Swami Ji, the OG

What is cultural appropriation? Cultural appropriation is defined as the process by which Intellectual property, artifacts, dance, clothing/fashion, language, music, food, religious symbols, medicine, wellness practices and more are used for purposes that were unintended by the original culture and may even be offensive to that culture.  With yoga, this can often be seen through the adaptation of practices in ways that sterilize them for the West by stripping the spiritual aspects of the philosophy, by refusal to use Sanskrit words, or by removing the symbols or stories that exemplify the teaching. Another example of cultural appropriation is at the opposite extreme through the glamorization of yoga through commercialism and marketing. Within the modern Western yoga community, Om symbols, Sanskrit scriptures, and Hindu deities are emblazoned on clothing, yoga mats, and even as tattoos on practitioners' bodies! After decades of involvement with a classical lineage of yoga, I have been accused of cultural appropriation. Indeed, I do have a Sanskrit name given to me by my guru in India. I use my legal name in my daily, worldly life. When teaching, I wear the orange clothing of being a swami. I wear regular clothing other times, though I do have a lot of orange clothes! When I teach, I use the Sanskrit terms, but I add the English equivalent until my students embrace the meaning. I have statues of a variety of deities within my living space. I also have many other artifacts and works of art from other cultures.  I do not feel my choices involve cultural appropriation, rather I believe what I practice is cultural appreciation. As an American within a global community, what hasn't come from another culture? To me cultural appreciation involves respectfully seeking to learn and understand while honoring the beliefs of others, giving credit to the culture from which information has come, and most importantly knowing the significance of what is being utilized. From the time of my first trip to India more than 40 years ago, I have felt a familiarity, a deep connection with the culture that far surpasses what I've felt when traveling to so many other countries around the world. And I believe that my involvement with yoga came from and continues to manifest from this place of deep connection and cultural appreciation. Rather than sanitizing yoga of symbols and stories that have arisen from the ancient culture of India, I appreciate them and use them to further illustrate the depth of the teachings. It's also important to understand that because yoga is based on the science of living, the symbols and stories that have been associated with yoga are as “modern” now as they were in the past.  The history of storytelling is a part of virtually all cultures as a learning tool to help us connect more fully with life and guide us to find our better self. In telling the stories we are offering easily remembered life lessons and this should not be confused with advocating for any religion. The stories help us better understand how the difficulties we face that are the same as those faced for eons across cultures and offer lessons that can improve self-awareness and self-efficacy. Today I will tell you one of my favorite stories. It is the story of Ganesh, one of the most popular deities both in the West and in India. Perhaps you have seen Ganesh? He is the elephant-headed, pot-bellied, eater of sweets! He is also the son of Shiva, who represents the universal consciousness and his consort Parvati, who represents the universal energy. These two forces underpin the entirety of the universe. Shiva liked to go out hunting with his hordes known as the Ganas. These were all sorts of beings that were frightening to be around but were true devotees to Shiva. When Shiva went out, Parvati enjoyed the quiet solitude by rubbing her body with turmeric paste and then bathing. However, Shiva knew this habit and often came home early just to annoy her as happens between couples! After this happened a few times, the next time Shiva left, Parvati took the turmeric paste and molded it into a small boy, then breathed into him bringing him to life. She declared he would be her loyal son and posted him on guard duty outside the door of the house. It's important here to remember that Parvati is the embodiment of universal energy and imbued her son with great powers.  After some time, Shiva came home only to find this strange boy sitting outside blocking the way preventing Shiva from entering his own house! This angered Shiva who tried to push past him only to find this little guy had incredible strength. At this point, Shiva turned to his hordes and told them to destroy the little boy but all failed. This surprised Shiva and in his divine fury a huge battle ensued and at some point, the boy's head was severed, killing him, and in the chaos of the moment it rolled away! At this point, due to the commotion, Parvati comes out from her bath and sees what has happened. Imagine what happens when the universal energy gets angry! She decided that her only recourse was to destroy the entirety of creation.  Brahma, who represents the lord of creation had been out with Shiva and his hordes was a bit dismayed about this, and he began to plead with Parvati to reconsider. Calming her down, Parvati said she would refrain from doing so if two conditions were met. One, that her son would be brought back to life, and two that he be forever worshipped before all other deities. They all agreed that this would be done, and Brahma was sent with orders to either find the head or to bring back the head of the first creature he found. After some time, Brahma returned with the head of an elephant and Shiva placed it on the body. He then breathed life into him, saying Ganesha would become his son as well and gave him the status of being foremost among the deities and the leader of all the Ganas. Ganesha is also referred to as Ganapati, the leader of the Ganas. And they all lived happily ever after. In reviewing the symbolism of the story Parvati represents the cosmic energy that sleeps within us. The process of classical yoga involves the process of purification to awaken this energy, to empower us to reach our higher consciousness. The bath symbolizes the process of purification to release us from what binds us to the external manifestations of life. The turmeric paste is bright yellow and symbolizes the earth element. Once this purification occurs, we meet our higher consciousness which may arrive unannounced! One reason that Ganesh is so loved is that he is considered the remover of obstacles. However, many don't realize that first he is the obstacle! Associated with the earth element, he also represents the ego, that aspect of us that can keep us from the process of purification through meditation and knowing our true nature. He is protecting the cosmic energy in the story. He the obstacle to purification. The cutting off of the head symbolizes the cutting of the ego. It is the ego with its likes and dislikes that keeps us bound to the material life and prevents us from engaging with our spiritual potential. To become successful in the process of purification, we must realize how the ego is the obstacle and it needs to be overcome. Replacing Ganesh's head with that of an elephant represents the replacement of our little, petty ego with a big universal ego. This doesn't mean becoming egotistical, rather there is disidentification with the small self and connection to the more universal Self Ganesh is therefore the one who puts the obstacle there and has dominion over removing it. Does this sound like you? Who puts your biggest obstacles in your way? And who removes them? The expression, “you are your own worst enemy” might be true. And it's often true that we have big breakthroughs in discovering our inner strength when we are challenged by life's circumstances.  When we are in the middle of the battle, we can't always defeat the obstacles preventing us from moving forward. But when we get the guidance we need to reach deep inside and find our power, those obstacles can be removed. Remember the story. When I see or think of Ganesh I see that part of me, that ego-driven self that gets in my own way from being all that I can be. I am Ganesh. I am the obstacle and I have the power to remove it as well. The story of Ganesh symbolizes each of us. 

Today we are going to discuss the components of who you are, and then you will be guided through a short meditation. Feel free to listen to the discussion portion, but then stop the recording before doing the meditation if you are not in a location where you can sit quietly and still with the eyes closed.  You may have heard the common definition of yoga is “union” and it comes from the Sanskrit word ‘yug' meaning to yoke.  If we think about how buffalo are yoked together or horses or sled dogs are joined together, the purpose of yoking is to unite multiple forces to create more power. In yoga, we become more powerful when we understand, and yoke together, the different dimensions of our being known as the koshas. Koshas are the different aspects of who we are and of what we are composed. These are physical, energetic, the mind that links us to the world around us, the mind that is intuitive and wise, able to witness the world and our patterns, and lastly, the spiritual. These aspects, dimensions, or layers of our being have differing levels of awareness from the most gross, the physical, to the most subtle, the spiritual. Let's start with the physical aspect since this is the part of us that captures the most of our awareness. It's called the annamaya kosha. Anna = food Food sheath – we become what we eat It is the vehicle for our expression and interaction in the physical world, and it occupies about 75% of our awareness. All of the koshas interact with each other. They are not separate entities. You are like a cake that is made of eggs, flour, sugar, chocolate, etc. But once the cake is made, those components can no longer be separate. In the same way, your physical health and balance ripples through the higher koshas. It affects your sense of vitality and mental peace. If you are in pain or have an illness that distracts you from the subtle aspects of your being, you must first address that. In yoga this is one of the reasons we do asanas, the physical practices. Less gross than the physical is the energetic body. This is called pranamaya kosha.  Prana = energy This kosha is a part of the vast energy of the universe, and it energizes all of the koshas. You have bones and muscles as part of the physical but it's the energy that allows you to walk or run. Pranamaya kosha is vital for all of the functions of humans. Although this aspect occupies perhaps only 2% of our awareness, it permeates the entire entity that is you. Grossly the breath is a critical part but then how aware are you even of your breath yet alone more subtle manifestations. However, when the energy becomes disturbed or blocked, illness and disease may result. It is necessary to become more aware of and control the energy to access the higher states of being. Next, we move to the mind and how it manifests in two primary levels. Man, mana or manas = mind Mental sheath We talk about this aspect of the mind as the lower mind, but perhaps we should consider calling it the worldly mind. It is responsible for the thoughts that relate to the day-to-day activities of life, as well as managing the senses.  It occupies about 20% of our awareness, and it pervades all the other koshas. Every Individual cell has its own intelligence. As you know, mental states influence your sense of health and vitality (think of what happens to you when you receive unexpected, good or bad news). However, excessive mental chatter inhibits our ability to access higher koshas by keeping our awareness externalized on the world around us, or engages with thoughts about the past or future, rarely being in the present moment. The more subtle aspect of the mind is called the “higher mind” but might be better referred to as the knowing mind. Vigyana = special knowledge Intuitive sheath It is here that you can access intuition, wisdom, and higher knowledge-that sense of knowing-to see without judgement. The average person may connect awareness at best about 2% of the time. This is because it is much more subtle than the chatterbox mind. To access this more fully, you must work with the other three koshas-sort of clearing the way! Many of the more subtle practices in yoga such as breathing, deep relaxation and meditation practices are designed to enhance awareness of this aspect of your being. Like the intuitive, wisdom mine, the most subtle kosha-the spiritual aspect can only be accessed by developing the awareness of the previous four. Ananda = bliss Blissful sheath At this deeply subtle level of consciousness, you can experience perfection and bliss that is beyond normal experience. It is at this level where the most intimate contact with our true nature occurs. It is at this point that there is an understanding of being part of a bigger whole spiritually. But remember, first we must develop optimal health and awareness of the other koshas.  Now I will guide you through a short meditation practice to begin this process. PRACTICE Settling into a comfortable and still position through body awareness. Shifting to awareness of the breath and movement of energy in the body. Becoming aware of senses and thoughts. Witnessing. Finish

Is your life simple and easy? I believe it can be and for the last couple of years, I've challenged myself to create a life that is becoming simpler and easier. Prior to this time my life was so full it was overflowing, and it often left me drained to the point where I felt so weighted down that I could barely keep moving forward. In 2019, I was in the twenty second year of running a yoga center that employed about 16 staff members and served several hundred students per week. I was also the education director and president of the board of a nonprofit yoga academy, housed in the center's premises, that provided a variety of in-depth courses and yoga teacher training. In addition to teaching many classes and these courses each week, I was often emotionally mired in the “dramas” of staff and students. I was working 10-12 hours per day, seven days a week. My only time off was to travel to Mexico to lead a yoga retreat or when I would take a group to India to connect with the ashram where my guru lives.  I was approaching 70 and I felt as though I was doing more and more and enjoying life less and less. I needed a breakthrough before I broke down! I knew things had to change and that I was the only one who could change them. Wishful thinking wouldn't work. I needed a plan. Now, three years later, I am feeling as though I am truly entering a new phase of my life that is becoming simple and easy. Today, I'm going to share some of my thought processes and actions that have brought me to this point. I believe they are consistently problematic for most people these days. Maybe they will be useful to you. First, I needed to find a way to shed my busy lifestyle. I had to find a way to let go of many of the things for which I was responsible.   For most people, this process requires examining all of things we are doing-maybe write them out on a piece of paper to be face to face with them. Then highlight or check the ones that NEED to done, and ask yourself why and or how long? For example, for me, I spent many hours preparing and teaching yoga classes, workshops and trainings. Why? Because I had a dedicated group of students, my classes were well attended and because I didn't pay myself for those classes, only taking a salary, they were the backbone of the center's financial health. So yes, they needed to be done. Maybe for you, you spend a lot of time parenting. Why? Because you chose to be a parent and your children need your ongoing support. It needs to be done.  Next question. For how long? Teaching at the center and the academy would need to continue unless I sold the center and stopped the academy's coursework once the current courses finished.  For you, the number of hours parenting will never end, but what changes will lead to fewer hours doing so? It's not about knowing specifically when something will end but having an idea of the range and what will prevent it from happening is important to distinguish. You can then begin to plan and work toward making it happen. It's important to know where you are going so you don't get lost along the way! Do you ever think, “Why did I decide to do this?” Remember there was a decision to take on those responsibilities and it's good to begin to look at the root reasons that you made that choice. Was it done out of a fear of loneliness? Was it done to prove yourself in some way? Was it done out of a sense of obligation? Maybe it was chosen to distract you from some other area of your life? Or maybe you are thinking no one can do it but you?  It's possible to be doing things because they are good things to do. No doubt about that. But overloading yourself, even if you have the superpowers of being well organized, dedicated, and good at multitasking, eventually will lead to some level of burnout that will affect your physical, mental, and spiritual health negatively. It is necessary to let go of some of the responsibilities to find the space in life where you can nourish yourself, rather than wear yourself down.  I can almost hear you thinking, “But how can I let this go, or that go?” and then you dismiss the analysis and keep trying to forge ahead! For me, selling my yoga business was an idea I put out into the universe once I decided this was truly the course I needed to take and that letting go of it would reduce stress and allow more time for me. I knew it might take a year or two but setting out that intention renewed me to the possibilities of life. I began asking a few people if they might be interested. Within a couple of months, someone came forward and after several more months, we came to an agreement and signed the paperwork. It was a year after first deciding that I would sell it, and the last couple of weeks of ownership was when we all went into lockdown due to the pandemic. Despite the relief I felt about letting it go, I also realized that I would need to delay letting go of my teaching obligations to more fully support the students who were all attending online, and the new owner who had purchased a 3600 sq ft space that was locked! I have since let go of all teaching earlier this year. How can you determine what things might be “letting go” decisions you need to make? Let me ask you what tasks or responsibilities annoy you? Think about it. Then ask again, do I truly need to be doing this or am I doing it for some other reason? Am I truly needed to accomplish this? Can I delegate or share this with someone else? Realize that when you hold onto tasks or social obligations that consistently annoy you that they will steadily drain you! As I've mentioned in many previous podcasts, we all require a certain level of energy or prana to optimize our physical and mental health, and to make the changes necessary to create a more fulfilling, simple, and easy life. When you can let go of some parts of your life, then you will have the energy to take on the process of simplifying your life. It's at this point that a new intention must be set otherwise as space opens up, you will likely fill it with yet another thing and be back to where you were before! For me, I felt like selling the center was going to give me soooooo much free time! I was still teaching 8 yoga classes per week, doing workshops, and supporting the new owner in terms management training. I started an online yoga business offering one-on-one consultations, digital practice recordings, and volunteered to be the treasurer of a different community nonprofit for which I had been a board member for a decade. Gee. I wonder why I still felt overwhelmed!  I don't think I'm unique in this. I've seen many people who let go of one big task and then take on two more that might be smaller and might not!  This is when I began to tell myself, “Remember when you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else.”     Start to simplify life by “decluttering.” Start by decluttering your schedule. Don't overschedule and as more time and space appear, start to look at tasks and projects as karma yoga, the yoga of meditation in action. This requires a certain amount of awareness and discipline in doing the work along with minimizing your expectations as a result of the action. When looking at life's projects as karma yoga, set a starting and stopping time and stick to it even if it's not finished. Stopping when it's not finished is also a great practice in letting go! By having a certain time frame provides its own sense of completion over time. For example, maybe you hate cleaning your kitchen and so you let it go all week, doing only the minimum. Instead try to schedule a 10- or 15-minute cleaning time each day and when the time is up realize that you will do the same tomorrow. In a week, you will find the kitchen pretty much stays clean with that minimum daily amount. Another key element of karma yoga is awareness. Don't talk on your cell phone as you clean or listen to a podcast or other things that will distract you. Instead, watch your thoughts. Many of the undercurrents, the patterns of thinking and behavior, become more evident during the practice of karma yoga. I didn't realize how competitive I am with myself until I started to engage more in karma yoga! Once you have practiced karma yoga, begin to declutter you space. Organize closets and drawers, getting into areas that have been kept pretty much closed to your awareness rather than dealing with them. You may think that if things are out of sight, they are out of mind but that's not so. Everything we own can own us at some level!  Over the past two years, I've gotten rid of so much stuff! I ask myself, when was the last time this was a part of my life? If it's been packed in somewhere, I probably don't need it. But our minds are tricky! The next thought might be that it might be needed some unknown day in the future. As soon as I have that thought I ask myself how realistic is that thought. I then either donate it, give it to someone who will use it, or I throw it out. None of the things I've ever thrown out have left the planet so if I find I need it again in the future, it's still available. The last things to declutter is relationships! Are you trying to be too many things to too many people? Are you embroiled in the dramas of other people's lives? Do you make endless excuses for the behaviors of others? If so, you may want to go back and listen to the last podcast on Healthy Boundaries and a previous one called “Relationships, Ugh!” As you declutter, you will feel your body and mind functioning more optimally. This is when you begin to create a more realistic life schedule. A life schedule is one that is about you and the nurturing of you through regularity and having contingency plans. It doesn't have to be rigid. In fact, it shouldn't be.  For example, my life schedule includes going to bed and rising at essentially the same times each day, as well as eating at the same times. I have a morning ritual that includes yoga practices for 30-60 minutes, walking the dog for 20-30 minutes, going to workout on Mon, Wed, Fri, etc. Build in a certain amount of flexibility. Assess what things are essential and what can be altered. You can see above I have a range for many things to minimize feeling “pressed, stressed, or just giving up” and not doing it. Make it shorter one day as needed and longer when possible but don't stop doing it. In addition to flexibility, have some contingency plans. This might sound complicated but without contingency plans what will happen when something goes wrong? Actually, when something goes wrong is a wonderful opportunity to watch how your mind and body responds. It can tell you a lot about underlying patterns of behavior.  Then ask yourself two questions. What lessons can I learn from this? And what alternative is there to what I had planned? Lastly, bring the practice of gratitude into your life. I don't know about you, but I have so much for which I am grateful. This morning it was blowing and snowing and when I was walking the dog it was icy in spots. I could have seen it as a negative experience but instead I practiced gratitude. I was grateful to have warm clothes and good shoes. I was grateful to be outside and not worry about a bomb or missile strike. I was grateful that my feet weren't hurting as much as a year ago. I was grateful to have me 3 legged, 14-year-old dog as my companion. I was grateful for the few daffodils who were demonstrating their resilience by standing up to the snow and cold. I was grateful to be alive, living such a good life with so much comfort and abundance.  And now, I am grateful that you for taking the time to listen to this podcast!

