As you might have heard (read) me mention before, I'm a sucker for natural cosmetics and although I love it, there are other things that I've started to value more than it being »natural« (well, you know, besides the fact that they actually work for my skin). Here are my top 3 beauty products that I've been loving and using on daily basis for the last while.

The sea, the yoga, the yummy food, the sunshine, the community—what is there not to love about a yoga retreat? But how to choose the correct one? We’ve done a little research and chose 3 European retreats that we think would be a good choice if you’d like to spend a few days or a week yoga-ing, meeting new people, taking care of your body and your mind (although let’s commit to doing that every day, eh?).

Pardon my French but I'm a sucker for books. Novels, fiction, yoga books, sex ed, spirituality, books about animals...you name it, almost everything goes and when it comes to summer holidays, I get way too excited about ordering and packing books and making my summer reading list. And because there are some books that I could go on and on about and wish everyone would read them, without further ado, here are my top few books to read this summer.

As much as I’d love for everyone to be as hyped about yoga as I am, I know it’s not for everyone, but there are definitely some common misconceptions about it that hold back even those who might be intrigued to try it otherwise. With the recent boom of social media yogis, fancy clothing brands and every gymnast-turned-yogi, I can see where these most likely came from.

Being a conscious consumer is part of yoga, too. In the West, we normally focus on postures or asana but based on the eight limbs of yoga (of which asana is one), one of the important parts of the practice is also ahimsa or non-harming - and it doesn’t only apply to fellow humans but also animals, plants and the environment in general. 

While being near or in the ocean brings me infinite amounts of joy, I couldn’t say the same when it comes to the majority of the news about it. Every time I open one of the news sites, I see another article on how a whale has washed up with a belly full of plastic bags or how our oceans are in great danger and the news is even more heartbreaking today, on World Oceans Day.

The land of old-school Hollywood glamour, ambitious beauty queens and (last but not least!) James Franco, it is also the cradle of modern organic nutrition and natural plant-based health and beauty products that are yet to take the world by storm. 

Some yogis compare hips to the body’s junk drawer, storing emotions we were not able to cope with. On a psycho-spiritual level, the hips are the seat of our sexuality and our individuality, both of which are deeply connected to our emotions and relationships to others (and ourselves).

According to the yoga expert Mahua Deb, the inverted yoga poses help regulate endocrine glands and target those specific female hormones that so often affect our wellbeing. We tried 21 days of Halasana. The verdict: it works. 

Oxford Dictionary defines “me” time as “time spent relaxing on one’s own as opposed to working or doing things for others, seen as an opportunity to reduce stress and restore energy” and often there is no amount of medication that could heal as quickly as 60 mindful minutes do.