Reunion Online

The season premiere of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is fast approaching and many are waiting in anticipation to find out what happens to Detective Olivia Benson. For some, witnessing the ordeal she endures could be painful, as it can be an all too-real depiction of a personal experience.

Today we have a guest post from Purvi Shah, a writer and poet who recently facilitated a wellness session entitled "Imagining Our Wondrous Selves" at a Joyful Heart Heal the Healers event in New York City. Today, Purvi shares her reflections on why writing can be a practice of self-care, self-revelation and self-liberation.

The Internet is great. My favorite resources are videos. If I don’t know something, I can quickly learn from an 18 minute presentation. A Google time-suck can uncover gems to make me smile, help me find tools and stoke my creativity, so don’t feel guilty; get lost in a video. There are so many good teachers waiting to find you.

In a fleeting moment, negative emotions, like anger, can steer us off our chosen course and into a murky emotional world. Thankfully, yoga helps us work through our feelings intelligently so we can acknowledge them and let them go. Is something making you mad? Start here.

Feeling more frenzied than thankful? In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, it's way too easy to let travel plans, family drama and other stuff crowd out the really important part: the gratitude.

You know that cliché about life being a gift? Well, we buy it. Every new waking is another chance to appreciate and use our lives, so we're trying to recognize that potential by taking 10 minutes each morning to get ready for greatness. With us?

Each of us has behavior patterns that inform our individual personalities, habits and thought patterns that stem from deep mental impressions. These conditioned ideas and behaviors have a name in Sanskrit: samskaras. While we tend to think of a habit as a bad thing, though not all samskaras are harmful. But if you've noticed that a certain habit—like a daily doughnut indulgence or relying on the television for background noise—is keeping you from truly living well, know that each of us has the power to replace a "bad habit" with a positive one.

Your alarm goes off. It's 6am, and you'd really like to get to a 6:30 yoga class... but you've only been asleep for five hours. What's more beneficial: an early morning stretch session or an extra hour of sleep? It may seem that getting to yoga will be better for your state of mind, but a full night's sleep is undoubtedly better for your body—and bolsters your brain over the long run as well.

It's a common paradox: you've finally got a few moments to yourself to relax or meditate, but your thoughts refuse to be silent. Mind chatter plagues us all, but yoga is here to help. In fact, some say that yoga is the stilling of this mind chatter.

If you've ever really tried to live in the present moment, you know how tough it can be to go with the flow. Adapting to your circumstances and maintaining a positive outlook in any given moment is easier said than done. It's easier to focus on your own limitations, but the instant you do, you step further away from your authentic self and dharma, or unique life purpose. Criticism and self-doubt can be a breeding ground for negative thoughts, multiplying into a whirlwind of destructive "I am not ____ enough" statements. So how do we curb the negative thoughts?