We have lived our whole lives to be right here in this very moment. Wow. Stop a second and think about that.  There must be some true value and preciousness in now, if we can stop and really receive that. We do  have the ‘eyes to see and the ears to hear’ the grace of this moment, but often they are covered over with the fears and conditions of our workaday mind.  All the tools we employ - meditation, breathwork, yoga, etc., all our attempts at relaxation have this goal in mind. To return us to this source, simple awareness without a point of view, the deep well of our own stillness. This presence is our inner source of wisdom, the very nature of clarity. And we know in our hearts that all action that arises from this place can only lead us to peace and unity.

One of the true gifts of yoga practice is that it builds this ‘muscle’ of presence - the capacity to rest in awareness that does not need a position or definition. It really does take practice! Short moments of awareness, returned to again and again, build this muscle. From this awareness, inspired action naturally flows -  receptivity and creativity in harmony with the good of all, beyond our agendas and manipulations. From this awareness, our own natural evolution arises, free from the repetition of patterns carried over from the past. And as lovely and desirable as that sounds, we do resist it, more or less. That is why we practice - to access the wisdom that is already there for us. We have it within us, but we must choose it, give it value and priority, knowing we not only do it for ourselves, but for our relationships and in fact, our world.

These are the times of turning - turning inward to find a deeper inner authority, to find what has most meaning for us. For many of us it feels like an initiation into authenticity, waking up from what can no longer work and digging for what is real and true. The spell cast by our cultural conditioning is being broken. Whether we have seen it coming or not, it seems it is time to live the concepts and ideals we have so often talked about and perhaps even prayed for. We can quite literally not afford to re-imagine the past and continue to replay our memories for the illusion of security they might offer. Something new can be born when we let go and live from our inspiration and faith. We can go beyond ourselves and grow, and truly embody our deepest values - peace, compassion, courage, love.  

Our bodies are the vehicles for our transformation. Our beloved bodies give their allegiance to our wholeness, and speak a language of a life that wants to be lived - if we can learn to listen. Our bodies hold a key to our needs, our values, our evolution. Yoga can help us turn that key to that  mystery by cultivating the mindfulness and presence that we need to harvest the insight, guidance and wisdom that is always right there for us, as our deepest truth, our truest feeling. The ongoing intimacy of practice cultivates the skills of deep listening and intuitive confidence that we need to live an inspired life, awakening to meet the world in a way that is fresh. When we break the bonds of recurring cycles in our body/mind through practice, we set ourselves free to be more available to the grace that is there for us. When we let go, spontaneity and clarity arise, and right action flows. The art of living yoga is the dedication to this infinitely intimate process.

Renewing our commitment to our health in body, mind and spirit is something many of us our doing now at the beginning of a new year. Whatever your intentions for yourself are, your practice can be the gateway to the empowerment and clarity it takes to live them.  In the Yoga traditions, practice is broken down into the three aspects of Kriya Yoga -  tapas, svadyaya, and Isvarapranidhana. Tapas means to purify or ‘cook’ in order to bring transformation to our body/mind. The purpose of tapas is to bring us into the present, clear accumulated tensions and habits and give us the strength and clarity it takes to change. Svadyaya means self-reflection and being honest with yourself about where you are. With self-examination and inquiry, we develop the self-awareness it takes to choose the right practice for our true needs (whatever that might be). When we reflect on our world and our choices, actions, words and thoughts, we look into a mirror that gives us information about the direction of our growth. So tapas and svadyaya, purification and reflection, work together to steer our practice in the direction of our true growth and values so it does not become mindless or rote.

The third aspect is Isvarapranidhana, a sanskrit word meaning ’surrender to the Divine’. In essence, it is a recognition of our Source, however we may refer to it, a acknowledgement of our relationship to something greater than ourselves, the Mystery. The qualities of humility, gratitude and receptivity help us to release the tight grip of the illusion of control, and in turn serve us in seeing ourselves and others more clearly.

