Do you celebrate your mastery and finesse?  Are you intimate with a posse? Do you rally and converse with your various parts (i.e., feelings, emotions, actions, words), regardless of their positivity? Recognizing your gifts, cultivating relationships and collaborating with all aspects of your human nature are just a few of the effective Tantric teachings that have invited more humour, dharma and love into my life.

It takes a lot of courage for me to remember and relish my unique flair. Once as I started to immerse my awareness and actions around my gifts, conditions in my life began to align. Life didn’t seem so edgy, or shall I say I didn’t seem so edgy? It was as if I stepped into my flow (i.e, dharma). Unfortunately I’m not in this flow 100% of the time…there are moments when I’m in the mud. But now I have the knowing to feel and see when I’m misaligned, and then I take steps to meet the flow. Whether they are baby steps or T-Rex steps I move toward my dharma.

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Do you believe in Valentine’s Day?

This is a question I’ve heard many times before, have always known my answer but never known why.  Yes, I always say, and last night I realized why…

Whilst twisted up in my least favourite yoga pose, our teacher told us to smile and open our hearts.  Easy for you to say, I wanted to retort.  Then she continued.  What she said was very simple and shut my ego up right away. “If we’re not here to give love and receive love, what are we doing?” Well that’s the best question I’ve been asked in a long time, and that question turned into my reason for believing very wholeheartedly in Valentine’s Day.

“It’s a event that Hallmark made up!” or “men should be nice to women every day of the year!”  These are the two common phrases that I hear in the “down with Valentine’s Day” argument.  Are they valid? Absolutely!  Both of those statements are true.  But I say, so what?  Why not use today as a reminder or excuse to give extra love?  I’ve never seen someone receive a Valentine and be mad … I’ve only ever seen smiles.  Studies have shown that smiling releases endorphins, natural painkillers, and serotonin.  Together these three are a natural drug.  Well, who would say no to that?!  Certainly not me.

So I say, soak it all up.  Enjoy giving love and receiving love.

Happy Heart Day!

How to easily improve everything in your life this year…in ONE step!

The New Year arrives in a flash of optimism and a renewed commitment to my best health.  Suddenly it’s February, I’m clicking “Play Next Episode” and having ice cream for dinner.  Hmm.

What happened?  Why is it so fun to break our own rules?  Why is it so tricky to make Resolutions that stick?

If we combine intentions with habit, we can transform our lives beyond recognition.  Resolutions usually come from a soul-desire to improve our lives, but we express them with thoughts and judgments that come from the mind.  Resolving to lose weight or work out more because we ‘should’ doesn’t bring success.

A weight-loss study in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine is very revealing:  Of a group of women ages 30-50, half were asked to focus on the affirmation “I am making these changes for better health.”  The others used the affirmation “I wish I had the body I did when I was 20”,  which is really a negative self-judgment, and the women in this group lost 10-20 lbs less  than the women affirming a message of self-care.

We also LOVE to break our own rules, and will often make a Resolution based on unrealistic expectations simply to sabotage ourselves.  Drastic changes to lifestyle are hard on the system in many ways, from something as basic as being sore after working out a lot after a period of inactivity, all the way to deepening depression when we set ourselves up to fail.  In a study at the University of California at Davis, people who made small, evolutionary changes to their lifestyles experienced 75% greater success than those who made dramatic changes, like completely removing sugar from their diets.  When we deny ourselves comforts (even if those comforts are not great for us), we feel deprived, and this can lead to a feast-or-famine way of thinking and feeling.

What are the top Resolutions?  Weight-loss, better fitness, greater happiness, being ‘greener’,  increased productivity, release from addictions, being kinder to others…these are all worthy goals, so let’s make it simple, and do them all at once with one easy step.  Ready?

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This December 1st marked a really special day for all of us at Saje. A new Saje store on Robson! The DJ made us dance, the essential oil cupcakes made us smile and the hugs were plentiful. Check out the photos of all the fun times!

Co-Founders :: Excited!

What inspired you to start One Yoga for the People?

“I was living in Los Angeles and that is where I was first exposed to a donation based yoga model. I wanted a studio that was out of the box and had alternative payment options to make yoga accessible to everybody. I wanted to see change and evolution in our communities and I thought that offering yoga would be a great place to begin seeing that change. I felt that even if I were just serving a few people it would ripple out and impact the larger community.”

What has been the biggest benefit of having yoga in your life?

“There’s so many! One primary benefit is that I feel I’m able to see more beauty because of the practice of yoga. It allows me to have a lens that allows me to see clearly. I feel I’m able to see more beauty in everything around me whether it’s people I don’t know, people that are in my life, in art or in food.“

I’ve heard a lot of opinions on how often one needs to go to yoga, walk me through your opinion.

