About 6 years ago I found myself smack dab in the middle of a dark night of the soul. I had 3 young children, I was working myself to the bone, and my body began to revolt. Four rounds of strep throat in 6 months led to joint pain, diarrhea, migraine headaches, exhaustion, and brain fog. I could hardly get out of bed. How …
9 Tips to Combat Depressed Mood in the Late Winter/Early Spring
This past week I observed many people starting to emotionally crash, myself included! Getting ready for work I received the 10th call of the season came from the superintendent of my kids’ school announcing yet another snow day. I admit I spent several minutes in tears on my closet floor feeling exhausted, frustrated, limited, and certainly not wanting to deal …
Yoga For Emotional Well Being
Eighteen years ago I found yoga during an especially tumultuous period of graduate school. Little did I know that starting yoga would have such an impact on who I am, and would change the course of my career. The integration of psychology and yoga is my passion, and I feel an urgency to get this work into the world. The …
The Never Ending Flow Of Life
The energy of life is never static. It changes – just like the weather. And sometimes the changes are extreme like what we all experienced last week when our temperatures swung from 50 below to 50 above zero, all within 5 days. Our emotions and feelings can also undergo these extremes. Sometimes we are flying high emotionally, and sometimes we …
The Intensity of Modern Life
“For those wounded by civilization, yoga is the most healing salve.” ~Terri Guillemets Very few of us are not wounded by civilization. It’s a wild, unpredictable world out there. The truth of this hit hard as I re-acclimated to daily life after a week teaching a yoga retreat with Fannie in Costa Rica. It wasn’t so much the cold Iowa …
Welcome 2019
Happy New Year! Here we come 2019. How are those resolutions? I quit setting New Years resolutions a few years ago after reading the dismal research that only 6% of resolutions are kept. Despite not writing down formal things I want to fix or change, a new year always feels optimistic to me – a chance for a fresh start …
What Energy Are You Contributing To the World?
What kind of presence are you in the world? How are you impacting those around you just by the energy you bring? I once learned that we are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. Think about this for a moment and ask yourself…Are the people I’m around uplifting? Are they actually enjoying life? Are …
Cultivating Kindness
The front entry to our small neighborhood has been closed due to some plumbing work, requiring all of us to enter and exit through the back entrance. One of the neighbors that lives by the back entry has been sending angry emails to the neighborhood ranting about people’s speed and overall driving skills. After the first 2 emails it became …
You Can’t Erase, You Must Replace: Rewiring Our Brains Toward More WellBeing:
I’m a firm believer in owning and telling your story. When we do this we often find meaning in what has happened to us, it can feel cathartic, it allows us to bond with others who have experienced similar things, and it can be empowering. Our stories have value and deserve to be told. But there does seem to be …
Fall Winds Of Change: Yoga As A Way to Ground
These are tumultuous times when so many of us are feeling unsettled by the world, not to mention our own personal upheavals and transformations. This is all happening in the first weeks of Autumn, which traditionally is a time when people experience more anxiety and feel ungrounded. It’s a perfect storm. My mind and heart have been swirling of late, …