Grace in Aging

Aging…

Detoxifying with Mayurasana

Getting to Know the Peacock

mayurasana

One of my favorite detoxifying poses is Mayurasana – the peacock. Mayurasana is more than just an impress-your-friends-at-parties yoga pose – it is one of the original Hatha Yoga practices – one of the first 15 poses ever written down. The Hatha Yogis understood its tremendous health benefits. Here’s what Svatmarama wrote about mayurasana in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika:

Mayurasana quickly alleviates all diseases like enlargement of the glands, dropsy (edema) and other stomach disorders. It rectifies imbalance of the humours (vata, pitta and kapha). It reduces to ashes all food taken indiscriminately, kindles the gastric fire and enables destruction of kalakuta (toxins). – HYP 1.31

This pose is named Peacock not only because of the shape of the pose, but because its strong, tonifying effect on the digestive system. Do mayurasana and you can have a stomach like a peacock’s – Huh?

I realize that probably doesn’t mean much. Most of us in the west haven’t spent a lot of time observing peacocks. In India it is understood that peacocks can eat a wide range of foods including poisonous snakes, insects and scorpions. And they are able to digest the poison of these animals without harm. I’m not suggesting practicing this pose should inspire you to partake in a peacock’s dietary habits – but it will help you improve your digestion. Here are some of the benefits that have been ascribed to this pose by yoga masters:

•    Powerful digestive tonic
•    Promotes elimination of toxins, especially from the liver
•    Invigorates the entire body
•    Increases blood circulation throughout the abdominal organs
•    Relieves many diseases of digestion
•    Massages and strengthens the stomach and spleen
•    Can help those with diabetes
•    Revitalizes the pancreas
•    Decreases acidity in the blood, especially when performed in the morning
•    Strengthens wrists, elbows and shoulders

Contraindications
Any powerful yoga practice should be used with respect. If you have wrist, elbow or shoulder issues, be very careful about placing your entire body weight in your wrists. Some other common sense contraindications include: pregnancy, menstruation and serious intestinal problems. It also should be avoided if you are dealing with an ulcer, hernia, heart disease, high blood pressure, brain tumors and ear, eye, or nose infections. Because this pose is deeply detoxifying and can release built up toxins into the system, notice if you don’t feel well after practicing it. Reduce the amount of time and the repetitions of this pose and work on cleansing through diet before building up to longer holds.

Instructions
1.     From a kneeling position, take your knees wide apart and bring your outer wrists together in front of you.
2.     Place the palms on the floor between your thighs with the fingers pointing back towards your body. Draw your elbows together.
3.     Rest your navel on top of your elbows. Place your forehead on the floor.
4.     Stretch your legs out behind you and rest on the balls of your feet. Press the knee caps into the backs of the legs.  
5.     Then lift your head off the floor, and press your crown forward.
6.     Lift your legs off the floor, so they come parallel to the floor or higher.
7.     Hold for 30 seconds.
8.     Rest in Child’s Pose or Hero Pose for a few breaths.
9.     Repeat 4 times.

Modifications
1.     Take your head off the floor and rest on your elbows without trying to lift the legs.  
2.     Rather than stretching your legs back behind you, lift them out to the sides, with the knees bent. Flex the feet.
3.     Lift your legs up but keep your forehead on the floor.
4.     Place the hands a few inches apart with the fingers pointing to the sides rather than back.

At the Cult of the Breast

This morning at 8 am I had my first visit to the Cult of the Breast – a radiology clinic. I was greeted with low lighting and sweet women who chatted easily about, and poked their fingers easily around, my lumpy breast. A week and a half ago I found a lump in my right breast. Pretty squishy, moved around easily – I had every reason to believe it was a cyst. A lumpy, tender mass of nothing-to-worry about stuff.

So I worried about it.

