Health & Wellness Content

Walking by a park, the smell of fresh-cut grass instantly transports me back to the relaxed, carefree Saturdays of my childhood. I’m overcome by nostalgia as I recall the countless weekend mornings spent on the fields of outdoor youth sports.

When was the last time you thanked your hips (or even thought about your pelvis)? They quite literally carry your body throughout the day, after all, bearing the weight of your upper body and transferring it to your lower limbs—allowing for all

If you’re anything like me, and the estimated 62% of Americans who drink coffee daily, you not only love the taste—you love the way your cup of joe makes you feel. From the increased focus to the mood boost, coffee’s simply the best.

Napping. Some people love it, some hate it, while others claim to be bad at it. Whatever camp you fall into, the verdict (and research) is out—napping can be good for your body and brain … when done correctly.

Understanding the dimensions of pain and the neuroscience behind it is an empowering recovery tool. Thanks to advancements in neuroscience, our understanding of pain and how it’s processed has dramatically changed. For starters, scientists now know

There isn’t a system, processes, or function in the body that doesn’t rely on movement to stay healthy. Everything, from circulation and digestion to hormone regulation and mood, is affected by how and how much you move your body.

As someone who spent a decade performing yoga poses, most people would take one look at my photos and covet my flexibility. But what wasn’t evident, hidden behind the impressive photos, was the chronic pain that had slowly, then suddenly, taken

Complicated grief is more than the intense, acute grief almost everyone experiences after someone dear to them dies. Complicated grief is prolonged and all-consuming.

Walking, as you may know, is one of the most beneficial activities you can do for your overall health and wellbeing. That is, aside from walking in nature – our happy place. A growing body of research shows that we, as humans, are innately more at

Want to sleep better, lose weight and/or have more energy? How about clearer skin and less bloating? Start by showing your liver some love.

Whether it’s anger, fear, grief, or sadness, difficult emotions are uncomfortable and often painful. So much so that many of us have learned to avoid feeling them altogether. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean they just go away.

Intuitive eating is a philosophy, and evidence-based approach to eating that makes you the expert of your own body, helping you get back in touch with your body’s natural signals around food.

Within family lineages, patterns of abuse, estrangement, betrayal, divorce, money issues, etc.—just to name a few—are passed down through the generations. And that said patterns unconsciously influences our thoughts, beliefs, behaviors and

Coffee naps, or “napaccinos” as Daniel Pink—author of six thought-provoking books on business, work and human behavior, including New York Times best-seller “When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing”—dubbed them, are all the rage in the sleep

When Gabrielle Bernstein wakes up in the morning, the first thing she does is say a prayer of gratitude. “I take a deep breath and I say that I’m grateful for this day and for the rest I’ve received,” she tells 24Life.

We are by nature profoundly social creatures—neurologically wired to connect.

Traditionally rooted in meditation, the popular and ever-growing mindfulness movement has hit the gym for a calmer, clearer mental state alongside a more productive and satisfying workout.

Breath of Fire is a unique and powerful pranayama that charges the entire nervous system, causing a physiological chain reaction affecting the whole body; and is a helpful tool for burning off excessive nervousness, relieving stress, and combatting

David Weinstock, author of “NeuroKinetic Therapy”, hated every minute of pre-med school at John Hopkins University. He couldn’t wait to get out of there.Weinstock felt a disconnect when it came to traditional Western medicine and knew it wasn’t his

Years ago, I came across a list of health conditions walking can help manage and/or prevent. Impressed, I sent the article to my aging parents in hopes they’d be inspired to start moving and take back their health, so to speak.

Between leftover Halloween candy, Thanksgiving feasts, baked office goodies, holiday parties and New Year’s Eve cocktails, there’s ample opportunity to consume copious amounts of food. That is, if you’re not paying attention.

Meditation. We know (or at least have been told) that it’s good for us. Scientifically speaking, meditation has been proved to reduce stress, relieve anxiety, enhance concentration, improve sleep, decrease chronic pain, increase emotional

Yoga, mindfulness, and gratitude have a lot in common. They are all tools proven to enhance physical and emotional wellbeing. Research shows that practicing gratitude, much like yoga, meditation, and mindfulness, boosts brainpower, increases

Having meditated on and off for more than a decade, I’ve taken many meditation workshops, classes and courses. It took me years to develop a consistent home practice, and there are still mornings I find myself resistant to taking my seat. But now I

Ayurveda is a holistic, complimentary health-care system designed to restore and maintain balance in the mind and body. Despite Ayurveda’s ancient roots, there are plenty of people who are unfamiliar with Ayurvedic principles. So 24Life asked Erin

Dedicated to improving the health and well-being of military veterans, Veterans Yoga Project is a nonprofit educational and advocacy organization on a mission to support recovery and resilience among our vets, families and communities.

Yoga is the journey back to self. It is a process of undoing—or unidentifying with—self-limiting notions and reconnecting with all parts of your innate self, helping you to remember your basic wholeness and reawaken to your inner wisdom and.

One of the most beneficial (and necessary) things you can do for your own self-care and personal perseverance is spend time with your attention turned inward—attune to your inner world.

Twenty-four hours after receiving an epidural in my lumbar spine for lower back pain, the musculature through my low back, butt, pelvic floor, hamstrings, groin, and the rest of my legs began seizing up. I was in excruciating pain. Something had

Most of us abandon our New Year’s resolutions within the first six months of the year for many different reasons, the overriding factor being that change is hard. More so, lasting, long-term, sustainable change is really difficult. But it’s not

Beginning a meditation practice can feel like a daunting endeavor. However, meditating regularly is one of the most rewarding and beneficial habits you can develop for your mental health and emotional well-being.

