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The 5 Best Yoga Studios with Small Class Sizes

There are so many benefits of yoga that it may even trump conventional exercise in term of benefits. Not only does it have a host of physical benefits, like toning your muscles and improving flexibility, yoga has been shown to improve other aspects of health as well, such as mental and emotional health. To make sure that you get all these benefits, why not try a class that caters to small groups? Here are few yoga studios that can assure you that you get their utmost attention for your wellbeing.

1. Tirisula Yoga
For those who would like a comprehensive approach to learning yoga, try out the courses offered by Tirisula Yoga. Because of their comprehensive teaching style, this studio is perfect for beginners; Tirisula’s teachers can help you understand the theories behind the poses, and guide you through the basics and foundation. It even offers a 200 hours yoga teacher training course for those interested, as well as retreats to Bali and India for a more immerse yoga experience.

2. Shiva Yoga Studio
Shiva Yoga Studio is a studio with classes smaller than your usual yoga classes, to ensure a quality learning experience. They offer classes for students at different experience levels, including hot and regular classes. Here at Shiva, you could put your trust in their talented and knowledgeable yoga instructors to guide you to better health and wellness.

3. Meraki Yoga
This studio gets its name from the Greek word meraki, which means ‘to do something with utmost care and love’. True to form, Meraki Yoga keeps its classes small to ensure that its students get the best care and attention. Meraki offers a large number of classes of varying levels, from beginner to intermediate levels, including classes for pregnant mothers.

4. Ziva Yoga
While most yoga studios focus on calmness and meditation, Ziva teaches yoga with a slight twist. This studio focuses on strength training through yoga classes to improve your upper-body strength, as well as tone the rest of your body. Ziva provides mats and towels, as well as lockers and shower facilities at their studio so that you wouldn’t have to bring your own materials.

5. COMO Shambhala
COMO Shambala ensures a personalized one-on-one experience with their private classes. Even without private coaching, you could still get a personalized class that is tailored to you, with your knowledge, progress, and needs considered and weighed by knowledgeable instructors. This studio mainly focuses on Vinsaya, which is a type of yoga that focuses on the way the breath flows throughout the body. This studio also offers massages and retreats, which promotes yoga-adjacent concepts, such as bodily awareness and self-love.

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What You Need to Know About Brain Tumors

Not all tumors should cause panic, but the cause of the formation of a mass tissue is not yet understood. Like any tumor, brain tumors can either be cancerous or benign, but they can also pose some threats that you need to know about.

Primary Brain Tumor
The tumor forms because of cells that do not go through the normal cell aging process, because they form even if the body will not need them and they do not die. The tumor that begins in the brain, a primary brain tumor, can be cancerous or benign. However, even if the tumor is benign, they can affect other parts of the brain and cause other problems. Primary brain tumors are just one variety of brain tumors that begin in the nerve cells, brain cells, glands, and membranes called meninges. Brain tumors are considered secondary of the cancer began in other parts of the body that metastasized to the brain.

Cancerous Tumors
Brain tumors that are cancerous grow faster than benign tumors and can spread to other parts of the nervous system, they are also more difficult to remove and can possibly recur even they are removed, unlike the benign tumors. However, both types of tumors can cause damage in the brain tissues because of the pressure and inflammation in the skull.

Brain Tumors in Children
One type of primary brain tumor that commonly affects children is craniopharyngioma. However, it’s usually benign although it can cause other health problems. Another type of brain tumor, astrocytomas are mostly benign as well. Brainstem gliomas mostly affect children and can be asymptomatic until the tumor has grown large enough to be noticed. Ependymomas can either be malignant or benign, while medulloblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor among children. Detecting brain tumors in children isn’t easy because the symptoms usually show in the behavioral changes, but physical symptoms are rare.

Glioma Tumors and Other Brain Tumors
These type of brain tumors begin in the glial cells or those cells found in systems that provide nutrition and support to the central nervous system. Gliomas can be oligodendroglial, astrocytic, and glioblastomas. The last one is considered the most aggressive type of glioma. Tumors can also develop in the pituitaries, pineal gland, and myelin sheath.

Brain Tumors in Adults
There are various types of brain tumors depending on where the mass of abnormal tissues originated, and each will exhibit different symptoms and complications. Some of the symptoms also manifest in other parts of the body that are controlled by the affected area, however, there are tumors that are asymptomatic until they grow large enough to affect the individual’s health. There are common symptoms to look out for, such as; a headache that does not respond to the usual treatment; seizures; changes in the vision, hearing, speech, movements, and balance; and problems remembering and concentrating.

