Finding Beauty
The Fierce Goddess
She is burningly fierce and infinitely gentle. Her beauty is unparalleled, even as her face is reddened from the heat of her own passion and rage. She has a closet full of outfits but favors dressing in vivid red from head to toe. She is so powerful that there are twelve forms of her, each form displaying a specific aspect of her personality and power. In her four hands she holds prayer beads, a book, and she makes the gestures of fearlessness and of graceful offering. You're either with her or against her. Draped around her neck and shoulders is a garland of severed heads, and her chest and face are smeared with their blood. From the midst of the gore, her three luminous eyes shaped like lotus blossoms shine like the rising sun….
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Wake Up Call
Notice Things
All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable, which makes you see something you weren't noticing, which makes you see something that isn't even visible.
Progress Reports
Holidayasana Week Two and Big Deals on BluePrintCleanse
It's Day 6 of our Holidayasana challenge, and just about 300 yogis have logged 396 hours of yoga, 718 healthy meals, 70 hours of volunteering, and collectively avoided thousands of disposable plastic bags. All that good work will not go unrewarded! Today we add another free trial class to your virtual gift bag, as well a special deal from our generous sponsor BluePrintCleanse. Read on for the details, and some helpful challenge hints. Also, not to worry if you haven't joined the challenge or started logging your activity yet. There's still time. Come along!
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Elixirs
Five Ways to Manage Holiday Sugar Cravings
The holidays tempt us to let down our guard. It's a challenge to say no to homemade goodies. But those darling things can seriously throw you off balance. The sweets hit some harder than others. Be honest with yourself. Can you handle the gingerbread, or is it a trigger food that you should aviod at all costs?
Food is powerful. Know your body and take care of it. For me, it's important to be mindful of my portions and the quality or type of sugar I intake. I try to stay away from the killer combo of refined flour and sugar. I've learned I can get more pleasure without the side effects (bloating, zapped energy, headache, dehydration, weight gain, digestive issues, increased cycles of sugary carb/quick fix cravings, moodiness, dull eyes, and dry skin!) from healthier sugars such as stevia, raw honey, and grade B maple syrup.
Here's some tips that will do anyone some good, regardless of your sweet tooth status....
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Celebrating Yourself and Holidayasana!
In order to give to others you also need to give to yourself. In order to be a good friend, family member, or partner you have to be good to yourself first. You have to love yourself. In Anusara® yoga we begin with the premise of self-embrace. This is not any sort of narcissism. Rather, it is a reverence for nature, of which we are a part. It's also a show of appreciation for our family members, teachers, and friends who have helped form us.
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Site News
Survive the Holidays with Social Workout and Friends!
It’s the first Monday of the holiday season, and I’m standing on the deck of Social Workout 2.0 frantically tossing life preservers into a quietly rising tide of egg nog. December is challenge time around here. It’s also shaping up to be a coming out party for our new site.
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Wake Up Call
Set a Goal
Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.
Finding Beauty
The Beauty of Asymmetry
Beauty resides in the asymmetrical, the not-quite-matching-up-ness of things. The unexpected, the quirk. Think of the crack in the vase that accentuates the beauty around it. Symmetry can be beautiful in its evenness, but too much of it becomes stasis. Predictability. Beauty lies in surprising contrasts.
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Buns of Steal
Gymhopping into Your Ex
New York's a big city, right? With lots and lots of gyms. And lots and lots of people. Right, well, leave it to BoS to inadvertently gymhop (quite unawares) to the favorite workout spot of a guy she had said her goodbyes to not even a week prior. Well done, BoS....
So here's how it happened: I was gonna do a boxing class with my fave fitness blogger, Mizzfit, but when that fell through I hastily decided to swing by the YMCA, one of the gyms I hadn't yet checked out. I show up at 6:30 P.M. and jump right into a "Fitness for Athletes" class, led by a former football player known as "Sexy Rob."
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Site News
Simple Goal Setting Comes to SW 2.0
Last night, or maybe it was this morning, I wrote the following "special alert" to users of "SW 2.0." That's what we call our fancy, new personal tracking, goal setting, and challenge-doing site. We've been working away on the changes for a while, and we've got a lot more to come.
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Wake Up Call
Once We Believe in Ourselves
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
Boob Tube
von Hottie's Zombie Apocalypse Guide to Fitness
There is nothing like watching a zombie apocalypse on the television to remind me that it's been awhile since I've been friendly with the elliptical. Watching AMC's new show The Walking Dead this past weekend, while walking, I realized that you'd have to be super fit and beautiful to survive a zombie attack.
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Buns of Steal
Buns of Steal Gets a Brazilian
Leandro Carvalho's Brazil Butt Lift DVD begins with the following words...
"The Butt... They Come in All Shapes and Sizes.... but what if you could have the perfect butt you've always dreamed about?....My Booty is my best feature. My booty is Round, Hard, Firm... I get Whistles and Cat-calls... "
Glamour magazine has dubbed Carvalho the "butt master." Alessandra Ambrosio raves about him. He's got a "booty blueprint guide" with a "pencil test" to help you determine if your ass is too big.
Look, I'm really not sure how I feel about all that, but my pseudonym is "BunsofSteal," so does that make me the pot or the kettle? For my first class back at Equinox Fitness, my favorite recent conquest, I decided I had to investigate.
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