A rabbi, a yogi and a Buddhist walk into the Manhattan JCC…What sounds like a stock opener of a joke actually happened at an event March 1 connected to Dani Shapiro’s newly released memoir, “Devotion” (Harper). The author invited her spiritual teachers to join her in a conversation moderated by writer and former television producer Abigail Pogrebin, who not only feigned surprise that attendees didn’t arrive in yoga pants, but also declared herself the most high-strung person in the room. Spiritual searching seems de rigueur for the modern memoir, and when Shapiro’s first blipped my radar, I thought, the world does not need a Jewish “Eat, Pray, Love.” Luckily, with “Devotion,” we’re getting much more. After relocating to rural Connecticut from Brooklyn, Shapiro suffered a general malaise. A mother in her mid-40s, she’d buried her father in childhood, battled drug addition and alcoholism, and abandoned her Orthodox upbringing. Yet it was her young son who nudged her toward a transformative journey. He asked about God; she sprung into action, seeking out teachers to guide her through her own head.

Here I demonstrated a yoga sequence to help strengthen your lower back – the most vulnerable part of the spine – to protect the sacrum, and improve the stability and flexibility of the hips.
As I’ve mentioned in the previous article, when done regularly and correctly, this therapy can help reduce pain and inflammation, increase circulation, improve function and increase a sense of self-confidence and well-being. Before you start, always be mindful of breathing. Inhale deeply and freely and exhale completely through the nostrils. In the practice of yoga, inhalation and exhalation are used to integrate the spinal movement. We breathe in to lengthen the spine, creating space in our vertebrae, and we breathe out to move or to go deeper into the posture. Last but not least, follow the order of the sequence. It starts with gentle warm-ups before going further. These hatha yoga poses have been modified to meet therapeutic needs. In this part, we cover poses on the floor and standing, while the next column will cover those lying on the belly and on the back.

Bollywood actresses are slimming down, as an increasing vogue for showing bare flesh on screen and Western ideas about body size and beauty take hold in India's big cities.Whereas former leading ladies like Mumtaz and Zeenat Aman once found their curvaceous figures no barrier to success, their modern-day counterparts are as famous for their diet and fitness regimes as their acting and dancing skills.
"There's been a lot of changes in the last decade, whether it's in modelling or in Bollywood," said Venu Hirani, a nutritionist and fitness consultant in Mumbai. "Today, the basic requirement for someone wanting to go into either is that they need to be a (US) size zero," she said. Actress Kareena Kapoor has been the focus of much media attention since appearing in a bikini in the 2008 film Tashan (Style) - a significant development in an industry known for its chaste treatment of romantic love. The 29-year-old star slimmed down dramatically for the role and reportedly collapsed on set. She has since had to deny suggestions that her current weight is unhealthy, instead attributing her smaller size to eating correctly, regular exercise and yoga.

"The Biggest Loser " trainer Jillian Michaels sits in with "The Doctors" with tips for a healthier, and happier lifestyle. We all know her from The Biggest Loser, fitness expert and trainer Jillian Michaels visits the set of The Doctors today to talk about exercise, health, and her new workout DVD, Yoga Meltdown. Yoga is considered by many to be less about developing strength and more about increasing flexibility and balance. In Jillian's new video, she combines the traditional power poses of yoga with circuit training to create a workout that combines both flexibility and power. Jillian also talks with the docs about hangover cures and foods to help relieve PMS. Hangovers are due to alcohol's toxic effect on the body, one of the largest and most significant of those being dehydration. Doctors cast member Dr. Travis Stork suggests balancing out your alcohol consumption with water by drinking a glass of water with every alcoholic beverage. Another key hangover component is acetaldehyde which is a toxin formed in the liver as the body tries to process the alcohol.

Wow, two weeks in a row I have been super busy! But this past week has been all about my family and friends and for a change work was not a major part of my week. In fact this week work really got in the way. Ever notice how things come in waves? Sometimes there is not much social activity and suddenly, you have a couple of events in a week, it's either feast or famine! But this past week was fun, it was good busy. And there has been more snow. Yes, just when we thought that perhaps the snow would melt, we had more snow on Thursday and Friday (with our office closed again.) Between my busy schedule and the snow, riding Nitro had to be put on hold until this coming Tuesday. All of this activity meant that it was tough week to get to the gym, but I still did my cardio,yoga and Pilate's at home. For these busy days I use exercise DVDs, specifically ones for yoga and Pilate's. I discovered these DVDs by accident when I won a Rodney Yee Power Yoga one at the gym. Exercise DVD's never appealed to me and I was skeptical, but after using the Power Yoga one I was convinced and they are now my yoga back-up. The two other yoga DVD's were gifts and I LOVE the AM/PM DVD.

What’s it like to follow the lifestyle guru – to the letter? Expensive and confusing, says the author of Living Oprah. Robyn Okrant has a complicated relationship with the most powerful woman in the world. She says she isn’t an Oprah hater or a superfan – she’s simply intrigued by the mogul’s influence on American women. In 2008, Ms. Okrant abided by all the advice the icon doled out on her show, in her magazine and on her website. Along the way, she spent $4,781.84 – plus 1,202 hours and 1 minute – as she followed the lifestyle guru’s instructions including taking a 21-day vegan cleanse, buying a crisp white Brooks Brothers shirt and seeing Céline Dion in concert. The Chicago yoga instructor recently published a book about the experience called Living Oprah. By the end of the year, she told The Globe and Mail in a phone interview, she was unable to distinguish her own point of view from Oprah’s and felt unclear on whether she really was living her “best life.” You mention many times in the book that you were on a tight budget. How did you deal with all of the things that you needed to buy for this project?

Round and round go the pounds, according to hula hoop fitness instructor Allyson Makiej. Makiej is introducing students to hula hoop training as the latest exercise regimen targeted to tone muscles, gain balance and lose weight. Yoga, she said, plays a large part in her hula hoop exercise. “Yoga helps my students stretch themselves through a variety of positions. This stretching opens up the students. With this technique, one woman, who was 70, was able to get up from the stretching and be able to do the hula hoop. She couldn’t do it before the stretching,” she said. “I open up students in a nurturing kind of way, which is the opposite of what a lot of workouts are usually about.” Markiej, 46, is based in Lowell and has been training students in Westford and surrounding towns for the last two years. She uses a three-way approach to fitness: yoga, hula hoop movements and natural foods nutrition. “The combination of those three for me has been phenomenal,” she said. “When I teach these three things I feel as if I am teaching a Western take on Eastern philosophy. This lends itself to one-on-one sessions but I also do groups.”