5 Yogic Tips To Make Your New Year’s Resolutions Stick…and 6 good habits to cultivate

“Every year I try eat better,” a yoga student Jen, told me in a frustration-tinged tone, “And I do really well for a while, but then I start to notice, around the end of February, that my old habits have come back and I’m eating candy bars again every day. I just don’t know how to make it stick.”

Habits, whether good, bad or neutral, comprise much of our daily activity. Brushing your teeth, meditating and taking a shower are all habitual activities. But so is eating junk food, biting your nails, negative self-talk and spending too much time on Facebook. How do you make New Year’s Resolutions stick? Whether you’re trying to lose weight, quit smoking, stop eating sugar, or just trying to get to bed earlier here are some yoga ideas about employing the power of yoga and making it work for you so that your New Year’s Resolutions actually become healthy habits.

These also happen to be some of the core principles of my Subtle Yoga Training and Personal Transformation Program –  a unique journey toward becoming the kind of authentic, inspiring yoga teacher the world is waiting for.

1. Satsaunga (keeping good company)

We make a big mistake in our thinking about habits when we define them as purely individual behaviors and choices. In reality they have as much (perhaps more) to do with your social circumstances as they do with you personally. Many habits are the indirect, tremendously complex result of your social network. According to the folks who conducted the Framingham Heart Study, “When smokers kick the habit, odds are they are not alone in making the move. Instead, the decision to quit smoking often cascades through social networks, with entire clusters of spouses, friends, siblings and co-workers giving up the habit roughly in tandem, according to a new study supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).”

The Framingham study found that if someone you didn’t even know – a friend of your friend’s friend – quit smoking, you were 9 percent more likely to quit yourself. This means that people you don’t even know influence your habits. And guess what, if your best friend becomes obese, your chances of heading that way go up 171 percent. Is that a good enough reason for you to schedule regular yoga classes with your friends?

The yoga tradition recommends satsaunga or “keeping good company.” Perhaps the most powerful thing you can do to change your habits is hang out with people with good ones and encourage them in others.

2. Create Good Habits

One of my yoga teachers said to me, “Don’t worry about your bad habits, just meditate every day and see what happens.” We had been talking about whether or not it’s okay to drink alcohol, eat meat, stay up late and other habits yogis generally eschew. She explained that it’s not so much about steeling your will against what you should not be doing, but rather paying attention to cultivating what is good for you. Here are a few of my faves:

1. Exercise – do I really need to say why? The more important question is this: How does your social situation/life support this? Do you need an exercise buddy? Can you scrape your spouse off the couch to join you? How can you make this fun, easy and something you will actually do regularly.
2. Be in Nature – find someplace not too far from home and go there to breathe, walk, be – twice a week.
3. Hydrate – if you use a quart-sized Ball jar, you can easily keep track and the amount varies from person to person. I try to drink at least three in the winter (a lot in the form of herbal tea) and more in the summer starting 30 minutes after or finishing 30 minutes before eating.
4. Eat like a real person – I’m serious! It’s much better to have hearty, healthy meals than it is to be plagued by late night snack attacks that pack on the pounds. Smoothies and tea are great, but they do not constitute three meals a day. Remember, cultivate the good habits! For example, eat a lot of steamed veggies or salad at the beginning of your meals – this will go a long way towards helping you attain a healthy weight. Don’t worry so much about what not to eat, rather focus on enjoying the good things.
5. Put your legs up the wall – if I could only bottle this pose! The yogis called it “the reversing process” it’s an amazing way to relax and to help correct a spectrum of imbalances. The benefits of regularly stimulating the relaxation response should not be underestimated and I know of no yoga pose that does it better.
6. Get to bed by 10 pm – well, this is one I don’t always follow, but I do try hard, especially if I’m really run down, to remember how much better I feel when I’m rested. Chinese medicine folks say that every hour you sleep before midnight is equal to two hours. Sleep is good.