A boundary is a limit or space between you and another person. It is a clear place where you begin and the other person ends, physically, mentally, energetically and spiritually.  The purpose of setting a healthy boundary is, of course, to protect and take good care of yourself at all levels of being. Do you have unhealthy boundaries? Unhealthy boundaries involve a disregard for your own and/or others' values, wants, needs, and limits. Unhealthy boundaries can also lead to dysfunctional and potentially abusive relationships.  I'm going to ask a few questions that will help you determine where you have weak boundaries or at least boundaries that need to be strengthened. As I go through these questions, be honest with your feelings-does the question resonate with you, or do you have that area covered? Do you really hate to “let people down?” This can be exemplified by feeling guilty by saying no, so you say yes; or you fear what someone will think of you for saying no; or you give away more of your time than you want, and this prevents you from having time for self-care?  Or you are so rooted in being a “people pleaser” that interactions don't necessarily make you feel guilty, but you find your mood is often underpinned by a level of anxiety with no obvious cause? Could it stem from a deep feeling of being rejected or abandoned? Does this sound familiar? How do you share your personal information? Those with unhealthy boundaries often “overshare” about their personal information in an attempt to impress the other person, or to make the other person feel special to know so much about you. However, being an open book can demonstrate to the other person that you are desperate to be liked or may not be trustworthy about personal information and with whom it is shared. Or you may not share at all. Sometimes this is because you you've been burned in the past, or you are afraid to let someone know you because you're not sure you know yourself anymore. Does this sound familiar? How do your relationships play out in your life? Do you find that your relationships are fraught with drama? A lack of boundaries can signal others that you obviously don't know how to take care of yourself This leaves you open to those who want to control you. This may result in codependent relationships or a feeling that you are giving a whole lot more than you are receiving from the relationship. You begin to feel a lack of respect, so you try harder to be “nice” and to make the other person happy. I want to tell you that you are not responsible for creating happiness in any other person!  Does this sound familiar? Do you sometimes feel you're being “used?” Manipulators seek people to use for their benefit, and many have learned how to flatter you, give you what you want with the goal of taking it back later. Whenever you begin to feel that you are being used, you probably are! This may result in depression, anxiety, or a feeling of exhaustion from suppressing feelings of inadequacy and/or resentment.  Inadequacy can present as an inability to make life decisions; or you feel like you must try harder to “earn” respect by being extra nice; or you fear speaking up or disagreeing with the other person. This inadequacy can lead to a sense of victimhood. Your life feels out of balance, and you no longer feel that you know what you need from life. Your dreams and life's purpose feel inaccessible, and a part of you may even believe that you didn't deserve them anyway.  At this point resentment begins to build, and you may start blaming others for your feelings. This is a way of not facing up to the fact that you didn't set a boundary, but you have given away your power to set a boundary with the other person. Resentment may show up as unexplained anger over small things. You're angry that it's raining when you expected sun – a metaphor for looking at things that are not in your control but are making you angry. It may show up as passive aggressive behaviors. First you let others take the advantage. Then you try to manipulate back the energy and power you have lost by nagging the other person, or complaining about them to others, or even punishing them in little ways.  If resentment continues to build, it can even show up as self-destructive, numbing behaviors such as addictive behaviors, or isolating oneself from others. So, does any of this sound familiar?  To be open and honest, and without oversharing, I want you to know that I have been that person who exemplifies these concepts of unhealthy boundaries for a good portion of my life! I was severely bullied in grade school. My brother and sister were both gone from the house when I was 8 and my parents were both working, and because we lived in a very rural area, I had no one to support me. And when I was young, any support that would have come would have been in the form of “toughen up.” I have had weight issues with my weight yo-yoing up and down throughout my life. This often made me feel “unliked and different” from what is considered “desirable.”  I became an over-achiever, trying to prove myself. I became a people pleaser to show that I was good enough. I have spent countless hours, probably years, wondering what people thought of me and trying to mold myself into someone who deserved respect! There are still remnants of that person within me. Those samskaras, or thought patterns lying in the subconscious mind, are actively being managed and better ones are growing. At this point in my life, I feel that the real me is more than “good enough,” and if someone thinks badly about me, that says more about them than me, and I am only interested in molding myself into the best version of myself through self-acceptance, self-care, and self-respect.  A big part of my evolution is by finding the boundaries that have eluded me for most of my life. Now I want to share three steps that may also help you create healthier boundaries.  First, you will need the energy to do the work. Life is all about prana, your life force or energy. If you feel tired with no apparent reason you are using your energy in your relationships with others more than in relationship to yourself. Anxiety, depression, resentment, and anger are emotions that are exhausting! To bring the emotions into balance requires developing an awareness of how you use your energy, your prana. Are you overcommitting to others? Begin to dedicate a certain amount of time each day to commit to self-care. Don't confuse self-care with “hiding” from life. Lying on the couch, eating a bag of chips and watching TV, or spending hours on social media are not forms of self-care. Doing a short meditation each day, or some breathing practices, or walking for 20-30 minutes each day outside regardless of weather or cooking a nourishing meal – something that “feeds” your body, energy, mind, and spirit.  Begin to listen to your body's signals when you are around other people. Do you feel a subtle sense of contraction? A shrinking of your energy field? This is not a good sign. When I feel this around someone, I might be aware I've felt it before with that person and I need to evaluate how the interaction leaves me feeling. If I feel that the person has “sucked” my energy, I know I need to develop stronger boundaries with that person. If the feeling continues, then it may be necessary to psychologically distance myself from that person. Distancing yourself from people who just don't get you and cannot appreciate your kindness is important. You owe them nothing, and you don't need to stick around and be manipulated. If your body signals an expansion of your energy field, then this person can be a positive force in your life provided that they are not just trying to please you, flatter you or build you up to gain some control.  Basically, learn to listen for a “whole body yes” signal. This is one reason that the meditation practice of Antar Mouna can be such a useful practice to cultivate better awareness of our body's sensations as well as seeing the convolutions of our thoughts and the emotions behind them. I encourage you to download the practices of Antar Mouna from my website swamiatmarupa.com. As you become more aware of your energy and thoughts, then begin to create your life through choices and discipline. Make one choice that will start you on the path to the life you need. Just one. You can always make another one after you embody the first.  Choose that one thing and once you have chosen, realize that if you start making excuses for not doing that one thing, you have not really chosen it. When you say yes to your excuse, you are saying no your choice. Remind yourself, “I have chosen to do this for x amount of time per day and x numbers of days per week. No excuses.”  I suggest with committing to at least 4 out of 7 days, otherwise you are doing it less often than you are actually doing it! Things will only change when you do something more often than not doing it! You developed the self-defeating samskaras from doing it over and over again. The only way you can change is to practice self-affirming samskaras over and over again. I recently did a podcast on discipline, and you may with to listen to that or review it again. Step three is to practice setting boundaries. In our yoga teacher training program, we had a module on student support skills. One of the exercises was to have one student play the role of teacher and they were only allowed to say, “No” to whatever the student asked of them. No further explanation. Only no. The student who played the role of the teacher's student was told to ask the teacher for something inappropriate. They then practiced the exercise. Every student who was confined to answer “No” was visibly uncomfortable in the situation as the other student pressured more and more, even though they all knew it was role playing! This can be a good exercise for you to try and as you do, pay attention to the bodily sensations and mental patterns arising. And how you feel after. You can also be aware of what happens when you “give in.” Obviously, most boundaries aren't that simple, but it's a good place to start. The process of setting healthy boundaries means: define what you need that you're not getting communicate what you need I felt really ____ when this happened I feel ___ when you don't overexplain – keep it simple, use I statements I know that you ___ You made me ___ You always ___ to me or at me don't accuse – take the other's feelings into consideration I need this to ___ If this isn't possible, I will ___ set consequences – say why it's important show gratitude and honesty – thank for listening, and if there is still disagreement, suggest we can agree to disagree Results of healthy boundaries good mental health good emotional health developed autonomy developed identity avoid burnout influence others' behavior A person with strong boundaries understands that it's unreasonable to expect two people to accommodate each other 100% and fulfill every need the other has. A person with strong boundaries must understand that they may hurt someone's feelings sometimes, but ultimately, it's important to remember that you can't determine how other people feel.

When we feel we are losing our balance we grab hold of something to feel secure and to prevent falling. This is a normal reaction to be able to maintain our physical balance and hopefully prevent pain. At that moment of uncertainty, that moment of being out of balance, we would think it strange if someone told us to “just let go.”  But what about our mental balance? What are we grabbing hold of to feel secure? And are we holding on to hopefully prevent the mental and emotional pains? In the ancient text, the Yoga Sutras, within the very first few sutras we are told that it is possible to manage the mind. We are given the information about just five different thought patterns that disturb the mind that take us away from balance and the methods to reign them in. These five thought patterns are said to create vrittis, or whirlpools within the conscious mind and prevent us from seeing our true essence. I've always loved the definition of vrittis as whirlpools. I used to do some river rafting and the rough waters of rapids there are sometimes “holes” as rafters call them. This is where water flowing over a rock or other obstacle flows down, then back onto itself in an eruption of whitewater. It creates a whirlpool circling around and around and if a raft goes into one, it can trap that nice buoyant raft and pull it down under the water!  Now when the Yoga Sutras were written over two thousand years ago, this metaphor didn't exist. I don't think there was that sort of river rafting going on. But every time I think about the thought patterns being a whirlpool, this metaphor works for me. I know how often I get stuck in the different patterns of my thinking and how I've been pulled down under the water many, many times. In river rafting, one must be alert and aware to manage the river flowing around the “holes” that will become a trap. In the same way, in yoga, one must also be alert and aware to manage the thoughts flowing that can entrap us, so that we can access the knowledge of our true nature, that aspect of who we are beyond how we present in the world.  We identify with our thoughts, our vrittis. The Yoga Sutras say that if you can find a way to stop identifying with them, you will “rest” or “abide” in your own true essence.  I love the commentaries that use the word rest. It implies a time after working, or a sense of being rather than doing. A time when it might be possible to stop the mental battles, to put down the variety of masks we wear in the world, to find a point of balance within the mind that actually exists-and “rest” there. The five vrittis, or thought patterns are: right knowledge wrong knowledge fantasy  deep sleep memories These are the whirlpools that keep us from reaching that point of balance where we can “rest.” Let's take each one and briefly discuss it, but first I want to say that each of these has both positive and negative qualities within them. It's not about that-the good or bad-it's about seeing them for what they are. To be able to understand the full spectrum of what each means as it plays out in your life, and by then finding the space between seeing each and the reaction to it. You might believe that right knowledge doesn't belong in the list. After all, isn't yoga with its teachings a form of right knowledge? Isn't studying to learn anything that helps us be a productive and positive member of society good? Well, yes. That can be toward one end of the spectrum, but what about overindulging in knowledge-such as being a professional student who uses schooling as an escape? Or being fanatical that your knowledge is somehow better than someone else's? The knowledge itself might not be bad but the ego-driven use of it puts it at the other end of the spectrum. Regardless, the knowledge creates patterns of thought that may take you away from your inner knowing. What about wrong knowledge? Again, it depends on what it is and how it's applied. Perhaps you were brought up to believe that no one could love you because you were raised in an unloving family. That's wrong knowledge, but it can dramatically affect how you relate to others going forward through life.  But then how can wrong knowledge be good? Well, let's say you're a weather geek and the forecast is for a cloudy, rainy and windy day, so you prepare appropriately. But then the approaching storm takes a different course, and the sun comes out and the day turns beautiful. I'll bet you will think it's good that the weather forecast was wrong. Actually, in this instance, if you live in Cleveland where I do, the forecast is often wrong so it's “good” to be prepared for whatever life gives you and be content with it! Fantasy or imagination can be great! Artist and creatives utilize this to bring beauty and excitement into our lives. However, indulging too deeply into this pattern of thinking can create delusions and other forms of inappropriate behavior. Are you beginning to understand? It's not just the vritti but how firmly we are letting it control the mind and manipulate our actions. So, we are now at deep sleep. Remember that these vrittis are about disturbing our conscious mind and in deep sleep the mind is in a very deep state of unconsciousness. This lack of awareness in this stage of sleep is a vritti. It's a necessary one to allow the body to recover and repair itself, but because it is an absence of consciousness and actions, it is still a vritti. Lastly, but definitely not least is memory. I'm sure each of you can see how memories create patterns of thinking, both good and bad and everywhere along the spectrum. Memories are a necessary part of everyday life. Imagine waking up in the morning and not remembering who you are or how to do anything! There was even a movie years ago called “Memento” that was a mystery/thriller based on a rare form of memory loss due to a tragedy.  Memories can serve us or destroy us. Memories can exert their influence even when they are not in the conscious, self-aware mind. There has been a lot of research in recent years about memories, false memories, the influence of memories, and so on. You see, more than 2000 years ago, memories were considered to be one of the five primary thought patterns that keep us from accessing a higher level of awareness and reaching an understanding of our true nature. So what are we to do? What's the answer? The Yoga Sutras say the answer is twofold: Abhyasa and Vairagya. Abhyasa is a dedicated practice done with faith over a long period of time. These three factors need to be clarified. A dedicated practice requires unwavering discipline. It's not a meditation practice that's done irregularly, maybe once a week then three times a week, then take off for a week, and so on. It means that the practice is a daily part of life, and not only that but it must be done with faith! True progress and change occur slowly, and it is somewhat ludicrous to think that practicing in a class once per week, or while on vacation but no other time, is going to yield results! Imagine you wish to become a great musician. Can you practice irregularly for a year or two and achieve this? So why do we think we can change our lives by this pattern? And because it takes a long time, we must have faith. Those changes are small and sometimes too small to even realize, but with faith, you must believe that they will come over the long haul. The other method of managing the vrittis is vairagya, or non-attachment. Cultivating the ability to “let go” of our attachments and expectations. Think about this. What does it mean to you? Many of our mental disturbances come from the thought patterns associated with what we are attached to and what we expect to happen at any given moment. Take a moment to think about the last time you were upset about something….I can pretty much guarantee that your distress came from being attached to something or expecting a different outcome than what was there facing you. To practice non-attachment doesn't mean you give everything away or that you try to create a mental state of detachment. Rather it means that you can fully enjoy life and find emotional contentment regardless of circumstances! You are no longer governed by the situation around you. Everything in your life is “on loan” so to speak. Your relationships, your material belongings, your job, even your emotions and reactions. There's a story about the Buddha who was accosted by an angry person who shouted and berated him calling him stupid and a fake. When he stopped, the Buddha turned to the man and asked, “If you buy a gift for someone and that person does not take it, to whom does the gift belong?” The man was surprised by the question, but answered, “It would belong to me because I bought the gift.” The Buddha said, “Correct. It's the same with your anger. If you become angry with me and I don't feel insulted nor accept your hostility, the anger falls back on you, as it was initially yours to give. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy, not me. All you've done is hurt yourself.” Now that's a great example of embodiment of non-attachment. Probably one that would be difficult for most of us! But we can start to see where our attachments lie, which thought patterns or vrittis are disturbing our consciousness, and begin to explore and practice forms of yoga that are meant to develop our awareness.  Feel free to contact me for more information and guidance or visit my website for recorded practices.

Sometimes we keep busy moving from one thing to another and believe this will keep us from thinking too much. However, we are only creating a distracted mind, the part that is overdeveloped to start with, and all this busy-ness keeps feeding this part of the mind that is processing sensory information and tries to make sense of the world. We need to develop the part of the mind that connects us with our higher self.  When we go to bed at night, we become still and gradually the mind slows down and we fall asleep. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to slow down the mind at any point during the day? Today you will learn a yoga practice that will help you still the mind through the mechanism of body stillness. The practice will take about 10 minutes. After the practice I will explain more about how this works. You will be asked to sit with the eyes closed, so if you are driving, stop the recording and save it for another time. Now, come into a comfortable sitting position. You can sit in a chair with the feet on the floor and the back straight, or you can sit in a meditation posture on the floor or on a meditation cushion. I will now guide you through the process. Outline of practice – details will be instructed Sit with the back straight Scan through the body making any adjustments to align the body Find stillness through movement Take 5 slow deep breaths Become aware of the posture of the body Be aware of the various triangles of the body systematically from the feet to the head Begin to visualize the body as though looking in a mirror See the body from the front, the back, the right, the left and above Visualize a second time, then see the whole body from all sides Feel the stillness of the body and how the mind is more still Breath awareness, body awareness Body supported, deep breath and open eyes when ready How do you feel? Good? Calmer? Maybe some of you don't really want to move at this point. This practice is called Kaya Sthairyam, meaning body steadiness, and you have just practiced the first 3 stages of the complete practice which is 12 stages.  Stage 1 is called “finding stillness through movement.” If I simply told you to sit still, you would do so for a short time, but then start adjusting, something would itch, or something would be uncomfortable, and you would move. So, in this stage, you are guided through movements that will hopefully saturate the mind with adjustments until it gets a bit bored and settles into the position. Stage 2 is “awareness of the posture of the body.” Again, we are saturating the mind with awareness of different aspects of the body. In this recording, I guided your awareness through a variety of triangles made by the awareness moving along the different angles of the body. Sometimes I guide students to feel the inner space of the body as though hollow inside. There are several ways of doing this stage. The purpose is to capture that part of the mind that is interpreting the senses and trying to make sense of the world. It's giving the mind something to do through the capture and it then follows along, minimizing distractions.  Stage 3 is “visualizing the body.” This recording utilized the idea of seeing the different parts of the body as though looking in a mirror, but it can also be done as though you were outside your body looking at the body from this perspective. This continues to keep the mind focused on the body, but it also creates a “space” between the part of the mind that “sees” the world without judgement and the part of the mind that interacts with world. This is a vital part of managing the mind and connecting with your higher self – this concept of witnessing – the space between “seeing” and “taking action.” As this concept develops, it allows us to cultivate the ability to act with intention rather than react without awareness. After stage 3, I guided you to be more externalized before moving and opening the eyes. This is an important part of any meditation practice so that you leave the practice with more mental clarity and don't feel spacey. As I mentioned earlier, the complete practice of Kaya Sthairyam is 12 stages and it's a much more advanced practice that takes 40-60 minutes to do correctly. The next stages continue with different ways of experiencing the body and its sensations, then creating a sense of profound immobility. With immobility, the awareness is moved to how slow and subtle the breath has become, and ultimately to a state of pure awareness, separate from the stillness of the body, the stillness of the mind, and even the breath becomes barely perceptible. It's a very powerful practice that guides the mind into a state of one-pointedness. However, I want to emphasize two things.  You are meant to practice these first 3 stages consistently for a period of weeks before trying to advance. Notice how the rest of your day goes after doing this short, simple practice. Overall, the practice of Kaya Sthairyam - just these 3 stages - will help you find more clarity, focus and contentment in your life if you practice more days than you don't!  

