How long do the benefits of your yoga practice last? Until you walk into that first business meeting of the day, during the commute to work just as you hit a traffic snag, the moment before your child has his/her first tantrum of the day, right before your teacher announces that you have a very big assignment due tomorrow? Let's face it -- life can be challenging. And habits can be hard to break. Sometimes the peace and bliss of that 20, 30, 60, or 90 minutes of yoga just doesn't get us through the day. My question is -- who says that you have to relegate your yoga to one specific time slot during the day?

I use my yoga constantly throughout my day -- it doesn't end when I step off the mat. Just before writing this I was engaging in some deep yogic breathing to calm my rising ire towards my slow as molasses computer. If you've lost that yoga feeling and you want to get it back, try incorporating one -- or all -- of these yoga breaks into your daily routine.

• Waiting for a bus - use the bus sign as a wall to stretch those tight achilles tendons in an arm-supported Warrior Pose.
  
  
• When sitting down for the first few minutes, allow the top of your body to drape over your thighs and touch the floor. See how long you can stretch your torso forward, out and down.
  
  
• When rising from your chair, take no more than a minute or two to do tadasana - mountain pose - by standing tall and decompressing your spine and ribs upward. Stretch arms up and reach for the sky until you feel/hear your joints strain slightly. Then back off and into an easy hold.
  
  
• When you're picking up something you dropped on the floor, get all the way down on your hands and knees into Virasana, or Hero's Pose for a few moments, then down into Balasana, or Child's Pose. Relax there for a minute before picking up your dropped object.
  

Just wanted to let you know that your book, Everyday Bliss For Busy Women, was featured prominently at our local Border's bookstore here in Birmingham, MI.  It was on the end of the self-help section where they feature the "best picks".

Congratulations! I think it's a cool thing to actually see a book by someone I know -- and with that stunningly beautiful cover -- at the top of the self-help display rack.  The cover is what caught my eye.  It's a completely magical cover design.  

I am so blessed in my friends. They are a constant reminder of Bliss in so very many ways. Suzanne Falter-Barns, besides being a good friend, personal platform coach and author, is also accomplished at the art of Joy Cultivation. She was a key interview for my Everyday Bliss For Busy Women book, and contributed some of the most poignant learnings for me about living a joyful life, even when all around you is a little crazy.

Whenever I see Suzanne in my mind, she is smiling beautifully as she sits and gazes out at the huge lake she lives on the shores of, on the large verandah of her restored 19th century colonial inn. I admire her sheer verve and the beautiful lifestyle she's created for herself and her family. Suzanne recently wrote a blog post I felt compelled to comment on and wanted to share a wise nugget of here:

.....I've come to understand not only how restorative quiet is, but how necessary it is. In order to connect with our creative projects, we really need that stillness. Our tender, fragile creative voices are hard enough to hear. Once you add the static of these crazy, complicated, overly busy lives we've cooked up, it becomes downright impossible. There is a reason writers have always headed to the hills to write their opus magnus -- they already know the magic of quiet....

She follows this with a great selection of coaching questions around whether you are getting enough silent time in your life. A must-read.

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