This month’s featured book is by the amazing yoga teacher Rachel Brathen. Originally from Sweden, she’s been yoga-ing around the globe for many years sharing her practice, wisdom, and colorful spirit with others. Her book Yoga Girl came out fairly recently and has been extremely well received. Once you open the book it’s easy to see why. Her gorgeous, fun, vibrant yogi beach girl shots that made her such an Instagram star pepper the book with page after page of uplifting imagery. Coupled with personal stories and funny anecdotes of how, when, and where she learned to incorporate the teachings and practices of yoga into her life the book is both light-hearted and deeply motivating.
My favorite thing about Rachel and a lot of other modern yogi women out there is the embrace of balance. Her mantra, which she speaks to in the book, is that balance means you can have your red wine and your green juice, your chocolate and your kale and she takes that to a much broader level that steps beyond food. Being healthy does not mean stripping away the joy of living and I’ve met a few people (possibly orthorexic) that think the right way to do things is to restrict and control everything.
That’s not the ideal for me or what has worked in the past. It’s refreshing to hear someone celebrated for their wisdom on health and happiness advocate for a little chocolate festival from time to time – or whatever. Creating daily habits that help you be your strongest ideal self is great, and the point of what she’s teaching, but that doesn’t have to mean never again on some of the seemingly unhealthy items if the put a big fat smile on your face – that’s its own element of health too.
Check out Rachel’s book Yoga Girl to see what else she has to say about every topic under the sun.
Here are a few quick poses with Rachel in case you’ve never seen her before. Doesn’t she have such a beautiful spirit!
Let us know what you thought of Rachel and her book Yoga Girl. Did you enjoy it? What inspired you most? We’d love to know. š
The OM Project 
I loved Yoga Girl! This was the first book my yoga instructor had me read. What inspired me most was that Rachel was already “fit” but still struggled with connecting mind, body, and spirit. As someone who is morbidly obese, this book helped me understand that what I see (i.e. skinny fit person) is not always what’s on the inside. The inner practice of yoga is just as important as the outer practice. That’s what I learned from Rachel in Yoga Girl. ā¤
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What a great take-away! Skinny is not the same as healthy, and without a doubt cultivating a healthy spirit is super important and something you have to remember to work on daily. Thanks for the lovely insight! ā¤
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I hear you. I enjoy a glass of dry white wine too from time to time. š
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Looks interesting!!
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I am just at the beginning of my journey as a yogi. So happy I stumbled upon your inspirational blog. š
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ā¤
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I havent read this book but now you’ve definitely made me want to! So excited – I’ll stay tuned
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