When you think or hear about the word discipline what comes up for you? “Oh, I wish I had more of it,” or “I don't have time for discipline,” or even “did I do something wrong?” The last implying that the word discipline is a form of punishment. Today we are going to discuss our misperceptions about discipline, its importance, and how we can improve our discipline to be more successful in our lives.  Let's start with the dictionary definitions. 1)  the practice of training people to obey rules using punishment to correct disobedience or 2) a branch of knowledge, typically one studied in higher education. Both of these definitions imply that discipline is a learned behavior. It's not something we are born with although we may think it is, especially if we grew up in an environment that lacked discipline. But remember that so much of who we are is established in those first years of life. If we were surrounded by people who were undisciplined or only used discipline as a form of punishment, that's what we learned. Another definition comes at the very beginning of the Yoga Sutras, one of the major texts of yoga psychology and philosophy. In Sanskrit it is, “Atha yogah anushasanam” which means “now yoga is to be understood as a form of discipline.” In yoga, this concept of discipline can be further explained as the ability to govern the subtle processes of one's personality. In other words, it's a process to know the subconscious patterns that manifest as our personality and how to be in charge of how they play out in the world. It is not something that is meant to be imposed from the outside. Rather it is developing the ability to see ourselves at a deeper level, to understand where undesirable behaviors come from, and to create a more appropriate response to the world around us that will result in a more harmonious, healthy, and successful life. As my guru has said, “We tend to identify with the weaknesses rather the strengths of our character. This promotes won't power – I won't do that, I can't do that, rather than will power – I will do that. We need to reduce the weak and limiting characteristics of our personality and develop the positive and creative characteristics. Yoga is what will lift you up and guide you.” True discipline must come from within even though it may be influenced by the world around us. So how do we reduce those influences and find the inner strength and will to feel disciplined? Let's start by assessing where you are according to the Yoga Sutras and how they define the stages of mind. In the Yoga Sutras there are five stages of mind: 1) Dull – mired in ‘darkness' meaning full of negativity and stuck in the patterns so deeply that there's no desire to change; 2) Dissipated – some ‘light' peeks in, meaning the darkness is pretty consuming but there is an awakening to the possibility of some change might be a good thing; 3) Oscillating – action rotates with inaction, and this is where most of us find ourselves – we try to make a change toward a goal and then we slip back into our old patterns – we try something again or something different and then we slip again – we oscillate; 4) One-pointedness – focus without dissipation, this is where we begin to truly develop discipline – we have a goal, we know the self-sabotaging behaviors, we have the energy and will to stick to the plan; 5) Controlled – balanced with discernment – at this point discipline is a natural part of who we are!  If you are listening to this podcast, I'm assuming that you are in the oscillating stage of the mind. You are interested in finding a different way of being in the world. You're a searcher, and that's a great attribute! But you may also find that your goals are hard to achieve, that you may think that others must have something that you don't have? Well, I'm here to tell you that you have everything you need inside of you – now the work begins as to how it can be accessed! Let's start with 5 keysys to begin the work in developing more discipline in your life! These are 1) set a goal, 2) understand your motivation, 3) identify obstacles, 4) replace old habits, and 5) get support from appropriate people. Set a goal. Remember that self-discipline is the bridge between goals defined and goals accomplished! It's very important to not just set a goal but to develop and execution plan. This plan needs to be kept simple, broken into small bits that are defined and doable. If you listened to my previous podcast, I talked about the goal I set to “get healthier” and just one component or “bit” of that was to lose weight, another bit was to move more, another bit was to prepare my meals and eat healthy, another bit was to declutter my life to reduce stress. I also set “markers” for success. Celebrate when I lost certain amounts of weight, such as 30 lbs, 50 lbs, 75 lbs, and I'll soon celebrate 90 lbs! I bought a treadmill and put it in the middle of a room and vowed to walk on it at least 4 out of 7 days per week – started with 10 min/1 mile per hour and now doing up 6 days per week for 30-40 min/2.5 miles per hour. I've reestablished buying healthy foods only, my ability to cook, and have learned that my food is like medicine – I feel better, and I've lost food cravings. I've also decluttered my life by leaving a volunteer position as an officer of a non-profit organization, I'm quitting teaching regular yoga studio classes at the end of the month, I've sold a commercial building that I own, and I'm decluttering the “hidden” spaces of my home, such as closets, files, and most recently the basement which had remained untouched since I moved in 10 years ago.  This was an interesting “bit” of getting healthier that was rather unexpected because I used to create stained glassed pieces and had simply moved all my old studio and glass inventory and left it all down there with the plan to someday sell it all. But everything was dusty and dirty and totally disorganized with sheets of glass leaning up against all of the walls, equipment in boxes or scattered about in disassembly. I cleaned it all up and with each piece of the work I became reinspired! Reinspired by the beauty of the art glass sheets I had purchased decades ago. Reinspired by my own creativity and talent! A part of me that I had put down into the deeper recesses and closed the door – a metaphor for how we sometimes lose parts of us that need to be given permission to reemerge to bring balance into life. The studio is almost set up. Just a little more clearing out of unnecessary things. Once you have set a goal and have a plan, the next key is to find out more about what motivates you. Motivation is not something that will spontaneously appear! There needs to be some time spent on self-reflection to delineate your strengths and weaknesses. We all have strengths and weaknesses. And you can't ignore your vulnerabilities thinking you are the only one that has them! Over the decades of teaching yoga classes, I would always try to encourage people to do what was right for them and not to look at others around them. I often said, “it doesn't matter what someone else can do or not do, you aren't in their body, nor do you know what they are thinking!” Sometimes to emphasize how we think about what we should be doing, I would ask everyone in the class to raise their hand if they had no physical or mental limitations – at which point, everyone would look around to find that no one had their hand raised - ever! Motivation comes from shifting your mindset and behaviors. Baby steps – the importance of breaking your goal into manageable bits! A little motivation based on manageable steps done with consistency and repetition will gradually increase your motivation. It's like strengthening a muscle. You don't start by deadlifting 300 pounds, yet we often try to deadlift 300 pounds of change in our thinking! No! You will fail and you will give up. Back to the oscillating stage of mind – you tried but maybe it wasn't the right choice. Maybe you will try something else. Motivation comes from little successes that happen over time and regularity You need to recognize that starting was an accomplishment, figure out what you learned from that and understand there will be discomfort along the way. This is what I call comfortable discomfort – whether physical or mental or emotional – there is a need for a bit of discomfort and to be able to successfully deal with it to be motivated.  When I first stepped onto my treadmill, I was somewhat appalled by how little I could do because of my physical status – my weight and the development of severe arthritis in my feet. After all, I had trekked to Mt Everest Base Camp! But at the same time, I realized that although that was an accomplishment, there were many moments of discomfort during that and again I would need to experience some discomfort to remain motivated and to progress toward my goal of being healthier. Which brings us to the third key, identify possible obstacles and create a backup plan. It's easy to get sidetracked, especially if you don't know where you are going and you haven't created a mental map how to get there in the face of the common obstacles like procrastination, overextending yourself in other areas that make you “too busy”, the inability to forgive yourself when you fall short because you aren't engaging in an ongoing reevaluation and modification of your actions. Put your plan in a spreadsheet, or on a to do list, or on your calendar, or on sticky notes that you post in prominent places. Make it a living thing in your life and find whatever works for you in terms of also documenting the actions you're taking. Having your small, manageable steps in some sort of format where you can check off what's been accomplished each day. Lean on this when the obstacles, or perceived obstacles arise.  For example, when I got my treadmill, I decided to use it at least 4 out of 7 days per week because that meant I was doing it more often than I wasn't doing it. I also made an agreement with myself that I would do it before dinnertime each day. And there have been many days when I was procrastinating, or I was busy because I had overextended my commitments that I didn't want to do it. I wanted to eat my dinner and be done with my day. But then I reevaluated – I will do it for a shorter time and see how it goes – and I would start. Often then while doing it, I could feel my motivation returning and over time I also realized that overextending myself and my perceived busyness, stemmed from my unwillingness to set healthier boundaries. This resulted in a lot of decluttering of my mental and emotional weaknesses, and I have learned that saying NO is a complete sentence! Another obstacle can be when others' expectations obstruct your program. Use that obstacle to learn and grow into other ways of being. Have a backup plan. A lot of social connection comes from sharing meals. Instead of giving up eating out with friends, I have learned to check the menu ahead of time and choosing what I'll have. My plan includes eating my biggest meal at lunch, so I meet for lunch instead of dinner, or if dinner it's an early one and light. Dealing with the obstacles and planning ahead, will strengthen your willingness to keep going. Yes, there will be some failures – two steps forward and one step back. That can be good enough on any given day. Set an 80/20 rule. If you can keep doing your plan 80% of the time, then 20% of the time you will have the space to come up a little short without the need for perfection – one of the biggest obstacles out there! If you've gotten this far, the next step, replacing old habits, will be easier. You've set a goal, you've found your motivation and you've prepared for obstacles with a backup plan. Realize that habits develop from repeating patterns over and over again until they happen without thought.  It will take time and energy to think about them, to be aware of their influence, and to replace them with new habits. Having time and energy can be difficult. Again, start small and believe you can do this! Take 5-10 minutes at the end of the day to reflect on what one behavior, just one, that you experienced that day that made you feel negative about yourself. Was this a habit? What could you have done differently? What can you do tomorrow in place of doing that again? See yourself making the better choice and how will that make you feel?  Do this in silence with your eyes closed – you can even do it in bed before drifting off to sleep. Mark Twain once said, “Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man but coaxed downstairs one step at a time. “ Lastly, get support! Find appropriate supporters who will cheer you on but also give constructive, maybe even painful, feedback. Don't try to do it alone. Seek out those who believe in you and can help you stay on track.  This doesn't mean that you have to tell everyone you know because there are those who might feel threatened by you due to their own behaviors. Choose a few key people to support you and don't be afraid to connect with them in a truthful and vulnerable way. We are often afraid to expose ourselves, our weaknesses, our failures, but everyone has them! It is nothing to be ashamed of, and if they are true supporters, they will care even more about you because you are trusting them with your authenticity. These five keys, set a goal, understand your motivation, identify obstacles, replace old habits, and get support from appropriate people will allow discipline to evolve within you. And when as it does, you will experience a higher degree of self-control and self-esteem. Your behaviors will begin to align with your goals so you will spend less time debating what to do and feeling bad about the choices you're making. With time, you be less distracted, more satisfied with your life and you will reach the one-pointed state of mind and the controlled state of mind will begin to unfold.

Today I will discuss the inevitability of change, why we find it difficult, how change and growth go hand in hand, the importance of having goals, and to welcome change! WHEW! That's a lot to think about! And all of those thoughts are also part of the mechanism that keeps us “stuck” where we are and resisting changes. It has often been said that the only constant is life is change! Yet most of us find it difficult to change, especially when it takes us away from our routine, our conditioned ways of thinking.  In actuality we've been changing our whole lives! Some of the changes may have seems “natural” but at the time, we may not have realized just how difficult they were. When we were you young, the world was new to us. We needed to make changes to explore who we were and how we were meant to fit into the world around us. It was the openness to the possibility of failing that helped us get our hands and knees under our bodies so that we could crawl! It was the lack of fear that prompted us to take our first steps and falling so many times before we could totter around. It was the desire to move in different ways that helped us try out some dance steps, climb onto a bicycle, to figure out swimming, to put on skates, or maybe skis.  And we grew from all of these experiences and couldn't wait to reach a certain stage of life to experience more changes. I remember when I learned to drive our speed boat and pull others on water skis when I was 12. I remember turning 16 and learning how to drive the car, and yes it was on a manual shift. To this day, I remember lying in bed at night visualizing the steps of pushing in the clutch, other foot on the brake, starting the car, putting it into gear while simultaneously moving from the brake to press on the gas as I slowly lifted the other foot off the clutch and continuing the process of getting to the “right” gear with increasing speed. At what age did we start to resist the changes that would bring so much growth and freedom? When did we become so resistant to change and where did that resistance come from? As we grow older, we usually turn our awareness to the world around us, seeking affirmation from outside and we often lose touch with our need for self-acceptance and self-empowerment. We live our lives based on a lifetime of conditioning by our families, our schools, our belief systems, our friends and work associates.  I've come up with 8 common reasons that might help identify the thought distortions that keep you stuck!  I recall in 1997 when I decided to leave the profession of anesthesia and open a holistic health center that ultimately became a yoga center. Any one of these thought distortions could have stopped me. Complacency? My life is okay. I'll just leave things as they are. TD-I am making good money vs money isn't everything. Lack of self-worth? I don't think I can do it so why try? TD-Am I going to be able to do it vs when I'm determined I can accomplish what I want. Timing? I just can't manage to find time for that now. TD-It will be too much work vs I'm working 2, 24 hour call shifts per week so I do have time available to use. Social conformity? What will people think? TD-Having been a big people pleaser, people will think I'm crazy vs maybe I'll find a more supportive tribe Lack of knowledge? TD-I don't know anything about running such a business vs I've helped my husband open businesses from scratch. Are you the exception? Well, it might work for others, but not me! TD-What if I fail vs what if I succeed? Selfishness? What's in it for me? TD-How can leaving my profession and the money I make be good for me and my family vs I will still be helping people, just in a different way. Fear? What will happen? And this is the big one!! It's a thought distortion on its own. It's fear that really underpins so much of our resistance and “stuckness.” So, I keep using this word “stuck” and it's really the force that keeps us from being all that we can be. In yoga, it's called tamas. According to yoga philosophy, there are only three qualities that make up all of the universe in varying proportions. These are tamas, rajas and sattwa. They exist in everything, including each of us.   Tamas is defined as inertia, darkness, depression, immobility, rigidity, stability. stillness. Stuck! Rajas is movement, dynamism, ego, passion. It's rajas that can help us get unstuck! To move forward, to take chances and to possibly reach the third guna…sattwa. Sattwa is balance, luminosity, goodness, harmony. Most people live in this world fluctuating from tamas to rajas and back to tamas. We might have glimpses of sattwa but it is hard to achieve without considerable self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-actualization and developing the power to leave past conditioning in the past and welcome change as an opportunity for growth regardless of potential outcomes. Yoga can be the medium through which this process begins.  Not the workout style of yoga as is often practiced in the West, rather the classical version of yoga whereby the physical practices are used to develop more inner awareness. It is this inner awareness that can then grow to a point where there is a desire to practice the subtle and more powerful practices of pranayama (breathing practices) and meditation.  As the awareness continues to grow, we see the thoughts and patterns of conditioning, first during the practices themselves, but ultimately during our daily lives. This is when we can truly begin to make the necessary changes to accomplish our goals. Up to this point, we may set goals, but usually fall short due to the self-sabotaging patterns of conditioning and thought distortions that lead to abandoning our goals, or once the goal is achieved for a time, then falling back to our previous state. I'll use the example of losing weight. All of my life I have had a weight problem. I think I went on my first diet when I was 11 – the Atkin's diet. I have yo-yo'd up and down for the last 60 years, trying one thing after another. I was frequently told as a child and teenager, “you have such a pretty face, if you would just lose a little weight.” The undercurrent of that message was that I was imperfect, not accepted, and uglier due to being overweight. It also contributed to the conditioning that I had to do what other people wanted to be accepted. I've often said that if I would never have dieted and felt more accepted, I probably wouldn't have ended up being morbidly obese! As student nurse, I basically starved myself down to my low weight of 140 pounds, and even though I was 5'7”, I still felt fat! When I look at pictures from that time with wiser eyes, I looked so thin! My internal image and thoughts were distorted by the popularity of the late 60's and Twiggy! For the next 20 years, I went up and down between 170-240 depending which diet I tried along with a lot of physical activity. This was a time when I did a lot of trekking in the Himalayas, even to Mt Everest base camp! I also spent days biking, river rafting, scuba diving and more. My highest weight ballooned to 307 pounds about 30 years ago. I then tried some new diet drugs and lost nearly 50 pounds before the drugs were pulled from the market due to a life-threatening side-effect of pulmonary hypertension. I was lucky to only end up with a heart murmur. My weight stayed around that range, going up 20, then down 30, and up again. What I had failed to do up until this point was to look seriously at the underlying conditioning and patterns of behavior that kept me stuck in my fat. However, being fat didn't keep me from becoming a yoga teacher. In fact, in some ways it allowed me to accept others and give them a welcome space no matter size or physical abilities. My weight also allowed me to learn modifications for the variety of body types that I taught. Ways of practicing yoga that thin, very flexible yoga teachers might not be able to understand. Don't get me wrong, some didn't accept me as a yoga teacher. I remember early on someone getting up and walking out after the opening meditation and later complaining to my manager that having a fat yoga teacher was unacceptable. When I went to yoga conferences I felt so out of place and was made to feel invisible or was confronted by others in a “teacher intensive” by asking me if I was a teacher!  After 23 years of running my yoga center and teaching literally tens thousands of students there and elsewhere, I sold it right before the pandemic. During the lockdown, I created the time and space to be alone and be still. And in that stillness I decided to give up all of my feelings about my size, all of my underpinning patterns and conditioning, and found the strength to be healthier. The ability to do this arose from years of meditation, yoga nidra and looking at the task at hand as an opportunity to bring more awareness into my life and to let go of expected outcomes. As Deepak Chopra has said, “To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions.” Faced with my oncoming birthday when I would be 70, I made a choice and set a goal. It wasn't to lose a specified amount of weight. My goal became to GET AS HEALTHY AS POSSIBLE regardless of how long it takes.  This is where we need to talk about setting goals and some important parameters.  The first thing is to be willing to change. You might think, well of course. If I'm not willing to change, why set a goal that will require it. In reality, it's important that you truly understand that you will need to change to reach your goal, or you would already be there. In fact, you must welcome change and watch your attitude closely. Welcome the need to do things differently, to become different. You may need to get the necessary support and knowledge to find a different way. Secondly, once the goal is set, know that there will be times when you may feel that you are not moving toward it. Don't stop. Break it into bits each day and commit, commit and commit some more. As long as you are moving forward when looking at the overall progress and not just at the moment, be reassured you are heading in the right direction. Lastly, live your goal! Don't focus on what you “have to do”. You have the choice not to do it, so if you are doing it, then you've made the choice, you have set a goal, end of story. Back to my personal story about being healthier. Since the lockdown about 18 months ago, I've totally changed the way I eat due to working with an Ayurvedic practitioner and I've lost 86 pounds. I'm back to being a little overweight rather than obese. I've gone from struggling to walk a half mile due to arthritis in my feet, to walking 2 miles per day at double my earlier pace. My overall health and energy have improved remarkably. I'm making great progress. But people keep asking me about my goal. “How much more weight are you going to lose,” and I tell them I honestly don't know. My goal is to get as healthy as possible and in my mind there is no finish line to cross.  And I am looking forward to meeting who I will become over time as I welcome further changes and growth!

Just relax! I'm sure someone has said this to you at some point in your life! As if the ability to relax is like flipping a switch and something so easy you can just do it spontaneously at any time. When we were growing up, did anyone ever teach us how to relax? Do you know how even now? From my experience teaching yoga since 1995 and practicing yoga since the early 1980's, I know that relaxation can be difficult to achieve, and few people have a method that supports them to become deeply relaxed. Today this podcast will have a brief introduction to the practice that I've done and taught for decades and then you will be guided through that practice! Yes, this podcast is primarily a yoga practice! But if you are listening while driving, please do not do the practice until you are in a safe environment where you can lay down, or at least lean back in a way that the head and arms are fully supported. The name of the practice is Satyananda Yoga Nidra. Most people come to this practice to learn to relax. However, the practice can develop into a form of meditation over time. The name, yoga nidra, comes from the word yoga meaning union or bringing all aspects of you into cohesion, and nidra meaning deep sleep. The kind of sleep that is restorative to your body and mind. Not that you are meant to sleep during the practice, although many do fall asleep, and this is why you DO NOT do the practice while driving! When I began teaching yoga nidra, hardly anyone else was teaching it, but now there are many variations of this original form that was brought into modern times by Swami Satyananda, the guru of the yoga lineage with which I am associated. I will go over the format of the practice we will be doing. The practice will begin with establishing a comfortable and supported position of the body and then settling into stillness. The guidance will then help you move your awareness from the world around you and become centered in yourself. Next you will rotate your awareness through the body in a very systematic way that provides relaxation without ever using the word relax! After the body rotation, the awareness is brought to the breath. You will be asked to follow the breath without changing it in any way and to count the breaths. Lastly, the awareness will once again be connected to the environment around you, and you will be asked to begin to move and gradually get up. If you would like to learn more about this technique, please go to an earlier podcast called, “Awaken Your Potential with Yoga Nidra.” And if you wish to listen to this practice again and again, you can fast forward through this introduction to the 4 3/4 minute mark and start there. The practice will be about 15 minutes. The practice will now be guided.  (The script of the practice is not included. The practice is to be done with a recording to allow the mind to rest.) Thank you for participating.

