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Have you ever tried to change one of your habits? Maybe you’re determined to go gluten-free, wake up earlier, eat healthier, or just cut ties with your coffee addiction. It seems so simple. But, as yoga practitioners know, it takes dedication and determination—or what we call tapas—to really pull it off.

I certainly discovered that last month when I embarked on a personal challenge to stop eating dairy and sugar. Cue a sudden proliferation of free chai offers, food covered in cheese, and desserts wherever I turned.

Against those odds, however, I survived—and in the process, learned how making small commitments to a new habit boosted not only my health, but my confidence and sense of empowerment.

According to Zen Habits founder Leo Babatua, one of the best ways to fail at new habits is to give yourself too many things to do at once. Or surround yourself with what you’re trying to avoid. So what does work?

Sometimes you just gotta start simple. Take 10-15 seconds before every meal to relax and re-focus. Try a 12-hour fast. Or choose one time of the day to practice an unfamiliar form of relaxation: diaphragmatic breathing with a sandbag; yoga nidra; even just 3 rounds of nadi shodhanam.

If none of these works for you, challenge yourself to do one thing every day for a set period of time, something you know will provide immediate health benefits.

That’s what I did when I chose to avoid dairy and sugar—just for a month. I already knew that I didn’t tolerate dairy well, but permanently quitting seemed impossible. So I promised myself I’d eliminate it for only a month. It worked.

Strangely enough, now that I’ve discovered how healthy I feel without dairy, I’m not tempted to eat it again. A no-strings-attached, one-month challenge gave me the confidence I needed to keep going. And that will happen if you create a micro-challenge to regularly run, practice yoga, or even just keeping a journal of your practice.

Our little experiments each day build tapas, giving us with the determination to do anything. It wasn’t always easy. I’ll admit that. But it was definitely worth it.

What’s your challenge? What habits do you want to change? Let us know—we might even blog about with you.

Photo by Hannah Sue Gray

We’d love to get your feedback on what cover we should use for the fall issue of Yoga International. You can help us out by taking a brief survey—we promise it’ll only take a minute!

Access the survey by clicking HERE.

—Yours truly, the Editors

How many yoga tattoos do you spy at your local yoga studio? Obviously there’s the obligatory om symbol. The lotus flower. And a host of other possibilities, some highlighted in a New York Times photo essay, which noted, “for some yoga practitioners, the body presents a blank movable canvas for images that inspire and inform their practice.”

I wholeheartedly agree. I have three of them, all black—like little symbolic sketches intended to encourage me to keep going. One hitch, however, is that one of these looks like a coffee stain. How does that inform my yoga practice?

At the deepest level, it is a simple reminder for me to embrace imperfection. When I got the tattoo I was 18 years old and attending art school in Chicago. I really wanted to be bold and confident. But I was just awkward and anxious. To the max. The coffee stain didn’t change that, but Buddhism, in a roundabout way, did. It didn’t alter how I felt, but it showed me how to accept it.

My coffee stain came about when I began to explore Buddhist art; I became enamored with the horticultural art of both bonsai and ikebana. I realized that in spite of any asymmetry or obvious imperfection I noticed, I still experienced the inherent beauty.

I wanted to remember that feeling every day. So I picked up a painting of an irregular, misshapen enso, or circle, and had it tattooed on my forearm. Is it a coffee stain? Is it a Zen tattoo? I don’t care. It’s beautiful to me either way.

Of course, I don’t always apply this “embracing imperfection” to my asana practice. Instead, I’ve repeatedly pushed myself beyond my own limits and gotten injured instead of inspired. But what would happen if I focused more on accepting who I am? “That’s key,” says Kat Heagberg, co-founder of the Anahata Co-Op, in Portland, Oregon. “We don’t all look a certain way. Why do we expect our practice to always look or feel a certain way?”

According to Sharon Gannon, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga in New York, changing these habits and attitudes can begin before we even step onto the mat. “What you think about when you practice yoga will determine the result of your practice,” she says.

