Throughout her entire life, Shri Mataji kept to her vision - a vision which goes beyond the political freedom of her motherland India, a vision of inner freedom and transformation of each individual, a vision that is worth fighting for and that would take her to the five continents to spread her message. A message that has the great capacity to touch people’s hearts and desire for a better life.

“Freedom and Liberation” is the work of young German director, Carolin Dassel, who shows the many stages of this adventurous life in a very subtle way. The timeless impressions and beautiful music, as well as the original locations and archival material, combine to produce an atmosphere of meditative authenticity. The film has now been shown nationally and internationally.

“Freedom and Liberation” is a biography of Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi (founder of Sahaja Yoga meditation) who, inspired by her political parents and Mahatma Gandhi, dedicated her youth to the resistance against the British Empire for Indian freedom.

Many Dahn Yoga centers around the United States, particularly in Washington, DC and Texas, had events celebrating Brain Awareness Week. Most of the events were open Brain Wave Vibration classes of some kind, which, although they did not make the public more aware of of the importance of brain research, did help make their participants more aware of their own brain. This awareness is the first step to knowing how important the brain really is to our lives.In her blog, Tori Deaux shared how physiological changes in her brain affected her mind and her thinking. They really made her more aware of her brain and who she really is. Here is an excerpt from her blog post.

  I was suddenly, hugely aware of the difference between that thing I knew of as “me”, the part that was observing, and the physical circuitry in the brain. I was also suddenly aware that that observant part of “me” wasn’t nearly  as disconnected from my neural networks as I’d imagined. This wasn’t at all like a hermit crab living in a borrowed shell - my mind, my sense of self, so much of what I identified as “me” was clearly tied to brain and body.Interestingly, somewhat also like Jill Bolte Taylor, none of this convinced me that the “spiritual” aspects of identity weren’t real.  Becoming aware of my own brain definitely changed how I thought about the concepts of  spirit and soul; clearly, the brain shapes my identity as much or more than any other part of the experience of this world  “I’d developed a wacky sensitivity to sugar.  Any sweets (and most carbohydrates) were setting off extreme insulin reactions, causing my blood sugar to roller coaster up and down, flooding my body with a biochemical cocktail of adrenaline, cortisol, and a bunch of other things the names of which I’ve forgotten.As my blood sugar rose, my focus would scatter, and anxieties would build…when levels dropped again, my ability to think clearly would just stop.   I couldn’t problem solve, I couldn’t make decisions.  My memory sucked, my reaction times were horrific.   It wasn’t a matter of  thinking about thing in the “right way” or practicing skills…. my *brain* wasn’t responding right.

Prior to practicing yoga regularly, my relationship with my body wasn’t all that positive. I didn’t pay all that much attention to it, yet I would always send it messages that I wanted it to change. Once I started a regular yoga practice, I came to notice and eventually appreciate my body. Our relationship is much more loving these days — despite the fact that my closet was still holding some nasty remnants of relationship past. These days when I feel my body moving to my breath in my yoga practice, I know that looking hot in a pair of low-rise jeans isn’t the name of the game (don’t get me wrong — looking hot is fun; it’s just not the end all and be all).

Christine, Ms. Blisschick herself, has written some awesome posts lately on this very charged topic. And being that summer is coming, I think it’s perfect timing. Click here for a great post on body image and yoga with a response from Kundalini yogini Ana Brett and click here for Christine’s post on nourishing the body. These are wonderful reads that I think many of us can relate to in one form or another.

Now that my closet is filled with clothes that honor my body, I may just treat myself to a few more goodies from my favorite clothing boutique, TranquiliT. The spring colors — peony, bluebonnet, and iris — are out and they make my soul sing with delight. If there’s anything I’ve learned from this weekend’s purge, it’s that my body deserves to be clothed in flattering clothes that make me happy. The spring palette at TranquiliT does exactly that. Ah, my reward for all of that cleaning.My closet is far from empty, but at least it’s a bit more spacious — and the clothes inside are more reflective of me and my lifestyle than the contents prior to the purge. While ridding my closet of clothes was fun, it was also a bit more of an experience than I bargained for. All sorts of thoughts came to the fore as I was chucking clothes into an awaiting donation bag. Read the rest of this entry »

So you must make the most of this chance.  No matter if you believe in reincarnation or not, this life is a golden opportunity to achieve this highest possible purpose of human life.  For those who believe reincarnation exists, you know how very precious and rare a human birth is, and for those who believe there is just one go around, well you certainly don’t want to waste this opportunity then for sure.  Either way, since you are here anyway, why not shoot for highest high. Before all the experts on non-duality start clamoring that there should be no purpose to life, you should not set goals, etc, let me say that if there is any purpose at all to life, then it is Self-Realization, or to put it another way, it is to find God.  Everything else is immature.

