Bob Roth c. Alexander Berg courtesy DLF

Bob Roth is America’s favorite Transcendental Meditation teacher

For more than 45 years he has brought Transcendental Meditation (TM) to millions of people through his role as CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, as host of SiriusXM radio show, Success Without Stress, through his podcast Stay Calm, available on the iHeart radio network, and as the New York Times best-selling author of Strength Into Stillness. (Now available in paperback!)

Bob’s work has improved the lives of students in underserved schools in 35 countries; military veterans and their families who suffer from post-traumatic stress; women and children who are survivors of domestic violence, incarcerated and homeless populations and more. He has taught titans of industry, government, sports and entertainment, including Oprah Winfrey, George Stephanopoulos, Martin Scorsese, Jerry Seinfeld, Howard Stern, Katy Perry, Hugh Jackman, Robin Roberts, and many more.

Roth’s contagious compassion, exceptional intelligence, and light-hearted humor are always an honor to be around. In the following exchange we learn more about this proven practice.

What Is Transcendental Meditation?

Amy: First can you just tell us what Transcendental Meditation is?

Bob Roth: Transcendental Meditation is a very simple, easily learned, effortless practice that allows any person to access a field of calm and science that already exists underneath all the noise, deep within everyone. Just like an ocean has choppy waves at the surface but is silent at its depths, every human being has a silence deep within. We’ve just lost access, we’re stuck up here [points to his head].

It’s practiced for 20 minutes, twice a day, sitting comfortably in a chair, you don’t have to sit in any strange position. You’re given a mantra which is a word or sound that has no meaning in TM, just a couple of syllables. Then you’re taught by a teacher to dive within.

It’s easy, it’s effortless, it’s so tender and gentle and kind and compassionate a meditation. It’s not a strain. It has huge health benefits.

TM For Better Health

Amy: What are some of the benefits?

Bob Roth: Benefits of the meditation, according to research, are very significant. I’ll give you an example: it takes about five and half or six hours of a good night’s sleep for your body to take your metabolic rate to drop about 8%, so that’s a good night’s sleep. In 20 minutes of TM your metabolic rate drops 16%, twice as deep, in just a few minutes.

You know what cortisol is? Too much of it is a bad thing. What they’ve found is if you get a good night’s sleep, cortisol drops about 10 %. During 20 minutes of TM they drop 30-40%. So the first thing that happens is a huge reduction of stress, improvement in sleep, much less anxiety because cortisol goes down.

Sorry about all the science here.

Amy: I love it…! The facts help eradicate that outdated “woo woo” stigma around these proven practices.

Bob Roth: Right.

There’s a neurotransmitter called serotonin. Serotonin is called the happiness neurotransmitter or the well-being neurotransmitter. When a person is depressed – and people are that way now during this whole thing – there’s a real decrease, a sharp decline in serotonin.

TM courtesy DLF

Antidepressant medications like Prozac mimic serotonin. During TM just as there’s a decrease in the anxiety hormone cortisol, there’s an increase in the happiness neurotransmitter serotonin. They both maintain that through the whole meditation and afterwards, through the rest of the day. A person feels stronger inside, happier inside, less anxious, less stress. Research shows that they sleep better at night, that they feel better throughout the day. The research on the brain shows that they think more clearly, and are more resilient. Lots of real good things that we would all love to have.

This is important. It’s not a philosophy, not a religion, nothing you have to believe in. Just a lovely simple technique. It’s not in opposition to anything. People can do other forms of meditation, they can do prayer, they can do exercise – TM fits in nicely with everything.

TM For Clarity of Mind

Amy: I love the old joke, “If you think you don’t have time to meditate for 20 minutes then you need to do it for 40.”

Bob Roth: The reason that is, is because your mind is not clear. There are 1,440 minutes in a day. If you don’t have 30 minutes, or 20 minutes out of that 1,440 minutes to take care of your brain for self-care, then your life is not well-organized and your brain is not clear. That’s why they say you need 40, because you’re in serious trouble!

Meditate American courtesy DLF

Amy: Yet, our society seems to run on this bigger, better, faster, more syndrome. In the ‘80s and the ‘90s it was actually “cool” to be stressed out. Where do you think we are with that now?

Bob Roth: The fact of the matter is, it is a crazy world! To be successful, to succeed, to pay your bills, to grow the way you want to grow, to feel like you’re expanding; in your career you want to do more, you want to be more creative, have more influence, then we want to do more. But what TM does is give us an inner equanimity and an inner steadiness so we can do all of that and not get all tied up in knots.

I use the ocean analogy. The ocean is both active and silent. The mind is both active, dynamic but inside silent, quiet, calm. What TM does is give us the energy, the clarity and the inner balance so we can do all of those things and not go crazy.

TM For Sports + Performance

Amy: We’re now seeing a rise in professional athletes turning to TM for performance enhancement. Can you tell me about your experience in sports franchises?

Bob Roth: Oh yes…! There are two aspects to performance. One is what happens biochemically with cortisol. If I am anxious, then my adrenal glands secrete cortisol which is a stress hormone. I need a little cortisol to get going in the day but not too much. My body secretes cortisol if I’m worried about something, then I get more anxious and secrete more cortisol and it becomes a vicious cycle. Two of the problems with cortisol is it affects my immune system, so it weakens or compromises my immune system so I get sick more often. The other thing that it does – it floods my hippocampus which is the memory center. Now, say you have a 10-year-old child and they’re a sensitive soul and they study very hard for the test. Then they get anxious before the test, the test comes, their body secretes cortisol. It floods the hippocampus and they can’t remember anything.

MLB’s Barry Zito, David Lynch, Russel Brand and others at DLF Quiet Time in Schools Event – San Francisco courtesy DLF

Amy: That happens to a lot of people. Geniuses in their field, but terrible test takers.

Bob Roth: A lot of people. When you talk about the athlete who choked under pressure. It’s that. The athlete knows how to shoot a free throw, to catch a ball. But when the cortisol floods the hippocampus they freeze, they choke. So when you have a way to reduce your anxiety levels dramatically during TM then you’re not constrained, you’re not having that reactive thing.

The second thing that it does is it speeds up mind/body coordination. It wakes up part of the brain for focus, reactivity, quickness. It calms the part of the brain, the amygdala, which gets very anxious. So this is a dream come true for any athlete.

Amy: Makes sense, an obvious, proven way, to sharpen skills and performance.

You mentioned a sensitive 10-year-old child. I know you’ve taught many children over the years, who have grown up into amazing adults, who have then taught more children. They’re some of the steadiest people I know. How have you witnessed these generations, sort of re-wire reactions to outside circumstances?

Bob Roth: You just said it right there. Re-wire. There are neural pathways in the brain. They’re pathways in the brain – like when you’re young and you’re learning to tie your shoe. It takes a while. You try and you fumble, and you try and then you keep trying and all of a sudden ‘click’ you got it. And you don’t forget it. Or you’re learning to ride a bike, wobble wobble wobble and then you’ve got it. Or a stick shift or something.

Those are neural pathways in the brain doing something that became familiar. What the problem is with kids, is that they become neural pathways for anxiety, tension, fear, fear of failure, stress. Anything that comes up, there’s a test that’s two months away or a paper, already those pathways, those highways are there.

Children meditating in school courtesy DLF

What happens when you do TM is that it establishes new neural pathways in the brain. Healthier neuropathways. Calmer. All the different parts of the brain are now, instead of going crazy, are now functioning in an integrated, more communicative way. So then the brain is functioning more efficiently. So as far as academic performance, or in business, just being able to stay steady when everything is crazy. In your profession with deadlines. We need that. We need to have that equanimity. We can’t go the old route of, “Somebody pushes my buttons and I overreact.” No! Then we’re a victim of the past.

It’s like, “I had a bad relationship with someone five years ago and I have reactivity to that. Now I’m in a new relationship and I’m still in five years ago. I can’t trust the person. But that person did nothing – I’m in five years ago.” So the ability to meditate and have your mind settle down to that unboundedness inside and have your brain, all the different parts of the brain connect together. Then that forges new neural pathways and then you’re freed from the past, you’re yourself. And it allows you to see maybe this guy is a loser too! So you can see it fresh rather than just reacting. This guy may be great! But if you’re only reacting from the past you’ll never know.

TM For Trauma

Amy: How have you seen this benefit trauma survivors?

Bob Roth: Same thing – the healing. We work with veterans. PTSD is contagious. With veterans they have serious hyperarousal of the amygdala, which is that ‘fight or flight’ area of the brain. So they’re overreacting to everything and that area of the mind for equanimity and calm is offline. High levels of cortisol. Such high levels of anxiety that they start self-medicating and it becomes a downward cycle.

Veterans Mediating On Retreat

Research that was conducted in the San Diego VA Medical Center a few years ago showed that TM was, in many ways, better than anything that the VA is using right now to help veterans in reducing the symptoms of PTSD. We’re working on a new thing called “Healing the Healers,” which is bringing meditation to doctors and nurses on the front lines who are suffering from PTSD themselves.

Active Duty Military Meditating courtesy DLF

Amy: In recent years we saw so many doctors and nurses go through significant trauma, as though they were in a warlike environment with astronomical death tolls. The stories from family members who work in ERs in the New York/New Jersey Area are horrific.

Bob Roth: Totally. This whole field is called ‘Moral Injury’. That is – you’re a nurse. You have one ventilator and there are two people that are dying. And you have to decide. YOU have to decide, with the families behind the glass wall looking, who lives and who dies, who gets the ventilator and who doesn’t. That is horrible trauma. Our Heal the Healers  is the initiative in which we’re working with hospitals to serve all the healthcare workers on the front line.

Heal the Healers in hospitals courtesy DLF

What we want to do is take TM away from the “Oh that’s for celebrities, for rich people who can mess around.” This is a medical intervention that has to go to everybody. That’s what we’re working on – to have the research done that shows how effective it is so that the government and Medicare and insurance companies will reimburse it.

TM To The People

Amy: I heard you now have an office in DC to help with these kinds of initiatives?

Bob Roth: Yes, right near Capitol Hill. Before the lockdown happened, we were teaching a lot of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to meditate. So that they can help move these things … and not just TM. Other evidence-based integrative approaches to healthcare. It is clear medicine isn’t going to do it all – they’ve got to look outside the box. But it should be proven to work, not just new age mumbo jumbo. I know I shouldn’t say that with you in LA. [laughter].

Amy: [Laughs] Ha, I know, the epicenter of the new age. Now, what about the marginalized communities DLF has gone into? There can be a lot of trauma and scarcity in those environments to work through.

Bob Roth: They say that the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, from conception to the second birthday is the most impactful 1,000 days that person will ever have. So if they grew up with trauma, neglect – did you know that neglect is more traumatizing for an infant than physical abuse? You’re just left there. Alone. Neglect is more traumatizing. A lot of these youngsters have that kind of trauma from birth. In Washington DC, we’re in community centers. We’re teaching, for free, great-grandchildren all the way up to great-grandparents. So whole families are learning to meditate. Again, all religions, all backgrounds. It’s the tool of the times, we need it now more than ever.

Meditators at the David Lynch Foundation, Washington, DC

Amy: It’s said that if one person is healed that it heals seven generations back and seven generations forward.

Bob Roth: That’s true. American Indians say that and the Vedic literature also says that.

Amy: Sounds like you’re doing a lot of clearing there!

Bob Roth: It’s a wonderful thing on so many levels to do.

If You’re Going To Change The World, Start With Yourself

Amy: How did you come to TM? It seems to be a magic carpet for you.

Bob Roth: [laughs] It’s been!!!

I started as a college student. I was 18 years old. I had worked for Senator Bobby Kennedy in high school and I saw him speak in San Francisco at San Francisco Civic Auditorium on June 1st 1968 and I thought, “Oh we’re going to change the world!” It wasn’t that I was a Republican or a Democrat, it was just that we were 2,000 people and we were going to change the world. And, Amy, four days later he was killed. That had a huge impact on my life.

I vowed when I went to college that I would go to law school and become a United States Senator and change the world, like Bobby Kennedy was going to do. I thought the way to change the world was through legislation, through laws. It took me about one month in college in 1968 to realize that politics is important, but it’s not going to be my path to change the world.

Bob Roth early in his career on the Larry King Show courtesy DLF

Then I thought, “Well, my mom was a school teacher, so what if I write educational curricula? What if I give tools at a very early age, kindergarten, that they could use to help them navigate?” What I saw even then was going to be a stressful, traumatic world. I was going to school full-time, I was working full-time, there were riots in the streets because of the Vietnam War.

I’m a skeptical guy by nature, I’m stressed, I’m not sure what to do, I wasn’t a druggie. I had this one friend who I really trusted of all the people I knew, who was so normal and down to earth and smart and awake and funny and clear. And he was doing something called Transcendental Meditation and I didn’t know what it was. I decided to find out what it was. I said, “I don’t believe in any of this stuff.” And he held up a pen, and he dropped the pen in my hand and he said, “You don’t have to believe in gravity for the pen to fall.” You don’t have to believe in meditation.

So I learned it. From the first meditation it was so natural and profoundly relaxing. One of my first thoughts after I learned it was, “Oh. So this is the tool I’m going to teach those kids.” June 28, 1969. 50 years later I worked with David Lynch on the Foundation. We brought it to over a million kids and we want to bring it to 10 million kids in the next five years.

Amy: I think you’ll do it .

Bob Roth: Thank you. From your lips to God’s ears.

Everything Is As It Should Be

Amy: Something I ask everybody is, where do you think dharma meets free will? Like, you listening to your friend, and going to that first TM class.

Bob Roth: There’s a wonderful story that I’ll tell you, that relates to that then I’ll answer it. I was with Maharishi somewhere, a big conference. They had been talking about cause and effect. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. People were saying you can see some cause somewhere, whether it’s genetic or whatever.

A reporter asked him, “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” And Maharishi said, “Everything is as it should be.” Which seemed kind of harsh. The reporter then said, “Then why are you working so hard to change it?” And he said, “Because everything is as it should be.”

I think what you have is: we have our dharma, we have our path. Built into that path is the opportunity to change that path. The opportunity. You have that opportunity to make a choice. Now you might say that is also driven by dharma. That gets too complicated for me!

I am sort of a simple guy, I just want to make a better world. I meditate twice a day. It gives me the energy.

Bob Roth In His Element courtesy DLF

You know. It’s life. You can get knocked down a lot. You have to pick yourself up. In relationships. In jobs. You have to pick yourself back up.

Independent of that, I’m teaching TM, the meditation for me has helped me maintain my resilience. I have more energy now than I had when I was 25. I sleep better now, I feel healthier now than ever. I think it’s just we have free will. we can take care of ourselves, we don’t have to let our bodies just wear down like they inevitably could.

The World Is My Family

Amy: What are some of the other projects the David Lynch Foundation is working on right now, and how can we, the readers of LA Yoga Magazine help?

Bob Roth: There’s a beautiful ancient Vedic proverb that says “Vasudaiva Kutumbakam” which means “The world is my family.” That child that is suffering down the street, or Rwanda, or anywhere, is our child. We can’t. I could cry. We can’t ignore that child. Obviously, we have our own children and we have to feed them and take care of them, but that doesn’t release us from our commitment, our dharma, our responsibility, to do everything we can to make the whole world family. A rising tide needs to lift all boats.

DLF Quiet Time Around The World – Bali courtesy DLF

One thing that can be done through the David Lynch Foundation is help us bring the meditation to the people who need it, in some regards, the most, who are so vulnerable. That 10-year-old child living in the Bronx or – I just came back from Israel and then I was on the West Bank, and I was talking to little Muslim children and Palestinians, the fear that they have.

DLF Quiet Time Around The World – Uganda courtesy DLF

I think one thing is, educate yourself. Go to the David Lynch Foundation.org website. See if there’s something there that resonates with you. If you have the finances to be able to support us, 100% of it goes just to bring TM to the people who need it the most. You can learn to meditate yourself.

One time someone asked Maharishi, “What can a person do to create peace in the world?” He said, “Learn to meditate and become a light unto yourself.” We should all become a light unto ourselves.

Learn More About Bob Roth, the David Lynch Foundation and Transcendental Meditation

Purchase the new paperback version of Strength Into Stillness

Listen to “Stay Calm with Bob Roth”

Learn more about The David Lynch Foundation for Transcendental Meditation.

Watch a TM Intro Video By Bob Roth Here.

Follow Bob Roth on his social media channels, IG, FB, Twitter, LinkedIn.

Author’s Note; Thanks to DLF-LA Regional Director Lynn Kaplan, for her help with this article.

Amy V Dewhurst

To Check Out Amy’s Work Go To; Sense + Color, You Can Reach Her At IG:  Amy_V_Dewhurst  + AmyVDewhurst@SenseAndColor.co #PutYourGoodWhereItWillDoTheMost

www.senseandcolor.co

The post DLF’s Bob Roth: Become a Light Unto Yourself appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

What Exactly is Vitality? And How Can You Expand Your Vitality?

