Where to Find Free Yoga on the Internet

If you are like me and love yoga, but haven't got the funds to spare you are probably very well versed with the search phrase "free yoga videos online" on google and you know it can be rather difficult to find.  There seems to be a multitude of places you can find free yoga poses, but for me personally I like to do the classes with someone guiding me.  And I must say that it is easier to google the free yoga poses than to find the videos that's for sure!

So I feel like I am consistently always searching for free places to practice yoga online.  There are several sites that give you "free trials".  Those sites are great, but I have only found one that doesn't ask for your credit card information (which make it much less obligation free in the end):

http://www.myyogaonline.com/

I love this site, but after two weeks you have to pay, and at this point in my life that is not an option.  So what is next when you have run your subscription and just want to do yoga for FREE everyday and don't want to keep doing the same class over and over?

Well there are sites like www.hulu.com, which has several GREAT yoga videos with a group called yoga zone and gaiam.  The only catch is there are commercials which can really throw off your practice in a bad way.  I know many times I will be in the middle of a pose and they cut to commercial suddenly jarring me out of the mood my practice is putting me in.  It is very annoying, so personally I have stopped doing yoga with hulu searching instead for something that is truly free and doesn't subject me to commercials when I am working on finding my zen.

After all of my research to find completely free (including obligation and commercial free) online yoga classes here are a few places I have found some lovely videos:

http://www.yogaclass.com/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/yoga-other-useful-stuff-tara/id284197564
http://yoga.prevention.com/
http://www.yogajournal.com/
http://www.doyogawithme.com/

My favorite thing about all of these sites is that there is a multitude of videos on all of them.  You can pick from the length, difficulty, what part of the body you would like to work on, and with a some of these sites you can even pick the teacher of your choice.  I feel that I should also mention that there are many free yoga videos on www.youtube.com as well, but I have always felt like you have to cycle through a lot of videos in order to find a few good ones.

By far I have to say that my favorite of all the free sites I have found is www.yogajournal.com.  I keep my home page set on this site because on top of all the great free videos they offer there is also a multitude of wonderful articles about health, beauty, the newest benefits discovered through yoga, etc.  It is a great place to be used as a reminder on a daily basis that I need to be doing yoga to find my center, as well as the other obvious benefits.

I also feel that I should mention that if you have a netflix account there is a limited amount of great yoga videos on there, but of course only if you are willing to pay the $8.00 a month!  They do however give you a free one month trial, so if that is your cup of tea you can do your yoga as well as watch a lot of great and MANY more bad movies when you are done!




If you have any other sites that are for free online yoga classes and would like to share please comment here or contact me and I would love to include them in this blog entry.

Beautiful and Eerie Biltmore Estate

I spent a couple of days last week busy in Asheville, NC getting stuff for school done.  (I'll spare you the boring details).  In between testing and talking to councellors and whatnot I found time to visit America's largest home - The Biltmore Estate.


If you do not know what it is; the place is completely gorgeous!  A bit pricy to see, but if you buy a two day pass you will certainly get your moneys worth with gardens that spread across acres, a mystical enchanted forest, a winery (with FREE wine tastings), and of course the gigantic estate.

The Biltmore is a very beautiful mansion that you can take tours of, however you cannot see even half of the house when you are going through it.  There are several wings that are completely roped off, as well as floors that guests are forbidden to visit.  I would have loved to see the place with the ropes completely gone and no one there seeing as the crowds were large even early in the morning.


The estate was built by George Washington Vanderbilt in the late 1800's.  There is a long and interesting history about the family, though I do think a lot of the history the Biltmore gives you is sugar coated.  They do talk about a few tragedies, such as G. W. Vanderbilts death, a flood that happened in 1914 which killed a lot of people in Biltmore Village (it is a few miles away from the mansion), and of course the great depression.  I felt though that a lot of the family drama was left out of the history of the sprawling mansion and surrounding lands.  One gets the feeling when reading about the Vanderbilts lives that it is all fluffed up stories of their past sparing the details of who they really were.  The original family still owns the place however which would explain why the family secrets are still in tact.

The mansion is completely beautiful, but there are sections of the estate that are downright eerie ( which further suggests that there is more to the story than what is shown at face value).  The upper floors of the estate are lovely; breezy and beautiful with lavish riches spread throughout the rooms that could give even the most poverty stricken person a feeling of decadence.  You can almost see the family and their guests through a veil of the past as visitors walk around looking at everything.  I didn't think that the energy on those floors felt bad, rather it was airy and nice, but there was an air of sadness that even the Vanderbilt family's fairytale story of the estate could not get rid of.  The energy after all does not lie.


