Training Yoga Teachers in Europe – Part 1

On August 10 I took the red-eye to Denmark. We started our descent around 9 am – just in time for the Delta flight attendant to serve a breakfast of, that’s right, danishes.  I was pretty pleased by my astute observation of the cultural  metaphor here. However, like most Americans, my knowledge of the place is confined mostly to an awareness of tasty pastries, abundant bicycles and that eco-conferencey sorts of things happen here.

It was 3 am my time and after several hours of cat-naps interspersed with mostly ineffectual insomnia pranayamas, I just wanted to lie down flat. Nonsense! My inner sightseer argued, Too much to do! You get to see Copenhagen – the greenest city in the world! Clean streets, happy people, castles, churches, quaint little houses with flower boxes, brightly colored wharf buildings!

I’ll be fine, I rationalized, I’d had enough rest for a day of exploration before catching an evening train to the retreat center in the countryside where I would conduct yoga teacher training for a week.

The first thing I witnessed on the train platform waiting to go to the city center from the airport was a middle aged-ish man in a tweed suit pulling a duty free bottle of whiskey out of a plastic bag and wrestling the cap off. His wife plucked shot glasses out of the bag she was carrying and they went to it. Skaal! Velcome to Scandinavia!

Quiet. The people were quiet waiting for the train – even the partying couple. The train was quiet. Everyone was contentedly quiet. So I quietly asked a stranger if I could borrow his cell phone.

My cell phone company is small – and they don’t travel to Europe. Not too interested in helping me out over my two week stay. But I had to call the wonderful woman who had invited me to Denmark and let her know I would be there at some point after my sightseeing, and payphones in Denmark are sooooo 20th century. He very graciously and quietly obliged.

When I got to the city center I found a place in the basement of the train station to lock up my embarrassingly enormous, why-don’t-you-just-broadcast-your-exceedingly-obvious-nationality suitcase and backpack. Did I really need to tote 6 pairs of yoga pants, a European voltage fire-hazard hairdryer, all my electronics and the largest bottle of moisturizer in my medicine cabinet with me to Europe? Sigh. The only thing I left behind was any sense of aparigraha (simplicity).

When I lived in Japan, I had an American friend with a very Zen approach to traveling. “Walk out into it,” he would encourage. “Just go, don’t worry about where or what or who, just experience.” His words echoed through my mind as I thought about my ensuing adventure.

Freed from the burden of my material possessions, I happily set out in the wrong direction to see sights. Nothing but cheap hotels and office buildings for the first 20 minutes. I went back to the train station and reluctantly conceded to a map.

I walked past Tivoli, the oldest amusement park in Europe and found some churches – which I tend to find much more amusing as they offer fantastic opportunities for sitting down.

Wow, spotless streets and stunningly beautiful architecture. Copenhagen truly deserves its reputation. There were some Hari Krishnas chanting in front of this fountain – which made me feel all warm and yoga fuzzy. So of course I asked one to take my picture.

You can see his buddy behind the bicycle on the right. “Say Krishna!” I’m all about Krishna in Denmark – he would’ve been so at home here! The cows, the danishes, the gopis by the city fountains. Oh, and it rained every day I was there – off and on, never knew when. It is very soggy and green.

I found a park in the middle of the city with an amazing castle surrounded by a moat. Seriously, a moat. Which I suppose is still something of a deterrent to any potential medieval miscreants eyeing the crown jewels housed inside.

On my way out I ran into the Copenhagen fashion show. No, I am not making this up. Big haired models, hoards of photographers, disco music, et al.
I guess the garden house in front of the medieval castle seemed like a good place to hold this festive event.

Oh yeah, I’m here to train yoga teachers. Got on the train at 4:30 pm to go to the retreat center and it efficiently took me back to the airport. I suspect that, in spite of the fact that most Danish people speak English quite a lot better than I do, knowing how to read Danish would’ve been an advantage here.

I went back to the central station and obsessively asked many people to confirm I was on the right platform and train before letting my mind sink into a relaxing ride to Holbaek – a little town by the North sea where I would spend the next 8 days.

Stay tuned for part 2…

Comfortable and Numb

I like being comfortable and happy. It feels good.

But I’ve also realized that it’s the times when I’m not very comfortable or happy that I do the most waking up – and that psychological pain is the most effective alarm clock – the greatest opportunity for growth and for deeper, real happiness.

In 2006, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth deftly changed the cultural understanding of the severity of the climate crisis. He pleaded for us to collectively wake up, smell the toxic brew and do something about it.

Gore encapsulates our mass, convenient denial this way: “The Earth is so big, we can’t possibly have any lasting, harmful impact on the Earth’s environment.”