In this article, I would like to discuss the 5 major obstacles that often prevent you from fulfilling this great journey to God Realization.

0 Major Obstacles to Self-Realization:

It is unlikely that the highest achievement in life, is going to be easily accomplished by you overnight.  We are being trained to become quite an impatient and instant gratification society.  This can be easily seen not only in the use of medical drugs for muscle building, fat loss, pain, etc, but is also more subtly visible in relationships that today tend to skip romance all together and go straight to sex.

This attitude has spilled over into the spiritual arena as well, and I have written about this in the article, No Shortcuts to Enlightenment.  Essentially, the point here is that for Self-Realization, you will have to stay on the path for as long as it takes.  Another secret I would like to share with you here is that the path itself is really a lot of fun, Enlightenment is great, but so is the work leading up to it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Eckhart Tolle suggests three techniques to live in the now: breathing consciously, noticing the inner body, and asking what is my relationship with the present moment?

This final method worked wonderfully for me last week. Throughout the day, I’d question:

“What is my relationship with the present moment?”

This question alone, brings your attention to the now and you become the observer instead of being sucked into the mind’s drama. The follow up question below really cinched it for me.

“Can I make space for this moment?”

You may interpret this query differently at different times. Can I accept the situation? Can I step back and allow my feelings to flow? Can I allow someone to be different than I think they ought to be? Can I see the bigger picture? Can I be present without identifying with any given role?

When we can make space for our emotions to exist, a fascinating thing happens; we become the witness and watch emotions rise and fall while maintaining a sense of peace and objectivity. By making space for the current moment and our habitual reactions to it, we can see how silly and repetitive some thoughts are. We can give sadness or anger the room it needs to run its course. Then we are free to move on without Last week, I found my thoughts running a muck leaving me unable to enjoy being fully present with my friends and family. One of my goals is to live a conscious life and be fully in the moment at all times–hey, it’s a goal. The question arose: how does one stay present when strong emotions or thoughts fill the mind and draw attention to another time and place?

Does a class setting encourage us to pull our knots tighter? How do you feel about Leslie’s outline for an individualized, breath-centered yoga practice? Do you disagree and want to give him a blue button (how funny is this?!?!)? Or do you whole-heartedly agree?

I’ve practiced both ways — with a group mentality and with a focus on the individual. I can honestly say that I’m reaping more benefits with the practice for the individual. Yet this is the unpopular choice, so it seems.

Advocating individualized breath-centered practices doesn’t translate into the death of the yoga class, but it does change the way a class looks and feels to a student. Are we yoga students ready for that?

That doesn’t mean that I haven’t seen group classes that adhere to the guidelines that Leslie laid out. I’ve been in some classes in which students were going at their own pace and were individually instructed for modifications for the poses. The room was filled with yogis going at their own pace and looking quite different in the same poses. The unfortunate truth is that the classes like these I’ve attended have very few people in attendance. This begs the question of yoga teachers — do you teach what you think is best or do you give people what they want? What about giving students what they need (but don’t know they want)? Read the rest of this entry »

The Five Elements constitute the basis of Chinese medical theory on the idea of proper flow or biotransformation among all collaborative organs to ensure optimal health. The five elements are Metal, Water, Wood, Fire, and Earth.

Detoxification: Modern Knowledge and Ancient Wisdom. Dr. Jui presents the concept of detoxification from the viewpoint of Chinese medicine and philosophy.

Detoxification is any process that decreases the negative impact of chemicals or molecules on the body, involving biotransformation of these toxic substances into excretable forms. Although this process has been a focus of recent scientific research, the idea of detoxification, however, parallels with the idea of proper flow in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

1. Non-Duality and the Zen concept of Big Mind:

At the end of the excerpt above, Master Suzuki gives us a helpful meditation term which defines enlightenment from a Zen perspective.  He calls it Big Mind.  He also describes this Big Mind, as the all inclusive mind, where everything is understood as being within the mind, and nothing lies outside of it.  For the students of Advaita Vedanta, this is will sound an awful lot like the definition of the Big Self, and it should, because it is really referring to the same thing.  In the article Understanding Non-Duality, Hinduism & Buddhism I discuss this common thread of these great religions in more details.

