Swami Ji, the OG

What is cultural appropriation? Cultural appropriation is defined as the process by which Intellectual property, artifacts, dance, clothing/fashion, language, music, food, religious symbols, medicine, wellness practices and more are used for purposes that were unintended by the original culture and may even be offensive to that culture. With yoga, this can often be seen through the adaptation of practices in ways that sterilize them for the West by stripping the spiritual aspects of the philosophy, by refusal to use Sanskrit words, or by removing the symbols or stories that exemplify the teaching. Another example of cultural appropriation is at the opposite extreme through the glamorization of yoga through commercialism and marketing. Within the modern Western yoga community, Om symbols, Sanskrit scriptures, and Hindu deities are emblazoned on clothing, yoga mats, and even as tattoos on practitioners’ bodies! After decades of involvement with a classical lineage of yoga, I have been accused of cultural appropriation. Indeed, I do have a Sanskrit name given to me by my guru in India. I use my legal name in my daily, worldly life. When teaching, I wear the orange clothing of being a swami. I wear regular clothing other times, though I do have a lot of orange clothes! When I teach, I use the Sanskrit terms, but I add the English equivalent until my students embrace the meaning. I have statues of a variety of deities within my living space. I also have many other artifacts and works of art from other cultures. I do not feel my choices involve cultural appropriation, rather I believe what I practice is cultural appreciation. As an American within a global community, what hasn’t come from another culture? To me cultural appreciation involves respectfully seeking to learn and understand while honoring the beliefs of others, giving credit to the culture from which information has come, and most importantly knowing the significance of what is being utilized. From the time of my first trip to India more than 40 years ago, I have felt a familiarity, a deep connection with the culture that far surpasses what I’ve felt when traveling to so many other countries around the world. And I believe that my involvement with yoga came from and continues to manifest from this place of deep connection and cultural appreciation. Rather than sanitizing yoga of symbols and stories that have arisen from the ancient culture of India, I appreciate them and use them to further illustrate the depth of the teachings. It’s also important to understand that because yoga is based on the science of living, the symbols and stories that have been associated with yoga are as “modern” now as they were in the past. The history of storytelling is a part of virtually all cultures as a learning tool to help us connect more fully with life and guide us to find our better self. In telling the stories we are offering easily remembered life lessons and this should not be confused with advocating for any religion. The stories help us better understand how the difficulties we face that are the same as those faced for eons across cultures and offer lessons that can improve self-awareness and self-efficacy. Today I will tell you one of my favorite stories. It is the story of Ganesh, one of the most popular deities both in the West and in India. Perhaps you have seen Ganesh? He is the elephant-headed, pot-bellied, eater of sweets! He is also the son of Shiva, who represents the universal consciousness and his consort Parvati, who represents the universal energy. These two forces underpin the entirety of the universe. Shiva liked to go out hunting with his hordes known as the Ganas. These were all sorts of beings that were frightening to be around but were true devotees to Shiva. When Shiva went out, Parvati enjoyed the quiet solitude by rubbing her body with turmeric paste and then bathing. However, Shiva knew this habit and often came home early just to annoy her as...

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

Is your life simple and easy? I believe it can be and for the last couple of years, I’ve challenged myself to create a life that is becoming simpler and easier. Prior to this time my life was so full it was overflowing, and it often left me drained to the point where I felt so weighted down that I could barely keep moving forward. In 2019, I was in the twenty second year of running a yoga center that employed about 16 staff members and served several hundred students per week. I was also the education director and president of the board of a nonprofit yoga academy, housed in the center’s premises, that provided a variety of in-depth courses and yoga teacher training. In addition to teaching many classes and these courses each week, I was often emotionally mired in the “dramas” of staff and students. I was working 10-12 hours per day, seven days a week. My only time off was to travel to Mexico to lead a yoga retreat or when I would take a group to India to connect with the ashram where my guru lives. I was approaching 70 and I felt as though I was doing more and more and enjoying life less and less. I needed a breakthrough before I broke down! I knew things had to change and that I was the only one who could change them. Wishful thinking wouldn’t work. I needed a plan. Now, three years later, I am feeling as though I am truly entering a new phase of my life that is becoming simple and easy. Today, I’m going to share some of my thought processes and actions that have brought me to this point. I believe they are consistently problematic for most people these days. Maybe they will be useful to you. First, I needed to find a way to shed my busy lifestyle. I had to find a way to let go of many of the things for which I was responsible. For most people, this process requires examining all of things we are doing-maybe write them out on a piece of paper to be face to face with them. Then highlight or check the ones that NEED to done, and ask yourself why and or how long? For example, for me, I spent many hours preparing and teaching yoga classes, workshops and trainings. Why? Because I had a dedicated group of students, my classes were well attended and because I didn’t pay myself for those classes, only taking a salary, they were the backbone of the center’s financial health. So yes, they needed to be done. Maybe for you, you spend a lot of time parenting. Why? Because you chose to be a parent and your children need your ongoing support. It needs to be done. Next question. For how long? Teaching at the center and the academy would need to continue unless I sold the center and stopped the academy’s coursework once the current courses finished. For you, the number of hours parenting will never end, but what changes will lead to fewer hours doing so? It’s not about knowing specifically when something will end but having an idea of the range and what will prevent it from happening is important to distinguish. You can then begin to plan and work toward making it happen. It’s important to know where you are going so you don’t get lost along the way! Do you ever think, “Why did I decide to do this?” Remember there was a decision to take on those responsibilities and it’s good to begin to look at the root reasons that you made that choice. Was it done out of a fear of loneliness? Was it done to prove yourself in some way? Was it done out of a sense of obligation? Maybe it was chosen to distract you from some other area of your life? Or maybe you are thinking no one can do it but you? It’s possible to be doing things because they are good things to do. No doubt about that. But overloading yourself, even if you have the superpowers of being well organized, dedicated, and good at multitasking, eventually will lead to some level of burnout that will affect your physical, mental, and spiritual health negatively. It is necessary to let go of some of the responsibilities to find the space in life where you can nourish yourself,...

