Framingham Social Network Analysis and Satsaunga

What started in 1948 as a study to reveal the risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease turned into a gold-mine of social networking data that reveals what the yogis have always know - it’s not about just about you, it’s about who you hang out with. So the question is – Have you examined your satsaunga lately?

What the social network analysts became fascinated with was not what the study reveals about heart disease, but what it shows them about a whole host of other social factors: Who smokes and how do they quit? Who becomes obese and why? (believe it or not, they could predict exactly when a particular individual would gain weight based on her/his position in the network!), Who is happy and who isn’t?

The researches likened obesity to the flu: if you become obese, chances are others will catch it with viral-like speed.

It took them 5 years to analyze the data. Here are some of their findings:

• If your spouse becomes obese, your chances of following suit increase by 37%, but if a friend becomes obese, they skyrocket to 171%.
• When smokers quit smoking (which happend en masse in the 70s and 80s), their friends were 36% more likely to quit. And the action of that one person affected others up to three degrees of separation. That means even if all your friends were still smoking, if even one of the friends of a friend of your friend stopped, it would have some influence on your stopping.
• Happiness is contagious. For each happy friend you have, it increases your chances of being happy by 9%. Having an extra $5000 a year only increases your happiness by 2%.

You can read more about the social network analysis in the current issue of Wired. It also says that if you post a smiling face on your facebook account, you’ll have 15% more friends!

Here’s something to reflect upon about satsaunga from the Yoga Vashistha:

“Self-knowledge or knowledge of truth is not had by resorting to a guru nor by the study of scripture, nor by good works: it is attained only by means of inquiry inspired by the company of wise and holy people. One’s inner light alone is the means, naught else. When this inner light is kept alive, it is not affected by the darkness of inertia.”

 Om Shanti that one.

Fear

How to not live in fear. I wish I could give a “5 Steps to Not Living in Fear” tele-seminar and explain the simple, but obvious secrets to living the fearless life you deserve. But like all real-life challenges, figuring out how not to be afraid is not always a simple, obvious formula that everyone can access with equal ease. 

A student from the Subtle Yoga Training Program called me today and asked me about dealing with recurrent fears. “I have horrible scenarios running through my head about what could happen.” she said.

Yup I get that too. And when I ruminate about why these big disaster scenarios enter my mind, I can’t help but wonder what I am gaining from it. Perhaps when something bad really does happen I will have hedged my bets. I can then say with lots of self-satisfied glee, ‘See, I knew I was going to get cancer! I always knew it!’ “

So what then? I get points for being the most psychic, because I always knew!? For me, the appropriate solution to catastrophic thinking patterns is… laughter. I happened to be near a mirror when I was recently having a catastrophic thought about my son, riding his bike, getting mowed over by a speeding car.

So I glanced up and caught a glimpse of myself. And then proceeded to smirk and giggle. He is having fun, he is being safe and my catastrophic thought is far too far out there in misfiring neurotransmitter land to be of any use to anyone.

Fear of horrible things happening is a state of being disconnected from myself and my Source. When I am trusting that things are being taken care of, that things are happening as they should, then there is no need to fear. I can relax. Interestingly when I relax, there is no fear. Did I mention that yoga is good for relaxing?

The other big thing for me is to stop and flood myself with gratitude for what I have right in front of me right now. Helping my son catch a baby cricket (who has been chirping on the refrigerator door) in his bug net and releasing him outside, or enjoying the cucumbers from the garden (they are going a bit crazy out there!), or taking a deep breath as I move into a delicious asana, or driving the car with a half full tank that works just fine, or sleeping next to a man who could win a prize for being the kindest person in the world – all these things put me in a state of delirious gratitude.

That’s what I have right now. That’s what fills me. I don’t know what I will have tomorrow, but if I spend my time in fear of that rather than with what I have right now, then I’ve lost today. And I won’t stand for that. I won’t allow fear of the future to ruin my present life – that’s what the mirror me tells me. And that invites me to have a good laugh.

Saluting the Cosmic Sun

We chanted the traditional Sun Salutation mantras last Thursday night at One Center Yoga. Wow, what a practice. The mantras just keep the whole thing moving in this amazing way.