3. Visualize it, Believe it

Quantum physics has confirmed an important insight that yoga masters have understood for centuries – mind can control matter. Allowing the mind to stray into its old patterns is simply self-defeating fatalism: “I am just a heavyset person, that’s the way my whole family is, it’s genetic” or “I am a night owl and that’s when I do my best work and even though I’d like to sleep better, I just can’t.”

If we are really limitless as the teachings of yoga tell us, then why do we place these deterministic, tired old restrictions on ourselves? If you are really the universe, then how can you simply give up and resign yourself to being a chocoholic? One way of remembering your limitlessness is to be vigilant about catching yourself in your thinking patterns.

Here’s what Patanjali said: “Vitarka Bhadane Pratipaksa Bhavanam” If you’re plagued by a negative thought, cultivate its opposite. What is one thought that irritates you regularly? Find it’s opposite, see how it feels when you say it to yourself – say it over and over until you feel it, until you really believe it.

4. Silence Please

But like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Patanjali’s pratipaksa practice has its limits. This is because negative thoughts are often actually feeling patterns which are carved into the limbic brain – creating a shift with your rational front brain that percolates down into the depths of your non-verbal reptilian self may not be possible.

But yoga offers a powerful way to shift out of deeply held mindsets – meditation. Preferably twice a day, even if it’s just for 2-3 minutes upon waking and before going to sleep. It will help you connect with your Source, activate your relaxation response and put things into perspective.

Neuroscientist mapping the brain states accessed during meditation say that meditation slows the patterns called delta waves. These patterns, similar to those activated in deep sleep are associated with healing the body. Meditators learn to access this deep state consciously.

And if you’re resistant to meditation, or think that you are the kind of person who can’t do it, ask yourself this: What is more important than your emotional/spiritual growth? Traditionally for yogis, meditation has been the paramount practice because it is the ultimate tool for real, lasting personal transformation.

5. Gratitude

Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California at Riverside is studying the effects of keeping a “gratitude journal.” According to an article in Time magazine, Lyubomirsky found “ that taking the time to conscientiously count their blessings once a week significantly increased subjects’ overall satisfaction with life over a period of six weeks, whereas a control group that did not keep journals had no such gain.”

While research this is inspiring, I’m much more interested in why and how gratitude works. I simply feel better when I’m in a state of gratitude. And being in that state then activates the relaxation response causing me to do want to do more good things for myself.

As far as resolutions go, being grateful of what I have been able to do, the healthy habits I have created for myself, is a way to celebrate my health and being and helps me keep up the spirit all year long.

I don’t want to know what you are grateful for…What I want to know is how gratitude makes you feel

When I get asked to think about what I’m grateful for in a yoga class, it makes me feel like a naughty 5 year old.  I don’t want to think about what I’m grateful for, it makes me feel like I did something wrong and I have to atone for it by being good and pleasant.

So another season of gratitude is upon us and what I’ve learned from yoga is this: I don’t think it matters much what you’re grateful for, what I’d rather be asked is “How does it feel to be in a state of gratitude?”

I would request that you take a moment, close or lower your eyes, breathe deeply and sink into a state of gratitude. It doesn’t even have to have an object – just a feeling state of gratitude. And then when you get in that state ask yourself any of the following: How does it feel in your body? How does your breath feel? How does your heart feel? How does your face feel? How do your hands feel? How does your neck feel? How does your belly feel? What does your energy body feel like?

I asked the question on my Facebook page and got lots of amazing responses.

I assure you you’ll get much more out of this exercise than you will out of writing lengthy lists of people and things you are grateful for – not that that’s a bad idea – it just doesn’t get underneath it all to the feeling state.

And why get to the feeling state? Because from there you can make healthy grounded decisions – which you may need to make over the next couple of days. Perhaps the decision not to have that third piece of pecan pie, or not to drink another bottle of wine, or not to trash Glenn Beck to your obnoxious brother-in-law. Why not ask him how he feels when he’s in a state of gratitude? He might get it, I dare you!

