Judith Hanson Lasater

Forward to The Woman’s Book of Health and Yoga We no longer have a choice about including practices in our daily lives that create health and spiritual growth....

MAKING BABIES: How yoga poses may help with infertility Ten years ago at the end of a yoga class, a young woman walked slowly to the front. She was a little tentative at first, but finally asked if we could talk privately......

Many students say that sometimes they have problems getting themselves to practice at home. Often I hear the statement, "I just don't have any discipline." I would like to redefine the concept of "discipline" by contrasting it with the concept of "commitment".....

For Beginners: the Benefits of Yoga Practice There is an old story in the ancient literature of India about a student attempting in vain to describe the taste of a mango. Listening to the futile words, the teacher shakes his head, smiles, and picking up a ripe luscious mango, bites into it. Writing about the benefits of hatha yoga is a little like this...(Thanks to ThriveOnline on Oxygen for providing "Benefits of Hatha Yoga". You can find ThriveOnline at www.thriveonline.com or on AOL with the AOL keyword: ThriveOnline)

Core Concerns in Teaching Yoga - One day as a child on a family outing, I was seated in a small motor boat facing backward as we cut a sharp path across an icy blue lake....

The Ten Most Important Sutras - As a child, my experience of summer was that of an endless progression of days filled with infinite time to pursue whatever seemed interesting to me and the gang of kids who gathered each morning on our street.. ..

Swami Mommie - I squirmed impatiently in my seat as I waited for the parenting expert to finish his talk at my children's school. I was eager to go up to the lectern to ask my personal question: How could I get my two older children to stop bickering all the time?

Rediscovering Ease: Learning how to sit - A brief look at the chairs which are offered to us in schools, cars and on airplanes reveals that there seems to be little understanding of how our human anatomy functions in the sitting position...

Beginning the Journey: Living the Yamas of Patanjali - When our children were young, my husband and I would occasionally summon up enough courage to take them out for dinner. As we stood outside the selected restaurant, one of us would stare down into their upturned innocent faces and remind them, to “be good” or we would leave the restaurant...

Practicing the Presence of God: Living the Niyamas of Patanjali -Recent research has proven that not only are human beings inherently social creatures, our very health and longevity may depend upon our social ties....

Embodying the Spirit: Understanding the Meaning of Asana - All I remember of my first asana (posture) class is the ceiling. Between movements we would be instructed to lie down on our mat and rest. I do not remember very much about what we did, but I do remember I wanted more....

Breath of God: the breathing practices of pranayama - We usually take the ability to draw a simple breath for granted, but our everyday language reveals our intuitive awareness that breathing is critically important and powerful....

Returning to the Self: the practice of pratyahara - In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the second chapter is filled with teachings about the astanga or eight-limbed yoga system. The astanga system is presented as a series of practices which begin with external limbs like ethical precepts and move toward more internal limbs like meditation...

Returning to the Self: the practice of pratyahara - (part 5)I was sitting in my favorite chair, the chocolate brown one with the fringe along the bottom and I was engrossed in a Nancy Drew novel. I was eight years old, and I was completely mesmerized as I read about the daring exploits of my favorite heroine.....