I researched – more than 50 percent of women apparently have cystic breasts. I have no history of cancer on either side of my family – and my aunts smoked themselves neurotically anorexic in the 70s, you’d think someone would’ve had some kind of something. But fortunately no. Alcoholism, rampant. Cancer, none.  My dad had prostate cancer last year. But he’s 70 and thinks meat is the foundation of the food pyramid, so that’s pretty normal.

I figured it was some kind of cystic thing, but I called my midwife anyway, who said she couldn’t see me this week – full up with appointments and lots of babies coming in – and recommended I  see someone else immediately. So I called my son’s family practice doctor and she said she could see me the next day. She and her intern assistant spent a few minutes poking and prodding and then declared the need for a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound – “You’re 44 and you haven’t had one,” she said measuredly with a slight cock in one eyebrow. “Well, even though the guidelines have changed, (I get to have a little smug smile here) I recommend you do this immediately and we’ll get you in.” (smile dissipates)

They had to squeeze my breast – er, that is, appointment, in amongst about 8 other women in the waiting room at the Cult of the Breast. We all dutifully took off our shirts in a pleasant, spa-like dressing room with lockers and keys on little stretchy bright colored key chains you put around your wrist. We donned attractive pink crossover smocks and waited patiently amonst fake fuchia orchids to get our mammary glands squished by the machine.

The first technician was petite,  sweet and caring. She kept asking me if it hurt – which it didn’t -  and then rearranging my tea cup sized breast, gently stretching it towards the cold metal slab while instructing me to relax my shoulder or tilt my head. “I know this can sometimes be a little painful,” she smiled. “But it doesn’t take long.”

“It’s not really that painful,” I reported. “Just humiliating.” We giggled in agreement.

Afterwards she brought me over to a small, pretty alcove and offered me some coffee. I think I read that coffee was bad for cystic breasts. Oh well.

Then it was time for the ultrasound. The woman was equally sweet although she didn’t introduce herself or talk to me much. She squeezed goo on my breast and then put the ultrasound machine on it and stared at the screen as intently as a teenage boy playing a video game. There was another woman with her whom she talked to about what she was doing. “Are you training,” I asked. “Oh, yeah,” she laughed, “Sorry.”

After 15 minutes of seeing scary red areas highlighted on the ultrasound and surrendering to the idea that I must indeed be afflicted with a most virulent malignant breast tumor, they left and told me they’d be back soon with the doctor. So I meditated for a few minutes in the lovely low lighted, warm room, it was actually pleasant. Well, whatever it is, everything will be all right, I reassured myself.

So the doc came in – very kindly older man with neatly combed white hair and metal-framed square glasses. “Well, this all looks like cysts,” he said. “Just benign cysts. No cancer here,” he said kindly. He didn’t touch me, just placed the ultrasound on the cyst. It’s all about the cancer. Cancer or no cancer. Cut, chemo, radiate, or not. Save the breasts, save the women. Be kind. And they were.

“So why do I suddenly have cystic breasts,” I asked him. “What’s the etiology (a word I picked up studying homeopathy years ago and thought I’d throw in so he would take me seriously)?”

“Well, I am very sure it’s not cancer,” he said dosey do-ing the question nicely. “But well maybe we should keep an eye on that and check it out again in three months.”

“Oh, so it could turn into cancer?” I asked.

“Well, it’s just a cyst,” he pirouetted, “but we should keep an eye on it anyway. So I’d like to see you back again in three months, okay?” And he then sashayed out. Kind, paternal and certain – but not terribly interested in explaining.

Maybe it’s because there are no researched based answers. Maybe they want to create neither alarm nor false hope. Maybe they are not used to visitors questioning (I find that hard to believe – this is Asheville). Maybe we are just a tiny bit over-obsessed with our breasts.

So I am left with questions. Why does someone like me – yoga teacher, meditator, vegetarian, holistic, progressive, vitamin-taking, clean-living, politically correct, acupuncture-getting dirt worshipper have to visit the Cult of the Breast anyway? How could I possibly get cancer? I mean if I can get it, can’t anyone? Isn’t cancer  something that happens to unhealthy people? The clueless Wal-mart shopping masses? Why should I spend any time thinking about cancer?