But the inconvenient truth is that our lifestyle has radically altered the viablity of life on this planet.

Inconvenient truths are reflected in myriad ways throughout our individual lives also. And it’s the adept, practiced denial of those truths that throws the biggest wrench in our personal transformation process.

The tireless advocacy of environmental activists and organizations has inspired a radical consciousness shift in western culture. But once you wake us up, it’s hard to keep us awake. The media has kind of lost interest in climate change – have we’ve psychically numbed ourselves to the fact that this summer has been the hottest on record?

“Don’t look!” The other day my friend covered my eyes as we walked by a parked car with a bird impaled on its grill. The injunction to protect ourselves from the horrors of the world, and from the horrors of our own being, is deeply engrained and nothing new.

Buddha’s father kept him palace-bound until he was 29 – if he doesn’t see how bad things are out there, he rationalized, maybe I can dodge the prophecy and he can take over as the heir to the kingdom instead of becoming a yogi.

Both the world and each of us individually are full of inconvenient truths – and waking up to external horrors, while unpleasant, is a lot easier than seeing them within ourselves. Waking up is painful and if we decide to stay awake, we realize we’ll have to change. Buddha woke up first to the suffering of the world, but then he spent years mining his own dysfunction and pain. Nothing comfortable and happy about living in the woods – but it afforded him the opportunity to unearth and battle his “stuff” so that he could wake up completely.

Why should feeling good and being temporarily happy trump real transformation? What is the sustainability of life dedicated to comfort and happiness and all costs? The west is living in the last days of the Roman Empire of unsustainability – if we don’t consciously make changes inside and out, they will necessarily be made for us.

What is the personal sustainability of the teachings of some new-age gurus who pedal wisdom like “the path of least resistance”? Or who coddle our egos with the very comfortable assurance that we are already enlightened? Or those who offer chocolate and wine with yoga as just a natural extension of the feel-good experience of asanas?

Addiction is not something confined to alcohol and drugs. It is the default mode of our entire culture – carefully crafted to keep us comfortable and happy at the expense of any real personal or social change. Too much tv, coffee, shopping, sex, junk food, gossip, sugar, reality shows, Facebook, and Twitter are just the tip of the addiction iceberg. We become increasingly dependent on that which numbs the pain and keeps us comfortable.

We also become increasingly dysfunctional because the addiction gradually fails us. You have to do more to get the same amount of happiness and comfort.

Popular culture encourages us to indulge our dysfunction. You have to increase the levels of denial, go deeper to sleep, to keep yourself happily dependent on your dysfunctional behavior and thoughts.  Comfort and happiness keep us in our addictions. All of our addictions and addictive behaviors are simply the misguided, desperate desire in all of us for the limitless.

“The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.”  – Albert Einstein

Are struggle, pain and real happiness mutually exclusive? Can’t you open to grace and feel the love even while admitting to yourself that you need to change? The path of yoga is not a path intended to help you maximize happiness and comfort while eschewing personal and collective transformation. Real happiness comes only from a relentless, but contented, commitment to waking up.

Clean Up the Oil Spill with Your Consciousness

Yoga means union. What I often hear yoga teachers say after that is “union of the body, mind and spirit.” And that’s very nice, but then I wonder about everything that’s outside of me. What about other people, plants and animals, my noisy neighbors with the dog who poops in my echinacea? My son’s patronizing music teacher? Lady Gaga?

My 6 year old’s sweet bedtime story says, “All I see is part of me.” That sounds good. I realize my annoyance with people is Spirit’s way of waving a big black flag at the drag race in my head – “Violation! Pull over!” But perhaps thinking everything is my creation could send me down the slippery slope of indulgent self-importance, which sounds kind of antithetical to yoga.

Do I just find my own private union on my own little Manduka mat island and ignore the annihilation of the Gulf of Mexico? Blowing off the world’s problems and focusing on only my own personal liberation sounds like spirituality’s version laissez-faire capitalism. But I come from a culture that has a tendency to celebrate pluralism and radical individualism and ignore the toxic, narcissistic byproducts that it off-gases.

Am I directly responsible for the oil spill? Yes and no. In an Ultimate Spiritual Truth kind of way, yes, I created it, I need to fix it. In an everyday, relative lower case “truth” kind of way, no, but I still should help fix it.

How? I’m a yoga teacher not a petroleum engineer.

My favorite Einstein overly quoted quote:

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

The yogis broke down the human being into 5 layers or koshas – the body, the prana, the mind, the supermind or (wisdom mind), the layer of bliss. The system of yoga practices, with a focus on meditation, help to expand the self into the higher koshas. Get us out of the mind that created the problem, escort us deeper into the layers that can solve it. The world is screaming for higher consciousness.

