So many articles focus on the wonderful food, herbs and spices that make up part of Ayurveda. Did you know there are body treatments as well?

You know that feeling when your mind finally lets go of something it's been chewing on for hours? The thought that wouldn't unhook, the rerun of a conversation, the worry that wouldn't quit…

Every September, my classes fill up. People come back from summer looking for something to anchor to as the weather turns and the school year starts and the year stops feeling endless. There’s a reason for this. September is the secret New Year for a lot of us — even if we left school decades ago, the body remembers the rhythm.

These six specific movements stay in my week, every week and they also are ideal for travel prep. The point is that on day two of the trip I'm not wincing about my hips, or compensating for a sore back from a long flight, or skipping a hike because my calves are cramping. These exercises protect the investment you’ve made in your travel, so you can freely enjoy all your planned holiday has to offer.

On Crescent Island in Lake Naivasha, there are no large predators. So when you walk among the giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, and eland, no one’s heart rate is up — yours included. They graze. You walk.

I grew up outside a small university town in Connecticut, on a dead-end road far from any traffic. Our yard had trees, a vegetable garden, and a river running through the back. In summer the leaves were thick enough that we couldn't see the neighbors' houses — we were inside nature, not beside it. The sounds were birds and water.

I've been finding my way back to that ever since. Time present in nature is a cure — it soothes what aches in the soul. It's also prevention: real, measurable, physical change in the brain and body.

Since having children — and then watching them move out into their own lives — the first time I really noticed I was on vacation, it was day two…

Pilates has a complete breathing system that most students and many teachers never fully learn .Each has a distinct purpose.

These four stretches target four of the areas that take the most abuse from prolonged sitting: the thoracic spine, the shoulder girdle, the spinal rotators, and the piriformis.

Before you go anywhere — a two-week adventure abroad or a Saturday hike along the Patapsco — your body is already packed. It’s the one piece of luggage you can’t leave behind. Is it prepared?.

There’s a tradition in Arab culture that holds both strength and softness, that is absolutely beautiful. It’s a practice in which the whole room says: we see you, we’re with you. People’s hearts are held with both strength and softness. These things must be felt in person, and no camera can capture them.

The technology is sophisticated. The service is exceptional. The natural world immersion is genuinely exciting. So why does the feeling fade so soon after guests return to their lives?

Your gluteus maximus has a smaller, lesser-known neighbor — your gluteus medius — and it plays a critical role in how you move, balance, and stabilize through almost everything you do in a day.

Shopping in Morocco is not what you think it is. You don’t walk in, browse a rack, and tap your credit card at a register. No, no, no. Shopping in Morocco is an education and a sales pitch rolled into one — a fascinating, sometimes funny, sometimes frustrating experience that my guests and I just call “the show.”

On March 17th, the American College of Sports Medicine published its first major update to resistance training guidelines since 2009. Seventeen years. That’s a long time in exercise science — roughly the same span that separated the first smartphone from the one in your pocket right now.

Here’s my little summary.

Every week, someone in class asks me some version of this question: “Should my lower back be flat on the mat or not?”

It’s a great question — and the answer isn’t as simple as most Pilates instructors make it sound. Because the real answer is: it depends on what we’re trying to accomplish and where you are in your practice.

We were sitting on a hillside in the Atlas Mountains sharing a meal after a long day of hiking, The conversation had turned to weddings, and our guide was describing how Amazigh weddings in his region are three-day festivals. Entire surrounding villages come. The men do the cooking and serve the feasts — enormous spreads for enormous crowds.

I asked why the men cooked for the wedding when, on a daily basis at home, it’s usually the women cooking in Morocco.

His answer floored me.

In the 1980s, fascia was called “inert tissue.” Filler. Surgeons cut through it to get to the structures that mattered. Anatomy professors pulled it off cadavers and threw it away.

A few decades later, we discovered it has more sensory nerve endings than muscle. It’s critical for proprioception, pain signaling, and structural integrity. Some researchers still deny it.

I’ve been thinking about what else we might be throwing away right now.

During World War I, a German-born fitness trainer named Joseph Pilates found himself interned in a camp on the Isle of Man. His fellow internees were bedridden, deconditioned, and losing hope. He didn’t have a studio full of gleaming equipment. He had hospital beds.

So he took the beds apart.

Fifteen years into my dance career, I was sitting in an orthopedic surgeon’s office listening to him tell me—with the casual certainty doctors sometimes have—that he’d see me back for surgery after I tried physical therapy. My back injury had stopped me cold, and according to him, the knife was pretty much inevitable.