Are You Excited about building your vitality now?!

Try these 6 practical tools to expand vitality in your life:

1. Regular meditation.

2. Finding times for stillness.

3. Digesting your feelings.

4. Direct your will to your purpose.

5. Eat Sattvic foods to expand your vitality.

6. Preserve your energy by avoiding over-talking and emotional chaos.

In conclusion, think of your vitality as tending the fire inside.

Kimberly Snyder

Kimberly Snyder is a multi-time New York Times bestselling author, spiritual and meditation teacher, nutritionist and holistic wellness expert. She has authored 6 books, including Radical Beauty, which she co-authored with Deepak Chopra. Her highly anticipated 6th book, You Are More Than You Think You Are: Practical Enlightenment for Everyday Life, (Hay House) published on January 25th, 2022.

She is also the founder of Solluna®, a holistic lifestyle brand, Practical Enlightenment Meditation,™ Solluna Circle and the host of her top-rated Feel Good Podcast.  She has worked with dozens of top celebrities to feel their best, including Drew Barrymore, Reese Witherspoon and Channing Tatum, and has been featured by numerous national media outlets, including Good Morning America, The Today Show, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Kimberly resides in Los Angeles and Hawaii with her husband and her sons.

Kimberly Snyder Author Photo by Kevin Estrada

www.mysolluna.com

The post How to Expand Your Vitality: 6 Essential Tools appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

It’s not lost on any of us that the years of the pandemic have given us all a figurative kick in the introspective pants. We have all been forced to find new ways to center, to ground, to de-stress, to reset, to practice mindfulness, and to find the “happy” in life again amidst all the unknown swirling around us each day.

After all, in the big scheme of things this moment in history is but a chapter in the larger novel of our lives. Let’s lean into finding what works for us where mindfulness is concerned. It is the time for us to find ways to embrace what is right here, right now in front of us with zero judgment. This is what mindfulness offers. Finding the sweet sauce in the spaces between each breath without critiquing what we experience.

Below I will share six of my favorite mindfulness practices that can take place anytime/anywhere. (Of course breathwork and meditation are at the top of the list!)

Navigating Life Amidst the Amygdala Hijack

First, it’s important to understand the way some of us navigate life, although usually by no fault of our own, is by allowing life events to do what’s called an “amygdala hijack” a phrase coined by psychologist Daniel Goleman.

During this brain hijack,  the amygdala is overactive and we respond reactively rather than from a place of center and calm. It is the amygdala’s job to detect danger, but often it thinks something is dangerous that’s not a threat at all. People who suffer from PTSD or trauma deal with this most often as their sole way of dealing with danger. This is also known as a flight, fight, or freeze response. Unfortunately, this reaction can lead to many health issues and a constant state of high alert.

Learning mindfulness as a way to elevate all areas of life is important.

This is especially important for those who struggle with trauma and PTSD.

The following offers a deeper definition of mindfulness and how this practice can be a game-changer. In my humble opinion, mindfulness should be in everyone’s self-care/wellness tool belt.

Mindfulness is the art of living and being in the present moment.

Mindfulness is also the art of living with complete awareness both mentally and physically while allowing all the emotions, sensations, and thoughts to exist without judgment of self or others. In short, witnessing our thoughts and feelings with objectivity.

The biggest lesson mindfulness teaches is how to truly “just be” without any criticism in any direction (especially self-criticism).

Mindfulness originated with Buddhist and Hindu teachings. In Buddhism, the journey toward enlightenment includes the concept of “sati.” Sati encompasses attention, awareness, and being present. These are the first steps toward enlightenment.

From this term (sati), the word “mindfulness” was born.

Mindfulness practice offers many benefits and is often referred to as a “superpower.”

These are some of the main benefits of practicing mindfulness.

• Reduces anxiety and stress. (Even just one session of mindfulness meditation can greatly reduce anxiety.)
• Upgrades your brain through the rewiring that takes place during consistent mindfulness practices.
• Increases brain functionality, improved immune function, and lower blood pressure and heart rate.
• Improves mental functions by increasing awareness.
• More clarity, focus, calm, and greater feelings of connection.
• Reduces feelings of depression, self-criticism, and increases resilience to difficulties.

This is just the short list of the benefits. The actual entire list is quite long! Ok, now let’s dive into how we can cultivate an at-home or on-the-go mindfulness practice that is guaranteed to introduce you to a whole new YOU.

6 Ways To Practice Mindfulness NOW

1. Pay attention to the way you respond or engage with the world around you throughout the day.

Rather than instantly reacting to a situation, someone else’s energy or the content you consume from a place of emotion, instead, with each encounter you have – remember to take a deep breath, lean into the present moment (stay out of the past or present) drop reactivity and feel and breathe for at least 10 seconds. Allow yourself to respond or react only when you feel a true connection to your center.

2. Engage in a sport or activity that involves mental focus as well as movement.

Ideas for these kinds of activities include: rock climbing, yoga, trail running, martial arts, painting, dance styles like hip hop, tango, salsa, jazz, etc. These sorts of activities demand mindfulness due to the precision and technicality of the activity along with the mind/body connection that is required to master the activity or sport.

3. Create a daily mindful breathing practice that consists of breath awareness exercises.

The goal of this type of breathwork is to get present with the inflow and outflow of the breath by noticing the length of each breath, the sensations of the breath, and all the nuances that take place with each wave of the breath cycle.

4. Practice moving meditations.

Moving meditations are a different style than traditional seated meditation and is done by simply becoming aware of your breath, your surroundings, your senses, and each movement as you engage in any regular activity throughout the day.

5. 5 minute Trail of Gratitude practice.

This is one of my favorites and is part of my daily wellness routine. You can do this seated or lying down – this is how I end each breathwork class I teach and it’s a beautiful way to combine gratitude and visualization (another powerful mindfulness technique)

How to practice Trail of Gratitude:

• Picture yourself in your favorite place in nature, and see yourself standing there .your bare feet firmly rooted on the ground beneath you.
• In front of you is a trail and it’s clear you are meant to walk down it.
• As you stand there, begin to see all of the people in your life that have touched you, changed your life for the better, and/or deeply impacted you. Visualize all the people you are grateful for. See them one by one appearing on this trail of gratitude.
• Walk up to them, look deep into their eyes and say “Thank you, I’m grateful for you.” Give them a big hug for touching your life.
• Continue doing this for 5 minutes or more and see how many people you can call onto this trail of gratitude.
• This practice brings tears every time.

6. Practice Mindfulness in the Shower.

This one is more of just a great wellness and mindful way to start the day. Another of my favorite wellness and mindfulness practices involves combining some of the above (breathwork and visualizations) in the shower.  Add some self-massage for relaxation and stress relief, and affirmations (aka rapfirmations).

How to Practice Stress Relief in the Shower

• Start with some deep mindful breathing.
• Take a breath in through the nose and out through the mouth, making an audible sigh on the exhale.
• Do several cycles of these “deep sigh breaths.” Letting the sighs be freeing, relaxing, and soothing.
• Then do a body scan which is simply starting at your feet and working your way to the top of your head by checking in with each area of your body for any discomfort, stress, tightness, or stuck energy along the way.
• As you move up the body, breathe into each new area. See where you might need to add some self-massage along with the warm water from the shower targeting that area.
• Take a few minutes to massage that area until relief is found and the body scan is complete.
• As a final component to this morning mindfulness and wellness routine, end with 3-5 minutes of affirmations.
• I’ve found that singing or “rapping” them has created more of a connection to my affirmation practice over the last few years. Seriously, give it a try, you’ll see what I mean.

Implement 6 Easy Ways to Practice Mindfulness Now

Start with these 6 ways to create more mindfulness throughout each day. Watch as your connection and interaction with yourself and the world around you begins to transform.

Remember, you are always just one breath away from “happy and healthy”!

Rebecca Kordecki

Rebecca Kordecki is the owner of The Breath Zone and the creator of Booty Slide.  She has enjoyed a very successful 26-year career as a highly sought after celebrity trainer and wellness expert.

Over the past 5 years Rebecca has added Breathwork to her list of expertise after training with Dan Brule and David Elliot.

Rebecca is beyond passionate about teaching people to use breath + movement to get out of their heads and into their hearts and be the boss of their happy and healthy one breath at a time.

She’s been featured on The Today Show, EXTRA, Daily Candy and in Vogue Magazine, Men’s Health and many others.

You can follow Rebecca on Instagram @rebeccakordecki or visit her website www.thebreath.zone to find classes and dates for her upcoming breathwork teacher training.

www.thebreath.zone

The post 6 Ways to Practice Mindfulness Now appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Why Learn the Easiest Meditation Techniques with Lorin Roche and Camille Maurine

You have heard that meditation is good for you. You may have heard that meditation is helpful for reducing anxiety, dealing with stress, enhancing deep recovery, improving sleep, and any number of other benefits. On this journey, you may have been or you might feel challenged by finding the meditation techniques that work authentically for you and your personality. There are so many styles, lineages, and approaches to this practice. The truth is that different practices and techniques work for different people.

How do you find the technique that works for you?

How do you fall in love with meditation?

In this conversation, I’d like to introduce you to modern-day meditation teacher and trainer of teachers Lorin Roche, PhD and his wife and teaching partner, Camille Maurine.

Lorin Roche has spent his life meditating as well as teaching people to meditate, and teaching people how to teach others to meditate. Lorin earned his doctorate from the University of California, Irvine in the 1960s. In his research, one of the things he studied was the language meditators use to describe their experiences. This allowed him to help people customize a way in to their experience and to finding meditation practices that are instinctive and enjoyable for them. The combination of this work of deep listening and of combining technique with observation gives him a unique perspective that comes through in his work with groups and individuals. This, along with his lifelong immersion in the subtleties of language and technique of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra (an ancient text describing 112 meditation techniques), makes him one of the most accessible and ground-breaking teachers of our time

Camille Maurine brings a uniquely feminine and embodied approach to meditation practice and teaching. She is a dancer, an artist, a poet, a performer, a person whose skills in facilitation draw people out of themselves and into community as well as into the bliss of their own experiences. Meditation is not just in our head. A successful meditation practice is done with our entire bodies. We embody meditation and Camille guides this. Camille is also the coauthor (with Lorin Roche) of Meditation Secrets for Women and Meditation 24/7, Camille’s work with the Radiance Sutras, with the teaching of meditation, opens a portal to practice that allows meditation techniques to be effortless and accessible.

Together they teach the Radiance Sutras Meditation Teacher Training.

Even if you have never before thought about taking a meditation teacher training, and have zero interest in teaching anyone else how to meditate, now may be the time to make this commitment to yourself to your personal growth, to your practice, and to your own inner peace.

Guiding People through the Language of Meditation

There are many times when I was profoundly struck by Lorin’s mastery of the language of meditation. One example took place nearly 10 years ago. We were in a small Santa Monica yoga studio on a Monday evening. The class was a drop-in meditation techniques for beginners. Lorin began by leading the group through a practice exploring instinctive meditation. Then Lorin deftly guided each individual through a process during which he asked them to talk about how they meditated, the words they used to describe their inner experience, the thoughtfulness of their flow state. He reflected words and phrases back to them, and even mirrored their body language as they reflected. Through this process, he provided ways for people to find their instinctive meditation practices. He showed people how to meditate in ways that are authentic and accessible.

Observing this and being part of this experience has changed the way that I think about meditation. It has changed the way I meditate. Practicing with Lorin has helped me understand exactly what meditation does, the rhythm and flow of meditation practice on the deepest most cellular level. And how meditation is an essential practice for recovery at all levels and layers of a person’s being.

The Radiance Sutras and the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra

The Vijnana Bhairva Tantra is a yogic text, written in Sanskrit, from the 7th or 8th Century. It is framed as an epic conversation between Bhairavi and Bhairava, deities exploring the nature of meditation, the benefits of meditation, and how to meditate. This text allows for the understanding that there are many forms of meditation. It also describes how different types of meditation work for different people. Over decades, Lorin Roche and Camille Maurine have explored the language and feeling of these verses describing meditation. Their work is found in The Radiance Sutras, a the modern take on the ancient text of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra for the world we live in today.

The word “Bhav” in Sanskrit refers to the feeling state, a mood, or an expression of something. In this work, Lorin and Camille truly capture the “bhav” of playful and instinctive meditation for the modern meditator. If you want to understand the benefits of meditation in a way that actually allows you to practice, it is helpful to feel the joy and the playfulness of meditation.

The Radiance Sutras and Meditation

Poetry is one of the portals through which we can understand our experience of meditation. Over the years, I have seen the artistic creativity that Lorin and Camille bring to their interpretations of the Radiance Sutras. They have practiced this ecstatic form of spoken word poetry set to music accompanied by dance and movement with group participation at yoga studios, at retreat centers, in meditation teacher trainings, in yoga teacher trainings, at Esalen, at Kripalu, at Bhakti Fest, and in a number of other locations around the world.

The Radiance Sutra Jam Sessions is the ecstatic practice of meditation in action. Over and over again, I have seen these jam sessions introduce people to the joyful practice of meditation.

I remember one of the first times when I experienced this. A packed room. Musicians at the front of the space riffing on ecstasy. People taking turns standing up and choosing a stanza describing meditation. Spoken word repetition of evocative language that makes meditation real. Accessible. Fun. People lit up laughing and dancing. We often take meditation so seriously. Through the Radiance Sutras, meditation is joyful. Their way into the human psyche and the soul through this work is truly inspired.

Transformation takes place when you practice. Meditation made easy and fun makes practice possible.

I have also seen the implementation of the Radiance Sutras over time and the power of this text, this set of teachings, and how Lorin has used the modern language of poetry to talk about meditation. Through the Radiance Sutras, adapt this work in ways that are truly transformative and in ways that allow people to access this work who may not have related to it previously.

The Music of The Radiance Sutras

“Elixir: Songs of the Radiance Sutras an album that blends 10 songs into a mix of melodies that will inspire ecstatic dance, sensual expression, and meditative movements. It is a collaboration between Dave Stringer, Donna De Lory, Joni Allen, and Lorin Roche. Elixir provides music and vibration to complement meditation techniques.

This meditation teacher training program may be for you.

• If you are looking for an approach to teaching meditation that offers a number of meditation techniques.
• You are looking for ways to find your authentic and instinctive meditation practice.
• You want to learn more about the benefits of meditation.
• You have been frustrated by other meditation courses.
• You have been challenged by finding out how you want to meditate.

There are many meditation classes, and even a growing number of meditation teacher training programs offered around the world. There is an art to teaching meditation.

Teachers Speak about the Radiance Sutras Meditation Teacher Training

Over the years in Los Angeles, and around the world, Lorin and Camille have collaborated with some of the most noteworthy teachers practicing today. In teacher trainings, at retreat centers, in studios, and on stages, leaders in the field speak about this intuitive approach to meditation with reverence.

Dr Eden Goldman on Studying Meditation with Dr Lorin Roche

Terra Gold: On Studying with Lorin Roche

For over a decade at Loyola Marymount University, I brought Lorin Roche in to guide foundational level yoga teachers and yoga therapists skills for practicing and teaching meditation. It seemed to me that the best way to help practitioners understand the value of meditation, was to help them unlearn whatever they thought meditation was.

Every year, Lorin would come in and remind the students that if they had learned a style of meditation that had given them the impression they couldn’t do it, or if they felt inadequate at it, then it wasn’t the right style for them…and it may have even been detrimental for them.

I watched hundreds of students melt what was for some of them, years of shame and grief over feeling inept as meditators.

With each person in the room, Lorin artfully guided personalized meditative experiences that were so natural people didn’t even realize they had gone into meditation until they came out and felt the profound effects of where they had been. The experiences were poetic, profound. Each year the students’ feedback was filled with people being uplifted by the experiences. Students were feeling more present, awake in their senses, embodied and vibrantly alive.

Most of all, students left empowered and trusting their own unique ways into mediation.

Beyond those events, I also shared experiences of learning from Lorin directly in his workshops at Esalen Institute, in his teacher training course for meditation teachers, and most favorite of all, over tea on his couch with him and his wife Camille, and sharing walks together.

I’ve found that many of the metaphors Lorin uses for describing qualities of meditative states, stay with me, largely because they are such natural sensorial expressions, are practical, and they are truly experiential.

He’s a master of honoring the mundane as the sacred…recognizing a flower, a melody, a texture or color of fabric, a word, a fond memory and how each one can invoke full samadhi (awakening moment, to moment, to moment) NOW.

Lorin Roche is a pioneer in the field of meditation, but most precious of all is how he consistently reminds me that growing as an elder can be elegant, wild, unique to each’s own, and he reminds me that each and every moment of life is so worth experiencing FULLY.