Want additional wisdom for your practice on the mat? Try these other tips on for size:

Recognize What Makes You Unique
Because not everyone can or should have an identical asana practice. Sometimes, it’s merely because of differences in anatomy. “If I’m sitting in dandasana, there’s no way I’m gonna get my hands flat to the floor,” says Heagberg with a laugh, “Because my arms just aren’t that long.”

And adding a bind to a pose is “nearly impossible,” she says. On those rare occasions when she can bind safely, “It does not look very pretty. But that’s ok. My body doesn’t have to look pretty.”

Use Your Breath to Experiment
You’ve probably heard a yoga teacher tell you to breathe into a pose. How does this help you know your limits? “If you’re in a pose, and you literally can’t breathe or you’re holding it involuntarily,” says Heagberg, “then that’s probably a good sign that you’ve gone too far in one direction and you just need to soften.”

Practicing compassion towards yourself has some unexpected benefits: according to a recent study, simple acts of self-kindness promote better mental health, and can help us more quickly reach our goals.

So repeat after me. Imperfection is beautiful, and so are you.

Photo (cc) by Flickr user Grufnik

On the fourth of July I used to dress up in a bespoke, multi-layered dress that really belonged on an immigrant from early 1800s-era America. I’d then jump in a car and head down to Historic Fort Snelling, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where my parents were historical re-enactors—and so was I.

Now that I’ve left the home front, I don’t quite know how to relate to the 4th. There aren’t exactly a whole lot of obvious tie-ins when you write for a yoga magazine. And at the Himalayan Institute, where I live, I can definitely say that there are no patriotic speeches, no two-day pig roasts, and no third-rate farces. No re-enactor will shout at me about Great Britain while pork fat drips down his face and small pieces of meat fly to the ground as he jabs at the air with a pig’s head on a sword.

Amateur history lessons aside, however, yoga does have a lot more in common with why America celebrates the 4th than I realized.

Pandit Rajmani Tigunait illustrated some of the similarities a couple weeks ago. The founding fathers, he noted with a laugh, probably never read the Vedas. They didn’t practice yoga or host study groups to understand the wisdom of the Yoga Sutra. But they still wrote “the finest piece of Vedanta and yoga,” he said, in the form of the American Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence: two documents, at heart, about the pursuit of happiness and “liberty and justice for all.”

Isn’t that what yoga is all about? The idea that anyone can experience bhoga (freedom) and apavarga (happiness) in his or her own lifetime? More to the point, Panditji noted, none of this depends on our religious or cultural beliefs, and the Founding Fathers (for their part), understood that. Because it’s a path inherently accessible to everyone: yoga practitioners, spiritual seekers, and global wanderers alike.

That’s inspiring.

Whether or not you celebrate the 4th of July, if you practice yoga or study yoga philosophy, this is one idea worth contemplating. The signing of the Declaration of Independence is just one example among many, of universal wisdom manifesting itself everywhere in the world—even in politics.

For my part, I will be celebrating. Probably not in costume. But definitely with my whole heart.

Yoga Philosophy In-Depth

When Panditji speaks of bhoga and apavarga, he’s referring to concepts from yoga philosophy noted in Yoga Sutra verse 2.18:

“The objective world is made of elements and senses. Illumination, action and stability are its inherent qualities. The objective world furnishes conscious with the means of achieving fulfillment and freedom.”

For an expanded commentary on the meaning and purpose of the sutra, check out Panditji’s full commentary online here. Or take a look at our discussion with Four Desires author and Yogarupa Rod Stryker on (pursuing) happiness.

Bonus: Interested in studying the Yoga Sutra further? Our complete yoga sutra study guide is free and accessible online, where you can access Pandit Rajmani Tigunait’s commentaries on each verse, read translations of the devanagari and original transliterations of each verse, and listen for comprehension to DC Rao’s audio recitations.