A boundary is a limit or space between you and another person. It is a clear place where you begin and the other person ends, physically, mentally, energetically and spiritually. The purpose of setting a healthy boundary is, of course, to protect and take good care of yourself at all levels of being. Do you have unhealthy boundaries? Unhealthy boundaries involve a disregard for your own and/or others' values, wants, needs, and limits. Unhealthy boundaries can also lead to dysfunctional and potentially abusive relationships. I’m going to ask a few questions that will help you determine where you have weak boundaries or at least boundaries that need to be strengthened. As I go through these questions, be honest with your feelings-does the question resonate with you, or do you have that area covered? Do you really hate to “let people down?” This can be exemplified by feeling guilty by saying no, so you say yes; or you fear what someone will think of you for saying no; or you give away more of your time than you want, and this prevents you from having time for self-care? Or you are so rooted in being a “people pleaser” that interactions don’t necessarily make you feel guilty, but you find your mood is often underpinned by a level of anxiety with no obvious cause? Could it stem from a deep feeling of being rejected or abandoned? Does this sound familiar? How do you share your personal information? Those with unhealthy boundaries often “overshare” about their personal information in an attempt to impress the other person, or to make the other person feel special to know so much about you. However, being an open book can demonstrate to the other person that you are desperate to be liked or may not be trustworthy about personal information and with whom it is shared. Or you may not share at all. Sometimes this is because you you’ve been burned in the past, or you are afraid to let someone know you because you’re not sure you know yourself anymore. Does this sound familiar? How do your relationships play out in your life? Do you find that your relationships are fraught with drama? A lack of boundaries can signal others that you obviously don’t know how to take care of yourself This leaves you open to those who want to control you. This may result in codependent relationships or a feeling that you are giving a whole lot more than you are receiving from the relationship. You begin to feel a lack of respect, so you try harder to be “nice” and to make the other person happy. I want to tell you that you are not responsible for creating happiness in any other person! Does this sound familiar? Do you sometimes feel you’re being “used?” Manipulators seek people to use for their benefit, and many have learned how to flatter you, give you what you want with the goal of taking it back later. Whenever you begin to feel that you are being used, you probably are! This may result in depression, anxiety, or a feeling of exhaustion from suppressing feelings of inadequacy and/or resentment. Inadequacy can present as an inability to make life decisions; or you feel like you must try harder to “earn” respect by being extra nice; or you fear speaking up or disagreeing with the other person. This inadequacy can lead to a sense of victimhood. Your life feels out of balance, and you no longer feel that you know what you need from life. Your dreams and life’s purpose feel inaccessible, and a part of you may even believe that you didn’t deserve them anyway. At this point resentment begins to build, and you may start blaming others for your feelings. This is a way of not facing up to the fact that you didn’t set a boundary, but you have given away your power to set a boundary with the other person. Resentment may show up as unexplained anger over small things. You’re angry that it’s raining when you expected sun – a metaphor for looking at things that are not in your control but are making you angry. It may show up as passive aggressive...

When we feel we are losing our balance we grab hold of something to feel secure and to prevent falling. This is a normal reaction to be able to maintain our physical balance and hopefully prevent pain. At that moment of uncertainty, that moment of being out of balance, we would think it strange if someone told us to “just let go.” But what about our mental balance? What are we grabbing hold of to feel secure? And are we holding on to hopefully prevent the mental and emotional pains? In the ancient text, the Yoga Sutras, within the very first few sutras we are told that it is possible to manage the mind. We are given the information about just five different thought patterns that disturb the mind that take us away from balance and the methods to reign them in. These five thought patterns are said to create vrittis, or whirlpools within the conscious mind and prevent us from seeing our true essence. I’ve always loved the definition of vrittis as whirlpools. I used to do some river rafting and the rough waters of rapids there are sometimes “holes” as rafters call them. This is where water flowing over a rock or other obstacle flows down, then back onto itself in an eruption of whitewater. It creates a whirlpool circling around and around and if a raft goes into one, it can trap that nice buoyant raft and pull it down under the water! Now when the Yoga Sutras were written over two thousand years ago, this metaphor didn’t exist. I don’t think there was that sort of river rafting going on. But every time I think about the thought patterns being a whirlpool, this metaphor works for me. I know how often I get stuck in the different patterns of my thinking and how I’ve been pulled down under the water many, many times. In river rafting, one must be alert and aware to manage the river flowing around the “holes” that will become a trap. In the same way, in yoga, one must also be alert and aware to manage the thoughts flowing that can entrap us, so that we can access the knowledge of our true nature, that aspect of who we are beyond how we present in the world. We identify with our thoughts, our vrittis. The Yoga Sutras say that if you can find a way to stop identifying with them, you will “rest” or “abide” in your own true essence. I love the commentaries that use the word rest. It implies a time after working, or a sense of being rather than doing. A time when it might be possible to stop the mental battles, to put down the variety of masks we wear in the world, to find a point of balance within the mind that actually exists-and “rest” there. The five vrittis, or thought patterns are: These are the whirlpools that keep us from reaching that point of balance where we can “rest.” Let’s take each one and briefly discuss it, but first I want to say that each of these has both positive and negative qualities within them. It’s not about that-the good or bad-it’s about seeing them for what they are. To be able to understand the full spectrum of what each means as it plays out in your life, and by then finding the space between seeing each and the reaction to it. You might believe that right knowledge doesn’t belong in the list. After all, isn’t yoga with its teachings a form of right knowledge? Isn’t studying to learn anything that helps us be a productive and positive member of society good? Well, yes. That can be toward one end of the spectrum, but what about overindulging in knowledge-such as being a professional student who uses schooling as an escape? Or being fanatical that your knowledge is somehow better than someone else’s? The knowledge itself might not be bad but the ego-driven use of it puts it at the other end of the spectrum. Regardless, the knowledge creates patterns of thought that may take you away from your inner knowing. What about wrong knowledge? Again, it depends on what it is and how it’s applied. Perhaps you were brought up to believe that no one could love you because you were raised in an unloving family....