There’s this thing you might have heard of called Distributed Computing. It combines the unused processing-power of multiple Internet connected computers for number crunching. So when you’re not using it, your computer uses its idle time to do research. One of the standouts is Standford University’s Folding@Home which is using the computers of millions of people to do research on Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cancer.

So I got to thinking… What if all meditators participated in Distributed Consciousness? Every time we meditate we intend part of the concentrated consciousness of our higher minds to be used by a central consciousness server, to solve problems – like the Gulf, or Haiti, war in Afghanistan, or a suffering relative. Maybe we’re not even aware of how it’s being used, but we offer it up. Use our mindspace to do the necessary calculations to solve problems. Find that level of consciousness that Einstein says we need to work from.

Maybe the central consciousness server will upload our data and deliver it to the right person or people. Teilhard call this collective intelligence the no-osphere. He believed that we are co-creators of our destiny, that we have a direct hand in it. And that an overarching Consciousness is always there waiting for us to tap in and fiddle with it.

“Not only do we read in our slightest acts the secrets of [evolutions] proceedings; but for an elementary part we hold it in our hands, responsibile for its past to its future.”

Maybe real union is not just about our own personal liberation but about coming together in a synergy of consciousness – both in our practices and also out in the world.

The Transcendental Meditation experiment in 1993 showed a dramatic drop (23%) in violent crime in Washington D.C. when 4000 people meditated for peace between June 7 and July 30.

Why stop the experiment? How much chaos and trauma has to be created before we reach a critical mass of people willing to sit down and expand their consciousness for the good of all?

Something from Andrew Harvey:

“I know there is only one way out of our horror – that of a global revolution in consciousness that expresses itself urgently in radical wise action. And I know too, that if enough human beings became revolutionaries of sacred love the species could be transformed and co-create with the divine a new way of being and doing everything. I know also that my responsibility in knowing these truths is to embody them as completely and humbly as I can…”

What if we all sat down and closed our eyes and allowed our mindspace to be used for research?

It’s Summer Solstice – Why not Get Out there and Salute the Sun?

In yoga, the sun symbolizes spirituality and the movement of the sun, the process of awakening. The solstice is a bittersweet turning point in the year. Sweet because the sun is so strong and full of potential – all the inner and outer work of the previous months is coming to fruition. Bitter because this is the day the light begins its decline.

The hopeful beauty of yoga philosophy reminds us that regardless of where we are in the year, there is always an inner sun which can shine. Sun salutations can fire this inner light. The practice serves not only to show reverence to the  physical and spiritual Source of life, but also to remind us that, our very essence is, in fact the sun. We are fractals – unique replications of the Cosmic reality.

The Sun Salutation, or Surya Namaskar is an ancient practice, but it became popular through the efforts of HH Meherban Shrimant Raja Bhavan Rao Shrinivas, the King of Aundh in the early part of the 20^th century.

Variations were adopted by both Swami Sivananda and Krishnamacharya and were carried into all the schools those systems have influenced – including Integral yoga, Ashtanga, Vinyasa and the grandchildren of these systems.

The mantras I’m chanting on the recording here are actually from the Ramayana, but were linked to the Surya Namaskar by Swami Satyananda of the Bihar School of Yoga. Sometimes they are performed at the beginning of the practice, other times with the movement. Swami Satyananda claimed that the 12 poses of the sun salutation done rhythmically, reflects the rhythms of the universe – the 12 months and zodiac signs – and that applying the form and rhythm of Surya Namaskar to the body generates a transformational force. His mantras really give a deep rhythmic resonance to the practice – students frequently comment how much deeper the chanting takes them.

When applying mantras to Surya Namaskar, first go into the numbered position, take a breath, and then exhale with the mantra. Start on the right side the first time. And then the left the second time. Repeat 6-8 times. It’s slower when you practice Sun Salutes with mantras, but the effect is really mind-blowing. Give it a try and see for yourself.

I recorded the mantras so you can hear what they should sound like (or at least approximately – I’m no Sanskrit scholar, but I think I’ve squeezed most of the Jersey girl out of my voice) The first time I include the English translations – the second two times are just Sanskrit so you can really get into the hypnotic flow of the mantras. Hope you enjoy it!

