Libra & Scorpio Season: Yoga for Lower Back Relief, Hip Openers, and Diaphragmatic Breathing

Libra & Scorpio Season: Yoga for Lower Back Relief, Hip Openers, and Diaphragmatic Breathing

Libra is a cardinal air sign. Its instinct is to initiate through relationship, weighing one perspective against another until something resolves into balance or other form of resolution. It's the sign most associated with analysis, though the analysis is rarely detached, it's usually in service of a relationship or a decision that involves someone else.

Scorpio is a fixed water sign, and the fixed quality is how it contrast with other water signs, such as Cancer's water. Scorpio's water channels and embodies. This likely is the reason why folks with strong Scorpio placements often are seen as โ€˜intenseโ€™, because a fixed water sign often absorbs what other people haven't fully metabolized themselves. Often, water signs holds things in the hips. Weโ€™ve included effective hip openers for this reason.

How to Relax: A Nervous System Reset Through Porch Sitting

Spending time outdoors canโ€ฆ

  • lower blood pressureโ 

  • reduce levels of cortisol (stress hormones)โ 

  • strengthen immunity โ 

  • relieve anxietyโ 

  • improve concentrationโ 

  • improve short-term memory โ 

  • energize the body + mind

  • improve your mood โ 

  • strengthen sleep patternsโ 

What Is Asana? Finding the Yoga Style That's Right for You

What Is Asana? Finding the Yoga Style That's Right for You

This limb has become equated to โ€˜the yoga practiceโ€™ in the modern western world, yet it is only one of many other limbs that make up the true yoga practice. In the yogic view, the body is a temple of spirit, the overall and complete care of which, is an important stage of our spiritual growth.

Through the practice of physical postures we develop the habit of discipline and the ability to concentrate, both of which are necessary for cultivating healthy routines in life.

Fall Equinox 2026: A Yoga Practice for the Turn of the Season

Fall Equinox 2026: A Yoga Practice for the Turn of the Season

The fall equinox falls on September 22 in the Northern Hemisphere this year, when day and night reach equal length. Where the spring equinox carries the quality of emergence, the fall equinox carries the tone of return. The word equinox comes from the Latin aequus nox, equal night. 

For a few days on either side of September 22, the scales are evenly distributed. It comes as no surprise that this day also marks the sun's entry into Libra, the sign of the scales, whose symbol is the only inanimate object in the zodiac. Libra presents us with questions relating to balance, such as what is in balance? What feels asymmetrical? What is within your power to shift?

Nectar Yoga Explores the Yoga Principle of Santosha: Cultivating Contentment in a Restless Wor

Nectar Yoga Explores the Yoga Principle of Santosha: Cultivating Contentment in a Restless Wor

As we surrender ourselves to the observance of Santosha, we discover that contentment is not a destination to be reached, much like how Saucha is also not an arrival point, but a way of beingโ€”a way of embracing the fullness of life with hearts wide open. This practice may not make us immune to undesirable situations in our lives, but it can sweeten our perspectives, inner stories, and how we respond to the insatiable demands of our need for gratification. May contentment be part of what anchors us to ourselves, to each other, and to the divine presence that dwells within us and among us. In many ways, this is both a personal and community practice, something that can be cultivated at home, and also further amplified (or activated) at a nature retreat here at Nectar Yoga on Bowen Island, BC. There is something profoundly powerful when you are witnessed by others, and when you witness others cultivate Santosha with intention.

Svadhyaya: Meditation Techniques for the Sacred Journey of Self-Study

Svadhyaya: Meditation Techniques for the Sacred Journey of Self-Study

At the core of Svadhyaya lies the act of self-reflection. Through inner reflection, we gain insight into the tapestry of our thoughts and emotions, and how they play a role in our habits and experiences. All over the world, where yoga and mindfulness is practice, including right here at Nectar Yoga Retreat on Bowen Island, BC, we face our vulnerabilities, our joys and our sorrows, with a sense of clarity and acceptance. Encountering ourselves demands courage, a willingness to stay in the present, and with fully open eyes to witness our complexity and paradoxes. 

Virgo & Libra Season: Yoga for Gut Health, Lower Back Relief, and Relaxing Breathing Exercises

Virgo & Libra Season: Yoga for Gut Health, Lower Back Relief, and Relaxing Breathing Exercises

Virgo's relationship to the gut is therefore fitting, as the digestive system is the body's most discerning organ, responsible for processing experience at its most physical and deciding what to absorb and what to release. August and September are when this sorting tends to surface most noticeably, when the nervous system, which has been managing a full summer of input, begins to signal that it needs to metabolize.

An Overview Of The Raja Yoga System: Meditation Techniques and the Eight Limbs

An Overview Of The Raja Yoga System: Meditation Techniques and the Eight Limbs

Traditionally, Raja yoga refers to the objective of yoga as well as the method of attaining it. Through this, it is also considered to be the state of peace and contentment that comes from a sustained yoga + meditation practice. It also encompasses teachings from all the different paths, and it is from Raja yoga that Hatha yoga and modern Asana practice has developed.

Considering that Raja yoga involves all three dimensions of human existence (physical, mental + spiritual), it empowers practitioners to find harmony on each of these levels.