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

When you think or hear about the word discipline what comes up for you? “Oh, I wish I had more of it,” or “I don’t have time for discipline,” or even “did I do something wrong?” The last implying that the word discipline is a form of punishment. Today we are going to discuss our misperceptions about discipline, its importance, and how we can improve our discipline to be more successful in our lives. Let’s start with the dictionary definitions. 1) the practice of training people to obey rules using punishment to correct disobedience or 2) a branch of knowledge, typically one studied in higher education. Both of these definitions imply that discipline is a learned behavior. It’s not something we are born with although we may think it is, especially if we grew up in an environment that lacked discipline. But remember that so much of who we are is established in those first years of life. If we were surrounded by people who were undisciplined or only used discipline as a form of punishment, that’s what we learned. Another definition comes at the very beginning of the Yoga Sutras, one of the major texts of yoga psychology and philosophy. In Sanskrit it is, “Atha yogah anushasanam” which means “now yoga is to be understood as a form of discipline.” In yoga, this concept of discipline can be further explained as the ability to govern the subtle processes of one’s personality. In other words, it’s a process to know the subconscious patterns that manifest as our personality and how to be in charge of how they play out in the world. It is not something that is meant to be imposed from the outside. Rather it is developing the ability to see ourselves at a deeper level, to understand where undesirable behaviors come from, and to create a more appropriate response to the world around us that will result in a more harmonious, healthy, and successful life. As my guru has said, “We tend to identify with the weaknesses rather the strengths of our character. This promotes won’t power – I won’t do that, I can’t do that, rather than will power – I will do that. We need to reduce the weak and limiting characteristics of our personality and develop the positive and creative characteristics. Yoga is what will lift you up and guide you.” True discipline must come from within even though it may be influenced by the world around us. So how do we reduce those influences and find the inner strength and will to feel disciplined? Let’s start by assessing where you are according to the Yoga Sutras and how they define the stages of mind. In the Yoga Sutras there are five stages of mind: 1) Dull – mired in ‘darkness’ meaning full of negativity and stuck in the patterns so deeply that there’s no desire to change; 2) Dissipated – some ‘light’ peeks in, meaning the darkness is pretty consuming but there is an awakening to the possibility of some change might be a good thing; 3) Oscillating – action rotates with inaction, and this is where most of us find ourselves – we try to make a change toward a goal and then we slip back into our old patterns – we try something again or something different and then we slip again – we oscillate; 4) One-pointedness – focus without dissipation, this is where we begin to truly develop discipline – we have a goal, we know the self-sabotaging behaviors, we have the energy and will to stick to the plan; 5) Controlled – balanced with discernment – at this point discipline is a natural part of who we are! If you are listening to this podcast, I’m assuming that you are in the oscillating stage of the mind. You are interested in finding a different way of being in the world. You’re a searcher, and that’s a great attribute! But you may also find that your goals are hard to achieve, that you may think that others must have something that you don’t have? Well, I’m here to tell you that you have everything you need inside of you – now the work begins as to how it can be accessed! Let’s start with 5 keysys to begin the work in...

Today I will discuss the inevitability of change, why we find it difficult, how change and growth go hand in hand, the importance of having goals, and to welcome change! WHEW! That’s a lot to think about! And all of those thoughts are also part of the mechanism that keeps us “stuck” where we are and resisting changes. It has often been said that the only constant is life is change! Yet most of us find it difficult to change, especially when it takes us away from our routine, our conditioned ways of thinking. In actuality we’ve been changing our whole lives! Some of the changes may have seems “natural” but at the time, we may not have realized just how difficult they were. When we were you young, the world was new to us. We needed to make changes to explore who we were and how we were meant to fit into the world around us. It was the openness to the possibility of failing that helped us get our hands and knees under our bodies so that we could crawl! It was the lack of fear that prompted us to take our first steps and falling so many times before we could totter around. It was the desire to move in different ways that helped us try out some dance steps, climb onto a bicycle, to figure out swimming, to put on skates, or maybe skis. And we grew from all of these experiences and couldn’t wait to reach a certain stage of life to experience more changes. I remember when I learned to drive our speed boat and pull others on water skis when I was 12. I remember turning 16 and learning how to drive the car, and yes it was on a manual shift. To this day, I remember lying in bed at night visualizing the steps of pushing in the clutch, other foot on the brake, starting the car, putting it into gear while simultaneously moving from the brake to press on the gas as I slowly lifted the other foot off the clutch and continuing the process of getting to the “right” gear with increasing speed. At what age did we start to resist the changes that would bring so much growth and freedom? When did we become so resistant to change and where did that resistance come from? As we grow older, we usually turn our awareness to the world around us, seeking affirmation from outside and we often lose touch with our need for self-acceptance and self-empowerment. We live our lives based on a lifetime of conditioning by our families, our schools, our belief systems, our friends and work associates. I’ve come up with 8 common reasons that might help identify the thought distortions that keep you stuck! I recall in 1997 when I decided to leave the profession of anesthesia and open a holistic health center that ultimately became a yoga center. Any one of these thought distortions could have stopped me. So, I keep using this word “stuck” and it’s really the force that keeps us from being all that we can be. In yoga, it’s called tamas. According to yoga philosophy, there are only three qualities that make up all of the universe in varying proportions. These are tamas, rajas and sattwa. They exist in everything, including each of us. Tamas is defined as inertia, darkness, depression, immobility, rigidity, stability. stillness. Stuck! Rajas is movement, dynamism, ego, passion. It’s rajas that can help us get unstuck! To move forward, to take chances and to possibly reach the third guna…sattwa. Sattwa is balance, luminosity, goodness, harmony. Most people live in this world fluctuating from tamas to rajas and back to tamas. We might have glimpses of sattwa but it is hard to achieve without considerable self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-actualization and developing the power to leave past conditioning in the past and welcome change as an opportunity for growth regardless of potential outcomes. Yoga can be the medium through which this process begins. Not the workout style of yoga as is often practiced in the West, rather the classical version of yoga whereby the physical practices are used to develop more inner awareness. It is this inner awareness that...