We are acculturated to ignore the feelings in our bodies – it keeps us in a state of dis-ease where we are likely to consume more (fill in the blank) – so it works well for the status quo and the economy. But yoga helps us reclaim the body and own our feelings. And when we are aware of the body and of our feelings, we are more likely to trust and nurture ourselves, to be compassionate to others and to take positive, transformative action in the world. We are less likely to act from a place of reactivity and more likely to move from a place of centeredness, energy, passion and love.

I would suggest this holiday season to not only give thanks, but also to feel thanks.

Om shanti.

Homemade sattvic-ish Tofurkey – enjoy!

1 1/2 pounds tofu2 T arrowroot (or cornstarch)3 T Vogue Vegy Base (if you want to avoid the garlic and onions add some sage and basil, maybe corriander to the mix)3/4 tsp. sea salt1/4 tsp. white pepper1 1/2 tsp agar flakes or  (more cornstarch, you might need up to 2-1/2 T altogether)Sage Dressing (see below)2 T barley malt syrup, dissolved in a small amount of water (recipe calls for2 T water, but I found that to be too runny)

Agnisara – Strengthen Your Fire!

Getting ready for the winter requires more than just shopping for warm boots and extracting your mittens and scarves from a box in the closet – your body can adjust better to temperature change with a few simple yoga practices.

This is one of my favorite, called Agnisara mudra – it helps to stoke the fire of digestion so that you can transition into a more winter-ish diet more easily and the heavier food we’re more attracted to in the cold, and it also helps move your blood so you feel warmer.

Try it with me here in this short video:

You can do this practice three times – 2-3 times a day before meals. Make sure you really pull your belly (pubic bone to navel) as you exhale and press your fingers into your belly. It will help you digest your meals better, improve your energy and make you feel warmer.

Don’t do this practice if you are pregnant or menstruating or have a serious digestion issue.

Oh and BTW, it’s also a little mini-practice you can do any time so feel free to try it out first thing in the morning, even if you’re not doing any other asanas, it can help make that transition out of a warm bed into the snap of a cool autumn morning much more pleasant.

Om shanti

Training Yoga Teachers in Europe: Part 2

I’m on a Danish train, skipping along the tracks to a place called Vg. A town so tiny, they couldn’t be bothered giving it a vowel. It took about an hour and a half to get there from Copenhagen so I enjoyed the lulling rhythm of the train and dozed. In my jetlagged fog, I imagined I was riding Thomas the Train on the Island of Sodor.

I awoke sleepy and happy at a station full of Danish quaintness and was met by a lovely Portuguese woman in an old beat up steel blue car. She explained that she was the assistant/cook/driver for the teacher training, and that they had hired a Rent-a-Wreck to help with transportation for the month. Then she hoisted my stuff into the back seat and drove me another 25 minutes to the retreat center.

Drifting over rolling hills and fields of wildflowers, occasional windmills and spectacularly quaint Danish cottages, we arrived at the tiny dirt road driveway of the retreat center.

There I was waved to by yellow and purple wildflowers and an army of butterflies. I think from somewhere I heard choruses of “It’s a Small World” and caught glimpses of Disney characters fluttering in and out of the woods.

I could smell the sea, just a few kilometers away (did I just write “kilometers”, ooo, I’m feeling very sophisticated right now), and I realized that no matter how much I might have to do over the next nine days, there was no escaping relaxing in this setting.

When I arrived the students were warm and welcoming and it just kept getting toastier. So many sweet, amazing, accomplished, intelligent, thoughtful people. What is it with Europeans? I know it’s a tired stereotype, but it’s true, they are so mature. Their continent is mature – my culture feels so high school in comparison.

There were people from all over the place, Denmark of course, but also Sweden, England, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Iceland (A sweet reminder of my trip is that I now regularly find Icelandic on my Facebook page).  And with 40 people staying in close quarters, I was amazed that there were no big personality dramas, no seething passive aggressive conflicts, easy bathroom awareness protocols already in place, and, in general, not a whole lot of complaining going on.

