Tara Stiles
My parents were/are straight-edge hippies. Mom roamed around gardening so we would have fresh food, and Dad was on wood-chopping duty to heat our passive solar home that they figured out how to design and build together. I was the kid with green peppers in my lunch, and I liked them!Collection: Gardening
Read labels in your favorite products. Look for short lists of simple, less-processed ingredients with names you recognize as food. If you find some of the same ingredients in your cereal as your shampoo, maybe it's time to switch to something simpler.Collection: Food
We experience happiness as a series of pleasing moments. They come and go like clouds, unpredictable, fleeting, and without responsibility to our desires. Through honest self-work, reflection, and meditation, we begin to string more of these moments together, creating a web-like design of happiness that drapes around our lives.Collection: Happiness
The first rule of negotiation is to always be willing to walk away from the deal. The first rule of happiness is to not be attached to pleasing moments.Collection: Happiness
The truth of the matter is if we listened to our bodies and cleared our psychologies, we would inherently know what we need to do to stay healthy, and there wouldn't be a market for diet pills, extreme cleanses, or low-calorie, pre-packaged junk food.Collection: Diet
The mere acknowledgment that 'God is watching' can act as a trap, fueling bad behavior, corruption, and guilt, all remedied by God's forgiveness. No personal responsibility is needed - someone on the outside sees whatever we're doing and makes it all OK.Collection: Forgiveness
Friendships naturally shift over life. We have different friends for different times in our lives, and sometimes it's not the best idea to hang on to a friendship to try to make it work if it's an unhealthy connection.Collection: Friendship
Practicing yoga has helped me realize a deeper, grounded way of being in the world. I have learned how to communicate in a meaningful way that makes me smile and have learned the super handy skill of efficiency. Use what you need. Rest what you don't.Collection: Smile
It's amazing what we've been through already in our lives no matter what our age. Think of what we've seen, people we've met, our relationships, experiences, and accomplishments. Reflection is a powerful tool.Collection: Age
A trap in dealing with difficult people is getting wrapped up in their personality. When we can stay objective and remove ourselves from other people's roller-coaster psychology, we have a much better chance of moving through the situation positively.Collection: Chance
There are people who intensely clutch an idea that yoga is a higher system, not to be lowered to the weight loss or even fitness category. This is the same kind of clutching that has kept yoga part of a tightly knit club for so long since its introduction in America.Collection: Fitness
Balance takes work. Lots of it. There is no endpoint in balance, no goal, no finalization. Balance requires practice, patience, and - most importantly - movement. We often get stuck in our ways and form habits based on our fears and driven by our insecurities.Collection: Patience
You are whole body, whole mind, whole spirit, all the time. When you experience all of you at once, anything is possible.Collection: Positivity
Eat like you love yourself. Move like you love yourself. Speak like you love yourself. Act like you love yourself.Collection: Love
A successful tree pose probably won't change your life. Learning how to keep your breath easy, long, and deep no matter what the circumstance? That absolutely will.Collection: Successful
When we are at ease, our bodies work efficiently, our minds settle, and space opens up for us to connect to our intuition, creativity, and sense of connectedness.Collection: Creativity
Everything we need is already there. The challenge is letting go of all our stuff in the way.Collection: Letting Go
There are no rules in life. It’s a mind-set that limits people dramatically.Collection: People
Each movement reminds us that every moment invites a new opportunity for change.Collection: Opportunity
Everything you need to know is right there inside, waiting for you to tap in and discover it, and then hopefully do something about it.Collection: Waiting
Each full, deep inhale creates more space in your body and mind. Each long, exhale moves you directly into that space. The deeper you breathe, the more opens up. It's like opening a door and walking through with each breath. The fuller your breaths the more and more doors open on up, leaving you with the space to walk on in!Collection: Moving
All the body's systems and processes - your nerves, your emotions - take instruction from what is going on with your breath.Collection: Systems And Processes
Go after what gives you goosebumps.Collection: Giving
