Sometimes you need to stop. Stop for a minute, close your eyes, and take a deep breath. It sounds cliché, because it seems to be something we are starting to see all over the place, but have you every really stopped and did just that? Have you ever allowed yourself to move out of your head and actually listen to what is going on inside your body? We hate sitting still, even for a moment, we grab our phones, or turn on the t.v. to engage us for even a short amount of time so we can be occupied by something outside of ourselves. But when we slow down and connect, truly connect with ourselves, body, mind, and spirit, we realize it is all interconnected. Just a little food for thought. - Picture is a passage from Bessel Van Der Kolk's book The Body Keeps Score 

#yogaeverydamnday - Have you seen this hashtag before?? I have, many, many times, and at first I was a cheerleader for it. I mean, really, what could be better than practicing yoga every single day? Well, many things. For one, this hashtag insinuates, at least to me, that you have to get onto your yoga mat everyday or you just aren't doing things right. I feel like expecting yourself or anyone else to hold a physical practice everyday is setting yourself up for unfulfilled expectations. Also, that level of expectation is the kind of unnecessary pressure that doesn't need to be associated with a yoga practice.  Two, why does yoga have to be practiced only a mat? And, again, remember this is how I interpret this hashtag. Yoga, at least a majority of it, has little to do with just the physical practice we see portrayed on Instagram. Yoga is about the mind; how to calm it, how to deal with our incessant thoughts, and how to free ourselves from the chains of being "human." As far as I am concerned yoga can be as simple as taking a deep breath while you are stuck in traffic. Yoga can be taking a moment in the heat of an argument to think before you react. It can also be a nice big stretch you take after sitting for hours. It simply needs to be what you need it to be, at the time that you need it, and not anything else, because we certainly don't need that added pressure in out lives. So how about, instead of #yogaeverydamnday, we try for #yogawhenyouneeditandintheformyouneeditin?