1. Mountain pose with hands at heart   Aum mitraya namah salutations to the friend of all
2. Stretch the arms up and back Aum ravayé namah salutations to the shining one
3. Fold Forward               Aum suryaya namah salutations to the supreme light
4. Right leg back to lunge              Aum bhanavé namah salutations to the illuminator
5. Down Dog                               Aum khagaya namah salutations to the one who moves through the sky
6. Knees/chest/chin to the floor     Aum pushné namah salutations to the giver of strength
7. Cobra                          Aum hiranya garbhaya namah salutations to the golden, cosmic Self
8. Down Dog                               Aum marichayé namah salutations to the lord of the dawna
9. Right leg forward to lunge                     Aum adityaya namah salutations to the son of the cosmic mother
10. Left leg forward to fold                         Aum savitré namah salutations to the lord of creation
11. Arms up over head                   Aum arkaya namah salutations to the one who is fit to be praised
12. Hands at Heart                                     Aum bhaskaraya namah salutations to the one who leads to enlightenment

Click the link below to hear the mantras.

salutations to the sun mantras 2

Sioux Prayer Request

This is an open letter from Chief Arvol Looking Horse
(Present Chief and Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe of the
Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Nation of the Sioux)

Gulf Coast Oil Spill – Sioux Prayer Request

A Great Urgency

To All Nations
My Relatives,

Time has come to speak to the hearts of our Nations and their Leaders. I ask you this from the bottom of my heart, to come together from the Spirit of your Nations in prayer.

We, from the heart of Turtle Island, have a great message for the World; we are guided to speak from all the White Animals showing their sacred color, which have been signs for us to pray for the sacred life of all things. As I am sending this message to you, many Animal Nations are being threatened, those that swim, those that crawl, those that fly, and the plant Nations, eventually all will be affected from the oil disaster in the Gulf.

The dangers we are faced with at this time are not of spirit. The catastrophe that has happened with the oil spill which looks like the bleeding of Grandmother Earth, is made by human mistakes, mistakes that we cannot afford to continue to make.

I asked, as Spiritual Leaders, that we join together, united in prayer with the whole of our Global Communities. My concern is these serious issues will continue to worsen, as a domino effect that our Ancestors have warned us of in their Prophecies.

I know in my heart there are millions of people that feel our united prayers for the sake of our Grandmother Earth are long overdue. I believe we as Spiritual people must gather ourselves and focus our thoughts and prayers to allow the healing of the many wounds that have been inflicted on the Earth. As we honor the Cycle of Life, let us call for Prayer circles globally to assist in healing Grandmother Earth (our Unc’I Maka).

We ask for prayers that the oil spill, this bleeding, will stop. That the winds stay calm to assist in the work. Pray for the people to be guided in repairing this mistake, and that we may also seek to live in harmony, as we make the choice to change the destructive path we are on.

As we pray, we will fully understand that we are all connected. And that what we create can have lasting effects on all life.

So let us unite spiritually, All Nations, All Faiths, One Prayer. Along with this immediate effort, I also ask to please remember June 21st, World Peace and Prayer Day/Honoring Sacred Sites day. Whether it is a natural site, a temple, a church, a synagogue or just your
own sacred space, let us make a prayer for all life, for good decision making by our Nations, for our children’s future and well-being, and the generations to come.

Onipikte (that we shall live),

Chief Arvol Looking Horse
19th generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe

Celibacy and Divine Chewing

Brahmacarya is the sun which the rest of the yamas orbit around

“If we even occasionally experience our immersion within a universe that is a vast, multidimentional living organism, that experience will naturally foster a profoundly ethical posture toward the totality of life.” – Duane Elgin

The Yamas and Niyamas are the 10 ethical principles of yoga which were outlined by Patanjali about 2000 years ago in the Yoga Sutras. The word “ethics” tends to make my eyes glaze over. So for a long time I just ignored them – I spent many years recovering from the firey torture of 10 other set-in-stone rules – no desire to replace them with a more exotic version, thank you very much.

But as my yoga journey continued I began to realize the importance of the yamas and niyamas in my own life – not as roadblocking rules, but as fluid streams of consciousness that permeate the universe and lead me to balance. When I ride those streams I am privy to new levels of awareness. I began to realize that the yamas and niyamas are woven into the very fabric of consciousness. Understanding and abiding in them became more about relating to them as internal barometers and less about adhering to externally imposed dictates.

Some of it is really obvious. Ahimsa (pronounced ah-heeng-sah) for example, the first of the yamas, means non-harming. In general, not harming others – in any way, actions, words or even thoughts – creates a sense of inner peace. So what I began to understand is that the yamas and niyamas, are not only ethical guidelines, they are in effect, a very powerful mental health strategy.

The ethics of yoga are split into two categories because the first five (the yamas) have to do with our relationship to other people or the path of social integration, and the second five (the niyamas) have to do with our relationship with ourselves, or the path of personal integration.

