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Do you love to attend community kirtan, or listen to the devotional music that crops up at festivals from Wanderlust to Tadanasa to even Omega’s Ecstatic Chant? Do you own a harmonium, sitar, guitar, or any kind of synthesizer? Are you guilty of joining at least one drum circle?

If you’ve answered yes to any of the above—even one—you’re in for a treat. Brooklyn-based singer Nina Rao just released a debut, double-album mix of devotional kirtan, bhajan, and Hanuman Chalisa chants called Antarayaami.

If you’re unfamiliar with Rao or the New York-area outlets she regularly performs at (like the donation-based Brooklyn outpost of many Dharma Yoga-trained teachers, the Brooklyn Yoga School), it’s time you got well acquainted. Since 1996, she’s worked as the assistant of chant master Krishna Das, also frequently assisting him with cymbals and vocals on tour.

That kind of dedication has long been mutual: notably, Krishna Das’s unmistakable, deep baritone-voice appears on the album in a duet entitled “Ocean of Ram Hanuman Chalisa.” But that isn’t the only story worth telling.

The album is also a much deeper reflection for Rao, who was initially introduced to devotional music at the age of 9. It was then she first learned traditional chants from her grandfather, in a village in South India. She was re-introduced to chanting and the yoga of devotion, bhakti, through Krishna Das—and currently bands together with seasoned artists like Ambika Cooper, Devadas Labrecque (equal parts kirtan artist, part producer of Antaryaami), and the founders of the Brooklyn Yoga School themselves, as part of the New York-based collective chant community, Vanaras.

Check out some of our favorite tracks, get info on future performances and more here. The album is also available for purchase at the Krisha Das online store, Amazon, and iTunes.

Year-end lists, spontaneous resolutions, and 30-day yoga or meditation challenges are all common ways to test your willpower on—or even weeks after—the New Year. But what now? How can you sustain this mindful resolve the rest of the year?

Cut yourself some slack and really listen to yourself. That’s the first step to cultivating what the yoga tradition calls a sankalpa, or resolve. More than just a desire made public, “a sankalpa practice starts from the radical premise that you already are who you need to be to fulfill your life’s dharma,” says Kelly McGonigal, author of The Willpower Instinct.

If this is your first experience with a sankalpa, try this. Close your eyes and settle in for a few moments. And then ask yourself, “what do you I really want?” The answer to that could be anything: to become a yoga teacher, to stop feeling so angry all the time, to quit smoking, or even just to wake up earlier.

You can also build willpower over time by practicing yoga, according to senior Iyengar yoga teacher Patricia Walden, who says willpower exists in our bodies as well as our minds. She recommends choosing a challenging yoga pose and holding it for 30 seconds; do that every day for at least a week. A practice like this can build your reserves and help you follow through on difficult decisions in the future.

Or make it habit to regularly explore a short, restorative practice like yoga nidra.

No matter what you choose to do, by all means be compassionate. Back off from a challenge if necessary. That might sound like a sign of weakness or even counterintuitive, but according to McGonigal, “If you think that the key to greater willpower is being harder on yourself, you are not alone.” You’re just wrong, she says. According to a growing wealth of research, self-criticism is “consistently associated with less motivation and worse self-control.”

Building your willpower muscle and remaining true-blue to challenging goals—according to the (scientific) writing on the wall—isn’t about taking the high road. It’s actually a lot more about compassion and even, it seems, self-confidence.

Check out the full scoop on the science behind willpower, and explore 5 poses that cultivate resolve from Senior Iyengar teacher Patricia Walden, here.

SHARE YOUR WILLPOWER SECRETS AND WIN!

Tell us in the comments how you keep your resolve and we’ll register you to win a HOME PRACTICE yoga kit from Manduka. Now if that isn’t motivating!

In the December issue of Time magazine, Dr. Mehmet Oz recommended we all give frozen food a chance—even those forlorn glommed-together chunks of spinach that come out of your freezer in one big hunk. In his in-favor-of-it-all feature, he was quick to note, “The rise of foodie culture over the past decade has venerated all things small-batch, local-farm and organic—all with premium price tags. But let’s be clear: you don’t need to eat like the 1% to eat healthily.”