“Each tradition may tell you different things. Many if not most of my teachers have told me that I should practice every day….whether it is asana, pranayama, meditation or mantra. This I still do. But I feel that people can acknowledge that yoga is so much more than just the Asana. That a lot of it has to do with allowing yourself to drop in to a certain moment in time and that, in and of itself, can be a really strong practice. Don’t get me wrong, practicing Asana 2, 3, 4, 5 times a week or practicing everyday will provide enormous openings in the mind, body and heart, but there are so many people that can’t practice everyday and so I find that they get overwhelmed by the idea of practicing everyday and give up all together. That’s not what I want. I want people to acknowledge that if you can only make it to the mat 1-day a week and practice on really connecting to your breath and to each moment…then that is an amazing yoga practice.

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Kit bags made from recycled water bottles? It’s true!

This holiday season we’re stepping up our commitment to nurturing wellness within and without by offering a gorgeous selection of gifts that are good for you and good for the Earth!

Soon you’ll get a first peek at our fabulous new natural healing kits, gift boxes, skin care sets, pampering kits and so much more (we can’t wait to show you some of our gorgeous new candle diffusers and nebulizers!)

And here’s why it will feel so good to Give Green this year: Saje has a whole lineup of products featuring:

- packaging made from recycled or recyclable materials,
- 100% vegan products,
- no harmful toxins or dyes,
- biodegradable materials,
- sustainable wood packaging,
- AND of course, all Saje products are 100% natural and never tested on animals.

Keep an eye out for some new kit bags made from — of all things — recycled plastic bottles! Your go-to, must-have remedies, mists and roll-ons are bundled in this gorgeous PET fabric that’s given tossed plastic bottles a new life!

We hope you’ll join us to Give Green this Holiday season with Saje and give gifts that show your friends, family, and the Earth a lot of love.

Saje Southgate is built!

The nerves kicks in, will it be everything we want it to be?! A brand new design, a fresh look and the day is finally here: it is ready. We arrive at the mall, run to the hoarding, punch in the key code and swing open the door. Thrilled doesn’t begin to describe the feeling: it is clean, it is done, it is everything we wanted.

The next 4 days were a flurry of painting murals, unpacking boxes, late night tap dancing and playing with our new AromaFriends! Take a look at the journey and let us know what you think of it!

Day 1 || Hoarding

Day 1 || The Calm Before the Storm

Day 1 || Old -> New

Day 2 || The Plans Begin

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Back to the regular routine of work and school? Here are some helpful tips to keep your spirits high and your shoulders relaxed! Feeling like there’s too much task and not enough day, or struggling with stres. These are my 5  favourite stressbusters!

1)     Top of the list, Peppermint Halo.  This world-famous Saje Remedy is an astonishing blend of Essential Oils which reduce muscular tension and pain. Though traditionally a headache and migraine remedy, it can be applied quickly on shoulders, neck, lower back – any spot that needs a fast-acting pain reliever. As a huge plus, inhaling Peppermint Halo, triggers feel-good neurotransmitters in the brain.  All this naturally with no nasty side effects!

2)    Almost as great as Aromatherapy:  Saying NO.  This one’s tough, especially for all you SuperMoms and awesome Dads out there, however, demonstrating healthy boundaries will help your budding Gretzky or prima ballerina, as well as keep you much saner.  Yes, 5 AM practice is important.  Car pooling can get you some equally-important extra sleep.  In an office?  Do you know why they call it a deadline?  Taking on a healthy workload allows you to really do your best.  Practice saying YES to what you want, and NO to what you don’t want. Deepak Chopra recommends feeling how the choice sits within us.  A healthy, positive choice usually gives the body a feeling of contentment.

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Dear Green Mama: We are in the process of renovating a room for our baby.  We want everything to be beautiful, safe, and of course, healthy. Of course we don’t have an unlimited budget so where do we begin?

Dear Green Nursery on a Budget:

Hooray for the fun part: planning the nursery. And Hooray for you because you can save A LOT of money by buying green the first time. While there are many reasons to go green, health is the reason given by most of the moms we work with at The Green Mama so that is the focus in my Top 6 Nursery Items To Buy Green tips below. As usual, you can learn more at www.thegreenmama.com.

Mattresses

Infants sleep 12 to 18 hours a day so it’s important to consider what they’re sleeping on. The average mattress is made with polyurethane foam (petroleum-based) and treated with a variety of chemicals such as brominated flame retardants (also known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers – PBDEs) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) for stain and water resistance. Both the materials used and the chemicals they are treated with can off-gas (release chemicals into the air) to create unhealthy indoor air quality. There is some research to suggest that this contributes to SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). Either way, it is extremely unhealthy.

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I used to be a dancer. Not that I no longer dance (‘cause I’ll still be the last one off the dance floor at any wedding) but I mean that for over 10 years growing up I took dance classes five days a week – ballet, tap, jazz, you name it. Once I started university though, dance lessons fell by the wayside and while I still loved dance, there just didn’t seem the time to commit to classes.

Fast forward ten years and I find that whenever I go out on a limb and attend a drop-in dance class I’m quickly reminded of the amazing things my body used to be able to do and what it strains to do now.

That’s where yoga comes in.

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