I never was that into Sun Salutations, but when I started chanting the mantras with it, it really changed the way I feel about the practice. It’s totally solar (oh, that sounds like, very LA). I mean it’s a firey, third chakra practice. It heats you up like sun salutations always do, but in an ethereal, almost trance-like way. With so much less effort. I will record the mantras and get them up here so you can hear them. The trickiest one is cobra: Om Hiranyagarbhaya Namah. Just split it into four parts – hiran-ya-garbai-ya – it’s not so bad after doing it a few times. Here are the mantras:

1.    Mountain pose with hands at heart   Aum mitr?ya namah
salutations to the friend of all

2.    Stretch the arms up and back      Aum ravay namah
salutations to the shining one
3.    Fold Forward              Aum s?ry?ya namah

salutations to the supreme light
4.    Right leg back to lunge          Aum bh?nav namah
salutations to the illuminator

5.    Down Dog                 Aum khag?ya namah
salutations to the one who moves through the sky
6.    Knees/chest/chin to the floor      Aum pushnav namah

salutations to the giver of strength
7.    Cobra              Aum hiranyagarbh?ya namah
salutations to the golden, cosmic Self

8.    Down Dog                 Aum m?rich?ya namah
salutations to the lord of the dawn

9.    Right leg forward to lunge          Aum ?dity?ya namah
salutations to the son of the cosmic mother
10.    Left leg forward to fold          Aum s?vitra namah

salutations to the lord of creation
11.    Arms up over head              Aum ?rk?ya namah
salutations to the one who is fit to be praised

12.    Hands at Heart             Aum bh?skar?ya namah
salutations to the one who leads to enlightenment

We’ll practice again next this Thursday – feel free to drop in – 6-7:30 pm at One Center, 120 Coxe Ave. in Asheville. The space resonnates with the sound in an amazing way. The more the merrier when it comes to chanting.

Chakra Cooking Class – Lesson #4

When I was in India, I met a yoga monk who was well-known for his vast wisdom of all things yogic, but especially the chakras.

So I asked him about the color of the heart chakra. “Some people say it’s a smokey green color,” I said. “What does that mean?”

When I heard Anodea Judith talk about chakras, she said that the old scrolls had been kept in temples and that they could’ve easily been damaged by incense smoke and that’s where the “smokey” in the green came from. Hmmmmm. Weren’t yogis more tuned in than that? They shouldn’t have to use old scrolls to see the color of their heart chakras anyway.

“Well,” he said. “It’s not exactly ‘smokey’, it’s more like the inside of a cabbage.”
“Oh.”

I must admit here that I left a bit disappointed.

The inside of a cabbage? That’s as exciting as the heart chakra gets?! – a cabbage! Not something slightly more exotic – like a romanescu or a durian – or even an artichoke? My heart chakra felt insulted.

Anyway, I’ve often pondered what the inside of a cabbage could possibly have to do with the heart chakra. It’s not at all smokey green, more like yellowish-white. Eventually I gave up. Clearly, in my mind at least, there was no point in making a cabbage/heart connection. The heart chakra is just green. Green is a nice color, no need to dig any deeper here.

Last week my friend Matthew was coming over for lunch and to help me with some computer stuff. So I got out some leftover black beans and rice and decided I’d cook up some carrots and a Savoy cabbage I had purchased a few days earlier. Thought I’d make some wraps for us before we got to our business of website work. Matthew is a talented, patient, spiritually advanced IT guy – clearly, a person who deserves to be fed well.

Now I don’t know about you, but typically I buy big cabbages and since my family isn’t that into cabbage anyway, I usually don’t cook it all in one go. When I cut it, I usually just slice of a hunk and then cut that piece up into smaller bits.

But this cabbage was petite. I needed to use half of it. And it was very green and fresh and pretty and crinkly. So I got out a sharp knife and cut it in half.

And then…

I fell into vegetable samadhi

After all these years of not really being able to make the cabbage connection, I finally got it. Cabbages really do have feelings because there in the middle of my cutting board was the cabbage’s exposed heart chakra.

I got out my camera for the occasion because I thought you might like to see it too. Be careful not to look too long though because you might go into vegetable samadhi too and not be able to do anything for the rest of the afternoon but dream of perfect sauerkraut.

Brahmacarya – In Search of the Divine

Here’s a Sanskrit word to chew on: Brahmacarya.

Brahmacarya is one of those yoga concepts that been interpretated over the centuries in a variety of ways from celibacy to abstinence to self-control.

