By: Sasha Nelson for Hyde Yoga

Wellness is spreading like wildfire. Green juice has become a supermarket/social media staple, and people are realizing the importance of consciousness toward the environment, the food we eat, and the way we live. Yoga fits into this modern mindfulness matrix perfectly, even though some argue that this “trend” can discredit the integrity of what the asana practice and yoga as a whole is really about. Others could defend that, beyond the fancy poses we see on Instagram and the wide-spread craze of the yoga pant, the popularity of yoga itself is an obvious representation of the benefits of this practice (whether or not yoga students at your local gym know what the sutras are).

Experienced yogi or beginner student – the physical yoga practice is an excellent way to get in shape and feel great in any season. We know this because the results are all literally over the place, right in front of our face – everyone wants a piece of the asana pie. What newbies may be unaware of when they first step onto the mat is the beauty of the benefits of this practice beyond sculpting Madonna arms: experiencing unity and oneness (or sama, sameness), discovering physical and mental spaciousness, the ability to see yourself in others (and vice versa – the meaning of namaste), finding a silver lining within an undesirable experience (pratipaksha bhavana), noticing how and when you react to things, discerning between pain and discomfort, employing mindfulness in every moment, and so on. Who knew you were scoring so big when you first learned how to do a downward facing dog?

Needless to say, yoga and nutrition go hand in hand. When we are on that zenned-out yoga high post-practice, it’s natural to want your treat your body to something that will make you feel good as opposed to greasy, processed foods. One of the many reasons Hyde loves Purely Elizabeth is because they use clean, wholesome ingredients that are environmentally conscious – similar to our use of organic cotton. We love supporting these like-minded brands because we are all part of the same purpose – we genuinely care about the environment and the wellbeing of our customers, whether that be through our yoga practice, what we put in our mouths, what we wear, or how we find peace of mind.

Both Hyde and Purely Elizabeth started with an idea, and we’ve been growing ever since. All it takes is that first initial interest and an openness to whatever comes up as one continues down the wellness road. We’re all on different paths, yet (as yoga reminds us) we’re all one. So whether you’re a seasoned practitioner or just starting; whether you’re a bona fide foodie or want to start eating healthier, follow these simple yoga and lifestyle tips to feel amazing throughout summer and onward:

Eat whole, nourishing foods. Shop the outer aisles for fresh fruits and veggies, and buy organic whenever possible. Look for brands with a few simple, clean ingredients throughout the inner aisles. For a summer breakfast/snack, we are obsessed with Purely Elizabeth granola with coconut milk or yogurt and berries. Yum.
Practice surya namaskar A & B (sun salutations) 5-7 times per week (or moon salutations for a gentler approach). Be aware of things like how your body moves, the quality of your breath, where your mind wanders off to, the alignment of the posture, etc. If yoga isn’t your thing, enjoy your favorite activity – move your body!
Without judging yourself, notice how and when you react to things. When something happens that upsets you, try counting to ten before you react.
Find quiet moments to sit still and simply breathe, focusing on non other than your inhale and exhale.
Make space for fun moments to play outdoors, detached from judgement, allowing yourself to move and express yourself freely (remember running through the sprinklers as a kid?).
Be mindful of the brands you put your dollars towards, and support the local, sustainable companies that resonate with you.
Do what you love, and smile often (even when you feel like you can’t)!
During your physical practice, whether that means yoga or running or knitting, try to remain as present as possible in every moment. Notice the way you move, breath, if your brain wanders, if and when judgement comes up, and so on. Incorporate this mindfulness within your summer activities.
Pack Hyde yoga gear when you travel to remind yourself there’s always time to practice your favorite physical activity, even if it’s just stretching in your hotel room. Our jojo shorts and brooklyn halter are a popular summer combo.
Always come back to the present moment to make the most of the sunshine, outdoor activities, and all that summer has to offer.

Enjoy a Yoga Discount from Hyde!

Use code “purelyhyde” at checkout for 15% OFF HYDE YOGA GEAR when you shop online.

>> Shop Hyde.

Namaste, and happy summer.

Meet Sasha Nelson. 

Sasha Nelson is a yoga instructor, certified health coach, dancer, and music lover based in Brooklyn, NY. She works with individuals who seek to balance wellness within their modern lifestyle, and teaches primarily vinyasa-style yoga in Brooklyn and Manhattan. A former Fashion Merchandising MFA graduate from Academy of Art University, she now works for Brooklyn-based Hyde organic yoga apparel. When you don’t find her doing any of these things she is experimenting in the kitchen, poppin’ and lockin’, and practicing Breakti®. For more information, visit sashayogawellness.com.

