Kate Hanley

Kate Hanley is a freelance writer who specializes in exploring the mind-body connection and finding simple practices we can do to relieve stress and feel better — even when life is moving a million miles an hour. She's the author of The Anywhere, Anytime Chill Guide , a contributing editor to Body + Soul magazine, and founder of MsMindbody.com. Kate did her yoga teacher training at OM yoga center in New York City, and she's also a student of Jin Shin Do acupressure. "After practicing yoga in the midst of insane workloads, tragic break-ups, cross-country moves, and perhaps my biggest challenge yet — motherhood," she says, "I know the deep breath I take while waiting in an eternal line at the post office is even more important than the ones I take in yoga class." Kate lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

Contrary to the deluge of advertisements, magazine articles and greeting cards floating around right now, not everyone looks forward to Valentine’s Day. Lots of people can’t stand it. Hate it, even. (I know; I used to be one of them until I got engaged on Feb. 14th five years ago.) It can seem like just another excuse to spend money and an opportunity to wish your love life were somehow different.

If you detest this time of year or just aren’t looking forward to this particular V-Day, try these simple ways to shortcut through the schmaltz and societal pressure and go straight to what this high-pressure holiday is really all about. Not flowers, chocolates or over-priced dinner reservations, but love. May one or some or all of these activities help you transform Valentine’s Day into an opportunity to recharge your love batteries.

I have had two babies via natural childbirth. I can’t candy-coat the experience: My first labor was agonizing — it lasted a full three days, all but five hours of it at home — and, at times, excruciating. (Thankfully, the excruciating part was only an hour or so, during transition.)

I freely admit that winter is my least favorite time of year. I don’t mind it so much in December and January, when I welcome the excuse to hibernate, cook hearty foods, and do more reading. But by mid-February, crankiness sets in. I’ve always chocked this shift from tolerance to twitchiness to the gradual build-up and onset of Seasonal Affective Disorder—a sort of mini-depression induced by a lack of sunshine experienced by an estimated 11 million Americans each winter. To compensate, I always planned a late-February/early-March visit to see my grandmother in Florida—which provided a mega-dose of sunshine and could carry me until April.

To celebrate the release of her new book Yoga for Pain Relief, Kelly McGonigal, PhD, is getting the message out about how yoga can help you improve your health and happiness. Below, she shares some of the most exciting findings on the benefits of yoga from the growing field of mind-body research. I wanted to share these developments with you so perhaps you can use them to persuade the people in your life who are on the fence about yoga and meditation to give it a try.

I love dark chocolate. Its perfect mix of bitter and sweet scratches an itch down deep in my soul.

And yet, the past two times I’ve consumed it (once in the form of squares from an actual bar and once in the form of hot cocoa made with the highest quality cocoa powder I could find), it has upset my stomach.

If you could attend a workshop with Gandhi, the Dalai Lama or Martin Luther King, Jr., you’d sign up just as fast as you could, wouldn’t you? I felt just as excited when I heard that Thich Nhat Hanh — a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, master meditation teacher and renowned advocate for peace — was offering a day of mindfulness near my home. The day-long program was put on by the Omega Institute at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, meaning all this Brooklynite mom had to do was arrange for childcare and get on the subway. Done.

I just had the pleasure of test-driving an array of brand-spanking-new yoga mats — research for a Gaiam article on how to choose the right yoga mat. This was particularly exciting to me because I’ve had my current yoga mat for over 12 years. And although I’ve practiced on it hundreds, if not thousands of times, it is showing no signs of wear and tear.

One of the great things about yoga is that you don’t need to invest in a bunch of equipment to reap its benefits. As long as you have a yoga mat and some stretchy clothes, and you’re good to go. And yet there is one yoga prop I wish I could magically disperse to every household in America. Heck—the whole world! And that’s the humble yoga bolster.

The first time my back went out, I was 27 years old. I was about to go on a media tour, appearing on morning news programs to plug a book I had written, and I was terrified. I had a mortal fear of public speaking, and the very thought of waking up at 5 a.m. to talk eloquently about anything to thousands of people was … well, I can’t tell you because I couldn’t even ponder it. Whenever my mind wandered toward my impending TV debut, I froze. It didn’t take long for my back muscles to get the message to freeze, too — and pretty soon I was moving as gingerly as I could, whimpering with every step. And the pain lasted several weeks longer than the media tour.

My first job as a freelancer was a project from hell. My boss was a complete control freak. Everything I wrote he re-wrote 6 times. He insisted I go to client meetings in the next state, and then never shut up long enough for me to speak. He dallied on making decisions so long I had to work several weekends in a row to meet my deadlines. The kicker is, I knew when I was applying for the job that this guy was trouble. I had an undeniable pit in my stomach after the interview. When we were negotiating payment, I couldn’t sleep. But I listened to the voice that said “How will you pay your bills if you turn this down?” instead of the voice that said, “Run!”