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

Some think of it as endurance, but when I think of endurance, I think it means the power of enduring an unpleasant or difficult process without giving up. Or fortitude? Fortitude is courage in the face of pain or adversity. Indeed, both of these words can be a part of resilience, but don’t thoroughly encompass the whole concept. Resilience is the ability to bounce back quickly from difficult situations and actually thrive when faced with challenging circumstances! Some ways of thinking about resilience includes being tough, quick to recover, buoyant, irrepressible, adaptable, flexible and can’t be kept down. How many of these are physical and how many mental traits? Some are physical, but most are mental traits, don’t you think? Our inner resilience is a part of who we are and is a trait that we can strengthen, cultivate and build upon! Let’s discuss how yoga practices can help cultivate this quality! First, let’s examine how the autonomic nervous system influences our adaptability. This division of the nervous system is made up of two branches, the sympathetic known as the fight or flight system, and the parasympathetic known as the rest and digest system. These two branches are meant to be in balance to bring about health and mental equilibrium. But what happens when we face some sort of stress? If you are resilient, stress is a normal part of life and managed, but if not, then it can be detrimental. Stress stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight response. If not readily managed, it can result in higher-than-normal heart rates, blood pressure, digestive disorders, build of blood sugars from the liver and more. If the stressor continues, these effects become chronic and the longer-term adaptation kicks in with secretion of your body’s hormones that conserve fat around the abdomen, chronic inflammation of the tissues, irritability with others, insomnia, and potential maladaptive behaviors such as substance abuse. Yoga builds resilience in the body and mind by introducing small amounts of stress in a controlled scenario. Think about free divers who swim without the aid of snorkels or scuba gear and can actually hold their breath for more than 10 minutes. They trained by holding their breath for longer and longer periods of time, stressing their brain’s respiratory center by small increasing amounts of CO2. CO2 is what stimulates us to breathe. Rarely is it due to low oxygen levels. But another aspect of this adaptation is the ability to “turn down” the sympathetic system which allows the parasympathetic nervous system to create a more relaxes state. And because of some of these hormones, you can become addicted to overworking and/or overdoing! Recently there have been many articles written about yoga and the vagus nerve which is a major player in the parasympathetic system. The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve. It contains motor and sensory fibers and because it passes from the brain through the neck and thorax to the abdomen, has the widest distribution in the body. In yoga we utilize a variety of techniques that strengthen the conductivity of this nerve-guided relaxations, meditation and breathing practices. We’ll discuss more about these shortly. Having discussed some of the physical factors that are important to building resilience, next let’s look at our energy or “prana” as we call it in yoga. Actually, prana is more than just energy. It is our “life force” and is required for all actions, physical and mental. Obviously, the more physically active we are, the more energy that is utilized but moderate physical activity, like yoga and walking, is an important contributor to overall health and wellbeing. Our mental energy becomes depleted when we have too many unnecessary actions. Think about what activities you have done over the past couple of days. How many were necessary? How many were out of a need for distraction from feelings such as boredom, anxiety, envy, wanting validation,...

Welcome to Season 3 of SwamiJi the OG. It’s the beginning of a New Year and today I’ll discuss how to move forward into 2022 with a sense of purpose and potentiality. I keep hearing so many people wishing each other a Happy New Year with a thin layer of hope but often with an undercurrent of dread, adding, “After all it can’t get any worse!” Yes, we are still immersed in the Covid pandemic, but rather than continually talking about things “getting back to normal” it’s time to realize that the concept of what is “normal” is always changing and the lessons we are meant to learn are essential to our progress and evolution as humans. After all, what has been “normal” in the past would not be considered “normal” anymore. For example, at one time, bloodletting was a medical procedure that was normal, owning another human being was normal, child labor was normal, women existed only to please their mate and have babies was normal – I’m sure you can think of many less dramatic examples. Sending letters instead of emails? Phoning instead of texting or zooming, even just showing up to visit with someone in person? If you notice even these “antiquated” ideas of “normal” are still “normal” in some parts of the world! It’s important to remember that normalcy has to do with our own culture, our own family, our own job – all of the world that exists around us and our perspective of that world determines our perception of “normal.” What makes us believe a situation is normal or not normal? From a physical view, pain is abnormal. It makes us take notice that something is not right. It’s the body’s signal to reevaluate. Physical pain gets our attention. Energetically, overwhelming fatigue is abnormal. When we feel it, we take notice that we didn’t sleep well, or we have overextended our physical capacity in some way. Our inability to respond to our daily activities gets our attention. But when we feel mental distress, we are more inclined to look outside ourselves, our own patterns and behaviors, and try to find the answer by searching for what the world is doing to us. But in the same way as physical and energetic pain, when we feel mental distress, we should realize that we need to look at our patterns and behaviors because we have NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION! Instead, we are seeking comfort to release us from our discomfort. We are seeking to return to our comfort zone. Or at least how we remember our comfort zone. In our remembrance we are nostalgic for comfort, or at least the parts of our lives that didn’t trigger discomfort. Nostalgia is “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.” We tend to almost romanticize our previous experiences. We look back with rose tinted glasses. But what we remember as “normal” might not be what our neighbor was experiencing. What we are seeking is that return to comfort, and we seek feedback from others to confirm our perspective. Remember when we……(insert memory such as didn’t have to wear masks or keep social distance.) Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with seeking a certain level of comfort, but it’s important to realize that comfort can be like rocking ourselves to sleep. We can lose touch with our deeper needs. We can lose touch with the needs of others. And we can stop “growing” the capacity of resilience that we may need in the future. My point is that life is constantly changing and in flux. The term in physics is entropy which can be applied to life. Entropy is simply a measure of random disorder and affects all aspects of our daily lives. Left unchecked random disorder increases over time. Energy disperses, and systems may dissolve into chaos. And when this happens, we may find that we are unprepared. True growth as a human does not normally happen when one only exists in one’s comfort zone. It’s the challenges, the chaos that awakens us from our slumber and forces us to develop new ways of looking at...