It’s easy to live under the illusion that more is better. This “quantity over quality” approach can creep into our social lives, our material possessions, and our time commitments. But amassing people and things is a way of avoiding the simple silence that remains if we start to shed the extra baggage.  It’s a way of placing “having” and “doing” above “being.”

A beautiful way to begin to step out of this mindset and to bring more space into our lives is to simplify. When we begin with small things, like decluttering our work space, donating clothes we haven’t worn in two years (but that we keep telling ourselves we may need some day), or unplugging from the addictive habit of hoarding information from the internet, we start to liberate ourselves. Each small act of simplifying our lives allows us to gain enough momentum to ultimately be able to discern and discard the habits, relationships, and activities that don’t serve us. And when we can say goodbye to the extra baggage we used to think we couldn’t do without, we start opening up spaces in our lives for things that do nourish and delight us to enter.

To embrace simplicity and the peaceful sense of freedom that comes with “cleaning out” our lives, focus on the following areas:

1. Possessions. Donate or sell what you don’t absolutely need. The optimal way to shed the stuff that takes up space but offers little value is to first make a list of all the things you absolutely need and begin to get rid of everything else. If you approach decluttering the other way around by picking up each object and considering its possible future uses, you will convince yourself you may eventually need it, whatever the improbable reasons. So make a list first and stick to it. You may find that having more physical space open up around your home will bring a subtle sense of space to your mind. Reducing the external stimuli can help quiet our thoughts and bring us more calm.
2. Activities. Consider everything you commit your time to on a weekly basis. With each item, ask yourself two questions: “Do I enjoy doing it?” and “Is it absolutely necessary?” If that time commitment doesn’t pass both of these with a “yes,” it’s time to reconsider. If changing your schedule to one that serves and fulfills you means you’ll end up with more free time on your hands for now, then see if you can embrace the empty spaces in your schedule rather than scrambling to fill them. Ultimately, simplicity entails spending time on things that are important and allowing some gaps in your day to just be. Today, it’s become easier and more tempting than ever to constantly fill each of these gaps with technology or social media, to the point where checking Facebook or your email becomes an unconscious reaction to a deeply-rooted need to seek fulfillment outside of yourself. But when you start to fill these moments of free time or boredom with either a nourishing activity or nothing at all, your initial aversion to space can subside and give way to a sense of inner peace.
3. Relationships. Does your social life deeply fulfill you or does it simply keep you from being alone or bored? Do your friends support your highest good? A challenging but highly rewarding practice is to start being selective about who you spend your time with and who you give yourself to. If there are relationships, whether with friends or family or your partner, in your life that drag you down or aren’t compatible with your deepest ideals, then acknowledge this. Attachment and fear of loneliness can compel us to keep tolerating friendships and relationships that are so-so or even downright unfulfilling or hurtful. Letting go of your connection to these relationships can be one of the hardest but most powerful decisions you can ever make. It’s a crucial practice in self-love. And when you begin to release old connections whose time has come with a clear vision of the kinds of people you do seek to spend time with or to love, you will begin to see changes in the kinds of relationships you begin to attract.

Another way of expressing “simplicity” is selectivity. It’s not necessarily giving up what you want; it’s letting go of what you’ve been holding on to out of fear and attachment. Initially, it can be challenging to muster up the courage to let go, but once you do, you’ll be empowered to exercise this courage with more and more ease until you find that you no longer accumulate things and people that fill up the gaps in your life without providing much value. Instead, you’ll be surrounded with only what caters to your deepest desires.

This weekend marks a special holiday for us at Yoga International. Guru Purnima. No idea what that means? Here’s a hint: Step into a yoga class and pay attention to your yoga instructor. Has she ever offered helpful assists to you on or off the mat? Given advice so heartfelt it was like he knew you as an old friend? Guru Purnima allows you to remember those moments. At YI, we’ll be gathering with new (and old) friends alike to honor our teachers.