The yamas include the principles of ahimsa (non-harming), satya (honesty), asteya (non-stealing) and aparigraha (non-hoarding) and have to do with how we relate to the external world. The most controversial is Brahmacarya. In India Brahmacarya is typically translated as “celibacy.” In the west it started to emerge with more watered-down translations such as “continence,” “abstinence,” or “self-control.”

But if you break down the Sanskrit, the literal translation of brahmacarya is “to walk while you are chewing on the Divine.” In other words to ruminate upon the Divine in everything and everyone you encounter, in every situation, in every moment, in every breath.

If we translate it this way, brahmacarya becomes the sun of the yamas and the rest of them orbit around it in a strikingly beautiful concordance.

The literal meaning of brahmacarya is much more relevant to the yamas, because they have to do with our relationship to the external world. Sexuality is a pretty personal thing, if you think it’s important enough to include in ethical principles, you’d at least want to put it in the category of the niyamas, maybe under tapas (the burning effort – hmm, that sounds about right).

But trying not to have sex with everyone you encounter is not really in the same category as non-harming and being honest with them (unless you are in need of some serious therapy).

Approaching every situation and person in a spirit of non-harming, honesty, non-stealing and non-hoarding makes sense if every situation and person is an opportunity to see everything as an encounter with the Divine.

Patanjali wrote in the Yoga Sutras, “To those who are established in Brahmacarya, great strength (virya) is available.” (2.38) Yeah, if you are having a lot of sex you might not have much energy for other pursuits. But I think he meant something much subtler. If you know where your energy is truly coming from (hint: it’s not your fourth cup of coffee), you can do anything, anything is possible. You’ll have tons of energy.

Without applying the literal translation of brahmacarya, the whole system of the yamas disintegrates.

More to come on the niyama star system…

So How is the Subtle Yoga Training Different?

Here’s a letter I received today

Kaoverii,
I have talked to you before about the possibility of completing teacher training with you (which would be amazing for me!) Timewise, though, Stephanie Keach has an opening this summer that works for me. I don’t know her at all. How would you characterize her style compared to yours(if I may be so bold as to ask?)
Thank you so much,
L

And here’s my response:

I realize it is difficult to find the right program to fit your needs in all ways. And I only offer my program currently as a 10 or 11 month extended training.

Actually there are a few different teacher trainings in Asheville, not to mention all over the country! But I think it would be inappropriate for me to analyze other programs.

I do think my program is unique in many key ways. I think the whole purpose of doing yoga is transformation. And I don’t just use the word “transformation,” because it’s catchy, I actually provide a clear and effective process for it – my whole program centers around it.

I focus on helping students open to subtle understandings that form a bridge between mundane and spiritual knowledge. This includes a strong emphasis on epistemology – understanding how we know about ourselves, the world, and about yoga and how that knowledge can help expand us.

I conduct the training over a longer period in order to allow the cultivation of a personal practice — and this centers around developing a strong, daily meditation practice. Asanas and other practices serve to support this intention and to help facilitate personal growth and transformation. The shorter term program has some limits in the sense that there is less time for integration – however I will be teaching a 3 week training in Copenhagen in August – so if you feel like coming to Denmark…;->

Additionally my program is carefully, progressively designed – the knowledge builds on itself and results in a broad and deep understanding of the yoga tradition, history and practice. I delineate a solid rationale and techniques for using yoga to help balance the neuro-endocine system and through it, the mind, in order to facilitate personal transformation. So the teaching always revolves around this central understanding and purpose.

Another point is that the program emphasizes the group process. I keep the group small – generally 12-15. This facilitates the solid development of satsaunga (spiritual company).

I also have a therapist on staff to help during our monthly group processing sessions. And we periodically take on seva/service projects together (like helping out at the community gardens in one of the projects or visiting a nursing home).

The service projects serve both as karma yoga and also as a wonderful way for the group to experience their collective power. I actually spent a lot of time on the phone convincing Yoga Alliance that our projects are “real” yoga. When they finally did understand my rationale, I set a precedent for yoga trainings all over the country to begin to teach karma yoga or seva as part of an authentic yoga training. These sessions continually prove to be some of the most powerful personal experiences for students in the program (and certainly highlights!).

I hope this is helpful!

Knowing Something About Yoga

What do you need when you come to yoga?

A mat is a good idea. But then there’s also the mind. I’m not suggesting that you need to tote along a particular mindset, but I do think you at least need to know that you didn’t show up without one, that one is hitchhiking along in your mat bag.

