Deep rest in yoga

Recently I had my first great experience with restorative yoga. I had always come away stiff and sore in my ribs and back when I tried restorative, but not this time- under the expert guidance of Sarahjoy Marsh from Portland. Her emphasis was on calming the nervous system and moving us into the parasympathetic rest […]

Yoga for Pain Relief– Book review

This excellent book was written by Kelly McGonical, a professor at Stanford University, who has chronic pain herself. If you think yoga cannot be for you, then this is a good book to start with. It introduces you to the mind-body benefits and practices of yoga–what yoga really is about–not just physical poses, but there […]

Kids love these…

Finding the time and energy for meditation, yoga, imagery and some of the other ideas I suggest, may sound completely overwhelming if you are a parent. But what if you did these self-care techniques with your children? What if you could lower your stress level and your pain by sharing some of these activities with […]

Reflections on exercising

A recent yoga class left me stiff-necked and temporarily discouraged. A substitute teacher taught at a much higher level than the regular one, and did not offer suggestions for lower level students. After a while, I noticed that my neck was getting stressed and I consciously slowed down. However, while I have learned to modify […]

Chronic pain and what’s Enough?

Chronic pain and being enough I just realized that I do not often write directly about pain in these blogs. So this blog is about the struggle with feeling that we are NOT enough and do not DO enough. This is often a challenge when we have chronic pain. I had a deeply humbling period […]

Just pause

A few years back I brought back this little pillow from Germany for my daughter who was in medical school at the time. Actually Pause (pronounce the e like an a) in German means a break during work or school. It brings to mind the 20 minute Pause we had in school to eat our […]