Some think of it as endurance, but when I think of endurance, I think it means the power of enduring an unpleasant or difficult process without giving up. Or fortitude? Fortitude is courage in the face of pain or adversity. Indeed, both of these words can be a part of resilience, but don't thoroughly encompass the whole concept. Resilience is the ability to bounce back quickly from difficult situations and actually thrive when faced with challenging circumstances! Some ways of thinking about resilience includes being tough, quick to recover, buoyant, irrepressible, adaptable, flexible and can't be kept down. How many of these are physical and how many mental traits? Some are physical, but most are mental traits, don't you think? Our inner resilience is a part of who we are and is a trait that we can strengthen, cultivate and build upon! Let's discuss how yoga practices can help cultivate this quality! First, let's examine how the autonomic nervous system influences our adaptability. This division of the nervous system is made up of two branches, the sympathetic known as the fight or flight system, and the parasympathetic known as the rest and digest system. These two branches are meant to be in balance to bring about health and mental equilibrium. But what happens when we face some sort of stress? If you are resilient, stress is a normal part of life and managed, but if not, then it can be detrimental. Stress stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight response. If not readily managed, it can result in higher-than-normal heart rates, blood pressure, digestive disorders, build of blood sugars from the liver and more. If the stressor continues, these effects become chronic and the longer-term adaptation kicks in with secretion of your body's hormones that conserve fat around the abdomen, chronic inflammation of the tissues, irritability with others, insomnia, and potential maladaptive behaviors such as substance abuse. Yoga builds resilience in the body and mind by introducing small amounts of stress in a controlled scenario.  Think about free divers who swim without the aid of snorkels or scuba gear and can actually hold their breath for more than 10 minutes. They trained by holding their breath for longer and longer periods of time, stressing their brain's respiratory center by small increasing amounts of CO2. CO2 is what stimulates us to breathe. Rarely is it due to low oxygen levels. But another aspect of this adaptation is the ability to “turn down” the sympathetic system which allows the parasympathetic nervous system to create a more relaxes state. And because of some of these hormones, you can become addicted to overworking and/or overdoing! Recently there have been many articles written about yoga and the vagus nerve which is a major player in the parasympathetic system. The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve. It contains motor and sensory fibers and because it passes from the brain through the neck and thorax to the abdomen, has the widest distribution in the body. In yoga we utilize a variety of techniques that strengthen the conductivity of this nerve-guided relaxations, meditation and breathing practices. We'll discuss more about these shortly. Having discussed some of the physical factors that are important to building resilience, next let's look at our energy or “prana” as we call it in yoga. Actually, prana is more than just energy. It is our “life force” and is required for all actions, physical and mental. Obviously, the more physically active we are, the more energy that is utilized but moderate physical activity, like yoga and walking, is an important contributor to overall health and wellbeing. Our mental energy becomes depleted when we have too many unnecessary actions. Think about what activities you have done over the past couple of days. How many were necessary? How many were out of a need for distraction from feelings such as boredom, anxiety, envy, wanting validation, a desire for busy-ness?  How many of the activities created mental balance and built your energy reserves? Did you go for a walk and look at nature without engaging with your phone? When you wanted something, did you ask yourself if you wanted it or actually needed it? Did you meditate or do some sort of relaxation practice? What about regularity of your schedule? Do you eat meals at consistent times? Go to bed and get up at consistent times? Do you say no when you need to, or do you keep overscheduling your time? Someone once told me that saying no can be a complete sentence. Remember when you say yes to something, you are also saying no to something that might be a better choice. There are only 24 hours in each day no matter who you are. It all boils down to prana, your life force. If you have too many desires, that energy trickles away here and there and never truly accumulates to reach importance goals. As our energy becomes dissipated, our lives begin to feel fragmented. The will to change, to face our challenges and cultivate resilience cannot happen in this state. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Strength does not come from physical capacity.  It comes from indomitable will.”    Lastly, it's important to have resilience of mind. To be able to find the positivity that exists in our challenges. This requires mental energy and self-awareness. Psychologists estimate 70% of our thoughts are negative and redundant. Our thoughts and perceptions are beliefs that permeate every cell of our bodies.  We have protein perception switches in the cell membranes that respond to signals by regulating cell functions and behavior. The most important influence of signals on the dis-ease process is thought, the action of the mind. If the mind misinterprets environmental signals and generates an inappropriate response, survival is threatened because the body's behaviors become out of synch with the environment. Your conscious mind may be positive and hopeful, but the recorded message of the subconscious mind continues to assure your reality matches that message. This is why it is vitally important to utilize yoga practices that begin to fine-tune the awareness to be able to negotiate what arises out of the subconsious mind and see it for what it is and accept it. Within the style of yoga that I do and teach, this is a key component to developing mental resilience. So the key yoga practices that help build our resilience, our ability to bounce back quickly from difficult situations and actually thrive! First, it's important to learn how to relax. I suggest trying a guided relaxation like Yoga Nidra for stress management. In this practice, physical, mental and emotional tensions are released. Your ability to witness, to see the subconscious patterns, is enhanced. And to encourage you to try it, it's said that the relaxation and effects on the body and mind is equivalent to four times that amount of good sleep. In other words, if you do a 30 minute yoga nidra, it can be equivalent to 2 hours of good sleep. Next, try some breathing practices. Start with natural breath awareness. This will connect our thinking brain with the more primitive, life sustaining areas at the base of the brain, and these connections go through the area of the emotional, reflexive midbrain. Additionally, practice deep abdominal breathing. Put one hand on the belly and slowly increase the depth of each breath under your hand. This activates that vagus nerve that we discussed earlier that will turn down the sympathetic nervous system.  If you are feeling particularly anxious, try the calming breath known as bee breath. There's a guided bonus episode instructing this in early episodes of this podcast. Another way to create more calmness is to gradually lengthen the exhalation of the breath compared to the length of the inhalation. And lastly, try some meditation. There are several guided practices on my website, swamiatmarupa.com. All of these will enhance mindfulness so that you can see your thoughts without overreactions and increase your ability to overcome limiting belief systems that arise in the mind. In conclusion, remember these 4 things: 1. Worry Less, Act More 2. Bounce Back, Don't Look Back   3. Be Present & Aware 4. Practice, practice, practice! Start now!

Welcome to Season 3 of SwamiJi the OG. It's the beginning of a New Year and today I'll discuss how to move forward into 2022 with a sense of purpose and potentiality. I keep hearing so many people wishing each other a Happy New Year with a thin layer of hope but often with an undercurrent of dread, adding, “After all it can't get any worse!”  Yes, we are still immersed in the Covid pandemic, but rather than continually talking about things “getting back to normal” it's time to realize that the concept of what is “normal” is always changing and the lessons we are meant to learn are essential to our progress and evolution as humans. After all, what has been “normal” in the past would not be considered “normal” anymore. For example, at one time, bloodletting was a medical procedure that was normal, owning another human being was normal, child labor was normal, women existed only to please their mate and have babies was normal – I'm sure you can think of many less dramatic examples. Sending letters instead of emails? Phoning instead of texting or zooming, even just showing up to visit with someone in person? If you notice even these “antiquated” ideas of “normal” are still “normal” in some parts of the world! It's important to remember that normalcy has to do with our own culture, our own family, our own job – all of the world that exists around us and our perspective of that world determines our perception of “normal.” What makes us believe a situation is normal or not normal? From a physical view, pain is abnormal. It makes us take notice that something is not right. It's the body's signal to reevaluate. Physical pain gets our attention. Energetically, overwhelming fatigue is abnormal. When we feel it, we take notice that we didn't sleep well, or we have overextended our physical capacity in some way. Our inability to respond to our daily activities gets our attention. But when we feel mental distress, we are more inclined to look outside ourselves, our own patterns and behaviors, and try to find the answer by searching for what the world is doing to us. But in the same way as physical and energetic pain, when we feel mental distress, we should realize that we need to look at our patterns and behaviors because we have NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION!  Instead, we are seeking comfort to release us from our discomfort. We are seeking to return to our comfort zone. Or at least how we remember our comfort zone. In our remembrance we are nostalgic for comfort, or at least the parts of our lives that didn't trigger discomfort. Nostalgia is “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.” We tend to almost romanticize our previous experiences. We look back with rose tinted glasses. But what we remember as “normal” might not be what our neighbor was experiencing. What we are seeking is that return to comfort, and we seek feedback from others to confirm our perspective. Remember when we……(insert memory such as didn't have to wear masks or keep social distance.) Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with seeking a certain level of comfort, but it's important to realize that comfort can be like rocking ourselves to sleep. We can lose touch with our deeper needs. We can lose touch with the needs of others. And we can stop “growing” the capacity of resilience that we may need in the future. My point is that life is constantly changing and in flux. The term in physics is entropy which can be applied to life. Entropy is simply a measure of random disorder and affects all aspects of our daily lives. Left unchecked random disorder increases over time. Energy disperses, and systems may dissolve into chaos. And when this happens, we may find that we are unprepared. True growth as a human does not normally happen when one only exists in one's comfort zone. It's the challenges, the chaos that awakens us from our slumber and forces us to develop new ways of looking at life around us or succumb to disordered thinking processes. These thought processes may manifest as denial, anger, anxiety, depression, fear, envy – all emotions of the human condition that we suppress in our comfortable, “normal” life because we have been conditioned to respond to life around us in a patterned way. But this pattern has been disrupted! In yoga we call these patterned responses samskaras and they are a result of our conditioning first as a child from our family, then from our schools, then from our peers, from our jobs, etc. We become conditioned to be able to respond in a way that we have found “works for us” at some level and over time it has become automatic. We don't even have to think about it. But in yoga we are asked to see our thoughts. To learn to recognize our patterns. To be able to move forward from a place of intention rather than automation. In yoga, we are asked to know our authentic self. Not the person who is relying on feedback that comes from wearing a variety of masks – the gender mask, the relationship mask such as mother, father, child, wife, husband, the employee or boss mask, etc. Think about it. How many masks do you wear in your life? Who are you…really?  The process of coming to know your authentic self is a challenge. Most of us have come to rely on the comfort of being our masked self and have lost touch with our inner sense of being just who we truly are.  The process of turning our focus from the world around us and bringing our awareness to our behaviors, our thoughts, our feelings and searching for the root cause that has supported these aspects of our being, is the path of yoga.  I know that in our culture, most think of yoga as a physical practice to get in shape, but classical yoga asks more of you. It asks that you become a better version of who at all levels of being. This requires taking time to be still, to be aware, to witness the endless stream of thoughts and to reflect on the nature of the mind's incessant manifestations.  A good place to start is to find a comfortable sitting position and close your eyes. But not if you're driving while listening! Then take a few slow, deep breaths and begin to watch whatever thoughts come up. Don't judge. Imagine you are with a friend, and you are listening to what they are saying. Cultivate that level of detachment from your own thoughts. Just listen. Do this for a few minutes and then take another slow, deep breath and open your eyes. This is a good beginning. If possible do it a couple of times within the day. After all, we let the mind do its own thing without our awareness many, many hours each day, so why not spend a few minutes becoming aware? If you would like a more guided practice, I would suggest looking back through previous episodes to the BONUS practice episode of Antar Mouna. This translates as Inner Silence, but as we know that's pretty much out of reach. Instead, you will start the process of developing your awareness and begin to see who you might be. It will help you see the patterns and the conditioning that has brought you to where you are. Unless you can see where you are at this time, how will you change and adapt to the challenges of life?  I began this “work” over 20 years ago. In the beginning, it was hard to be still and even harder to see all of the crap in my mind! OMG! But I persevered and experienced breakthroughs and insights right along with frustration and disappointment. With time, I've learned a lot about myself – my strengths, my weaknesses, my aims in life as well as my needs. And in doing so I am able to live my life with more contentment, acceptance and love. It's a new year. Time will pass. Why not make the most of it?

This year has been filled with challenges! Never one to turn my back on challenges, I have used this time to sort out many feelings, many less than optimal relationships, and many goals. It has made me stronger. It has made me more intentional. And it has allowed me to have more space to find the person I want to become moving forward. Over the past couple of decades, my whole focus was creating a yoga studio and a nonprofit yoga academy. To create more options for people to incorporate the healing practices of yoga into their lives, I created and taught more classes, more courses, did more travel…more and more and more. And because the work was never ending, the demands of others never ceasing, I found myself letting go of more and more of the "normal" activities of life and was essentially swallowed up by the work seven days a week. As I got closer and closer to my 70th birthday, I knew I didn't want to go into the next decade of my life continuing down this path. I put that energy out into the universe. I meditated on letting go of it all. I put out the intention to move on and I really felt it could happen. But only if I worked toward it. I reached out to other teachers in the community who had a long history of teaching, searching for someone who might be interested. And someone came forward. Another intention that I made was to help the new owner maintain the student base and continue to teach regular classes for at least a year. The pandemic has made this a considerable challenge for yoga studios and many have closed. Our student base has mastered online classes and attendance remains steady with new students taking the place of the normal attrition The third intention I set was to get healthier. This summer I realized that any semblance of normal would not be likely before another year or so. I ordered a treadmill. I made some long overdue healthcare appointments. I began to eat and sleep on a regular schedule, eating tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, eliminating most sugar, and bought a sleep machine that plays delta waves to get into deeper sleep patterns. I'm losing weight and sleeping sounder. So why am I telling you all this? Because the concept of living with intention is SO important. Instead of letting life happen to you, take on life with renewed determination. Here are 5 ways to start. Make a choice and act on it every day. What do you want? Eliminate the split between what you think and what you actually do. Thinking about something may seem important, but if you don't take action nothing will happen except you will feel frustration or defensiveness. The idea and the action must be fused. Believe in your ability to succeed. Be convinced at a deep level, that you will make progress toward your goal. That daily action that you take can have its ups and downs but know in your heart that you will see changes over time. Adjust your expectations about how long it will take. Be patient. Accept change. Sometimes when these changes begin to happen, they impact our lives in a way that stirs unconscious fears and we engage in self-sabotage. Yes, change will happen and when it does, you cannot be the same. It is impossible to both change and be the same. Accept this. Don't fear it. Embrace it. Practice mindfulness. Develop some sort of daily meditation or self-reflection. A practice that will bring you peace and allow you to be more aware and more present upon its conclusion. And each day when you leave the practice, see if you can be a little more aware, a little more present, as you move back into your daily activities. Adjust your lifestyle for success. Simplify your life, eliminating unnecessary busy-ness and clean out the clutter. Set a daily schedule for those things that will build your energy – regular times to eat and eat health foods, regular times to sleep and rise, daily outdoor activity, exercise, meditation, and daily connection with someone who nurtures you. I encourage you to live with intention in 2021. Don't make a New Year's resolution that will probably last a few weeks and then go by the wayside. Living with intention requires action, ongoing commitment and patience. Happy New Year! This episode concludes the second season of my podcast. In my own need to live with intention in 2021, I will be taking some time off from creating this podcast and spend time creating short yoga courses and developing one on one yogic coaching. I hope you will stay in touch. Please go to my website, swamiatmarupa.com and sign up for my newsletter to learn more about upcoming ways we can remain connected. Or you can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @SwamiAtmarupa. My intention is to start another season of this podcast later next year. Thank you for listening!

On New Year's Day of 2020, I taught a yoga workshop called Perfecting Your Vision in 2020! And yes, the pun of perfect vision being 2020 was intentional! In this workshop I talked about the necessity of self-study. In the yoga sutras, self-study is called swadyaya and is one of the 5 codes of personal conduct. It is through self-study that we experience the nature of the self, who we are, what we are, what we are trying to do, how we are trying to do it. Not as an intellectual concept, but as an understanding at a cellular, primal level. I never dreamed that I would have so many opportunities in 2020 to engage in self-study!! Not only to gain a better understanding of who I am, what I am, what I am trying to do and how I am trying to do it, but I have also had many opportunities to study how I faced, and continue to face, some pretty significant challenges during 2020. Early in the year, I sold my yoga center that I ran for 23 years. That transfer of ownership occurred two weeks into the pandemic shut down in Ohio. Instead of spending the last couple of weeks enjoying the conclusion to my hard work and transitioning to simply teaching a few classes per week for the new owner, I was swallowed up by chaos. I had to close and transfer all classes to the virtual reality of online teaching. Hours and hours each day were spent orienting everyone involved to running a virtual yoga business instead of a brick and mortar. The transition process for the new owner became a “shared screen” experience rather than in person. The party students had planned for my retirement had to be online. Now don't get me wrong. Many people had many more challenges and far more difficulties than I did. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. My point is that we never know what's waiting around the corner. We frequently have plans and imagine how they are going to be actualized, but then when that time comes, the reality does not even resemble our expectations. It then becomes an opportunity for self-study. A time to watch reactions and feelings. A time to truly evaluate likes and dislikes. A time to be grateful for the simple things in life. As the curve flattened, and we began to ease back into our lives a bit, I found I was enjoying more time at home. I was enjoying more time alone. I was enjoying more time to be who I am. Who I truly am. Not who I was running a small business seven days a week for 23 years and all that entails. I was rediscovering parts of me that had been placed aside for safe keeping and now I was enjoying bringing them out of hiding and holding them near. But time keeps marching on, on through the elections, on through the divisiveness and into a place of suffering. The pandemic curve that was flattened is now spiking upward at a record-breaking pace. One million new cases in the last 5 days. The first million took 100 days from January into April. As I am recording this, 2 people are dying of Covid-19 every minute! Every minute! Someone's loved one is dying every 30 seconds! And they are dying in isolation without the comfort of family or friends. I am upset. As an anesthetist for 25 years, I not only did anesthesia for surgery, but I was responsible for putting tubes into people that needed a ventilator. I can't imagine what it is like to be in the thick of it providing healthcare these days. My heart is breaking! It is breaking for those who are dying and for those healthcare providers who are risking their lives, working endless hours, isolating from their own families, and doing whatever they can to ease the suffering of those in their care. And yet some claim this is a hoax. Some feel their freedom is being taken away if they are required to wear a mask and follow public health guidelines. Some are mounting an anti-vaccine campaign based on nonscientific propaganda. In the meantime, people are dying. People are out of work. People are waiting in lines for food like they did during the great depression. People are about to be evicted from their homes. People are suffering. It is TOO MUCH! TOO MUCH SUFFERING! And the heaviness of all of this suffering is weighing us down. We MUST start caring for each other. It is time to make a concerted effort to care and to put that caring vibration into the world. It is time for metta. Metta is a word from an ancient language in northern India, called Pali. Metta means to generate a positive energy of kindness. You may have heard about metta meditation or loving kindness meditation. Metta is an antidote to selfishness, anger and fear. And it is something to embrace during this time. We need to heal ourselves, as well as those around us, of selfishness, anger and fear. These three qualities are at the very foundation of our lives right now. Selfishness, anger and fear. When we are upset about what's going on around us, the upset stems from it happening to ME and that brings up anger, often from the fears we are facing. We need to generate loving kindness toward ourselves and others. To the whole world that is suffering at some level. Scientific studies have confirmed that regular practitioners of metta, loving kindness, experience an increase in their sense of well-being and enhanced feelings of empathy. It can even build resilience to face our challenges and help us develop compassion to all, even those who may be thinking much differently than we are. I have to keep reminding myself to offer some loving kindness to them as well. It doesn't mean I have to agree with them, or even like them, but I need to realize that they are suffering too, or they wouldn't be the way they are. So now I'm going to go through the stages of the practice of metta, or loving kindness, in the way that I practice it. I will outline it and then guide you through a short practice. There are two things to remember. The first is that it's more important to practice for a short time consistently than putting it off for when you can do a longer practice. And two, if you are driving, you should put it off and do the practice when you are able to be still and quiet. This is the outline. You will sit comfortably and settle your mind into the natural spontaneous breath. Take a minute or two to simply follow the breath as it moves in and out of the body. Then bring the awareness to the center of the chest and feel the breath expanding and releasing the space of the heart. In that space try to visualize a small flame with no source. With each inhalation, see that flame fill the chest with light and with each exhale, it returns to the small flame. Next you will offer yourself positive intentions. Silently offer to yourself: “May I be happy.” “May I be safe.” “May I be healthy.” “May I be at ease.” And sit quietly for a short time, knowing this message is received. You then bring to mind your family, keeping the awareness of the light in your heart, and again silently offer the positive intentions. “May you be happy.” “May you be safe.” “May you be healthy.” “May you be at ease.” And sit quietly for a short time, knowing this message is received by them at some level. Sit quietly for short time, connecting again with the light in your heart and then bring to mind neutral people. Acquaintances, coworkers, people that you see regularly but don't know deeply, and again offer them the positive intentions. “May you be happy.” “May you be safe.” “May you be healthy.” “May you be at ease.” And sit quietly for a short time, knowing this message is received by them at some level. Now bring to mind a person or people that you find difficult. Someone you find yourself agitated with or annoyed by. Connect again with the light in heart and offer them the positive intentions, recognizing that this person or people also seek happiness, safety, health and ease. “May you be happy.” “May you be safe.” “May you be healthy.” “May you be at ease.” And sit quietly for a short time, knowing this message is received by them at some level and continue to connect to the light in your heart for as long as you feel it is appropriate to do so. This practice should not be hurried but it doesn't have to take very long either. It's important that the intentions are not said in a perfunctory or mechanical way, otherwise this becomes and intellectual pastime of thinking about loving kindness but not actively projecting it into the world. Over time, the goal is to generate the bhava, the feeling, of loving kindness. If you believe, as we do in yoga, that every action yields a reaction, and if you believe that we are all connected at some level, then try this practice and see how it affects you and the relationships with those around you. Now I will guide you through a short practice.