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3 Secret Tips for Tamper-Proofing Your House Locks

Even if a 24 hour locksmith service in Singapore is readily available to repair lock, unpick lock, or just replace it entirely, replacing locks takes up a lot of time and money if they keep breaking down.

The same can be said whether it’s your home or your car: while having a locksmith to unlock car door or unlock door for your home can help you out a lot, there are still things that you can do or ask for to improve your privacy and home security.

Aside from checking for the label, tamper-proofing is the next best thing you can do to make sure your locks are secure. Here are three ways you can do that with different types of locks in your own home:

1. Pay attention to your strike plate.
The strike plate is the flat piece of metal attached to the door frame, which is where the bolt slides into when the door closes.

To make sure you don’t unlock door easily or by accident, choose a strike plate during lock installation that’s made of heavy-duty metals. Ideally, they should be installed by a 24 hour locksmith service using nails at least three inches long. Contact immediate locksmith services if you need help to unlock padlock.

2. Use tamper-resistant or tamper-proof screws.
Part of the reason why you may need to repair door frequently is because the screws used for your door knob or strike plate are not set deeply enough or are too shallow for the door, which makes them loose enough.

Tamper-proof screws increase your chance of security as they are physically impossible to remove without the proper tools, and you can easily get these installed for your locks by a locksmith or by simply calling locksmith services.

3. Add an auxiliary lock for your door.
This should especially be done for sliding doors, which can attract burglars because they only have one latch that they can easily deflate. To maximize security for your home, you can go for lock installation and add an extra lock that connects the door to the door frame.

While this could be either on the left or right side for most doors, sliding doors can be given extra security with a lock attached either on the top or bottom of the door frame.

Why You Should Call a Locksmith Service Today
Most of us take security and privacy for granted. Even though Singapore is quite safe to live in, there are still a lot of ways that the two can be compromised, and they all come down to your locks and security systems.

Taking the time to ensure your security and privacy by hiring a professional locksmith services will not only save you a lot of time and money later on, but also will keep you and your property safe and secure.

If you happen to encounter a problem when other locksmith services are not available, a 24 hour locksmith service in Singapore can even be your saving grace, especially when you find yourself locked out or that you need to repair lock for your home.

Whether it’s your car or house, locksmith services will be there to help you unlock car door or unpick lock for your home.

Call a professional locksmith service now!

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Take Good Care of Your Eyes

Taking good care of our eyes is a necessity since we are usually surrounded by radiation everywhere which hurts our eyes and therefore tramples our vision. There are so many wonderful things in this world which we describe as “captivating to the eye”. Our eyes are definitely important and without them, a great part of our lives would be removed. Life is both around us and also in our heads, the relation of both what we see and what we feel. Taking good care of your eyes can be very hard to do if you do not necessary have good habits when it comes to taking care of your eyes.

There are a lot of factors that do not just affect the condition of our eyes but also our vision. Having healthy habits is better than having to see the doctor every once in a while. Prevention is always better than cure. One of the most popular reasons for bad eyesight is spending too much time with our gadgets. Sadly, although they are beneficial, the radiation from our gadgets affect our vision dearly and usually dry our eyes to the point that they may be functioning under stress and this could actually be destructive in the long run.

Our eyes are affected by what we expose them to and getting a healthy dose of sunlight everyday is a great way to get vitamin E which directly improves our eyesight. Eating healthy is another great way for you to get enough vitamin E inside your body. Carrots are not only a good snack but are also great for your eyesight. Another great thing about carrots is that it is not too expensive to buy and you can find them in almost every grocery store or supermarket.

Another thing we normally do that is really bad for our eyes is washing them the moment we wake up. Our eyes are very sensitive to moisture and the sudden dampness has a huge effect on the health of our eyes.

The last thing that might be the most destructive factor of them all is not getting enough sleep. Our eyes need rest. Although there are certain parts of our bodies that can last longer than others, our eyes only have the strength to stay awake for so long. The more we do not give our body the necessary hours of rest, the more it can damage our eyes in the long run. The lack of sleep plus the abuse of our eyes can cause serious damage in the long run. It is better to go easy on your eyes now rather than having to suffer the consequences later on.

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Ending and Starting Your Day

What’s usually the last thing you do before you go to sleep? Is it to turn on the TV until you fall asleep over boredom? Is it to read a book until the words do not mean any more sense? Well, whatever it may be, we aren’t saying it is not effective, all we are saying is that there is a better way to end your day. What do you think it may be? Well, it is to be thankful. What we do not normally do is appreciate the little things that happen to us and this is what makes us discontent with the way we start our day the next day.

Ending your day with three different things to be thankful for is a great way for you to not only complete your day but also for you to be able to build confidence and serenity. Being thankful before going to sleep usually ensures that you will wake up with more confidence than you normally do. But before we talk about waking up, let’s finish talking about going to sleep.

Why be thankful? Because no matter where you are right now, you’ve been through a lot to get to that point and if you are at a bad point of your life, you have to be thankful for what you have because that will give you the strength and make you better throughout time.

There are a lot of things to be thankful for and we should definitely take notice in them until it becomes too late. Be thankful for what little you have because if you are not good at taking care of what you have now, you may lose it later on in the future.

Start your day with three things to do. The first is to acknowledge the problems you are going through. Acknowledgement of your problems does not mean defeat, it means that you know that you have a problem and once you are certain you have a problem, your problem is already fifty percent solved. Now you just have to figure out what to do about that problem. Anyway, let’s talk about the second thing to do.

The second thing to do is to set a goal for today. Whether it be work related or personal, set a goal for that day that you are most confident that you will be able to accomplish. It may not be too easy, but it must be something that you yourself want to do.

The last thing to do is to get up with confidence. Own your day before it happens. If your day doesn’t end up like it should, that’s okay. But you have to claim that it’ll be a good day even before it happens.

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The Best Platformer Games You Should Play

Platformers are games that allow the player to control a character while navigating in an environment full of traps and puzzles. If you haven’t tried the genre yet, you need to play some of the best platformers in history.

Super Mario Bros. (1985)
No list is complete without at least one Mario game. The 1985 installment features the brothers Mario and Luigi in a quest to save Princess Toadstool from King Bowser after the Koopa Army attacked the Mushroom Kingdom.

Strider (1989)
The game is set in a futuristic dystopian world where Hiryu, a ninja from the Striders, was assigned to assassinate the Grandmaster, the overlord and dictator of the Empire. The combos performed by Hiryu using his sword Cypher are based on the movements of the buttons and joystick.

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)
The iconic Sonic is out to destroy the scientist Dr. Ivo Robotnik after the latter imprisoned animals in the South Island and stole the 6 Chaos Emeralds.

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest (1995)
A direct sequel to Donkey Kong Country, the game features Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong who attempt to save Donkey Kong after he was taken by King K. Rool to Crocodile Island.

Banjo-Kazooie (1998)
The first installment of the renowned series, it introduces Banjo the bear and Kazooie the bird who are trying to overcome the evil plans of Gruntilda the witch.

Shovel Knight (2014)
The Shovel Knight is controlled by the player as he tries to collect different treasures and fights the Order of No Quarter. Shovel Knight might be able to rescue Shield Knight if he could overcome the Enchantress in the Tower of Fate.

Super Meat Boy (2010)
The player will help box-shaped Meat Boy get through more than 300 levels to rescue Bandage Girl after the latter was taken by the scientist Dr. Fetus.

LittleBigPlanet 2 (2011)
Unlike its prequel, LittleBigPlanet 2 features a main storyline involving Sackboy and the members of The Alliance as they overcome the vacuum cleaner Negativitron who is trying to destroy Craftworld.

Mega Man X (1993)
Set a hundred years after the previous game, the world is inhabited by Reploids and humans who are at odds because the Reploids are becoming destructive. Mega Man X is tasked to hunt down the mavericks and stop the plans of their leader Sigma.

Ratchet & Clank (2002)
The robot Clank has to convince his friend Ratchet to help him find Captain Qwark and to stop Chairman Drek from creating a new species that might destroy other planets.

Spyro the Dragon (1998)
Spyro and his friend Sparx the dragonfly are travelling to rescue other dragons, find treasures, and to fight the half-orc half-human Gnasty Gnorc.

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (2002)
The thief Sly Cooper enlists his gang, composed of Murray and Bentley, to retrieve his family’s book called Thievius Raccoonus, which lists all of his ancestors’ tricks for stealing.

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Hard Science Fiction Movies for Everyone

Tired of fantasy movies like Star Wars that are sometimes categorized as science fiction? Here are 12 hard science fiction films that are worth your time.

Blade Runner (1982)
Based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? written by Philip K. Dick, it follows the story of the conflict between the humans and the replicants who are hunted down by the blade runners.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
This Arthur C. Clarke classic features humanity’s first attempt to land on Jupiter with the help of an artificial intelligence named Hal.

The Matrix (1999)
What will you do if you find out that what we perceive to be true are only simulations? This simulation is called the Matrix, a tool created by machines as a mark of their superiority over humans.

District 9 (2009)
The film explores the issues of segregation and xenophobia when an airship was stranded on the city of Johannesburg. The aliens were unable to return to their planet, so the humans decided to confine them in an area known as District 9.

Inception (2010)
Dominick Cobb works as an extractor to steal information by using and penetrating the subconscious in a dream world. Now he is asked by a businessman to plant an idea in another person’s mind using inception.

WALL-E (2008)
When planet Earth was overrun by garbage, humans fled and left behind trash compactors to clean up their mess. Only one remained, however, and it seemed to have developed abilities beyond what it was programmed to do.

Starship Troopers (1997)
Inspired by the novel of the same title by Robert Heinlein, it follows the tale of Johnny Rico and the Mobile Infantry who are battling the Arachnids.

Gattaca (1997)
In a society where only the humans with the best genes are given all the privileges of life, Vincent Freeman struggles to fit in despite his flaws so that he could fulfil his dream of space travel.

Metropolis (1927)
This silent film is considered iconic in the movie industry because it was among the first feature-length films at that time. Metropolis discusses the huge gap between the privileged classes and the poor that power the city by working with the underground machines.

Children of Men (2006)
Based on the novel of the same title by P.D. James, it tells the story of Theo Faron, who lives in a society where humans have become infertile. He has to help a woman escape the collapsing society overrun by refugees.

Solaris (1972)
Based on the novel of the same title by Stanislaw Lem, it features the struggles of a space station crew on the planet Solaris who are being toyed with by forces they could not understand. The planet is well-studied, but there are no recognizable life forms that explain its intelligence.

Twelve Monkeys (1995)
When the humans were nearly wiped out after a plague, the survivors had to live underground. Several years later, James Cole was given the task of locating the source of the virus, believed to have been released by a group called Twelve Monkeys.

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The Language of Flowers: Romantic Meanings of Your Favorite Blooms

Over the years, different flowers were attached myriad symbolisms and romantic associations making them sought-after during events such as Weddings and Valentine’s Day celebration. Accordingly, there are specific flowers which are generally considered to be important part of a bride’s wedding bouquet because it plays around the theme of love. Common bridal blooms include flowers, daisies, and carnations.

Some flowers, however, have been attached with different meanings over time. Regardless of personal interpretation, here are some important flowers which carry symbolic romantic meaning.

Peony – Peonies symbolize a happy marriage and virility especially in Asian countries such as Japan. These blooms are also generally fragrant flowers. Peonies range in colors from white, yellow, to purple red.

Safflower – Safflower is one bloom that symbolize marriage itself. They also symbolize the “welcoming” of a new life for the two newly-wed couple. Safflower plant grows globular flower heads of orange, yellow, and red colors.

Forget-me-not – Blue forget-me-not flowers are what’s more familiar to a lot of people. They add a sweet touch of blue color to any floral arrangement. Aside from that, these blooms are widely believed to symbolize true love.

Pink carnation – Carnations are among the widely recognized flowers common in bouquets. It is easily identified thanks to its size and ruffled appearance. Pink carnations, in particular, represent a woman’s love.

Purple lilac – Lilacs are known to have a dainty appearance. These flowers are also fragrant and usually comes in a shade of purple. In the language of flowers, they famously symbolize one’s first love.

Red tulip – A tulip’s petal edges are often scalloped. This gives them a deeply textured appearance. The gift of a red tulip can be easily translated to a declaration of love. The black center on the flower is commonly known to represent a heart which is burned by passion.

Rose – Roses are generally associated with a romantic interpretation. The blooms represent love in all of its forms. Red roses, in particular, are said to represent passion and are considerably sacred to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty.

Larkspur – Larkspur are tall flowers which come in varying colors of blue, purple, white, and red. Their silky, blue-violet flowers represent one’s ardent attachment to the beloved.

Syrian mallow – This is another bloom which symbolizes one’s burning passion. Its showy flowers range from the shades of mauve, violet, purple, and blue. Sometimes, two colors may combine together in a single flower bud. Syrian mallow equates to one being consumed by love.

Baby’s breath – Commonly used in general flower arrangements as fillers, Baby’s breath symbolizes everlasting love and fidelity. This iconic bloom has a number of tiny, cloud-like white and light purple buds covering its branches.

Lavender – Lavender is another flower which is associated with one’s fidelity. This flowering plant is composed of multiple, little purple flower buds on tall and narrow stems. A gift of lavender can be associated with loyalty and utmost devotion.

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