In my ultrasound room meditation I asked those myopic, narcissistic questions to deflect reality. We like to point fingers because it helps us to feel safe. I remember when a friend from my son’s pre-school got breast cancer and had surgery and people from the school were giving her get well gifts. A granola mama whispered to me, “She’s got cancer and they gave her white flour croissants! Can you imagine – white flour! It’s probably what caused it in the first place!”

Diet is important, it’s true, and there certainly is lots of research on blueberries and green tea and tofu and all the wonderful things you can do to avoid cancer, but the bottom line is, we just don’t know. And in my arrogant health nut sort of way, I’d like to trust that I am doing all the right things. But the reality is that we have so much less control over it than we’d like to believe.

According to one of my favorite master yogis, Sri Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita, life is about doing your best – you do what’s right just because it’s the right thing to do, not because it makes you eligible to join the Granola Cult and shun the Cult of the Breast.

The process was scary, but it also helped to expand my heart chakra – with more compassion for those for whom the first visit to the radiology clinic is only the beginning of a long road to radical western medical intervention. And it’s no coincidence that the breasts are located in the area of the heart chakra. I remember one yogic nun telling me after I had my son that breast feeding was good for the child because it opens their heart chakra. While that may be true, my experience was that it opened my heart chakra. My husband, ever the sensitive, kind man that he is, was so envious, he wanted to have that experience so badly because he saw how joyous my son became and how much it softened me.

I certainly don’t want to ideate on it, jinx myself or “create my own reality” by buying into the idea that I could get cancer. But the fact is, anything can happen at any time, and the idea that I can with enough positive intention, or the right talisman or the perfect essential oil, avoid it, is just garbage.

What I can do is live in a state of gratitude and openness to grace. I will do my best to make my life whole and meaningful with integrity and humility. And I will remember that whatever happens to me, I will always walk with the Divine and know with certainty, that I am always being exquisitely and intimately taken care of – even if things don’t always go they way I think they should.

The first thing I did when I got out of there was call my homeopath.

Yoga and Addiction – Beyond the Western Recovery Paradigm

The commonly understood practice of yoga, yoga postures, offer a healthy way for people dealing with addiction issues to relieve stress, exercise the body and relax. These benefits are an excellent, evidence based complement to other therapies for addiction. A broader yoga practice can yield additional, transformative benefits and expand understanding about therapy, recovery and prevention/wellness promotion.

Yoga techniques are generally co-opted into reductionist western medical model practices and yet yoga is founded on a broader spiritually oriented “science” that describes a model of causality and control which is multi-layered and integrated. The yoga knowledge base provides more subtle understandings of body (e.g. Chakras) and mind (e.g. Kosas) within a spiritual framework and this provides a foundation for addiction work that is more profoundly healing than typically experienced in a yoga class.

The benefits of yoga practice do not necessarily come from bottom up – e.g. stretch the muscles, rest the nervous system, relax the mind. Rather opening to the Source (or Causal Layer of Self) through practice leads to healing and wholeness.

Seane Corn’s image gets a makeover

Seane Corn has been twiddling with her image.

Arguably the most photographed yogini in America,  Corn regularly shows up in, or on the cover of Yoga Journal lithe, coiffed, blissful and airbrushed to forever-young perfection. She’s been on the cover four times and she’s a hot icon for an industry that raked in $5.7 billion in 2008. Highly sought after to present at yoga and other conferences, Corn is everywhere. In print ads and articles, but also at every yoga conferences and workshops.

This was Corn on the cover of Yoga Journal last month:

But Corn presents a very different persona in ads for her program, Off the Mat Into the World. In the first days of Off the Mat, Corn and her partners Hala Khouri and Suzanne Sterling posed nude, draping themselves seductively around each other – it was confusing. I was used to seeing her perfectly styled and postured – but not peddling soft porn.  Was she advocating openness and acceptance of alternative lifestyle choices? Or was she trying to sell yoga to inappropriate yoga guy type men? What was Off the Mat and why in Kali’s name were they naked? There was no clear message except that they were trying to provoke a reaction. They must’ve – the ad never reappeared.