You may think that I am going to talk about becoming a swami, but I'm not. If you want to know that story, then look back through previous podcast to “What it means to be a swami and the journey I took to become one.” Today I'm going to talk about who I am as a person, approaching 70 years of age, and share some of my life challenges that shaped my life. When we have life challenges, especially as a child, they form what we call “samskaras” in yoga. Samskaras are patterns of thinking and behaving that become quite automatic, because they are buried in the subconscious and unconscious mind. We may not realize how these samskaras continue to exert their influence over the years. We may remember the challenge we faced, but we often think, “well this thing happened, but it happened when I was a child and now I'm grown and I've put it behind me.” It's not that simple. It has actually created a neurological pathway where the mental energy flows without awareness when presented with any similar situation. Depending on its strength, the subconscious mind might even be looking for the opportunity to release that flow of mental energy because it is conditioning and familiarity. It reinforces who we are. When I was eight years old, I had several changes in my home and school life. My only brother went away to college and my only sister got married. Because my brother was going to a private college, my mother took on a fulltime job to help pay his tuition. I suddenly became somewhat of an only child who walked home from school to find an empty house with a list of chores to do until my parents came home. At a very early age, I learned how to make dinner, iron clothing and clean the house. I lived in a rural area in an extremely small village of less than a hundred people. Doing the chores didn't really bother me so much because there really weren't very many other kids to play with anyway. Besides my cousin, a boy, there was another girl that would sometimes agree to play with me if I didn't tell anyone. You see I was the subject of bullying at school and this girl didn't want others to think she was my friend. How this happened was that when I was in second grade, it was decided that I should skip ahead and finish the year in third grade. I was big for my age and quite smart. I was not consulted about this decision that I recall. So, I ended up doing two grades in one academic year. The problem was, in this rural school, each grade had about 20 kids with all 12 grades in one building. There was no chance for anonymity. It seemed like I was suddenly an outcast. The kids who were in the lower grade didn't want to be my friends anymore, and the kids in the new grade began to ridicule me calling me a baby. This got worse as I continued to excel in my academic performance. I remember the one girl whose mother was a schoolteacher in the same building decided to lead the campaign against me. And because her mother was a teacher at the school, kids were eager to follow her lead because she was what we called, the teacher's pet. Now it's important to remember this was around 1959. Bullying was up close and personal, not through social media. I remember being taunted on the playground nearly every day during recess. One day it was so bad that I went to the restroom and locked the door to the stall and pulled my feet up and hid rather than go back to class where others would see that I had been crying. Over then next several years, I continued to be subjected to bullying. I remember decorating brown lunch bags to hang on the chalk tray for other students to put in those silly little valentines on Valentine's Day. I don't remember getting a single one. I was rarely invited to anyone's birthday party. I didn't know how to deal with my feelings. When I would try to talk to my mom, she would say, “oh don't worry they are just jealous of you.” What was wrong with me? Why wasn't I liked? Then in seventh grade we moved to another state and I entered a new school. No one knew me or my history. I started to make some friends. And I worked hard at it. I learned how to subjugate a lot of my feelings to be able to please others. I even learned to make fun of myself before anyone else could even think of doing so. I learned how to put on a really good front and never let anyone see my pain. I held at bay all of the resentment that had been building for years and tried to convince others that I was like them! And that I was worth liking! But deep inside was this nasty old samskara of doubt, of resentment, of envy. And again, and again it played out. I was always amazed when someone liked me and wanted to spend time with me. I didn't really like me, so why did they? Over the next several decades, I became driven. If I accomplished enough I would feel good about myself. Right? I graduated from nursing school at the age of 20, got accepted into anesthesia training at 21, and became an instructor in the anesthesia program at 25. I got married and divorced by 23. I did open heart anesthesia and started pre-med, working and studying, living on 5 hours sleep. Then at age 29, I burned out. On a whim, I signed up for an adventure travel expedition in India and Nepal even though I'd never slept in a tent in my life! The trip was five weeks. First, we rode camels through the desert of India, then bicycled from the Taj Mahal to Delhi. We flew to Nepal and went trekking in the mountains, river rafting, and then rode elephants through the Chitwan National Park. It was amazing! And I did it all! It was on about the third day riding a camel in the desert that I suddenly had an insight. I realized that I was indeed riding a camel in the desert of India and that all of those people back home were still there doing what they do, being who they are, and they would never change. I realized that I was riding a camel in the desert of India and that I had made that choice and that I could make the choice to be whoever I wanted to be. All of those years of trying to be what I thought others wanted me to be. All those years when I felt like I didn't fit in. I was riding a camel through the desert of India and I realized I could be different. Now because patterns of behavior are hard to change, it took more than that one insight to do so. I spent the next decade alternating between “trying to be normal” and then canning that idea and going off to travel, at one point living in Nepal for nearly 2 years. Patterns of behavior are hard to change, like I said, and eventually I threw away the idea of “being normal” for the last time. I left the well-paid profession of anesthesia and opened the no pay profession of owning a yoga center! And it was through my study and practice and teaching of yoga that I began to see that my patterns of behavior were not only hard to change, but they would continue to hold there grip on my psyche until I did enough studying and practicing and teaching of yoga to see them for what they are. They are me. They are my personality. These samskaras, these patterns of trying to please everyone, or working endlessly to feel worthy, to push my feelings down so as not to appear vulnerable – they were still there even though the work, the setting and the names had been changed. Because people are people, regardless of place or age. What I have learned, just these last few years is that my samskaras are me and I have to accept them and even embrace them, forgive them and then gradually release them by replacing them with more positive ones. What I have learned, just these last few years is that I am a good human being, worthy of love, worthy of friends, worthy of taking time away from work for self-care. I'm freely admit I'm not perfect, but I am trying to be my more authentic self, and that person is okay. If someone doesn't like me, or if they act against me, that doesn't say anything about me or who I am. It's about who they are. They are being held captive by their own patterns of behavior. I forgive them and move forward. In two months, I will be 70. It's taken my whole life to feel truly comfortable in my skin. Oh, don't get me wrong. I still have my moments! There are still flashes of those samskaras that rear their ugly heads, but now I am aware of then and see them for what they are. Old patterns. Not the patterns that will determine my path going forward. I'm so grateful for all of the good and bad experiences in my life and that I have reached this point of being who I am. I hope you will reach out to me if you have felt moved by this story. I would be honored to help you identify and overcome your patterns through yoga.

In this podcast I will be talking briefly about the classical codes of conduct prescribed by the Yoga Sutras and then we will delve into more modern lifestyle practices that are greatly needed in our world today. In Classical Yoga, we study the Yoga Sutras and the eight limbs of Patanjali's yoga or Raja yoga, the royal yoga! These are: Yamas – codes of social conduct Niyamas – codes of personal conduct Asanas – the poses of yoga Pranayama – the breathing practices that enhance our life force Pratyahara – withdrawing the awareness from the sensorial world Dharana – being able to concentrate and focus Dhyana – the state of meditation whereby the concentration is extended Samadhi – merging of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness The idea here is that we must first work on ourselves through the practice of the codes of conduct or we will continue to have disturbing mental turmoil that will prevent us from moving into the internal practices. In other words, the mind will always be thinking about every little detail of our external life – all of the feelings, the conversations, the play of our ego, our likes and dislikes – it will remain unsettled and unable to tap into the internal sense of peace and wholeness that exists in each of us. The five yamas ask us to avoid harming others or ourselves, lying, stealing, wasting energy, and possessiveness. The five niyamas ask us to live a clean life, to value contentment, to know our needs and not exceed them, to engage in self-study and connect with inspiration, and to surrender to something greater than ourselves. These are all quite lofty goals, but it is said that if you can embody even one of them fully it will lead you into the rest. Just one. But in modern yoga practice we actually see that most people concentrate on the physical practices, the asanas. Maybe some engage in some breathing and meditation practices, but it seems to me that most are looking to yoga as something to be done on the mat or the meditation cushion for a specific period of time and hoping it will improve their daily lives. And it does to a certain extent. Practitioners may feel better in their bodies, have more energy and feel calmer after practicing – these are all good things.  Don't get me wrong. This spectrum of yoga participation serves its purpose. But if you want to be less reactive to life's challenges, to feel more connected to the world around you, to evolve your consciousness and be the best version of you that you can be in this lifetime, then you will need to take yoga off the mat and into your life more. You will need to make yoga your lifestyle. Over the last few years, the Bihar School of Yoga in India has been emphasizing a set of six Lifestyle Yamas and Niyamas to support bringing yoga more fully into daily life. Given the worldwide pandemic and the political upheaval within the US, today I will be discussing the lifestyle yama and niyama of forgiveness and respect. This pair is especially useful in dealing with anger and there seems to be an epidemic of anger. Not just political anger, but anger that our lives have been turned upside down by the pandemic. Anger that we can't do everything we want to do. Let's start with forgiveness. How forgiving are you? Give yourself a ranking of 0-5 whereby 5 is the most forgiving. Now can you bring to mind some time in the past when you needed to practice forgiveness. Can you do it? Even as you recall it now, what feeling comes up inside of you? Sadness, hurt, anger? And as you recall this, how do you feel about the other person? Are your thoughts negative? To truly forgive means to let go of feelings of resentment, anger or hurt. Are you still holding on to those feelings? Sometimes we are masochistic about forgiveness. We are stuck in our pattern of suffering. It seems to be a pattern of human behavior that we are more likely to dwell on the negative in our lives than the positive. Think about your daily conversations. Don't most people share more about their negative experiences than their positive? It's more entertaining to talk about something bad that happened. It is easy to say we forgive but hard to truly release the negative feelings and experience freedom from them. To release the resentment in your heart is the true challenge. It takes strength and courage. “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Mahatma Gandhi So we need to make it a yoga practice of forgiveness. Not so much for the benefit of the other person, but for our own benefit! Let's go back to our forgiveness exercise-the one where you remembered an interaction that needed you to forgive. Once again think about it and see what feeling arises again. It can be the same feeling. And then think about the other person in the interaction, but this time, instead of a negative feeling about that person from that particular interaction, can you think of a positive quality about that person? Everyone has some positive quality after all. Is it hard or easy? Now from your heart, offer forgiveness again. It can just be a mental process, not in person. How do you feel now? Has the feeling changed from the beginning of the process when you first recalled the situation? Can you smile? Keep practicing this sequence until you can smile and then you can let go of that interaction and start working on another. After all, most of us need to do this work and can benefit greatly from it. We usually have more than one. We may become more conscious of the intricacies of our interactions and are more likely to forgive and move forward without having to pin fault on either participant. In yoga you may have heard people use the word namaste. The lifestyle niyama in this pair is namaskara. They both have similar meanings. Namaste means salutations to you. Namaskara means salutations to you with respect. It's a more formal greeting. Both greetings are done by placing the palms of the hands together in front of the heart and bowing the head. Namaskara is a way of connecting and honoring someone while understanding that this person contains inherent goodness that is also a reflection of you. Some will say it means the divine in me sees the divine in you, or the light in me connects to the light in you. It is an expression of humility. It is an acknowledgment of the value of others. Therefore, it can be an act of ego management. Too often we greet others as a social norm, but not with sincerity. “Hi, how are you?” is expressed and the person may not even look at the other in the eyes, may keep moving without even waiting for an answer or they wait briefly expecting “Fine, how about you?” But what happens to you when someone looks you in the eyes, smiles and sincerely asks, “how are you?” It touches your heart, doesn't it? Even if the interaction is just for a minute or less? It is my feeling that we need this now more than ever. We need to connect in this time of social distancing, isolation and insecurity of “the other” and their politics. It is the time to practice Namaskara. It doesn't mean you actually have to use that word but use the essence of what it means. Say hello with feeling and sincerity, with humility and respect and let that feeling reach from your heart to the heart of each person you greet. See each person as a reflection of you. It doesn't take a huge commitment or very much time at all to make someone smile by reaching out to them with a sincere greeting and inquiry. It takes just practice. And one way to keep up this practice is to keep track at the end of each day, how many people did you greet in this fashion? Through the recognition and acknowledgement of our negativity we provide the basis for developing positivity. See your strength in being able to look at your weaknesses and let your strengths grow. As we live through this pandemic and the political landscape of divisiveness, these two practices, forgiveness and namaskara, will support the best parts in you. Make a resolve to “thin out” your negative nature. As my guru says, “Be sincere, serious and committed.” Over time, it will become easier to develop new neural pathways to a more positive nature. The world needs a positive you!

There have been so many studies in recent years advocating meditation for managing stress, improving mental functioning and overall health and wellbeing. But in the 25 years that I've been teaching yoga, very few people really understand meditation or make it a regular part of their lives. Why is this so? Well, most often what I have heard is, “I'm too busy. I don't have time.” Or “I tried it a couple of times, but I couldn't stop thinking?' Or “I can't sit on the floor cross-legged like that.” These are all excuses. A regular practice of meditation can make a difference even if as little as 10 minutes per day. Regular means doing it more often than not doing it – at least 4 out of 7 days. I'm sure everyone listening to this podcast wastes at least 10 minutes each day! As far as not being able to stop thinking – don't worry, you won't. You will keep thinking, thousands and thousands of thoughts – the purpose of meditation is not to stop thinking, but to learn how to witness thoughts, to create space between you and the thought to reduce your reactivity and attachment to thoughts. And you can sit in a chair and meditate. Trust me. There is no meditation God watching you that will judge you as a failure for sitting in a chair. You're the only one that will judge out of some pre-conceived notion of how you should meditate. Today, I will teach you a meditation practice that is good for beginners with multi-tasking minds that never seem to find quiet space, but this is also an excellent practice for more advanced practitioners. First, I will explain the practice and then you will be guided through it. Therefore, if you are driving as you listen to this podcast, you can listen to the explanation, but then wait until you are home to do the actual practice. Or you can find a place to park your car and take ten minutes to begin calm your mind and balance your energy. The practice is called Ajapa japa. Japa means the repetition of a mantra with effort, whereas ajapa means the mantra repeats spontaneously without effort. We all begin by repeating the mantra, but at some point, with regular practice, the mantra will begin to repeat without effort. You will hear it in the sound of the breath as you practice. In the same way as the breath moves rhythmically every moment of your life, the mantra repetition is linked to the breath thereby creating a pulsation of energy rhythmically moving and supporting you. There are 3 components to this practice. The first is the breath and if you know ujjayi breathing, use that technique. If you don't know ujjayi you can simply breathe in a slow and relaxed way, focusing on the beath at the vocal cords. The second component is what is known as a psychic passageway. This use of the word psychic means that it's created by the mind. For this practice, the awareness creates this passageway between the navel and the throat in the front of the body. The breath moves along this passageway – inhaling from navel to throat and exhaling from throat to navel. The third component is the mantra and the mantra is linked to the breath and the passageway. The mantra is So-ham. On inhalation, there is mental repetition of So as the breath moves slowly and deeply up from the navel to the throat, and on exhalation there is repetition of ham as the breath moves slowly back down to the navel. It is sometimes said that So-ham is actually the sound of the breath especially if you are able to breathe in ujjayi and over time you may begin to hear it contained there. The actual meaning of So-ham is, “I am that.” Meaning I am the higher consciousness. And through inference, we can then say that I am NOT this. I am that, I am not this ego with all of it's likes and dislikes and reactions and emotions and doubts and fears. I am my higher Self.   Of course, it will take practice to fuse the awareness with these three components: breath, passageway and mantra. The mind will wander, think about all sorts of things, or maybe even space out, but there is the work! When it wanders, catch it and bring it back to the practice again and again. Before we get started, I want to let you know that you can find recordings teaching you how to do ujjayi breathing and a separate ajapa japa meditation on my website swamiatmarupa.com. So now is the time to either prepare for the meditation practice or turn this off until later if you are driving. Outline of practice: Settle into comfortable sitting position and close the eyes Be aware of the natural spontaneous breath for a minute Begin to breathe slowly and deeply (in ujjayi if you know it) Establish the awareness moving between the navel and throat on inhale, then throat to navel on exhale Each time the mind wanders, bring it back Stay alert After a few minutes, add the mantra So-ham, inhaling So from navel to throat and exhaling ham from throat to navel Continue for a few minutes, remembering that every time the mind wanders, bring it back to the practice Stop the practice and return to the natural breath for a minute and be aware of how you feel Take a couple of deep breaths and open the eyes

I have a confession. I love chanting. The chanting of mantras resonates in my soul. I often feel when I am chanting that I have been chanting for endless lifetimes. There is such a feeling of connectedness to some primal power that allows me to get out of my head. To let go of my intellect and bathe in the vibration of sound. Today I will tell you what mantras are and tell you about one of my favorites. The word mantra comes from the root words “man” meaning mind and “tra” meaning liberation. Mantra then means “to liberate the mind from bondage.” And what is that bondage? That bondage is the incessant rumination of thoughts, our negative patterns of behavior, our egos and more. With mantras, it's about the sound, the vibration. Simple mantras may be purely sound with no meaning other than the vibration. More complex mantras may have so much meaning that the vibration is an encapsulation of that meaning in a way that vibrates our psychic centers “feel” the meaning on a deeper level of awareness without having to “think” about the meaning. So, mantras can be a single word, such as the universal mantra “Om.” Or mantras can be pages long. But, when chanting a mantra the awareness is meant to embrace the vibration and not worry about the meaning. Sound is vibration. And sound is powerful. Think fingernails on a blackboard. Yikes! Even thinking about that sound makes my skin crawl! Sound is powerful. Ultrasound can penetrate your body and yield pictures of what's going on inside. Highly focused sound waves can shatter a kidney stone! The sound of certain music can bring tears to your eyes. Sounds genuinely penetrate all layers of our being. One of my favorite mantras is called the Shanti Path which means the “course of peace”. It contains eight phrases and when it is chanted in my tradition another mantra with four more phrases that “liberates from death” is added at the end. This combination gives us guidance on how to lead a meaningful life and how to let it go when the time comes. I will include a phonetic transliteration of each Sanskrit phrase that you can access in this episode's notes if you are interested. The first line is Asato maa sadgamaya – means lead me from ignorance to truth. The word “sat” means truth. Not your idea of the truth or my idea of the truth, but what is the greater truth of existence, of living? The truth that applies to all beings. That truth. The big truth. The truth of existence. Of humanity. Tamaso maa jyotirgamaya – means lead me from darkness to light. If you've listened to recent podcasts you might remember the word tamas? Tamas refers to one of the three qualities of life the are a part of, and make up, everything in existence. These qualities fluctuate continuously. Tamas is the quality of darkness, ignorance, depression, but also stability and steadiness. We need a little tamas, but when it predominates, then we slide into that darkness. A Jyoti is a divine light, a powerful form of illumination. We are chanting to remove our darkness, our shadow self, and to bring out our light, our luminosity. Mrityor maa amritam gamaya – means lead me from death to immortality. This is not so much about the death of this physical body, but to become more fully connect with our eternal soul. To nurture that spiritual aspect of our being. These first three lines are ways that we as individuals can become a more positive force in the world. The next five are about our connection with the lives of all beings and acknowledging what are meant to be our common goals. Sarveshaam svastir bhavatu – means may all beings be successful. We are wishing for all levels of success. To have do good works, to prosper, to have the love and support of family and friends. Sarveshaam shantir bhavatu – means may all beings have peace. We use the word peace to translate shanti, but what we often think of as peace is the absence of conflict in the world around us. Broadening our understanding of the word peace, we need to think about being peace, becoming the vehicle of peace.To live in a way, that we emanate peace into the world. Sarveshaam poornam bhavatu – means may all beings be full. Poornam is an interesting Sanskrit word. There's actually a mantra just about the meaning of poornam and it is a peace mantra. When something is full, there is no room for anything else, right? So being full is being complete. Some might say, fully baked! Nothing is missing. You are complete. That's a big ask! Sarvesham mangalam bhavatu – means may all beings have auspiciousness. When we can connect with auspiciousness (mangalam), we are favored by good fortune. From a yogic perspective, we might say that we are fulfilling our karma in a way that will free us to prosper and have a favorable future. Lokaa samastaa sukhino bhavantu – means may all beings be happy and free. I don't think we would recognize the world if all beings were happy and free, but it is certainly worth putting that thought out there. To me, this phrase summarizes the mantra to this point. If we can accomplish moving from ignorance to truth, from darkness to light, from fear of death to connection with spirit – if we can wish for all beings to live in prosperity, peace, completeness and good fortune – then we can fill the world with happiness and freedom. Wow! Those eight lines say a lot! And that's just my little summary. I'm sure someone could write a whole book on those eight lines, examining so many philosophical principles that outline the internal obstacles that prevent us from manifesting those phrases and what they mean. Actually, maybe several shelves of books. But we aren't done yet. Remember I said that there's four more phrases? In our traditional system of yoga, the Mahamrityunjaya Mantra is also chanted at the end of this Peace Mantra. This mantra is from the Rig Veda, an ancient text from about 3500 years ago. It is called the mantra of great liberation.  It is said the chanting of this mantra will ward off death, yield great healing powers, and bestow immortality.  However, remember this concept of death and immortality should not be taken to mean one can live forever within this lifetime.  Through the chanting of this mantra, one is meant to connect with one's own eternal nature, one's soul, and overcome the fear of the body's death this time around.  To understand that we are more than this body and that death is not the end to our eternal nature, our spirit. According to Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, one of the five great kleshas, or sufferings of mankind is the fear of death, called abhinivesha.  This fear grows from the root of avidya, the ignorance or lack of knowledge resulting from identifying with, and becoming attached, to the temporal, material world instead of seeing ourselves as an extension of cosmic consciousness.  Om Trayambakam Yajaamahe - means we sing praise to the three eyed one: trayambaka being another name for Lord Shiva who is the power of destruction which allows us to experience transformation. After all, we can't change or transform without destroying the way we are now. You can't change and still be the same.  Sugandhim purhtivardhanam - refers to Shiva as being fragrant and nourishing of all beings.  This fragrance is a sense of knowledge, presence and support so strong that it permeates our being, and we are then uplifted by it.  Think about when you smell something wonderful. What happens? You move toward it, right? This fragrance of transformation empowers us and draws us away from the material realm with all of its likes and dislikes toward a higher level of consciousness and connectedness.  Urvaarukamiva Bandhanan - means releasing a cucumber from the bondage of its vine.  Have you ever picked a ripened cucumber?  It releases from its vine with ease.  It just falls into your hand. But if it is not ready to be picked, all the twisting and pulling may not release it.  In this same way, if we are not ready to accept death as the conclusion to a good life lived, we twist and pull away, avoiding it at all costs, taking all possible measures to cling to life because we are totally bound by the fear of death and identification with this body and this lifetime.  Mrtyor Muksheeya Mamritaat - means to deliver us from our fear of death to realize our eternal consciousness.  May we be free of one of the great sufferings of embodiment. Therefore, the mantra is asking God, eternal consciousness, a higher force, or whatever words you may use, that we may feel the support of our eternal nature, and in so doing, we will ripen ourselves to the nature of our being. In doing so we will recognize the transient nature of this body and be released from our fear of death. When the time of death arrives, we will transition with the same ease a ripe cucumber is plucked from the vine. Now I have discussed just a summary of the meaning of one of my favorite mantras so you have a better understanding of its meaning but when I chant, I don't really think about its meaning even though I know it. I let go of that. You basically know the meaning of it now, too. But do you feel it? Can you let it penetrate into your essence from just knowing the meaning? Not really. So I will finish today's podcast by chanting the mantra. Try to listen with your heart and let go of your intellect.   SHANTI PATH Om A-sa-to maa sad-ga-ma-ya Ta-ma-so maa jyo-tir ga-ma-ya Mrit-yor maa am-ri-tam ga-ma-ya Sar-ve-shaam sva-stir bha-va-tu Sar-ve-shaam shaan-tir bha-va-tu Sav-ve-shaam poor-nam bha-va-tu Sar-ve-shaam man-ga-lam bha-va-tu Lo-kaah sa-ma-staah su-khi-no bha-van-tu Om tri-yam-ba-kam ya-jaa-ma-he Su-gan-dhim push-ti-var-dha-nam Ur-vaa-ru-ka-mi-va ban-dha-naat Mrit-yor-muk-shee-ya maam-ri-taat   Om shanti, shanti, shantih Hari Om