When you are plugged into you, anything is possible.Collection: Anything Is Possible
When we practice paying attention, whether in meditation, yoga (moving mediation), or simply walking down the street, we can choose to be at ease, or choose to be tense. It's a choice, and that choice is up to no one but us to decide.Collection: Moving
Learning to savor the moment keeps us from living in constant worry and fear and tension over things that haven't happened yet and may never come to pass. Practicing yoga helps us to undo these bad mental habits and stress triggers that we often unknowingly pick up along the way.Collection: Stress
Believing in yourself is essential to creating lasting change and a happy life.Collection: Believe
That's what yoga teaches: how to be fully present now, no matter the circumstance.Collection: Yoga
When you are balancing perfectly in a tree pose, everything is easy; your breath is deep and relaxed, and your muscles are working for you just as you'd like. It's pure and simple. Efficient. When you are having a great day, the same things occur. Your breathing is relaxed, your body is working harmoniously with your mind; everything just feels easier because you are in a state of balance.Collection: Simple
When we practice paying attention, moving with ease of body and mind, and being efficient, our body becomes very capable and strong, and the mind is able to be calm and travel further inward, where we have direct access to your unique creativity, intuition, and feelings of connectivity.Collection: Strong
With meditation, you become a sensitized superhero, completely in control, with endless possibilities at your fingertips.Collection: Superhero
Each exhale allows us to let go of the moment that has just passed.Collection: Letting Go
There is a big lesson in experiencing uncertainty and calamity with a sober focus - the most chaotic moments are the ones from which we can learn the most.Collection: Focus
You take yourself out of the moment and knock yourself off balance when you judge and think about what you are doing, rather than experiencing and enjoying what you are doing.Collection: Thinking
Why is balance important? From a life lesson standpoint, it's about learning to enjoy yourself without getting the ego involved.Collection: Life Lesson
The practice of being at ease also gives you the strength and stamina to pursue all that you find when you connect inward.Collection: Practice
You can tell a lot about yourself by how you go about things.Collection: About Yourself
When your life is not in balance and you're struggling to achieve stability, practicing observation without judgment gets really interesting, and very useful. How? Because you can learn to distance yourself from the roller coaster ride of your emotions and circumstances but still enjoy the ride of life.Collection: Distance
External means of escape like alcohol, drug use, and even overeating are a means of pushing uncertainty away and covering it up temporarily. And they may feel comforting for a moment, but I don't need to tell you that eventually they will cause more trouble than they ever solve.Collection: Mean
Each inhale creates more space in our bodies.Collection: Space
When your breathing is easy and deep, your body works efficiently, and your mind settles. That doesn't mean that your balance (in tree pose or anywhere else) will be perfect and your life will be seamless, but you'll be better equipped to deal with the wobbles and earthquakes that get thrown into the mix.Collection: Mean
You can fall out of a tree pose with ease, or with frustration and a sense of defeat. Just like you can take a spill in your life and decide to dust yourself off - with a chuckle or an annoyed grunt - and get back up, or you can stay down, lie there, and give up. It's entirely up to you. It's your life, and your practice.Collection: Giving Up
Our attention to each breath keeps us in the now.Collection: Attention
Say you're doing a headstand. The moment you think to yourself, "Wow, I'm doing this pose!" is usually the moment you'll topple out of it.Collection: Thinking
It takes an honest look to observe our selves without judgment, and then to do something about it. Observing without judgment is the practice of yoga. Doing something about it is the stuff that makes up your life.Collection: Yoga
Any of the yoga poses could be substituted in this analogy. How you practice is much more meaningful than what yoga moves you can or cannot do.Collection: Meaningful
What you practice on the mat is what you end up doing in your life.Collection: Practice
Your tree pose is going crazy and you're falling; and your leg is burning; and it feels impossible to maintain any sort of stability practice observing what's happening instead of getting wrapped up in the circumstance. If you can learn to be easy with your breath in these moments, your body and mind will follow.Collection: Crazy