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No, no, no...I'm not talking about yoga as an Olympic category.  I'm talking about the many athletes, including the Olympians who include yoga and meditation in their lives.  I was recently reading an articles in the Wall Street Journal, and came across many similarities among the athletes in the Olympics this year.  Besides eating healthy and training, a lot of them practice yoga and meditation.  For example, Elena Hight who is a professional snowboarder, says that she stays mentally focused and prepared by meditating on a daily basis.  She does it almost every morning and every evening.  She's also been doing yoga for quite some time.  All of this helps her keep a clear mind and stay calm throughout an event and life in general.  Then there's Jamie Anderson, another snowboarder who calms herself the night before a race by incorporating meditation and yoga.

Whether you are an athlete, Olympian, or just plain Jane or Joe; yoga and meditation can do wonders to your body and soul.  It's not a religion, but a way of life. 

Try it, be open-minded,  and enjoy. 

Enjoy each moment.  Breathe. Slowly. A monumental thing happened today for my daughter who just turned 4.  She declared that she was going to ride her bike without training wheels and she did.  Now, I have to tell you that when she first got her bike for Christmas, I was convinced that she would not use training wheels, because she had been riding a balance bike for the past couple of years.  If it had been up to me, I would have never even shown her the training wheels.  However, she got some bug in her ear that told her that she would feel better with them on, and so the training wheels stayed....for awhile.  For a month and a half, she continued to ride her balance bike, swapping it out for her new Hello Kitty bike with the streamers and training wheels. And then, one day...today....she decided on her own time that she could ride a bike. 

You can learn a lot from kids.  They help you slow down and enjoy life.  They love nature and love the outdoors, which are both so incredibly good for you.  They love a challenge.  Find your challenge and do it.  Enjoy it.  Slow down and live it up.

I discovered that yoga is alive and well in Taiwan.

Last year, my husband, daughter, and I spent a year in Taiwan. My husband and I were teaching English to Taiwanese students, while my daughter learned Mandarin at a small school up in the mountains. Now, when I say that we were teaching English, I mean that we were teaching English as a completely foreign language....not a second language. In other words, everything had to be translated and learned. Chinese characters had to be translated into letters, letter sounds had to be learned, and sometimes-actually a lot of times-things were lost in translation, because some things just couldn't be translated word for word.

Well, while I was teaching words such as lion and mouse, and sentences such as: "I can help you," I came up with this idea to teach the English words while doing yoga. Why hadn't I thought about this before? The children ages 8-12 really got into it. At first, they were a teensy bit shy, but when they realized that they could move around rather than all sit at their desks in rows, they were pumped up. They learned the word elephant, by getting into elephant pose, sucking up pretend water, and hosing down their friends with the water. When things got crazy, I had them get into mouse pose. They learned the phrase "quiet as a mouse" in a friendly, peaceful way.

Yesterday we were at the beach park. We had brought one balance board for the heck of it.  Would you believe that we had boys and girls ages 4-73, and we finally found a game that everyone could participate in....yoga moves on the yoga balance board! 

Everyone that wanted to participate could show off their moves or make up a pose on the balance board.  You didn't even have to  know yoga...you could just make up a pose and give it a name, like "jellyfish."  It was great fun and so easy.  Everyone was a winner, too!  We didn't even have to make up any rules, which seemed to be the problem with all the other games the kids wanted to play.  Also, it was fair, because everyone could do something on the board, whereas when we tried playing Frisbee, the 4 and 5 year olds struggled with throwing the Frisbee.  When we played chase, the older kids could outrun the younger ones.  "Sharks and Minnows"  was requested, but too many kids didn't want rules.  So, thank goodness for the balance board.  I would like to say: "Milkshake board, you saved the day."

Sometimes in my classes, I have teenagers.  The beauty of yoga for teens is that being a teenager comes with a lot of stresses, and yoga can help.  For one, teenagers are going through a different set of social  and emotional growth and development.  They struggle with sense of identity, feel awkward with their bodies (which are still changing sometimes on a daily basis), and the hormones rushing through their bodies cause moodiness, as well as feelings of love and passion.  They strive for independence and test their limits.

Teenagers are also dealing with school and academic pressure.  Even though their intellectual interests are expanding and becoming more important, they are still mostly interested in the present with limited thought for the future (that usually develops in the later teens). 

When teens do yoga, they can learn many skills to help them through this awkward, yet exciting time of their lives.  Breathing exercises can help with the daily school anxieties about tests or whether they are accepted into a group of friends or not.  The physical benefits of yoga compliment any sports that the teen may be doing.  And then there's the relaxation part of yoga which can just overall give a sense of calmness and allow for a time to be mindful.  Yoga can give a teen a sense of overall well-being. It's a great place to talk about concerns, issues, self-confidence, love, and life in a safe and respectable setting.