This year has been filled with challenges! Never one to turn my back on challenges, I have used this time to sort out many feelings, many less than optimal relationships, and many goals. It has made me stronger. It has made me more intentional. And it has allowed me to have more space to find the person I want to become moving forward. Over the past couple of decades, my whole focus was creating a yoga studio and a nonprofit yoga academy. To create more options for people to incorporate the healing practices of yoga into their lives, I created and taught more classes, more courses, did more travel…more and more and more. And because the work was never ending, the demands of others never ceasing, I found myself letting go of more and more of the "normal" activities of life and was essentially swallowed up by the work seven days a week. As I got closer and closer to my 70th birthday, I knew I didn't want to go into the next decade of my life continuing down this path. I put that energy out into the universe. I meditated on letting go of it all. I put out the intention to move on and I really felt it could happen. But only if I worked toward it. I reached out to other teachers in the community who had a long history of teaching, searching for someone who might be interested. And someone came forward. Another intention that I made was to help the new owner maintain the student base and continue to teach regular classes for at least a year. The pandemic has made this a considerable challenge for yoga studios and many have closed. Our student base has mastered online classes and attendance remains steady with new students taking the place of the normal attrition The third intention I set was to get healthier. This summer I realized that any semblance of normal would not be likely before another year or so. I ordered a treadmill. I made some long overdue healthcare appointments. I began to eat and sleep on a regular schedule, eating tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, eliminating most sugar, and bought a sleep machine that plays delta waves to get into deeper sleep patterns. I’m losing weight and sleeping sounder. So why am I telling you all this? Because the concept of living with intention is SO important. Instead of letting life happen to you, take on life with renewed determination. Here are 5 ways to start. I encourage you to live with intention in 2021. Don’t make a New Year’s resolution that will probably last a few weeks and then go by the wayside. Living with intention requires action, ongoing commitment and patience. Happy New Year! This episode concludes the second season of my podcast. In my own need to live with intention in 2021, I will be taking some time off from creating this podcast and spend time creating short yoga courses and developing one on one yogic coaching. I hope you will stay in touch. Please go to my website, swamiatmarupa.com and sign up for my newsletter to learn more about upcoming ways we can remain connected. Or you can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @SwamiAtmarupa. My intention is to start another season of this podcast later next year. Thank you for listening!

On New Year’s Day of 2020, I taught a yoga workshop called Perfecting Your Vision in 2020! And yes, the pun of perfect vision being 2020 was intentional! In this workshop I talked about the necessity of self-study. In the yoga sutras, self-study is called swadyaya and is one of the 5 codes of personal conduct. It is through self-study that we experience the nature of the self, who we are, what we are, what we are trying to do, how we are trying to do it. Not as an intellectual concept, but as an understanding at a cellular, primal level. I never dreamed that I would have so many opportunities in 2020 to engage in self-study!! Not only to gain a better understanding of who I am, what I am, what I am trying to do and how I am trying to do it, but I have also had many opportunities to study how I faced, and continue to face, some pretty significant challenges during 2020. Early in the year, I sold my yoga center that I ran for 23 years. That transfer of ownership occurred two weeks into the pandemic shut down in Ohio. Instead of spending the last couple of weeks enjoying the conclusion to my hard work and transitioning to simply teaching a few classes per week for the new owner, I was swallowed up by chaos. I had to close and transfer all classes to the virtual reality of online teaching. Hours and hours each day were spent orienting everyone involved to running a virtual yoga business instead of a brick and mortar. The transition process for the new owner became a “shared screen” experience rather than in person. The party students had planned for my retirement had to be online. Now don’t get me wrong. Many people had many more challenges and far more difficulties than I did. I’m not feeling sorry for myself. My point is that we never know what’s waiting around the corner. We frequently have plans and imagine how they are going to be actualized, but then when that time comes, the reality does not even resemble our expectations. It then becomes an opportunity for self-study. A time to watch reactions and feelings. A time to truly evaluate likes and dislikes. A time to be grateful for the simple things in life. As the curve flattened, and we began to ease back into our lives a bit, I found I was enjoying more time at home. I was enjoying more time alone. I was enjoying more time to be who I am. Who I truly am. Not who I was running a small business seven days a week for 23 years and all that entails. I was rediscovering parts of me that had been placed aside for safe keeping and now I was enjoying bringing them out of hiding and holding them near. But time keeps marching on, on through the elections, on through the divisiveness and into a place of suffering. The pandemic curve that was flattened is now spiking upward at a record-breaking pace. One million new cases in the last 5 days. The first million took 100 days from January into April. As I am recording this, 2 people are dying of Covid-19 every minute! Every minute! Someone’s loved one is dying every 30 seconds! And they are dying in isolation without the comfort of family or friends. I am upset. As an anesthetist for 25 years, I not only did anesthesia for surgery, but I was responsible for putting tubes into people that needed a ventilator. I can’t imagine what it is like to be in the thick of it providing healthcare these days. My heart is breaking! It is breaking for those who are dying and for those healthcare providers who are risking their lives, working endless hours, isolating from their own families, and doing whatever they can to ease the suffering of those in their care. And yet some claim this is a hoax. Some feel their freedom is being taken away if they are required to wear a mask and follow public health guidelines. Some are mounting an anti-vaccine campaign based on nonscientific propaganda. In the meantime, people are dying. People are out of work. People are waiting in lines for food like they did during the great depression. People are about to...

You may think that I am going to talk about becoming a swami, but I’m not. If you want to know that story, then look back through previous podcast to “What it means to be a swami and the journey I took to become one.” Today I’m going to talk about who I am as a person, approaching 70 years of age, and share some of my life challenges that shaped my life. When we have life challenges, especially as a child, they form what we call “samskaras” in yoga. Samskaras are patterns of thinking and behaving that become quite automatic, because they are buried in the subconscious and unconscious mind. We may not realize how these samskaras continue to exert their influence over the years. We may remember the challenge we faced, but we often think, “well this thing happened, but it happened when I was a child and now I’m grown and I’ve put it behind me.” It’s not that simple. It has actually created a neurological pathway where the mental energy flows without awareness when presented with any similar situation. Depending on its strength, the subconscious mind might even be looking for the opportunity to release that flow of mental energy because it is conditioning and familiarity. It reinforces who we are. When I was eight years old, I had several changes in my home and school life. My only brother went away to college and my only sister got married. Because my brother was going to a private college, my mother took on a fulltime job to help pay his tuition. I suddenly became somewhat of an only child who walked home from school to find an empty house with a list of chores to do until my parents came home. At a very early age, I learned how to make dinner, iron clothing and clean the house. I lived in a rural area in an extremely small village of less than a hundred people. Doing the chores didn’t really bother me so much because there really weren’t very many other kids to play with anyway. Besides my cousin, a boy, there was another girl that would sometimes agree to play with me if I didn’t tell anyone. You see I was the subject of bullying at school and this girl didn’t want others to think she was my friend. How this happened was that when I was in second grade, it was decided that I should skip ahead and finish the year in third grade. I was big for my age and quite smart. I was not consulted about this decision that I recall. So, I ended up doing two grades in one academic year. The problem was, in this rural school, each grade had about 20 kids with all 12 grades in one building. There was no chance for anonymity. It seemed like I was suddenly an outcast. The kids who were in the lower grade didn’t want to be my friends anymore, and the kids in the new grade began to ridicule me calling me a baby. This got worse as I continued to excel in my academic performance. I remember the one girl whose mother was a schoolteacher in the same building decided to lead the campaign against me. And because her mother was a teacher at the school, kids were eager to follow her lead because she was what we called, the teacher’s pet. Now it’s important to remember this was around 1959. Bullying was up close and personal, not through social media. I remember being taunted on the playground nearly every day during recess. One day it was so bad that I went to the restroom and locked the door to the stall and pulled my feet up and hid rather than go back to class where others would see that I had been crying. Over then next several years, I continued to be subjected to bullying. I remember decorating brown lunch bags to hang on the chalk tray for other students to put in those silly little valentines on Valentine’s Day. I don’t remember getting a single one. I was rarely invited to anyone’s birthday party. I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings. When I would try to talk to my mom, she would say, “oh don’t worry they are just jealous of you.” What was wrong with me? Why wasn’t I liked? Then in seventh grade we moved to another state and I...

In this podcast I will be talking briefly about the classical codes of conduct prescribed by the Yoga Sutras and then we will delve into more modern lifestyle practices that are greatly needed in our world today. In Classical Yoga, we study the Yoga Sutras and the eight limbs of Patanjali’s yoga or Raja yoga, the royal yoga! These are: Yamas – codes of social conduct Niyamas – codes of personal conduct Asanas – the poses of yoga Pranayama – the breathing practices that enhance our life force Pratyahara – withdrawing the awareness from the sensorial world Dharana – being able to concentrate and focus Dhyana – the state of meditation whereby the concentration is extended Samadhi – merging of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness The idea here is that we must first work on ourselves through the practice of the codes of conduct or we will continue to have disturbing mental turmoil that will prevent us from moving into the internal practices. In other words, the mind will always be thinking about every little detail of our external life – all of the feelings, the conversations, the play of our ego, our likes and dislikes – it will remain unsettled and unable to tap into the internal sense of peace and wholeness that exists in each of us. The five yamas ask us to avoid harming others or ourselves, lying, stealing, wasting energy, and possessiveness. The five niyamas ask us to live a clean life, to value contentment, to know our needs and not exceed them, to engage in self-study and connect with inspiration, and to surrender to something greater than ourselves. These are all quite lofty goals, but it is said that if you can embody even one of them fully it will lead you into the rest. Just one. But in modern yoga practice we actually see that most people concentrate on the physical practices, the asanas. Maybe some engage in some breathing and meditation practices, but it seems to me that most are looking to yoga as something to be done on the mat or the meditation cushion for a specific period of time and hoping it will improve their daily lives. And it does to a certain extent. Practitioners may feel better in their bodies, have more energy and feel calmer after practicing – these are all good things. Don’t get me wrong. This spectrum of yoga participation serves its purpose. But if you want to be less reactive to life’s challenges, to feel more connected to the world around you, to evolve your consciousness and be the best version of you that you can be in this lifetime, then you will need to take yoga off the mat and into your life more. You will need to make yoga your lifestyle. Over the last few years, the Bihar School of Yoga in India has been emphasizing a set of six Lifestyle Yamas and Niyamas to support bringing yoga more fully into daily life. Given the worldwide pandemic and the political upheaval within the US, today I will be discussing the lifestyle yama and niyama of forgiveness and respect. This pair is especially useful in dealing with anger and there seems to be an epidemic of anger. Not just political anger, but anger that our lives have been turned upside down by the pandemic. Anger that we can’t do everything we want to do. Let’s start with forgiveness. How forgiving are you? Give yourself a ranking of 0-5 whereby 5 is the most forgiving. Now can you bring to mind some time in the past when you needed to practice forgiveness. Can you do it? Even as you recall it now, what feeling comes up inside of you? Sadness, hurt, anger? And as you recall this, how do you feel about the other person? Are your thoughts negative? To truly forgive means to let go of feelings of resentment, anger or hurt. Are you still holding on to those feelings? Sometimes we are masochistic about forgiveness. We are stuck in our pattern of suffering. It seems to be a pattern of human behavior that we are more likely to dwell on the negative in our lives than the positive. Think about your daily...

