Put down that mind before you break something.

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Steve

Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy. —Eckhart Tolle

Today we began in anti-meditation, engaging in full-blown mental activity, and then reflected on the experience to note how much of our thinking is, indeed, repetitive, useless and even harmful.

Continue using a hammer after the task is done and you would most likely cause destruction. Same thing with the mind. When we overthink, we not only leak our energy, but diminish our experience of the present moment.

When the task is done, it's time to lay down the tool, be it a hammer or the mind.

All the tools of yoga are designed to still the mind long enough to create a window of awareness. With practice, we can establish ourselves in that awareness, and then, when we do think, we can choose to give our energy to thoughts that serve us rather than those that deplete or harm us.

Click & share this post with the world!
Posted in Yoga Class Themes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Happy Mother’s Day

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Steve

In 1968, as the Beatles were on the verge of breaking up, Paul McCartney was on the verge of a breakdown—lonely, depressed and exhausted from resisting everything that was going on. Then one night, he had a dream about his mother, Mary, who had passed when he was 14:

[T]here was her face, completely clear, particularly her eyes, and she said to me very gently, very reassurringly, “Let it be.”

It was lovely. I woke up with a great feeling. It was really like she had visited me in this very difficult point in my life and gave me this message: be gentle, don’t fight things, just try and go with the flow and it will all work out.

In Patanjali’s eight-limb yoga there’s a practice called Isvara Pranidhana. It means surrender to what is. In short, let it be. To give up the struggle and allow everything to simply be, exactly as it is, can free up a tremendous amount of trapped energy which then becomes available to heal your body, your mind, and ultimately your life. For Paul, this liberation was immediate: he got out of bed, went to the piano, and the lyrics flowed effortlessly, practically writing themselves. Soon afterward he got together with Linda, who ended up singing harmony on what became the title song on the album and a healing statement for Paul, the rest of the Beatles and generations of people.

Paul (left) and Michael, with their mother, Mary.

This morning, as we practiced simple but sometimes challenging sequences and postures, the invitation was to stay with the breath and go with the flow. Even if we stumble, in our bodies or minds, we can always practice letting go of the struggle, and trust that it will all work out.

Click & share this post with the world!
Posted in Yoga Class Themes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Please come home.

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Steve

PLEASE COME HOME

 

by Jane Hooper

 

Please come home. Please come home.

Find the place where your feet know where to walk

And follow your own trail home.

 

Please come home. Please come home into your own body,

Your own vessel, your own earth.

Please come home into each and every cell,

And fully into the space that surrounds you.

 

Please come home. Please come home to trusting yourself,

And your instincts and your ways and your knowings,

And even the particular quirks of your personality.

 

Please come home. Please come home and once you are firmly there,

Please stay home awhile and come to a deep rest within.

Please treasure your home. Please love and embrace your home.

Please get a deep, deep sense of what it’s like to be truly home.

 

Please come home. Please come home.

And when you’re really, really ready,

And when there’s a detectable urge on the outbreath, then please come out.

Please come home and please come forward.

Please express who you are to us, and please trust us

To see you and hear you and touch you

And recognize you as best we can.

 

Please come home. Please come home and let us know

All the nooks and crannies that are calling to be seen.

Please come home, and let us know the More

That is there that wants to come out.

 

Please come home. Please come home

For you belong here now. You belong among us.

Please inhabit your place fully so we can learn from you,

From your voice and your ways and your presence.

 

Please come home. Please come home.

And when you feel yourself home, please welcome us too,

For we too forget that we belong and are welcome,

And that we are called to express fully who we are.

 

Please come home. Please come home.

You and you and you and me.

 

Please come home. Please come home.

Thank you, Earth, for welcoming us.

And thank you touch of eyes and ears and skin,

Touch of love for welcoming us.

 

May we wake up and remember who we truly are.

 

Please come home.

Please come home.

Please come home.

 

You have 75 trillion cells. How many can you inhabit?

This morning’s focus was to inhabit the space within and around us, using breath, postures, sensation and awareness. When habitual patterns of thinking and behaving arise, the practice is to notice, and come back home to the here and now.

Click & share this post with the world!
Posted in Yoga Class Themes | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Tapping into the wisdom of the body.

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Steve

Everything we do in yoga is to still the mind so that we can recognize our true being. This morning, we practiced a core-intensive Kundalini set called Nabhi Kriya. This simple but challenging kriya takes us from our heads down into the deepest muscles of the lower abdomen—from thinking into being.

 

Working this area stimulates the enteric nervous system, comprised of cells similar to the ones in our brain. Hence the term, “gut feeling.” When we tap into the wisdom and energy deep within our bodies, thinking and doing become informed by being, and we’re empowered to live with greater ease and flow.

Click & share this post with the world!
Posted in Yoga Class Themes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The short-cut.