–Terra Gold, author, yoga therapist, east/west medicine practitioner, mother

Become a Certified Meditation Teacher

What You Learn in the Meditation Teacher Training

This perspective on meditation teacher training is accessible for everyone. You will explore your own unique approach to meditation.

During the course of this experiential training you will develop a successful meditation practice FOR YOU.

• Practice meditation techniques that are effortless.
• Learn how to teach meditation to a variety of people and in many situations.
• Understand more of the scientific research around meditation.
• Speak the language of meditation.
• Discover the easiest meditation techniques that anyone can practice.
• Explain meditation and how to meditate to your family and friends.
• Practice meditation as a form of stress reduction.
• Experience how meditation enhances peak performance.

Explore an intuitive approach to meditation through the Radiance Sutras Meditation Teacher Training.

It has been an honor and privilege to study and practice with Lorin and Camille over the years. They add so much to the community through their unique and accessible approaches to meditation practice. Now is the time to transform your meditation practice by working with Lorin and Camille. Don’t miss this opportunity to study in the Radiance Sutras Meditation Teacher Training.

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

www.blissnetwork.com

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“Words saturated with sincerity, conviction, faith, and intuition are like highly explosive vibration bombs, which, when set off, shatter the rocks of difficulties and create the change desired.”— Paramahansa Yogananda

The Power of Your Words

Understanding that we are all powerful creators is one of the fundamental principles of Yogananda’s teachings. The True Self is always creating. And one of the easiest and most effective ways of directing this energy is through the power of the words you use.

With a world population nearing 8 billion people, words are more copious today than they ever have been. Millions of conversations are happening right now, everywhere around the globe. There are more books, magazines, and movies being produced than ever before. And the internet? Well, there may well be an infinite number of words—good and bad—being used there that contribute exponentially to a never-ending cycle. And unfortunately, with all of this chatter that goes on minute by minute and day by day, it is impossible to comprehend all the words flying at us. It then devolves into a lot of noise and starts to feel like the blah blah blah sounds of listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher.

The phrase talk is cheap is one all of us have heard at one time or another. While it usually means, “I won’t believe what you’re saying until you give me proof,” it also suggests that words have lost their value in many ways. We speak idly, we fill empty spaces with words, we go off into unfocused conversations and just chat away without really thinking too much about what we are saying.

Yet words have awesome, creative power, especially when used consciously and directed toward a goal. “I love you,” “We will succeed,” “Never give up”: these words contain strength and beauty that inspire us and help us grow. And yet, like any creative power, words are a double-edged sword—they can build up or tear down. Most of us unknowingly take this for granted, otherwise why would we so casually declare, “I’m such a loser,” “I’m so gross and fat,” “There are no good men/women left for me,” or “This is all such a nightmare, and it’s never going to work out.” Words help to create your day-to-day reality. I’ve never met a successful person who repeatedly denigrates herself. In fact, when you use negative self-talk, you are sowing the seeds of turmoil and hardship. Bottom line: you speak into existence the words that you think and say.

Word Myths

The idea of affirmations has been floating around in self-help circles for over a hundred years. And unfortunately, they have gotten a bad rap because of the ineffectual way they are often used—casual and not fully directed. If you just sit around and say things like “I’m rich!” with no feeling or focused intention, then affirmations are a waste of time. In the end, you’re just lying to yourself. No one around you believes it, certainly not you, and most importantly, your lukewarm attempt at expanding your life fizzles and goes cold.

Most of us haven’t been taught how to really perform affirmations to their fullest, most powerful form. So, when they fail, we cast away affirmations like old socks that don’t really fit us, and in the process unknowingly cast away a potentially incredibly effective technique that you can use to manifest what you want.

The Power of Properly Practiced Affirmations

Yogananda had a lot to say about the power of doing affirmations properly. He teaches, “That is why all affirmations of the conscious mind should be impressive enough to permeate the subconsciousness, which in turn automatically influences the conscious mind. . . . Still stronger affirmations reach not only the subconscious but also the superconscious mind—the magic storehouse of miraculous powers.”

So properly doing affirmations doesn’t mean you just rattle off a bunch of phrases. Nor does it mean negating the power of your words by saying, “I am healthy and fit” while thinking, “Yeah, right. This doesn’t work. I’m actually the epitome of being out of shape.” When you combine words with a committed intention and powerful emotion, you unite that energy with each word you are saying.

The truth of this is wonderfully exemplified by my friend Dan Buettner, National Geographic Fellow and founder of the Blue Zones, which is an organization that teaches communities how to emulate the five regions in the world where people live much longer than usual. I asked him if he uses affirmations in his conquests, and he recounted:

In a moment of rapture, or perhaps too much tequila, I declared to a few friends that I was going to bike across Africa—an affirmation of sorts. I started researching the trip: crossing the Sahara, traveling parallel to the equator through the Congo, then to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti, and down to Cape Town. And I got very excited. I told more and more people about it and got them excited. Pretty soon, I got three team-mates excited—and 15 sponsors. Finally, we were dipping our rear wheels in the sea north of Tunisia to begin the trip.

But the story doesn’t end here. Two thousand one hundred miles into the Sahara, the road ended, and we faced raw, open desert. The easy thing would have been to retreat. Instead, we pushed on. In the Congo, we found almost no food. We contracted malaria, dysentery, intestinal worms, and giardiasis. We were emaciated, filthy, and defeated. What kept us going? That same declaration that got me started. But now, it had taken on a different type of power. I had made promises to sponsors who counted on us and friends who believed in us.

What had started as an affirmation had now transformed into a resolve not to let people down. And you know what? It pushed us through. On June 10, 1993, after 12,220 miles, we rolled into Cape Town, South Africa, and set the Guinness World Record for cycling Africa. The lesson: Beware of what you declare during a time of rapture.

Bottom line: affirmation plus willpower leads to transformation.

So don’t just recite your affirmations; really live them.

Yogananda was a pioneer in the science of affirmation and began teaching the technique long before it became a modern-day practice. Here is some guidance he gives: “Choose your affirmation and repeat all of it, first loudly, then softly and more slowly, until your voice becomes a whisper. Then gradually affirm it mentally only, without moving the tongue or the lips, until you feel that you have attained deep, unbroken concentration—not unconscious-ness, but a profound continuity of uninterrupted thought. If you continue with your mental affirmation, and go still deeper, you will feel a sense of increasing joy and peace. During the state of deep concentration, your affirmation will merge with the subconscious stream, to come back later reinforced with power to influence your conscious mind through the law of habit.”

This is what happened to my friend Dan. He had embedded his affirmation so deeply inside himself that it began to manifest and influence the decisions he made. Coupled with his will to not renege on his affirmation, he attained his dream. And you can do the same.

Here’s a simple way to get started:

1. First of all, create a clear affirmation.

It can be one or a few sentences, but you should be able to repeat it from memory. Align with your deepest desire that you find to be fully worthy and aligned with your time and attention. I recommend starting with “I am” to tie in the quality of beingness. Say it in the present tense, to enforce that it’s here now, or in the process of coming in. Here are some examples:

• I am passionate about my job, which is fulfilling and meaningful to me.
• I am love, and I find the matching love of my life.
• I am peaceful.
• I am the regional manager.
• I have a wonderful team to manage.
• I am the owner of my own fashion brand.

2. Second, repeat the affirmation out loud, then softer and softer, then to a whisper, and finally silently.

This means you are ideally going to be saying your affirmation 8–10 times in a session. Keep repeating it within yourself, until you feel that you have attained a deep state of concentration with the words you are saying. As Yogananda says, it should feel like a “profound continuity of uninterrupted thought.”

You need to keep merging with the words you are saying by accepting them as truth. It is important to turn off the tendency to rattle off the words mindlessly, or as Yogananda says, as “blind repetition of demands.” This technique requires intense concentration and focus, so it is important to keep your mind on your intention and not on something else, like what you are going to cook for dinner later or a deadline you have to meet.

3. Remember that this is a practice.

While seemingly simple, truly merging with your affirmation takes practice.

As I’ve already mentioned, it’s impossible to practice this technique properly if your mind is racing, if you are right in the middle of screaming toddlers, or if you’re answering a bunch of texts or playing the news in the background. Instead, it’s better to do your affirmations after you meditate, or at least after you put your phone in airplane mode. Once you do, take some deep breaths, and go into a quiet space. Otherwise, just wait for the right opportunity, because if you do it without the concentration required, you are just wasting your time.

4. Look for peace as a marker for effectiveness.

Yogananda teaches that if we find ourselves going into deeper and deeper states, we are indeed allowing the affirmation to go deeper and deeper into our “superconscious realm, to return later laden with unlimited power to influence your conscious mind and also to fulfill your desires.” Feelings of increasing peace are a definite marker that you are going deeper into the affirmation and uniting with it, so that it will manifest as your reality in your life. Feel that the affirmation is becoming part of you, actually merging into your heart and then through every cell and part of you.

5. Move on and believe.

Once you complete the practice, which can take anywhere from, say, three minutes or so to as much time as you want to stay in that state, be convinced that your affirmation has been heard and that what is Spirit’s is also yours. Then move on with your day with that confidence and knowing.

You can make affirmations part of your daily life and daily practice. Or you can weave them in and out as you feel connected to using them. There isn’t a “right” timing and frequency. If you are really focused on a goal, though, I suggest you practice them daily. Try them, wield your own power, and create away!

Note: if you are looking for affirmation inspiration, Paramahansa Yogananda offers hundreds of affirmations for healing, self-improvement, and deepening your unity with the True Self in the Self-Realization Fellowship Lessons and the books Scientific Healing Affirmations and Metaphysical Meditations.

You Are More Than You Think You Are

Reprinted with permission from You Are More Than You Think You Are: Practical Enlightenment for Everyday Life by Kimberly Snyder,

Kimberly Snyder

Kimberly Snyder is a multi-time New York Times bestselling author, spiritual and meditation teacher, nutritionist and holistic wellness expert. She has authored 6 books, including Radical Beauty, which she co-authored with Deepak Chopra. Her highly anticipated 6th book, You Are More Than You Think You Are: Practical Enlightenment for Everyday Life, (Hay House) published on January 25th, 2022.

She is also the founder of Solluna®, a holistic lifestyle brand, Practical Enlightenment Meditation,™ Solluna Circle and the host of her top-rated Feel Good Podcast.  She has worked with dozens of top celebrities to feel their best, including Drew Barrymore, Reese Witherspoon and Channing Tatum, and has been featured by numerous national media outlets, including Good Morning America, The Today Show, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Kimberly resides in Los Angeles and Hawaii with her husband and her sons.

Kimberly Snyder Author Photo by Kevin Estrada

www.mysolluna.com

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Kimberly Revereza

Choosing Teacher Training

Choosing the right teacher training for you can be challenging. You might feel overwhelmed sifting through reviews.

While you’re considering teacher training, ask yourself some of the following questions.

“What type of practice resonates with me?”

“Is this what I’d like to strengthen and share with future students?”

Knowing Yourself: Sharing Meditation

Meditation. This is something I know I’d like to strengthen and share with others. It’s tough to train your mind to sit still. I know I’ve always looked up to those who seem to have perfected the art of the craft.

If you’ve ever felt the same way, please continue reading!

Flourish Meditation Teacher Training

I came in contact with Flourish Meditation just a few short months ago while researching their brand and events. They offer a 200-hour Meditation Teacher Training. Spanning over the course of three months, the Flourish Meditation Teacher Training includes foundational knowledge about meditation as well as self-development, creative writing, speaking and storytelling, and business and marketing.

Kimberly Revereza and Sarah Hyde

Owner and founder, Kimberly Revereza, states: “We included elements in the Flourish Meditation Teacher Training that make this course informative and even transformational for our students. We invite special guests to offer things like sound baths, mindful eating experiences, and even storytelling lessons from an actor.”

Kimberly Revereza and her Journey

Kimberly has worked in development in different forms for two decades. She started in the entertainment industry before creating a self-development workshop program, and then became a meditation teacher/studio owner. “Our teacher training program is really a combination of the best of what I have to offer from all of my experiences,” states Kimberly.

About the Flourish Meditation Teacher Training

The training program also includes a discussion on honor and appropriation during which students learn together how to become better ambassadors of the practice. This course is for people who are interested in teaching meditation, for yoga teachers who are wanting to add this specialty to their offerings, and for students of meditation who want a deeper connection to their practice and to themselves.

Flourish’s next session kicks off in the Fall of 2022. The community will be studying together on Zoom and students who are unable attend all the sessions live will have access to the playbacks. Flourish offers two partial scholarships for BIPOC students. Learn more at Flourish Meditation.

Kimmy Saracino

Kimmy is an integrative health coach, actress, voice over artist, and world traveling yoga instructor. Her various interests have led her to many opportunities in connecting with clients all over the country. She specializes in mind-body wellness for even the busiest of travelers. Based in Portland, Oregon, Kimmy continues to teach both online and in the studio with “Yoga On Yamhill.”  For more information, or to work directly with Kimmy, please visit her online:

kimmysaracino.com

yogaonyamhill.com/kimmy-saracino

IG: @kimmy.saracino

www.kimmysaracino.com

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What to Know about Stress to Get Rid of Anxiety

There are two kinds of stress: eustress and distress. Eustress is the “good” stress. Someone may experience this when they are about to get married, before going on stage to perform or riding a roller coaster.

Some of you may even feel eustress from watching a horror film! That’s not me. Watching such films actually cause me distress, the “bad” stress. Examples of this include: going through a divorce, experiencing the loss of a loved one, being late for an important meeting and dare I say, living through a pandemic. Prolonged moments of distress and heightened moments of distress cause anxiety.

Once distress causes anxiety, it prevents one from moving through the world and executing important life related tasks. With data stating that 60-80% of doctor office visits are related to distress, it is important that we decrease our distress before it turns into anxiety. But you may be saying, “Well Kadeem I am anxious now! What can I do?” Don’t worry boo. I got you! I am about to list the four ways you can get rid of anxiety and take healing in your own hands. Here we go!

1. Breathing to Get Rid of Anxiety

If you have breath, you have life. However, most of us don’t breathe efficiently on a day to day basis to enhance our life. We just take it for granted as it is something that happens automatically. However, if you know how to manipulate the breath correctly, it has an abundance of healing powers. It can even help to get rid of pain! But for the purposes of this article, let’s focus on anxiety.

There are two main breathing techniques I teach my clients for anxiety. One is called square breathing or box breathing. It requires you to inhale for 4 counts, pause for four counts, exhale for four counts, then pause for four counts. You repeat this process over again, for at least seven times. This helps to calm the mind and emotions. It is also useful for insomnia.

The second technique I teach is based on the principles of pranayama. I call it the rapid, deep clearing breath. It includes breathing in through your nose quickly while putting your head back, then breathing out through your mouth forcefully and putting your head down towards your chest. This is repeated in succession ten times in a row. Then you pause for about 30 seconds, and do the deep breathing exercise once again. You would repeat this process three times in one sitting. As a meditation teacher on the app Insight Timer, I have a guided version of this you can follow. Feel free to check it out.

2. The Relationship between the Environment and Anxiety

Have you ever experienced a moment when you walk into a room and the tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife? You know what that means? Tension, stress and anxiety is not only held in the body, but it can also be held within a space. So if you are feeling stress or anxiety, another easy way to release it is by changing your environment. This can be a radical physical change such as going from your home to a nice tropical place on vacation or a less radical one as in going from your workplace to just stepping outside for some fresh air…or even less radical as moving from one room in your house to another.

There are many ways to change your environment. I have even had clients mention they found creative ways to change their environment by literally moving the furniture around in their room from one location to another. This is a perfect way to change your environment if you are unable to leave your situation as it helps to move around any stale energy and infuse it with fresh energy.

3. Improving Posture to Get Rid of Anxiety

When you see the body posture of someone who is depressed and sad, how do they look? Usually with their head down with their upper body hunched over, correct? And if you look at the body posture of someone who is happy, confident and successful, their chest is up, smiling and maybe even their arms are up high in the air or on their hips. No matter where you go in the world, this is the universal language for showing these two very different emotional states. What does this tell us? Yes, although your emotions can affect your physical stance and posture, your posture can also affect your emotions.

So if you are feeling anxious, just switch your body posture to that of someone who is happy. My suggestion is to roll your shoulders back, stick out your chest, put your hands above your head or on your hips and smile. Hold this pose for a minimum of sixty seconds — three minutes would be optimal.

4. Change Your State

Now I don’t mean you literally change your state from let’s say Cali to New York (like I did in December, 2020!). This change of state is more about changing your emotional state. When you are anxious, you need to do something, be a part of something or watch something that creates the opposite emotional state within you.

