Slim Calm Sexy Yoga: 210 Proven Yoga Moves for Mind/Body Bliss

clarity. I was doing insanely long back-to-back shoots (a music video shoot all night, straight to a Lady Foot Locker campaign in the morning). I was exhausted to the point of tears. I couldn’t and didn’t want to continue down the path I was on. It had no substantial meaning for me and didn’t fuel me with anythingpositive. I had seen much more exciting things meditating in the trees and on the mat in yoga class. I began to wonder if yoga could bring me back to myself.
    It didn’t happen overnight, but soon after I made yoga a priority in my life, I started feeling alive again. The physicality of yoga reminded me how to feel good in my body. Its meditative side made me feel good in my head. Practicing yoga helped me f i gure out how to sync up my body and mind so I could return to my own intuitive sense of well-being, the one I’d had so naturally as a kid. I’d forgotten what I was capable of, but once I was back to a regular practice, I realized I was finally on the right path to a healthy and satisfying life. It was a game changer.
    In the past decade, I’ve made up for lost time. I’ve devoured the teachings of such major players as Paramahansa Yoga-nanda, Krishna Das, Ram Dass, Dharma Mittra, and many other meditation masters, mystics, and healers. I continue to explore, meditate, and learn through my own practices and the wisdom of others. I still model now and then, but I’ve devoted my life to helping other people through yoga. Today I run my own studio, called Strala Yoga, in New York City, where I teach some of the most successful, hard-charging people in the world—from busy executives to professional actors to members of the military—to be slim, calm, and sexy.
    And I want to teach you, too.

INTRODUCTION

    Slim. Calm. Sexy.
    Wouldn’t it be fantastic to feel that way all the time?
    The reality is that we’re often too busy, too tired, too stressed to do what it takes to get those results. Things like eating well, exercising, even just taking a deep breath now and then seem beyond our grasp in the hectic world we live in. And that hectic way of living leads to an endless cycle of stress, exhaustion, weight gain, anxiety, and frustration. There goes slim, calm, sexy.
    Well, go ahead and take that nice long, deep breath.
    Because I’ve got some great news: There is something you can do to radiate slim, calm, sexy from the inside out—in just 15 minutes a day. It’s a revolutionary new approach to the ancient discipline of yoga, and it’s proven by research to work.
    With this simple guide, I’ll teach you how to focus on the little things that make your life seem hard—a sore back, a pounding head, a growling stomach, even a nagging boss—and show you how to turn them around in just 15 minutes a day. My approach is based on harnessing the healing power of yoga and applying it in the most targeted way possible—fixing whatever hurts you, stresses you, or makes you sad, in less time than it takes to wash and dry your hair.
    And you will be amazed at how it will transform you.
    There’s a reason I believe in the 15-minute yoga fix. See, I know exactly what it’s like to think you’re too stressed, too busy, and too exhausted to feel slim, calm, or anywhere close to sexy. So before I get into the details of how yoga will change your life, let me tell you a little something about how it changed mine.
    I grew up in rural Illinois, and there weren’t many kids to hang out with, so I spent a lot of time on my own scrambling up trees, sitting, thinking, and just breathing as I soaked in the nature that surrounded me. I honestly believe that all that time I spent alone in the treetops contemplating the mysteries of the universe was my first experience with what I now know as meditation. But it wasn’t until I was in my teens and enrolled in a rigorous classical dance program that I had formal contact with yoga. Once a week, as part of our training, a yoga teacher sat serenely in front of the group leading us through poses and meditations to relax our tightly wound bodies. And while I loved to dance, doing yoga made me feel more alive than endless plies at the barre. It was like being back up in the trees. I felt at home.
    My story would be nice and simple if I could tell you that once I discovered yoga, I’d found my calling and lived happily ever after. But in real life, signs are not always so clear, and the paths we start on aren’t always so easy to jump off.
    I had chosen classical