I don’t know about you, but I feel like there is far too much negativity these days. Don’t get me wrong, there are many things to be negative about. After all, we are in the middle of a pandemic that is poorly managed in this country and we are dealing with all of the associated issues. There’s political unrest and demonstrations related to current politics and the elections. Conspiracy theories have moved from the fringes to the mainstream. It seems endless. How do we manage? How can we bring more positivity into our lives and the lives of others? First, we need to understand that negativity is a default setting to protect us, to help us survive in a dangerous world. From the earliest times, paying attention to bad, dangerous, and negative threats in the world was literally a matter of life and death. Those who were more attuned to danger were more likely to survive which means they were also more likely to hand down the genes that made them more attentive to danger. And remembering those negative thoughts creates a framework where new situations are first perceived from a negativity bias. These days, we might not need to be on constant high alert as our early ancestors needed to be in order to survive, but the negativity bias still plays a starring role in how our brains operate. Studies have shown that more areas of the brain are involved in dealing with negative situations than positive ones. In one study, pictures of people with positive, negative and neutral expressions were shown to participants. Negative images showed a much stronger response. Another study involved showing study participants pictures of people with a variety of expressions, but this study offered either a cold, icy drink or a hot, steamy drink to the participants while they waited for the study to begin. Those who waited with the cold drink in their hands, then rated a higher percentage of facial expressions as negative versus those who had waited with a hot drink. The participates did not know that the study was looking at the effect of sensations on how the results would be influenced. This implies that our level of comfort, will influence how we perceive the world around us. The researchers demonstrated that having cold hands (which most of us would consider negative) would create more negative judgments when someone began to push the buttons than those with warm hands. They created a negative condition that yielded negativity. So, what conditions our responses? If something as simple as whether we are holding a cold or hot cup of liquids can shape how we react, what about all of those other factors that rise up out of our subconscious minds? From a yogic perspective, we react due to our conditioning. We are conditioned by our samskaras, or patterns, that decide your thoughts, behavior, perceptions, understandings, expressions, reactions, basically everything. Our strongest samskaras are created from the negative experiences of our lives and therefore, we are prone to respond negatively. Psychologists call this negativity bias. Think about that happy little baby that responds to positive facial expressions and your silly baby voice. But research suggests that negativity bias actually starts to emerge in infancy near the age of one. Brain studies indicate that around this time, babies begin to experience greater brain responses to negative stimuli. And as our brains develop and we accumulate more experiences in our lives, that negativity bias is strengthened. We find that negative comments carry far more weight than positive ones. When we need to evaluate a possible decision, we tend to look at the bad things that could happen before we evaluate the positives. Even though we may say that we are looking at the Pros and Cons, I’m betting that you might start with one pro and then immediately go to the cons. When I’ve mentored student yoga teachers, sitting in on their teaching, at the end of the class I ask them what did you do well, and most of the time, even though the question was what did you do well, they start talking about something they could have done better. We all, myself included, need to work harder on positivity. Otherwise, this negativity bias can become so overwhelming that we dwell on dark thoughts to the point that it’s almost impossible to be optimistic. Negativity becomes masochistic. In yoga philosophy, there is a practice called Pratipaksha Bhavana – meaning to cultivate the opposite feeling. So, whenever a negative condition, idea, thought or reaction appears, instantly counteract that with a positive one. To truly engage in this practice there are a couple of pre-requisites. Develop awareness of the thoughts. When our minds are overly busy and distracted the thoughts run on autopilot. To influence the thoughts there needs to be times of stillness. Most important is to learn a meditation that will help you learn how to see the thoughts. Accept the thoughts. Realize that guilt over negative thoughts is part of the normal human condition. Hey, you’re normal! Isn’t that a positive thought? Remember, accepting the thoughts does not mean that you don’t make an effort to change them into more positive ones. Just realize that they are thoughts and that everyone has them as a part of the personality. Stop condemning others for their negativity. Boy, that’s the hardest one, don’t you think? But when we continually condemn others for their negativity, it prevents us from seeing ours and accepting it. Be aware of the thoughts, accept the thoughts and quit judging or condemning others for their negativity. Can you begin to do that? As you begin to practice these, there are other actions to take in cultivating the opposite feeling – pratipaksha bhavana. And they all begin with you of course. Change yourself. Change the world around you. When you become aware of the negative self-talk, stop it and replace it with a positive thought. For example, if you think you aren’t attractive enough for whatever reason, immediately remember all of those who care about you and tell yourself, I am loved. And recall a few incidents when people that you value have demonstrated that you are loved. Be aware of resentments that you may harbor. Those deep wounds will continue until you are able to heal them through detachment and forgiveness. These days we are practicing social distancing because of the pandemic, but psychological distancing may be necessary to heal. When I think about someone who hurt me badly, it’s hard to let go of the resentment. There’s a tendency to keep recalling what happened. It is a little like picking the scab off a wound. Instead I’m learning my hurt is something that I am keeping alive. What the person did is done. I need to realize things cannot be undone and to let it go. When that person comes to mind, I stop that thought and forgive myself for continuing that connection, even mentally. That forgiveness of myself is the balm for the wound and it is slowly healing. This is not a reframing of the situation regarding the relationship. It is a reframing of my emotional reaction. Once you are becoming more aware and accepting your thoughts, creating opposite thoughts and letting go of old resentments, then you have begun to create new patterns of thinking. These new patterns create new, more positive samaskaras, those pattern that underpin our reactions. Additionally, it is helpful to establish new, more positive life patterns that will support you in this transformation. Begin to recognize other factors in your life that leave you feeling negative. What are you watching on TV, reading on social media, who are the people around you, the food that you eat, the self-care that you do? Re-evaluate what’s been going on before those moments when you begin to feel negatively, think negatively and respond negatively? Be aware that you may not be able to change what preceded those moments, but you can change the moments yet to come. And when positive moments come, savor them. See the beauty in the world. When someone smiles, smile back. Offer random acts of kindness to others. Practice gratitude. A positive mind is free. It honors one’s connections with the world and is inspired by those connections. As Norman Vincent Peale once said: ”Those who send out positive thoughts activate the world around them positively and draw back to them positive results.” Become a force of positivity! We need you more than ever!

Last week I talked about your comfort zone and the need to re-examine it based on the philosophy and psychology of yoga in relation to the sense of security mediated via mooladhara, the root chakra. Today, I will be talking about the chakra of happiness. Just to remind you that the chakras are energy centers within us. They are not a part of the anatomy that can be seen with the eyes. You can’t dissect out a chakra and examine it. However, it’s interesting to note that each of the chakras is located in the physical body near a major endocrine gland and nerve complex. It’s the endocrine and nervous systems that help regulate bodily functions and not just from a physical perspective. In fact, the endocrine and nervous systems influence us on many different levels, physical, energetic, and mental. So when the ancient yogis delineated the chakras and their locations, they had an understanding that each of these areas of the body greatly influences us. This week we will explore the effects of the next chakra, swadhisthana. Swa means “one’s own” and adhisthana means “dwelling place” so swadhistana is the basis of our individual human existence. It is said that this chakra is associated with the unconscious mind with its storehouse of impressions from our actions during this life and that govern our individual responses to life as we live it now. Unlike mooladhara where we seek security and may seek pleasure as a means to acquire security, here we seek pleasure because it just makes us feels good! Swadhisthana looks for the sensorial pleasures based on one’s samskaras or patterns of behavior that become the default, patterned behavior that helps us respond to the world around us. The whole world is viewed according to the amount of pleasure it yields. Basically, this is the chakra that is most predominantly functioning in today’s world. Again, there are degrees of how this manifests from one person’s life to the other. To briefly review the continuum of the gunas, the qualities of existence, you will be able to see where you fall on that spectrum to have insight into managing your desires. At the dark end of the spectrum is tamas, the sense of inertia, ignorance, stuckness. At the light end of the spectrum is sattwa, the quality of balance, purity, and luminosity. And to move from tamas to sattwa, in the middle is rajas, the quality of dynamism, action, but also ego. Considering the gunas let’s look at this spectrum as it relates to swadhistana. Since this chakra is about pleasure, then if tamas predominates, there is no pleasure – one is stuck in darkness. This results in a lack of motivation, depression, and even suicidal thinking. There may be inappropriate feelings of guilt and pessimism. Addictions may happen in an effort to elevate this darkness and find pleasure, which, of course is only temporary leaving one unfulfilled and results in the cycle beginning again. Generally speaking, this person needs professional help along with support from any friends or family. The likelihood is that this person won’t come to a yoga class or listen to this podcast or do anything that will help them move forward because they don’t believe they deserve to feel better. Now, many of us have periods where tamas is influencing our lives. We experience sadness, boredom, and loneliness. There is more action, but it may be over-action in an effort to be happy. Overeating, overdrinking, overspending, indulging in sex only for one’s personal pleasure. Not caring about how others feel about these actions. Becoming more fully established in rajas, there is more optimism and drive as long as things are moving along smoothly. All good things still come from outside oneself, but there is humor and a desire for fun. As the light of sattwa begins to shine into swadhisthana, one becomes more interested in others, kinder, and less self-absorbed. They are considerate of others, contented, and happy. Continuing further into sattwa, this person lights up a whole room when they walk in and people love to be with them. They are joyful and can always see the funny side of life. Without effort, they see the positive side of everyone and all of life’s situations. So, do you know someone like this? Do you want to be someone like this? How do you get there? Well of course I’m going to suggest you do yoga! But seriously, not so much yoga on the mat, although movement is important and if done with awareness, can be beneficial. What will be most beneficial is yoga off the mat, on the meditation cushion and in your life. Practicing meditation is essential to be able to see yourself and the ruminations of your mind. I honestly don’t think you will progress without it. With meditation you will gain some serious insights as to the number of thoughts that relate to cravings – the seeking of happiness through sensory pleasures. In watching the thoughts, you also see what emotions are attached to those thoughts and how many of your patterns are an attempt at soothing negative emotions. Now when I speak of meditation, I don’t mean you have to do one hour sitting cross-legged on the floor. In fact, I suggest you start with about 10-15 minutes and sit however you wish, in a quiet place without distractions. The mindfulness meditation of antar mouna is an excellent beginning practice and you can get that as a bonus podcast practice last November. In this practice, you begin to find space between you as the witness of the thought so you can be proactive rather than being swept away by your thoughts into your usual patterns of conditioned behavior. In addition, try using the practice of yoga nidra, a guided meditation where you lie down and relax deeply. Yoga nidra will help to alleviate your stress. Stress creates unhappiness so it is often the triggering mechanism for overindulging. Remember, your cravings are a result of seeking happiness outside of you through sensory pleasures. Therefore, managing your senses is important and this requires simplicity and regularity in life. For most of us this can be difficult, especially since the pandemic has altered our lives so much. But you can start trying. Begin to examine the overwhelming variety and amount of sensory input that you experience daily. What things stimulate your senses and cravings, but aren’t really healthy or necessary? When I go to India and stay at the ashram, life is so busy there, but also simple. When you have hundreds of people in a limited space, things have to be organized! There is a time to get up, a regular schedule for eating simple meals, afternoon tea, time for work and time to stop working, time for learning and practicing and time for sleep. Even if I’m only staying there for a couple of weeks, I can feel layers of my usual life being peeled away and I leave feeling a sense of fullness that I rarely feel here. You don’t have to go to extremes, but do begin to engage in some restraint, both physical and mental restraint. Cut back on unhealthy foods and adopt a simple diet. Sit less and go for a walk more. Less screen time on devices and more time in solitude. Less freedom to do anything at any time and more of a schedule for your life. Start with small steps to begin the journey to stop looking outside of you and find the happiness that lives within, just waiting for you to set the stage for its opportunity to play out.

We are creatures of comfort. When we feel comfortable, a feeling of security and contentment is engendered. Because we like feeling this way, we spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to stay in that comfort zone and feel threatened when we are pushed out of it as is happening during this time when we are living through a pandemic, with a layer of political and social unrest on top of it all. Today, I will discuss why we feel so threatened based on the yoga perspective of chakra theory. ……. Let me take a few minutes to help you understand what the chakras truly are. The word chakra means ‘wheel’ and each one is an energy vortex that is somewhat of a ‘meeting point’ for the different aspects, the different layers, of our being. Each chakra influences, and is influenced by, the physical, energetic, mental, wisdom and spiritual dimensions of who we are. I want to make it clear that your chakras are all functioning, or ‘open’ despite what you may have heard or read in what I have to refer to as rather new age teachings. No chakra is ‘closed’ or ‘blocked’. The question actually becomes how the chakra is functioning - poorly, normally, or optimally. It’s really a matter of degree – a continuum – and that function slides along the continuum. As an example, consider your eyes. If your vision is poor, you can’t see well, and especially as a child, you may not even realize there’s a better way to see until someone tests you. Maybe you become aware there is a weakness of vision and you take the action of getting glasses that allow you to see normally and this correction becomes second nature. Now imagine that you could ‘see’ beyond that – to ‘see’ or discriminate more of what is truth. Perhaps realizing that at our core we are all connected and all subject to the same fears and goals. And this level of seeing results in more understanding, compassion and humility. It is at this point that you are seeing optimally!   So, it’s not a matter of the chakras being open or closed. It’s a matter of where their function falls along the continuum of darkness to luminosity. In yoga we call this continuum that ‘gunas’ or the qualities of nature. There are only three gunas but there are various shades emerging from one to the other in the same way as different colors emerge as one overtakes the other. I’ll give a brief primer on the gunas. Tamas is at the dark end of the spectrum and represents depression, inertia, stuckness. Rajas is in the middle and represents dynamism, movement, ego. And Sattwa is at the other end of the spectrum with balance and luminosity. These gunas are always shifting a bit from one direction to the other depending on our lives – our conditioned behaviors, our associations, our karmas, our lifestyle. But generally speaking, the vast majority of people are mainly tamasic with some rajas. In other words, most of us are acting without much awareness and as a result of how we were raised. But this will vary depending on the chakra discussed because you may be predominantly rajas in a couple and more tamasic in others. So now coming back to the discussion of the chakras and re-examining our comfort zone, I will explain how these gunas play out for the chakra most associated with our comfort zone – mooladhara. Moola means ‘root’ and ‘adhara’ means foundation. Our need for security, to feel comfort, is primarily held within this root chakra.   To as certain extent, the chakras align with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow was a psychologist and a bit of a philosopher who laid out a series of levels that are required for self-actualization. Maslow delineated the most important needs to be met first are those that relate to survival – food, water, warmth, rest, safety, security. In yoga this is also the first level, the first main chakra, the foundation chakra of mooladhara. It is also the root of fear when these needs aren’t met because this foundation, this root chakra is about security on all levels. It’s about having enough. Having enough food and water to sustain us. Having enough warmth and shelter to protect us from the elements and other possible dangers. Having enough children to pass on our genetic material. And having enough skills to acquire all of this. And when you don’t feel that you have enough, and for some, there is never enough, fear and anxiety result. But even if you do have enough, do may live in fear of losing it. This is the influence of tamas. If the energy that infuses mooladhara is tamasic energy, then you live in fear. You believe the world is a dangerous place and may be hypervigilant. You fear those you don’t know those who look different than you do, those that act different. Because of this fear, you avoid exploring anything unfamiliar. You hold tightly to what you have, both the objects you possess as well as the thoughts because to think a different way creates more anxiety. Actions taken are all about me and mine! Belief systems cannot easily be changed. You are stuck! But if rajas begins to enter the picture, then you begin to take care of security in a more materialistic, direct way. You believe in hard work to accumulate more money and possessions. You may even use deception and dishonesty to acquire them, continually looking for ways to get more and more! Having more makes you feel secure because your mind engages a lot in comparison. If your friend has the latest iPhone and you are still carrying a model that is several years old, you feel envious and you want it even though your phone works perfectly fine. This behavior is part of the ego aspect of rajas – to have more than what you need and to let others know it. In mooladhara this can show up as a strong sense of selfishness and opportunistic actions. There is virtually no generosity unless it yields a win/win outcome. There’s always a need to get something from the actions. Gradually as the consciousness evolves into sattwa, one begins to see the bigger picture. There is still a sense of pride in family, possessions and self that can feed the ego, but there dawns the understanding that possessions don’t provide inner security. There is a realization that you need just a fraction of what you have, and you begin to take actions that benefit others. You realize that when you give you don’t need anything in return other than the inner happiness that you gave. And when you reach this point an amazing phenomenon takes place. Life starts to fall into place. Your needs become less. Your sense of self is not prideful but authentic. You can embrace your strengths and accept your weaknesses. You can ‘see’ how your actions affect those around you, the environment, your own inner nature. A sense of security blossoms from knowing that you are able to see the bigger picture, and you will do your part in making that picture more beautiful. There is an inner knowing that whatever happens – I will be okay. At this point I hope you are asking, “How do I get to that point?” The short answer is ‘awareness’. Cultivating more and more awareness. To be able to see your thoughts and question your beliefs, to realize your attachments and acknowledge your fears. This require practice. To do this you will need to move out of your comfort zone. What!! Why? Why would anyone want to live outside one’s comfort zone? Well, because growth rarely happens within our comfort zones. We have to have a push. Think about some of the best, most valuable lessons you have learned in life? How many happened when life was moving along smoothly and all was well? And how many happened when you were challenged? When you had to find a new way of thinking, a new way of being? This time of chaos from the pandemic and the political and social unrest may just be the push you need. What security we have had through our normal routines has been challenged. Life is in flux. How are you responding to it all? How much anxiety and fear are you feeling and are you facing it? Or are you falling into the common coping mechanisms of denial and distraction? Where is your mooladhara sitting on the continuum of consciousness evolution? Personally, I feel my mooladhara is rajasic with a little bit of the light of sattwa showing me a glimpse of a different way of being. Generally, I am not as disciplined as people may think. I lean toward darkness and I tend to be overly busy to avoid dealing with that aspect of my nature. For me this means I need to bring more sattwa into my life - more sattwic foods, a more sattwic connection with my body and the environment around me. A more sattwic connection with my thoughts and feelings. So to help my evolution, I’m engaging in lifestyle changes that support me more fully – eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, walking with a friend outside every morning and walking on my treadmill every afternoon, getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night and doing the relaxation practice of yoga nidra regularly. I’ve increased my meditation practices and joined an advance yoga study group. To engage all of these changes during these last few months, pushes me out of my comfort zone. And you know what? It’s all good. I’m re-examining my dark side, my pattern of overcommitting and taking better care of myself so that I can take better care of others. I challenge you to experiment with living outside of your comfort zone. I would love to help you find the way. Through 2020, I’m offering free 15 minute clarity calls to support your growth. Just go to my website, swamiatmarupa.com and click on the “meet with Atma” button on the home page to book an appointment. Start now so with time and practice, you will be secure in yourself knowing that your comfort zone is internal to you and you will always be comfortable no matter what is happening outside of you.  