If that isn’t a statement. He criticizes the ‘foodie culture’ not only for the price tags that regular adorn its fancy produce at boutique organic bodegas and large-scale chains, but also for its insistence that organic is healthier. He cites a recent review by Stanford University of 237 previous scientific studies that finds “little evidence” exists that suggests going organic is a healthier choice.

Harsh. Should we really end all our homegrown, locavore dreams and start buying everything in non-organic, frozen bulk because of findings like these? It’s a personal decision that warrants your own list of pros and cons—but here are some to, ahem, chew on.

Freezing or repeatedly reheating food fundamentally alters its vitality—the actual nutritional benefits you get from eating it, according to ayurvedic physicians. Exceptions to this are pretty rare—like bringing non-organic, homogenized turmeric milk to a boil three times to make the milk easier to digest.

Still skeptical? Notice the difference between eating homemade pesto from fresh basil and the store-bought variety made with the frozen herb. Or how about fresh, handmade pasta vs the dried, packaged variety? Or even marinara sauce made from ripe tomatoes?

‘Organic’ doesn’t always mean expensive. An intrepid, budget-squeezed comrade at food blog The Kitchn recently tested a claim from Whole Foods that you can stock an organic pantry for $99. For a chain of grocery stores once lampooned by the movie Baby Mama and much better known to the 99% as Whole Paycheck, it was a challenge worth looking into.

By choosing goods almost exclusively from bulk bins and the store’s private label 365 Everyday Value brand, The Kitchn succeeded. They bagged 38 different items for the low price of $93.52.

It’s not just about us. Buying all the groceries you can between a grocery store like Whole Foods and your local farmer’s market (or by joining a CSA) can be a way to both support your diet and put compassion into action. Dr. Oz seems to have forgotten that we buy organic not only for our own health, but for the health of the farm workers and the planet. In just one small example of the damage non-organic farming can do, New York Times columnist Mark Bittman reminds us that “The genetically modified soybeans grown in 91 percent of U.S. soybean fields have repeatedly been linked with reproductive and birth defects in animals.”

So if we can find ways to support our own lifestyle with all the small-batch, local-farm, organic goods we can afford, we not only avoid pesticides, we also support the lifestyles (and livelihoods) of other like-minded, mindful individuals. This is the kind of community-building I think yoga practitioners and teachers aspire to and believe in.

So wake up early. Kiss an organic farmer. Take on an organic food challenge of your own. Then tell us about it. Or just share any tips you have for living mindfully, on a budget.

Heard of the Kumbha Mela? It’s quite possibly the largest human gathering on the planet, a 2,000-year old celebration on the Ganges river that draws as many as 100 million spiritual seekers and pilgrims once every 12 years. Those dedicated seekers are a diverse bunch: international travelers, yoga teachers, Hindu leaders, mystic recluses.

Makeshift bridges and tents and medical services have cropped up in the past month to serve or shelter all of them, almost like limited-time, pop-up boutiques.

As these millions will no doubt attest, we all yearn to discover a deeper connection to something spiritual or even just more “authentic” in ourselves. But we don’t necessarily have to travel half way around the world to get there.

As Deborah Willoughby puts it, “The specific destinations—Jerusalem, Mount Kailash, Canterbury, Bodh Gaya, Mecca, Mount Kilimanjaro, Prayaga Raja—vary by culture and spiritual path, but the lure is always the same.” That lure is sometimes just something bigger. Something that seems—from afar—more intimate.

More often than not, a pilgrimage denotes a religious or spiritual quest and involves traveling long distances—like when devotees in India roll, carefully, on the ground surrounding sacred mountains like the Arunachala, or when pilgrims walk the Camino de Santiago trail in Spain. But for many of us, the most important trips we take on any given day are much closer to home.

Every time you walk into a yoga studio, for example, you can set the intention to discover something more authentic in yourself. Before taking a considerable risk, like switching careers—something some of us might call a leap of faith—spend time in self-reflection and exploring possibilities. It’s more of a “close to home” kind of pilgrimage.