Do cat videos make you smile? Does gardening make you relaxed? Does dancing make you feel alive? Great, then do them all! The key here is to do something that interrupts or breaks the anxious state.

Think about it for a moment — how many times have you had a moment in which you may have been talking about a particular topic with someone, someone changes the subject and when you try to go back to the topic you were talking about before, you forgot what the topic was. You know why that happens? That is called a pattern interrupt.

However, this interrupt was a mental pattern interrupt. This same phenomenon exists for emotions too. So watch those cat videos to your heart’s content!

Now I know I said I had four steps, but I have a bonus one for you! This last step I am calling: Skill

Find Someone With Skills

None of us can go through life on our own. We can always use some sort of help in something. So if you are struggling with chronic anxiety, then it may be time to see someone with skill in this area. This can be a therapist, doctor and/or seeing a holistic wellness practitioner to help you. (Here comes my shameless plug!) As someone who is a wellness practitioner with training and certifications in aromatherapy, energy healing, meditation, sound therapy and hypnotherapy, I can offer deep, personalized sessions that are suited specifically to your case. So feel free to reach out to me to see how I may be able to help and be of assistance to you. Until then, use the tools listed in this article. I have seen these work wonders for people, especially if they layer on the techniques, as opposed to using them individually.

Kadeem

kadeemone.com

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You Know You Want to Meditate…..Now You Want to Know How to Meditate

One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is to learn HOW to meditate and to do it every day. You’ve heard it’s good for you and you want to feel more calm, connected, and balanced.

Why Meditate?

The common reasons I’ve personally heard for this resolution including the following.

• Meditation has been recommended by your doctor.
• You’ve been told to meditate to reduce your stress from work or family.
• You haven’t been able to meditate so it’s now a goal.
• Other people who meditate swear by how helpful it is.
• You want to slow down and you’ve heard meditating will help you do that.

I spent years working at five star spas leading meditation classes (some immediately coming after a meditation retreat). These classes were always the most full throughout the month of January. Every single person struggled meditating on their own. They all had apps they listened to but even those weren’t helpful every day.

But they did find the meditation I’m going to share with you here to be very powerful.

There are billions of meditations out there. What I have found to be the most helpful and easy to do is what I call a Guided, Energy Healing Meditation. Why is this so helpful? It addresses the two areas everyone struggles with: the body relaxing and the mind wanting to think and not be quiet during your meditation. This meditation also is customized to you in that moment, so it’ll also be exactly what you need.

You know meditation is good for you. But why is it so hard for you to meditate?

This is a really important question to ask yourself. The follow up question is: Do you have a hard time relaxing? If you do, this is where you want to focus. There is no way you’ll be able to sit down and meditate for two minutes if you already struggle with relaxing.

How to Meditate

Step one in how to meditate is  being comfortable sitting down and relaxing. You may have to let go of any resistance you have in giving yourself permission to sit down and take care of you. You don’t have to always be busy, hustling, going from one thing to the next. This mentality actually hurts you when you do sit down to meditate because your thoughts are, “I need to do ____.” Or, “I can’t sit here in the middle of the day and do nothing.”

Release whatever thoughts you have about sitting, relaxing and taking care of you that keep you from being in the moment without action. Decondition what you were taught as a child. Your body needs you to relax. It isn’t a machine, stop treating it like one.

Meditation is your body’s daily tune up.

1. You have to acknowledge your body’s messages in meditation.

You are busy and on the go. This means your body is used to doing something. The moment you sit down at the end of the day to watch TV or read a book, you may notice a pain, a cramp, or tension in your body. You didn’t notice it when you were busy, honestly you were ignoring it. But the moment you sit down to relax, you’re feeling it. You will also experience this when you go to meditate.

It’s hard to go within and focus when you feel a physical ailment. This doesn’t mean you can’t meditate because you’re focused on this message from your body. It does mean you have to recognize it otherwise it becomes a distraction when you do try to meditate. Or more accurately, you’ll spend the whole time focusing on a part of your body that is bothering you, which isn’t meditating. I like to address your body first when you start your meditation.

Try this technique to acknowledge your body in meditation.

• Sit somewhere that is COMFORTABLE for you.
• Choose a place where you don’t have any distractions.
• Set your timer for five minutes. (You’re going to start out slow and add time slowly, that way you’ll stick with this practice.)
• Do not cross your legs or arms so you don’t feel any cramps, another common distraction.
• Sit relaxed and comfortable for you! You may event want to have your feet touch the floor.
• Begin your meditation by bringing a soft, White Light in. (Just like you see when the light breaks through the clouds on a cloudy day or when you see a beam of light coming through the trees).
• Imagine this White Light coming in from the top of your head, and let it gently and easily go through your whole body, down to your feet and into the Earth.
• Say, “I am peace. I am calm. I am free.”
• Notice where you feel tension in your body or any pain. You are going to start here.
• Your body will not relax in meditation until you clear this stress, tension or negative energy out.
• Let go of the stress or tension. Let go of any negativity that you stored in your body to deal with later.
• Imagine pulling it out of your body like smoke, leaves or wind and let it disappear into the sky.
• Let it go until it feels lighter or gone.
• Then imagine a soft, pastel color like pink, blue, green or orange.
• It’s going to come from behind that space and fill every cell in your body with a positive feeling all the way to the front and out of your body.
• Then say, “I am free. I am supported.”

Continue this until you feel no tension or stress in your body anywhere. If you have a hard time bringing the White Light in anywhere, let go in that area as well and repeat the paragraph above. Once your body feels balanced and has stopped giving you pain messages, you are ready to quiet your mind before it starts taking over.

2. Calm your mind

Your mind is used to running on autopilot. It thinks what it wants whenever it wants. Once you sit in a quiet space and the body is comfortable, your mind will just start throwing thoughts out there – but not anymore! Give your mind something to focus on that includes: I am statements and pastel colors.

You can imagine bringing the rainbow in one color at a time in pastels: pink, orange, yellow, green, blue purple. Bring each color in individually and slowly start at the top of your head and make your way gently and easily, through your body, down to your feet and into the Earth.

After each pastel color, repeat an “I am” statement such as one of the following.

• I am peace.
• I am free.
• I am whole.
• I am supported.
• I am calm.
• All is well.

Keep bringing in soft, pastel colors and “I am” statements until your timer goes off, letting you know you’ve done five minutes. Once your timer goes off, turn it off and then bring in the White Light again from the top of your head, through your body, down into your feet and into the Earth. Say, “All is well.” Then open your eyes when you’re ready. Check in. How do you feel?

Balance your energy through regular meditation

One of the keys to meditation is to actually clear and balance your energy every time. Then you will feel amazing and you’ll want to keep doing it. If you want to keep doing something that feels good, it can more easily become a routine. BUT if you keep doing the exact same meditation every day, without the energy work pieces, you’ll find you don’t feel any different and it could feel like a waste of time.

Meditation is one of the most powerful ways you can align and balance your energy. Once you find you can easily do five minutes and want more, keep increasing your timer by a minute or two until you hit fifteen minutes. Once you hit fifteen minutes, I would recommend splitting up your meditation into two times, once in the morning before you begin your day and once at the end of the day before you go to bed. Just don’t lay down – you’ll fall asleep every time!

Cheers to you creating a daily, energy healing meditation that supports you in 2022!

Lisa Gornall

Lisa Gornall is a Spiritual Medium, Author, Healer and Coach. She was born with her abilities to become one with your energy which allows her to intuitively clear and balance your energy. Lisa gets to the ROOT of your patterns, beliefs and fears that are no longer working. Since 2002, she has combined her intuitive abilities with healing and coaching. Lisa has coached thousands of individuals to heal their relationships, love their life again and get back to the lifestyle they originally envisioned for themselves – a freedom lifestyle. You can find Lisa at www.lisagornall.com

www.lisagornall.com

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Walking the Lifelong Path of Finding Self-Acceptance

When I was a little girl, I remember the feeling of unfairness rising up in me often. It didn’t feel fair that my last name started with an S, which was towards the back of the alphabet, so I had to be called in attendance as one of the last students and sit in the back of the class. It didn’t feel fair that I looked different than other kids – I’m half Asian, and I grew up an in all Caucasian town. The unfairness list went on and on.

The idea of finding self-acceptance wasn’t taught to me as a child. It wasn’t part of our family culture, and so when I started hearing about it later in life as I started backpacking and spending a lot of time in India, at first it felt revelatory. At first I struggled with my intellectual mind: Wait, doesn’t acceptance mean that I’m giving up? It was the big battle that my mind was trying to wrap around.

Yet little by little, I came to understand the meaning, and the real power of acceptance. Acceptance is the pathway forward to peace, and importantly, inner peace. Acceptance is about finding harmony with this now moment. So whatever’s arising, we accept it. And when we find harmony with we then have more power and more energy to go forward and to create change, if that’s what we want. The openness that comes with acceptance is very magnetic. It’s a different frequency for allowing more that you can attract in and more will start to come to you.

All of this has to start with finding self-acceptance, as our inner connection is what influences and creates our experience in the external world. Self-acceptance, however, is a biggie for all of us. It sounds nice, but it’s not always so easy to embody!

It’s important to have solid tools that are practical, tangible and that you can use to keep fostering and deepening your inner connection, so that self-acceptance starts to build more and more, like a muscle.

Here are 5 practical tools that I want to share with you to help you along the self-acceptance journey, that have also really helped me.

5 Tools for Finding Self-Acceptance

1. Relax your body periodically throughout the day.

When your body is open and relaxed, you will have an easier time accepting things mentally. This is because our bodies, minds and spirit are all intrinsically connected. There is no real beginning and end, for all is energy. Working with your body’s power and wisdom to help heal and restrictive patterns is important.

To relax your body, simply do a scan from the top of your head to your feet, several times a day, and bring awareness to each area. Relax any areas of tension consciously as you scan down.

2. Gratitude at the beginning, middle and end of the day.

Resistance is when we want something to show up differently than how it really is. In contrast, when can find that expansive energy of gratitude, it can makes acceptance easier, no matter what we’re going through.

Gratitude means we look for the blessings in the here and now, and they are always there! So if you are having a hard time feeling grateful for your life, your body, or whatever situation is at hand, try getting out your journal and making a list of all that you can give thanks for in this moment. It can be the simple but important things we take for granted, like fresh air, clean water, running water, the sunlight, the ability to breathe.

3. Journaling for Empowerment Versus Victimhood.

This relates to what I shared with you earlier, about when I was a child, the prevalent “this isn’t’ fair” mindset. It parlays into: I don’t want it this way. I worked so hard. Why is this? Why is that? Ultimately, it is the disempowerment mentality of the victim. We can turn that into empowerment by shifting our perspective, and looking for the lessons, while also seeing any part that we played in the situation, as well as surrendering to the greater whole, the greater intelligence that we don’t fully understand.

Try using your journal as a powerful tool to shift your perspective. It can help to get things on paper to help create some perspective. First, write out whatever you feel about the situation or your life or whatever is on your mind.

Then try writing out these journal prompts for finding self-acceptance.

1. What are the gifts of this situation?
2. Without blame or shame, what can I see are the parts I played in this situation?
3. What can I let go of in peace, which was beyond my control?
4. What are the lessons I have learned?

4. Meditation on a daily basis.

This is the ultimate way to connect to your True Self, the formless nature within you, Spirit within you. When you do that, you become less attached and rigid about outer details and circumstances, because you start to transcend attachments. You realize there is so much more beyond what your physical eyes can see.

I’d love to share some of the free meditations I’ve created to help you connect to your True Self, which are inspired by my guru’s work, Paramahansa Yogananda.

They are called Practical Enlightenment Meditations™ and they have 3 components.

1. First, some physical movement to help still the body.
2. Second, breath work.
3. Thirdly, the seed intention of that particular meditation in the I AM form, which is for merging our individual consciousness with the Divine.

You can find these meditations on my site, mysolluna.com or inside our Solluna App.

5. Include simple rituals around natural objects in your home.

Nature just IS. And this is a powerful lesson for all of us in the ultimate acceptance of I AM THAT I AM. Keeping natural objects like shells, crystals, rocks and so on your home altars or places you will see them, like in your kitchen, can help remind you and ground you to that knowing.

A simple ritual is every time you see that rock or natural object is to take a deep breath and come into your body, into this now moment- the ultimate act of finding self-acceptance. You can also hold a crystal and do a mini meditation when you feel your anxiety spiraling or you notice that you are definitely not in the now moment. Use your creativity and make some of your own rituals!

Ultimately, we are all here for a purpose, and we all have a unique essence and energy. The more we connect with that energy, which is the True Self, the more self-acceptance and acceptance in general will flow in our lives. This natural flow state of peace is our birthright.

Kimberly Snyder

Kimberly Snyder is a multi-time New York Times bestselling author, spiritual and meditation teacher, nutritionist and holistic wellness expert. She has authored 6 books, including Radical Beauty, which she co-authored with Deepak Chopra. Her highly anticipated 6th book, You Are More Than You Think You Are: Practical Enlightenment for Everyday Life, (Hay House) published on January 25th, 2022.

She is also the founder of Solluna®, a holistic lifestyle brand, Practical Enlightenment Meditation,™ Solluna Circle and the host of her top-rated Feel Good Podcast.  She has worked with dozens of top celebrities to feel their best, including Drew Barrymore, Reese Witherspoon and Channing Tatum, and has been featured by numerous national media outlets, including Good Morning America, The Today Show, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Kimberly resides in Los Angeles and Hawaii with her husband and her sons.

Kimberly Snyder Author Photo by Kevin Estrada

www.mysolluna.com

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Meditation Teachers Lorin Roche and Camille Maurine

Meditation Teacher Training for the Modern Meditator

When we consider meditation and how we can integrate this practice into our daily lives, we would benefit from considering the plight of the modern meditator.

Teaching meditation is a sacred art form. A navigation of the highways of our mental processes. We might assume that we think too much to be able to meditate. But what if our thoughts themselves were part of the portal for our access? What if we could befriend ourselves in meditation?

Dr Lorin Roche and Camille Maurine are meditators with decades of study and practice, a series of thoughtful and accessible books, and experience teaching meditation teachers around the world.

Their ability to facilitate the exploration of the mental landscape and allow the modern meditator to find inroads into the practice is both skilled and unparalleled.

LA YOGA was able to have a conversation with Lorin and Camille about their work. Please watch their insightful interview on the LA YOGA Facebook page.

Learn more about their unique and comprehensive Meditation Teacher Training through the Radiance Sutras School of Meditation: https://www.meditationtt.com

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

www.blissnetwork.com

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Why Befriend Yourself in Meditation

You may not consider how to befriend yourself in meditation, but when you shift your mindset, you can develop a friendly and compassionate approach to the practice. Try the following five practices and approaches to meditation.

 1. Let Yourself Love What You Love

Think of meditation as immersing yourself in the flow of love. Yoga means “connection,” and in meditation we allow our attention to connect intimately with the flow of the life force, so deeply that we fall in love, merge, and come into union. One tangible flow of the life force is breathing, and each breath connects us with the mystery of life within us and all around. In meditation, breathe in the way you do when engaged in what you love – walking in nature, making love, playing sports, dancing, listening to music, cooking, savoring the aroma of wine. The essence of all meditation techniques is savoring the thrill of aliveness.

2. Love Your To-do List when you Befriend Yourself in Meditation

People with busy lives generally spend half of their meditation time, or more, simply sorting through their to-do lists. This involves skillful attention – feeling the energy or passion or tension that goes with each item, each action, and choreographing the action flows. To the brain and body, your to- do list is an asana flow and the sequencing is important, as are transitions.

When we are meditating and shift from inward absorption to outward orientation, this is yoga. This is connecting our inner world with our outer world. Whatever we think about in meditation becomes infused with prana and flow, and later when we are in action, there is a kind of sparkle and flow to our daily life. What this means moment-to-moment in meditation is to celebrate every thought that arises, welcome it as a little package of prana, welcome whatever urgency or feeling is associated with that impulse toward action.

3. Delight in the Rhythm of Inner and Outer

During meditation, our attention often switches every half a minute between feeling sensations of relaxation in the body and then becoming absorbed in mental movies about what to do in the outer world. This is a natural rhythm of inner and outer, a pulsation of life. Sometimes you will find yourself pulsating inner- outer every few seconds, sometimes every couple of minutes. Think of this as an inner asana flow, as beautiful and natural as breathing in and breathing out. There are days when it seems like we are daydreaming the entire time we are meditating, even if we sit there for 20 minutes.

When you emerge from a long sequence of thoughts and remember, “OMG, I am meditating! What time is it?” Be gentle and humorous and loving toward yourself. Do not “return to the mantra” or “bring your attention back to the breath.” Rather, just sit there and enjoy yourself and be sensitive to where you are in your rhythm of inner and outer. Take a few breaths and savor the sensations in your body.