The three aspects of practice bring vitality and meaning to our practice and helps us follow the thread of meaning on the wilderness path of wholeness to deeper and deeper compassion and peace. Ultimately, the purpose of practice is the realization of Unity - the transformation from separation to oneness. This is truly the meaning of ‘yoga’  - union or nonduality. The realization of this in our being is LOVE.

The President-Elect’s inaugural invitation has borrowed a quote from Gandhi himself  - “Be The Change”.  I love that he is inviting us to the secret of prayer and intention - be that which you want to see. I am that I am. How can we apply this to our life and practice, challenging ourselves to bring our evolution into ‘this’ moment rather than keeping it safe as a conceptual ideal? What is the change that you want to be?

Lately, I’ve read about the future trends of spirituality in business and conscious capitalism. (Megatrends 2010.) I was inspired by the hopeful evolutionary thinking that recognizes the opportunity in this time of disillusionment. This is the time for a new dream, a sense of response-ability in each of us that says ‘yes’ to breathing and growing past fear. Integrating the spirit of the sacred into the business of our work in the world is an evolution of our shared values. And this work, of course, begins with us personally. It begins with an end to ‘us’ and ‘them’ consciousness. It begins with the democracy and ecology of our own integrity. In other words - if it is ‘out there’ it is ‘in here’ and this is where I can begin to meet greed, hatred, and all the big and little wars in the world. With compassion, with humility, with acceptance. This is the leadership we need on every front. The willingness to see it all with the eyes of love, to remember the allness of God, and start from there.

And what does this have to do with yoga practice?  Again, yoga means ‘to join’, it is a practice that we can bring to each and every moment of our day. It isn’t so much about setting aside time for the sacred, it is about making all of our lives sacred, bringing all of our lives into alignment with our deepest values. The practices of yoga are an elegant and effective way to clear the fog of our lives, to disperse the accumulated tensions and stories in our body/mind so we can see clearly. Now, in the present, where we can begin to sort through the outmoded belief systems and conditioning that keep us in a holding pattern of suffering.

It is wonderful to have tools that help to bring us into the stillness of presence wherein we can actually hear the voice of our heart. It is that voice that speaks of our deepest truths, our purpose and values, our soul guidance, and it so easily drowned out by the overstimulated virtual reality of our cultural milieu, by the siren song of fear. The voice of our heart sings the song of the embodied ground of our being, and from there we can hear our own heart beat in harmony with the music of our Earth and all of Life. It is from that embodied ground that we can remember the Divine and dream of peace - for everyone. 

I would love to hear any comments or sharing you might have on these subjects or yoga in general!

Thanks, and have a peaceful and prayerful holiday season.

I celebrate the election of Barack Obama as President; since last Tuesday night the new level of hope has been palpable. He has a big job to do, and I pray for his protection and wise guidance. We have made a vote for the future and for change. And I know that it is for us to remember that the sea change required is in all of our hands. It is not just a government repair job that is necessary, we are all being elected to take responsibility for our connection to each other and our earth. Our necessity is our evolutionary opportunity. 

Change begins with us, it begins when we decide to live responsibly, and really question deeply and with humility our place in nature. What is the dream you are holding for yourself, your family, your community? We have outgrown the runaway dream of individual wealth and personal aggrandizement, the go-it-alone individualism that sets us up in little outposts and castles. We have outgrown the American dream of life as a competitive sport, a contest of quantity over quality. It is time for a new vision that includes respect for nature, a remembrance of the sacred, universal human rights and peace. When basic human needs are met, human development can be about being more, not having more. It is time to take care of each other, the ‘commons’ of our humanity and our planet.

We of my ‘boomer’ generation have talked about oneness and unity consciousness for decades. It is not just a concept. More that ever it is time to manifest it in our lives in a meaningful way - in our values, in our language, in our choices. Separation ideologies have run our lives and hurt us and the planet in a way that deserves deep inquiry. Can we dare to ask what the new archetypes of Unity look like, how they change our lives, the body politic and life on this precious earth? What is the bridge from me to we? How do we get there from here? Our bodies know, our earth knows - let’s open our hearts and dream, see with new eyes and envision a new world. Imagine, if we were all to do this together….