But recently Corn has become very clear in her ad’s messages – written in  boot-campish fonts – the no-nonsense, and certainly no bleached (tooth, hair or otherwise) ads were posing serious questions – Are you enough of a yogi to care about world suffering? Do you care enough to do something? There were no smiles and there was no styling – clearly, self-promoting was secondary.

It’s hard to see in this scan, but check out the dark roots and normal person face on Corn (left):

Corn with Hala Khouri and Suzanne Sterling

What does her shift mean? Corn’s work with Off the Mat appears authentically seva-driven and as her project grows her image becomes more somber and serious – at least the one she has some control over in her marketing, clearly this image would not make the cover of YJ. She has helped raise nearly a half million dollars for AIDs in Africa and poverty in LA (a drop in the $5.7 billion bucket, but noteworthy nontheless). Still the messages are mixed.

And the question remains: Can we take her seriously as a fearless advocate for the downtrodden when her image is one of the most common tools used for selling yoga? It will be interesting to see how her image evolves in coming issues and ads.

Just Switched My Site Over to WordPress

I’m a late bloomer in general – my husband says it was because I was induced at birth (that’s his excuse too). I think many babies born in the 60s were induced so maybe it’s the excuse of everyone on the Baby-boomer/Gen X cusp.  It took me a long time to realize I really needed to switch my site over to wordpress. But I’m here now. Whew! It’s lovely. Can’t wait to get blogging again.

I have heaps of stuff coming out of my sixth cakra waiting to be written down. Stay tuned for a slew of entries about third cakra power reclaiming – coming soon! I also have something to write about Yoga Journal and Seane Corn’s work.

If I didn’t need to sleep, I’d write every day – it’s what fills my spirit – but my spirit is also filled by teaching yoga so i spend a good chunk of time doing that and training others to teach yoga – just graduated 16 students from the Subtle Yoga Training and Personal Transformation program yesterday – and the applications for this year’s program (begins in March) have already started streaming in! No rest for the wicked…ly passionate about yoga that is (who knew I’d quote Ozzy in this one?).

Hari Om!

On Gifting and Giving

Mid-December Holiday Shopping Blues

So it’s mid-December and my Christmas shopping has yet to commence. You get super busy with parties, school stuff, events, special yoga classes and suddenly, Christmas is just about here and so you’ve got to quickly dump shopping in a hot, overcrowded mall into the mix. Doesn’t really get my cheer on.

When I think about gifts for my sisters, I usually get as far as flowers or fruit baskets – but do they really want another fruit basket? Could I possibly be any less creative about this? For my mother it’s worse, the last thing the woman needs is another scarf or sweater set – let alone some waxy fruit.

This year I’m refusing to go shopping (except maybe to Target to get a Starwars Lego set for the 5 year-old Jedi who sleeps upstairs). I’m staying home and getting online and finding sites that will give money to a charity in the name of those who really don’t need more stuff to dump into landfills some day.

The interesting thing is that everyone seems to really like it – even my 12 and 14 year old nephews who, I think would prefer itune giftcards, appreciated the idea. Last year I gave them warm gloves and a coat for a Mongolian orphan. This year they will get shoes for an AIDS orphan in Kenya. And why not? How am I really showing my love for them by enabling them to download really bad rap music?

The Yoga of Giving

What about yoga and giving? No, I don’t mean giving a gift card to your local studio for 10 classes (but, come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea! My hypertension-prone older brother could certainly use it.) What I mean actually is what is the traditional idea of giving in yoga?