4. Sit with your Feet on the Ground

The best meditation posture for many of us is in a comfortable chair with back support, and feet on the ground. This is called the Maitreya Asana and it has a lot of advantages. One day in 1969 I was meditating at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, sitting cross-legged near the cliff overlooking the ocean. My bodyworker, Ed Maupin, came by and when I opened my eyes, said, “Let’s have a talk.” He explained to me that even the half- lotus can over-stretch the connective tissue around the knees and lead to arthritis and injuries later. It turns out that Ida Rolf studied Tantra Yoga from 1920 to 1930 with Pierre Bernard, the first American yogi, and he taught her Yoga Massage. They figured out, a hundred years ago, that the lotus and even half- lotus can be damaging. Because of this insight, my knees are great, even though I am 72 and have spent about 25,000 hours in meditation over the past 52 years.

Meditation Teachers Lorin Roche and Camille Maurine

5. Don’t Judge your Meditation Experience

If we practice meditation in a way that is healthy for us, our body and heart and brain will just take what they need. This is because we feel safe to heal, safe to be ourselves. It is common for people to cry the entire time they are meditating, for months after beginning. It is such a relief to be able to “just be myself and feel my heart.” Then one day the tears cease to come and you feel renewed, years younger. Or you may feel filled with sexual passion during meditation, with tingling electricity flowing around under your skin. You might be angry, or sad, or start laughing.

Welcome all your moods and emotions. Meditative experience is infinitely varied and includes the interaction of all of the senses, all possible emotions, innumerable bodily sensations, and all the instinctive motions of life. In one minute we are at home, feeling safer and more relaxed than ever in our lives, and this is followed by a gush of electricity that is so intense as to be scary and taboo – how can I handle so much power of aliveness?

As you experiment with fitting meditation into the flow of your daily life, judge your meditation by its effect on your ability to live. This is how to judge meditation – how does it enhance your ability to work, love, play, and rest? If you give half an hour in the morning to meditating, does it enrich the other 23 1/2 hours of the day?

Meditation is a universal human instinct, we all can do it. The key to how to befriend yourself in meditation is to practice in your own way.

Lorin Roche

Dr. Lorin Roche began practicing with the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra in 1968 as part of scientific research on the physiology of meditation. He has a PhD from the University of California at Irvine, where his research focused on the language meditators generate to describe their inner experiences. He is the author of The Radiance Sutras and Meditation Made Easy. With his wife, Camille Maurine, he wrote Meditation Secrets for Women. A teacher of meditation for 46 years, Lorin’s approach centers on how to customize the practices to suit one’s individual nature. Lorin leads the Radiance Sutras Meditation Teacher Training, a 200 hour certification program registered with Yoga Alliance. Lorin teaches regularly at the Esalen Institute and around the world.

www.meditationtt.com

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Transform Your Life through Understanding Meditation

Are you reeling from the effects of the last few years? Does your life feel like it’s moving like a speeding train? Do you feel overwhelmed? Do you want to connect on a deeper, more spiritual level? Would you like to feel more grounded in your life? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then meditation is a powerful way to “slow things down.” Understanding meditation can help you achieve a deeper connection with yourself, reduce stress, help with physical and health issues, clear your mind, and open yourself to receive spiritual guidance.

Meditation is the ideal way to practice being in the moment and start to control your racing mind or your ever-increasing anxiety.

Understanding Meditation: Dispelling Meditation Myths

There are many myths and inaccurate information that are associated with the practice of meditation. Some examples of these myths include the following.

1. Meditating is hard.

On the contrary, meditation can be amazingly easy. There is no one way to practice meditation and it is not a “pass/fail” process. There are so many variations of meditation, that you’ll wonder why you didn’t start your practice sooner.

2. In order for meditation to be effective, you must sit for long periods of time every day.

Every time you close your eyes for even five minutes and listen to sounds around you, that is a form of meditation.

Taking 10 minutes out of your day to focus inward on your breath is meditating.

And there are many, many more examples of meditative practices. It is true that some practitioners sit for a long time every day, but others are able to quiet their minds and sit in stillness for a few minutes at a time. A few minutes is enough!

3. You must be in total silence to meditate properly.

That is false on several levels.

• First, you can meditate in a waiting room, on a bus, or anywhere you are able to implement your form of practice. The practice can be modified to fit your surroundings. This could include as eyes open or with a downward gaze rather than fully closed.
• Second, there are thousands of guided meditations and others with both music and a meditation guide. Some types of meditation use vocalizations such as mantras said aloud and the expression of various words and sounds.
• Third, as noted above, sound(s) can actually be the focal point of the meditation.

4. You need to sit in the same place to meditate for each session.

Though it can be helpful to have a place, a certain room, or even a special chair or mat that you use to meditate, so that you can “go into that space,” if you will, it is not required. As noted above, you can do it anywhere.

The most important aspect to a meditation practice is consistency.

Some Types of Meditation

Below are sixteen styles/types of meditation. And there are more. There is a meditation for everyone. The trick is to find the type(s) that work for you. Remember you can change it up and try different types until you find the one that resonates the most with you.

• Breathing Meditations
• Mindfulness Meditations
• Focus Meditations
• Movement Meditations or Walking Meditations
• Progressive Muscle Relaxation Meditations
• Mantra Meditations
• Loving Kindness Meditations
• Guided Meditations
• Spiritual Meditations
• Transcendental Meditation
• Active Listening Meditation
• Gazing Meditation
• Yoga Meditation
• Chakra Meditation
• Qi Gong Meditation
• Sound Bath Meditation

Benefits of Meditation

There are so many benefits to meditation, too many to mention here, but I’m going to share the ones I feel are most significant.

Meditation can:

• Lower cortisol levels (one of the hormones involved in the stress response that can increase anxiety).
• Lift your spirits.
• Lower blood pressure.
• Enhance serotonin levels, which is a mood stabilizer.
• Help in pain reduction.
• Teach you to be present.
• Help you release emotions that don’t serve you well.
• Help you relax and to sleep better.
• Open up your creativity.
• Help clear brain fog, bringing you clarity in your thinking.
• Make you a kinder and more compassionate person.
• Help you to bring balance into your life.
• Connect with Spirit on a deeper level.
• Help you forgive others and yourself.

Start Where You Are

If you’re still unsure when or how to start your meditation practice, do as many spiritual leaders say, “start where you are.” That statement is not only powerful for understanding meditation, but if you think about it, you can’t start anything at any other place than where you are in the present moment.

30-Day Meditation Challenge

To make the process of meditation easy and accessible, I created a 30-Day Meditation Challenge; 30 Ways in 30 Days to Start or Deepen Your Meditation Practice. Learn more at: www.marlagoldberrg.com

Understanding Meditation as a Path to Freedom

With all the ways you can meditate, and with all its benefits, you can see why I’m such an advocate for my clients and myself to meditate regularly. I believe that meditation can help to set you free from the emotions and conditioning that society has imposed on you, allowing you the ability to feel flow in your life, joy, and connection on levels you never knew existed.

Whether you’re a meditation pro or a beginner, I would love it if you would share with me how your practice is coming along. I hope you notice the subtle changes that understanding meditation brings to you as you deepen your meditation practice, and how you feel your life transforming in a positive manner.

Marla Goldberrg

www.marlagoldberrg.com

The post Understanding Meditation: Dispelling Myths and Sharing Benefits appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

I’m learning right now just how fragile life really is.

My husband and I watched in terror from our bedroom window as enormous red flames rose high into the sky. Started by an arsonist, the Palisades Fire jumped from 100 acres to 750 acres in just a few hours and, at the time of this writing, has engulfed more than 1,300 acres.

Local areas around us were forced into evacuation, and I knew we might be next. The firefighters’ helicopters roared overhead, dropping water on the inferno around us. It was hard to tell if it was just my heart beating quickly or if my whole body was trembling in fear. I had never experienced a threat like this before in my life. With our 11-month-old baby cradled in one arm and our five-year-old playing with his Legos next to me, completely unaware of the imminent risk, I had to start packing our bags. I instinctively grabbed our passports, laptops, a few sentimental items, and some essential clothing for all of us.

 

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A post shared by Kimberly Snyder (@_kimberlysnyder)

After I did all the basic prep, I knew where I had to go: inward. I went into another part of the house, shut the door, and meditated (while hubby stayed with the kids).

As I meditated, I started to center. I realized we might have to leave soon–our house and neighborhood here that we love so much might burn to the ground–and there wasn’t anything I could do to control the fire and the destructive trail it was leaving behind. Yet, as I meditated more, I could feel a sense of tranquility in the chaos.

Reflections on Being out of Control and Finding Comfort

Being in out-of-control situations is something I’ve experienced before (as I’m sure all of us have at one time or another). Four years ago, my mom found out she had cancer. Six weeks later, she left her body. Looking back, that month-and-a-half is a complete blur, but I remember how helpless I felt. My mom was dying and dying quickly, and there was nothing I could do about it.

My mom’s passing was a turning point in my life when I went from practicing meditation to living it. Prior to that event, I would do my practice when it fit in, and I would sit after my asana practice and it would feel nice. Yet after that event, it was a whole other story. I leaned on my meditations not just in periods of the morning and night, but to connect in deeper all throughout the day when I was drowning in grief on the surface. Even if for a minute or so, mini-meditations started connecting between my morning and evening meditations until my whole life felt part of my practice. Since that time, mediation has become the core foundation of my life; going inward, deep down beyond the external, has saved me time and time again.

While not everything in life is as dramatic as a raging forest fire or the death of a loved one, much of life is still beyond our control. In small ways and significant ways, including losing a job, relationship failure, a social media post that falls flat, we are all reminded that we don’t have the kind of control that our egos would like for us to believe we have.

Sure, we can intend, we can plan, we can take all the proper action steps, but we are never truly in control. There are much larger forces at play–call it fate, call it destiny, call it rotten luck; we are humbled time and time again when we think we have more control than we actually do. Yet, when life goes awry, we can always go inward, and there we can find order in the chaos.

Six tangible tools to cope with feeling out of control and to shift to getting comfortable:

Pay attention to your body and mind.

As soon as you feel your heart race or observe your mind going off into a dark place, realize that you are in some triggered state. When this happens, it’s time to reset.

Get still.

Prioritize going into a quiet place, putting your entire focus on calming your breath and recentering yourself. Try doing nadi shodhana breathing or another pranayama practice that resonates with you.

Descend.

The ocean’s surface is choppy, but underneath the waves there is stillness (which those of us that have gone scuba diving have experienced!). After finding some peace in your breath, go deeper, and observe. If you can, observe who is observing the fear, discomfort, pain, or uncertainty moving through you.

Go wide.

Look at the larger picture. Life doesn’t always work out as we plan it. If your business proposal fell through, take a step back. Often, we are so close to something that we don’t see the whole picture. In this instance, maybe the timing isn’t right. Maybe there was a flaw in your idea. Maybe there is something better for you. And perhaps you can’t see any of these things because you need to take a step back.

Stay present.

When things don’t go our way, we tend to fantasize (negatively) about future scenarios. After a breakup, many of us become fortune tellers, “I’ll never love again” or “I’ll never find someone I connect with.” Never? We can’t deal with a future that isn’t here yet. When your mind starts coming up with “what if” scenarios, call it back in. Take a breath. Take a few. Focus on the present moment. Focus on your present breath.

Call on community.

Love and connection endure. Going inward is essential. So is going outward. Reach out to a friend or lean on a trusted family member. The people we love and respect around us are like roots–we can hold on to them when the storms of life rage.

Find a Safe Harbor for Getting Comfortable

In the end, life is unpredictable. Our days may be choppy, but we can find safe harbor–and a vital lifeline–by putting our practice to the test. Yes, we practice meditation to calm ourselves and find center, but most importantly, we meditate to allow our True Self to safely guide us in all that we think, say, and do. When the world turns upside down, let the real you take a deep breath and meet life with a sense of balance, acceptance, and sometimes, even a little bit of humor. Ultimately, you are going to be okay.

Kimberly Snyder

Kimberly Snyder is a multi-time New York Times bestselling author, spiritual and meditation teacher, nutritionist and holistic wellness expert. She has authored 6 books, including Radical Beauty, which she co-authored with Deepak Chopra. Her highly anticipated 6th book, You Are More Than You Think You Are: Practical Enlightenment for Everyday Life, (Hay House) published on January 25th, 2022.

She is also the founder of Solluna®, a holistic lifestyle brand, Practical Enlightenment Meditation,™ Solluna Circle and the host of her top-rated Feel Good Podcast.  She has worked with dozens of top celebrities to feel their best, including Drew Barrymore, Reese Witherspoon and Channing Tatum, and has been featured by numerous national media outlets, including Good Morning America, The Today Show, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Kimberly resides in Los Angeles and Hawaii with her husband and her sons.

Kimberly Snyder Author Photo by Kevin Estrada

www.mysolluna.com

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Meditation is a Superpower

Selecting the Pathways to Practice

Benefits of Meditation Include:

• Improved Ability to Focus
• Increased Creativity
• Deeper Level of Relaxation
• Improved Perception and Memory
• Development of Intelligence
• Natural Change in Breathing
• Decrease in Stress Hormones
• Lower Blood Pressure
• Reversal of Aging Process
• Reduced Need for Medical Care
• Reduction in Cholesterol
• Increased Self-Actualization
• Increased Strength of Self-Concept
• Decreased Cigarette, Alcohol, and Drug Abuse
• Increased Productivity
• Improved Relations at Work
• Increased Relaxation and Decreased Stress
• Improved Health and More Positive Health Habits

Meditation, Stress, and Rest

Chronic stress often interferes with our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. So people can get stuck in a negative cycle – they need rest desperately, but the body-mind system has taken some damage and is not able to access its built-in healing system called sleep. Millions of Americans take some kind of pill to try to fall sleep, and about half of adults say they have trouble falling asleep at least once a week.

One thing wrong with a lot of the thinking about stress, both in science and in meditation gossip circles, is the idea that stress is bad somehow. It’s not. Stress is wonderful. It’s a genius capability that life put into our bodies. You could be deeply asleep and if you smelled smoke and realized there is a fire, you could zoom around like a superhero, gather up the dog or baby or both, and race out of the house.

There are several levels of challenges in meditation.

Meditation is a Key Tool for Survival

Lorin Roche

Dr. Lorin Roche began practicing with the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra in 1968 as part of scientific research on the physiology of meditation. He has a PhD from the University of California at Irvine, where his research focused on the language meditators generate to describe their inner experiences. He is the author of The Radiance Sutras and Meditation Made Easy. With his wife, Camille Maurine, he wrote Meditation Secrets for Women. A teacher of meditation for 46 years, Lorin’s approach centers on how to customize the practices to suit one’s individual nature. Lorin leads the Radiance Sutras Meditation Teacher Training, a 200 hour certification program registered with Yoga Alliance. Lorin teaches regularly at the Esalen Institute and around the world.

www.meditationtt.com

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Transcend the World through Empowerment

Achieve Alignment and Enlightenment on Mahasivratri World Yogi Day 2021

Once a year, astronomically & astrologically earth’s alignment to planets, sun and the cosmology aligns to the possibility of all who do Yoga attaining enlightenment in a single night.

Mahasivratri, the World Yogi Day, has been observed for thousands of years by yogis and householders as the most effective time to attain the full extent of expansion in Consciousness. Consciousness and unity with source is the goal of all Yoga.

Influence of the Moon:

The night of Mahasivratri March 11,2021, is based on the lunar calendar. During this period our consciousness easily condenses into divine awareness. From the yogic perspective, the Moon directly influences the mind and our consciousness. Each month, the new Moon and full Moon energies offer their own unique power as the Earth rotates around the Sun in its oval-shaped orbit through the year. Mahasivratri is a sacred vortex of time caused by the once a year alignment of Earth in correlation with the moon and sun; Earth and the planets and stars.

This is our time to Transcend the World and Step into Infinity:

The quest to greater potential is within everyone- and this big quest activates itself in destiny of time as Consciousness.

Siddhartha was torn by this deep quest to leave home & family to find the answer to this deep quest and be the Buddha, the Being of Consciousness. Especially in troubling and challenging times we are all forced to ask “Why me?” and seek the vaster solution of transformation & truth within ourselves to be Whole.

Yoga, meditation, and other spiritual practices have a sole objective- attainment of Consciousness. The quest to want to be whole, to deepen our spiritual practice and to be the core of harmony & peace is the need to take an inner pilgrimage to find ourselves and transcend material form, time and space.

Yoga as practice, is the daily discipline of push and the sacred grace of the pull. For a yoga practitioner, meditator and seeker Mahasivratri is like a birthday, the day of awakening to the vastness of ourselves as Spirit- the newer consciousness. This is the time leading up to the night of Mahasivratri the most sacred time when all the Avatars, Himalayan and South Indian Gurus Yogis who are never seen by humanity emerge to participate in the great cosmic alignment with you.

