain and so on, people also come to me with relationship issues,...
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