I’ve had a lot of students ask me, Do you have to be celibate to be a real yogi? There certainly was a time when many people believed that. And somehow the idea that celibacy is more spiritual has gotten into the collective mind of yoga practitioners.

But in general most commentators have not examined the literal translation of Brahmacarya: To walk while chewing on God. Perhaps ruminating would be a better word choice here. Brahmacarya is the fourth of the yamas, the ethical guidelines of yoga. Now when you look closely at the yamas and niyamas, you see that there are two categories; the yamas are about how we deal with the external world, like non-harming, honesty, etc. and the niyamas are how we deal with our internal world, like cleanliness, contentment, etc.

So, if you translate Brahmacarya as celibacy, it seems a little weird. I mean, sex is a very personal thing. And the people who were writing this stuff were thinking about one-partner-for-life kind of sex. So, with that in mind, why would they put a principle about sex in with a bunch of other principles about dealing with others and the external world? With the celibacy translation, Brahmacarya ends up looking more like a niyama than a yama and this gets kind of confusing.

But if we translate it literally, as walking with the Divine always in mind, then it actually becomes the cornerstone of the yamas. If I am always with the Divine, then I will behave towards the external world kindly, with honesty and without greed. I don’t think the yogis who outlined the ethical principles of yoga were terribly interested in other people’s sex lives.

Here’s my story about how the term became mis-used: There were probably some yogis traveling through a town one day, the inhabitants of which had never seen a renunciate before. And one guy goes up to the yogis and asks them, Hey, what are you guys all about?

The yogis explain their quest for truth and enlightenment. They mention that they follow the path of Brahmacarya and attempt to see everything as an expression of the Divine. The villager asks them where the children are and they explain that they do not marry and are celibate renunciates.

So the villager goes back to his village to report about the strangers and tells them, Wow, how bizarre. They don’t have sex! They call it Brahmacarya. Then the villagers name the people Brahmacaryas and the name sticks.

Renunciates = brahmacaryas = celibates.

That’s simple. Kinda misses the point a bit, but, oh well.

The yogis were attempting to see everything that happens as an expression of Divine Consciousness. This is quite a practice. It might help some people to not get distracted by sex, but it’s not essentially for everyone. With a literal translation of Brahmacarya in mind, sex itself becomes a divine act. Everything in life becomes divine. It’s a beautiful practice.

Try Brahmacarya for yourself: Before having a difficult conversation with someone, take a moment to pause and remember everything is an expression of Divine consciousness. Close your eyes and breathe in this reality, then go on with your conversation. Notice the outcome. It might be pleasantly surprising.

Duke Integrative Medicine – Wow, cool doctors!

Greetings from Durham, NC!

I kinda want to stay here for another month or two.

I’ve been at Duke Integrative Medicine for the past 7 days taking the Therapeutic Yoga for Seniors Training – and it’s been truly an amazing experience. This is not your average yoga training program – for those of you who’ve done those out of town, typically you go to a nice studio and learn stuff from yoga people – but then you’re on your own for food, accommodations etc.

But this training is taking place with yoga people AND Duke Medical professors at Duke’s IM facility – which is something like a zenned-out health spa, complete with an enormous crystal Tibetan singing bowl which invites you to ring it as you walk in. Some of the walls are papered with real tree bark, there’s both an exquisitely meditative meditation room and a stony zen contemplation garden. They have a labyrinth outside, just off of the patio and inside, a live bamboo-filled atrium waiting room – that would be, waiting for a massage or some kind of hydrotherapy or acupuncture, of course.

And then there’s the food. They provide lunch every day cooked by their very conscious food person – chef Kate (sorry I can’t find a link for her, but she’s definitely worth knowing about) – who makes dietary considerations for any of the merely 40 of us who request them. She does under 100 calorie things with chocolate which make me terribly skeptical that she really does any sort of calculations.

The level of expertise of the program’s instructors is humbling. Our main teachers, Carol Krucoff and Kimberly Carson have quite a bit of both yoga experience and western medical credentials. And the Duke professors they have brought in include some of the finest names in pain, arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes, pulmonary health, opthamology, end of life care – it goes on and on. After 7 days of this my brain has hit the saturation point!

But tomorrow is the last day and I’ll be heading back home to Asheville with a heart full of gratitude for the wealth of wisdom and knowledge which has been imparted - if you are in the 55 plus age range, keep an eye out for an upcoming series which I’ll be doing as part of my research project for the program. I can’t wait to share what I’ve learned with you! They will be free but with limited space so you’ll need to sign up early.