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Steve
“In any situation in life, you can notice yourself responding inwardly in two ways. Either you will brace, harden and resist, or you will soften, open and yield….Interior surrender is often precisely what makes it possible to see a decisive action that must be taken and to do it with courage and strength. To ski down a hill or split a piece of wood, you must first relax inwardly; only then can you exert the right force and timing. It’s exactly the same in the emotional world. Whether it’s a matter of holding your ground in a dispute with your boss, handling a rebellious teenager with tough love, or putting your life on the line for an ideal you believe in….action flows better when it flows from nonviolence, from that place of relaxed inner opening.” —Cynthia Bourgeault

 

The aim of yoga is to rest in awareness, and there are many tools and techniques we can use. We can chant, breathe, meditate, do postures or any combination thereof—or we can just surrender. To completely let go into faith and trust is not that easy, especially for us control freaks.

Surrender.

This morning we began with a Kundalini set designed to release holdings and inhibitions through spontaneous, effortless movement. As we proceeded into a more challenging practice, the invitation was to observe any tendency to brace, resist or struggle—and then practice the opposite: to surrender to the experience. Our yoga nidra included a visualization of walking through a field of tall grass with closed eyes, trusting in the process of surrender.

The next time you notice yourself bracing or tensing up, try doing the opposite.

 

Click & share this post with the world!
Posted in Yoga Class Themes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

I am, therefore I am

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Steve

When Descartes said, I think, therefore I am, he confused thinking with being. We can be without having to think, and if we misidentify ourselves with the mind, we can greatly limit or disempower ourselves, placing ourselves at the mercy of our thoughts.

If you believe Descartes, then you're nothing more than a thought. A bit limiting, don't you THINK?

Yoga is the science of disengaging from thoughts long enough to recognize that we are not our thoughts, but rather the awareness that contains them. Once we establish ourselves in that awareness, we become empowered to notice our thoughts and choose thoughts or lines of thinking that serve our higher good.

Today, our intense core work brought us down away from the head and into the heat, energy, wisdom and intelligence of our bodies. During yoga nidra, we went deep into that no-thought state where we can recognize and establish ourselves in being.

I am, therefore I am.

 

 

Click & share this post with the world!
Posted in Yoga Class Themes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Happy Earth Day.

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Steve

The five elements circle walk we practiced this morning reconnects us to earth, metal, water, wood, fire, and back to earth. To view a video of Master Paulie Zink, from whom I learned this a few years ago, click here.

 

Click & share this post with the world!
Posted in Yoga Class Themes | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Stuck in your story?

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Steve

As pointed out in the documentary film, I AM, humanity is stuck in an old story that no longer serves us, and never really did.

In fact, the story, “Survival of the Fittest,” has become true only because we’ve come to believe it. In The Descent of Man, the phrase, “survival of the fittest” is mentioned only twice while the term “love” appears numerous times. And yet the book has been interpreted in way that perpetuates the belief that humans are essentially competitive—that war, conflict, and separateness are predominant in our nature. Fortunately, new scientific evidence is showing that we’re also hard-wired to be cooperative, compassionate and loving. This new story is equally if not more valid than the old story, and, more importantly, serves our higher good.

Just as we can re-write our story as a species, we have the power to do so individually. Our practice this morning began with the inquiry of whether the stories we keep telling ourselves are empowering or disempowering, and then we used the tools of yoga (movement, breath, sound and yoga nidra) to help cultivate awareness of old stories, let them go, and create new ones.

For more about the documentary, I AM, click here.

Click & share this post with the world!
Posted in Yoga Class Themes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Nectar Vision

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Steve

It was about a year ago that I won the raffle for a 600-hour yoga teacher training at Southwest Institute for Healing Arts. Yesterday was my exit interview.

Ramona did an index-fingers drum roll on the desk, then handed me my diploma.

“That’s not all,” she said. Another drum roll, followed by a second certificate, this one for Yoga Nidra.

“Wait. One more.” Drum roll: Certificate in Life Coaching.

All of a sudden the last 12 months came flooding back: my teachers, my fellow students, all the experiences. I felt my body swell with nectar pouring out my eyes. There was no way to stop it. It was literally overwhelming.

Pure nectar.

It made me realize that when it comes down to it, we’ve all won the grand prize. All it takes is a moment to see it.

 

Click & share this post with the world!
Posted in Yoga Class Themes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Be a forklift.

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Steve

Yogi Bhajan, a master of Kundalini yoga, once said that the job of a teacher is to be a forklift. Because we are all teachers in one way or another, each of us is offered the responsibility to uplift ourselves and everyone around us.

Our job is to uplift.

This morning we explored our relationship to gravity, uplifting ourselves physically and energetically. By lifting the pelvic floor, our spine ascends and our entire attitude changes. We can also lift our arches, diaphragm, and upper palate to become lighter, brighter, and more confident.

We teach by example, by how we’re showing up in the world. Think about what you want to teach, and use your practice to support you in becoming the example. By uplifting ourselves, we automatically uplift others.

Click & share this post with the world!
Posted in Yoga Class Themes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment