Why use a yoga strap

Yoga straps are a great way to ease a little deeper into poses that would otherwise be difficult. Flexibility, like most things in life, is fluid and unique to each of us. I, for example, have the tightest hamstrings in the world and I like to use a strap to work on stretching out those muscles. They’re versatile, too, which means you can use them however you like!

This Tumaz Yoga Strap is great addition to your practice. Here’s why!

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What makes this yoga strap awesome

• The band is thick enough to be durable and won’t stretch, meaning you can maneuver into poses safely.
• D-ring buckles add more versatility – you can create a loop if that best fits your practice.
• It’s capable of holding a ton of weight (2,379 pounds, to be exact).
• It comes in a variety of jazzy colors!

Different ways to use the yoga strap

• While lying down on your back, you can fold the strap around your foot and, while holding the strap taught, work on the flexibility in your hamstring and hip flexor by working your foot closer to your face.
• While standing, you can fold the strap around your foot and work on lifting your leg while it’s straight. The strap will allow you to work on keeping your leg straight.
• While kneeling, you can work on your shoulder flexibility by lifting one arm and folding it back over your shoulder with the strap in your hand. With your other arm, you reach around behind your back and grab the strap. This works on your shoulder and tricep flexibility.

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Why use a yoga block

Yoga blocks are often used as an extension of the arms, which is handy when working into poses that require you to elongate your body. They’re also durable enough to support your weight, which is great when you want to work on the alignment of your body in certain poses.

A long-standing and popular name in the yoga industry, these Gaiam Essentials Yoga Blocks are perfect if you want to enhance your practice.

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What makes these blocks awesome

• They’re made of durable foam that can support your full weight without condensing.
• The foam is nonslip, so it won’t move around beneath you while it supports your weight.
• They’re also easy to clean if you’re a sweatier yogi!

Different ways to use yoga blocks

• While sitting with your feet tucked beneath you, you can tuck your block beneath your posterior, which takes pressure away from your knees.
• If you have trouble touching your toes, you can stand your blocks on either side of your feet to support your hands in a forward fold.
• While seated with the bottoms of your feet touching, you can release your knees outward, which opens up your inner thighs and hips. Placing a block beneath each knee can relieve any discomfort if you’re particularly tight in this area!

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Why use a yoga towel

Yoga towels are great, not only if you tend to sweat during yoga practices, but they offer a little added cushion. If you practice on hard surfaces, you know what I’m talking about. I’ve practiced on surfaces like hardwood floors and concrete and they’re always hard on my knees! A folded-up yoga towel beneath your knees or wrists can offer some reprieve from such surfaces.

This Pefi Yoga Towel is perfect for dabbing away sweat during a Bikram class while offering just enough cushion without interrupting your practice.

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What makes this towel awesome

• One side is made of soft microfibers while the other has a distinct waffle shaped texture that won’t slide around.
• It’s easy to wash and dries quickly.
• It’s 72″ long and 24″ wide, so you can use this towel in place of a yoga mat. -It comes in a variety of jazzy tie-dye colors!

Different ways to use the yoga towel

• Keep your towel to the side of your practice, just within reach if you need to swipe away sweat.
• Drape your towel directly on top of your yoga mat to catch any downpours during a Bikram class.
• Fold your towel up and place it beneath your knees to offer another layer between you and the ground.

Buy the Pefi Yoga Towel on Amazon.

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Why use a yoga bolster

An uncommon addition to a yoga practice, yoga bolsters are a long and firm pillow that can be used to provide extra comfort and support. They’re mainly used in restorative yoga practices and postures and can help to further open up the diaphragm and encourage deeper breathing.

This Retrospec Sequoia Yoga Bolster offers the right amount of support and comfort for any yogi looking to deepen their breathing.

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What makes this yoga bolster awesome

• This bolster comes in either a rectangular shape or a round, cylindrical shape to fit your specific needs.
• The cover is removable and machine washable so you don’t have to worry about dirtying up the fabric.
• A thick handle at the end makes this cushion easy to carry.
• It offers support for yogis with tightness in the spine.
• It comes in a variety of fun colors!

Different ways to use this yoga bolster

• In child’s pose, you can tuck your yoga bolster beneath your body with your knees wide so you’re straddling the bolster.
• When you’re seated with your legs crossed beneath you, you can sit on your bolster which can add extra support to your pose.
• You can sit with your legs extended up a wall and you can tuck your bolster beneath your lower back and pelvis.

You can find this Retrospec Sequoia Yoga Bolster on Amazon.

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Why use a yoga wheel

Our fifth and final item on this list is a newer one in the yoga game and is the perfect addition to your practice if you want to work on backbends, heart-opening positions, or if you just want a fun and new way to massage your spine!

This UpCircleSeven Yoga Wheel is the top-of-the-line wheel when it comes to circular objects in your practice.

