Holiday Hip Openers

Whether or not you celebrate Christmas, the winter holiday season can prove quite stressful. Gift shopping, social obligations, and irregular eating patterns can take their toll on our bodies. On top of all this, those of us living in my neck of the woods often face plummeting temperatures and hostile precipitation. Not surprisingly, many of

Birthday for Giving

People always ask, “What do you want for your birthday?” or “How are you going to celebrate?” Since my birthday is November 30, I have been thinking about this quite a lot. I knew there wasn’t really anything I wanted, and after years of bar crawling and all-night dancing (on occasions not limited to my

Exercise is the New Watercooler

This week I gave a lunchtime talk about fitness at a local law firm. The firm has a group committed to health and fitness, and they provide a weekly lunchtime yoga class as well as a lecture series. When they asked their yoga instructor–the multi-talented Molly O’Neill–to suggest a speaker for a talk on fitness,

Yoga Weekend, Part 3: Led Primary Series

During Saturday morning’s session (10am-1pm) Kino led us in the Ashtanga Primary Series. This series formed the foundation of my initial yoga teacher training back in 1998 at It’s Yoga in San Francisco. Since that time, I’ve been something of a “yoga slut” – dabbling in a variety of formats, studying with a whole host

Yoga Weekend, Part 2: Twists

Unlike the workshop on adjustments, the evening session on twists was organized just like a “regular” yoga class. Kino began with a short description and rationale of what was to follow, led us in some chanting, and then took us into asana (poses/postures) practice. Since twisting is meant to detoxify, I assumed the class would

Yoga Weekend, Part 1

This weekend, I flew to Chicago for an amazing series of workshops in Ashtanga Yoga with Kino MacGregor at Moksha Yoga. Even though it would have been possible to sign up for the sessions à la carte, I figured, if I am going all the way to Chicago, why not just do it all? The