Ojas is an Ayurvedic concept that holds the key to your resilience and adaptability. It is the youth luster, the oil that lights your fire. 

​In this video, I'll go over what the heck is OJAS, why it is so essential to maintain, and how creating more ojas in your life can offset disease, aging, stress, and more. 
Learn: 

• What is OJAS
• Why it is important
• How everyday things you are doing are depleting it
• 3 things you can do right now to build more ojas

join us for the COMPLETE PRACTICE-OJAS SERIES
Each week we'll dive into a new element of building your ojas...
Week 1 - Soothe - Oct 21
Week 2 - Nourish - Oct 28
Week 3 - Assimilate - Nov 4
COST: $20/class or $50 series
Classes can be taken separately but recommended as a series. 

Experience Evan Soroka's renowned class: The Complete Practice. A complete practice is movement, pranayama, meditation AND self-reflection. Not all yoga is yoga unless it is complete. This week's video is the culmination of a 4-week series on PRANA with MANTRA at the HEART. Evan will guide you through a subtle body journey weaving science and tradition into the direct experience of the heart. The heart in tradition is considered the second brain, the seat of all intelligence and knowing. The heart and the mind are separate entities; quiet the mind to access the heart. 

​Join Evan for her next series OJAS - The Life Nectar

I want to show you a simple and effective diabetes recovery strategy to bounce back after any blood glucose swing that no one is talking about at the doctor's office. 

One way to define resilience is by our ability to return baseline whenever there's a deficit. 

When it comes to building diabetes resilience, it is essential to apply recovery strategies to recuperate the energy lost so that you can go back to life feeling more vibrant, present, and capable. 

For instance, if you are running high or just experienced an intense low, there's an invisible after-effect from those extremes. It taxes our neuroendocrine responses, alters perception, performance, and vitality for hours even after numbers have returned to normal. 

Not feeling your best because of the wear-and-tear on our body's adaptive responses can make you depleted and moody. Over the longer duration of diabetes, it can give rise to anxiety and depressive symptoms, negativing impacting quality of life. 

There's no cure for diabetes, so no matter how well you've got it under control, we're all going to have moments like these. 

So it is best to apply strategies during and after these episodes to give our bodies and minds a chance to reset. 

One of the main tools that I use personally and prescribe for my clients is a regular yoga nidra practice. 

Yoga nidra means "yogic sleep," but another way of looking at it is "sleep with a trace of awareness."  The practice helps individuals create a supportive state of deep physical, mental, and emotional relaxation. In the state of yoga nidra, there is simultaneous relaxation and detachment, resulting in a profound reset on all planes of one's being. 

Yoga nidra is scientifically proven to reduce stress and anxiety, lower blood pressure, reduce A1c levels in T2D, decrease depressive symptoms, and improve sleep.  

Studies have also shown that yoga nidra interventions improve feelings of happiness, enthusiasm, being more alert and inspired, active, having clarity of thought, control over anger, and self-confidence (1) 

In the attached link, you can access a free yoga nidra for diabetes.

You'll learn how to:

• tap into your innate healing response
• relax deeply
• look at diabetes objectively
• build back your defenses 

I want to show you how to prepare for meditation and do so successfully. Last week I reached a personal milestone: 1,008 consecutive days of meditation. Although I've meditated regularly for over a decade, I've never fully committed to a daily sadhana (practice).  

It was not for lack of interest; I knew the benefits of meditation. 

But I did not understand exactly how transformative a daily routine would be versus something I "fit in" a few days a week. 

The results of my daily sadhana are not only perceptible on my face, but in every aspect of my life. I've achieved great things over the last 1,008 days, wrote a book for diabetes, brought my A1c levels down consistently under 6.5%, and gracefully navigated through significant challenges and losses.  

​I share my story with you to encourage you to do the same and I want to show you how. 
It is a no-brainer that meditation is beneficial; however, many do not know how to practice, or they have tried only to give up after a few days, weeks, or even months later. 

To those people, I ask, "Are you preparing for meditation"? 

Yes, prepare. 

Most likely they aren't. 
Just as you would warm up before exercise to avoid injury, maximize performance, meditation also requires preparation. 

Otherwise, it can be an uncomfortable and fruitless endeavor. 

Complete meditation practice trains the mind to turn away from worldly distractions, become established subtle aspects of awareness, and eventually transcend all objects to abide in the one, eternal truth. 
On a more practical level, meditation helps us look at ourselves from a different perspective, overcoming obstacles, making better choices, irradicating stress, and receiving more joy from life experience. 

Let's be realistic; we do not always have time to do all the physical and breathwork to prepare to sit. Because of this, people often skip practice altogether. 

I want to show you how to prepare with a quick and easy method to maximize your meditation experience. 



The sages knew that the way to enter the state of meditation was to use the breath to still the mind.

It is a process called prana dharana. 
Prana—the vital force—travels in the body on the wave of the breath. Dharana means concentration in Sanskrit. The breath sensitizes the mind to prana, and thorough attention, allows the mind to perceive what is otherwise invisible. 
When you meditate on the breath, you notice that the breath's jerkiness and strain correspond with mental distractions. 

According to Swami Rama, "Those who do not want to practice pranayama can still practice meditation, but without breathing awareness, a deep state of meditation is impossible."

A Practice to Prepare for Meditation - Prana Dhanana

Steps of meditation prep:

1. Pure breathing - breathe consciously checking-in, presenting your awareness. Resolve tension in the breath. (1-5 minutes)
2. Transition to a natural breath flow. Notice the origin of the inhale just in front of the nostrils. Witness the inhale rise up and into the nasal cavity, link with the joyous sensation. Do not try; simply allow the mind to notice the feeling of the breath in and out. (1-2 minutes)
3. Continue to relax your effort. Surrender mind into the feeling of the breath. As the breath becomes more smooth and subtle, presence develops, and thoughts subside. 
4. Allow awareness to rise from space just below nostrils to the point between the eyebrows on the inhale. On the exhale from eyebrow center to origin just below the nostrils. (1-2 minutes)
5. Then, from the eyebrow center to the midbrain and back to the origin point. (1-2 minutes)
6. Now the mind is sufficiently awakened to a presence in the form of prana. Let go of the origin point just beyond the nose and sense the movement of breath localized in the mid-brain. Like a lighthouse flashing, perceive or feel the presence expand from mid-brain on the inhale and return to mid-brain on the exhale. The more you relax effort, the brighter awareness the presence becomes. (1-5 minutes)
7. Rest in the presence of awareness. (As long as you like)
8. Options to continue to meditation: continue to watch the pulsation of breath if the mind is distracted. Feel mantra arising naturally from the still point. Direct presence to a chakra and meditate on that region. Or rest in undivided transcendent awareness.