Keep karma, love and warmth. Also included: Backbends.

As many of you might know Yoga is not just Asana or doing the physical poses. Yoga is chanting, singing, meditation and all kinds of other things! I myself am much more of an Asana Yogi BUT I am greatly a Karma practicing Yogi because the world will only take care of you as much as you take care of it. My favorite Christmas ritual (I celebrate Christmas as a commercial and American holiday and not a religious holiday) is volunteering for the homeless at Goddard Riverside Community Center with two of my besties. We started this about 4 years ago. We sometimes do Thanksgiving and/or Christmas Day. Its an awesome way to spend my Christmas morning because I get to see my friends before heading off to family gatherings. We basically help out by preparing food and/or preparing the space where people will be served and then we go out and do meal deliveries to people who have difficulties leaving their homes. I'm not here to toot my own horn or anything but just putting it out there that in the hustle and bustle of New York living its kind of awesome to do something so physically and spiritually rewarding while hanging with your friends. Its not completely self-less for me of course, I'm mostly hanging out and having fun with my friends, but at the same time why not help out the universe? There are other places that take volunteers such as the Food Bank, The Bowery Mission and God's Love We Deliver. (I've only ever personally volunteered at Goddard and Food Bank.)

Another Christmas time ritual I try to keep is getting together with my friends and cooking brunch for ourselves. Brunch is such an easy meal to put together and taking time out of life to be with friends is so important to me nowadays because its so good for my heart. This is what our Post-Christmas brunch looked like.

And HELLO snow in nyc?! How U DOIN'? Because of the snow I was one of two people who showed up to Yoga this morning. I was all climbing mounds of snow to get to the gym too because no one was shoveling at 6am...Well due to low attendance I had to do crazy backbends in class! My arms went numb doing this (see picture for example below)...because my instructor kept telling me to walk my legs towards my hands. WHOA NELLY! Needless to say, I had an awesome class today. Thanks to my instructor who showed up to teach class in this madness!

What Union Sq looked like today at 6:15am