Mosses’ diminutive size belies their resilience, tenacity, and ecological significance. Mosses are essential for retaining soil and moisture (as much as 40 times their weight), preventing erosion, and providing homes, insulation, and sustenance for various organisms in their ecosystems, including at Nectar Yoga Retreat on Bowen Island.
Known for its stinging leaves, Nettle is a herbaceous perennial that offers a myriad of benefits ranging from environmental rewilding to medicinal uses and even spiritual significance. Nectar Yoga Retreat’s wellness blog also includes lesser known fun facts, and three nettle tea recipes that do wonders for our complexions and general vitality.
Beyond appreciating them in cooking, what are oyster mushrooms good for? Pleurotus varieties are saprotrophs that are involved in providing nutrition to its ecosystem as a primary decomposer of wood, especially deciduous trees, and beech trees in particular, though here in the Pacific Northwest, oyster mushrooms are also seen growing on dying hardwood trees. Their saprophytic function benefits the forest by returning vital elements and minerals to the environment in forms that are usable to other plants, other organisms, and general soil biology.
Examining our inner judgments, there are 9 types of bias as shared by educator and author Clay Drinko, is not only opportunities for developing more self-awareness, but is also a way to identify where edges are in the first place.
These practices are designed to help you connect with your edge while fostering a sense of joy and renewal.
Wild Thing (Camatkarasana)
This heart-opening pose embodies freedom and vitality. As you flow into Wild Thing, you’ll feel a playful release, inviting both physical and emotional renewal.
Psychologists Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund have formulated this definition of self awareness, "Self-awareness is the ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don't align with your internal standards. If you're highly self-aware, you can objectively evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behavior with your values, and understand correctly how others perceive you."
Here at Nectar Yoga Retreat on Bowen, in the beautiful Pacific Northwest of Canada, we are blessed with an abundance of different flora and fauna, each lending its unique properties to our environments. Guests staying with us through our Nectar Experience Packages or attending our day / evening events or overnight spiritual retreats often share how the presence of trees during their Bowen Island getaway makes a lasting impression on their wellness within.
As part of the living yoga practice and our commitment to being stewards of the land, part of our practice of Svadhyaya, the Yama translating to self-study, is learning the wisdom of the trees.
Turkey tail mushroom benefits
Turkey tail mushroom identification and look alikes
Turkey tail mushroom benefits for skin
Where to buy Turkey tail mushroom
Turkey tail’s spiritual significance
Nectar’s own adaptogenic chai recipe with Turkey tail mushroom
If you are familiar with general Ayurvedic practices and the three doshas (where you may also hear of vata body type, kapha body type, and pitta body type), you already know that the summer corresponds to the Pitta season.
If you want to learn some of the fundamentals of the doshas, we cover that in “The Three Doshas Defined.”
As we retune our inner rhythm to the energies surrounding our own and the seasonal Pitta dosha this season, we explore the principles surrounding the Yama, Satya.
Are you curious about the Raja yoga system and more details about the Yamas and Niyamas? We outline everything in our blog post, “Overview of the Raja Yoga System.”