For inspiration for your not-quite-a-pilgrimage, take a look at online startups like Codecademy, Coursera and Udacity. These are online education-focused communities that allow you to study with top-tier teachers for free, in your pajamas. These services might not offer classes in Sanskrit or yoga philosophy (yet!) but they can help you gain confidence exploring sometimes entirely foreign career paths (and gain real-world experience) in a structured, yet social environment without quitting your day job.

According to Codecademy’s co-founder and CEO, Zachary Sims, a student in Kenya did just that. She was in the middle of a medical internship when she began learning online how to code, excited by just how much the internet empowers others to create. Her curiosity paid off. Two weeks into her internship, she quit. The internship, that is. And she eventually landed a paying job as a Ruby developer.

Arguably, her success depended on cultivating qualities that Deborah Willoughby believes are necessary for any pilgrimage: “steady attention centered in the present, the ability to drop preconceived notions, and—above all—a willingness to open ourselves, patiently and reverently, to what we don’t yet know how to see.”

What about you? My own pilgrimage in the next year might or might not involve travel, javascript, or the internet. But take your own cues. What are you going to do?

For more, check out Deborah Willoughby’s contemplative essay on how pilgrimage transforms from a once-in-a-lifetime-journey-to-your-deepest-self-in-a-foreign-land to an ongoing spiritual practice.

Photo courtesy Kumbha Mela 2013

If you needed to pack for a trip tomorrow, what would you take? When faced with imminent travel plans like these, many of us choose possessions we know will definitely provide us comfort. A lot of them. There are an infinite number of things you might need, for every possible instance of bad weather or sickness or good times (or bad times).

And yet, ironically, it’s the time and energy we spend carting around all this stuff that always seems to cause the most stress. It can also make us stick out, uncomfortably, from the rest of our surroundings: like a couple of backpackers in Europe with massive packs, eager to see the world while carrying a kitchen sink from America.

Longtime travel writer Rolf Potts ventures overseas with a slightly lighter hand; he only carries a small daypack. He also challenged himself to take this minimalist philosophy further in 2010 by venturing on a 6-week world tour through 12 countries on 5 continents with no baggage at all, his only possessions stuffed into carefully-placed pockets hidden in his clothes. Sound unreasonable? He thinks he packed too much.

Keep reading for his insights into the benefits of minimalist travel and how to apply its principles to living simply, mindfully, and more happily—at home.

What do you take with you when you travel?
I take a few clothes and a few toiletries, plus a smartphone and a charger. If traveling on business I’ll also take a laptop, but everything can be fit into a daypack that fits in an airplane overhead bin. The benefits are huge—I have little to slow me down, little that I have to pack or unpack or store or keep watch over. I am extremely mobile, and I can focus on the people and experiences I find in my travels; I break the ties with all the “stuff” that binds me to home and immerse myself in my new environment. The challenge with the smartphone is balance—using it enough to inform my trip without using it so much that it distracts from my trip.

How can someone relate habits like that to the way they live at home?
The heart of my travel philosophy—and, really, my life philosophy—is that time is your truest form of wealth in life. Too often we tally our wealth in terms of money or possessions, when in fact time and experience is a far more valuable commodity. Abiding by the principles of simplicity can help you live in a more deliberate and time-rich way:

How much of what you own really improves the quality of your life?
Are you buying new things out of necessity or compulsion?
Do the things you own enable you to live more vividly, or do they merely clutter up your life?

Scientific studies have determined that new experiences satisfy our higher-order needs in a way that new possessions cannot—that taking a friend to dinner, for example, brings more lasting happiness than spending that money on a new shirt.

How do you apply philosophy like that to your own home life?
I try to slow down, to seek experiences over possessions, to keep things simple and to not set limits on what can be experienced in a day. Home is a place where habits and routines can make life more efficient, but I try not to let those habits and routines take over my life.

What do you try to improve on?
Balancing my desire to be in the moment with my various professional ambitions. I like work, and it brings me a lot of satisfaction, but it can begin to wear on me if I’m not taking the time to enjoy my day (or parts of my day) in a non-goal oriented manner.