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

I have a confession. I love chanting. The chanting of mantras resonates in my soul. I often feel when I am chanting that I have been chanting for endless lifetimes. There is such a feeling of connectedness to some primal power that allows me to get out of my head. To let go of my intellect and bathe in the vibration of sound. Today I will tell you what mantras are and tell you about one of my favorites. The word mantra comes from the root words “man” meaning mind and “tra” meaning liberation. Mantra then means “to liberate the mind from bondage.” And what is that bondage? That bondage is the incessant rumination of thoughts, our negative patterns of behavior, our egos and more. With mantras, it’s about the sound, the vibration. Simple mantras may be purely sound with no meaning other than the vibration. More complex mantras may have so much meaning that the vibration is an encapsulation of that meaning in a way that vibrates our psychic centers “feel” the meaning on a deeper level of awareness without having to “think” about the meaning. So, mantras can be a single word, such as the universal mantra “Om.” Or mantras can be pages long. But, when chanting a mantra the awareness is meant to embrace the vibration and not worry about the meaning. Sound is vibration. And sound is powerful. Think fingernails on a blackboard. Yikes! Even thinking about that sound makes my skin crawl! Sound is powerful. Ultrasound can penetrate your body and yield pictures of what's going on inside. Highly focused sound waves can shatter a kidney stone! The sound of certain music can bring tears to your eyes. Sounds genuinely penetrate all layers of our being. One of my favorite mantras is called the Shanti Path which means the “course of peace”. It contains eight phrases and when it is chanted in my tradition another mantra with four more phrases that “liberates from death” is added at the end. This combination gives us guidance on how to lead a meaningful life and how to let it go when the time comes. I will include a phonetic transliteration of each Sanskrit phrase that you can access in this episode’s notes if you are interested. The first line is Asato maa sadgamaya – means lead me from ignorance to truth. The word “sat” means truth. Not your idea of the truth or my idea of the truth, but what is the greater truth of existence, of living? The truth that applies to all beings. That truth. The big truth. The truth of existence. Of humanity. Tamaso maa jyotirgamaya – means lead me from darkness to light. If you’ve listened to recent podcasts you might remember the word tamas? Tamas refers to one of the three qualities of life the are a part of, and make up, everything in existence. These qualities fluctuate continuously. Tamas is the quality of darkness, ignorance, depression, but also stability and steadiness. We need a little tamas, but when it predominates, then we slide into that darkness. A Jyoti is a divine light, a powerful form of illumination. We are chanting to remove our darkness, our shadow self, and to bring out our light, our luminosity. Mrityor maa amritam gamaya – means lead me from death to immortality. This is not so much about the death of this physical body, but to become more fully connect with our eternal soul. To nurture that spiritual aspect of our being. These first three lines are ways that we as individuals can become a more positive force in the world. The next five are about our connection with the lives of all beings and acknowledging what are meant to be our common goals. Sarveshaam svastir bhavatu – means may all beings be successful. We are wishing for all levels of success. To have do good works, to prosper, to have the love and support of family and friends. Sarveshaam shantir bhavatu – means may all beings have peace. We use the word peace to translate shanti, but what we often think of as peace is the absence of conflict in the world around us. Broadening our understanding of the word peace, we need to...

I don’t know about you, but I feel like there is far too much negativity these days. Don’t get me wrong, there are many things to be negative about. After all, we are in the middle of a pandemic that is poorly managed in this country and we are dealing with all of the associated issues. There’s political unrest and demonstrations related to current politics and the elections. Conspiracy theories have moved from the fringes to the mainstream. It seems endless. How do we manage? How can we bring more positivity into our lives and the lives of others? First, we need to understand that negativity is a default setting to protect us, to help us survive in a dangerous world. From the earliest times, paying attention to bad, dangerous, and negative threats in the world was literally a matter of life and death. Those who were more attuned to danger were more likely to survive which means they were also more likely to hand down the genes that made them more attentive to danger. And remembering those negative thoughts creates a framework where new situations are first perceived from a negativity bias. These days, we might not need to be on constant high alert as our early ancestors needed to be in order to survive, but the negativity bias still plays a starring role in how our brains operate. Studies have shown that more areas of the brain are involved in dealing with negative situations than positive ones. In one study, pictures of people with positive, negative and neutral expressions were shown to participants. Negative images showed a much stronger response. Another study involved showing study participants pictures of people with a variety of expressions, but this study offered either a cold, icy drink or a hot, steamy drink to the participants while they waited for the study to begin. Those who waited with the cold drink in their hands, then rated a higher percentage of facial expressions as negative versus those who had waited with a hot drink. The participates did not know that the study was looking at the effect of sensations on how the results would be influenced. This implies that our level of comfort, will influence how we perceive the world around us. The researchers demonstrated that having cold hands (which most of us would consider negative) would create more negative judgments when someone began to push the buttons than those with warm hands. They created a negative condition that yielded negativity. So, what conditions our responses? If something as simple as whether we are holding a cold or hot cup of liquids can shape how we react, what about all of those other factors that rise up out of our subconscious minds? From a yogic perspective, we react due to our conditioning. We are conditioned by our samskaras, or patterns, that decide your thoughts, behavior, perceptions, understandings, expressions, reactions, basically everything. Our strongest samskaras are created from the negative experiences of our lives and therefore, we are prone to respond negatively. Psychologists call this negativity bias. Think about that happy little baby that responds to positive facial expressions and your silly baby voice. But research suggests that negativity bias actually starts to emerge in infancy near the age of one. Brain studies indicate that around this time, babies begin to experience greater brain responses to negative stimuli. And as our brains develop and we accumulate more experiences in our lives, that negativity bias is strengthened. We find that negative comments carry far more weight than positive ones. When we need to evaluate a possible decision, we tend to look at the bad things that could happen before we evaluate the positives. Even though we may say that we are looking at the Pros and Cons, I’m betting that you might start with one pro and then immediately go to the cons. When I’ve mentored student yoga teachers, sitting in on their teaching, at the end of the class I ask them what did you do well, and most...

