LISTEN: Jane Fonda & Tara Stiles chat about issues facing Women, Yoga, Meditation and more…
May 8, 2012 by Going Out of Your Mind with Ed and Deb Shapiro
Filed under •-Feature, •-VividLife Radio Shows, Arts & Entertainment, Going Out of Your Mind with Ed & Deb Shapiro, Meditation, Yoga, Yoga
VividLife’s Ed and Deb Shapiro welcome Icon Jane Fonda and Yoga Instructor Tara Stiles, to discuss Women, Yoga, Meditation and more, in support of Tara’s new book Yoga Cures: Simple Routines to Conquer More Than 50 Common Ailments and Live Pain-Free
Jane Fonda, Born in New York City in 1937 to legendary screen star Henry Fonda and New York socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, Jane Seymour Fonda was destined early to an uncommon and influential life in the limelight. Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father’s trade, she was prompted by Joshua Logan to appear with her father in the 1954 Omaha Community Theatre production of “The Country Girl”. Her interest in acting grew after meeting Lee Strasberg in 1958 and joining the Actors Studio. Her screen debut in Tall Story (1960) (directed by Logan) marked the beginning of a highly successful and respected acting career highlighted by two Academy Awards (for her performances in Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978)) and five additional Oscar nominations (as Best Actress in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), Julia (1977), The China Syndrome (1979), The Morning After (1986), and Best Supporting Actress in On Golden Pond (1981), which was the only film she made with her father). Fonda underwent a series of metamorphoses in both her profession and personal life. After finding her niche in romantic comedies such as Period of Adjustment (1962), Sunday in New York (1963), and Any Wednesday (1966), she starred in the notorious sci-fi sex farce Barbarella (1968), directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim. The events that followed became her most debated, scandalous, and controversial period: her espousal of anti-establishment causes and especially her anti-war activities during the Vietnam War. Her political involvement continued with fellow activist and second husband Tom Hayden in the 1970s and ’80s. In the 1980s she started the aerobic exercise craze with the publication of the “Jane Fonda’s Workout Book”. After divorcing Hayden and announcing her retirement from the film industry, she married broadcasting mogul Ted Turner in 1991; they split eight years later. In 2005, Fonda penned the best-selling autobiography “My Life So Far” and relaunched her film career with a starring role in the box office hit Monster-in-Law (2005).
Tara Stiles, Named “Yoga Rebel” by the New York Times, Tara Stiles has inspired a wide audience around the world with her healthy and relatable approaches to yoga, meditation, exercise, awareness, nutrition and every day well being. Tara has been featured in publications including Elle, Harpers Bazaar, Lucky, InStyle, Esquire, Shape, and Self, and has been profiled by the Times of India, The Times (UK), and Sweden’s Dagnes Nyheter.
Tara is the founder and owner of Strala Yoga, widely known for it’s unpretentious, inclusive, and straightforward approach to yoga and meditation. She is the personal yoga instructor to Deepak Chopra, whom she’s collaborated with to create the best selling Authentic Yoga iPhone app, Yoga Transformation DVD series among other projects. Jane Fonda named Tara, “The new face of fitness”. They partnered to re-launch Jane’s famous WORKOUT brand of fitness DVDs and equipment.
Tara is the author of the best selling Slim Calm Sexy Yoga, and the upcoming Yoga Cures, that is already climbing the charts. Her approach leads people to their own intuition and awareness. The results are radiant health and lasting happiness.
Tara is the first yoga instructor to use social media effectively to reach a global audience. Her instructional yoga videos, #1 iTunes podcast, blogs, and cooking videos have received over 20 million views so far. She engages with her wide range of subscribers daily through her video blog, twitter, Facebook page and her popular Tumblr blog, Tara Eats. Through social media Tara has been able to help millions of people ranging from kids, teenagers, moms, regular guys, and beyond not only get healthy and happy, but heal a wide variety of conditions from back pain, anxiety, sleep disorders, weight issues, body issues, and more. Her total social media reach is in the tens of millions and growing.
As Vanity Fair noted, “Tara Stiles has got to be the coolest yoga instructor ever.”
“One of the things I like about her is her ability to make yoga accessible to people who might be scared of it or think it might be too esoteric,”
–Jane Fonda
“We are both nonconformists who have incurred the wrath of traditional yogis,” Mr. Chopra said of Ms. Stiles, whom he now considers his personal instructor. “A lot of the criticism is resentment of her rapid success. I have been doing yoga for 30 years. I have had teachers of all kinds. Taking lessons from her has been more useful to me than taking yoga from anyone else.
–Deepak Chopra
Listen to more with Ed and Deb Shapiro on demand:
READ: Resurrecting Happy by Shasta Townsend
April 10, 2012 by Shasta
Filed under •-Feature, Health & Well-being, Natural Healing, Yoga
What do you want most in your life?