The basement is where the energy goes from airy and nice with a twinge of sadness to weird and foreboding.  The air feels of tragedy and the most immense sadness, yet there are no stories as to anything tragic ever happening there.  However there is a story about a wild three week party they had there back in the 1920's.  It is unknown what happened at this party, but they did paint the most creepy murals in a room called "The Halloween Room".  The guests were handed brushes and buckets of paint and told to paint whatever they liked.

Truly the above picture does not do the room justice, nor does it really show the other parts of the mural which are very strange.  There are many weird animals, witches, angels, demons, etc painted on the walls.  It is hard to explain what the room felt like.  The word tense comes to mind however, and it is a great precurser to the weird energy one encounters in the rooms following the "Halloween Room". 

The energy just gets stranger as you walk out of the Halloween room through the changing room(s) hallway.  This was the only time I had a chance to be alone in the house and while I was there I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.  The feeling increased when I walked into the pool room.

I don't know what it was about that room.  Perhaps it was the empty pool, likely unused for 50 or 60 years, but that is just a guess.  I couldn't help but wonder if something terrible happened in that room, but there aren't any stories about anything bad ever happening there.  I know that I am not the only one who has felt this way.  When I got home I looked on the internet and low and behold many other people had the same feelings as I did.


So what did happen in the Biltmore house to give it such an odd feeling?  Why is it not mentioned that the daughter of the builders of the estate had a tragic divorce from a man she didn't love and left the estate never to return leaving her ex husband to run the place?


So many strange things, and such and interesting place with a lot of hidden secrets which tempt the imagination but likely will never be revealed.

Red Tail Hawk

Had a lot of fun today painting my spirit animal the red tail hawk with a beautiful nebula inside of it.

A nebula is the death and rebirth of a star silmutaneously destroying the old and creating the new.  The star energy hidden deep within our DNA I think of the energy of our souls being close to that of a nebula something that should shin within projecting deeply without.

I am selling prints of this piece:

http://society6.com/UniquelyYew/Red-Tail-Hawk-Nebula_Print

Many Exciting Things!

Uniquely Yew has been going through some changes lately, and these changes are welcome!  I know most recently I posted about my newest paintings, and here I would like to post some more!


Before I do this however I would like to announce two things:


#1 I am proud to announce that I am now selling prints of my art work!:


http://society6.com/UniquelyYew

The prints come in several different sizes for several different prices.

#2 My shop is running a 10% off Jewelry sale from today until July 31st!  Coupon code is JEWELRY10PERCENTOFF.  Just visit:


www.uniquelyyew.etsy.com


I am extremely excited about what I have been doing lately artistically.  I have been working a lot in theme repetition.  Recently I watched the film Exit Through the Gift Shop.  It was primarily about a guy who filmed a lot of street art and his journey as a pop artist, but through out the film there were many other street artists talking about what they like to do.  Many of the artists worked in repetition, something I've never really dabbled with until most recently, so I found myself inspired me to do art in repetition theme-wise.  I decided to start working with silhouettes, and make them something more than just a shape, but a piece of art detailed, yet simple, and beautiful.  Here are a few examples of what's new:

 

Otherwise life is busy for this artist, and it is getting even busier!  I have enjoyed the beginning of this journey, but there is a long road ahead of me!  I hope that as I go the artwork will get better and even more imaginative!

Watercolor Fun!!

For the past few weeks I've taken a step back and looked into what I am best at, and that is painting and drawing.  Recently I started to experiment with watercolors, and I have not been more excited in ages!  I have had several things as subject matter that interest me, but admittedly the most fun I've had is with my experimental abstract american painting!

I have many plans for this style painting, so this is the first in a series of several countries and states that I will be painting.  I will keep my readers posted on this matter!


Some of my more realistic pieces have turned into what look like illustration style art.

And I couldn't help doing an octopus, one of the most whimsical and interesting animals that there are:

I have been having a great deal of fun with all of these paintings and each week I come out with a few more.  I am selling the original pieces of art on Etsy for prices ranging between $15.00 - $25.00.


I am also in the midst of a couple of oil as well as acrylic paintings on canvas, but they are much slower to come out with, so I will post them when they are finally done sometime in the future.



www.uniquelyyew.etsy.com

DIY Chalkboard Table

As I said in the last post I made I planned to redo my garage into a make shift jewelry/misc. art studio.  And in the process I came up with what I thought was the brilliant idea to paint my work table with chalkboard surface paint so that I could write notes or draw designs as I go.  So far it has worked wonderfully!  So without further adieu here is how I did it:


Need:
-Sand Paper
-Primer
-Chalkboard Paint
-Paint Brush

First I started by removing the laminate that was on the table.  I did this by poking a hole in it and getting it very wet and peeling it away from the table top.  You do not have to do this however.  If you have a laminate table lightly run sand paper over the top to where it's rough enough that the paint sticks to it, and then apply a coat or two of primer.  **(Note if you remove the laminate you may not have to primer.  My table was press board and I did not have to primer it, so it is completely up to you.)**


If your table is wood then sand the top down to where most of the finish is removed then primer the top.  Now you are ready to paint!


