In this yoga memoir, author Jessica Berger Gross details how she “lost 40 pounds with a yoga mat, fresh pineapples, and a Beagle-Pointer.” With a subtitle like that, I had to read this book.

It’s a very relatable tale. After a challenging childhood (including an abusive father and an exhausted, cowed mother), college-age Jessica finds herself an overweight, chain-smoking wallflower. Envious of her slimmer, more energetic friends, Berger Gross assumes it’s her destiny to be heavy and sluggish. However, after spending a year in Nepal, finding her true love, connecting with her yoga practice and moving to a house in the mountains, she begins to realize that she can change herself, although she has a few false starts before she finds her path.

She begins writing for yoga magazines, deepens her home practice and starts teaching classes. She attends a yoga retreat with Baron Baptiste. She gets a dog and starts walking her regularly. And she revamps her diet, starting off every day with fresh pineapple (and ending it with a lot of black bean chili).

By taking the advice of her healthier friends, severing ties with her parents and taking control of her destiny, Berger Gross eventually loses the weight and finds her happiness, though not without some struggle and a lot of hard work, proving that none of us is a slave to our past. An inspiring tale, indeed.

Ani Phyo has a new raw food recipe book coming out at the end of the month. I can’t wait!

Ani’s Raw Food Essentials will feature “simple, fresh recipes using what you’ve already got in your kitchen while also offering tips on dehyrating and more sophisticated techniques. Phyo offers everything from classic comfort foods like nachos and burgers to Reuben sandwiches and bacon, along with more gourmet dishes like risotto, angel hair pasta, and her ‘you-won’t-believe-they’re-raw’ desserts.”

You know what’s fun? Waiting a few years to start watching a great TV show. Then you can cram several seasons worth of viewing into a week (or weekend). I do this all the time — it’s how I watched Charmed, Veronica Mars, the early years of The Simpsons and more. And I recently decided to do this with How I Met Your Mother.

The show had always been on my radar, and I had watched intermittently over the years, but when free time and availability in my Netflix queue opened up at the same time, I decided to take the plunge. And it was totally worth it.

The show is centered around single guy Ted’s (Josh Radnor) search for true love in New York. Along with his best friends Marshall and Lily (the always-hilarious Jason Segel and Buffy/Angel alum Alyson Hannigan, respectively), ex-flame Robin (Cobie Smulders) and his womanizing pal Barney (the legen-wait for it!-dary Neil Patrick Harris), architect Ted struggles through the trials and tribulations of looking for one’s soul mate in the big city. He’s ready to settle down and have kids; unfortunately, he can’t seem to meet a woman who wants the same thing. The show is actually told in reverse; set in 2030, Ted is telling his children the story of how he met their mother, so each episode is part of the story and essentially a flashback.

My husband described the show as Friends 2.0, which is actually pretty accurate: you have the married couple (Marshall and Lily to Friends’ Monica and Chandler), the on-again, off-again friends/couple (Ted and Robin to Friends’ Ross and Rachel) and the happily single man-slut (Barney to Friends’ Joey). HIMYM replaces Central Perk (the Friends coffee shop) with MacLaren’s Bar, and Ted even goes on to become a college professor, much like Ross.

Despite the similarities, HIMYM is definitely its own show, with excellent writing and perfectly crafted performances by all the actors (especially Segel and Harris). Neil Patrick Harris is single-handedly reintroducing the expressions “awesome!” and “legendary” into modern lexicon, and the show has certainly reinvigorated the high-five around my house.

Check out the Season 4 bloopers (but beware, some of the language is NSFW):

I discovered the Breathe Easy Deck while looking for meditations and affirmations to share in my yoga classes. This little deck is perfect – each of the 36 cards contains a theme, such as compassion, meditation, floating, sacred space or balance, as well as an affirmation related to that theme. For example, the “openness” card reads:

I am open.
When we open ourselves up to the truth, we show real faith-and then miracles can happen.
I breathe in the faith that things that I do not know and cannot see at this time will work out for the best. I am filled with receptiveness. I breathe out close-mindedness.

I use these during meditation time in my classes. Since meditation can be challenging, I like to read an affirmation for the class to reflect upon as a way to guide the meditation. These work very nicely!