What the Obamas Can Teach Us About the Type 1/Type 9 Enneagram Couple
Michelle Obama is the most admired woman in the United States, according to the 2020 Gallup Poll, and her husband Barack was the 44th President and first African American President of the United States. They’re an impressive couple, but what can the most admired woman and the former President of the United States teach us about relationships? Using the lens of the Enneagram, it turns out quite a lot. While we know it is risky to guess the Enneagram type of people who haven’t typed themselves, we’ll talk about how specific behaviors align with Enneagram type. Michelle Obama as a Type 1 Always looking for improvement and pushing herself…
If Happiness Is Your Birthright, Your Energy is Your Passport
My first Kundalini Yoga teacher, Siri Vedya, would always start his classes with a brief discussion about life. He would talk about practical day-to-day issues as well as more advanced philosophical concepts. While I loved the full 90 minutes of his classes, his lecture was my favorite part. One day he announced that we were starting a “happiness series,” and explained that there were different steps required to reach happiness. The first step, he said, was our energy. “You need energy to be happy. Without enough energy, it will be very difficult to enjoy your life and to accomplish the things you are here on planet Earth to…
This is the Recipe I Cook for My Cat
I love all animals but the truth is, I’m a dog person. Given my dog obsession, it is a surprise when people learn that the cats in my home outnumber the dogs. The story of how a dog lover became a cat owner is here, but the bottom line is that I live with two orange male tabby cats and a female shepherd mix dog. Because they grew up together, the dog and cats are friends and watching them play during the day has been a nice bit of comic relief during these long stretches at home. My cat Milo was adopted as a tiny kitten from the San…
I Started Intermittent Fasting During the Lockdown…
and It Was One of the Best Things I Could Have Done. I have been reading about intermittent fasting for the last year and even experimented with it at the beginning of 2020. For those unfamiliar with the topic, intermittent fasting is a way of eating that limits your food intake to specific “windows” or periods of time during the day. The rest of the time you fast and during this time your body repairs and heals. The tradition of fasting is ancient, but the science around this practice is relatively new. In the health and wellness circles, it’s become a trend, and it is easy to see why.…
How This Simple Three-Minute Practice Can Make Your Lockdown Better
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” ~Lao-Tzu In most of the world, we’ve been in some sort of lockdown for the last two months. It isn’t easy. Some days are better than others, but everyone I talk with describes moments of feeling overwhelmed. We are trying many different things to help stabilize ourselves during this period—journaling, healing circles, support groups, the list goes on. All these can be really valuable, but I’m going to ask for something even simpler. I am going to ask you for three minutes of your day. Because in these three minutes, I can improve your life. How do I…
Beating The Coronavirus: It’s All About Endurance
This was originally published on TinyBudda When you’re going through hell, keep going.” ~Winston Churchill A couple weeks ago the Greek government announced that our quarantine would continue “well beyond April 6th,” the original date for which it had been set. We knew this was coming, but it was still hard to hear. And it was this same moment that my memories as a long-distance runner came flooding back. Read more.
Zoom, Zoom Baby!
This post is in partnership with Elephant Journal. Last week, I took my first live yoga class via Zoom. It’s a bit ironic, since I’ve been teaching yoga via Zoom since November 2019, but this was the first time I sat on the student’s mat and got the “in-class” experience. Like my students have been telling me since I began teaching online… read more.
The Coronavirus: A Yogic Perspective
This post was written on March 3, 2020. I’ve updated it as of April 4, 2020. The theories around the three minds remain the same, but the data has changed. The coronavirus (CO-VID19), which originated in 2019 in Wuhan, China, has been spreading globally. It is a serious threat with over 1,100,00 known infected cases as of April 3. The trajectory is dangerous, the spread is exponential, and the growth occurs very quickly. The virus contained would not have been that big of a deal. The virus spreading is a big deal. It is now clear the virus is rapidly spreading far and wide, and nearly half of the…
Why Meditate?
Lots of people ask “why meditate?” I’ll give a more scientific answer below, but I’ll start by sharing my personal experience. I had been taking Kundalini Yoga classes for several months before I did my first 31-minute meditation. Most of the meditations in my regular Kundalini Yoga classes were three to five minutes, and I was curious what would happen if I tried to go longer. When I saw that Akiva Satnaryan was offering a class with a 31-minute meditation at the Hayes Valley Yoga Tree near my house, I decided to sign up. The class started in the regular sequence: we tuned in, we did a short…
What You Might Not Know About Weight Loss
It’s that time of the year when we set out with our New Year’s resolutions and since the #1 New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, I thought we’d start there. Last year I wrote “How to Lose Weight in Four Steps” and while it still applies, for the month of January, I’m including a tip per week of something you might not know about weight loss. Installments #1: Understand the Math Behind Weight Loss (below) #2: What should I eat? A review of the current diet trends #3: So…what do you eat? #4: Exercise #1: Understand the Math Behind Weight Loss While there are hundreds of diets…
