The Season of Giving: Gift Ideas for Your Favorite Yogis

Enlightening Books:

 Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson, Ph.D.

Buddha’s Brain joins the forces of modern science with ancient teachings to show readers how to have greater emotional balance in turbulent times, as well as healthier relationships, more effective actions, and a deeper religious or spiritual practice.

You should also check out this iPhone app based on the bestselling book; it helps show you how to rewire and recondition your brain over time.

Art of Attention by Elena Brower    

This is an elegant yoga book designed for practice, contemplation, and creativity for students and teachers of yoga. This book invites you to craft your own profound practices and make your yoga your own. Explore sequencing, theming, and your interior experience; then create your own well-wrought practices.

Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes by Mark Stephens

Addressing one of the most popular topics in the yoga profession, this book offers sixty-seven model sequences of asanas that cover the broad range of yoga student experience, including multiple sequences for beginner, intermediate, and advanced students; yoga for kids, teens, women across the life cycle, and seniors; classes to relieve depression and anxiety; and sequences for each of the major chakras and Ayurvedic constitutions.

Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea by Jaimal Yogis

Fed up with suburban teenage life, Jaimal Yogis ran off to Hawaii with little more than a copy of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha and enough cash for a surfboard. His journey is a coming-of-age saga that takes him from communes to monasteries and the icy New York shore. Equal parts spiritual memoir and surfer’s tale, this is a chronicle of finding meditative focus in the barrel of a wave and eternal truth in the great salty blue.

DVDs for Inspiration, Education, & Personal Development:

Titans of Yoga

Titans of Yoga brings together 25 of the most prominent figures in the worlds of yoga, meditation, and mindfulness, from Dr. Dean Ornish to Lilias Folan to Dharma Mittra to Shiva Rea. As they share their own life experiences—from the tragic to the ecstatic—they embark on a journey of self-discovery that touches and inspires. Their tales of addiction and depression, an HIV positive diagnosis, and a penchant for sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll will move you as they share how they overcame these challenges and transformed them into their greatest life victories.

The Sacred Science

We’ll let David Wolfe do the talking on this one: “The Sacred Science presents a profound overview of the Native American healing systems of the Amazon Basin… In this film, you will discover ancient yet immediately relevant healing strategies. An entertaining, educational, and empowering film!” – David Wolfe

Yoga Link: Harmonizing the Hips, Shoulders and Core 3-DVD Set (2012) with Yoga U Presenter Jill Miller

Harmonizing the Hips, Shoulders And Core 3-DVD Set is a terrific collection of three of Jill Miller’s best DVDs: Yoga Link Hip Helpers, Yoga Link Shoulder Shape-Up, and Yoga Link: Core Integration.

Maya Fiennes: Yoga for Real Energy (2012)

Maya Fiennes combines her talents as a successful classical pianist and performer with her upbeat personality to create a unique style of Kundalini yoga. In this hour-long practice, Maya has designed an energetic Kundalini dance that will invigorate your mind, clear your system of toxins and leave you feeling focused, vibrant, and alive. Strengthen your ability to project energy into every facet of life.

Yoga Journal: Your Daily Yoga Two-Disc Set (2012) with Elena Brower, Richard Rosen, and MC Yogi

Nine fun flow practices to strengthen and tone your body, relax and nourish your mind, and create total well-being. Choose a sequence each day depending on your mood, energy level, or physical focus. More than three hours of clear and precise yoga instruction.

A Few Other Holiday Gift Ideas:

Adopt A Wolf

Gray wolves inhabit mostly wild and inaccessible areas in a very limited portion of their former range within North America. Wolves suffer not only from habitat loss, but they also endure revenge killings for attacks on wild stock.

Jack Canfield’s Vision Board System: Empower Yourself… Envision Your Future

Jack’s program teaches you about the Law of Attraction and explains, step-by-step how to apply the principles for results. According to the Jack Canfield website, “The KEY to Living the Law of Attraction, the Gratitude Journal, and Jack’s unique Vision Board and accessories are all tools that will help you manifest your dreams.”