Brighter Days

Bill Kirby kicked me in the pants to write a new blog. So here I am, checking in with my blog readers. I have been writing on yoga... writing and rewriting, so although you have not had anything new to read here, ...it's happening!

How are you doing with the darker, shorter days? Maybe I'll see you on the trails. Get out! Especially if you can catch a few rays - those rare moments when the sun shines. Imagine what it's like in Alaska! Speaking of Alaska, the way things look right now, I'll be here in Wisconsin for the winter - in Alaska all summer - home in November. We got a job editing a video for a salmon fishing business on Kodiak Island and will be out there filming next summer! Except for the week or two when I'll be flying back to Wisconsin to see my new grandbaby - due June 28!!!

My days, in addition to my time spent writing, are filled with preparations for the holidays and studies. I am studying photoshop and several programs for creating soundtracks (one of my jobs). I am having so much fun! We had an interesting year with our new video business. Last night we finished off the year filming the Danny Mitchell concert at Frame Memorial. Fantastic!

My November retreat was wonderful. I've come to call them love fests because when people spend concentrated time peeling off the layers of ego-defense, the love shines through brighter than ever! If you have not been able to attend, there will be another in April. I'll post it on the web soon.

Out of Time

Hello Everyone!
I'm back in Wisconsin and preparing enthusiastically for the yoga retreat coming up in a couple of weeks. If you don't know about it, check my website www.smilingyogi.com for information. In pulling my notes together for the retreat, I ran across a journal entry from just before I left for Montana. I thought I'd share it with you here.

From my journal: August 12, 2009
I sit here in my yoga space, settling in for my morning practices. It is August and the windows are wide and open and already the day is abuzz with traffic - ground and air, bikes, pedestrians, birds, dogs, all the sounds of a new day. Within those sounds all around them and supporting them is a spaciousness, an expansive, open aliveness. Shifting my awareness to THAT instantly awakens my senses to take in even more, subtler sounds.

The morning air is fresh and alive with the perfume of lilies and sunflowers, galardia and hosta blossoms. The lavender is lush and vibrant outside my window and the hummers frequent my little garden - best buffet in the neighborhood. I've always tried to have fresh flowers in my yoga space - especially in my studios. Flowers are a little piece of heaven. Nature's finest art work. They have a way of catching one's attention and then doing their work on the entire nervous system, soothing and relaxing it with pleasing color and texture, curling, dancing, swaying shapes and a perfume to transport the soul out of exile directly tothe here and now instantaneously.

A typical class at my studio ran 1 1/2 hours so I wanted to do everything I could to set up a space that would bring people quickly to a more present state. I hoped they could walk in the door, or even approach the building, or even remember the space and instantaneously move to a less guarded, more relaxed, open and aware state of Being. An hour and a half is not much time to undo a day's or a week's or a lifetime's accumulation of thinking and stressing about life's circumstances. I often longed to have more time to do more in-depth sessions. Now my studio is gone and my typical class length is a weekend long. Funny thing. I still long for a bigger chunk of time. My classes typically have about 20 participants. There are questions and requests enough to fill a full week - easily.

When I took my first yoga teacher training - the month-long program at Kripalu, time was my biggest challenge. I had a hard time finding out how to be in the spacious, timeless presence I needed to be in to teach, and still keep an eye on the clock so the classes would have a predictable beginning and ending. In the twenty years prior to that training, my practices and studies seemed to remove the element of time - I felt outside of time or somehow beyond it. For many years, my practice fit comfortably into a three hour block I carved for it from 5 - 8 am.

Mind your business

In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna tells Arjuna: "It is better to do your own work badly than to perfectly do anothers; you are safe from harm when you do what you should be doing." It is easy to get lost in this. What is your own work? Where does your work leave off and someone else's begin? When contemplating the wisdom here, look beyond the usual interpretation of "work" meaning merely livelihood. Look closer at all your work - including but not limited to your daily tasks and jobs. Consider also, work such as self-study, personal growth and spiritual work. Observe your words, your reactivity, your critical and judgmental thoughts and your everyday deeds and conversations as well. It may surprise you to discover how quickly a conversation can turn to a commentary on someone else's business - someone who is not even present and did not ask for help or guidance. How helpful is that? How often do you feel you have an answer to someone else's problems? If they only ate this way or dressed that way or if they acted the way you think they should, relaxed more or worked harder, then we could all be happy and we wouldn't have these problems!

But that is not the teaching we find here. Each of us has enough work of our own to do without worrying about what others are up to, or what they may be thinking about what we are doing. I observe my own tendencies to want to correct something or fix it for someone else by offering unsolicited advice about what they should do or to even do things for them. How much more effective it might be simply to be present for them, and to give them the reflective room to figure out their own solutions! At those moments, I like to take a step back and ask if what I am about to say or do is welcomed, or is it really going to help? Is this something I am doing to win the approval of someone, or to make myself more comfortable with someone's difficult situation? I ask myself what I can learn from observing without interfering. I ask myself if there is a teaching in it somewhere for me. In Byron Katie's work, she has us ask "whose business is this, yours, mine or God's?" If we stay in our business, we are, as Krishna says, "safe from harm". We avoid the feeling of being taken advantage of, or feeling 'put out' because we've taken on someone else's responsibilities when we shouldn't have. We avoid speaking foolishly or hurtfully and possibly causing harm where it wasn't intended. Trust in the great unfolding of life. It is hard to know what someone else might need to learn for their greater development. We have enough to do just figuring out our own lessons! Beyond that, be simple, be beautiful, be LOVE and it'll all work out.

Be still and know...

