04.02.16 Launch

Today I made thoughts public.  I spent 60 stollen minutes figuring out how to make a website then 60 more populating it with words (sorry bout it picture people).  The time with which to do this was stollen from my family.  I think they ate hot dogs and I can hear right now 30 minutes passed bedtime that things are not going exactly just right.  

But this is what it is.  This is what all moments are - a little trade off between what we need to do and what we want to do.  Sometimes what we want and what we need crash together like chocolate and peanut butter and those are the best moments.

Sometimes I write things.  Well...that isn't very honest.  I am constantly writing things. All day long I am writing things.  Sometimes, they are shareable thoughts.  Today I am went through a bunch of (unedited) work and published it.  It is a little out of order but then what is order amiright?  I found some journal entries and dharma talks from past classes and stuck them up here.  These are all thoughts that inspired me and it is my hope that they inspire someone else.

03.19.17 Dharma Talk : Essential Life force

It is incredibly difficult to protect our life force in modern western society.  This is probably extra true for the US.  For myself, I can say that one of the reasons I teach yoga, is because I know that my commitment to doing that with any amount of integrity requires me to practice yoga and in doing so continually taking stock of my life force.

I am a wife, mother, daughter - I work full time and I am the primary provider of wealth in my family and quite frankly, there are no external queues in my life  encouraging me to evaluate and tend to my essential life force.  TBH, the people I love and serve are not the slightest bit concerned with it until it is visibly diminished.

I think the best we can do here in service to our Ojas, is to come to our mats and take stock of our breath.  Take stock of our quality of thought.  Take stock of our bodies.  Move with intent and continue to observe what we are like.

In the context of this class, I have great intention to serve everyone who has suffered from judgements directed at their bodies by either by themselves or from others.  The amount of energy it takes to avoid judgements, feelings of inadequacy, disappointment is not small and it takes a toll.  I can personally tell you that I have avoided my mat for months or years at a time in order to avoid feeling any of those feelings.

I would like to hold out the absolute truth that everything is perfect.  You need not do anything on your mat today but take a look at your perfection.  Take some time and move slowly in asana and develop gratitude for all that is good.  I promise that however your individual distresses manifest themselves, creating nourishment for what is just right in the world is the perfect contradiction to dissolve them.  fear and the like beget fear and the like.  love and nourishment beget love and nourishment.  It is easy. everything can be easy.  It is possible to give up hard forever.

12.28.16 Dharma Talk: Joyful Rebellion

Yoga is a deeply liberating activity.  I personally practice yoga because I plan to realize my goal of seeing the liberation of all beings in my lifetime and the elimination of oppression.  I teach yoga, for the same reason.

Here in the west, we have a few dominant patterned tendencies that I have noticed and they are:

1. sedentariness
2. excessive stimulation
3. rushing

All of these behaviors keep our whole selves pretty bound up in activity that has not much to do with our real selves.  It is easy to become bound to the pace and requirement of society.  

Our yoga practice always aims to put us back into homeostasis - balance.  The first thing that we do in yoga is “Chitta Vritti Narodha” - the sessation of the turnings of thought.

Really, to paraphrase, the first point of yoga practice is - still your mind and the rest will follow

Never underestimate the powerful and radical nature of this instruction.  By stilling our minds, we are basically saying, not today oppressive forces, this is my mind, and it is not working for you.

Then we focus on our breath.  That is our second act of rebellion.  That is when we say this is MY OWN life force, it is not serving anyone else’s purpose.

Next we take notice of our bodies and move them in a way that honors their strength and their struggles.  Again, this is not for the agenda of “the man”…whatever that is to you.  This is for us.

If we want to we can take all of these efforts and just take note and bask in our own joy.  OR we can offer them up to God, offer them to each other, and amplify our liberation.

Bonus liberation tip, we also get to let go of the outcomes of our liberation.  We can simply enjoy our acts of Joyful rebellion.

12.05.16 Dharma Talk : Focus and Steadiness

Today is a big day for all of the baby swans.  We have been on this pretty incredible path here at the Mandir learning how to become yoga teachers.

During our training we read the book Journey Home by Radanath Swami, which is - to give a most basic summary a story of a spiritual journey.  Pretty much right away in this narrative Radnath Swami get very pointed that he is trying to connect with God. Personally I was struck by the many moments when Radanath Swami had to choose between what was known and comfortable and something difficult that moved him closer to God.  Basically, time and again he would choose God over easy.  I am not suggesting that choosing God or Grace or what ever your end goal is  - is always hard, but it can be.  In order to decide well, we need to have Focus and steadiness .  By consistantly practicing these things, we ready ourselves to make good choices.

These decisions or forks in the road where one way is towards your goal and the other is just easier, these happen in our lives all the time.  I have a very real goal to realize global liberation of all beings and peace on earth in my lifetime.  But I also want to sit on my sofa with my husband and watch The last man on earth.  One of these things is far easier to do and feels good for a minute and the other is rewarding beyond any measure and is totally necessary. 

As crazy at it sounds, when this moment comes for me to decide to chill on the couch with my boo or to use my time to work on liberation, if I can’t remember my focus, and have no steadiness of mind, I choose the couch.  What a rip off really.

As it turns out, our yoga practice is an excellent place to develop our focus and steadiness.  We do this by accepting the circumstance of our pose, being present, maintaining focus on whatever you have dedicated you practice to, and doing this consistently over and over again to cultivate steadiness.  Eventually that focus and steadiness that we build in our practice, creates a focused and steady mind.  Then we take that focused and steady mind and go out into the world and get awesome with the radical yogi stuff of our choosing.

I say this because it is important.  There is a lot of good to be done and it starts here on your mat.

09.13.16 Fire-walking

In my Swan School letter of intention to Michelle I said that i was looking for a fire to walk through.  I wanted to experience change even without knowing what exactly what that would look like in the end.  A couple of days ago I thought to myself “how is that fire going?”  For half a second I thought, "this is no big deal”, and then i looked around my house and realized that my environment was completely reorganized and so were my thoughts.  Where there once was chaos and disconnection there is now intention.  I looked at my family and my work and saw the same.  I looked at my meditation practice and saw the same. 

I remember clearly Michelle saying in one of my earliest yoga classes, that if this feels familiar to you it is because you have done this before.  The moment I heard that I knew it to be true.  It has taken me 15 years of struggling to maintain a practice to develop the courage and focus to be here with all of you.  This union with all of you  has been the most excellent homecoming. This experience has provided a clear path to my most honest and true self.  

I am so moved by the vision of all of us taking our seats in this practice of teaching together.

Take a second and visualize all of us seated in a line together shining a bright unwavering light - blazing through the maya!  In all honesty, I don’t think the world will be the same.  It is not only our sweetly tended and polished consciousness, but our connections with one another that provide the most light to our community and this world.  I think about all of us sitting together in that bright line of light and standing and walking all over the planet in every direction while remaining bound to each other with golden strands of light illuminating everything between us.

So, now I am thinking again about what is it like to walk through this fire.   Its awakening.   Every day my dharma becomes more clear and my devotion expands.  Each day my commitment to serve and my ability to do so gets stronger.  

Namaste!