Author Archives: laurenbiniaris

Over the past few years, mindfulness has become a pretty mainstream term. When I first started teaching yoga a million years ago, the term mindfulness seemed mostly reserved for yoga studios, meditation teachers, and certain forward-thinking psychologists and psychiatrists. But now it’s everywhere. In magazine cover stories, self-care routines, slogans… it is ubiquitous. In myContinue reading “Not a Synonym”

Something funny happened to me yesterday. I was down in the yard where we keep our chickens and rabbits doing some chores and straightening up. Cleaning coops and scooping poop are not jobs I particularly enjoy, but they go along with the territory of keeping animals. I often listen to audiobooks or podcasts while IContinue reading “Fight or Flight”

Happy New Year, everybody! We are nearly a week into 2022 as of this writing, and when I sat down to write today, I started feeling stuck. There is always so much pressure with anything related to starting a brand new year. New beginnings and new opportunities. Optimism trying to win over pessimism (at leastContinue reading “New Year”

In April of 2020, about a month after COVID shut everything down in the US, I turned forty. It was a strange birthday for sure: in lockdown with my husband and kids, the world spinning totally off-kilter, death and uncertainty all around. Ever true to the cliche, I was really not looking forward to theContinue reading “First and Last”

Hello, dear reader! It has been several weeks since my last post. And good ole time, in all its gloriously elasticity, is playing one of its tricks on me again! Somehow those several weeks feel more like months; like I inadvertently slipped into an entirely different calendar year without even noticing it. But perhaps thatContinue reading “The Newness of Things”

Earlier in the week, my family and I took an impromptu day trip to the Catskill Mountains about an hour and a half north of where we live. It was one of those beautiful end-of-summer days where it was still warm and sunny, but a hint of fall was most definitely in the air. ItContinue reading “Hope Is A Discipline”

This weekend I did something wonderful; I attended the wedding of a longtime friend. It was the first wedding I had been to in a decade. Weddings, like so many other things in life, seem to happen in seasons. In my twenties and early thirties, I was at weddings all the time. But then thatContinue reading “Union”

This past Monday was June 21st. That day happens to be the summer solstice (aka the longest day of the year), and my youngest daughter’s birthday. Eight years ago in 2013, she came into the world unexpectedly early and with a certain degree of complications. Thankfully she is completely fine and got that way relativelyContinue reading “Being Born”

When is the last time that you changed your mind about something? I don’t mean something trivial like changing your order at a restaurant or changing an outfit to better reflect your mood. I mean changing your mind about something you believe to be true, something that goes deeper than the surface. For me, myContinue reading “Azaleas”

These days the only in-person group yoga classes I am teaching happen outside. And I absolutely love it. One of the things I love is how it has made me so much more aware of seasonal changes, weather shifts, and how each day truly is unique from any other. Generally, when we think about theContinue reading “Second Snow”