Do you have any other insights into how travel has taught you how to simplify your life?
I think that fear is one of the things that gets in the way of living simply. We think that the comfort and happiness we desire is tied up on owning more, seeking more, desiring more—when in fact the opposite is often the case. Travel is a good way to confront these fears—to strip down your possessions, get away from home habits and realize how simple it is to live fully.

You can only take so many things with you on the road, and you put yourself in a situation where you can experience the world in a transient, non-habitual way. If you travel long enough, this rhythm becomes ritual, and you can incorporate this new attitude into your life at home.

I might add that this kind of simplicity involves cutting back on your addiction to gadgets and online diversions. Often what is cluttering our psychic world at home is our addiction to constant information online and through our smartphones. Knowing how to unplug from all this on the road can remind you how pleasurable it can be to get your information and enjoyment from your immediate surroundings and experiences.

Photo (cc) by Flickr user Alex E. Proimos

Does this scenario sound familiar? Your skin’s completely dried out, your lips are chapped, your whole system’s dehydrated, and your brain is fuzzy and barely functioning. To top it all off, you can’t even seem to fall asleep even though you’re bone tired. According to ayurvedic expert Kathryn Templeton, you’re suffering from holidaze, a common malady this time of year when we all feel a little out of whack. We can blame our condition on a combination of holiday chaos (or cheer), travel, and the dry, windy environment we live in.

If you think the only way to combat dry, hectic conditions like these is to slather on the cold cream and hibernate until spring, you’re wrong. Put the bottle down and try these ayurvedic remedies instead. Templeton relies on them anytime she travels during the holiday season, but they work just as well from the comforts of home.

For Dehydration—and Digestion
According to ayurveda the best way to stay hydrated during the winter is by drinking lots of warming, hot liquids. A cup of your favorite herbal tea works, but if your system is a little sluggish make some CCF tea instead: a simple infusion of cumin, coriander, and fennel (in equal parts) will warm your belly and promote better digestion. To prepare the tea, just add hot water to your herbs and let it all steep for at least 3 minutes.

On the road a lot? Carry a sealed, plastic baggy of the herbs with you, and add hot water as available.

For the Airplane
If you’re flying, says Templeton, and you know you’ll be held captive by the dry, stale air of the airplane cabin, pack a small bottle of nasya oil in your carry-on. Once you’re in the air, you can dab a pinky of the oil inside both nostrils, saturate a couple cotton-balls and stuff them into your ears as well. “At the end of a flight, my neighbors are usually my new best friends, or—they’ve moved,” Templeton says, laughing.

For Bedtime
Before crawling into bed, give yourself an abhyanga (a self-massage). You can go for the full monty—dry-brushing combined with a head-to-toe massage with sesame or triphala oil. Or, if you’re pressed for time, just go for the feet—you’ll get many of the same rejuvenating benefits as a full massage.

One of the best side effects? A good night’s sleep.

Bonus: For dry eyes, Templeton recommends dabbing a little castor oil at the corner of your eyelids.

Get more of Templeton’s ayurvedic tips for every season here. Or curb your holiday stress with an in-depth lesson in the healing practices of pranayama from Rolf Sovik.

Photo (cc) by Flickr user thisisbossi

The winter travel season can bring us closer to our family—or drive us further apart. As spiritual teacher Ram Dass once said, “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a weekend with your parents.” Rediscover your compassionate heart with the following tips.

The holidays are an opportune time to practice vairagya, or non-attachment. Parents (and our reactions to them) often serve as a mirror for where we are spiritually and emotionally.

During any length of travel, try to designate a physical space for practice. Use it as a reminder to utilize spare moments for yoga. Even if you only think you have time for a single sun salutation, one nadi shodhanam cycle, or 10 minutes of diaphragmatic breathing, each of these practices promotes clear-headed understanding and balance.

And remember—as the writer Hermann Hesse wrote inSiddhartha, “Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.”
Photo via (cc) Flickr user Christina Rutzi

Want to change your habits? Yoga practitioners commonly set a heartfelt intention, or sankalpa, to promote positive change. Want to push your practice further? Take up a purascharana.

For beginners, a purascharana might be a commitment to the practice of mantra meditation every day for a week. Your individual practice might vary; a reasonable goal the first month might be to sit for anywhere between 15 to 30 minutes each time you mediate.