So, if you’re a yoga student or a yoga teacher, looking at the contents of your mat bag might help you get more out of your practice. If you can stop and look at your worldview and your thinking architecture and also what you want from your life and your practice, you’ll get more out of yoga.

I like to do this with my students through a questioning process:

Why do you want to do yoga?
How do you know about yoga?
What are the underlying assumptions you make about it?
What is your thinking about yoga and where does it come from?
Is it useful? How?
What are other ways that other people think about yoga? Are these useful for you?
Why or why not?

This process can help students see the fullness of yoga and make decisions about why to do it from a clearer understanding of themselves and their needs. My students frequently come to me and say things like,

“Hey Kaoverii, what do you think about Jiivamukti yoga?”

“What do you think about Anusara yoga?”

My answer is always the same, “Why do you want to do yoga?” All styles are valid, they all have their purposes and their special flare. But the more important question is why do you want to do yoga? If you are clear on that question, you can fairly evaluate any yoga style for yourself.

Most people are not used to examining their worldviews – so when I teach about epistemology, I try to keep the process as simple as possible and allow for lots of time for integrating (using some movement). And yet this is really the most important foundational piece in determining why you should do or teach yoga, or why you should do anything really.

In the west, yoga has mostly been relegated to the realm of fitness and secondarily to the realm of therapeutics because of our western scientific mindsets – we can fit it in to those paradigms without having to examine the  paradigms themselves and their inherent problems. And yet yoga has the capacity to create a geometrical progression of our minds and beings if we are able to think about it and use it differently — if we are able to think about ourselves differently.

Thinking differently is also foundational for any problem solving –

“You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.”

So the idea is to examine our thinking paradigms in order to use yoga, not just as an Rx for a myriad of issues, but as a holistic transformational process. I begin my Subtle Yoga Teacher Training and Personal Transformation program with a whole weekend exploring this topic to help ground students in the why of yoga and the why of personal transformation.

If you dive underneath all of the benefits of yoga and look at how you look at it, it can help you contextualize your personal needs and the thinking and needs of your students. Then you can understand your drives and motives better – and get a whole lot more of what you need out of your practice.

How I Found Out What Fasting is Really All About

Fasting and Oreo Hallucinations

In November of 1994 I was cold, thirsty and several miles from something safe to drink. I dipped my green plastic water bottle into what, I convinced myself, was a very clean looking Himalayan stream. Dropped in a couple of iodine tablets and half waited for them to dissolve. Then I drank the koolaid.

Later that day I found a guest house and passed out under my sleeping bag in a small cold room. In the middle of the night, I woke up with horrible stomach cramps and stumbled to the outhouse, which, incidentally, sat perched over a very clean looking Himalayan stream ;-> After some wonderful diarrhea and a little exciting vomiting I emerged and promptly passed out a little too close to the edge of a cliff. I remember, as I came to, noticing that the stars were startlingly vivid.

For the next three or four days I ate very little, slept a lot and got to know the outhouse quite well. Finally I felt strong enough to continue my trek. And after a few days I got out of the mountains and continued my travels around south Asia, but the mountains never really got out of me. I had diarrhea every day for almost a year after that.

When I returned to the states I had numerous tests, saw lots of doctors and natural healers and did what I could to get the Giardia out of my body. I got a lot better and gained the knowledge of how to maintain a decent level of health – but even after all these years, my digestive system has never fully recovered.

So three weekends ago I decided to try something I hadn’t – long fasting. I attended a yoga detox retreat taught by a yogi who probably weighs about as much as I did in seventh grade. But he claims to have tons of energy, sleep 4 hours a night and rarely get sick. And did I mention he could eat? I saw some serious putting away – mostly salad, fruit and vegetables but still, quite an appetite for a really skinny guy. Now I’m not interested in regular long term fasting or reviving long dead disordered eating patterns – but I thought a cleansing fast might help –  I’ve tried just about everything else.

Day one we fasted on juice and broth. Pretty easy, I’ve been doing one day fasts for years so, no biggie. Day two was optional, lots of people broke their fasts, but I, along with a few others, decided since I was feeling okay that I’d keep going. I had more juice and broth. The detox guru said that if you feel hungry, try drinking a big glass of salted lemon water – then you’ll know if what you are feeling is real hunger or what he called “demon hunger” – acidity welling up in your digestive tract as you go through your detox process. If you’re not hungry after the lemon water, then you’re being haunted by your “demons” – keep fasting until you are really hungry.

