An oldie but a goodie. We’ve all been here. Cover illustration from The New Yorker: December 8, 2003. Illustrator unknown.  

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? If you reduce stress and [...]

Thank you Brokelyn! The awesome blog about “living big on small change” researched a list of massages under $50. There’s one five blocks from my house! Check it out here: http://www.brokelyn.com/massages-for-50-and-under-in-brooklyn/

New article in the Journal links prolonged TV watching to an increased rate of death — even for people who exercise! The problem is the extended periods of sitting still. And it seems that sitting on a plane, at a computer, or — gasp — reading a book is just as bad.

Yoga, Inc., “the documentary that asks whether yoga can survive big business with its good karma intact,” is available for free viewing online. It reviews the entrance of yoga to the West, its secularization and marketing, yoga ethics, guru reverence, and the business of running a studio. It spends a long time on Bikram’s copyright [...]

If you have even one ounce of energy tomorrow at 1pm, come out to the Yoga for NY meeting! They are doing insanely tireless, valuable work to get yoga exempted from the state’s extortion initiatives. Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 Yoga High 19 Clinton St

Holiday deadlines, moving apartments… I lost my yoga practice somewhere in the transition between neighborhoods and seasons. It was hard to commit to class cards just before the move, and easy to let the price of a drop-in class become an excuse. (But selling furniture did increase the frequency of home practice! Ah, space.) Even [...]

Do you remember your first yoga class? The questions, the perceptions, the expectations (or lack thereof)? Yesterday’s Times had a nice first-time-to-yoga narrative: Ignoring the warning bells deep inside my brain, I grabbed a book, thinking that if the class got too long for my limited physical capacity, I would just slip outside and read. [...]

Good reminder as the holiday music starts playing: exercise creates physical, as well as mental, buffers for stress in the brain. Rats who had run for several weeks before stress tests (like swimming in cold water): showed less activation in neurons associated with stress displayed less anxiety and helplessness maintained calmness and curiosity, even when [...]

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 runs across the base of your [...]