How your Yoga and Meditation Practice can benefit from this auspicious time:

Mahasivratri is observed in general by staying up all night, with spine erect- so to receive the enlightening blessings. It is advisable to prepare for this cosmically empowering all nighter by starting our pilgrimage within.

Siddha Yoga Guidance for How to be Ready to attain ultimate Yoga Consciousness on World Yogi Day March 11th.

Take the initiation to start the pilgrimage within and achieve alignment and enlightenment. Set your calendar to being with the full moon day Feb 28th, two weeks before Mahasivratri. You can choose to join us as we go through seven empowerment initiations and a program of preparation together.

Or create your own personal program and retreat.

On Feb 28th- On the Full moon, moment pray setting an intent to plunge within to dissolve into Lord Siva. Feel this moment as an initiation of Source where you are committed. Go to your Guru or visit a Temple or sit beside your altar and pray to be guided through the next 14 days into Mahasivratri. Pray that from this moment on, every breath is with the mantra

AUM NAMAH SIVAYA.

Let this moment be the Source initiation.

Like the Full Moon waning to be the New Moon, we pilgrimage from human in limits to being the Spirit, the Unlimited.

Begin each day with light a lamp (to kindle our inner lamp) and end the day lighting the lamp–with mantras. Wake up with the mantra, be aware of each moment in the mantra fires, before sleep recite the mantras. Make the mantra fires a 24/7 inner heart song.

Detox the mind and body. Through the 14 days let go of the thoughts, the mind, the ego and all the attachment. Forgive others. Forgive ourselves. Let go of the past.

Have just nuts, fruits, fruit/vegetable juices and herbs. (Consult an Ayurvedic practitioner of the ideal herbs you could take.). Taking Ayurvedic herbs during this period amplifies their healing abilities.

Be in a nurturing environment. Surround yourself with higher vibrational Beings or be in solitude. Observe silence. Silence the mind and thought process through the joy states of mantra recitation and a meditative mind.

Each day go deeper within. Do pilgrimages to sacred places if possible. At the end of each day, celebrate the inner journey by way of doing a puja. (A puja is a worship of the Divine offering flowers, fruits and devotional love.)

Most important is to connect to the power of the ‘pull.’ This is the grace of yoga. Consummate the grace of Mahasivratri, the pull element by doing dharma/ charity/ heart’s service, and random acts of consciousness.

Drop all habits and addictions. These could be cigarettes, coffee, internet use, or even anger. Step out of the mind that functions in karmic imprints of the past.

Do the Siva Linga Puja to accelerate the journey into Consciousness. When we bring focus of the Infinite in the finite as by way of the Linga :Puja, we are following the path of the enlightened mystic Sages, the Siddhas.

Each day welcome the vast new crisp energies of clarity, revitalization, rejuvenation, and states of bliss. Witness the experience of bliss and joy that eliminates hunger and thirst. Be aware of the ecstasy of experience that increases with each passing day as the mind withdraws. Feel the need for sleep subside- without force and as naturally as possible. Let our meditative mind experience being a pillar of Light.

On Mahasivratri Night, enjoy the effortless ease of sleeplessness, bliss, perpetual energy, joy, clarity, and states of Oneness–the states of Turiya. Stay awake through the night doing your Yoga practice and rise in the morning renewed with pristine mind, body and spirit.

If you would like to get the most from this most auspicious time join Siddha Yoga Master Nandhiji

Grace of Mahasivratri: Transcend the World Empowerment Retreat

Register with Code: LAYOGA to get 50% off before Feb 28th.

February 28th to March 11th

• Be Empowered by more than 15 Extremely Rare Empowering Siddha Mantras only released at this time.
• Over 7 live empowerments events with Nandhiji. Go at your own pace and schedule on your personal retreat portal.
• Receive the Grace of Lord Siva and 5 Living Siddha Masters from India when the stars align March 11th for Mahasivratri, World Yogi Day.
• Upgrade to receive personal soul guidance, karmic cleansing and reading of your Dharma from Nandhiji.

Siddha Yoga Master Nandhiji

Siddha Yoga Master Nandhiji is a multiple lineage holder of the ancient Sacred Siddha Yoga tradition. He has been guided and initiated directly by Lord Siva, Babaji, Adi Guru Muruga, and his Eight Gurus for the purpose of helping enlightened Consciousness arise in humanity at this time. He has performed the opening of Bhakti Fest, One Love Festival and been featured in books and movies about Consciousness. Register for the Empowerments learn more at: https://linktr.ee/Nandhiji

Nandhiji

Tapasyogi Nandhi is a Siddhar mystic from South India. His life purpose is in awakening consciousness for humanity by way of his Visions that he unfolds each day. One  of his visions is the observance and declaration of Mahasivratri as the world yoga day. http://www.universalyogaday.org/

His website is: www.nandhi.com

www.nandhi.com

The post Achieve Alignment and Enlightenment in 2021 with Mahasivratri appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Rethinking Spiritual Practice: Do we Walk the Inner or Outer Path?

Is the spiritual path an inner one? Do we have to leave the world behind to find ourselves? If not, how can we integrate our relationship with the world? Is there an outer path to freedom? I think it is time for us to rethink our relationship with what we are taught on the spiritual path. It’s time to reinvent the spiritual ideal. Let’s start by putting this into context.

The Path of Inner Contemplation

Many modern-day spiritual practitioners are following traditions that were made for a place and time that looked quite different from the modern world.  If you look at it, many of our most popular traditions were curated for the contemplative. The instructions are given for the aspirant who studied to give his or her full life to the path because of family lineage or personal calling. Teachings are often given for the ascetic.  This puts many of us in a dilemma because, as important and relevant spiritual practice is in our modern lives, the spiritual ideal that has been fostered over time can actually limit us or create within us certain unrealistic images or goals.

We are busy people with full lives. However, we yearn for peace and inner quiet.  We have family and appointments and careers. However, we are taught to be unattached. We move from meditation, contemplation, or prayer to the full swing of life in a matter of minutes.

When we look to our spiritual practice we can recognize that our modern-day intensity is not actually a problem. In fact, this offers us a treasure trove of lessons that can become profound material for spiritual self-inquiry.

What it Means to Reinvent the Spiritual Ideal

This is only possible if we reinvent the spiritual ideal to embrace the busy life. We can absorb the lessons of this moment no matter how challenging. What if those lessons are exactly what we need in order to open more deeply? We might then enfold that life into the practice instead of pushing away our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and perceptions as somehow invalid, problematic, or less-divine.

The spiritual self-investigation practice is about turning our attention to our own personal process of observation and awareness. When we turn inward, we can begin to unravel deep inner patterns or shields that we have created over the course our lives.  We might call this investigation toward the deep heart of the Self the Inward Path. Traditionally this model of inner practice has been prized—for good reason. Contemplation and silent commitment are described as essential to discovering our reverence to the divine within.

This highly individualized practice was born of a distant world that had far fewer distractions and options. When coupled with a deep cultural bias toward individualism in the West, the emphasis on this approach has created some real problems for the spiritual seeker.

Perhaps we think we are failing in the process self-inquiry if we continue to experience nagging thoughts or troubling emotions. We think we should have more clarity, grace, and wisdom. We think we should be quieter.  Or we may feel that we should not be triggered by that certain family member or friend. On the spiritual path, we may compartmentalize our busyness and schedule a retreat or covet a certain meditation ritual to recenter and step away from it all.

This misguided understanding of perfect practice is a classic half-teaching of awakening.  There are so many misunderstandings when it comes to self-inquiry, particularly non-dual self-inquiry. But this one is particularly challenging for those of us who like to follow the rules and traditions passed to us.

Returning to our Willing Heart

Can we begin to see that the whole world is conspiring to bring us back to the self-discovery of our inner heart? I don’t mean this casually. For real spiritual non-dual self-inquiry understands the gravity of this truth. The dance is just complex enough, just uncomfortable enough, that it is always giving us the material that we need to return to the heart. This is only possible if the heart is willing to stand and meet the dancer as a partner.

Walking the Outward Path

It’s time to explore the Outward Path of spiritual reverence. It’s time to engage actively with our community, with our friends and family, with our work, and to do so with the same contemplative, even ritualized, care that we use when practicing the Inward Path.

We need each other for our unfoldment. We need our problems. This is just as important as our inner observation. There is a dynamic between the space we can take to notice what we notice at the point of silence and the interaction with the world around us. The two together teach us the great material that opens the heart further.

Self-inquiry on The Outward Path allows us to begin to recognize that the awakened heart needs the external world for grace and revelation just as much as it needs the internal world as an anchor. One of the mature insights of self-inquiry is that the world “out there” is also the divine, truly equal and seamless to the divine within. The ways in which we navigate our relationships with our intimates and even with strangers becomes the great meditation.  This is the path of infusing the ordinary life with the extraordinary.

Cynthia Abulafia in meditation

Meditation and What We Notice in Action

We are never apart from meditation. Meditation is not a practice that we do while closed off for certain minutes of the day, dedicated to a favorite spot, seat, or time. Meditation is how we interact with the complex, living world from validated intimacy, or awareness.  It is how we notice what we notice in action.

What happens when we are triggered by something someone says?  We notice that. What happens when a deep pattern is opened up, leaving us feeling raw and exposed?  We notice that, without pushing away we notice and we retrain ourselves to live from that validated intimate place of Self.

We must remember hold valuable the pain of life, the wisdom of our friends and teachers and living relationships, the things that stir our most hidden emotions.  We need the outside world to return us home.  If we cannot find the divine in our ordinary, if sometimes complex, lives, then we certainly will not find that divine sitting alone on a mountaintop.

On a level perhaps even more subtle and beautiful, we are served by understanding that the entire body of the earth is just an outer dance born of the inner, individual heart. The divine loves nothing more than waking up to itself, remembering itself, in every possible way and through every possible lens. This complex world is the dance, is the teacher, is the divine.

Practicing The Inner and Outer Paths Together to Reinvent the Spiritual Ideal

Let’s learn to play with life and have the courage and curiosity to understand that our inner meditations must pour outward into that dance with equal reverence to the inner noticing. At the end of the day, it is this outer world that we are all here to learn from as we take our places as students in a cosmic classroom.

Teacher Training at Yoga Soup

Explore the Inner and Outer Paths in the upcoming Yoga Teacher Training at Yoga Soup.

Cynthia Abulafia

Cynthia brings an eye for detailed instruction to her challenging and creative classes. Her attention to detail brings her class deeply into the experience of the body, breath, and heart in order to tune attention to its finest point– believing that the purpose of the practice is to simply notice ever deeper into the silence that is the root of all form.

Her passion for biomechanics, non-dual self-inquiry, and the beautifully rooted grace of the yoga asanas themselves shines in her classes. She believes time on the mat should be playful, fun, sweaty, and a celebration of this amazing dance we call experience.
In addition to teaching asana she teaches courses in yoga philosophy, subtle body, human anatomy for yoga and yoga ethics.

She has been instrumental in the creation and leadership of Yoga Soup’s 200 Hour Teacher Training, is E-RYT 500, YACEP (she teaches continuing education), IAYT (Yoga Therapy), and Pilates certified, and holds a Masters in Nutrition. She has over 25 years of study with world class teachers in several schools of yoga, including Yoga Therapy, Ashtanga, Iyengar, Vinyasa Krama with Srivatsa Ramaswami, modern flow blends originating at Yoga Works in Santa Monica, and many beloved meditation, Advaita, non-dual Tantra, kundalini-Shakti, and self-inquiry teachers.

Cynthia believes strongly in educating students about Kundalini energy (not to be confused with the system of yoga in the same name). The poses of Yoga are designed to wake up our subtle body, and yet when this happens- as it inevitably does for many people- we often find ourselves without a compass or a safe community. This site will offer writings and explorations on topics related to the body, the breath, the subtle energies, non-dual literature and self-inquiry, Kundalini energy, & meditation techniques in order to facilitate understanding and conversation around these complex and beautiful topics.

www.cynthiaabulafiayoga.com

The post It’s Time to Reinvent the Spiritual Ideal appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Riding the Waves of the New Year & Decade with Awareness

We are certainly living in very interesting times. Now, as never before, our socio-political landscape is shifting rapidly. Almost daily we are faced with news headlines that shake the foundation of what we assumed would or could happen. The level of perceived uncertainty experienced by humanity has been, and continues to be, unprecedented in this new decade. Where past generations could create and then carry out a five-year plan, millions of people today find the direction of their lives greatly altered within the course of a few weeks or months. Riding these rollercoasters of emotion can feel like our new, perhaps uncomfortable reality.

With wave upon wave of change, we may find ourselves riding rollercoasters of emotion which impacts how we show up; in our work, our relationships, and for ourselves. With each additional piece of news we digest online, we may feel pushed into despair, or lifted to joyful heights. This is occurring at an accelerated rate and we may be struggling to keep up with the cascade of thoughts, feelings, and accompanying hormones.

Reflecting on our Emotional Landscape

On January 20, 2021 the United States inaugurated a new President, and the first female, Black, South Asian Vice President. Throughout this day, I witnessed my emotions and tracked my internal responses to news and online commentary. Some of these were very intense indeed! Upon reflection, I recognized that I am sharing a moment with millions of people who may be surfing waves of strong emotions. Some of these emotions may be labeled as positive; ecstatic, relieved, hopeful. Some of these emotions may be labeled as negative; angry, betrayed, resigned. Regardless of how one may have voted in November, or whether one’s personal life has been directly affected by COVID-19, everyone has likely experienced strong emotions over the past few weeks and months.

On Inauguration Day, I was also struck by how my emotional spectrum four years ago was more or less the opposite of what I was currently experiencing on a visceral level. Recognizing this solidified my ability to see how external conditions can have a strong effect on me, and how often these days I am like a small ship tossed around on a massive stormy sea. I know I am not alone in this, and want to bring awareness to the collective experience of being inundated by change and uncertainty.

Pause and Practice for Balance

Yet there is hope for all of us, across the political spectrum! In this rapidly and ever-shifting climate, we have the life-rafts of yoga, meditation, and contemplative time in nature. We each have the power and capacity to pause, notice emotions as they arise, and create a bit of space between ourselves and this wild rollercoaster ride.

The essence of yoga and meditation is to remind ourselves of our true nature as embodied energy. We have a short and precious time on this planet to experience life, to connect with our experience, and to ease the suffering of others. It is challenging to fully embrace this truth of fluidity when we are constantly being shipwrecked by tidal waves of strong emotion.

The next time you begin to feel the rollercoasters of emotion arising within you, whether you label it as positive or negative, I encourage you to try this simple practice. It doesn’t require anything external, and will take less than five minutes to experience.

Meditation to use when riding rollercoasters of emotion

• Take a full breath in, and as you exhale let your awareness travel down to whatever parts of your body are in contact with the earth or the surface beneath you (i.e. your feet or your seat).
• Pause here and allow yourself to become fully absorbed in the sensation of your physical body contacting the surface beneath it.
• Next, commit to taking three breaths. This should be relatively easy since you are breathing anyway! Follow the course of the inhale, beginning at the nostrils, all the way down to the abdomen, then allow the exhale to freely leave the body, perhaps washing all the way down to those points of connection between you and the earth.
• After the completion of your third breath, take a moment to honestly assess whether your level of emotionality or activation has changed. If you find this to be the case, perhaps give yourself three more deep breaths.

Practice becoming comfortable with change

This short practice is accessible, free and can be done by most people in any location. My hope with this practice is to encourage us to come back to the very simple truth of who we are; embodied energy that is constantly in a state of change. When we are able to see how rapidly we can shift our own internal compass, we may find a greater sense of ease as we swim through the turbulent waters of our time.

You may choose to follow this up by taking some time to walk outside without any hurry, to sit somewhere outdoors, or find a place where you can rest your whole body on the earth. Feel the air in contact with your skin; allow your senses to connect you to your environment. When we spend quiet time in any natural setting, we can’t help but be reminded of how we are part of a greater whole. Give yourself this opportunity regularly, and over time notice whether it is supporting you in a world that will inevitably continue to change.

Paula Wild

Paula Wild is the Program Manager and Lead Trainer for Balanced Rock Foundation’s WildYoga Teacher Training. Paula’s teaching blends alignment based, heart-centered, therapeutic yoga with her love and knowledge of ecology and natural history. Since 1999 Paula has been exploring the overlap between yoga and sustainable living, and her greatest intention is to support people in connecting to the wild world within, and around us. Please check out more wonderful programs to inspire health and wellbeing through deep connection to nature and spirit at Balanced Rock!

balancedrock.org%20

The post Mindfulness and the Rollercoasters of Emotion appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Why Stress is Useful: Meditating With The Radiance Sutras

The Flow of Opposites

Measurable Meditation

The Opposite of Stress

The Internal Asana Flow

Continuous Flow of Love

It’s All About Survival

The Thrill of Aliveness

There are two major challenges to learning to meditate.