Back in 1987, Swami Rama said that on Guru Purnima, he remembered the way he was looked after by his own teacher. “He was so loving. When I see darkness everywhere, in all relationships in the world, from one corner gleams light. I call it the light of the guru.”

He told his students that Guru Purnima is a day to remember and honor that light—the tireless guidance, compassion, and encouragement we’ve received from our own teachers. And, of course, teachers come in so many guises, from the English professor who believed in us, to the yoga teachers who paid extra attention, to our mothers, dads, friends and mentors we’ve collected along the way.

But he also noted something else about this cross-spiritual, international festival: it’s a time to re-kindle our personal commitment to yoga practice. Why? Guru Purnima isn’t just about external teachers: it’s also about recognizing the guru within.

Buddha might have put it best: light thine own lamp. Be your own beacon—your own lighthouse in the perfect storm. Because even when you don’t feel strong, or your teacher feels far away, as Rolf Sovik points out, your practice can reconnect you with the light of the guru that continually inspires and keeps you going.

Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore illuminated it this way:

“Within us we have a hope which always walks in front of our present narrow experience; it is the undying faith in the infinite in us; it will never accept any of our disabilities as a permanent fact; it sets no limit to its own scope; it dares to assert that man has oneness with God; and its wild dreams become true every day.”

I hope that the words of each of these teachers will give you as much inspiration as they’ve given me. Want to celebrate Guru Purnima at home? Make kheer. Attend a community kirtan, or honor the holiday in your own way.

We’d love to hear who has inspired you and what makes that person so special in your life.

Photo (cc) by Flickr user 27147

Six months ago, I passed my first-ever driving exam. At age 23. It was a somewhat-embarrassing journey from white-knuckling the steering wheel to pulling a fancy maneuver on an uneven, pockmarked road because I thought I saw a very large, dead deer ahead. It was instead a very large, dead tree branch. My friend Kelham who was with me laughed himself all the way back home.

I drive comfortably now—off the interstate. But I’m easily vexed. A shared experience apparently: one shared, at least, by BBC personality Anita Rani in her co-hosted documentary, India on Four Wheels. In the second episode, the road-trip travelogue captures Rani as she encounters a motorbike barreling towards her car, traveling the wrong way—on not just on an old rural road, but in the fast lane of the six-lane, high-speed Mumbai Pune Expressway.

It all feels so universal. Even if cars pretty much stay in their own lane around here, (and peacock attacks on cars are pretty much unheard of) who hasn’t had an experience driving that made them angry, anxious or upset?

More to the point: how do we keep our cool during the season in which we spend hours (and sometimes days) on the road, traveling to yoga festivals, family reunions, and best-friend weddings? I must admit, these tips helped me relax a bit and enjoy the ride.

Health and Driving
According to ayurveda, If there’s one season during which we need to watch our tendency toward aggression, it’s summer. Our level of pitta-dosha hot-headedness can easily skyrocket.

How can you tell? Shouting at traffic might be your first clue. Excess pitta, however, can also cause oily skin, acne, excess sweating, and excess stomach acid—or put in another way—heartburn and ulcers.

Keep your cool by staying hydrated (at least 4 to 6 cups of water daily) and, if you’re particularly feeling the heat, eat plenty of cooling foods (like coconut) that support a pitta-reducing diet and lifestyle.

Practicing mindfulness before and during a drive will also profoundly effect how you navigate that special intersection between hot weather, body aches and pain, and unpredictable traffic.  It can be as simple as doing a few rounds of deep breathing every time you stop at a stop light.

The One-Minute Method: Pause for a few moments before turning the key in the ignition, says Jill Satterfield, founder of Vajra Yoga in New York City. This can provide the opportunity you need to let go of emotions before you get on the road: otherwise, “whatever you’re feeling will be there for the remainder of the trip,” she says, and may affect your ability to enjoy the moment.