Most of us abandon our New Year’s resolutions within the first six months of the year for many different reasons, the overriding factor being that change is hard. More so, lasting, long-term, sustainable change is really difficult. But it’s not

There is a major global shift underway. More change is happening at an accelerated rate than ever before, and as the world itself seems to be becoming increasingly chaotic, agitated and polarizing, more and more people are waking up to the deep

According to the “Vedas,” ancient, sacred texts that formed the basis of Hinduism and the yoga tradition, everything in existence was born out of desire. In other words, desire—inextricably woven into the very fabric of your being—is the reason you

A common form of leg pain, sciatica, has become a general termed used to describe any type of discomfort or neurological symptoms, including sharp pain, throbbing, burning, tingling, weakness and numbness, felt along the sciatic nerve. However, the

While yoga has become exceedingly popular as a health and fitness endeavor, the larger yoga tradition is an incredibly vast and comprehensive approach to physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being with hundreds of useful methods and

While festivals in a broader sense are nothing new (people have been gathering to celebrate various aspects of their culture, religion and/or tradition since the beginning of time), the last two decades have given rise to the era of music and art

I’m a huge advocate of props. Not only do they help you find more space and stability in your poses, they’re also great teaching tools with endless uses if you get creative. I love taking workshops and discovering new ways to use blocks, blankets,

One of the oldest holistic health modalities (dating back at least 2,000 years), Ayurveda is a system of traditional Indian medicine designed to restore mind-body balance for healing to take place. It’s an individualized approach to health and well

Yoga is an ideal recovery activity. It releases tension, relieves soreness and restores range of motion, helping prevent injury. The practice also cultivates a balance between strength and flexibility, opening and lengthening tight areas and

Like most alignment-based teachers, the majority of my adjustments are aimed at helping my students find more optimal alignment for their physical body in asanas. Matthew Sanford approaches adjustments from a radically different perspective,.

While we don’t often associate meditation with becoming more creative, the byproducts of a regular meditation practice—such as focus, calmness, patience, clarity and perspective—go a long way toward boosting creativity.

Yogic, or conscious breathing is the cornerstone of any yoga practice. Yogic breathing, through the nostrils, is longer, fuller and deeper, and has profound effects on the mind and emotional state. If the breath is shallow and rapid, the mind is

When most of us hear “risk and reward,” we tend to think in terms of immediate cause and effect: taking a chance, putting yourself out there and gaining something in return. Most of us don’t necessarily consider the vulnerability involved in taking

Think you’re just exercising your body when you’re at the gym or on your yoga mat? Think again. Neuroscience has proven that yoga and other exercise are just as good for your brain as they are the rest of you.

By now, chances are you’ve heard that sitting for hours on end is bad for your health (heart disease, obesity and diabetes have all been linked to prolonged sitting). If you have a job that requires you to sit at a desk for long periods of time

Rather than racing toward the future, making resolutions and plans for the year ahead, slow down this week and use this in-between time to reflect on the past year: what you’ve been through, how far you’ve come, when you were your happiest, how you�

During my years as a private yoga instructor, I’ve had the opportunity to work one-on-one with a number of men who suffer from chronic low-back pain. The husbands of students or clients of mine often took some convincing, quick to buy into the idea

Yoga is the practice of intention. That doesn’t necessarily mean that your intention has to be enlightenment or world peace (although excellent choices); your intention—or rather your reason for doing yoga—can be anything you’d like to cultivate.

Tension, or stress, headaches are by far the most common types of headaches—affecting 30 to 80 percent of adults in the U.S. while three percent (the majority of them women) suffer from chronic daily tension headaches.

Once you understand what you\’re working with, you can delve into the how the rotator cuff, serratus anterior, and rhomboid work together to create optimal shoulder stability in weight-bearing poses. Here, Tiffany Cruikshank gives us four steps to

Let’s face it: seated forward folds can be awkward, uncomfortable, and even slightly irritating. Tight hips and hamstrings can make it nearly impossible to sit comfortably on the floor, let alone fold forward. Some people who are tight in these

Hundreds of variations and hybrids of yoga have found their way into studios and gyms around the world. As a beginning or even seasoned practitioner, how do you know if the option you’ve chosen is best for you? Our fun and revealing guide can help

Leslie Kaminoff claims you should never say never about a yoga pose and that the key to safely teaching asana is actually shifting the focus to svadyaya.

I love props. I love practicing and teaching with them. They are fantastic tools that offer endlessly creative ways for finding more space, freedom, and stability in your poses. When used skillfully, they can help students understand alignment

The more weight-bearing, dynamic, and repetitive an exercise is (hey, vinyasa yoga), the more crucial shoulder stability becomes. Learn the anatomy and understand the actions necessary to prevent injury in your body\’s most vulnerable joint.

When most people think of yoga, they think of the flowing Vinyasa style yoga or the sequence of standing and seated yoga postures typically used in Hatha yoga. Few people have heard of Kundalini yoga and even fewer are aware of what it entails. In

Rolf Gates originally based his sequencing on opening the five lines of the body in order (as presented in Tom Myer’s Anatomy Trains), organizing his classes into seven chapters: (1) centering, (2) warm-ups, (3) standing poses, (4) balancing, (

Tight shoulders? You’re not alone. Nearly everything we do—sitting at a desk, working on a computer, cooking a meal, picking up children, riding a bike, driving a car, etc.—closes off the front of our chests and creates varying degrees of tension

With the yoga community\’s recent head-spinning debate on this pose, we turned to anatomy experts Leslie Kaminoff and Amy Matthews for guidance.

As seasons transition from dark, cold winter to bright, hot summer, springtime can be damp, cloudy and cool—depending on where you live. (Even in sunny Southern California, we experience a bad case of “June gloom.”) That’s all kapha’s.