Meditation Teacher Training

Lorin Roche

Dr. Lorin Roche began practicing with the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra in 1968 as part of scientific research on the physiology of meditation. He has a PhD from the University of California at Irvine, where his research focused on the language meditators generate to describe their inner experiences. He is the author of The Radiance Sutras and Meditation Made Easy. With his wife, Camille Maurine, he wrote Meditation Secrets for Women. A teacher of meditation for 46 years, Lorin’s approach centers on how to customize the practices to suit one’s individual nature. Lorin leads the Radiance Sutras Meditation Teacher Training, a 200 hour certification program registered with Yoga Alliance. Lorin teaches regularly at the Esalen Institute and around the world.

www.meditationtt.com

The post Stress Makes Us Strong: How Meditation Helps appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Addressing the Mental Chatter During Silent Meditation

“Ok, just breathe.”

“Wow, it’s quiet in here.”

“Seriously!!?? That’s it….”

And, scene.

This is my brain on silent meditation.

Whether I’m sitting in a hall with a hundred people or alone with a hundred thoughts, meditation is a discipline. It’s difficult, challenging and rewarding. And, I’m just getting started.

Pregame

I drive winding roads and sing along to every song on the radio. It’s a ten-hour drive from Santa Monica to the Dhamma Manda Vipassana Meditation Center in Kelseyville, Northern California. After a few hours, everything fades into a blur of sleepy towns and asphalt. I’m relieved when I finally pull through the gates of the Center.

Popularized by S.N. Goenka, this ‘retreat’ is offered to all walks of life as a gift and teaches the technique of Vipassana meditation. Vipassana is defined as a meditation technique where self-observation is the key to purifying the self and seeing things as they really are.

With 4AM wake-up calls, up to 10 hours of meditation a day, and nightly lectures, the schedule is quite rigorous. Plus, all of this is done in complete quiet as the participants have taken a vow of silence for the entire retreat.

Goenka teaches that there are two things that create all misery: craving and aversion. I want this. I hate that.

I feel like I wait a lot in my life. I wait for the highs of achievements and for the lows to dissipate. I have high expectations of myself and need validation that I’m on the right path. I blame myself, overcompensate, try to please and end up on a wheel of disappointment.

Yoga has taught me to manage the ebb and flow, but it has been a long road.

We will first learn the technique of Anapana. We focus only on our breathing and the subtle sensations around the nose and mouth. Our goal is to witness without reacting. The sooner we can detach from the feelings of daily life, the more balanced or equanimous (as Goenka repeats) we can remain towards the ebbs and flows of life.

At night we return quietly to our rooms. I hear the beautiful sounds of crickets outside my temporary home. It’s dark and quiet and lovely until…

Tick tock, tick tock… I lay awake twitching in time to the clock. I turn on the light (to my roommate’s surprise). I try miming to her that her clock is too loud. She speaks, “Can we just talk like adults? Let’s just use your clock.” “Of course,” I say. She apologizes, I feel bad… I wasn’t planning on breaking the number one rule of silence my first night here.

Day 1

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho it’s off to the hall we go… Half past 4AM and I know, this ain’t gonna work. The numbness in my feet is unbearable. “Just breathe.” The technique is easy enough… for about two minutes until I start thinking about how I haven’t pooped in two days. Hmmm… how often are you supposed to poop anyway?

His voice gritty and rumbly, Goenka chants words in Hindi from a loudspeaker. At every pause, I think he is done, and then he continues with more phrases. Finally, after what seems like a decade, it ends…relief!!

Nope, he’s still going. What is this torture I’ve signed up for??

We move to the dining hall and swarm the buffet, piling food atop our plates. Meditation makes you hungry…who knew?

Later while exploring the grounds, I find a nice bench and watch the sun as it moves past the trees. I forgot about that… that the Earth is constantly in motion. How surreal.

That night I dreamt. A LOT. It was all lucid dreaming: places and people I knew from childhood.

Day 2

The bell rings at 4AM, and I’m up in an instant. Time for more meditation. I open the hall’s door cautiously and find a seat in the sparsely populated arena.

When I stop fidgeting someone else starts. The more I focus on the little space around my lip, the more I think I may need Botox after this. My eyes open to half-mast hoping no one will see as I peruse the rest of the gang.

Mouth Breather to my right and Acid Reflux to my left create a musical beat in my head. I can’t help but rock along, and I sail away into the story of ‘Vipassana The Musical’ where every bodily noise and yawn is a cacophony.

“Start again,” I hear Goenka say. Start again.

This may be my new password for everything – start again.

By lunch, my roommate has stripped the room of her belongings and has moved into a tent in the forest.

She must be rebelling because of the clock incident. How ruuude.

Back to the hall.

…

The Kardashians all have names that start with a K. I can’t keep up with them. What are their names? Well, there’s Kim, Kanye, no, that’s her husband, but how convenient, am I right?

“She take my moneeey, when I’m in neeed,” I sing in my head. “Now I ain’t sayin’ she a gold digger!”

Kanye becomes the soundtrack of my day.

Day 3

“She take my moneey, when I’m in neeeeed!!” Oh, Kanye.

Each day, fewer come to the hall for the early morning sit.

I keep my eyes closed: focus on my nose like the paparazzi on Angelina Jolie.

I like my nose. My mom and sisters have this nose. Ok, come back to the nose, not your family.

The time passes. The pain passes. The bell rings. I give myself a mental high five for being such a good student.

I drift slowly from the hall. It’s lovely out. I feel open and balanced. I’m finally getting this whole thing!

My phone rings in my pocket. Nope… just a passing bird. I meander down the path feeling amazing even though there is STILL no movement in my nether regions. Can constipation get you out of a meditation session?

Day 4

I use breakfast time for another walk. Desperate to hear the sound of any voice, even my own, I try out a few of my new jokes on the pine trees.

“Hey guys, thanks for comin’ out, although it looks like you haven’t gone anywhere in a while!” Ba Dum Tss… I’m pretty sure I laughed harder than they did. And… I’m obviously going insane.

Today we learn Vipassana, becoming aware of the sensations in other parts of our body and how to view it with non-attachment.

I ride a rollercoaster of craving and aversion, hating the person next to me and shopping on Amazon in my mind. And then, my brain gives up, she just lets it all go.

At night, I awake screaming. No one answers and I stand absolutely alone in the darkness. Wait… nope, still dreaming. “Hi, Dad,” I greet my father. I wake up with soft tears on my cheek.

Day 5

You know, it doesn’t matter how many cushions you put around your body, sitting on the floor hurts. My mind literally, is over it.

We learn to sweep the body rather than going bit by bit. We search for subtle sensations. I feel physically and emotionally great, then horrible to the point where I just bore myself with it.

Lunch is vegetarian tacos.

I decide that the best domestic terrorist idea is to feed a bunch of people beans then have them sit in a quiet, closed room. I leave the hall early if only to save the group from my “wind.”

Day 6

I notice a woman in one of the tents is moaning with sadness. I hear her cries for hours and wonder what could have happened to her.

I hear a man yell at another for sneezing too loud.

Day 7

Today there is one cushion under my bum. I tuck my knees under me, one either side of the cushion.

I equalize, balance, equalize. I scan, get distracted, start again.

This morning a man has a breakdown. He cries and exclaims and wanders around like he’s hallucinating. He’s taken out of the hall.

I open my eyes a bit. No one in the front row reacts. I close my eyes and return to breathing.

At lunch, I see a tree stump. I take colored stones and write a message, LOVE, and a little smiley face.

During a break, I see the words have changed to hope and the smile has turned to a sun.

Day 8

The man who had the breakdown leaves. The gates open up and swallow his retreating car. I can still hear the gravel under his tires, when…, “Another one bites the dust… And another one goes and another one goes, another one bites the dust!” I’m a horrible person for thinking these thoughts during silent meditation.

Start again.

Day 9

At lunch, the word on the tree stump reads “chance.” I make the c into a g. “Change.”

Day 10

We learn the final silent meditation – Metta. We offer love and happiness, forgiveness and balance, to ourselves and others.

We’re set free to speak, to go back to our lives. But instead of jumping for joy, I find myself sobbing like Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone when she uses the post-it stuck to the fridge that says, “Buy more tissues,” as a tissue. The episode passes, and all I can think to say is, “I’m exhausted.”

Every face held down by silence is revealed and they come alive with animation. I get to know their names and abandon the ones I nicknamed them. I was amazed at how their voices sounded and how similar our experiences were.

I made it. I hated and loved and let it all go. Free of spirit, my body was finally able to lighten its literal load too. Finally, sweet detached from my physical and mental torment, it was my last letting go…my final detachment. Now I’m ready to accept the ebbs and the flows.

Laurie Searle

Laurie Searle is an international yoga teacher leading workshops and trainings with Yoga and Fitness to Go and the Sphota Yoga school. She’s the creator of Lady Yoga, Superhero and F.E.D. Fight Eating Disorders, a 501(c)(3) in Los Angeles: YogaAndFitnessToGo.com.

Meet Lady Yoga and her Super Hero Wellness Team. Follow them on exciting adventures as they promote healthy living and well being. Learn fun easy ways to relax, stay fit and enjoy life. Watch out for their arch enemy Cookie Couch Man. The big meenie who tries to turn everyone into couch potatoes with his powers of persuasion.

www.YogaAndFitnessToGo.com

The post Vipassana: Deconstructing 10 Days of Silent Meditation appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Meditators at the SRF International Headquarters meditating in gardens open to the public. Photo courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship.

Excerpts from The Law of Success by Paramahansa Yogananda

Throughout his lifetime, Paramahansa Yogananda gave guidance on how to live a truly successful life—through the power of positive thinking, dynamic will, introspection, and meditation.

The Following are excerpts from his classic book, The Law of Success, to help start the New Year off with the clarity, courage and resolve to become what you want to be.

Paramahansa Yogananda Photo Courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship.

Your work in the world—in the sphere where your karma, your own past activity, has placed you—can be performed only by one person—yourself. And your work can be called a “success” only when in some way it serves your fellowman.

Don’t mentally review any problem constantly. Let it rest at times and it may work itself out; but see that you do not rest so long that your discrimination is lost. Rather, use these rest periods to go deep within the calm regions of your inner Self.

Mind is the creator of everything. You should therefore guide it to create only good. If you cling to a certain thought with dynamic will power, it finally assumes a tangible outward form. When you are able to employ your will always for constructive purposes, you become the controller of your destiny.

But you should always be sure, within the calm region of your inner Self, that what you want is right for you to have, and in accord with God’s purposes. You can then use all the force of your will to accomplish your object; keeping your mind, however, centered on the thought of God—the Source of all power and all accomplishment.

Learn to see God in all persons, of whatever race or creed. You will know what divine love is when you begin to feel your oneness with every human being, not before.

It is not your passing inspirations or brilliant ideas so much as your everyday mental habits that control your life. Habits of thought are mental magnets that draw to you certain things, people, and conditions.

Weaken a bad habit by avoiding everything that occasioned it or stimulated it, without concentrating upon it in your zeal to avoid it. Then divert your mind to some good habit and steadily cultivate it until it becomes a dependable part of you.

Until you are a true master, able to command yourself to do the things that you should do but may not want to do, you are not a free soul. In that power of self-control lies the seed of eternal freedom.

Attunement with the Divine Will is the most important factor in attracting success. Divine Will is the power that moves the cosmos and everything in it.

Since God is the source of all mental power, peace, and prosperity, do not will and act first, but contact God first. Thus you may harness your will and activity to achieve the highest goals.

Before embarking on important undertakings, sit quietly, calm your senses and thoughts, and meditate deeply. You will then be guided by the great creative power of Spirit. After that you should utilize all necessary material means to achieve your goal.

Happiness depends to some extent upon external conditions, but chiefly upon mental attitudes. In order to be happy one should have good health, a well-balanced mind, a prosperous life, the right work, a thankful heart, and, above all, wisdom or knowledge of God.

A strong determination to be happy will help you. Do not wait for circumstances to change, thinking falsely that in them lies the trouble. Do not make unhappiness a chronic habit, thereby affecting yourself and your associates. It is blessedness for yourself and others if you are happy. If you possess happiness you possess everything; to be happy is to be in tune with God. That power to be happy comes through meditation.

(Excerpts from The Law of Success Reprinted by permission. Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles, Calif., yogananda.org)

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

www.blissnetwork.com

The post Habits for Success and Happiness from Paramahansa Yogananda appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Why we Need Joy

Joy does not require a reason. When we let go of everything, what is left is pure joy. On a deep level we all know this, but many people have forgotten it. With the current pandemic, this wisdom has become buried even deeper. We can feel challenged and feel we need permission to be happy.

As we connect with our innate nature and feel the joy bubble up, an odd thing happens. We feel guilty for being happy. We see all the horrific things happening in the world and we might even be facing some personal challenges. Then through our spiritual practice, or even at a random moment, we experience joy. There’s no denying it, yet we feel like we don’t deserve to embrace the joy because of all that is happening.

In the early days of my spiritual path when I had begun to meditate every day, I would experience intense bliss. I couldn’t help but smile. This earned me some strange looks during my morning commute on the subway in New York City. At the morning office meeting, people would occasionally ask me, “Why are you so happy?” They would expect a story about how something wonderful had happened. I was in debt living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to survive in the Big Apple. There was no special event; I was simply happy. As my confidence grew, and if I was feeling snarky, I would reply with my own question: “Why are you not happy?”

Through daily meditation practice, I learned that joy is our natural state of being. We never need a reason to be happy, but whenever we are unhappy there’s always a cause. Several years later, when my body began collapsing due to a chronic illness, my theory was tested. Even as my body screamed in pain, if I held still and looked past the body and outer events taking place, the joy remained present. Twenty years later, it remains a weird experience to be aware of ecstasy in the midst of pain and sorrow. Yet I cannot deny the truth.

I know my findings are not unique. Buddha and many other spiritual teachers have discovered the same thing: we are not these fragile bodies and we are not the mind. What we truly are cannot be put into words, but when we strip away the conditioned responses of our mind, we are an expression of joy.

This is why I’ve written Unreasonable Joy: Awakening through Trikaya Buddhism. I created this guidebook to share my path. But more importantly, I want to remind people that joy does not require a reason. Sometimes we hold ourselves back and we need permission to let go. If you are waiting to be happy, please take this as permission to be happy and to allow your Unreasonable Joy to shine!

Our society holds the promise of joy out in front of us like a carrot on a stick. We’re told we can be happy when … when we finish our degree, when we land the high paying job, when we buy the house, when we find the perfect relationship, when we do something. But the truth is, joy is already here, now.

We’re taught to use the idea of future happiness as an incentive to work hard and be productive. What people don’t realize is we are much more effective when we are happy. We’re better at every aspect of life when we embrace joy.

Our minds are sharper and it’s easier to concentrate. We’re more creative and we can see solutions beyond the problems in our world. In a state of joy, we’re content yet we can still see areas of improvement. When we act from a place of joy, we’re more confident and can be honest in our relationships. Our communication is clearer and we see the benefit of helping others.

Think back to the last time you were really happy and remember how gracefully you were able to handle any issues you faced. We all know the truth of this, yet we still buy into the carrot and stick routine. This is the mental conditioning that keeps us in a state of suffering.

We’ve been sold a lie that if we’re happy, we will become lazy. Or even worse, we’ve been told people who express joy are fake.

Embracing our unreasonable joy does not mean we’re bouncing off the walls laughing – although sometimes that happens! Nor does it mean everything in our lives is sunshine and roses. Mostly there is a serene, quiet happiness permeating our being. We still struggle with challenges and we still feel all the human emotions.

There is a phenomenon I’ve seen of saccharine sweetness in the spiritual world. In some circles, there’s a whole lot of “stuffering” going on – where people stuff their feelings behind a wall of denial and silently suffer, all while forcing a smile. They pretend to be happy because they’re confused about what spiritual success means.

Be Real and Give Yourself Permission to Be Happy

On the Path, to be successful we need to be real. To reach our innate, unreasonable joy, we have to break through our mental conditioning. We cannot go around it or bury it. If we want to be free, we must be willing to face all that we are. This includes the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly parts of our being.

As we meditate and open the Pandora’s box of our mind, everything spills out. In the course of learning how to meditate, we learn concentration and control. We learn how to focus on a single point to the exclusion of everything else. But this is only the beginning. We then learn how to be still as thousands of thoughts and feelings pass through us. Through the fire of meditative practice, we discover how not to cling to any of it.

