Tara Stiles

Even if you're a seasoned professional multi-tasker, your body, mind, emotional life, and growth potential can get a blow from over-committing. Take a look at what's on your plate if you're swamped, and you can surely find some space for yourself even when you feel trapped.

Tension can be useful, exciting, flirtatious, strength-building, or destructive. Put yourself in charge of how you direct it.

Having goals can be useful, but don't lose sight of how great you are and how much you can help yourself and others right now.

When we interact with others from a place of compassion without expectations, things are set up to go pretty smoothly.

We all have insecurities. It takes maintenance and constant practice to first identify what they are so we can have an understanding of how we tick and, second, to put forth the action to deal with them.

What fun is life if it's taken so seriously, and what fun is yoga and the search for enlightenment if we are tight, tense, and clenched up from the inside out?

Stress happens. In different ways, we all hold unnecessary tension in our bodies all day long. Shoulders, neck, wrists, hips, hamstrings, back, oh my!

A swollen belly is a lot of pressure on the back.

I've learned that the more I streamline what my actual tasks are and where I'd like to direct my energy, as opposed to where I let my energy go in an unaware state of mind, the more energy I have to place where my intentions are. Boundaries are good! Use them and know where they are.

My parents were/are straight-edge hippies. Mom roamed around gardening so we would have fresh food, and Dad was on wood-chopping duty to heat our passive solar home that they figured out how to design and build together. I was the kid with green peppers in my lunch, and I liked them!

Yoga is not about the history of yoga. Yoga is not about being in a sacred community of the initiated few. Yoga is about uniting inward, which takes place in the present, not the past, in each and every moment.

I started practicing yoga when I was a teenager, studying classical dance. My body and mind were very open but not very strong. I was trusting, excited, passionate, and receptive. All good qualities when balanced with the proper amount of strength and awareness.