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What makes this yoga wheel awesome

• This wheel is able to withstand 550 pounds and won’t flex, even with your full body weight on it.
• Thick padding on the outside of the wheel cushions your body.
• The padding is also textured to ensure it grips to your yoga mat or towel, minimizing the amount of unnecessary slipping.
• It also comes with a PDF e-guide to show you how to use it and use it safely!
• It comes in (you guessed it!) jazzy colors so you can customize your experience.

Different ways to use this yoga wheel

• Use your wheel to stretch the front side of your body by holding your wheel in place and carefully laying backward on it. Maneuver your wheel slowly so you can control how deep you want to take your stretch.
• With the same position above, move the wheel carefully down your spine. It’s similar to massaging your body with a body roller, but it offers a larger shape to maneuver your body about.
• If backbends are a part of your practice or you want to work them into your practice, the wheel offers the perfect shape to begin opening up into your spine.

You can find this UpCircleSeven Yoga Wheel on Amazon.

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Creating secrets, like most Kubernetes operations, is accomplished using the kubectl command. Fortunately, there are a few ways to create secrets, and each are useful in different circumstances.

Let’s first look at the secret we want to create. Remember that the secret is an object that contains one or more pieces of sensitive data. For our example, let’s imagine we want to create a secret, called database, that contains our database credentials. It will be constructed like this:

database - username - password 

Create a secret from files

Suppose you have the following files: username and password. They might have been created like this:

echo -n 'databaseuser' > ./username echo -n '1234567890' > ./password

We can use these files to construct our secret:

kubectl create secret generic database --from-file=./username --from-file=./password

Create a secret from string literals

If you’d prefer, you can skip the files altogether and create the secret from string literals:

kubectl create secret generic database --from-literal=username=databaseuser --from-literal=password=databaseuser

Examine the new secret

Both of the above examples will create identical secrets that look like this:

$ kubectl get secret database NAME TYPE DATA AGE database Opaque 2 1h

And let’s example the secret:

$ kubectl describe secret database Name: database Namespace: default Labels:  Annotations: Type: Opaque Data ==== username: 12 bytes password: 10 bytes

Copy secrets from another cluster or namespace

While this is directly applicable, I’ll add this as a note because it could be useful. Sometimes we’ll need to copy secrets from one cluster or namespace to another. Here’s a quick example:

kubectl get secret database --context source_context --export -o yaml | kubectl apply --context destination_context -f -

For an explanation and more details, see our guide on copying Kubernetes secrets from one cluster to another.

Secrets aren’t all that helpful until they’re attached to a pod. In order to actually use the secrets they must be configured in the pod definition.

There are two primary ways two use secrets: as files and as environment variables.

Attaching secrets as files

See the following pod config:

apiVersion: v1 kind: Pod metadata: name: web spec: containers: - name: web image: web:1.0.0 volumeMounts: - name: database-volume mountPath: "/etc/secrets/database" readOnly: true volumes: - name: database-volume secret: secretName: database 

There are two important blocks to take note of. First, let’s look at the volumes block. We set the name of the volume and specify which secret we want to use. Note that this is set at the pod level, so it could be used in multiple containers if the pod were to define them.

volumes: - name: database-volume secret: secretName: database 

Next we’ll look at how the volume is mounted onto the container using volumeMounts. We’ll specify which volume we want to use, and set the mount path to /etc/secrets/database.

volumeMounts: - name: database-volume mountPath: "/etc/secrets/database" readOnly: true 

Inside of the container, we can run an ls on /etc/secrets/database and find that both the username and password files exist.

Attaching secrets as environment variables

Secrets can also be used inside of containers as environment variables. Check out the same config but with secrets attached as environment variables instead of volumes:

apiVersion: v1 kind: Pod metadata: name: web spec: containers: - name: web image: web:1.0.0 env: - name: DATABASE_USERNAME valueFrom: secretKeyRef: name: database key: username - name: DATABASE_PASSWORD valueFrom: secretKeyRef: name: database key: password 

Summary

Both volumes and environment variables are perfectly acceptable ways to access secrets from inside your containers. The major difference is that environment variables can only hold a single value, while volumes can hold any number of files—even nested directories. So if your application requires access to many secrets, a volume is a better choice for organization and to keep the configs manageable.

I know some readers will not be using Python containers, but the purpose of this step is to provide a conceptual understanding of how secrets can be used from within the container.

Assuming you’ve followed the first two steps, you should now have a database secret that contains a username and password.

Reading secrets from a volume

If we’ve mounted the secret as a volume, we can read the secret like this:

with open('/etc/secrets/database/password, 'r') as secret_file: database_password = secret_file.read()

Grabbing the secret file is as easy reading from a file. Of course, you’d probably abstract this code and add error handling and defaults. After all, this is much more pleasant: get_secret('database/password').

Reading secrets from environment variables

This is even more straight forward, at least in Python. You can read the secret just as you would any other environment variable:

import os database_password = os.environ.get('DATABASE_PASSWORD')

I hope this overview of Kubernetes secrets was helpful. By now, you should have a good understand of what Kubernetes secrets are and how to use them. If you have questions, please ask in the comments below or head over to the Kubernetes secrets documentation.