 Do you stretch after your workouts?! You definitely should. Even if it’s only for 5 minutes. It will help so much to avoid muscle soreness from your workout, overall tightness, and to maintain healthy range of motion in the body. It will help with your recovery and you’ll just feel better overall when you’re not so tight and stiff. Read on for 5 quick tips to help make your stretches safe and effective.
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 Want to make progress with your binds in yoga?! Binds are tough, because the amount of flexibility and mobility needed to achieve a safe bind simply doesn’t happen overnight for the majority of us. One of the keys to practicing yoga is to be kind to your body and accept (no, celebrate!) what it can do, rather than to force injury upon it. However, if you want to make healthy progress with your binds, here are a few tips...
 To kick off the new year, I've been talking up my own 30 Day Challenge to move every day on my Instagram page. This means I'm posting my own daily activities to give people an idea of what moving every day looks like for me. And while I didn't actually host a challenge, I've had a lot of people jump in on this, which makes my personal trainer heart so very happy. Here, I'm giving a little more insight into this specific challenge of mine, in hopes that you'll take it on as well and see that it may just change your life like it did mine. Read on for more...
Hi Friends! If you're looking for my yoga flows and sequences for your home practice, please view my YouTube Channel: Small Town Yogini. On that Channel, you'll find Gentle Flow videos, Vinyasa Flow videos, and a few workouts. Subscribing is free and makes it easier to find my videos! If you want more workouts, those are mostly listed on my Instagram page: small.town.yogini.
 Half Moon Pose may be one that we learn pretty early in our yoga practice, but that does not mean it's an easy pose. It requires balance, strength, stability, and flexibility. If those aren't your strong points, don't despair. Half Moon Pose may be a lot more accessible than you think. Read on for some help and tips.
 Crow pose was the first arm balance I learned, and I remember how tough it was to me at that time. It's hard to convince your brain not to freak out when you're going upside down in an inversion or lifting off in an arm balance like Crow. There is a real fear of literally falling on your face. Any inversion or arm balance requires practice. Getting comfortable (mentally) when lifting off or going upside down can be one of the main hurdles.
I write this post to encourage you if you're working on Crow because with the right alignment and enough practice, you can do it, too.  Here's something I’m pretty passionate about: how we measure our progress while on our fitness journey. Stop comparing yourself to others, stop obsessing over your weight, and stop expecting too much too soon. Otherwise, you’ll never be satisfied. There are so many ways to measure and see your progress, so don't get hung up on the wrong things. If you're on a fitness journey to be healthier, this post is for you. You may be making more progress than you think.
 My mission statement is to make yoga and healthy living relatable and approachable for all. I recently had an idea to start a column on my blog where the content aims to "decode" some of the terms you hear in yoga. I've realized that the vocabulary and Sanskrit throw some people off, and since they don't know what these terms mean, they lose interest or are afraid of yoga. But yoga shouldn't be scary, intimidating or unrelateable (I've even written about that here in Yoga: Where To Start?). Instead, it should be meaningful, inclusive, and (hopefully) a really fun never-ending personal journey. Therefore, in this new category of my blog, I'll do my best to take some of these terms / items / chants and explain them.
I'm starting with the term drishti, one of my favorite words. It's really fun to say. If you’ve ever been in a yoga class and heard the instructor mention your drishti and immediately thought “Uh oh. I didn't bring a drishti.”... then this post is for you. It sounds mysterious, but when you begin to really understand what drishti refers to, it can revolutionize your yoga practice.  Plank pose is well known for being a core strengthening pose, but it's underrated as a total body move. YES it's great for your core, but it also strengthens the back, shoulder blades, shoulders, arms, wrists, inner thighs, legs and glutes. Engaging those areas as well as your core gives the pose a lot more strength. Learn how to do a proper plank in this post.
I'm starting a new "column" on my blog. In this column, I'll write about one small habit or change you can make in your life that is easily attainable. If you have any thoughts or feedback on this, please email me and let me know. This first post for "One Small Habit" is aimed at a large portion of our population: those with back pain.
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