The Road Trip Survival Method: As you drive, says Insight Meditation instructor Michele McDonald, pay attention to all five senses. Listen to the ambient sound of your car or feel the heat of the sun through your windows. Observations like these can keep you focused on the present moment.

You never know. You might have loads of fun here. Pack a picnic, grab your favorite sunblock, and head out on the open road!

Need more advice on how to drive mindfully? Read additional tips from Satterfield and McDonald here.

Photo (cc) by Flickr user bass_nroll

I used to be the ultimate city girl: I didn’t like to hike or camp; I would shriek and run at the sight of a worm (okay, maybe this one is still true); and I never had what you would call a fulfilling relationship with Mother Nature.

But gradually, my yoga practice changed all that. Yoga made me much more aware of the deepest needs of my body. These needs had always been there, of course, but learning to listen to my body on the mat—while cultivating my ability to discern and address my spiritual needs off the mat—helped me start to finally recognize them. One need in particular called out rather insistently: my body’s longing for nature, for a place of refuge from the chaos outside so I could access the clarity inside. Something in me, for the first time, craved the outdoors.

And so I responded.  Slowly I began to awaken to the powerful spiritual practice of appreciating nature’s beauty. Noticing a flower was no longer simply nice; it became a doorway into stillness. Breathing in rich and pure mountain air wasn’t just enjoyable; it actually strengthened me physically and emotionally. I could sink my bare toes into the earth and feel energized. Little things I had taken for granted—or neglected to notice at all—became my personal expression of a yogic journey.

For some people connecting with the natural world is, well, second nature. For others, like me, it takes cultivation, patience, and gratitude. The benefits, however, are worth the effort. But when the demands of daily living restrict your access to this ever-present source of renewal, you don’t have to travel far or sacrifice much time to allow nature to bring a little more light into your day. Here are some suggestions:

Recognize connection. You aren’t separate from nature; you’re part of it. That’s why it can make you feel so sublimely at home.

Practice gratitude. Each songbird’s chirp, majestic tree, or funny-shaped cloud provides an opportunity to stop, stay still, listen deeply and watch intently. By giving thanks for these small daily gifts, you open yourself up to more of what nature has to offer.

Make time. On a regular basis connect with what’s natural. Take a mindful stroll around your favorite park, sink your bare feet into fresh soil, or spend the afternoon swimming in a pond or lake.

Acknowledge the healing. That rejuvenation you feel after a weekend trip to a national park? That’s your body rejoicing. Does gardening in your backyard leaves you a little more refreshed and grounded? Then perhaps tending the soil is, on some level, your body’s way of healing itself. Its intelligence always knows what serves your being best, and those impulses you get—to go hiking, surfing, gardening, or bird watching—are manifestations of that inherent wisdom.

Our yoga practice strives “to yoke” and unify, and learning to feel our inherent oneness with nature is an accessible and immensely pleasurable place to start.

Did you know? Breaking up your busy work week with short bursts of creative activities—like learning to make pottery or just singing your favorite song—will benefit your health in ways that are strikingly similar to yoga. Summing up the recent research findings, a columnist for CNN put it this way:  “Creating helps make people happier, less anxious, more resilient, and better equipped to problem-solve in the face of hardship.”

That sounds pretty common sensical to me. Have you ever noticed that when you’re in touch with your creativity— no matter how you choose to express it—problems don’t seem quite so difficult, work seems like a breeze, and you can pretty much apply yourself wholeheartedly to anything? But if you’re exhausted, uninspired? Not so much.

Luckily, you can also give yourself the creative boost you need by stepping onto your yoga mat or meditation cushion. How? Specifically, by tapping into what’s known as kundalini shakti.

Creativity and Yoga
According to the Himalayan Institute’s own Swami Rama, using your yoga practice to awaken kundalini will naturally promote creativity and give you that cool sense of working in the groove—what Sandra Anderson refers to as the “creative, blissful consciousness of enlightenment.”