If we deny what we feel or what thoughts are parading through our mind, we wind up clinging to those very thoughts and feelings. They become a barrier between us and our true nature. Stories about who we think we are spring up. Justifications for our blocks drag us into suffering.

This is where our teacher and our spiritual community help us. By being brave and willing to admit where we are stuck, our companions provide a mirror. We can then see our hang ups and attachments with more clarity. They help us get a close look at the mental conditioning preventing us from experiencing our unreasonable joy.

The more internal baggage we release, the more compassionate we become. There’s no longer a need to be anyone special, or anyone at all. We are here, exploring this wild and wonderful world. We’re able to be fully present with those we encounter, without judgement or expectation. In this joyous state, we can respond to the suffering of others with genuine concern and care. We then become the mirror for others who are ready to be free.

I invite you to discover your own true nature and explore my new book Unreasonable Joy: Awakening through Trikaya Buddhism. You are also welcome to sit with me and the other teachers at Dharma Center of Trikaya Buddhism (www.dharmacenter.com) in San Diego and online.

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

www.blissnetwork.com

The post Permission to Be Happy appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Why Can’t I Get Myself to Meditate?

A common scenario I see is people who started a meditation practice, found it beneficial, and then for whatever reason they stop. When they try to return to a daily practice, they hit resistance. They ask: I know I feel great when I meditate, but why can’t I get myself to do it?

When we commit to a meditation practice, old layers of self shed, and we become something new. We enter an unknown world which causes us shift and change in sometimes unexpected and surprising ways. Trikaya Buddhism is the study of the mind and these changes.

There’s a part of us, sometimes called the critter brain, which craves continuity. This part of the ego will keep us stuck in painful patterns because they are familiar. To the critter brain, all that matters is survival. When faced with anything new and unknown, it will always choose the perceived safety of our current state of being. Even if we are completely miserable, the ego will throw up roadblocks to stop us from exploring the unknown.

We could try to use our will power to force ourselves to sit, but sooner or later, this method ends in failure. In order to truly overcome resistance, we need to accommodate our ego’s need for security. Initially this is about addressing the critter brain’s concerns. Eventually, we discover the Presence that is always here, beyond the turbulent waves of our mind and the world. In order to develop that awareness, we first must move past the struggle.

We can make this process easier and commit to meditation by asking ourselves some questions.

Is your meditation area and seat comfortable?

If your meditation seat is not comfortable, and especially if you experience increased pain when you sit, your brain will protect the body and distract you from sitting.

In a similar way, if your meditation looks more like a storage area than a sacred space, your ego will want to organize. It will look for ways to tame all the items surrounding you. If you don’t have a place to put these things and you’re not ready to let them go, the ego will react. Every time you think about sitting, there will be a low level of anxiety, so naturally it will find other things that it can control for you to focus on instead.

Start by claiming a dedicated meditation area.

This might be a corner in a room. Clean it thoroughly and use this space for only meditation. Place a few objects that remind you of your divine nature in the room.

Next select a comfortable seat.

Some people like sitting on a cushion, while others need more elevation with a chair or folded futon. Experiment with different options, sitting up with your back as straight as possible, until you find the support your body needs. You should be able to sit in a relaxed alert position, without your feet or legs falling asleep.

Is life too busy to fit in time for meditation?

It can be challenging to add a new habit to your life. A good strategy to build a daily practice is by connecting meditation to something you already do every day. Think about your routines and add 5 to 15 minutes of meditation to one of them, like sitting before you brush your teeth or after you get out of the shower. By adding meditation to an already established routine, it will feel like a natural extension instead of something forced.

When you sit, are uncomfortable feelings or thoughts arising?

As we sit on the meditation cushion, we recognize thoughts are passing phenomena. We ignore them and return to our focal point. But if a repressed thought pattern or emotion surfaces, our psyche will try to protect us by stopping us from engaging in the activity that triggers it, in this case meditation.

If this happens, carve out some time to contemplate and process what you are experiencing. This might look like sitting with a cup of tea and exploring those thoughts and feelings as you gaze out the window. Others find it helpful to write about them in a private journal. As you contemplate, you are not trying to figure anything out; rather you are looking at what is happening within your mind.

By taking the time to see the pattern clearly, a natural release will occur.

Your ego will feel safe, and you’ll be able to continue sitting in meditation each day.

To learn more about meditation and self-discovery, explore Unreasonable Joy: Awakening through Trikaya Buddhism or visit www.DharmaCenter.com

Felicia M. Tomasko

Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.

www.blissnetwork.com

The post How to Commit to Meditation Practice appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

We Can Prepare for Meditation to Support our Practice

In today’s world, amidst the hustle and bustle of everyday pressures and the nonstop digital universe, the idea of a regular meditation practice can seem daunting or even impossible. Let this be easy. Be gentle with yourself. Allow this to be part of how you prepare for meditation.

Set yourself up for success by preparing a sacred space to set the tone for your practice, and it’s helpful to establish some level of consistency. For some, that means taking time during their commute to meditate and journal. For others, that means sitting on the back porch early in the morning or meditating for a few minutes on the couch. Still others will have a sacred corner with an altar, a few candles, an image of Christ and a place to store your journal. Find a comfortable place, where you have enough privacy to go inward and are unlikely to be interrupted.

While a dedicated place to hold your practice can be very helpful, it is actually not necessary. As children of God, we are walking portals to the Divine, and the Kingdom of Heaven is within. Through us, the Spirit moved through the Earth, and an important part of the journey of individual spiritual development is learning to create a sacred path with our faith and reverence.

People all over the world choose to meditate in many ways, following a wide variety of recommendations. You may choose to sit cross-legged for your meditation or recline in your favorite chair. Some meditations ask you to hold your hands against your heart. Others will suggest holding your hands open in your lap or opening your eyes.

Relax and Focus on the Meditation

The most important thing is to be comfortable, awake, and relaxed. If that means meditating cross-legged on a cushion with your hands in a yogic mudra, or posture, so be it, but it’s not at all necessary. Regardless of your exact posture, the goal is to be focused on the meditation itself.

The brief time for your practice should be dedicated solely to your meditation. It is not the time to solve all of your problems. The miracle of the meditation often happens afterward, out in the world, while living our lives.

Meditations on Christ

Excerpted from Meditations on Christ: A 5-Minute Guided Journal for Christians by Benjamin W. Decker.

Ben Decker

Declared by Conscious Lifestyle Magazine as “one of the world’s leading meditation teachers,” Ben hosts popular classes, trainings, and events on meditation, social justice, and related studies at The Den Meditation, Wanderlust Hollywood, Divine Meditation, and Unplug Meditation.

Once praised by Forbes as a “legendary PR maven,” and “a shining example of the talent the philanthropic community needs to attract,” Benjamin W. Decker left a prolific career in Hollywood to dedicate his professional life to conscious activism.

He has worked closely with humanitarian organizations including anti-human trafficking organizations Unlikely Heroes & Saving Innocence, as well as Generosity.org, Children of the Night, the American Red Cross, and many others.

Decker is the Founding Executive Director of The Providence Project, President of the Board of The inerHEALTH Foundation, and Founding Spiritual Director of Full Circle Venice.

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You can Support Healing in Times of Quarantine and Radical Change

There’s a pandemic upon us. And I’m not just referring to the one everybody’s talking about. I’m referring to the quieter contagion that underscores it—one of anxiety, uncertainty, and transition. Whether you’re an essential worker who has had to transition into the chaos of high-demand services, an everyday employee who has had to transition to remote work, or an at-risk individual who has had to transition to complete and total isolation, you’re undergoing a change. When we go through times of change, we need to find ways to support healing.

In this period of more questions than answers, I turn to the East.

Understanding the East

As a Shamanic Practitioner and carrier of Eagle Medicine, the Native American Medicine Wheel plays a very meaningful place in my life. This Medicine Wheel consists of seven directions. These are: North, South, East, West, the Above, the Below, and the Self.

So, why have I chosen to focus on the East?

The sun rises in the East, bringing with it a new day and new possibilities. Thus, the East represents rebirth, new beginnings, and an invitation for personal growth. Opening our East Gate allows us to realize this potential and recognize our new beginnings. For me, this realization could not have come at a more transitionary time in my life.

Parashakti with Elder Wakia Un Manee (“Thunder He Walks”) after receiving Eagle feathers for completing East Gate teachings.

Moments of Sudden Changes in Direction

COVID-19 struck just as I was hitting a high in my career as a Movement Therapist and lifelong dancer. I was in New York, currently the country’s epicenter of infection, preparing to open the first-ever Conscious Dance Movement Division at Integral Yoga founded by Sri Swami Satchidananda.

And then, the music suddenly stopped.

In the midst of developing a program dedicated to connection, society forced self-isolation upon us all — with just cause, nonetheless.

Now, I find myself back in my Los Angeles home, quarantined with my Mom, whose flight back to her home in Tel Aviv was suspended in light of the pandemic. This situation alone has instilled new patience in me birthing an incredible new bond. Little did I know that after not living together for twenty-seven years my Mom has become my favorite flatmate. It is during this time fraught with forced acceptance, reacquaintance with familial ties, and self -reflection that an idea dawns on me.

New Beginnings in Times of Pause

I have been a facilitator of the Conscious Dance Movement for over 20 years, promoting the healing qualities of Dance for our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Now, I understand that the times – and my own recent experience – have called upon me to host an offering that delves deeper into the foundations of Eagle Medicine.

The Symbolic Meaning of the Eagle

Eagle Medicine channels the wise and majestic Spirit of the Eagle in an effort to help us achieve introspection and connection to the bigger picture. The Eagle is one of the most honored creatures in Native American tradition, and it’s believed that its high-gliding power allows it to be closer to the Creator.

When not perched in thought, the Eagle soars higher than any other bird, uncovering uncharted territories inaccessible to the human eye. Therefore, the Eagle represents the limitless depths of our Soul that we can uncover through the quiet examination of the self.

It is with the use of these principles of Eagle Medicine that I uncover a new beginning, one that I call The East Gate.

“I opened my East Gate about six months ago and I found love, intimacy, work, clients and a new career path,” says Danielle Rose, founder of LightsUp. “And then COVID hit. Everything changed. And now all the same things are happening again. This time, I go into the depths of beginning again. Without rushing, without judgement.”

Danielle Rose, founder of LightsUp, with her Winged Ones pendant.

This new practice consists of two elements: a sacred jewelry power object made of energetically-charged Labradorite stone, and a ceremonial journey that includes various meditations and daily rituals. These power objects, also known as “Winged Ones,” activate our sense of clarity, allowing us to better envision our new beginning.

Photo by Eric Allen. Close-up of Winged Ones pendant, handcrafted with energetically-charged Labradorite stone.

The Medicine in Regular Practice

“Such medicine is exactly what the collective needs most right now,” says Dr. Kristy Vanacore, a holistic healer and empowerment coach based in New York who recently participated in The East Gate program. “As I shift my focus inward, as we are all being asked to do—a collective ‘time-in,’ I call upon my guides to help me navigate these unprecedented global shifts with ease and grace. As I connect with the Winged Ones, the Eagle reminds me that I can fly above the storm.”

Dr. Kristy Vanacore with her Winged Ones pendant.

My Conscious Dance and Movement as Medicine practice has allowed me to engage in physical and mental healing for decades. Yet now I’m able to experience something deeper. I’m able to explore the power of spiritual healing with Eagle Medicine as the world collectively ails.

“Connecting to Eagle Medicine is a calling for a shift of perspective”, says Kai Karrel, a fellow spiritual teacher and Shamanic facilitator. “Connecting to a sacred talisman, such as the Eagle of Winged Ones, in relation to the meditative practices… allows us to remain centered within this storm. To raise and elevate and bring about a transformative quality to the way we see ourselves and our path ahead.”

Spiritual teacher and Shamanic facilitator Kai Karrel with his Winged Ones pendant.

Virtual Connections and Looking to the East to Support Healing

The new beginning of my East Gate offering is also compounded by the new normal of this virtual connection we’re all encountering. I, like most, have surrendered my practice to the internet. Perhaps it’s not what comes to mind when we think of a sacred space, yet these virtual meditations have allowed me to heal remotely — another new endeavor reminiscent of the qualities of the East.

Stepping into the East Gate

I invite individuals from all walks of life to practice opening their East Gate. It all begins with a simple meditation, in which they are called to Surrender to the Unknown.

Sign up to receive the Surrender into the Unknown Meditation.

We are all surrounded by the unknown today and accepting this uncertainty is key to settling into this new normal.

Setting Up the Meditation Practice

A clean, calm, sacred space is encouraged for this practice to support healing. Create this environment by cleansing with sage, placing a glass of water on your altar (or wherever you choose to do your meditation), lighting a candle with an intention or prayer for your practice, and asking yourself: What is it you are surrendering to?

“During this time of expansive change comes infinite possibility for the world we want to see,” says Executive Coach Heather Hanson, who participated in the program with husband and business partner Colby Wickman. “The Winged Ones could not have come at a more synchronistic time in our lives. Our shared vision of a world completely healed and whole requires tremendous courage, fearlessness, and… solitary flight — all characteristics of the Eagle’s medicine.”

Heather Hanson and Colby Wickman of Untethered Consulting after completing the East Gate program.

I acknowledge that this “new normal” has left many vulnerable. Healthcare workers and essential employees at the frontlines of the fight are not the only ones suffering. Those battling addictions and mental illness have also been left vulnerable by the chaos that currently encircles us.

Brian Beckmann

“As a Bank Manager and as a Spiritual seeker, I live in both worlds,” says Brian Beckmann, a Wells Fargo branch manager. “There is always noise and pressure in daily work. My spiritual practice of many years is dedicated to connecting and providing a platform for self-discovery with the people in a corporate environment. The East Gate program supports me in stepping into the sacred.”

Coping with Unusual Conditions

Opening ourselves up to the fear and uncertainty — whether through Conscious Dance, meditation, or other healing hobbies and rituals — may be the best way to cope in these unusual conditions and support healing.

“Most of us just want to find our way home,” says Antonia Montalvo. Antonio is a former Dance of Liberation participant, a recovering addict, and founder of numerous women’s sober living homes. “I found my soul’s purpose. I’m in my creative genius; I can breathe, I have faith, I have trust, and I’m able to move on and let go much faster.”

Antonia Montolvo, founder of the Antonia Maria Foundation, with her Winged Ones pendant.

It’s difficult to absorb the concept of surrender in a time that’s all about fighting. The fight against COVID-19. The fight toward effective treatments and widespread recovery. And the fight for a return to normalcy. In the midst of all that, we forget that surrender sometimes plays an important role too. After all, it’s when we surrender to the things that we cannot change that we often discover new beginnings. For me, not a day passes where I don’t surrender to the dance floor in my West Hollywood apartment.

“A very great vision is needed and the man who has it must follow it as the Eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.” – Crazy Horse

East Gate Program Offers

In light of the current pandemic, Parashakti is offering 50% off her East Gate Program and supplemental Winged Ones Power Object Pendant in order to support healing and make spiritual healing more accessible to those in need at this time. You can also join her at OneDanceTribe Global, an online Conscious Dance retreat, May 21 – 24. The online retreat consists of 25 live sessions hosted by a team of teachers from around the world.

A deep bow and wings of gratitude to Photographer Eric Allen for his incredible support and for capturing the divine essence of our latest Winged Ones design, “The Visionary.”

One Dance Tribe Global as a Source of Healing

Join Parashakti May 21 – 24 at OneDanceTribe Global 2020. This live online Conscious Dance Retreat features School Founders and Senior Teachers. Presenters will weave all sessions as one to explore transformation to support healing.

The Retreat will span over four days, cover all time zones and offer 25 sessions woven into one fabric. The format guides us through a deep transformational journey supporting what is happening in our inner and outer world at this moment in time.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to explore the new that is emerging from this global crisis and receive tools and inspiration for your life and work. Interact live with an amazing international team of senior teachers and connect with dancers from all over the world. All are welcome, no previous experience required. OneDanceTribeGlobal 2020.

Parashakti

Parashakti’s shamanic healing work is born of more than two decades of experience facilitating workshops, trainings, and retreats around the world, in Los Angeles, New York, Mexico, Bali, Guatemala, Indonesia, Israel, and Greece.  As a lifelong dancer, her path as a healer followed a severe injury – a period of what is often called shamanic dismantling, after which her mission shifted towards healing. Over the last 20 years, Parashakti has developed the Seven Foundations and the Dance of Liberation™, as maps for her spiritual practice, living and breathing these foundations in daily ritual. Dance of Liberation™ has been practiced by over 10,000 dancers around the globe. It’s was born of a mission to help people experience ecstasy – without taking it.
Above all, Parashakti is dedicated to serving community and creating a sacred container where people feel safe enough to experience their deepest essences, honor their voices, and shine their brightest light. Join her on the Dance floor: www.parashakti.org

parashakti.org/

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