In this embodiment as a feeling-sensing breath-body, the full spectrum of aliveness arises. On the journey from the unconscious to the conscious we encounter the unlived, the unshed, and the unspoken; all that is sub-conscious. As we cultivate a practice of attending to our bodies with patience, reverence and perseverance our bodies begin to ‘trust’ us and the release of tears, terrors and trauma can happen. (The release of laughter and bliss happens, too, but we don’t resist that quite as much!) The body in its wisdom does not let that happen until the whole system has the resilience to hold it and process it. Even as we encounter something that challenges us, there is still an undeniable fulfillment that comes with deepening intimacy with ourselves. With love, we can hold the lost within the found, and open to Grace.

One definition of healing is the relinquishment of resistance to our truth. On the other side of the resistance to our vulnerability is our birthright of wholeness, the soul of who we are. We owe our precious bodies so much gratitude and reverence for many reasons, not the least of which is their loyalty to our growth and evolution. They are committed to the dream within us and steer us with longings and symptoms in the direction of necessary change and healing. Yes, this is often a painful truth, but Grace will use anything to get our attention, to unfold our purpose. (Our freedom is in heeding that call or not, of course.) Indeed, the shadow of the hidden and unseen is not only our disowned negativity, or what we deem unacceptable. Herein also lies the ‘golden shadow’, the power, beauty and brilliance we have not lived or expressed. Our dear body tells all these stories, it is the bridge to that far shore of our deepest dream, the vehicle of our highest potential. The somatic inquiry of yoga assists us in the discovery and integration of what is blooming under the surface of our lives. YES WE CAN develop the confidence and resilience that our expanded nature asks of us. The practices of yoga help us open our minds and heart and arms wide to all of who we are - and surprise even ourselves.

Today is Halloween, or Samhain on the Celtic Calender, the beginning of the descent to the dark days of winter. Historically, this holiday marked a thinning of the veils between worlds, the time when we can feel the spirits of all of our ancestors, those that have gone before, and those that have yet to be born.  Traditionally, it is also a time of divination, where rituals of syncronicity are used to see what is hidden from us, where the boundaries of time and space are suspended. It is interesting that some celebrate the day by digging into the shadows of the collective unconscious and dressing up as something ‘other’ as a way to visit the darkened rooms of their unlived life. (And it is true, sometimes looking into the mirror of our wholeness can be spooky!) It seems in these times every day is halloween - and I see it as an invitation to be the magical beings that we really are, to reclaim the instinctual wholeness that knows how to praise and ‘divine’ our moments and see the mystery of all of who on the other side of fear.

In the past the word magic has had the connotation of manipulative self-interest or has been relegated to the unusual or the esoteric. I think it is time for a new definition - magic as a life awake, remembering the Divine with every breath. To divine is to see the sacred in everything, to recognize the the threads of meaning and interconnectedness on the loom of our lives here together. Magic is the meeting of the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’, the seen and the unseen, the primal unity of all of life -  the whole quantum, multidimensional miracle of it. Perhaps there are more spiritually correct terms for it, but I like using the term magic because it seems that is what our world is so longing for; a re-enchantment of life, a return to awe and wonder. To recognize the magic and harmony of this life is to open to joy.

The wisdom of the deep feminine in each of us is the receptivity and reverence the sees the world with the eyes of love, that trusts in the alchemy of reality, the cycles of birth, death and evolution beyond our puny understanding. When we cultivate this quality of attention and bring it to our world, it blooms a richness and meaning that nourishes and guides us. This is what magic is to me. The magic and miraculous WE is an archetype that can be awakened in us, especially in times of uncertainty and change such as we are in now. This is the part of us can wake up from the illusions of what we think we know, undo our grasp to let control fall away and live in the amazement of life unfolding. It is time to dream our lives anew and see with new eyes the magic all around us.

