Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter
Yoga is one of the most important things you can do for the balance of your body mind and soul. It’s also one of the most minimalist forms of stretching and exercise tools that exists.
This is probably why I’ve been so drawn to this particular method of strengthening myself, because it requires nothing but what you already have.
There are only two requirements for doing yoga.
1, a mat or blanket.
2, your body.
Modern corporations are trying heard to teach us that we need much more than these two things to do yoga. At a typical yoga studio you will find ropes, blocks, heated rooms, clean white towels, and other assorted gizmo-gadgets.
Have you ever picked up a yoga magazine? Stocked full of ads and stories trying to sell you more equipment.
You don’t need anything but yourself to do yoga. It doesn’t matter how skinny or fat you are, how tall, or how old you are. Anyone can do yoga, and you only need a mat.
You certainly don’t need Lululemon butt-grabber pants (though they do look quite nice) to be able to do downward facing dog properly.
All of these additional things serve to distance you from the origins of yoga, which is an incredibly simple practice.
You don’t need to buy anything else to do yoga.
If you feel like it, make a promise now to never buy anything beyond a mat for your yoga. I certainly haven’t. Some people spend thousands of dollars on yoga junk they don’t need and never manage to do any yoga. I don’t want you to be that person.
This is a guide to doing yoga by yourself without spending a dime. You won’t be asked to buy anything. There is no catch at the end asking you to give me money. My intent is only to demystify the basics of yoga enough that anyone can do it on their own for free.
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Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter
I believe were all pursuing this minimalist life because somewhere, deep down below the surface, we know being minimalist is the only way we’re going to save the planet.
I spend a lot of time writing articles about how to live a simple lifestyle, I give step by step instructions about which habits to adopt. Then I cross my fingers and I hope that a couple of the 10,000 people that visited this site in the last month will adopt these habits and make their lives better.
But my dream is much bigger than convincing a few people to unclutter their closets.
Embracing a minimalist lifestyle is the best way to save everything.
There’s a double meaning to every post that I write. By spreading the word that living a life without stuff is the best way for us all to achieve a better life together, we also make it possible for the world not to end.
The manufacturing of low quality goods destined for the trash heap, burning of billions of tons of fossil fuel, deforestation, the flawed food we eat.
We know these things are wrong, but a minimalist decides to actually opt out. They make the conscious decision to stop perpetuating the cycle of consumerism that has plagued our culture for the last 100 years.
All of these problems are ultimately connected to us.
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Interview by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter
Every week on Far Beyond The Stars I interview an important person on the subject of being minimalist. Last week I spoke to Colin Wright about what you take with you when you work from anywhere. Next week I’ll be speaking with Chris Baskind of More Minimal.
This week I spoke with the minimalist legend Leo Babauta. For those who don’t know him, Leo writes the top-100 blog Zen Habits and has another smaller blog called Mnmlist. He’s the author of a slew of books on living a simple minimalist existence, including his e-book A Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life, and his print book The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life.
We spoke about doing less of the unimportant, the illusion of control over life, and a few ways you can be more minimalist today.
I’ve decided to release this interview under an uncopyright license. This interview is copyright free, which means that you can distribute, republish, source from, even profit from this article without any permission from me. If you enjoyed this interview, please share it with as many people as you can. There’s no need to link back, but I’d love it if you could.
On to the interview!
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Everett Bogue: When you first started on your journey towards becoming minimalist what was the most profound change that you made in your life?
Leo Babauta: It was the realization that all the crap in my life that I’d been buying and building up and treasuring … just wasn’t worth it. It’s the stuff that’s advertised and hyped, that we think makes us happy, but that really doesn’t. I’ve learned that I don’t need any of that — all I need are a few essentials, and the time to do things that I love doing, to spend with the people I love most.
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Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter
Mind-clutter is one of the biggest obstacles that I encounter daily on the path to my goals. I imagine you know what I’m talking about, the constant chatterbox that is our human brain.
Brains are useful things, they help you do a lot of incredibly cool stuff. But sometimes they just won’t shut up. There’s a lot going on most of the time, so who can really blame our minds for wanting to over-analyze everything? Except a lot of brain-clutter can be a problem when you’re trying to accomplish anything.
A cluttered mind can keep you from achieving your potential in most situations.
Sometimes brains get stuck on problems. They get into a pattern where they’re constantly trying to imagine what’s going to happen to you next, or worse, they second guess all of your actions.
A healthy mind will help you accomplish goals when you need it to, an unhealthy mind will sabotage you before you even start working.
If you haven’t noticed, I’m a minimalist, and in my opinion excessive thinking is just as problematic as having an excessive amount of things. This is one of the many reasons why I find it important to employ a number of de-cluttering activities with my mind. I try to engage in at least one of these activities a day.
If my mind clutter is too much at any one moment, I will acknowledge that my mind is overwhelmed. When this happens, I immediately turn off whatever I’m doing and begin one of these activities below.
Sometimes I will dedicate an entire day to clearing my mind. I will mark a day off my calendar and simply spend it meditating and rejuvenating my mind. I’ve done this many times, and it can increase my mind’s effectiveness two-fold when I return to normal activities.
A mind is most effective at zero.
The purpose of all of these exercises is to reset your mind to zero. This is a place where there is no conversation.
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Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
Productivity is such a popular concept. Everyone is trying to streamline their lives so they can get more and more done during their 40-60 hour workweek.
Funny, that, because being productive is the exact opposite of what everyone needs to be doing to get ahead in the modern workplace.
Productivity is a trap.
You’ve bought into this idea of a safe productive workplace, where everyone does their part and the company gets ahead, and so you get a raise, right?
Doing 60 hours a week of mundane productive work is useful, if you’re a cubicle-bound widget pusher. Large industrialized corporations reward workers for how many ticks they tock in the collective board every day.
I know, I’ve been to cubicle-nation. It ain’t pretty.
If you work in a cubicle, take a moment and think about the last person who got a promotion at your company. Was it a widget pushing productivity master? Probably not. I bet it was someone who either:
- Had a big idea.
- Brought in a lot of money because of a big idea.
I bet you want to know what the secret to having big ideas is… it’s simple really.
Let me propose a minimalist way of working: be less productive.
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