I went to my local hardware store and bought a can of chalkboard paint for $15.00.  It comes in an array of colors from black, to green, to blue, but I went with simple basic black.  (They also sell chalkboard paint in a spray can).

I painted four coats on mine, but for something like a dinner table you probably only need 2 coats.  Play it by ear and see what works for you.

As you can see the table turned out gorgeous, and is a PERFECT surface to work on and write notes to myself, or to just draw silly pictures on.

One note to make is that you need to wait 24 hours before you draw on the table.  It does dry fast so you can keep putting on coats, but if you draw on it before this time is done whatever you draw will likely leave marks on the table resulting in you having to add another coat of paint!


So I hope you enjoy!  It was a very fun project for me and I am considering chalk boarding some other stuff...shall we call me a chalkboard addict?

Just Go With It!

I don't know about everyone else, but for me as an artist I have always sort of been all over the place focusing on several different things at once.  Meaning, I will get into one thing, and give it my best, work my hardest to master it, and when I'm either done, (or so close to being done I can taste it) I find something else I'm interested in and dive headfirst into it!  So as I work to build a career as an artist I have been thinking of ways to make this work for me instead of against me as it has for so many years (with too many unfinished projects to count).


As I work to build this career as an artist I have been focusing on jewelry (which is something I have been doing for years, but only recently decided to have a go at it professionally).  So I thought to myself how can I make it to where it keeps being new and interesting for me?  How can I make it to where it is consistently on the right path so that I can allow my business to grow and change as I grow and change?


And this phrase hit me like a bag of bricks:  Just go with it.  It seemed so simple, in fact a little too simple, but aren't way too many of life's issues solved by a very simple solution?


In all of my life as an artist, as someone who draws, paints, and makes ceramics on the side of my jewelry making I never thought to utilize this hunger of always something new and different to work with.  And I sure as hell didn't think of it for my jewelry career!  But the term just go with it made so much sense.


So why does this phrase mean so much to me?  Well it means that instead of getting too focused on any one thing to level my focus, and to allow the new ideas to flow into me and out of me, finding balance in my own creativity not being too into or not enough all at the same time.  To try new things within moderation, but also to keep working towards my initial goals and FINISH my projects!  It keeps blockages from forming in my subconscious which make it difficult for me to create any one thing.  I decided that it would be easier to let my inspiration flow within me and out of me like water, or waves lapping on and off the shore.  After all jewelry has so many different artistic elements you are not bound just to some pretty beads and wires, or chains.  It is a world full of endless opportunities!  I can take all of my interests, drawing, painting, sculpture, and ceramics and put it together in a meaningful and delicate manor.


So the next project to make this happen in a more efficient way is to set up a better workshop for myself.  At the moment I create mostly while I'm sitting in the office at my job (yes I am allowed to make my jewelry on the job), but when I am at home I'm mostly on the dining table, or in my bedroom.  I think setting up an actual studio sooner than later in my garage is more like it.  This project is something that has been on the back burner for the past couple of months, my excuse being that it was too cold to organize!  But now with spring just around the corner and my new just go with it attitude it seems to be more of a necessity than ever!  After all without a TRUE place for me to work the ideas flow on creative energy are not level which create blockages.  So while I like to work on making items while I sit in my bed or at the dining room table a place that is truly mine to create in would help with the whole just go with it attitude.


Wish me luck!!  And don't forget to just go with it!




So with all of that said as I work on my journey to a career as an artist I should announce that my Etsy shop is open!


Uniquely Yew Shop


Come by and check it out, and don't forget to like my shop on Facebook!

Sneak Peak!

Here is a sneak preview of some of my new jewelry collection I have been working very hard on for the past several weeks!


First I would like to preview these earrings that were inspired by the art of Gustav Klimt.  They are reminiscent of the colors he used but also the shapes, and the swirls he was so fond of using.  These earrings are made with hammered copper and lapis lazuli.

The next pair of earrings were also inspired by Kilmts work.  They are made with hammered copper and azurite drop beads.

Aside from being inspired by Klimts work I was inspired by some of the items I had in my bead kit itself.  The next pair of earrings are made of bone and red coral with sterling silver findings.

The next earrings I would like to display are jasper coins with copper findings.  The jasper is very beautiful with the green and brown inclusions.  They remind me of looking at the earth above, and one of the coins even has what I like to call a little hurricane swirl in it!