Couple of things that come to mind: first is the practice of guru dakshina – a gift for the guru. Traditionally, when the guru taught a disciple the practices, the disciple would give the teacher some food or some money. What’s behind the practice of guru dakshina is the idea that at the time of receiving the teachings, we offer something of ourselves as a gift. We give up some of our idea that our ego controls everything. We give up some of our clinging and offer ourselves at the service of the teacher or teachings.

Varnarghyadana – The Gift of the Colors

Guru dakshina is expressed beautifully in the practice of “varnarghyadana” which means offering the colors of the mind. In this practice, generally done after meditation, you envision the thoughts that collected during your meditation practice as beautifully colored flowers. And then you offer those thought-flowers to the guru – which means “The one who dispels the darkness.” BTW, keep an eye out – your gurus are everywhere.

There are mantras that go with this practice, but it can be done also as a visualization exercise – you offer the flowers up to the ultimate guru – the deity, entity or energy that presents itself to you as the Divine. It is a practice which lightens your burdens and directly connects you to your Source.

The Gift of Seva – Selfless Service

Then there’s the idea of Seva – which means “Selfless Service.” Even though seva ostensibly is about you giving your time, money, or talents to those less fortunate than you – the real recipient is actually you. When you have an opportunity to serve someone else you burn karma and your spiritual progress is accelerated. The seva projects that my students participate in during the Subtle Yoga Training and Personal Transformation program by far get the best reviews from the students. Connecting with sick people, or older people who live alone, or spending time with kids with challenges is incredibly heart-warming and uplifting. Also, seva in and of itself is a powerful mental health strategy – just think of how much your problems diminish when you contemplate giving shoes to an African AIDS orphan?

Reclaiming the Spirit of the Season

To avoid the stress, burnout, overload, weight-gain, and children-spoiling effects of the holidays – give yourself instead of stuff. Bake something for someone who lives alone, walk someone’s dog, take some blankets to the Salvation Army, take a kid to a movie or read him or her a story, visit your aunt and listen to her stories. We do not have to succumb to the tyranny of the retailers or the fear that the economy will fall apart without our conspicuous consumption. Or the fear that you will lose points (i.e. love) if you don’t get the latest, greatest thing-a-ma-jig for whoever.

Here are some different organizations that would love to send a card to your loved one with a message about what your gift donation did for someone in need.

AMURT
Doctors without Borders
Kiva
Animal Rescue Site
Hunger Site store
Amnesty International
Worldvision
Habitat for Humanity
Education4change
Amma’s organization

Giving and Giving it Up

In the story of Vajra Krishna, he is the ultimate giver. He transforms himself into the perfect lover, companion for each of the gopis in Vrindavan – they have his complete attention and he is perfect for each and every one of them. In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna talks about what really happens when we give. This popular mantra is often used before eating:

Brahmarpanam Brahma Havir
Brahmagnau Brahmana Hutam
Brahmaiva Tena Ghantavyam
Brahmakarma Samadhinaha

Here’s what it means:

The act of offering is Divine
The act of consuming the offering is Divine
It is the Divine who offers
It is the Divine who receives
And when all our karma is exhausted
We’ll become one with the Divine

That’s the path of yoga – give it all up to gain everything. Happy giving.

Neurons and Jungles and Monkeys

Why should I meditate? What’s it going to do for me?

One of my students asked me a few questions the other night after class. Good questions. Questions everyone should be asking if they are seriously thinking about starting a meditation practice. What’s the point anyway?

Well, there’s the brain. For us non-scientific types, one of the ways I like to think about the brain is that it’s a big jungle. It’s a jungle of neurons and axons and synapses. And all sorts of things can happen in this jungle. And although the infrastructure is complicated and the range and potential is vast, we should remember that it is populated mostly by monkeys. The monkeys are your thoughts and they love to swing and shreik and mess around.

The monkeys have carved out many paths in the jungle, but they are often arbitrary and may not be so useful to the human being (you) who also lives in the jungle. There’s one path that likes to eat four chocolate bars when it feels lonely and another that stays up late fiddling around with Facebook even though you have to get up early tomorrow. Then there’s the really long, well worn path from childhood that takes you to I’m-not-good-enough mountain.

