North Exercises

This practical guide to understanding the cranial nerves as the key to our psychological and physical well-being builds on Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory - one of the most important recent developments in human neurobiology. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience as a craniosacral therapist and Rolfer, Stanley Rosenberg explores the crucial role that the vagus nerve plays in determining our psychological and emotional states and explains that a myriad of common psychological and physical symptoms.

All parts of the body need exercise for optimal health, and the eyes are no different. Vision for Life presents an approach to eye health for people with 20/20 vision who wish to maintain their perfect vision as well as people who see poorly and would like to improve their eyesight. Clients of the Meir Schneider Self-Healing Method experience their own capacity to bring about recovery, reversing the progress of a wide range of degenerative conditions including eye disease.

Overcoming Trauma Through Yoga is a book for survivors, clinicians, and yoga instructors who are interested in mind/body healing. It introduces trauma-sensitive yoga, a modified approach to yoga developed in collaboration between yoga teachers and clinicians at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute, led by yoga teacher David Emerson, along with medical doctor Bessel van der Kolk.

Breathwork expert Jesse Coomer reveals how to breathe our way to better health, increased vitality, and mental clarity by unlocking The Language of Breath. Using powerful, proven breathwork exercises, Coomer delivers a new paradigm to the world of breathwork: one that reconnects us to our innate mind-body wisdom and bridges the evolutionary disconnect between our bodies, brains, and the stressors of modern-day life.

Revised and updated, Teaching Yoga by yoga expert Mark Stephens is one of the most popular resources for new and experienced teachers, and has been a trusted guide since its publication in 2010. This classic resource covers fundamental topics of yoga history and philosophy, as well as each of the 11 major styles of contemporary yoga. There is also practical advice for every stage of the teaching process, including tools for teaching 108 yoga poses (asanas), breathing techniques (pranayama), and meditation.

Deep Fitness introduces a proven, new approach to building strength and whole-body health: Mindful Strength Training to Failure (MSTF). This science-based method reverses muscle loss and improves overall strength in just one or two 30-minute sessions a week. MSTF exercises are simple and effective, and can be done at home with resistance bands and bodyweight, or with the machines at your local gym. Using slow reps, MSTF marries mindful body awareness with proven strength-training techniques to help you become stronger at any age.

Jacoby Ballard provides an empowering and affirming guide to embodied healing through yoga and the dharma, grounded in the brilliance, resilience, and lived experiences of queer folks.

Liz Koch seeks to dissolve the objectification of “body” in order to reconceptualize human beings as biologically intelligent, self-organizing, and self-healing. Specifically addressing educators and therapists, she delves into the conceptual framework of core by decolonizing the popular mechanistic thinking of psoas as muscle, inviting the listener on a journey toward reengaging with life’s creative processes. The book illuminates the limitations of the predominant paradigm of body and actively explores psoas as a vital, intelligent messenger that links us to an expansive network of profound possibilities.

Yoga Beyond Belief offers a unique vision of contemporary yoga. It integrates scientific and practical approaches providing a much-needed integrative perspective that complements existing yoga books for all levels and styles of yoga students. Serving up a collection of valuable insights gleaned from a lifetime of exploration, practice, study, and teaching by one of America’s pioneering and leading teachers of yoga, the book assists listeners in making sense of the many discordant claims and teaching techniques that currently exist in the yoga world.

More of a transformative guide than a specific list of exercises devoted to any particular physical approach, Zen Body-Being explains how to create a state of mental control, enhanced feeling-awareness, correct structural alignment, increased spatial acuity, and even a greater interactive presence. Exercises are simple, often involving feeling-imagery and meditative awareness, which have a profound and sometimes instant effect. Where similar guides teach readers what to do, this book teaches readers how to be.

Somatic educator and writer Liz Koch has spent decades studying the principles of Core Awareness—a body-based approach to movement that utilizes attention to inner sensation as the key to increasing strength, gaining flexibility, preventing injury, and improving resilience. In this book, she shares her vast knowledge of Core Awareness with listeners, providing movements, stretches, and mindfulness explorations that she developed herself.

Although modern science has unraveled some of the mysteries of our sleeping, dreaming, and waking states and age-old yoga practices are helping us enjoy better sleep, clearer minds, and healthier bodies, over 65 percent of U.S. adults are still sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation causes and aggravates ailments like stress, heart conditions, high blood pressure, obesity, and depression. Master yoga teacher, trainer, and best-selling author Mark Stephens provides easy-to-do, effective yoga activities for better sleep, no matter your age.

Brendon Abram combines his first-hand experience with PTSD in the field and years of teaching to offer this practical guide to bringing trauma-sensitive yoga to both clinical and studio settings. Drawing on his work with military veterans, first responders, and survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, he emphasizes the importance of respecting the uniqueness of every individual and demonstrates how to use the foundational principles of yoga to create a safe experience.

Here’s an idea: exercise should be enjoyable—not punishing, elitist, or overly competitive. Nor should gym work cause us harm or bring us shame. Part exercise manual and part workbook, Movement for Every Body celebrates this approach and champions an inclusive movement practice for anyone who doesn’t fit the "typical" fitness mold and doesn’t wish to—who refuses burdensome narratives that tell them they're broken and need to be fixed, cured, or mended to be whole.

From Downward Dog to Cobra, Wild Asana invites you into an embodied exploration of the animals that inspire familiar yoga poses. Drawing on wildlife science, anthropology, Hindu mythology, Eastern philosophy, and personal stories, this insightful guide by environmental educator and yoga instructor Alison Zak explores the connections among our bodies, our minds, and the animals that inspire our practice, and invites you to bring the deep nature of animals into breath and movement.

Your definitive trauma-sensitive guide to working the Steps: skills for understanding your addiction, processing your trauma, and navigating your recovery journey—the anticipated companion to Trauma and the 12 Steps.

Yoga instructor Alison Rogers and coauthor Erin O. White forge a new path through contemporary motherhood with their collection of gentle suggestions for beginning and deepening a home yoga practice for new mothers. From the warm-up of first days with a newborn to the wobbly-but-standing postures of confident new motherhood, Breathing Space for New Mothers encourages women to notice and nurture their feelings and foster self-compassion to approach motherhood with curiosity instead of fear, improvisation instead of rigidity, and humor instead of worry.

America is a stressed-out place. Paycheck to paycheck lifestyles, deadlines, bills, and keeping up with the Joneses all contribute to make us the most stressed out society in history. A lot of people can't help but feel a hole in their lives that has to be filled by something. To fill this hole, people tend to take one of two paths - either burying themselves in alcohol, drugs, and fast food, or the other path of harmful dieting, punishing exercise routines, and workaholism. Both of these paths represent extremes, and happiness is found in the middle.