Day three – I was back home now, out of the security of a fasting community and people to make fresh juice for me. I cooked for my family, taught a yoga class, went to Earthfare and bought a kale, spinach, cucumber, wheatgrass, and parsley juice (yeah, it was just as nasty as it sounds). Then I went home and worked. I got pretty hungry, but the lemon water helped. In the evening I had more juice and went to bed early.

Day four is when the Oreo hallucinations began. Was that an Oreo on my desk? On the dash board? I don’t think I’ve actually eaten an Oreo since the early nineties. There they were haunting me. I Facebooked my dilemma. My friend Sam encouraged me to try juicing some. I settled for more kale broth.

That evening I quelled the demon hunger with several glasses of salted lemon water. The hunger kept subsiding. But the acidity was becoming more and more uncomfortable. I taught a yoga class, or rather floated around the room in a haze trying to remember if which side we were on.

The morning of the fifth day I woke up dizzy, drank a big glass of water with apple cider vinegar (I was out of lemons at this point), dragged myself to the bathroom and promptly vomited. Then I collapsed on the couch to enjoy some soft moaning. That felt good. I was planning on a 7 or 8 day fast and wondering what the heck to do now. I had to take my son and his friend to school but that wasn’t happening any time soon. They played with Starwars Legos and gave me funny looks between light saber battles. I cancelled my clients.

I began to recall details of lying in the small cold room in Nepal sick with Giardia and what I was going through then – a failing relationship, gnawing insecurities, deep longing to find some personal meaning. My nausea then was in many ways a rejection of my life – an inability to “stomach” it or assimilate it. Then I went back further to high school and my not atypical teenage self-loathing and bulimia, diet pills that made my head tingle, iceberg lettuce salad with non-fat Italian dressing and fake bacon bits, followed by three chocolate chip cookie lunches. Lots of hungry afternoons. Fear – not having the guts to grow up.

I quit dwelling on the past long enough to call my friend Cindy – she’s a wonderful yogini and nutritionist. I told her my dilemma. Wisely advising the obvious she said, “Probably at this point, you should break your fast.” Kindness and the permission to not be a perfect yogi. What a relief. Her compassion pushed me from melancholy to gratitude.

She recommended spirulina and advised that I tune in to what my body was telling me it needed. After fasting for more than four days I had become pretty good at convincing my body that it really didn’t need to tell me anything, so that was a challenge. The only thing that sounded bearable was almond milk.

So I warmed some up and added a little spirulina. I had to dilute it with water because it seemed so rich. I slowly sipped a cup, and felt like I was returning from the ethers to the planet I belonged on. I was able to release more toxins from the proper orifice. Then I started to feel very clear and awake.

I took my son and his friend to school which is at a church that happens to have a beautiful white stone labyrinth on the premises. I hadn’t sat for meditation that morning so instead of racing home to work, I decided to meditate under the tree next to the labyrinth.

I closed my eyes and began my practice. My senses felt acute.  I noticed the birds singing but it sounded more like they were chanting mantras all around me. The labyrinth began to glow in my mind’s eye and I imagined I was walking it with my spiritual teacher while karmas untangled. Then we sat at the center in meditation and the labyrinth turned into the cosmos – white light emanating from the middle out into the dancing periphery. I was flooded with ecstasy.

Then came relief, gratitude and tears for this beautiful world that I get to live in, for the abundance of healthy food I have access to, for the people who love and support me, for being gifted with a chronic health issue that gave rise to this spiritual, emotional and physical healing process.

Perhaps I was gifted with a tiny sliver of insight into why the Buddha fasted, why Jesus fasted, why Native Americans fast, why great saints have always fasted and recommended fasting. Fasting is not only about cleansing the body, and it certainly is not confined to the realm of penance – what it does hold is the possibility of blasting open the heart. After his long fast the Buddha ate sweet rice and touched the earth. Fasting opened him to enlightenment, to the beauty of this world, and to the simplicity and rightness of the human experience.

For me fasting opened up my perspective to witness the welcoming arms of mother-love vibrating through my experiences, the support and embrace of the world, the nurturing of food and relationships, to my never invalid or pointless reasons for being here.

When I was in high school I denied myself food out of self-loathing. This time I did it out of hope for healing – the result was a deep experience of  acceptance, clarity and love. Om shanti.

The Gulf Disaster: 5 Yogic Things You Can Do Right Now to Help

What’s a yogi to do when you hear about dead dolphins washing up on shore in Louisiana, tar balls assaulting Key West and oil soon to be snaking its way up the East Coast?

Despair and paralysis aren’t terribly helpful at this point.

Our actions right now need to be deliberate and potent. We have the choice to make this event the pivotal shift in human consciousness towards real sustainability – it’s an opportunity for tremendous change.