4 Ways to Stop Talking Yourself Out of Meditating

Waking Up

I have this friend, he’s a yoga teacher, well, a tantric yoga teacher to be more exact. And some time soon I’m going to blog about tantra because that’s a whole big steaming mess of misunderstanding.

But let’s just say that tantra is the practice, and science, of expansion. Tan means something like inertia, or lethargy and tra means the force that liberates. So literally, tantra means that which liberates from the sleep or the lethargy of existence. But tan also means “to expand“ Sanskrit words have so many meanings, it just seems to go on and on, so tantra also means that which liberates and expands.

This thing called tantra proposes to awaken you from the anesthesia of living like a zombie. You know, the big screen plasma tv, the bottle of something mind altering, the quart of Haagen Das, the shot of celebrity gossip. It can go on and on. We can find lots of ways to go back to sleep, that’s easy.

But the thing that wakes you up from all that, whatever you call it, is ultimately tantra, and it happens because you practice going in to yourself and touching that which is undoubtedly Real, the truest part of yourself. And when you bring it back into your every day life, well, the yogis like to say that the “veils of illusion are lifted.” It’s amazing how there are always more veils to lift.

Anyway, this friend of mine likes to say this about spirituality: Either you expand or you don’t. But it’s even easier to go back to sleep – which is why there is practice. The thing about expansion is that the possibilities are endless, there are always opportunities to wake up even more, to expand even more.

And I’m not talking about visiting Starbucks here. Did you ever have this situation when you thought you were doing everything right and everything is coasting along so sweetly and suddenly, wham, there’s the shakedown. Everything you thought was real and true is pulled out from under your feet?

I was once in a situation where I thought I was being completely altruistic, I remember being accused of having ulterior motives – an accusation I vehemently denied. I spent a lot of time defending myself and being very hurt and upset. And I also allowed the situation into my meditation and through the practice realized that there were certain things I was doing that were not entirely pure. It was not at all a pleasant realization about myself, but it did force me to change and to become vigilantly clear about my motives.

We all have roles and masks we put on that keep us in various stages of slumber. We mostly have developed them from childhood or even came into the world with assumptions about ourselves. What opportunity do you have to wake up today from something that is keeping you asleep; what can you change about the way you see yourself that will set you free?

Then there’s the waking up that we all need to do collectively…the scene below is great - if you can catch one of my Chakra workshops – I talk about this scene as a metaphor for the spiritual awakening which occurs when we move from the first to the second chakra. The symbolism is amazingly accurate!

February Inspiration

4 Ways to Get Inspired

A friend told me the other day that she’s been feeling depressed. “I think it’s just this end of February stage I go through,” she said. “Just waiting around trying to make it through the end of winter. Well,” she paused. “It could also be that I just got laid off, the economy is in shambles, and we’re in the middle of a serious drought.”

Hmm.

This morning a bulldozer started digging up the ground 10 feet off the side of my house. They’re putting in yet another house on my street, which was once a forested oasis in the middle of the city. My first reaction was to cry. It was pretty sad to see the trees that I once enjoyed watch whispering in the breeze hit the ground with an unambiguous “thunk”. It’s sad to watch my garden (which, I admit, I illegally let creep into the neighboring lot) be dug up into a basement foundation.

But then my 4 year-old son came into my room, saw my state, and said, “Mommy, don’t worry, that bulldozer won’t dig all the way down to where the volcano fires are.”

my mind after the bulldozer

In all these years of studying and practicing yoga and meditation, I still have much to learn (mostly from a 4 year-old, it would appear) about non-attachment in troubling times.

And so here we find ourselves, collectively and perhaps individually in the middle of quite interesting times. There has been an economic downturn, or maybe “landslide” would be a better word choice there. And there’s a panic pulsing through the vibrational fields of the powers that be, mostly stemming from the worry that people will stop shopping.

Shopping. People need to keep shopping they say. Um, excuse me, are you serious? Is shopping really going to save us? Shopping?

When you can’t go outward for satisfaction, there is no choice but to turn within. And this is where the opportunity lies.

And with this in mind, there are many things to feel inspired about. How about starting that meditation practice you’ve always wanted to have? How about volunteering for that community organization you’ve always been interested in? Many opportunities for inspiration.

