I woke up in the middle of a stormy night a couple days ago, fevered and sore. The tossing and turning went on for hours, icepack on the face and neck, to no avail. Yes, it may be taboo to say, but yoga teachers get sick, too.

Maybe it's stress, lack of rest, or a few too many with your Poppa, celebrating Father's Day weekend. Whatever ails ya, we've a few ideas how yoga can help.

Here’s a quick list of tips and tricks I use to help my body do its healing job a bit faster:

My yoga practice didn’t begin because I wanted to touch my toes or do a headstand. I actually didn’t even think about the physical benefits of yoga when I made the decision to start practicing. Actually, let’s back up - I shouldn’t use the word ‘decision’ because it implies that I had a choice in the matter, and to be perfectly honest, it was more like a last resort. 

We’ve all met those people who play through life, believing everything is a synchronicity. The old acquaintance they bumped into yesterday lead to a group gathering that introduced them to their next big career shift. Everything was meant to happen this way, they were always destined for greatness, it just had to come in its own time. 

We’ve all met those OTHER people who schedule life, creating a specific routine. They’ve planned meeting up with their old acquaintance to discuss a new business venture, leaving an extra 30 minutes of buffer time to talk and account for traffic. The career shift they’ve been planning has been in the works day by day for the past 3 years, each piece slowly coming into place as they practice the same week-to-week program. They created their greatness.

It centers my body. All of the work you do to stay balanced and upright while practicing asana challenges deep core muscles that pull everything inwards. Imagine a cell- without a membrane to contain all of the organelles, they would slowly drift apart and cease functioning as a unit. Similar to the solar system being pulled into orbit around our sun. The same goes with your body. Your muscles are designed to support your bone structure like steel girders support a building. That’s what connecting to your core is all about. My teacher, Isaac, often talks about “hugging your muscles to the bone” when he teaches. This is the best way I understand how to explain it, too. Without this hugging action to unite everything, your muscles get strong and big from using them (the bro look), but your body won’t look tight and put together properly (the pilates/runner look).

Is there a way to have both?