Stay in touch for easy, healthy, tasty recipes, plus simple wellness + lifestyle tips:

Website: sashayogawellness.com

Facebook: facebook.com/sashayogawellness

Twitter: @sashayoga, Pinterest: @sashayoga, Instagram: @sashayogawellness

Hyde Yoga

Website: yogahyde.com

Facebook: facebook.com/yogahyde

Twitter: @hydeyoga, Instagram: @hydeyoga, Pinterest: @hydeyoga

Link to article – 

Tips on Yoga + Health for a Rejuvenating Transition into Summer

Are you a blogger of food, nutrition, health, wellness and/or fitness? Join our team and help us spread the word about eating and living purely!

The ideal Purely Blogger is an active blogger, who is social media savvy on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. A MUST for our bloggers is that they share our passion for fitness, health, wellness and clean eating!

As a Purely Blogger, you will receive quarterly deliveries of Purely Elizabeth products and sneak peek samples of new products. You will gain exposure to our audience via social media love, guest blog posts and through various other marketing collaborations. All of our Purely Bloggers are featured on our website with a bio and links to the blogger’s sites!

>> Learn More + Apply.

Read more:

Join Our Purely Blogger Team

We’ve got the chips + dip covered for your Memorial Day cookout! All week long you can enter to win 3 bags of Sea Salt Chips from Rhythm Superfoods + 3 jars of salsa from White Girl Salsa.

Rhythm Superfoods: Sea Salt Superfood Chips

The nutritionally dense and naturally delicious Sea Salt Superfood Chips are made with a super veggie base containing sweet potato, carrot and broccoli, cut into perfect squares for dipping. These delicious baked superfood chips are gluten-free, non-GMO and have 3 grams of fiber, 4 grams of protein and 15 whole grains per serving.

Connect: Website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

White Girl Salsa: Hot Tomatillo, Smokey Chipotle + Cranberry Mango

Vibrant, tomatillo-based blends that are fresh, sassy, and just a bit spicy. In each variety, tomatillo, cilantro, and lime come together for some flavorful fun without the preservatives and fillers. White Girl Salsa’s zesty, gourmet flavors are the perfect addition to your cookout spread, whether you’re scooping it onto a salty chip or topping off your grilled entrees.

Connect: Website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

Continue reading here: 

Memorial Day Chip + Dip Giveaway

Hello spring! Spruce up your morning parfait with this refreshing combo–yogurt, raspberry jam, blackberries, Cranberry Pecan Granola + mint. We promise you’ll have an extra skip in your step for the rest of the day.

>> For more of our favorite breakfast recipes. 

Original article: 

Blackberry Mint Parfait

Happy Wellness Wednesday! This week Anna Wootton, an emotional eating expert, shares with us how to avoid reaching for food to quell emotions, stress or even boredom.

We’ve all been there – whether it’s the clichéd tub of ice cream after a break-up, or simply a mindless reaching for that bag of chips when you’re bored, or heading to the food court after a disheartening session of trying on swimsuits (news flash: this will always be disheartening, no matter what size you are. Change-room lights are no one’s friend!).

Emotional eating is ever present and will always pop up from time to time in your life. We can all aim to be perfect and to realize that yes, food is meant as fuel and can be pleasurable in fueling us, but should not be used to feed anything else – emotions or otherwise – but this is not always realistic. Chances are there will be times when you reach for that bar of dark chocolate because you need a pick me up, even though you’re not that hungry.

The aim is not to be perfect, but to prevent these small and infrequent occurrences from taking over and becoming the norm, to the point where your brain immediately turns to thought of food whenever it needs comfort, relief or distraction. This is when emotional eating becomes a problem. So how do we stop this from happening?

Below I have listed FIVE WAYS to raise awareness of your eating habits and make smart choices that will prevent you from relying on food as a mental or emotional crutch.

1. Avoid foods that don’t serve you. Whether you believe sugar really is addictive or just plain tasty, studies have been done that show it’s hard to stop when we get on the sugar train. Limiting the amount of processed and simple sugars in our diet will help break the sugar cycle. It’s hard enough to avoid reaching for foods when we’re feeling sad (and sugar is the first one we will crave because it gives us that little boost or ‘high’ that can make us feel instantly happier), but reaching for a food that only encourages you to keep eating will make your efforts feel that much harder. On a similar note, avoid any foods you have an intolerance to, however slight. Research has suggested that foods we cannot tolerate well may be the foods we crave the most. If you struggle with gluten, dairy, corn, or other common food sensitivities, try to avoid them as much as possible.