If you are like most people you would say, “To be happy.”
Even if you said more money, a lover, a nicer home ask yourself why you want those things. I would suggest in the having of them you believe you will be more happy.
What if you could just be happy now – even without them?
Our “American dream” culture suggests that we will be happy when we get more money, more status or more reputation but recently released studies suggest that although the wealth of the average North American has doubled in the last 50 years we are actually not any happier. So we have bigger houses and nicer cars but we are not actually happier.
So what does make us happy?
Research suggests humans are happiest when they focus on these three intrinsic values:
- Personal growth or connecting to who we really are as individuals and unfolding our purpose
- Cultivating close relationships or being apart of a community of like-minded people
- Being in service to others and the world
Happy me doing all three values!
I am not suggesting you abandon your Porsche and live in a yurt but if you are seeking to resurrect happiness then connect to yourself, connect to others and just lend a helping hand.
Rather than negating yourself take that course or learning that you feel called to.
Rather than isolating ask someone to go for coffee or just smile at a stranger.
Rather than saying it’s not your problem, pick up that piece of garbage or help someone with childcare.
I guarantee you will feel happier.
Like me you may have spent many years of life working, striving, wanting to improve, overcome, succeed and achieve – which is all good but in the end for what if we are not happy?
I dedicate this spring to the resurrection of happy! I still have a To Do list and love moving and shaking but at the top of my list every day is “Seek Happy.”
Much love to you all.
Namaste
Shasta
Shasta Townsend is a passionate lover of life, cultivator of possibility and guide to radiant being both on and off the Yoga mat. She is the creator and director of Balanced Life Yoga, a freelance wellness, travel and well-being writer and a leader in grounded transformational spirituality. Her love of freedom and joy and her intention to always expand takes her to fresh and exciting places on the mat and around the globe. She offers group and individual transformation to help people live a life they love. Her own heart-based creation, Balanced Life Yoga is a community of light, transformation and possibility. You can connect with her in class or private sessions there (www.balancedlifeyoga.ca) or on Facebook (and follow her exploits and unfoldings).
Join her for a special offering dedicated to happiness and potential:
Super-Power Brain & Life Creation with Shasta
- Tuesdays April 9-May 13 from 8:00-9:00 PM $99
YOU can be, do and have all that you seek. Join Shasta for a compelling and enjoyable journey into mindfulness, manifestation and metaphysics and learn how to train your brain to be super powerful, calm and present so you can create the life and success you seek the most. All levels. This course is open to everyone seeking to create a great life. You do NOT have to have any meditation, Yoga or spiritual practice. If you participated in our January session, please note we will review some aspects but much of the material will be new. Please join us again for a fabulous journey that will blow your mind!!!
Six weeks for only $99
READ: What Does Karma Yoga Mean? by Ed and Deb Shapiro
April 4, 2012 by Ed and Deb Shapiro
Filed under •-Feature, Ego, Love, Meditation, Meditation, Mindfulness, Spiritual Guidance, Spirituality, Yoga, Yoga
If we act with kindness and without focusing on ourselves, happiness will arise naturally, like a flower opening in the sun.
Some people think that yoga means stretching, bending and twisting like a pretzel, or sitting crossed legged with our eyes closed and chanting Om. But if that is all we did we would be no use to anyone. We spent our honeymoon in India and lived at the Bihar School of Yoga, where the foundation of our training was karma yoga. This was brilliant, as it gave us the opportunity to deepen our understanding of what it really is.
Many great yoga masters have said that the greatest path of yoga is karma yoga, as it is the one that asks us to be the least me-centered. The teaching is very explicit regarding karma yoga, which is described as the path of action and selfless service, to renounce our own selfish pursuits and not to reap the fruits of our actions. Brad Pitt’s selfless work building houses in New Orleans, or yoga teacher and activist Seane Corn’s work with Youth AIDS are expressions of karma yoga. ”I realized that whether my yoga practice was fifteen minutes or four hours was irrelevant because it was not about how yoga can change me,” says Seane in our book, Be The Change, “but how I, through this practice, can begin to change the world. What I really felt was how dare I not step into the world and hold that space?”
Start by practicing selfless service for a day, giving in whatever way you can by offering kindness. How does it feel? Just one day of this can be transforming, so try doing it once a week. It doesn’t mean you have to deny or ignore your own needs—you are just as important as everyone else. But just for this time let it not be about you.
Tai chi teacher Arthur Rosenfield was in the drive-thru line at Starbucks. The man in line behind him was getting impatient and angry, leaning on his horn and shouting insults at both Arthur and the Starbucks workers. Keeping his cool, Arthur paid for the man’s coffee and drove away. When he got home later that day, he discovered that he had created a chain of giving that had not only continued all day but had been highlighted on NBC News. Within twenty-four hours it had spread around the world on the Internet.
“Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve,” said Martin Luther King. “You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
Karma yoga is creating goodness in the world. Do you treat your world with kindness or with aggression? Giving without any thought of getting is the most powerful act of generosity as it is unconditional, unattached, free to land wherever it will. But generosity can also raise fears about not having enough. Watch where resentment creeps in and remember that selfless action is just that: selfless.
On our morning walk through the alleys near our house we came across a back yard filled with used bicycles. Finally we met the owner. He had a bicycle shop in town and was collecting all these used bikes, repairing them, and then donating them to an Indian reservation in Montana. His goal was that everyone at the reservation, young and old, should have a bicycle of their own.
We see it in author Marc Barasch, founder of Green World Campaign. He decided that, “instead of cutting down trees to put words on a page, I wanted to plant some actual trees in the ground.” This year the nonprofit will plant millions of trees throughout the developing world, revitalizing barren land, helping sustain poor villages, and combating climate change. The slogan is, It’s amazing what one seed can grow.
And there is Aileen, a friend from England. In the last ten years she has created a farm in rural India. She sent us a photo showing her planting ‘flame of the forest’ tree seeds into starter pots. When these seeds become saplings they will be distributed to local school children so that each child will have their own tree to grow and tend.
Serving enables us to step beyond our own desires and to release any sense of separation. It takes us out of selfishness and neediness, and in the process we see our own self-centeredness in greater perspective. We discover that in giving we do not have any less. Rather, we gain so much. Let everything we do be of benefit to others.
Ed and Deb Shapiro are the authors of BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You And The World, with forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman and Winner of the 2010 Nautilus Gold Book Award. Deb is the author of the bestselling book, YOUR BODY SPEAKS YOUR MIND, winner of the 2007 Visionary Book Award. They are featured bloggers on Oprah.com/spirit, HuffingtonPost.com/Living, and Care2.com. They have 3 meditation CD’s: Metta — Loving Kindness and Forgiveness; Samadhi – Breath Awareness and Insight; and Yoga Nidra – Inner Conscious Relaxation. See: www.EdandDebShapiro.com
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Why Yoga Is So Misunderstood ~ How It Has Gone From the Sane to the Bizarre by Ed and Deb Shapiro
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Yoga ~ A Menopause Alternative to HRT by Mache Seibel M.D.
Twenty years ago during a particularly stressful period of work, I began taking a yoga class as a non-pharmacologic antidote. I was running a center for reproduction and women’s health, working 24/7 and needed a way to relax. I had the good fortune to enroll with a yogini named Hari Khar Khalsa, and I took classes from her for a period of time. One day after class I asked her if she would…
READ: Yoga ~ A Menopause Alternative to HRT by Mache Seibel M.D.
March 21, 2012 by Mache Seibel MD
Filed under •-Feature, Health & Well-being, Holistic Living, Natural Healing, Natural Remedies, Yoga
Twenty years ago during a particularly stressful period of work, I began taking a yoga class as a non-pharmacologic antidote. I was running a center for reproduction and women’s health, working 24/7 and needed a way to relax. I had the good fortune to enroll with a yogini named Hari Khar Khalsa, and I took classes from her for a period of time. One day after class I asked her if she would be interested in teaching a yoga class to my patients to lower their stress. We began a series of yoga classes with the first hour consisting of us sitting on mats on the floor with my patients and discussing a health topic. I called them “Mat Chats.” The second hour was devoted to yoga with a focus on the medical topic we had just covered.
Over time, I not only received the benefit of lowering my own stress level through yoga, but also the benefit of Hari’s friendship and ultimately collaboration on A Woman’s Book of Yoga, a book that combines Eastern and Western medicine to help women at different stages of their lives. Since that time, I’ve suggested yoga to many of my patients. One group that I find it particularly useful for is women in and around menopause. They often tell me it helps them deal with their symptoms. Because many women either can’t or won’t take hormone therapy, finding an effective alternative is really important.
I was delighted to discover that the February 2012 issue of the journal Menopause, finally proves yoga reduces menopause symptoms, hot flashes and improves sleep. This is the first study to do so. The article studied women between the ages of 50 and 65 with no yoga experience and who were not taking hormones or antidepressants. The study lasted 4 months and included two one-hour yoga sessions per week, which combined stretching exercises and breathing techniques. Compared to a group of women who only did stretching, the yoga group improved their sleep and their mental health, and also their menopausal symptoms. The researchers believe this is because yoga increases levels of the brain hormone -aminobutyric acid, which calms the brain. Yoga also seems to increase levels of the sleep inducing hormone melatonin.
Another benefit of yoga is that it amplifies the parasympathetic tone in the body, which aids relaxation and reduces the sympathetic tone – the so-called fight or flight hormones. This may be an important part of why sleep patterns improve and hot flashes are reduced. Most women observe that when they are stressed, their hot flashes increase.