Yogic teachings guide towards the right course of action in any situation. Yoga practices can strengthen our third chakra – the abode of will and resolve – and fire that strength up into our hearts so that we can act with compassion in order to make a difference out there where it’s so desperately needed right now.

An effective response necessitates that we raise our vibration to meet the challenge, that we thoughtfully and lovingly respond to this crisis from our highest part of ourselves.

So here are 5 yogic things you can do right now to help:

1. Raise Your Vibration: Sadhana
Sadhana means “to make an effort through practice.” If you’re a meditator, meditate more, if you’re a kirtan enthusiast, don’t stop singing, if you get your groove on by praying, keep it up, if you touch bliss in your asana practice, do more.

Whatever it is that makes you respond from the highest part of your being – maintain and strengthen that practice in order to raise your vibration. The people, animals and plants of the gulf need you to keep practicing so that you can respond to their need from a centered place.

Any obstacle can be overcome when we approach it from the highest part of ourselves – and we get to that part of ourselves through practice. Patanjali wrote Vishoka Va Jyotishmati – “Stabilize the mind by focusing on that which is peaceful and on the Light within.” With a stable, concentrated mind, your actions will be powerful and meaningful– and they’ll make a difference.

2. Take a Pro-active Intention: Bhavana
Hoping and praying for the best, for the highest good for all beings can go a long way. The idea of Bhavana is to then act on that intention. Whatever you decide to do, do it with the idea that your actions line up with your intention and your intention is for the highest good.

Cynicism, skepticism, doubt and depression are serious liabilities in the face of urgency. We are being called to raise ourselves up out of the muck of our individual vrittis (emotional tendencies) and harness all our capacities to swiftly and efficiently address the problem at hand.

3. Apply Critical Thinking: Viveka
One of the best bhavanas is the intention to think differently.Viveka is the practice of expanding your mind so that you can approach challenges with a keen intellect and clear insight. Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

We need to be thinking in ways that address the whole web of issues at hand – economic, social, environmental, corporate, political and individual. Then we need to figure out not only how we are going to clean up the mess – but also plan how to prevent manmade environmental disasters from  happening again, and use the impetus of the disaster to change how we live and use energy.

One way to apply Viveka is to talk to people you wouldn’t usually talk to. You could call this transdisciplinary, systems thinking. What are your skills? Identify them and then communicate with others who have completely different perspectives and skill sets. What could a marine biologist, a minister, a truck driver, a social networking junkie, an engineer, a retired math teacher, a city council person, a grandmother and an 8 year old soccer player come up with together? Talk to the people who look at the world entirely differently than you do, network, form alliances and small groups. Some amazing solutions will begin to emerge for a wide range of social challenges.

4. Be Humble, Ask the Right Questions and Offer Your Service: Pranipatena, Pariprashena, Sevaya
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna said, “Know by your humility, by asking the right questions, and by your service; Wise ones who see reality will give you knowledge.” This is one of the many formulas given in the Gita for taking right action and I think it speaks for itself -  ask lots of questions and listen with an open mind. Offer yourself and your skills in the spirit of selfless service – and the best part about service is that you are the main benefactor.

Krishna is also the dude who admonishes us not to be attached to the outcomes of our actions. Do the right thing, just do the right thing and don’t worry about the results. It’s the doing that matters.

5. Do the Right Thing: Karma and Dharma
Karma literally means “taking action” and here by dharma I mean something like “social justice.” If you apply the above principles, you can take firm and clear action. There is nothing wrong with channeling the motivational force of anger and disgust into doing the right thing. In fact, it has been an essential component of the strategies of all great people who’ve changed the world from Buddha to Jesus to Gandhi and Martin Luther King. But all of them refined, honed and strengthened their fire with spiritual practice.

Do something and do it in the spirit of the highest good. Not because BP, Haliburton and Transocean are evil corporate pigs we should despise, but because the world is fundamentally a beautiful place full of love and we should preserve and celebrate consciousness whenever and wherever we can. Sometimes that requires telling people that they are doing something wrong and stopping them from continuing to do it. Petitions, letters to Congress, showing up at rallies, Facebook pages, there are endless ways. Know your skills and apply them.

It’s always better to take some action than to do nothing.  Here’s a list of things US News and World Report recommended for helping out in the gulf.

And if you still can’t think of anything to do here’s a sixth idea:

Shave Your Head (I don’t know the Sanskrit word for this, but I’m sure there is one) – Hair absorbs oil and they want to use it on the beaches to help clean up the spill. Your whole family including the dog and cat can contribe. It would be a true and simple gift of yourself – as an added bonus, your friends might think you’ve become a Buddhist monk.