What a refuge is my practice of yoga - slowing down to the speed of body and breath. For me, yoga as a practice is not about managing my body or reigning it into shape, it is about waking up on the earth of my life - my beloved body. So often, many of us are ‘lost in thought’ and suffer the consequences of disembodiment as stress, illness and disconnectedness (and worse). Yoga can be the bridge we cross to living the life of the body, a re-entry to the reality of our embodiment, a key that we can turn on the door to the real. The body is, literally, the ground of our being, and tells the sensate truth of our connectedness to all of life. If we let it, if we would but listen. We so need and deserve this practice of learning to listen, I feel the quality of our life depends on it - now more than ever. 

We have too often colluded with our conditioning to domesticate our precious bodies and treat them as beasts of burden. And burdens they can all to soon become when they cry out to be heard. 
The body lives at the edge of what we know and do not know, it contains our unlived life, the map of our unfolding, the mystery of our organic divinity. When we live in the mirage of our minds, we deny the richness and guidance of our feelings, emotions, instincts and intuitions. With our attention and practice, we can bring our intimate embodiment to life, and embrace all of who we are. This is our chance for true health, presence and peace. The marriage of heaven and earth is here as US! What a wonder! The practices of yoga help me to to develop the capacity to look directly into the deep well that is my body and learn to adjust my eyes to the vibrant dark of my inner terrain.  This is the fruit of - and motivation for-  the practices that I love to share: moving and breathing as the art of the earth, her very own blossom, an instrument of the mystery.

 As Rilke put it - “Ultimately, it is on our vulnerability that we depend.”

 PS - Reginald Ray has written a beautiful testimony to the practices of embodiment called ‘Touching Enlightenment’. To those interested in the teachings of the Buddha, I highly recommend it.

I said to my inquiring friends the other day “When you don’t know what is going to happen next, you pay very close attention”. The truth is we never know..and many of us are getting to see old fearful and addictive patterns triggered by a loss of the illusion of control or security. What is the alternative to that subtle and not so subtle panic?  Faith. 

 What is real cannot be lost - this is one of the cornerstones of Sraddha, the sanskrit word for Faith. It means faith in Life, and it also means self-confidence. It is not a ‘belief’ or hope for something as much as a connection to the source of our own being. It is the energy that leads us forward, and according to the elders, the ultimate medicine for the emotional mind. Faith in ourselves is spiritual stamina, a knowing that what we do matters, that our choices have value.  The source of faith is Love..and in times of upheaval, especially, this is the well we must draw from.

The chaos in our world has come very close to home - and it’s message is truth and change. Chaos can shake us out of our complacency - and that is it’s gift.  How can we live in the eye of this storm? It is more important than ever not to allow ourselves to be infected by the collective fear of change. We need to fiercely guard and cultivate our peace by going deeper into our own values and renewing our commitment to living them. Can we take this challenge to come in from the periphery of our lives and all the external goodies and stories and really examine our values and live authentically? Are we willing to ask bigger, deeper questions? Are we willing to go beyond the conceptual and actually start choosing and creating peace and freedom in our lives, and sharing that with our world? 

The practice of yoga in the truest sense of the word, is the practice of union with our source, with what returns us to our faith. What is that practice for you - is it union with nature, with your beloveds, with your own beingness? When we are animated by faith, we have the energy to move forward without  the comfort of re-imagining and re-creating the past. Faith paves the way for freedom, and going beyond our old identities and definitions to our growth and evolution.

The calls to awaken are loud, but are they clear? This is where our own practices of presence come in. Nothing is clear unless we are. And whatever gives us the faith to persevere in our work of showing up is what we must cultivate, and commit to. Again and again.

The moon is covered by clouds,

so i look for her inside,

feel the push on my belly,

the pull on my heart,

the turning of the water wheel

of longing and laughter

and tears that soak the ground

made gray by ashes

of burning

and becoming.