2. Focus on dealing with your emotions as soon as they arise. Identify your triggers – most people have a few. Some will reach for food when they feel angry or irritated, others when their self-esteem is at its low point, others when they feel stressed or anxious. When you can focus on your triggers, you can spot those emotions as soon as they arise, and deal with them right away. Nipping them in the bud will prevent the next step – reaching for food. It’s when we push our emotions down and try to ignore them that our mind will try to find a release in other ways – drinking, eating, smoking, you name it. Addressing the fact that we are experiencing a negative emotion and – even better – giving ourselves a chance to release that emotion in a healthy, constructive way will help us to avoid the need to distract our mind from these feelings with things like food. Try journaling or meditation, even just 10 minutes a day, or talking to a friend as soon as you feel insecurity, anxiety, anger, sadness, or any other negative emotion bubble up.

3. Keep a list of healthy snacks on hand. While it’s easy to imagine ways to come up with healthy and balanced meals, snack options are often just disguised desserts which only encourage unnecessary snack binges. To avoid temptation, keep a list of ten healthy, go-to snacks for you to turn to when you feel hunger knocking at your door. Try to include a healthy fat or protein in each snack so that you can stay satiated for longer and keep your blood sugar more stable, which will help resist the urge to reach for sugary items.

4. Let food be thy medicine. If you want to turn to food for relief, rather than being ‘tricked’ by the foods that give quick relief but don’t serve you nutritionally, turn to foods that can help. When you’re feeling anxious or stressed, herbal teas like chamomile, peppermint or ginger are relaxing and soothing for mind and body. If you’re feeling overly fatigued or depressed, throw some superfoods like maca powder, spirulina or camu camu powder into a green smoothie and let the effects of the fresh fruit and veggies and superfoods provide the physical and mental energy boost you need. This is an especially useful tactic if you are already starting to struggle with emotional eating, as your mind is no doubt preoccupied with food when emotions hit. This way you can work on slowly changing your mind’s reliance on food, while in the meantime channelling it into healthy food choices.

5. Remember: No one’s perfect. The key is to always forgive yourself. The punishing cycle of guilt and self-loathing because you ‘fell off the wagon’ only perpetuates the cycle. No one is benefiting from you sitting on the couch berating yourself for your lack of willpower or your ‘weakness’ for having eaten more cookies than you intended. Even those who have never struggled with disordered eating of any kind will make poor choices – it’s part of being human. Just laugh it off, forgive yourself and remember that a few bad choices do not make a bad person.

Emotional eating is always a sign of something troubling going on beneath the surface, something that needs addressing and dealing with but is being ignored. Looking deep within ourselves to identify the root of these issues is absolutely key to banishing emotional eating once and for all. This can sound depressing and scary, so in my eight-week Life is About FUN, Not Food! emotional eating program, I focus on using positivity and light to make this process less intimidating and more enlightening, fun and exciting! For more on this group coaching program – which can be purchased as a self-study program at more than 70% off the regular price – click here.

Anna Wootton is a holistic health coach and emotional eating expert who offers group and one-on-one coaching online. With clients all over the world, sessions are completed via video chat with email support. Anna is a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and blogs over at Your Healthy Place. Follow her on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, and like her page on Facebook to keep up with her latest goings-on. Subscribe to her newsletter to receive her free ebook, 5 Fabulous Ways to Live a Life About FUN, Not Food!

Continued here: 

5 Ways to Prevent Emotional Eating from Taking Over

Adding oats to smoothies.

Chia breakfast bowls.

Fresh flowers.

Breathtaking mountains.

Creative flatbreads.

Simple inspiration.

Follow us for more beautiful pins!

Continue reading here: 

Lately on Pinterest.

Ever since we connected with the amazing Ksenia at Breakfast Criminals, we’ve been crazy about her decadent açaí bowls. She truly crafts them like a piece of art–and even better, she uses the most nutrient-rich superfoods in doing so. Ksenia blends in everything from berries to greens to chia seeds, probiotics, shredded coconut, hemp seeds, maca powder–you name it.

While we’re mesmerized by Ksenia’s creations, we know she’s not the only one out there making them! Açaí bowls have been blowing up our Instagram feed as of lately and we’re intrigued by everyone’s creative combinations.

Have you been indulging in açaí bowls? Share with us!

1. Follow us on Instagram: @purely_elizabeth

2. Post your açaí bowl photo

3. Include #eatpurely

We’ll repost our favorites and even include a few in our Purely Summer Magazine. Never made an açaí bowl? Let the expert show you her ways!

