Hasta La Gadget!

In late June, Mattel, Inc. and its signature toy, Barbie, made headlines with the creation of a LinkedIn page for the world-famous doll, complete with a lengthy resume spanning more than 150 careers. It was another interesting marketing move by the toy company, which has recently been promoting its popular 11.9 inch tall doll in novel ways (most notably via February’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover), to combat declining sales.

While Barbie purports to be a “Dream Incubator” on her LinkedIn profile, where she “act(s) as a consultant, helping girls around the world play out their imagination, try on different careers, and explore the world around them,” there are mixed opinions on whether or not the company’s “girl power” message is authentic.

Core strength: whether you’re an elite athlete or an occasional exerciser, it’s an essential part of maintaining your overall fitness (and good posture, too!).

Click here to see All of The 8 Best Yoga Poses for a Slimmer, Stronger Core

A strong core acts a stabilizer for the rest of your body. “You can look at it as the source of all power in the body,” says Travis Eliot, an expert yoga instructor and creator of The Ultimate Yogi. “One of the main reasons Bruce Lee was able to do his famous ‘1-inch punch’ that could break wood was because that particular movement originated from his core.”

OK, so maybe you’re not in pursuit of becoming the world’s next great martial arts star (if you are, more power to you!), but perhaps you’d like to focus on your abdominal muscles in order to develop your athletic performance or to achieve that all too elusive a “six-pack” ab aesthetic.

Yoga is often overlooked as an effective method for strengthening the core, but according to Beth Shaw, a fitness expert and the president and founder of YogaFit, a regular yoga practice is actually one of the best ways to really challenge your abdominal muscles.

“Yoga helps you naturally tone and condition your core by simply supporting the weight of our body parts,” says Shaw. “Some poses work out different parts of your core, but you are always working against your own weight and gravity. Going to lift weights will isolate working out one specific area. Yoga, however, is able to condition an entire region, like the core.”

Yoga can be a better alternative or supplement to traditional ab exercises because many poses target some of the deeper abdominal muscles that aren’t commonly engaged.

“I think a lot of people think about the abdominals just being the washboard part of the stomach area, which is called the rectus abdominis,” says Eliot. “But underneath that you have the transversus abdominis, and off to the side you have both the internal and external obliques.”

Shaw adds that yoga is also beneficial for the fact that it can help to increase your range of motion and reduce your risk for injury when participating in other activities.

Click here to see the Full Story: Yoga for Abs: The 8 Best Poses for a Slimmer, Stronger Core

Plus, whether it comes from increased strength, an improved body image or a mixture of both, Eliot notes that building a strong core will give you a confidence boost, too. “On a deeper level a strong core also equals strong self-esteem because this is where our confidence resides,” he says.
Of course, no mention of improving your overall fitness is complete without taking a look at the bigger picture. True health and wellness is all about balance. For all-around improved fitness (and especially if you’re after that six-pack), Eliot recommends the following.

“Start in the kitchen cutting out gluten, processed foods, refined sugars, bad fats, and alcohol; pack in cardio at least three times a week, which can come from a strong power yoga class or a favorite cardio activity; and set aside three 15-mininute sessions per week devoted to a core routine.”

To find out which yoga poses you should include in that 15-minute session, I asked both Eliot and Shaw to share their favorite core-strengthening poses.

“The core ultimately allows the torso to move in all directions. Without it we would move like a robot,” says Eliot”

Step up your ab game (and avoid becoming a robot) by adding these eight yoga poses to your regular exercise routine.

-Katie Rosenbrock, The Active Times

More Content from The Active Times:
10 Ways to Keep Your Yoga Practice Grounded
8 Epic Ab Exercises for a Firm, Flat Stomach
9 Yoga Poses That Make You Smarter
The Surprising Way Yoga Can Help You Lose Weight

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It happened three different times in the same familiar place.

I pulled into my grocery store lot and parked my car in between the painted yellow lines, shifting the steering wheel so that my tires pointed straight. I grabbed my purse and quickened my pace toward the sliding doors. As I entered, I observed an older man carrying a bouquet of flowers in his hands. The bright-colored daffodils formed a rainbow of pink, blue and green against the gray of his sweater. I smiled at him as we crossed paths and noticed how his thin-wired glasses rested on his nose. He walked fast, maybe eager to give these flowers to his date, wife, or perhaps even his mistress. I did not know his story, but the moment made enough of an impression for this image to stick. An ordinary excursion to the grocery store became one in which I attempted to fill in the blanks about someone else’s life.

I did not think about this previous encounter until it happened again almost four weeks later at the same grocery store. This time I didn’t bother to park my car straight. The air possessed a cold chill and my feet shivered because I slipped on a pair of flip-flops near my garage door. This time another man appeared as I walked the gray pavement. Like a lightning bolt in the middle of my ordinary, this 40-something man in a button down white shirt and faded blue jeans balanced a dozen red roses in his hands. His face had what looked like a pregnancy glow. His shiny hair, shoes that looked recently buffed, and a faint smell of aftershave made it clear he wanted to make an impression. Perhaps it was a first date with a woman he met online. Or maybe he wanted to use these roses as a form of apology because he stayed out too late with the guys the night before. Or that bulge in his back pocket disguised an engagement ring for his surprise proposal at the restaurant to the woman of his dreams that he found after a very messy divorce. His faced appeared eager. The roses seem to whisper second chances.

To be honest, I dismissed my second intersection with this man and the flowers as a coincidence. I felt silly even thinking about the “meaning” behind these two separate, but very similar occurrences. But when the same thing appeared a third time, I could not easily push my encounters to the back of my mind.

In the third incident, a man came out of the entrance door even though he was on his way out. It was mid-afternoon on a day when the desert’s sun did not want to hide. I remember catching a glance at the sky and admiring the deep clarity of the light blue. On this particular day, my cadence was not hurried because I had some time before tackling my next task. I saw him in the corner of my eye. The tapping sound of a cane caught my attention first. Looking sideways, I saw an older man with a trimmed beard. His hands held white flowers. Again, on another day, a different man with a set of flowers that appeared to make yet another statement. I looked at this man with intention. His pants did not seem to fit, his feet were labored, and he maneuvered his cane like a companion. His eyes looked tired, like he had shed his final tears the night before. I wondered if these flowers were for his wife who suffered from Alzheimer’s and could no longer recognize him. Or whether he just lost a dear childhood friend. In that moment, it looked like these white lilies were his saviors.

I am not certain why these very different men appeared in my life. It could be coincidence. Or it could be one of those reminders.

Everyone has a story. I think we all forget that sometimes. As we run our errands, fill up our gas tanks, wait in traffic, we dismiss nameless faces who carry stories just like ours. There are common threads among all of us.

And perhaps these flowers helped me realize that we are all trying to connect the dots.

It’s easy to keep track of emails that you’ve sent if you only send a few at a time that are in need of replies. This becomes exponentially harder when the volume of emails goes up. Cue Unreplied, a service that works with Gmail to keep track of each message that you’ve sent, so you can quickly check who has replied and who hasn’t yet.

Unreplied works by tacking on a label to your outgoing messages that you need a reply to. It syncs every night so you can see who hasn’t responded yet by the next day. At that point, you can then send a follow-up email or give the recipient a call to let them know there’s something urgent waiting for them in their inbox.

The service offers a free 7-day trial, then costs $3.99(USD) per month. You can find more information about the service here.

[via Laughing Squid]

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