Last weekend, 2,000 yoga teachers and students gathered for five days at the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. I was lucky enough to attend the gathering: the Yoga Journal Conference 2011. It was a last-minute opportunity. I'd never been to a huge, multi-teacher yoga event before, and the...

In yoga class, you'll often be told to "go deeper" while you're holding a pose. It's a yoga cliché, a lesson that's lost its power. It can be taken literally -- folding further, stretching more -- but that's not always the best idea. And often you're told to "go deeper"...

Yoga teachers often use the word grounded. It's a verb (to ground through the feet) and an adjective (a grounded feeling). But what does that really mean? It's a yoga cliche, a phrase that's used so often it's lost some of its punch. And most of us didn't know the...

We all know that stress is killing us. Or at the very least, aging and annoying us. It's wearing out our adrenal glands, graying our hair, lowering our immunity, disrupting our sleep, and building our bulges. But how can we battle a cultural cornerstone? What are we, if not busy?

Drink from the far side of a glass of water. Eat a spoonful of sugar. Get someone to scare you. Then pour the sugar water on your friend’s head, and come here to stop your hiccups.  

Hiccups are caused by a spasm of the diaphragm, the breathing muscle that...

Where do you find answers to your major life decisions? (Besides HuffPo, of course.) Hopefully you have a few trusted friends. Maybe your family still gives good advice. Obviously you have Google. But at some point aren’t you tired of digesting everyone else’s advice? Where’s your intuition?

When I...

I've always said that smoking is the American meditation. (Maybe the European one, too?) Taking a moment for yourself, focusing completely on your breath, noticing all the little sensations in your lungs, skin, and brain -- isn't that what meditation is all about? Yes, you could choose nicer companions than...

People are always asking me what kind of yoga they should do, which studios I like, and who's the best teacher in New York. I've wandered around NYC studios for about seven years, so I guess I know a few proper nouns.

It can be hard to sort through the...