During the last two Januarys, my dear friend and colleague Amanda Marks and I led New Year’s retreats in the mountains of north Georgia. It was a beautiful weekend filled with self-care and alternative ways to enter into a new year (like not dieting and learning about intuitive eating instead). Our hope was to help each guest return back to “real life” feeling nourished on every level with a renewed sense of self, and to feel more grounded as they enter into the new year. Unf

Hello lovely readers. Thanks for being here. Wow. We are living in an emotionally heightened, extremely uncertain time and not much is in our control. However, one thing is in our control – how we take care of ourselves. We can feel empowered right now, by taking responsibility for our own self-care. And I’m not talking about bubble baths and face masks (those things are great, don’t get me wrong!). And I get it – some of us don’t have much time for intentional self-care. But

Ever since I knew I was going to become a registered dietitian (RD), I dreamt of merging my yoga background with my nutrition expertise – a fusion of Eastern (yoga) and Western (clinical nutrition) philosophies. This year, I have slowly started to integrate yoga and mindfulness tools into my nutrition counseling work — and I truly feel like it makes a difference for any client who is open to letting me guide them. Whether it’s a few yoga poses, meditation, guided imagery, bod

This is a time of year when I feel like it is really easy to disconnect from our bodies. Whether it’s trying to tie up lose ends at work, trying to jam in extra social events or dealing with grief, it is a time that can be really taxing on all parts of us. Don’t get me wrong — I generally enjoy everything that comes with the holidays — good food and drink, extra time with friends and family, making my dog wear a red snowflake sweater, etc. But I think that the busier our live

Recently, two women and co-workers (who I admire very much) asked me to be a guest on their new podcast “Southern Fried Girlfriends”, to talk about yoga & meditation! This was definitely a first for me and I was very excited/nervous to talk about my own journey, the benefits of having a yoga & meditation practice and some tools to get you started (if you haven’t already). The main point I tried to get across is that YOGA AND MEDITATION IS FOR EVERYONE! This is two-fold, in my

It’s easy to think that yoga is only physical poses. It makes sense why we would think that, since our society tends to focus on the external. I’m not discounting the physical benefits of yoga — it strengthens the entire body and increases flexibility — and most importantly, it can help us to be more present and at home in our bodies. Yoga is in fact an embodied practice, meaning it is not mindless. It can help us really tune in and connect to our bodies, and feel, release an

Most of my inspiration for the themes I offer my yoga students come from a combination of two things — my studies of the Yoga Sutras (you could consider it the yoga bible) and my own life experiences. I am finding that the more I draw from my own struggles or joys, the more people connect with it. Naturally, the weekly digging for an intention to offer my students pushes me to sit with myself and take inventory of what’s going on. This week, I picked the intention of “Filling

sankalpa– Click for meditation. Please read the next several paragraphs before starting the short meditation. On New Year’s Day, I taught a New Year’s Day “detox” class. While I love the cleansing feeling of a strong sweat (especially from a yoga practice), I viewed this class from a much deeper perspective than “detoxing” the physical body. And I didn’t talk about resolutions (see below for my reasoning on this). My wish for this class was to create a safe space for my stude

Audio: moon meditation (for use as a starting point) With the election last week and all of the chaos happening since, it seems almost ironic that we have been approaching a full moon tonight (November 14), and it’s not just any full moon. It’s a supermoon- the biggest and brightest one since 1948. And it will not be until 2034 that the moon gets this close to us again. That’s pretty powerful stuff. Anyways, I was lucky enough to attend a full-moon practice this past Saturday