As more and more women question whether or not to take HRT, and women with breast cancer are typically not able to take HRT, finally getting proof that an alternative approach reduces symptoms of menopause, lowers hot flashes and improves sleep is a great thing. So if you are looking for an alternative to HRT, or even if you are taking HRT and just want to help your insomnia, improve your mental health and your menopausal symptoms, grab your yoga mat, enroll in a yoga class with a good instructor, practice several times per week, and sleep tight. Namaste.
Click here for a FREE ebook Ten Top Stress Busters as my gift to Vivid Life readers.
Machelle (Mache) Seibel, MD is one of America’s top health communicators. Whether speaking, consulting, writing or composing he teaches people the health information they need and the perspective they require to stay well. His passion is to help America stay well. “It’s better to stay well than to get well.” Professor and Director, Complicated Menopause Program, University of Massachusetts Medical School 2004-Present Founder of HealthRock®, reshaping health education with music and entertainment Harvard Medical School faculty nearly two decades Past Medical Director, Inverness Medical Innovations (now Alere) 2008 Recipient, Ashbel Smith Distinguished Alumnus Award, the University of Texas Medical Branch’s highest honor Multiple national awards for research, writing, music and patient education received Author/editor 14 books, over 200 scientific articles, past editor-in-chief of the medical journal Sexuality, Reproduction & Menopause Advisory board of Dr. Mehmet Oz’s HealthCorps initiative to fight childhood obesity Repeatedly voted into Best Doctors in America Hosted PBS and NYC TV episodes, frequent media expert http://www.doctorseibel.com/
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Spring is nature’s way of saying, “Let’s party!” -Robin Williams This week ushers in the official start of Spring! Yes, we all know winter is invaluable in the way it forces us into that place of deep inward reflection where…blah, blah, blah. Ok, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough ruminating…I’m ready to kick winter’s butt to the door and start seizing the revitalizing energy of SPRING!
READ: Mindful Living – When You Need It Most by Jacquelyn O’Brien
March 5, 2012 by Jacquelyn
Filed under •-Headline, Meditation, Meditation, Mindfulness, Yoga, Yoga
Isn’t it unfair the way that life gets in the way of your practice? Whether you’re experiencing life challenges or pleasures, whether they’re large or small, they do have a habit of getting in the way of our time on the yoga mat or the meditation cushion.
Sometimes we’re just using these life events as justifications for our own procrastination but sometimes they genuinely do get in the way of us going to a class or taking time to meditate.
At times it seems an overwhelming task to squeeze in time for ourselves, especially when the going is rough or busy. But, this is absolutely the time when we need our practice most.
Although every day is still a challenge for me, I am trying to let go of the idea that I need to do a full hour of yoga practice and a full half hour of meditation. Sometimes it’s just not practical for me to take all that time out of a day. Since I tend to take a ‘full practice’ or nothing approach, this leaves me missing out on practice completely and of course feeling guilty and less connected as a result.
My challenge is to accept that my practice won’t look the same every day. Some days I might have a full hour, other days I need to content myself with just one or two postures. Either way I feel better for it if I practice in some way.
However much time you have today, use it to make yourself feel more grounded and connected. Do two or three of your favourite yoga poses or take five minutes to focus on your breathing in meditation. You’ll feel better for it and your day will be improved.
Many blessings and best wishes.
Namaste,
jacquelyn
Join me at our Uxbridge studio for ‘Energy Healing and Chakra Balancing – The Third Eye Chakra’ on Friday, March 9th from 7:30 till 9.30 pm.
This workshop series will take you on a journey through the chakras, the main energy centres of the human body, and bring awareness, balance and harmony to each. In the sixth of the series we explore ajna, the third eye chakra. Connect to your centre of inner knowing, your innate wisdom to see the patterns and flow of your life more clearly. We will combine a physical yoga practice with meditation, aromatherapy, music, visualization, reiki and breathing techniques to encourage the free flow of energy in each chakra. We will journey inward to release unconscious blocks and imbalances. Join us for one or all of these workshops. $25 + HST
http://www.balancedlifeyoga.ca/home-pages/retreats/uxbridge-workshops/
Jacquelyn is a 500 hour Registered Yoga Teacher and Reiki Level Two practitioner. Yoga has helped her to overcome paralyzing fears and chronic pain and find her true purpose in life. Her focus is on encouraging those around her to have patience, kindness and compassion for themselves and the courage to stand, fearless, in their own light. Jacquelyn has studied meditation and mindfulness in the Shambhala tradition and with Thich Nhat Hanh. She teaches Gentle Yoga, Chakra Flow Yoga, EMpower Yoga, Beginners Yoga, Power Yoga, Learn to Meditate and a variety of workshops.
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