Next I would like to show a pair of elegant azurite broulette earrings which were a complete joy to make and I love because of their simplicity!

Lastly I would like to preview a necklace I made.  It is jade, with a silver plated hammered bar and a sterling silver chain.  It is reminiscent of an art deco or even Egyptian style blended with a modern earthy style.

I have really enjoyed creating all of these items so far, and I have many more things in the works!  There have been so many nights I have laid in bed thinking of my designs only to sit down and execute them the following day.  With a great deal of patience and trial and error I have found a my nitch in my designs and will keep creating more and more!


Soon I will be opening a shop on www.Etsy.com where I will be posting these items for sale plus many more of my unique creations.  My hopes are to have the shop open by March 1st, 2012.  I hope you all come and check out my work on Etsy, and I am sure to be posting more here as well!

My shop is officially open!  So if there was anything you see on here that you liked please go to:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/uniquelyyew 


And shop til you drop!

Lavender: One of My Favorite Healing Herbs

photo by:  http://joshuadavisphotography.com/

For a while now I have been studying the many healing properties of herbs.  And there are so many surprises out there that as a society we simply are no longer taught unless we go on a search for ourselves.


When I first started to seriously study herbs one of the first that I looked into was lavender.  Its scent in itself was enough to intoxicate my mind, and leave me wanting more.  So of course it was a natural step to start reading about it, and when I did I was amazed at how long the list of healing properties was!


A brief lesson:  lavender (lavandula) is a part of the mint family of herbs.  It's fresh scent comes from the leaves, but also the beautiful purple blossoms.  The flowers are known to produce a  nectar that makes a delectable honey, but is only produced along the Mediterranean Sea.  A tip for growing:  Lavender likes to be planted in full sun in soil that has great drainage.  I suggest if using a pot to line the bottom with sand or rocks before planting it for best results.


And now for the fun part!  There are so very many uses for lavender it's hard to even know where to begin honestly.  Lavender honey, lavender chocolates, lavender roasted pork, deliciously fragrant teas, etc.  If you are interested in looking more into the culinary aspects of this wonderful herb here is a great site to reference:  The Lavender Cookbook.


Lavender is known as a common cure-all in so many different ways.  Among its long list of healing properties it is known to cure headaches (when I have a headache before taking any pills I like to take one drop of the essential oil and rub it on my temples and my forehead which tends to do the job of curing my headache).  It is also known to prevent migraines (drink one to two cups of lavender tea a day for this).  It can be made into an ointment and used as a powerful antiseptic, soothes bug bites and burns, and if used as a toner it can help to prevent pimples and keep skin smooth, bright and beautiful.  Queen Elizabeth I who was known for her beautiful flawless skin used a lavender splash a few times a day on her face.


To make Queen Elizabeths' lavender splash simply soak fresh lavender leaves in spring water over night and use on the face a few times a day.  It will leave your skin bright and clear and not to mention a lovely scent to smell through out the day.


Something else I have read about recently, but not tried yet, is of making it into a hair spritz using the essential oils for those of us with curly locks.  If you are interested in this here is the blog link which includes the recipe for the spritz:  Live Beautifully's Love of Lavender.


On a more metaphysical note the herb also helps to promote good dreams and deep relaxation, (some even say it helps to open the third eye and give one psychic dreams).  Try placing a sache of dried lavender in your pillow, or anointing your pillow with a little bit of the essential oil before bed (to do so put one drop of the oil on your wrist and then rub it onto your pillow and enjoy your beautiful or even psychic dreams)!  It can also be infused into a very relaxing before bed time tea.


Bed time tea blend:
-1 teaspoon of dried lavender
-1 teaspoon of dried jasmine
Mix together and steep for fifteen to twenty minutes and enjoy for a very relaxing nights sleep.


So with all of these wonderful things I would like to add one other extremely important aspect of this herb.  Simply smelling it each day can promote longevity in life.  I think it is the relaxing properties of the herb that helps to promote a longer life.  Start by wearing a dot of the essential oil on your wrists and neck, and breathe in its relaxing scent.  Find yourself calm throughout your day and ready to face your daily challenges with an even keeled attitude.  When you smell it throughout the day remind yourself to push the stress out, and feel calm coming into your mind and body.  After all it is much easier to face things with your calm and collected self rather than your stressed out self; not to mention the benefit of lower blood pressure from a more serene disposition.


So use lavender as much as possible to promote a long healthy stress free/stink free life!  Love it, and smell it's precious scent everyday.


**Note:  Please be sure that you are not allergic to lavender before using it in anything.  It can be known as a powerful allergine!  Please check with your doctor first before using it medicinally.