2. Thinking Stops by Itself:

This is a very important aspect of meditation to understand.  The mind has to stop itself.  The way of bringing about this cessation that Master Suzuki is referring to above, is by simple witnessing.  Allowing the thoughts and feelings to run their course and finish.  This is truly the art of observation, and is the heart of meditation practice.  For those more interested in this topic, you can head over to the article, How to Attain Enlightenment, where I go into this topic in more details.

3. Remain Beyond the Drama of Life:

This helpful meditation hint, is actually indicating how to live your life.  Unfortunately, it is of course easy to say, but hard to do.  To not be bothered by anything is the ultimate freedom, but how many of us can be Ok, with anything and everything that life throws at us?  Problems with health, finances, relationships, children, jobs, are just of few of the challenges we have to face in life.  I have discussed this fascinating Zen view of enlightenment in the article Zen Definition of Enlightenment, for those who want to read more about it.

To help me prepare my class I’m reading one of the text books provided in my training kit. It’s called “The Sivananda Companion to Yoga” and it is a wonderful book. I just love it. It is beautifully illustrated and well laid out. My biggest gripes with my other text books were the cheesy illustrations and the horrific pictures. But this book is simply lovely and will be an invaluable source of information as plan my lesson.

After reading a few chapters and watching a long DVD of instructor tips I thought I was ready to use my husband as a crash test dummy and lead a little yoga class at home. I did positively no planning and tried to just wing it with my newly gained knowledge fresh in my head. Well, it didn’t go too good. We both ended up silly and laughing. How on earth will I pull off this taping?

I have to admit, I’m completely intimidated with building my first lesson plan. This is the class that I will need to lead in order to achieve my certification. It needs to be perfect. It needs to address all the different aspects of a well-rounded yoga class. It needs to take into consideration the different issues of special needs students. It needs to include only poses that I CAN DO. It needs to be an hour long. And most importantly, it needs me to be serious and on track for the duration. That will be the biggest challenge. My mind has a tendency to drift . . . . Where was I? Oh yes, worrying about how I will lead my first one hour class with the stress of a camera rolling the entire time. Yikes.

That’s not really what yoga is about. Yoga is about loosening the knots in the body and mind. Granted, it’s not easy to loosen the knots. It takes patience and dedication and it requires one to drop the ego. Of course the benefits of practicing in this way are countless. Again, this comes back to the question of why you’re practicing yoga. Are you practicing because you want to excel (getting into as many postures as you can, doing the postures” right,” looking good while you’re doing it, keeping up with the person on the mat next to you, etc.) or because you want to change your mind and your body? Forcing doesn’t get you there. Only patience and persistent practice does. And the ego has to take a back seat.I’m not sure whether it’s an ego thing or a follow the leader/listen to the teacher thing, but often students act without listening to their body. The problem with that is that practicing in this manner emphasizes form over function. If you want to get the true benefit of the pose — rather than just look nice — you have to achieve the function of the pose.

Let’s take Bow pose for example. Traditionally, this posture is meant to be done with legs and feet together. Yet, when you watch folks execute this pose in class, the feet and legs are often apart. That means that instead of the back stretching and the front opening, the hips and legs are compensating for the lack of back flexibility. Consequently, your back isn’t getting the stretch and your front isn’t opening as it should be in this pose. So you basically have someone getting into the pose and looking okay, but he/she is only compensating for weak body parts rather than strengthen and stretch what needs to be strengthened and stretched. Rather than loosening the knots in your body, practicing in this way can actually create knots — or bypass the knots you have by working around them.

I’m experiencing this all first hand at the moment. My teacher gave me a practice to loosen a knot in the body that I just didn’t want to admit to having (gotta love that ego rearing its ugly head — if that’s not a knot in the mind, I don’t know what is.). I found myself avoiding the practice and defaulting to a practice that I found to be easier for me. It was a practice that I liked and felt good. What I failed to realize is that the practice wasn’t benefiting me, either physically or emotionally. I didn’t want to work in a way that really worked my knots — I just wanted to stick with taking the easy route and letting my strong parts compensate for my weak parts. What’s the benefit here? Read the rest of this entry »