To prepare for any meditation practice, examine your sitting posture and props. Allow yourself the freedom to experiment. Some meditators find it useful to cultivate a sacred space, or use a mala to focus the mind. These practices support healthier habits—and promote well-being—within yourself and the world.

Yoga practitioners share a common bond. It might sometimes seem limited to the brand of chai we drink, the mats we buy, the devotional music we do or don’t like—even the style of yoga pants we insist on wearing. But, at best, a strong sense of community—and a feeling of gratitude for the teachings—inspires and empowers yoga practitioners and teachers throughout the world to come together and make things happen.

This week is typically when family and friends gather together to give thanks and to share their abundance—of love, time, and food—with one another.  So how best to do that? Here are three ways we’ve come up with at Yoga International.

Practice asteya or non-stealing, the third yama from the Yoga Sutra. How does not stealing from someone teach us how to show gratitude? Glad you asked. Irena Petryszak has some thoughts on the subject here.

Practice mindful eating. Before digging into your next big meal, spend 15 seconds doing nothing. Simply pause, close your eyes, and take a few full breaths. This not only helps you overcome the urge to eat everything in sight—it’s Thanksgiving dinner after all—but it also helps connect you to the source of your food—from the seeds in the ground to the farmer who planted them; from the sun and rain and loving care that helped them grow to the folks who harvested the fruits, veggies, and grains on your plate.

Spread the love. Don’t forget those whose lives have been ravaged by the early winter storms this year. Volunteer—by yourself or encourage your yoga community to join you—to serve community meals, gather much needed supplies, or raise money to help these communities and families get back on their feet.

Feel the blessings. To be able to eat, laugh, and spend time in the company of friends new and old—that’s where magic happens. That’s what yoga’s really all about.

So what are you grateful for? How do you express that gratitude? Tell us in the comments, post it to Facebook, or just make a point to tell everyone.

Photo (cc) by Flickr user  pomegranates

In our fall issue, we highlighted Santa Fe yoga teacher Josh Schrei’s plan to raise $25,000 for clean water advocacy by doing 3,000 sun salutes around the sacred Arunachala Mountain in South India. Regardless of how common such a feat like might seem to the locals in India, here in the US, Josh notes, “if you say, ‘I’m going to do 3,000 sun salutes, people think you’re kind of nuts.” We caught up again with Josh to get his insights into advocacy-fueled pilgrimage, how water relates to yoga, and tips for traveling healthier—and happier—anywhere in the world.

Why is something like clean water advocacy close to your heart?
I wanted to work on a cause that is physically and spiritually relevant to all human beings on the planet. Water is fundamental to life. Not just to a certain group over here, or a certain group over there, it’s relevant to everyone. I think of it as a great common denominator for all humanity.

When we really look at the human condition, we see vast inequality. We have people on one end of the spectrum who have everything they need, and they’re dying from diseases related to over-consumption. Then we have people on the other end who are dying from diseases related to lack. Specifically—lack of access to clean water kills more people than conflict or war. In India, millions of people die every year because they don’t have access to clean water.

One way we can make things a little more equal and promote loving kindness is bring clean water into more communities all over the world. Especially in the coming years, we’re going to be facing a lot of shortage so it’s best to start addressing it… yesterday (laughs).

How do you think all this relates to yoga?
There’s a very deep relationship between water and yoga and it relates on all levels from the cosmic to the practical.

When we talk about things we’re holding in our hearts, for example, we often use the analogy of water… that things aren’t flowing quite right. And when we really start to look at the motion of energy and how prana works, it’s very much associated with water.

Why did you choose the Arunachala Mountain out of any number of sacred places in India?
Arunachala, in the Shiva cosmology, is the mountain of fire. Shiva is a transformative fire and has five elemental temples to him in South India; Arunachala is the place where he manifests the element of fire. It’s an incredible place—a place I’d been as a child… I was there when I was 13.

And in the teachings of yoga on tapas, there’s this great relationship between water and fire, which we also find reflected in the energy channels of the human body.