Can you live in the world like a swan? Even though a swan lives in water, the water does not penetrate and it remains dry. Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in this world and let our troubles roll off without being soaked by them? - In this episode I will discuss the yogic process of self-study to better understand what makes you tick, and how to you can become more balanced in life. Yoga is classically a means to evolve your consciousness to be the best possible version of yourself. It is not meant to be an end to itself. You don’t need to go off to a cave and meditate endlessly. In fact, this will usually result in mental imbalance and darkness of spirit. But if you only focus on the outer life, your day-to-day busy-ness, then the result will be dissatisfaction and attachments. So, we need to develop both – find the inner power and strength of mind as well as carry that into the world around us creating a compatibility of the inner and outer world. Easier said than done! Our karmas, our patterns, are like gravity pulling us down. There will need to be effort to break free. Think about the amount of energy it takes to lift a rocket into space – to overcome the force of gravity! Sometimes it feels that difficult to break free of our patterns. In the style of yoga that I practice and teach there is great emphasis on the practice of karma yoga, or meditative action. When we can learn to approach our daily activities with meditative action, with enhanced awareness, we can begin to recognize our emotional patterns. Combining karma yoga with mindfulness meditation, we will be able to begin the process of self-study and truly see what patterns are holding us down. When you go to the eye doctor and you put your chin on the big device, and then the eye doctor flips different lenses in front of your eye as you look at the chart. Which is better, this or this. What about this or that? Sometimes it’s easy to tell the difference and other times it’s not! Well, we need to cultivate this same attention to what we are looking at…what we are doing…what we are feeling…this or that. Which choice will bring more clarity! To get to this point, it is so important to engage in the practice of self-study, or swadhyaya. ‘Swa’ = self and dyaya = to meditate on. For our purposes we will think of it as the process to be able to observe or study one’s self from the little ego self to our higher self As we move into self-study we must engage 2 important concepts – awareness and acceptance (remove tendency toward judgement) Stages of Swadhyaya observe (witness) - awareness through creation of space between seeing and action understand (viveka) - discrimination to see the root of our patterns (example childhood bullying) accept and let go regulate (appropriateness) – being proactive rather than reactive Swadhyaya – what it is and isn’t It is not an intellectual process; rather it is finding the nature of the self, who we are, what we are, what we are trying to do, how we are trying to do it. Swadhyaya is not reading this and reading that, cluttering the mind with different concepts and ideas while not being clear about our own aims and directions in life. Swadhyaya is a complete psychological analysis of the personality. There are two kinds of understanding: one is mental, rational, intellectual understanding or knowledge, and the other is the application of knowledge. We have to learn how to apply knowledge to gain wisdom. SWAN - Our strengths, weaknesses, ambitions and needs all have to be known, analyzed and understood using the faculty of discrimination and self-acceptance. Describe the process. Divide a paper in 4 blocks with the SWAN letters one in each. Start by listing 3 things in each category. 'S' stands for strength and every individual has strengths. Strengths are those qualities, skills, talents and characteristics which support and help us to evolve. They are those aspects of the personality that can be applied positively and constructively in life, those positive attributes of our character that have been acquired through our karmas. Everyone has a 'W' too. We have weakness, insecurity, inferiority complexes and unawareness of our potential. Weaknesses limit our progress. Weaknesses are the deficiencies in our personality, for example, apathy, anger and procrastination. Most of the time we are influenced by and try to hide our weaknesses, but by overly focusing on them we let them overshadow our strengths. When listing your SWAN aspects, do not let your weaknesses outnumber your strengths. This will make you more positive. At the same time everyone has an 'A', ambition. We all want to become what we are not and we try very hard to do it. Ambitions are what we want to do in life. They are the driving force behind our actions; we cannot achieve anything without ambition. Ambition can be based on fear, desire, power or a natural love of life. When practicing SWAN sadhana, do not let your ambitions overshadow or outnumber your needs. Everyone also has an 'N', need. Needs are what everybody has. The body needs food and water, clothing and shelter. There are mental needs, the desire for satisfaction, some purpose in life, while the need for inner harmony and balance with nature comprise our spiritual needs. Utilization of SWAN Write your strengths and display them somewhere to remind you that these are your positive points that will develop and encourage you in life. You will gain in strength and support each time you look at them consciously. Choose one weakness that you want to eliminate over the next month. Focus your awareness on that weakness for a month, using your strengths and your awareness to overcome that weakness. After a month, do your SWAN again and write down the results, then choose another weakness to eliminate, or if the first one needs more work, continue on that one. Which negative ambitions (if any) can be changed into positive ones? For example, “I will never” can become “I will always.” List your ambitions according to priority or chronologically. When do you want to achieve them? What first steps are you going to make to achieve them? Do you need to make an affirmation that you repeat frequently to help you? Over the month see what comes up as needs and which needs you can successfully modify, drop or put into ambitions, and adjust your needs list accordingly. In conclusion, Swami Niranjanananda says, “Ultimately, through the practices of SWAN meditation, a stage of integration is reached wherein the different levels of the personality, instinctive, emotional, mental and psychic, are able to function and coordinate harmoniously. The fragmented aspects of the human personality which hinder and limit creative potential are gradually unified and reinforced, creating more positive channels of expression. In this way, the practice unfolds a new vision of oneself and of one's life, an experience of internal unity and self-acceptance which is not affected by external changes and influences.”    

The breath is important. We all know that if you stop breathing for more than a few minutes you will not survive! Our breath keeps us alive. But did you know that the breath is just the more familiar aspect of a more subtle, yet complex force that not only animates you but upholds the world? Upholds the universe? In this episode you will learn more about the breath and how it not only keeps you alive but can heal both physical and mental disturbances. Let’s start with the basics. The average person breathes more than 20,000 times per day. Do you pay attention to any of those 20,000 plus breaths? Maybe if you have a cold. Or if you are short of breath from exertion. But in yoga, we learn to become more aware of the breath because the breath can be a tool to alter how we respond to the world around us, both physically and mentally. In fact, the breath is said to be the “bridge” between the physical and mental. There are practices in yoga called Pranayama practices. The word pranayama is often translated as breathing practices, because these practices manipulate the breath in different ways to create calmness, cool the body, relieve anger and anxiety, lower blood pressure and pulse, improve digestion and so much more. But the word “pranayama” is a combination of two words “prana” meaning the life force, the quality of aliveness, and “ayama” meaning to expand. Therefore, the word pranayama actually means to “expand the life force” that exists in each of us, and through that expansion the systems of the body can become more fully harmonized and health optimized. Prana is ever changing. It is essence of movement and change in the world and in you. In terms of the universe, prana is then called Mahaprana – the great force of aliveness. Are you aware of this prana? Your prana is a part of this bigger prana. Can you fell it? Do you know when is prana strong? When is it weak? Let’s look at some lifestyle considerations when you may have felt prana without necessarily being aware of what you were feeling. Prana in food Strong - Fruits, fresh veggies, whole grains, olive oil, fish, eggs Weak – meat, fatty fried foods, processed foods, white food (bread, rice, sugar) alcohol Prana in air Strong - Air near a waterfall, ocean, forest Weak - Air in city, polluted areas Prana in relationships Strong - Love, hugs, laughing Weak - Stress, anger, sorrow Now you may realize that you’ve been feeling prana in your life and how that feels in you. But can you translate that into the feeling of your own subtle prana within? In yoga we talk about the koshas, or the five different layers or dimensions of our being – physical, energetic, mental associated with the senses and thoughts, more subtle mental associated with higher knowing and intuition, and the spiritual. The energetic kosha is called pranamaya kosha and is composed of about 72,000 nadis or energy passageways through which the prana flows. These nadis are similar to the meridians in eastern medicine practices like acupuncture, and are arranged in systems within the body and extend a bit beyond the body as well. These energy passages can become blocked or disturbed, resulting in both physical and mental disturbances that if prolonged, can create dis-ease. Our physical and mental states are a good indication of our pranic condition. In the different areas of the physical body, prana serves different functions, energizing certain organs and supporting their corresponding actions. There are 5 main subpranas and there are yoga practices that are designed to help you truly feel the energy flowing in each of these. Within the chest, there is a subprana that supports the function of the lungs and heart, in the pelvis one that supports excretion and sexuality, and in between one that supports digestion. Then there is one in the head and extremities that supports the brain, nervous system and circulation. And the remaining one is spread through the whole body ad acts like the backup battery to the other four. By practicing prana vidya, or knowledge of the pranas, you can learn to feel these pranas and gradually optimize their support of the bodily systems. As you can see, the physiology of energy within us is more complex than you may have realized. Where should you start to better facilitate your awareness of, and strengthen your prana. Start by becoming aware of your breath. Don’t change it. Just be aware of it and notice what happens. Usually, what happens is that as you begin to watch the breath you realize you aren’t breathing very deep or it might be irregular, so you begin to change it. But I told you not to change it. And it you don’t change it, then how many breaths can you take without the mind wandering? The mind finds the watching the breath boring and so it will distract you. To stay aware of the natural breath will take practice. You can actually download a free natural breath awareness recording on my website, swamiatmarupa.com. It is important to understand that the emotions change our breathing and therefore we can use the breath to change our emotions. A recent study in the Journal of Neurophysiology revealed that several brain regions linked to emotion, attention, and body awareness are activated when we pay attention to our breath. What they found was that increased activity across a network of brain structures, including the amygdala, when participants breathed rapidly, like what happens when stressed. Activity in the amygdala suggests that quick breathing rates may trigger feelings like anxiety, anger, or fear. Other studies have shown that we tend to be more attuned to fear when we’re breathing quickly. Conversely, it may be possible to reduce fear and anxiety by slowing down our breath. A basic breathing practice that will help you deepen and lengthen the breath is to do rhythmic breathing and gradually extend the breath and the length of the exhalation. Count your inhalation and make the exhalation the same and then every few breaths make the exhalation one count longer. In a comprehensive article on the importance of breath in yoga, Amarjit Singh explains the process that occurs when we slow our breathing down: “By changing the breathing pattern, you can produce different states of mind. Slowing down the breath has an impact on your emotional state. The cerebral cortex is activated through consciously slowing down the release of breath. Then the cerebral cortex sends inhibitory impulses to the respiratory center in the midbrain. These inhibitory impulses from the cortex overflow into the area of the hypothalamus, which is concerned with emotions, and relax this area. This is why slowing down the breath has a soothing effect on your emotional state.” Many researchers have documented the benefits of a regular practice of simple, deep breathing, which include the following: Reduced anxiety and depression Lower/stabilized blood pressure Increased energy levels Improved immunity Decreased feelings of stress and overwhelm Beyond observing the natural breath and a regular practice of simple, deep breathing there are many, many more breathing practices and pranayama practices. Additionally, there are more advanced practices that unblock the pranic passageway and balance the pranic systems to optimize health. I am currently writing a 4 month long, home study course, Prana and Pranayama, for the Yoga Academy of North America. This course is a good introduction to the foundational practices and knowledge. The subject is broad and deep. If you would like to learn more about the course or breathing practices in general, please feel free to email me through my website.    

There’s a lot going on these days that can trigger significant anxiety! We have an ongoing pandemic. We have an upcoming presidential election that is often feeding cultural divisiveness. Our cities are experiencing protests and riots. Our forests are on fire. Our oceans are producing more hurricanes and bigger ones than normal. It’s no wonder we are experiencing stress and anxiety! These are unprecedented times. How can yoga help? Classical, integrative yoga is meant to support you, to give you inner strength and the ability to remain calm and centered in turbulent situations. In the US approximately 18% of the population can be diagnosed with some form of diagnosable, formal anxiety disorder at any time.  However, nearly everyone experiences generalized anxiety at different times. And these are different times! Major symptoms of anxiety affect the body, energy, emotions, mind, and spirit.  Therefore, yoga is an excellent resource to alleviate anxiety, especially any style that integrates practices that address our bodies, our energy, our emotions, minds and our spirit. When we practice n this way, we are cultivating a state of awareness that allows us to become more objective and present. There have been many studies on anxiety and yoga. One showed when yoga asanas were performed without breath awareness there was no improvement in the symptoms of anxiety.  However, when deep breathing was linked to the movements, there was improvement.  Another study showed that salivary cortisol levels (stress hormones) decreased after yoga classes that incorporated breath work and short meditations along with the asana practice. Asanas - or physical movements Asanas not only stretch tense muscles, but they massage the internal organs that are often negatively affected by stress and anxiety.  An important concept that distinguishes the practice of asana from other forms of exercise is the awareness with which the practice is done.  If the asanas are performed with loud music, rapid movements, and externalized attention the practice is no different that exercise.  Classically, asanas are meant to be accompanied by the sound of the breath, done slowly, while keeping the awareness on the sensations, thoughts and feelings generated at that moment during the practice.  Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on neuroplasticity, said in his book, “The Brain’s Way of Healing” - “Slowness of movement is the key to awareness, and awareness is the key to learning…Slower movement leads to more subtle observation and map differentiation, so that more change is possible.” Mapping means the brain’s ability to access different methods of learning and consolidating information to help the mind function with more efficiency, to understand relationships and connections more readily, and to improve symptoms of chronic disease. I’ve been teaching classical yoga for over 25 years and I’ve seen how this slower style of practice has benefited my students in so many ways! I’ve also seen how this style has helped me manage chronic pain conditions, low energy states, mental stressors and kept my spirit singing. Today, I want to share some simple practices with you that I often teach in my regular classes. You won’t be able to do these at this time, but you can listen to the instructions, visualize the practice and review the show notes later when you are able to practice. We’ll start with a few simple asanas that are very therapeutic for releasing tensions throughout the body and especially suitable to practice when the mind is racing.  These asanas massage the adrenal glands (our stress glands) and encourage deepening of the breath. Palm tree pose. Start by interlacing the fingers and place the hands on the head with the palms facing up. Inhale and stretch the arms as high as you can, pulling yourself up on your toes, then exhale and return to the starting position. Practice 10 times. Swaying palm tree. Move the feet about shoulder width apart. Again, interlace the fingers and place the hands on the head with the palms up. Inhale and stretch the arms up, but don’t rise onto the toes, instead exhale and bend to one side. Inhale back to center and exhale to the other side. Inhale back to center and release the arms down with the exhale. Practice 10 times. Moving on from these practices, do a standing forward bend slowly.  Bend the knees as much as necessary to release any back discomfort, rolling down like a rag doll, letting the arms hang.  Hold the pose for up to 10 slow, deep breaths and with each breath allow the tensions to be released with the breath. Lie down on the floor on the abdomen and rest the forehead on folded forearms. Close the eyes and breathe deeply in and out of the abdomen.  Push the abdomen out against the floor with the inhale and repeat mentally “letting go” with each exhale.  Count at least 10 slow, deep breaths. This deep abdominal breathing triggers a relaxation response in the body. When you are finished, notice how you feel. Pranayama – breathing practices Anxiety results in rapid breathing with more focus on inhalation and thoracic breathing- the belly doesn’t move.  Part of the purpose of the breathing practice from a yogic perspective is to encourage diaphragmatic breathing and to lengthen the exhalation.  The energy body contains energy channels.  The breath is just the external manifestation of these channels. Some of the channels create extroversion and an increase in energy and some create a more introverted, calm state of mind.  The practice of nadi shodhana (alternate nostril breathing) helps to balance both of these energies Normally when doing this form of breathing, the breath moves back and forth from one side to the other utilizing the hand. The technique can be altered during an anxiety attack by only breathing in the left nostril and out the right repeatedly, rather than back and forth, using the fingers to block one side then the other. Another useful technique that I teach in every one of my Yoga for Anxiety classes, is Bhramari (humming or bee breath).  This not only alleviates anxiety, but it is also good for anger. In this practice, the eyes are closed, the ears are plugged with the fingers, and after breathing in deeply, the breath is released while making a deep, humming sound. Continue humming like a bee, focusing on the sound in the center of the head behind the eyebrow center. To learn more about this practice, see the episode from September of last year called, “What do Bees Have to do with Yoga.” Meditation – to manage the mind There are several meditation practices that are excellent for anxiety disorders.  Meditation helps the mind introvert and let go of what’s going on around us. It’s a bit like rebooting your computer when it’s not quite working the way you want. It doesn’t mean you need to spend a lot of time for this. There are 3 that are labeled as bonus episodes from last year’s podcasts that are available to you. These make great starting points for those who aren’t used to doing any form of meditation. They also work well as a brief “meditation break” when you need to calm down and re-center. Natural Breath Awareness (about 5 min) A Yoga Nap (about 10 min) Antar Mouna (about 20 min) Intentionally setting aside time for daily meditation, even 5 minutes, will help release those deeply held tensions that can be the root of anxiety. The order I have given is the order in which the practices are done in a typical class in the style that I teach, and it is ideal for someone suffering from anxiety.  Starting with asanas there is release of the physical tensions and they begin to move the energy in a more directed and healthy way.  Following with pranayama brings the awareness more internal and focused.  Concluding with meditation work allows the mind and emotions to relax and release those deeply held patterns in the subconscious that manifest as anxiety. Lifestyle Additional considerations When the mind is creating anxiety, we need to look at what we are putting into our subconscious and what we are letting out. Look at your daily life and be aware of how some changes might alter your levels of anxiety. Do you watch a lot of news?  It is filled with repetitive, sometimes unnecessary material that feeds fear and results in more stress and anxiety.  Limit how much you watch or turn it off. Do you spend a lot of time on Facebook or other social media? Status updates and endless postings of information may result in looking outside yourself for reassurance and answers. It may make you feel inferior or angry. Remember, in yoga philosophy all of the important answers are inside you. Do you eat a lot of processed foods?  Eating a healthy diet goes a long way in altering mood.  Anything that doesn’t ever spoil when left in the air or can be stored for weeks on end is processed. It has no prana, no life in it.  Try eating more fresh foods. Be creative. I make fresh fruit smoothies for breakfast every day. It’s fun to try different combinations of fruit. This morning it was blueberries and mango! Cook for yourself. Freshly cooked, warm foods help to soothe and calm the mind.  Do you worry about how others behave?  Worrying about loved ones and friends can be natural up to a point.  But sometimes you need to realize what you can change and what you need to accept as it is, or let it go. Yoga philosophy advocates the only one that you can change is you. And that will normally keep you busy for a lifetime or so! But yoga can help! Remember yoga is thousands of years of teachings and has existed through so many desperate times. But the reason it has survived is because it can relieve our suffering.      