Last week I talked about your comfort zone and the need to re-examine it based on the philosophy and psychology of yoga in relation to the sense of security mediated via mooladhara, the root chakra. Today, I will be talking about the chakra of happiness. Just to remind you that the chakras are energy centers within us. They are not a part of the anatomy that can be seen with the eyes. You can’t dissect out a chakra and examine it. However, it’s interesting to note that each of the chakras is located in the physical body near a major endocrine gland and nerve complex. It’s the endocrine and nervous systems that help regulate bodily functions and not just from a physical perspective. In fact, the endocrine and nervous systems influence us on many different levels, physical, energetic, and mental. So when the ancient yogis delineated the chakras and their locations, they had an understanding that each of these areas of the body greatly influences us. This week we will explore the effects of the next chakra, swadhisthana. Swa means “one’s own” and adhisthana means “dwelling place” so swadhistana is the basis of our individual human existence. It is said that this chakra is associated with the unconscious mind with its storehouse of impressions from our actions during this life and that govern our individual responses to life as we live it now. Unlike mooladhara where we seek security and may seek pleasure as a means to acquire security, here we seek pleasure because it just makes us feels good! Swadhisthana looks for the sensorial pleasures based on one’s samskaras or patterns of behavior that become the default, patterned behavior that helps us respond to the world around us. The whole world is viewed according to the amount of pleasure it yields. Basically, this is the chakra that is most predominantly functioning in today’s world. Again, there are degrees of how this manifests from one person’s life to the other. To briefly review the continuum of the gunas, the qualities of existence, you will be able to see where you fall on that spectrum to have insight into managing your desires. At the dark end of the spectrum is tamas, the sense of inertia, ignorance, stuckness. At the light end of the spectrum is sattwa, the quality of balance, purity, and luminosity. And to move from tamas to sattwa, in the middle is rajas, the quality of dynamism, action, but also ego. Considering the gunas let’s look at this spectrum as it relates to swadhistana. Since this chakra is about pleasure, then if tamas predominates, there is no pleasure – one is stuck in darkness. This results in a lack of motivation, depression, and even suicidal thinking. There may be inappropriate feelings of guilt and pessimism. Addictions may happen in an effort to elevate this darkness and find pleasure, which, of course is only temporary leaving one unfulfilled and results in the cycle beginning again. Generally speaking, this person needs professional help along with support from any friends or family. The likelihood is that this person won’t come to a yoga class or listen to this podcast or do anything that will help them move forward because they don’t believe they deserve to feel better. Now, many of us have periods where tamas is influencing our lives. We experience sadness, boredom, and loneliness. There is more action, but it may be over-action in an effort to be happy. Overeating, overdrinking, overspending, indulging in sex only for one’s personal pleasure. Not caring about how others feel about these actions. Becoming more fully established in rajas, there is more optimism and drive as long as things are moving along smoothly. All good things still come from outside oneself, but there is humor and a desire for fun. As the light of sattwa begins to shine into swadhisthana, one becomes more interested in others, kinder, and less self-absorbed. They are considerate of others, contented, and happy. Continuing further into sattwa, this person lights...

We are creatures of comfort. When we feel comfortable, a feeling of security and contentment is engendered. Because we like feeling this way, we spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to stay in that comfort zone and feel threatened when we are pushed out of it as is happening during this time when we are living through a pandemic, with a layer of political and social unrest on top of it all. Today, I will discuss why we feel so threatened based on the yoga perspective of chakra theory. ……. Let me take a few minutes to help you understand what the chakras truly are. The word chakra means ‘wheel’ and each one is an energy vortex that is somewhat of a ‘meeting point’ for the different aspects, the different layers, of our being. Each chakra influences, and is influenced by, the physical, energetic, mental, wisdom and spiritual dimensions of who we are. I want to make it clear that your chakras are all functioning, or ‘open’ despite what you may have heard or read in what I have to refer to as rather new age teachings. No chakra is ‘closed’ or ‘blocked’. The question actually becomes how the chakra is functioning - poorly, normally, or optimally. It’s really a matter of degree – a continuum – and that function slides along the continuum. As an example, consider your eyes. If your vision is poor, you can’t see well, and especially as a child, you may not even realize there’s a better way to see until someone tests you. Maybe you become aware there is a weakness of vision and you take the action of getting glasses that allow you to see normally and this correction becomes second nature. Now imagine that you could ‘see’ beyond that – to ‘see’ or discriminate more of what is truth. Perhaps realizing that at our core we are all connected and all subject to the same fears and goals. And this level of seeing results in more understanding, compassion and humility. It is at this point that you are seeing optimally! So, it’s not a matter of the chakras being open or closed. It’s a matter of where their function falls along the continuum of darkness to luminosity. In yoga we call this continuum that ‘gunas’ or the qualities of nature. There are only three gunas but there are various shades emerging from one to the other in the same way as different colors emerge as one overtakes the other. I’ll give a brief primer on the gunas. Tamas is at the dark end of the spectrum and represents depression, inertia, stuckness. Rajas is in the middle and represents dynamism, movement, ego. And Sattwa is at the other end of the spectrum with balance and luminosity. These gunas are always shifting a bit from one direction to the other depending on our lives – our conditioned behaviors, our associations, our karmas, our lifestyle. But generally speaking, the vast majority of people are mainly tamasic with some rajas. In other words, most of us are acting without much awareness and as a result of how we were raised. But this will vary depending on the chakra discussed because you may be predominantly rajas in a couple and more tamasic in others. So now coming back to the discussion of the chakras and re-examining our comfort zone, I will explain how these gunas play out for the chakra most associated with our comfort zone – mooladhara. Moola means ‘root’ and ‘adhara’ means foundation. Our need for security, to feel comfort, is primarily held within this root chakra. To as certain extent, the chakras align with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow was a psychologist and a bit of a philosopher who laid out a series of levels that are required for self-actualization. Maslow delineated the most important needs to be met first are those that relate to survival – food, water, warmth, rest, safety, security. In yoga this is also the first level, the first main chakra, the foundation chakra of mooladhara. It is also the root of fear when these needs aren’t met because this foundation, this root chakra is about security on all levels. It’s about...