Hari Kirin Kaur Kalsa would agree. The painter and yoga teacher starts her day with a meditation taught by Kundalini master Yogi Bhajan, which she says will sharpen your concentration, help you access your intuition, and most relevantly—enhance your creativity.

Practice a yoga sequence, taught by Sandra Anderson, which focuses on udana vayu, or the upward moving breath. This breath is chiefly associated with kundalini shakti, and according to Anderson, “when udana is balanced and strong, we stand tall and joyous, enthusiastic, alert, articulate, and strong-willed.”

Who doesn’t want to be joyous and strong-willed? I do. And as someone who is not quite 5’2” a little taller wouldn’t hurt either.

For additional insight, take a look at how well known artists, musicians, and writers use yoga to fuel their own creativity in our feature, “Awakening the Artist.”

Photo (cc) by Fotopedia user Mirari Erdoiza

Do you ever go for a nice morning run to clear your mind, enjoy a cold swim, or voluntarily sweat bullets on a long bike ride in the heat of the summer? If your yoga teacher knew, she’d probably tell you that these kinds of sports won’t help your asana practice.

I beg to differ. Take Ultimate Frisbee, for example. Anyone who plays it knows that it promotes ekagraha (one-pointedness) right? So how exactly do you reconcile your two passions—sports and asana practice?

For starters, read Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s Running with the Mind of Meditation. The Sakyong, the lineage holder of Shambhala Buddhism, doesn’t claim that you can or should meditate while running. And he doesn’t even offer you a step-by-step guide to making it to race day.

But what he does do, to the delight of Buddhist meditators and yoga teachers everywhere, is help you recognize how close your goals as a runner are to your intentions as a meditator or spiritual seeker. One big similarity? The attitude (and respect) you bring to both.

Another observation will be awfully familiar to anyone who’s studied bhakti yoga:

“Running is not simply slogging through the miles, trying to sweat out last night’s good times, or burning off excess weight,” he says. It can also be, like any activity practiced with one-pointed focus and an open heart, “a way to celebrate life.”

So how do you manage to keep running and have an established asana practice?

Consider shifting your priorities for asana, says Portland-based yoga teacher Tiffany Cruikshank. She sees it in the personal practice of many seasoned yoga practitioners who are now runners: “their goal isn’t really to be Gumby anymore,” she says, with a laugh.

What does that mean, exactly? “Sometimes it means if my legs are burning I’ll fall out of a posture early,” says marathon runner and yoga teacher Marni Renison. “And that’s a big thing—can you hold this posture? Can you hold this inversion?”

But intensity is no longer why she practices asana. “It’s not my space of competition,” she says, “It’s my space of recovery.”

Bringing Yoga to your Running

Yoga practitioners have a leg up, so to speak, on other runners because they’ve learned to pay deep attention to their bodies. To get the most out of running, take these tips from yoga teacher and ultra marathon runner Josh Schrei.

Try to stay keenly aware of your physical alignment. “You can have really good posture in your yoga practice” he says, “then start running, and it’s a whole new thing—those good habits we have go out the window.”

Instead of leaning forward as you run, he notes, keep the spine long, the naval slightly drawn in, and the heart lifted—just like you would in Tadasana (mountain pose). The benefit? As in yoga, this can prevent injury, and also make every run become “tremendous core exercise.”

Focus on your breath and pay attention to physical cues so that when your body tells you to slow down or take a break you can hear that.

You can also use running as a way to practice the yogic concept of self-surrender, says Schrei. Start by letting go of expectations about how fast or how far you should run. Over time, that open and trusting attitude can actually open the doors to longer and more intense runs than you ever previously imagined.

Bonus: Consider incorporating the bandhas. “You can work with uddiyana bandha directly while running” Schrei says. In addition to its energetic effect on the vayus, practicing uddiyana bandha will benefit your run by stabilizing the neutral alignment of the lumbar spine—preventing it from overarching or collapsing.

Photo (cc) by Flickr user adropp