For some reason, the idea of doing a transformative practice around the mountain of fire in order to bring water to people seemed like a good thing to do (laughs). On very practical terms, I was going to be in South India anyway. I knew I wanted to do a campaign for water.org and it just came to me one day.

I also have tremendous respect for the tradition of parikrama—the tradition of circumambulation.

What were the months of preparation like?
As far as training, I do my yoga practice. I also live in the mountains and spend a lot of time running… I have a yoga instructor/outdoor fitness wizard whom I work with, who is an absolute madman. He’s 50 years old and he still competes in 5 different outdoor sports and comes in the top 10 basically every time he competes. He’s incredible. He designs outdoor training programs that really make use of the principles of yoga, pranayama, and asana.

But I’ll say the number one form of training is to practice ahimsa and surrender. When I got to South India, the whole thing was joyous. It wasn’t “Oh my god I have to do another sun salute” (laughs). Sure, sometimes things were tough, but it was joyous, because I was there to adore the mountain and to bring some water to people who were thirsty.

Was there any uncertainty, unexpected circumstances?
X-factors that I didn’t anticipate? Yeah. There are two roads around Arunachala: the inner path—a nice quiet forest path where I had been intending to do my sun salutes—and the outer path, the main pilgrimage route that’s a lot noisier, with animals and vehicles.

When I got there, the inner path was closed. They had just shut it down the week before. But actually that ended up being a blessing. I had a lot more interaction with people, and the support that I got from them was immense. The culture in India speaks the language of devotion in a way that’s hard to explain over here. When they see someone in an act of devotion, it speaks to their heart and they return that energy with lots of smiles and laughter and love.

I also didn’t anticipate how hot it was going to be. It was at least 10 degrees hotter than I expected—the first day was like 95 degrees. So that was a challenge. I had intended to go all through the day, but I actually ended up staggering morning and evening because the middle of the day was just too hot. The pilgrimage sidewalk was too hot to even put your hands on.

So I adjusted a bit. I ended up doing it over three days total. I did 750 sun salutations the first day, 1200 the second day, and 1050 the third day.

How did you stay healthy?
By praying (laughs). That might not sound practical, but that’s how I stayed healthy. I was doing sun salutes facedown in the dirt, in cow dung, and dodging monkey droppings 3,000 times. I did it barefoot, with ankle bracelets on. But, I didn’t get a single blister or break the skin on my feet or anything. I was totally blessed.

On a practical level, because I do a lot of endurance running up in the mountains, I have a pretty good sense of the line between when I’m right in the zone and where I’m pushing beyond where I should push—something that we all face on our yoga mats every day. That really kept me injury-free.

The first day the risk of heat exhaustion was high, because it was 95 and I was pushing it a little bit. I recognized that and backed off some. That is what we should be doing with our practice all the time.

Do you have other tips for healthier travel?
The number one tool we’re given in this life is our breath. I do a lot of pranayama when I’m traveling on a plane. It helps a lot. I also go in the back and sneak in a couple of triangle poses and uttanasana. Attitude is part of it, too. You have to be open.

In India, if you try to come with a full-on agenda, with no flexibility, you’ll probably encounter a few obstacles and those obstacles can create stressful situations and get you sick.

And then it’s as simple as: just don’t eat salad. (Laughs.) A lot of people go to restaurants that cater to westerners. And that’s the number one way people get sick, by thinking “oh, it’s probably safe.” Be careful.

What’s the first step you’d recommend for a yoga teacher who wants to do the same kind of thing?
Choose a cause very close to your heart—that’s the most important part. That ensures that whatever work you do for it is work you really deeply want to be doing. Sometimes we jump into cause-related stuff because we feel like we should. Or because someone else suggested it. Choosing from our hearts… The rest will flow from there.

That said there are a lot of organizations within the yoga world that help people direct their charity efforts.

What are your plans for the future?
I am definitely going to keep working with (and for) water.org. And keep coming up with ways to include the yoga community. I really love the practice of pilgrimage as a way to raise funds and awareness and to include other people. The only problem? Obviously not everyone can do 3,000 sun salutes!

So I’m kind of looking into a pilgrimage that can be more inclusive, one that other people can participate in. I’ll keep you posted.

Photography by Dev Gogoi