In the past, I wrote about compassion and loving kindness practices to support coming home. In case you didn’t know, these practices are part of a larger collection of buddhist virtues, called Brahmavihara. In pali, brahma means god or divine; vihara means abode. The brahmavihara are known as the “four immeasurables” in Sanskrit or “infinite minds” in Chinese. These virtues can be found in early buddhist texts and non-buddhist literature, like the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali. Brahmavihara includes the following four virtues…

Last week, lots of folks were talking about using the breath to alleviate anxiety associated with the elections. As a yoga teacher, these recommendations made me feel a little antsy, because breath work can sometimes retrigger people's unprocessed trauma stored in the body. My desire to decrease harm in breathing practices, inspired me to write a little bit about precautions and safe practices in breath work techniques from a yogi perspective.

The second chakra in yoga is called Svadhisthana and located in the lower belly. According to A.G. Mohan, it is the second wheel, motion, or changes within us in his book, Yoga For Body, Breath, and Mind. This sacral chakra is known as the creative and sexual chakra. It is where the “self” dwells or what Caroline in Spirit of Anatomy describes as, “Her special Abode.” The second chakra corresponds with the element of liquid or water - symbolizing the flow of life.

If you are dealing with feelings of “Meh” and can identify it as a form of irritation (a low level form of anger), nourishing the root chakra and yin yoga poses associated with the liver and gallbladder meridians might be helpful to you. Now if this is sounding too esoteric, let’s dive deeper into what this all may mean in more granular terms and what to do about it…