How do we still the mind? How do we go beyond the surface thoughts and emotions and reach that unchanging, pure consciousness that lies within? How do we access that potentiality? One way is through the practice of Yoga Nidra. Key Concept In deep relaxation, receptivity increases. During fully conscious state, intellect and senses are engaged. Information being processed is related to external world. In yoga nidra, we are taking the awareness away from the external world and the senses to access the subconscious and unconscious states mind. I teach Satyananda Yoga Nidra, developed in the 1960’s from ancient tantric techniques. Yoga Nidra book published in 1976 by Swami Satyananda. When I started teaching it 25 years ago, virtually no one had heard of this technique. In fact, it wasn’t until about 10-12 years ago that it became widely known. Now there are many styles, all involving deep relaxation. Obviously, it works that it has spread so quickly through the yoga world. Last year I was a main presenter at First International Yoga Nidra Conference at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Wellness. 4-8 Stages of the practice depending on your experience or time available. SETTLING – moves awareness from outside to inside First adjust the physical body and be aware of the body supported by the floor/chair. Physically releasing the body and scanning for tensions and using breath to release. Awareness of sensations of the body – clothing/air, awareness of sounds – to be able to let go of the senses and move the awareness inward. This becomes the start of process of pratyahara. SANKALPA - at beginning and end when relaxed and at the end before finishing a special sort of affirmation is made. Brain waves are at alpha/theta junction – a place between relaxation and drifting into sleep. Where incredible amount of information is “downloaded” into subconscious mind. The subconscious mind can hold a lot of negative downloads, resulting in patterned behaviors that really don’t serve us well. Sankalpa designed to work at the subconscious level to change what the conscious mind cannot. BODY ROTATION – captures the awareness and directs it through the body. Activates the sensory/motor area of the brain based on the homunculus. Rotation was created before right/left brain scientific studies but supports what we’ve learned in the last couple of decades. Starting on right side of body is left brain which is our extroverted nature and the “planning brain” then goes to the left side which is right brain and our introverted, more present, “everything is fine” part of the brain. Then crosses back and forth, activating the fluidity of nervous transmission from right to left and left to right, balancing the hemispheres of the brain. By moving the awareness in this systematic way through the body, the physical body relaxes deeply. And because the rotation doesn’t vary, over time the habituation of the awareness to follow along initiates relaxation more quickly and easily. BREATH AWARENESS – further deepens relaxation on an energetic level Further internalizes awareness. At the subtle level, helps balance the nadis, or energy channels of the body and facilitates the flow of energy. Connects cerebral cortex with brain stem. Connections go through limbic system, the emotional brain. OPPOSITES – deepens release of deeply held tensions, strengthens will power & helps us accept dualities. With opposites, there is the creation of experiences normally beyond our control. These experiences normally arise from the limbic system in the middle of the brain. The limbic system helps regulate responses to environmental factors as well as emotional factors. The limbic system is the emotional brain, controlling the emotional aspects of behavior related to survival. So the practice involves feeling hot then cold, heavy then light. The practice of opposites within the depth of relaxation of yoga nidra, releases emotional material held in deep subconsciousness independent of good/bad. Acceptance of dualities of life. Strengthens will power on the psychic level. Aids in cultivating opposites in daily life, so when there is sadness it is recognized as the other side of the coin and we learn how to let it go and cultivate happiness. VISUALIZATIONS – creating the dream. Most subtle stage providing deep mental relaxation. Here images are suggested that are meant to help purge the subconscious and unconscious mind. Imagery is used to ‘nudge’ samskaras – those deeply held patterns of thought that tend to dictate our responses to life. Images suggested may lead to drifting into other imagery – a dreamlike state. Dreams when we sleep are an important mechanism to release the buildup of emotional stress. In yoga nidra, with practice, this can be more like lucid dreaming whereby there is a level of awareness functioning that doesn’t usually exist in regular sleep. Slow progression of types of imagery based on practitioner’s experience and it is important to be able to witness whatever comes up without becoming disturbed and without intellectual analysis. Symbols are used to process information throughout our lives. In the same way what is seen in yoga nidra can be symbolic and one should just see the imagery and let it go. Over time, subconscious and unconscious material that influences the negative aspects of the personality are released to provide better integration within conscious states. Develops self-awareness and acceptance. Enhances imagination and creativity EXTERNALIZATION Moves from subtle to gross – reversing the process of internalization Upon completing the practice & moving back into your daily activities, ideally you feel: Physically relaxed Refreshed/Energized Clearer mentally So, this is what the practice entails, and I encourage you to make it a part of your life. Rather than a coffee break, why not try a yoga nidra break? Yoga nidra practices are generally 15-40 minutes long but remember it’s important to use a recording to hold you in the practice so that you can reach and stay at that threshold between awake and asleep. There is a variety of yoga nidra recordings available on my website.  

This episode will explore how yoga defines the mind and provide you with information to help you believe that you can manage the mind. To do this Understand our thought patterns called samskaras Develop and focus our awareness Observe where our response is coming from – the root of the pattern Use yoga techniques such as meditation, yoga nidra, breathing techniques, slow & mindful asanas Practice, practice, practice What are samskaras? A conditioned and automatic way of responding to the events of life around us, eg. anger, guilt or indecisiveness Subconscious process Samskaras decide your thoughts, behavior, pattern of perception, understanding, expression, reaction, everything Sum of our samskaras make up our personality, and we even define a person’s personality based on them – He’s an angry person, she’s indecisive We need to know about samskaras to understand some of the fundamental, underpinning concepts about yoga Yoga Sutras Yoga is to be understood as a form of discipline My guru says it means “to tame the wild nature of the mind” Yoga is defined as stopping the pattern of the mind. Enlightenment, not for most of us. Rather it is a system of mind management where the subconscious patterns that continue to keep us stuck doing the same old things the same old way are stopped. Once the mind is managed, a person becomes the “seer” established in his or her own true nature - meaning that you can access your higher self, your more intuitive wisdom and be less influenced by the dramas of life. You will have the space needed to do that. If this is not practiced, one continually assumes the form of the patterns and they continue without change and keep getting sucked into those dramas Consideration in Understanding the mind The mind is so preoccupied with thoughts about the past, the future, or some imaginary problem that we usually leave the day-to-day, moment-to-moment tasks to the subconscious. This becomes habitual. When the conscious mind is busy, we do not observe our own programmed subconscious behaviors. 95% of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behaviors are derived from the unobserved processing of the subconscious mind. Being unaware of our subconscious behaviors, we often perceive ourselves as being influenced only by external forces or see ourselves as victims of these circumstances. As victims we may fell that we are powerless to manifest our best intentions. Most powerful and influential programs in the subconscious mind are the ones that were recorded first during the formative period of our lives up to age six. Much of what we learned as a child, was based on misperceptions that may now be expressed as limiting beliefs. This keeps a lot of us from maximizing our potential. It has been estimated that over 40 million nerve impulses per second are interpreted by the subconscious mind. The prefontal cortex (the self-conscious mind) only processes about 40 nerve impulses per second. Subconscious mind 40 million – conscious mind 40? This means the subconscious mind is a million times more functional or powerful than the self-conscious mind. No wonder we “think” we are going to change, but then don’t. Additionally, psychologists estimate 70% of our thoughts are negative and redundant. Think about that one! Now, by combining this information with yoga psychology, we will have a better understanding of how yoga can help us. Sanskrit Antar Karana – Inner Instrument Manas Thinking mind, responds to sensory input for survival Measuring and judgemental Relates to thought and counter-thought Changes from moment to moment Continuously engaged with other parts of the mind Ahamkara The sense of “I - ness” Ego as protector Chitta consciousness The storehouse of past experiences Memory Substratum of mind and mental power Buddhi ‘To know’ True discernment, awareness and understanding – at higher levels Intellect & rational thought – at lower levels Here’s an example of how these parts work together. You walk into the kitchen and find a chocolate cake on your counter - Manas: That round thing smells of chocolate Chitta: I remember, it’s cake! Ahamkara: “I” like cake Manas: I want cake, but cake is fattening, but it smells so good, a little piece won’t hurt, I haven’t had chocolate all week, etc. Buddhi: Is eating cake really the best thing to do right now? Buddhi decides Yes or No Decides based on its strength from the input it receives If buddhi is influenced to act due to the continuous input of manas & ahamkara? The senses are always attended to without awareness The ego/I-ness is habituated into getting whatever it wants Then budhhi will use rational thought and decide a small piece is OK. If buddhi is influenced to connect with our inner sense of knowing based on strength of discernment and a better understanding of what our actions yield over time Has arisen by developing a depth of awareness A release of old patterns through mindfulness Having space to act rather than react Then buddhi will help us realize that cake is not leaving the planet and your desire for sugar is not necessary Must practice mindfulness techniques such as meditation, yoga nidra, breathing practices. Why Practice? To purify the subconscious mind. In life, we accept positive thoughts & allow them to be expressed. Negative thoughts & feelings are pushed down into those subconscious layers of mind, adding to our samaskaras. Those patterns that keep us stuck. Vast accumulation of suppressed thoughts create tension, stress, chronic pain & unhappiness in life. As we begin to practice yoga mindfully and cultivate our awareness there are many benefits that will be realized. Learn to witness the thoughts without reacting to them Allows subconscious thoughts and emotions to slowly be confronted and released in a therapeutic manner. Increases our resistance to external disturbances Mind becomes more tranquil and focused We can become more proactive and live with intentions. We become healthier, both physically and mentally Please note that there are several practice episodes in Season One that can help you get started.

We are experiencing a pandemic that has disrupted our way of life. We are yearning for normalcy! Today I will discuss how we can use this time to make a mental shift that will allow us to move from our yearnings to be able to see new opportunities. For much of my life, I did not feel normal. This feeling was rooted in childhood circumstances that resulted in patterns that kept me wishing I was different. Wishing that I was what I thought was normal. Normal meant that I would fit in. Have lots of friends. Be shorter and thinner! It wasn’t until I was well into my 30’s that I realized that normal was not all it is cracked up to be. I began to look for an alternative to normalcy. In my 40’s I started my yogic journey and learned more about the mind and how our fears and subconscious patterns tend to dictate our behavior. How we function in life primarily from this undercurrent of subconscious feelings and beliefs instilled in us from our childhood. Unfortunately, this results in a reactive approach to life that tends to be very self-centered. Classical yoga teaches us how to take a wiser, more inclusive, more proactive stance. Through my studies of yoga, I’ve found that what makes me feel “normal” is to be more present with fewer expectations. How is this relevant to the pandemic? Well, let’s flash back to New Year’s Day of 2020. Another year. Another set of goals. This year, I am going to….fill in the blank. I’m going to be that person that I have always wanted to be!! Then boom! We are in a pandemic! We didn’t know that we would soon be experiencing a pandemic with all of the fears, restrictions and economic fallout.  And who would have thought that people would become so divisive, so mean, rather than pulling together in an effort to face the unknown together? In this country we are proud of our individual rights, our freedoms, but then each of us may only function from our own individual version of “this is how I’m going to survive this.” Well it’s not working! In yoga philosophy each of us is a part of a greater whole. In the yoga sutras, when we lose touch with that concept of wholeness, we develop avidya, or ignorance. And this is one of the great sufferings described in the sutras. So the first step to relieve the suffering happens when we can put aside our “individualism” and begin to move into ”collectivism”. It’s only when we realize that we are a part of this greater, universal consciousness that we can begin to alleviate our pain and fear. Easier said than done.  I don’t know about you, but I know that I have had some serious low points over these last several months when I have nearly lost hope. Hope that people would just suck it up, find more humanity, and realize that if we can look at the “greater good” instead of our own personal desire for everything to get back to normal, we might even come out the other side of this in a better place. So when I slip into those places of darkness and hopelessness, I quickly become aware that I’ve “slipped” and that I need to pick myself up and move forward. This is not always easy, but it’s absolutely necessary. And moving forward means giving up the notion of “normal.” Now I don’t think there’s a person alive that isn’t longing for everything to get back to “normal.” But I’m here to tell you that “normal” is not going to happen. Even if this virus suddenly disappeared, the virus and its results have laid bare our souls, creating a level of fear and trauma that will need a very long time to heal. And if you don’t believe that, then  you are probably in denial. Denial! It’s one of our favorite coping mechanisms, after all. Denial can help us cope for a while, but not over the long haul. So what do we do? How do we step out of denial? How do we make a proactive shift that will begin to relieve our suffering?  The first thing that needs to be done is to stop! Stop, take a deep breath and accept what’s happening!  We need to ACCEPT that this is happening to everyone -  in every home, every town, every state, every country. We are actually all connected through this pandemic. And if you aren’t able to feel that connection, it’s as though you are saying, “Look at me! I’m a wave. I’m special. I’m not a part of the ocean!” We are connected through our pain. If you are fortunate enough to escape the virus you cannot escape the pain that exists and permeates our lives. The pain from those whose health has failed, the pain of those who have lost loved ones, the pain of the economic fallout,  the pain from having our lives turned upside down, and the pain born out of fear from those who challenge, deny and reject the reality of what’s happening, We must truly accept what is happening - that normal is not coming back! It is only when we practice acceptance that we can move out of fear and move forward into creating “a new normal or what I’d rather refer to as “a new opportunity.”  How can we create a new normal when we are clinging to the past? It will take awareness and courage! Life is full of dualities. Day and night. Love and hate. Pain and pleasure. Be aware. And use your courage to step out of discomfort and step into opportunity.  See this as a time for opportunity.  An opportunity to find new ways to connect. An opportunity to show the pain and to ask for support. An opportunity for gratitude.  What I’m going to say, may sound simplistic. But it has been my life experience that many of the answers ARE simple if we can just stop and create the mental space to look for them. to take the time away from our busy lives to allow the answers to come to the surface of our minds by getting out of the way of our usual mental  ruminations that tend to be negative. To be still, to breathe, to feel and to let go. This is where classical yoga can be such an amazing tool to navigate through this time. See this as an opportunity to deepen your experience of life, rather than seeking to widen life’s experiences through distractions and busy-ness. Simple yogic meditation techniques can help us see and reframe our internal messaging.  Feeling isolated by stay at home orders? Be grateful that you have a home. Explore your home, open those drawers and closets full of stuff, donating things that you aren’t using and that might support others. You will feel lighter and more positive. Don’t like wearing a mask? Imagine how uncomfortable it is to be on a ventilator. I used to be an anesthetist and put those tubes down into people’s lungs to breathe for them. You don’t want one. And you shouldn’t want anyone else to end up with one either. Wear a mask.  Don’t want to social distance? Realize these precautions are not just about you. They are acts of kindness and respect for others. Maybe you’ve heard the word namaste? It basically means that “I see you as I see myself.” Don’t get me wrong. I do like a good hug, both giving and receiving one. But I don’t think about what I’m lacking, rather I think about how it’s not safe for the person that I care enough to hug so it’s not available to me right now. It’s not about me. It’s about more than me. Deepen your experiences rather than widen them? Last week I received an email from my teacher in India after relaying some information about teaching and holding programs via the internet.  Part of the email said: “In the current situation, modern technology, used appropriately and with a positive intent, is the way to connect, relate and uplift each other. There is only a need for physical distancing, however our social interactions should become more meaningful, supportive and caring.” Let me repeat that. “Our social interactions should become more meaningful, supportive and caring.” So I might not be able to hug someone physically, but I can still send virtual hugs. I can reach out to people I haven’t seen for a long time. I can actually call people rather than texting. I can tell people I care about them. I can listen. And it’s important that we begin now. Remember normal is not coming back. Start planning ahead.  Right now since it’s summer and we can easily do socially distanced coffee dates and dinner outside. What about when the snow flies? Start deepening your connections now. Commit to others. Maybe create a pod of a few people and figure out how to continue to support each other when it’s cold and snowy. Open up to possibilities. New ways of being. Can you do it? Can you express your feelings and concerns to those around you that have remained unexpressed? Now is the time. Can you be a positive force, setting an example for others? Can you step into your higher self and away from the self-absorption of what you like and don’t like? The opportunities are here, waiting for you. Now is the time. And now is the time, even if it’s just 5-10 minutes, now is the time to do some form of meditation. It will help you see your thoughts in a new way. It will prevent your negative thoughts from defining who you are. If you don’t know where to start, I have several short meditations available for download on my website. So remember, normal is not what it’s cracked up to be so let it go. Think about the opportunities coming your way if you can accept what’s happening, realize that you are a small part of a greater whole, and do a little meditation. Then you will be able to deepen your experience of life by interacting with others in a meaningful, supportive and caring way. Won’t that be better?

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If you enjoyed this practice episode, head to Atma Center’s website to check out our class schedule. We would love to help you further your practice even more!To follow along, find me on Instagram @atmarupasaraswati or Facebook at Swami Ji, the OG.

For full episode show notes head to our website.To follow along on social media, find me on Instagram @atmarupasaraswati or on Facebook at Swami Ji, the OG.To learn even more about these practices come check out the Atma Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. You can find our schedule on our website.If you learned something new from this episode, please share with a friend who might learn something too! You can copy and paste the link from the episode right into a text message or email. It’s a great way to support the podcast and spread the word about how yoga can help change your life! Thank you for your support.

For full episode show notes, head to our website.To follow along on social, give me a follow on Instagram @atmarupasaraswati and like the Facebook page, Swami Ji, the OG.If this episode taught you something new, please share it with a friend. You can actually just text the link to the episode directly to their phone number. This will help us grow the community and get the podcast in the ears that need it most! Thank you for your continued support.

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To follow along on social media, find me on Instagram and Facebook.Interested in trying yoga nidra? Head to our website for a free 10 minute guided practice to get you started.Did this episode teach you something new? If so, we would be so grateful if you shared the episode with a friend. Just copy the link on whatever app you are listening on, open a text message to a friend, paste the link, and send away! Sharing the podcast helps more people find it. Thank you so much for your support.

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For full show notes on this episode, head to our website.To follow along on social media, find me on Instagram at @atmarupasaraswati and on Facebook at Swami Ji, the OG.If you enjoyed this episode, and learned something new, please share it with a friend. You can copy the link from whatever podcast player you are listening on, and paste it into a text message. That way more people can find the podcast. Thank you so much for your support!

For full episode show notes, head to our website!To connect with me on social media, follow me on Instagram, and like our Facebook page.Want to expand your practice even more? Come check out the Atma Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

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For full episode shownotes, head to our website.To connect more, follow Swami Atmarupa on Instagram.

For full episode shownotes and important links, head to our website.To follow along on social media, find us on Instagram. You can also like our Facebook page.Thank you for listening!Oms,Swami Atmarupa

Want to learn more? Come take a class at the Atma Center to delve even deeper. Check out our website to learn about the classes that we offer.Want to connect with me? Follow me on Instagram @atmarupasaraswati.If this bonus episode was valuable to you, please share with your friends! Take a screen shot of the episode, share it on your Instagram stories, and tag @atmarupasaraswati.Namaste.

Follow us on Instagram to stay up to date on new episodes.For shownotes, head to www.atmacenter.com/shownotes

Full episodes coming soon! Stay tuned!In the meantime, let’s connect on Instagram. Please feel free to send me your questions. I will answer them in future episodes to enliven your practice even more!