Blog Articles
The Amazing Benefits Of Preteen Yoga
There are so many amazing benefits of yoga for preteens that it’s hard to name them all. Lets face it; there are a lot of things young preteen girls are confronted with and at such a young age. While they might think they know it all, or are trying to, what they really need most is an outlet for all of the internal anxieties they are faced with everyday. This isn’t to say that being a preteen girl is the worst life experience to go through, but it’s certainly a challenge to say the least. I remember going through my own unique challenges as a young preteen girl and that combined with my passion for yoga is what inspired me to launch my preteen yoga series. I personally have already seen so much progress with my students in this series and hope you can find some of these same benefits in a local preteen yoga class near you.
Study Found That Yoga Reduces Anxiety in Teens
There are so many benefits of yoga for adults and these same benefits can also be applied to preteens. Making the transition from summer break back to school can be difficult. For both teens, preteens and their parents, adjusting to a new school with the challenges of balancing homework, extra-curricular activities, friends and down time can be tricky and can cause a lot of stress and anxiety. read more…
3 Yoga Poses to Improve Mental Clarity, Reduce Stress and Anxiety
Practicing yoga has been proven time and time again to reduce stress and promote feelings of calm and well being. It combines breathing techniques and meditation to help quiet the mind, ease stress and manage pain.
Here are 3 poses you can easily practice daily at home to start or end your day: read more…
Yogival Preteen and Teen Yoga Series for Girls
I really can’t express how much I enjoyed teaching my first public Yogival Preteen and Teen yoga class on Saturday April 11th. This class is a passion project for me and I am very excited to have experienced such an amazing response from the girls to my new class I specifically created for a preteen and teen audience. I wish that I had this class when I was a preteen! read more…
YogiVal Balancing Act
When I first started thinking about balancing effort and ease, it related to my yoga practice and bringing pain relief to my arthritic hip. But over time I realized I also desperately needed to bring that balance into my everyday life. Throughout my 20’s, it felt like I spent my days on a hamster wheel – jumping from one crisis to another. I lived in a chronic state of stress and anxiety. (Even though I had a successful career I loved, great friends and had plenty of fun, I was stressed out all the time.) I also think when you are deep into that stress, it is hard to make the conscious choice to do things a different way. It can be an uphill battle to get off the hamster wheel, but the first step is deciding you want to get off. I am not preaching or telling anyone how to live your life. I am sharing my journey, searching for the balance between effort and ease to consciously make an effort to balance all aspects of my life. I don’t think this balance is something we strive to perfect, but something we work at and stay open to evolving over time as our priorities and needs shift. This series includes some stories of how I search for that balance in my life everyday.
Lifestyle
Lifestyle Yogival's Summer Quinoa Salad Ingredients 2 cups of quinoa 10 cherry tomatoes 1 bunch of kale 1 sweet onion 5 stems of cilantro ½ cup of your favorite feta or mild cheese Olive Oil 1 lemon Salt Garlic Salt Black Pepper Directions Cook 2 cups of...
3 Ways to Make Time for Self-Care During the Holidays
The Holiday season is meant for family and friends to come together and celebrate. It’s a time that creates happy, lasting memories. It’s also a time where stress can run high and we often find ourselves over committing…
My Hot Date With Sugar
The Holiday season is filled with family gatherings, parties with friends, co-workers and school events, and we know all of those events are centered around food. We all love those special, once a year holiday treats we bake to celebrate the sweet nature of the...
Chapter 6: MOM CUT HER HAIR OFF!
I attended a wonderful workshop a few weeks ago at the Institute for Girls DevelMom Cut Her Hair Off Teaching Hardinesspment in Pasadena. The workshop was about how we can teach and support hardiness in girls. We talked about a lot of the different challenges girls are faced with
Chapter 5: How We Talk About Food in My Family
Food and nutrition is a priority in my family so I do my best to educate my kids about the food we put on our table. I use these discussions as a way to point them towards good food habits, and I do my best not to preach. I want them to eat whole foods, get nutrition...
Chapter 4: Kids and Nutrition
One of the biggest areas in my life where I strive to find balance is what I feed my kids. I want them to get a good start in life and understand the importance of good nutrition, whole foods, organic produce and meat produced without hormones and antibiotics. When I...
Chapter 3: Teaching our Children About Death and Dying
My children had their first lesson experiencing death this month. I have always been told that death comes in 3’s, but this story is almost too much to believe. It started in our own home with our sweet dog Rascal
Chapter 2: Learning Compassion for Ourselves as Parents
Sometimes I wonder if I am doing a “good job” as a mom. I became a mother when I was 37 and I had no idea how hard it would be. I loved the experience of caring for a newborn and felt a love so big I thought I would burst, but it was a big transition for me. Support...
Chapter 1: The Journey to Finding Balance in Marriage and Family Life
I never wanted to get married at a young age. I was clear from an early age that I wanted to have my own career and develop as a person before I got married and had kids. I achieved that goal with a wonderful career in retail and shoe wholesale before opening my yoga...
YogiVal Five Fundamentals
Now that you understand my inspiration for my mantra, balancing effort and ease, I am thrilled you are moving on toreading about The YogiVal 5 Fundamentals. My 5 Fundamentals video series will give you more examples and visuals of how to learn these connection principals of alignment, but I also wanted to write about what inspired me to create and teach these fundamentals. I find these alignment principals are universal. They help anyone make deeper connections in their yoga practice, reduce chances for injury in athletes and inspire anyone who has not yet started an exercise regimen as they provide a core foundation for a new active lifestyle.
I will be releasing a new fundamental each month until all 5 are posted. Once they are up they will live on my site forever. Feel free to post any questions you might have in my Ask Val forum. I hope you enjoy reading about my process for developing the 5 Fundamentals and I also hope they can provide some insight into finding your balance between effort and ease.
Fundamental 5: Finding Your Feet
This last fundamental is my favorite, which is why I saved the best for last. I hope you can see in my video that it is important to be aware of your feet. When you watch the video, pay attention to the examples that I give and ask yourself if...
Fundamental 4: Relax your shoulders
We are such a stressed out culture. No matter what stage of life you are in, there is plenty of stress and we love to carry that stress in our shoulders. I always wonder how people would react if I walked up behind them and touched their...
Fundamental 3: Spine and Hips
It is staggering how many people have back pain. I am so excited to write about this fundamental because I think there is so much we can do to reduce and sometimes heal our own back pain. Back pain can develop early or later in life. It can be a slow and gradual problem that worsens over time, arises from overuse, or as a result of bad alignment throughout the body…
Fundamental 2: Core
Core might be the most overused word in fitness, but that does not diminish how important it is. Connecting to your core is one of the most important connections you should learn to have great posture and confidence, and to minimize or reduce many pains...
Fundamental 1: Breathing
Breathing is universal. You don’t have to practice yoga to learn how to breathe correctly. One of the reasons I have expanded beyond my Bikram Yoga studio and started YogiVal.com, is to reach an audience that may not want to practice yoga, or is not ready to practice yoga, but wants to…