You can tell the monkeys all you want to stop traveling down those paths and that’s a good thing to do, but until you quiet the monkey’s down, they won’t listen to you. And until you get in there with a bulldozer and consciously carve out the paths that you want through your jungle, the monkeys will continue to reign.

So what’s the bulldozer?

Meditation.

Why Meditation Works

Here’s what Sally Kempton wrote about brain science and meditation in Yoga Journal last year:

“Replacing negative thoughts and making a willed choice to shift out of grievance are both performed in the front brain – the cerebral cortex. The seat of rational thought. But reactions to hurt, stress, and trauma are stored in the limbic brain where deeply rooted emotional patterns tend to be lodged. Many of these patterns play out automatically in the body, regardless of your intentions or rational decisions…

Shifting those patterns requires more than practice and choice. It requires intervention from your own depths, from the awareness-presence that you cultivate in meditation. Brain wave researchers 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.”

So what is meditation going to do for you? It’s going to help you to heal deep emotional wounds so you can have better control over your thoughts and attitudes. Monkey’s don’t like meditation, they think it’s boring. Because it makes the drama and the trauma go away. If the habitual thought patterns established 30 or 40 years ago are no longer serving you, you can help the jungle grow back over them with meditation.

Who Can Teach?

Who Can Teach Yoga?

This morning I got a call from a woman asking me about the Subtle Yoga Training and Personal Transformation Program. Although she found the idea of the program compelling, her concern was that she wasn’t advanced enough and that she wouldn’t be able to do some of the poses.

Since when do you need to be great at asanas to teach yoga?

If this was the case, then our most cherished teachers would be Cirque Du Soleil artists. The thing is, there is a big difference between contortionists and yoga teachers – and a whole different skill set is required.

What I’m more interested in is this question: “What is it about yoga that inspires you and how do you want to share that with others?”

Beautiful People Teach Great Yoga Classes

A few years ago I had a student I’ll call Anita in one of my programs who was from Mexico and spoke limited English with a very thick accent. I’ve had a lot of experience listening to English in varied and interesting permutations – but Anita’s accent was almost impenetrable. I was concerned that she would have trouble teaching because no one would understand her. So I was worried about how she would do during her practicum, where the students have to teach a class to demonstrate that they’ve integrated the teachings and can sufficiently transmit them.

When it was her turn to teach, Anita sat in front of the class and quietly invited everyone to close their eyes and meditate with her. Then she asked us to open our eyes and when I looked at her, I noticed how radiant she was. She smiled so soothingly and spoke with such a lack of self-consciousness that I forgot I couldn’t understand her very well. Her class was transporting. When it came time for evaluations I almost had nothing to say. I had written very little down – I was basking in the bliss of her vibration. “I couldn’t understand you sometimes,” one of the students said, “But please don’t change a thing! It was such a beautiful class.”

I would much rather take a class from someone who truly cares about me – my safety, my comfort, the inner experience I am having – then from someone who is an expert at performing Yoga Journal cover poses. Wouldn’t you?

People Who Need You to Teach Them Yoga

There are plenty of people out there who can teach athletic, fitness classes at gyms and yoga studios – what we don’t have is an excess of instructors who can teach people who have challenges like obesity, anxiety, inferiority complexes, or who are incarcerated, or don’t get out of their house except to go to the senior center down the street, or to their therapist’s or doctor’s office. What about children in afterschool programs who may not get enough attention at home or at school? Teenagers looking for meaning and mostly finding trouble? Single mothers who could use child care and a yoga class? Homeless people? The mentally ill or addicted?

Everyone needs to do yoga, for sure. But there are many who need yoga desperately. They are all around us and they are significantly underserved.