While the trainees stayed together in a dormitory, I felt perfectly indulged in my private, six by eight foot Trappist monk-like quarters. It had a lovely view of an almost neon green meadow, sparsely populated by big brown cows who seemed to enjoying moo’ing me up in the morning for meditation.

We did the usual yoga training things: lots of pose break down, anatomy, pedagogy, philosophy, practicum.

My first lecture was on history – and unweaving the strands which entangle yoga, Tantra and Vedanta (Hinduism) is a complicated job (and I offer a nod to the help my friend Ramesh has given me in making sense of it all).

Personally, I love the trip – but I realize it can get tedious. Nevertheless there were lots of interesting questions and lots of dynamic, often heated, but always amiable, discussions.

Most of the rest of my workshops were technique-based.

Here I am teaching standing forward fold – Gary Kraftsow’s proprioceptive, hands down the back of the legs version. Watch the chin jut, please.

In the mornings we got up early for kirtan, meditation and asana practice. The center was surrounded by some of the most amazing, lush patches of nettles I’ve ever had the joy of being stung by. The second morning I went out for a little wander after class and heard them whispering to me beneath the breeze, “Your kidneys and brain need us. ”

So I got some rubber gloves from under the sink in the kitchen and snipped a colander full. Then I boiled a huge pot of water and immersed them. The tea was a thick, almost sensual dark green. I felt my jetlag ease.

I mothered the students with it, although they seemed to prefer orange or rosemary tea and “The Bread” – which was amazing and ubiquitous. Every morning we woke up to a small mountain of fresh bread – delivered at hours obscene even for the most ardent yogi, from the retreat center’s bakery. Danish bread is good, Danish yogi bread, divine.

One morning I decided we all needed more probiotics so I found some quinoa and went to work with my friend Cindy Graham’s recipe for rejuvelac. It’s extremely complicated and nuanced: put some quinoa in the bottom of a jar and fill it up with water. Wait three days. Strain. Put in the fridge. Cheap probiotics with an almost beer-like kick.

Fortunately mornings we observed yogic silence until after breakfast – the first day I served everyone rejuvelac I got a few non monk-like mortified glares and a few mouthed, “What is this Lort?” Eventually I got them hooked and by the time I left, the students were lining up to take over the rejuvelac making duty.

One day we took a break from opening our hips and headed to the beach. The air was warm and the sea was still and tepid. Of course, whenever you get a bunch of yogis together at the beach, the resulting goofy posing for pictures is inevitable.

Denmark is famous for washed up Amber but I didn’t come across any – instead I found some fascinating flint stones. Despite the time and energy I spent in Copenhagen shopping for him, my son’s favorite souvenirs from mommy’s trip are those stones that he can make spark and smell like fire.

We also had time for ocean front meditation – possibly the highlight of my whole trip.

I think the highlight workshop was Pranayama 101 – taught by my friend and yogi extraordaire, MJ Glassman. She has a knack for getting adults to act like children. Air hockey anyone? This version involves straws and cotton balls. I probably don’t need to tell you that it’s incredibly silly and makes you think a lot about your breath.

On August 14 we had a crazy storm. Copenhagen was flooded. One of the participants had to go home to check on her house. “My house is okay except for the basement,” she told me, “which is full of, hmm, don’t know how you say it in English. Sh*t and p*ss.”

Oh.

I never before had thought about sewage being such a handy word.

The storm knocked out internet connection – for 7 days. Now that was a vacation. Which reminds me of legs up the wall. My favorite yoga teacher training break. We did lots of it. It seemed to attract the butterflies who appeared to have a hard time staying outside.

When I teach to people from other cultures I am reminded how yoga transcends our belief systems, cultural values, and even personality quirks. It’s that limitlessness that keeps me coming back for more, wherever I am.

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