Author: 8 Limbs Yoga

Today, June 21st, is International Day of Yoga! This holiday celebrates the global significance of the mental, physical, and spiritual practices of yoga – and is an invitation to communities around the world to come together in practice.  Per the United Nations, the 2021 theme for this year’s commemoration is “Yoga for well-being” – how […]

This spring has been miraculous. The trees and flowers are literally exploding with fluffy scent-bombs! Many of us have been able to get out more, spreading our wings as the world opens up bit by bit. This change comes with challenges. There is still risk, a great deal of unknown, and the fact that we […]

Why We Can’t Talk About One Without Including the Other For the past 15 years I have been training yoga teachers, clinicians and other direct service providers to be “trauma informed.” This starts with educating people on the impact of unresolved trauma on individuals and communities.  This lens can help us understand why our students […]

Back in 2014 I decided to finally travel to India, the primary source of yogic teachings, to spend ten days meditating in a shrine to Sri Vidya, the Tantric lineage of my teachers. Sri means “most auspicious, beautiful, joyful”; vidya means “knowledge.” I didn’t really know at the time why exactly I was going, how I’d get there, […]

Attention. It’s a valuable resource. When we pay attention we are stretching toward the object of our attention. Whatever we pay attention to, be it an ideology, a social media post, or a person, we are spending (thus the term pay!) that resource. And as many of us have discovered, our modern lifestyles – often […]

4 Little-Known Reasons to Study and Practice Mindfulness Meditation  1. Differentiation: The classical guidelines for practicing mindfulness meditation, according to the   Sutta (Four Foundation of Mindfulness), is to chunk our experience into categories, a process called “differentiation” in psychology. By categorizing our experience, life becomes more manageable, and self-awareness increases. For example, imagine a person […]

To our 8 Limbs community in West Seattle, When I took over the reigns of 8 Limbs Yoga Centers in January 2020 and a lease at W. Seattle set to expire a month later, my goal and hope was that by extending the lease and some investment and TLC, I would be able to revitalize […]

Almost ten years ago 8 Limbs started an annual ritual called the 28 Day Commitment. We chose February, a bit removed from the resolution madness of January and the shortest month of the year, and have continued in some form or another ever since! Our aim was to invite rather than challenge, and empower, a […]

There are multiple health benefits of doing “breath hold.” An average healthy person with no special training can hold his (or her) breath for about half a minute. Increasing the hold time gives more opportunity for the inhaled air to pass through the thin lining of the air sacs and into the blood vessels which […]

Our minds, they are tough to control. I know mine is! And that’s why I’m a yoga practitioner. When I was introduced to the practice in 1996 it was immediately clear that the combination of postures, with attention to breath, gave me a clearer mind, one more able to focus and concentrate. I was able […]