View post:

The Art of Açaí Bowls

Crazy for coconut oil?? You should be! Brittany Mullins, health coach + blogger shares why in this week’s Wellness Wednesdays…  

Coconut oil is gaining popularity as more and more people realize that virgin, unrefined coconut oil is much different (and healthier!) than the hydrogenated coconut oil found in many packaged foods. While hydrogenated oils are void of nutrients, unrefined coconut oil is a saturated fat that contains a unique combination of short and medium chain fatty acids, including lauric and myristic acids, which offer a host of health-promoting properties.

Here are the TOP BENEFITS of consuming coconut oil:

1. It promotes heart health, healthy brain function and proper thyroid function.

2. It can boost your metabolism. One study found that medium-chain fatty acids, such as the one found in coconut oil, can increase metabolism by between 48 and 65 percent in obese patients. This thermogenic effect also lasted 24 hours after ingesting medium-chain fatty acids.

3. It promotes a lean body and can aid in weight loss. Medium chain fatty acids are easily digested and immediately burned as energy by your liver, similar to the way carbohydrates are processed, but without the insulin spike. Longer chains (present in other oils) take longer to digest and are most often stored as fat.

4. It helps prevent blood sugar fluctuations after a meal — because it slows digestion, coconut oil also slows the rate carbs are broken down into blood glucose.

5. It can strengthen your immune system. The anti-microbial properties of the saturated fats help your body fight bacteria, fungi or parasites. The body converts the lauric acid found in coconut oil into monolaurin. Monolaurin helps to fight and ward off viruses and bacteria that cause things like herpes, toe nail fungus and the flu.

Pretty powerful stuff, that coconut oil!

Here are a couple TIPS TO REMEMBER when you head out to buy a jar of coconut oil:

• Look for unrefined coconut oil at your natural health food store. It will be labeled as virgin, extra virgin or raw. There are several extraction methods, which leads to the different labels: cold-pressed, expeller-pressed, and centrifuged. This terms refer to the process and also signify how much heat is used during the extraction process — the more heat used during the processing, the more pronounced the coconut flavor will be. Centrifuged tends to use the least amount of heat and is therefore your mildest option. I like coconut and don’t mind a more pronounced coconut flavor so I use cold-pressed coconut oil.

• Coconut oil is a saturated fat so it’s solid at room temperature. It can be stored in either it’s liquid or solid form, and it can be liquified easily by applying low level heat. Many times I find that it’s easier to measure and mix in recipes when it’s in a liquid state so I like to melt it by placing the jar in a cup of hot water.

• Just because coconut oil has numerous health benefits doesn’t mean you should start eating a jar a day. Like all oils, it’s high in fat and calorie dense (around 120 calories for a tablespoon) so you’ll want to use it in moderation.

• If you’re looking for ways to incorporate coconut oil in your diet, I have plenty of delicious recipes on my website. Some of my favorites include Maple Lemon Tempeh Cubes, Roasted Kabocha Squash Tots, Detox Macaroons and Coconut Cream Pie.

• Coconut oil has a number of beauty benefits too. I use it topically as a moisturizer for my face, body and hair almost every day!

Sources:

http://authoritynutrition.com/coconut-oil-and-weight-loss/
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/11/18/coconut-oil-uses.aspx
http://www.organicfacts.net/organic-oils/organic-coconut-oil/health-benefits-of-coconut-oil.html

Meet Brittany Mullins:

Brittany Mullins is a health coach, certified NASM personal trainer and has been blogging about healthy living since 2008. She is a lover of all things food, nutrition and fitness. Through her blog, eatingbirdfood.com, she proves that maintaing a healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to be a challenge by sharing recipes, fitness activities and tips. On a daily basis she focuses on inspiring and motivating others by showing that small changes can create long lasting health and happiness.

Feel free to check out her blog and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.

Source:

5 Reasons Why You Should Be Consuming Coconut Oil

Now for our second Purely Spring Mag Giveaway! It’s spring, which means it’s time to put the heavy boots away and break out your flats. Since pastels are in this season and Tieks are our favorite comfy, yet ultra trendy flats–we’re offering up a chance to win a pair of Ballerina Pink Tieks!

Meet Tieks by Gavrieli.

Tieks are versatile designer flats, made of fine Italian leathers that are designed to fold right into your purse! These comfy flats are perfect for everyday wear + they support a cause! The Gavrieli Foundation is committed to the empowerment of women around the globe as a means for social change–contributing funds to women entrepreneurs, who are key to the fight against global poverty.

Check out the Tieks Boutiek for more of their fabulous flats!

+ See what else we’re Purely LOVING this spring!

View original article:

Tieks Giveaway! Win a Chic New Pair of Ballerina Flats