The woman who called this morning wants to teach yoga to children in the detention center where she works. She is already changing their lives with yoga. She told me that she has taught them just a few simple poses and that they have been so grateful. “One of the kids wrote me a love song,” she said. “I know how much it can help them.”

Networks of Grace

“When the joy of compassionate service
is combined with the pragmatic and practical drive
to transform all existing economic, social and
political institutions, a radical divine force is born.”

- Andrew Harvey

“Networks of Grace” is Andrew Harvey’s term for groups of people working together to inspire and serve others. Both Yoga Plus Joyful Living and LA Yoga published excerpts from his new book, The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism, this month.

Clearly this is a hot topic – Yoga Plus reported that according to the Corporation for National and Community Service the number of people volunteering in the U.S. grew by a million from 2007 to 2008. Yes, unemployed people have more time on their hands, but the numbers are also indicating that people have seen the dire and increasing need around them and are rising to the occasion.

So how do we get ourselves organized and start making effective and lasting change in our world? Harvey suggests finding 6-8 other like minded people and organizing yourself around one of three areas:

1. Profession – for example yoga teachers have similar skills and can devote those to a common cause – perhaps team teaching at a housing project or nursing home. Retired people who have been working at the same profession as others in their network are especially potent sacred activists as they have both the time and the experience to make a significant difference.

2. Passion - perhaps for animals, the environment , healing, meditation or art.

3. A Heart-Breaking Cause - war refugee children, environmental degradation, etc.

Finding local people who are interested in your topic is becoming increasingly easier with the rising popularity of social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter.

So why should you work together instead of individually? Because of the incredible synergy that’s created when people cooperate. Six people working together have much more impact than six people working alone – it’s almost mathematical – you can multiply the effect rather than add.

But the problem of course is that six people working together can also drive each other nuts. So how do you avoid these problems? Harvey suggests these four requirements:

1. A Commitment to Spiritual Practice - each person in the group should commit to a daily practice of meditation or prayer.

2. Begin Meetings with Contemplation - each meeting should begin with 15 minutes of meditation, prayer or the reading of a sacred text.

3. Commit to an Atmosphere of Joy – meetings should be undertaken with the highest positivity. What I would call, the spirit of Dharma. Everyone attending should set their intention that the meeting itself and the work that comes out of it is being done for the highest good of everyone present and the highest good for the world. Meetings can center around a meal or the sharing of food and drink – in the spirit of cooperation and sharing.

4. Shadow Work – to protect the network against falling apart because of egos and manipulation, the group commits to doing some sort of “sober, intimate and kind shadow work.” This will enable the work that comes out of the group to be inspired and grounded.

I have noticed in my own life that over the past year I have been increasingly drawn to working in groups to create social change – including in our neighborhood, the Burton Street Community and in the larger world. I joined three new committees, two at UNCA and one with the Greater Asheville Yoga Association, just in the past few months. I see yoga practice and philosophy as central to all the groups that I am involved with.

Through yoga people change individually, but yoga can also serve as a prevention strategy for so many social problems including substance abuse, obesity, heart disease, back pain, anxiety and depression. Yoga is one of the simplest, cheapest and most directly beneficial approaches to improving public health.

I notice when I meditate with others that somehow the energy is different, I feel more peaceful and somehow am able to go deeper into myself. I have spent many years meditating in groups and what I’ve realized over time is that there is a pull that is beyond us. I used to think that it was because I was sitting with swamis and other people who practiced more than I did and that I was surfing on their energy. And I still think there is some truth in that, but moreso, I now believe that the group itself is the source of the difference. Practicing together is a literal shift towards Oneness.

When people improve their individual health (physical, mental and spiritual), they can then direct their energy towards applying the “Oneness” strategy of yoga to the world. If we all looked at the world as if each individual was really a member of our family, we would be better able to address so much of the educational and economic disparity that plagues us and truly move ourselves, together, towards the Divine. Individual practice helps us to see others with greater compassion and care – but collective practice elevates our vision beyond ourselves.

Andrew Harvey