And many ways to get there when you’re not feeling the magic…

Here are 4 yogic tools you can use to get inspired:

1. The Play is the Thing

In yoga, the cosmic play is called “Liila.” The idea is that everything that happens to you is part of a great big soap-opera drama.

I’m sure you have had something “bad” happen to you – like losing your job, ending a relationship with someone you thought was your soul-mate, or even banging up your car. Six months later you have a much more fulfilling job, you found someone who makes you realize that you were using the term “soul-mate” rather loosely, or your lack of a vehicle has helped you walk more and get in shape. We all have had experiences like this.

So, the technique is to remember, when you’re in the middle of something that seems like an irreversible tragedy, that you never know what will happen next in the play, and often, if you simply commit yourself to optimism, to trusting in your divine Source, and to doing the right thing, you will be pleasantly surprised. This stance will put you into a state that yogis call “rasa liila” or going with the flow of the divine play.

2. Incorrigible Optimism

Commit yourself to an incorrigibly optimistic attitude. This is not to be confused with rose-colored glasses syndrome or a superficial tendency to repeat “It’s all good” all day long. Optimism is a state of mind of trusting the universe and understanding that no matter what happens, you are always being guided and supported.

“You are never alone or helpless, the force that guides the stars guides you too.”

Bad things do happen to good people – including ourselves. We need compassion and empathy for ourselves and others and we also need to support ourselves and others in every way we can when we are in the middle of a trying time. However, succumbing to a state of despair is a bottomless pit. Hope is a tender petal on the flower of the heart chakra. (And that’s not a metaphor – It’s tantric microcosmology!) Find what nurtures the hope in your heart and feed it. And here’s a big secret: a regular asana practice will help you stay optimistic!

3. Satsaunga (Keeping Good Company)

“Sat” means “true”, “honest”, “inspiring” and “saunga” means “community.” Who are the people that inspire you and are you spending enough time with them?

Life is busy for everyone – but that doesn’t have to be an excuse to neglect yourself. Have a monthly potluck where you invite people who like to meditate and do it together before your meal. Or have a sharing circle and perform your favorite low-key ritual, group hug or Om. Start a weekly yoga get-together at your house. Join a meditation group.

There are so many ways to make satsaunga happen, but if we only invite our computer, it won’t.

4. Sing!

This is the easiest and perhaps best way to recapture the magic. If you’re shy, in the shower with you!

What music inspires you? Are you into kirtan? Then put on some Krishna Das or Deva Premal and sing along. Repeated phrases create a groove of positive vibration in your nervous system. This is yogic vibrational medicine. But it can be any kind of inspiring music – it has to inspire YOU. Sing in the car, while you’re cooking. Listen while you’re working, or when you get up in the morning. Singing changes your vibration quickly and can give you back the clarity and focus you need to feel inspired and positive.

Patanjali on Oprah

You can pretty much find everything in every self help book you’ve ever read or heard about concisely outlined in the Yoga Sutras. The author, Patanjali, understood some very deep things about human psychology.

What if Patanjali was alive now? What if he wrote a self-help book and then got interviewed by Oprah? You might overhear something like this in the coat room after yoga class.

“Did you see Patanjali on Oprah?”

“OH-MY-GOD! That was completely amazing! I mean, I felt like he was talking to me personally? It was incredible!”

“Totally – that’s exactly how I felt! I was like, ‘How do you know exactly what I’m going through!”

“He’s SO peaceful.”

“When he said that part about how, if you can’t stop obsessing about something negative, you should figure out what the opposite of that would be and then meditate on it. That was so totally cool. And I’ve been so annoyed with myself for not being able to deal with my completely irritating mother-in-law. So now every time she calls I think of her as “soothing and sweet” instead of ”Incredibly irritating.” I mean, that really helps. I wouldn’t have believed it but it really does.”

“I loved that! I can’t wait to buy his book, have you read it?”

“Yeah, I got it from my sister for Christmas cause she said I would really like it cause I’m so into yoga and all – and she thought it might help me not be so obsessive about my weight. Oh, did you see the part where he was talking about how if your mind is like, all over the place, you can focus it by thinking about something that makes you feel totally relaxed and peaceful.”

“Yeah, that was cool. I was totally on the beach in Maui.”

“Awesome! He’s amazing.” sigh.

“Kind of a bummer he’s a monk.”

Here are the two sutras – they sound great in Sanskrit. Give ‘em a listen.