In order to be fully present for something or for someone, you need to come empty. It doesn't help you to listen well if you bring all your preferences and opinions with you. If you are already full of knowing, you cannot learn new things. You will not be able to hear or receive new information.

Practicing silence is a powerful way to begin the study of deep listening. Observing your own auto pilot responses (the way you would be responding if you were not in silence) can be shocking and all revealing. Remain the witness without getting critical and without censoring and you will be able to see more and more of your own opinions and judgments and how those personal thoughts get in the way of Sat (Truth). Truth is always present but it becomes obscured with our "take" on things.

Contracting/Expanding

Notice your words, everyday, every moment - what do you choose to speak about? What words do you use? Are you speaking about your troubles? Are you speaking of your fears, inadequacies or your lack? Are you telling others what is wrong with them? Are you jabbing at the, cutting and criticizing them? Right now, you can turn that around. Don't feed your investments in unhappiness any longer. Simply notice that its there and don't give it any more of your awareness or attention. And certainly don't feed it by dwelling there. Notice it and then look around and notice everything else as well.

Actually, notice as many different things as you can. Let your field of vision and awareness expand. For example, if you are angry about something that just happened, notice what your mind makes it mean, or how the event is interpreted. Then notice how your body responds, and notice your breath. Then notice the sounds in and around the room you are in. Feel the energy of the area you are in, the village, state, country, planet, cosmos... and so on.

The field of vision tends to narrow around the things we give the most attention to. If you insist on obsessing over a wrong done to you or something you said that you now regret you only serve to bind yourself tighter with the ropes of unhappiness. I call that a contraction. When you release your desire to dwell there and willingly open to awareness, I call that expansion of consciousness. The more you do it, the easier it gets and the freer and lighter and more joyful you become.

When I look around myself and realize that all I see are all the things that are wrong with others and situations, and I feel grumbly and judgmental and critical about the world or about myself, I know I am in a contracted state and before I make any quick decisions, I need to get quiet and free myself up from all the thinking that holds me hostage. I sit still and quiet. Anyone can benefit from time outs, in the same way a child does when sent to his room after a temper tantrum. You don't have to wait until you feel contracted to benefit. Actually a regular dose is the best medicine for the world.

Listening and Understanding

I hear a lot of people complaining that they aren't being heard - at work, in relationships, and at home. If everyone in this situation would use the experience as an opportunity to hone their own listening skills, the world would be a lot quieter, more peaceful and more understanding. You can learn to listen more completely than you ever thought possible. As you sit quietly in meditation, listen to sounds in and around the room you are in. Without judgment, listen to your own thoughts, your fears and dreams, and listen to your heart. Listen without any need to change anything or even to hear anything. Listen with acceptance and patience. Even when what you hear is a desire to jump up and get busy again. Eckhart Tolle tells of one teacher who, when asked, said he learned the incredible stillness that he emanated by watching a cat watching a mouse hole. Try to stay that still and attentive, alert, but also at ease. When you learn to listen to yourself with that much awareness, you will move into your day feeling nurtured all the way to your soul. You will feel less needy or dependent on others to behave in a certain way in order for you to feel happy. Then you will be able to learn to listen that deeply to others. Be reserved in your speech so you can quiet your mind enough to listen, to really listen to others. Listen without thinking about what you will say next, without judging, without criticizing. This will have a profound effect on your relationships and on your life.

Truth

Sat means the ultimate truth, the unchangeable, completely undistorted, timeless truth that is beyond space and individuality. It refers to Truth as the infinite, all-pervading vastness that is the substance of your being. All actions, words, ideas and wisdom that take you closer to this truth are a part of the practice of Satya.

In her excellent book “The Zen of Listening”, Rebecca Shafir shared an interesting twist on the word compassion. She said “compassion does not mean pity or sympathy; it means getting a sense of the other person’s frustration. Com means “to connect with” and passion means “suffering”. True compassion begins with compassion for yourself. I have come to think of listening, deep listening, as a very direct path to yoga; a cut-to-the-chase direct path to self-realization. The state of meditation is one of listening without action: without a doer who is listening. It has been said that praying is when you talk to God and Meditation is when you listen. Practicing silence is a powerful way to begin the study of deep listening. Observing your own autopilot responses, the way you would be responding if you were not in silence, can be shocking and all-revealing. Remain the witness without getting critical and without censoring and you will be able to see more and more of your own opinions and judgments and how those “personal” thoughts get in the way of SAT. Truth is always present but it becomes obscured with our “take” on things.

I love the work of Byron Katie (www.thework.com) for finding your way to truth. She takes a whack-upside-the-head approach to recognizing how the mind colors events to make them fit with the story line and create all kinds of unnecessary suffering. Those interpretations hold us hostage to our story and block us from the liberation of SAT. Of your complaint, your statement of “truth” she instructs you to ask first, is that true? If your answer is yes, then her second question is “are you sure that your statement is 100% true?” She is asking you to look again to see how your “true” statements frequently are more or less subjective truths, meaning, what is true in your own mind, according to your interpretations, desires and past experience. A person has to be willing to see clearly and willing to lay down the sword and shield to do this kind of work. You have to be ready for honesty and humility at a level you may not have experienced before. It is very common for people to get defensive doing work with Byron Katie but if you are open and honest and willing to release your hold on a limited view, and willing to release a need to be “right”, then truth is revealed and it is so brilliant that you will want to throw your head back and laugh and cry at the same time. You will start to behave in strange ways, seeking out people who may find a hidden button for you and push that button so you can do “the work” and find that sweetness that comes with the release. Liberation is, well, it’s liberating!

Support and Inspiration

I cannot even imagine my early days of practicing yoga without the inspired reading material I was taking in. I read the Bhagavad Gita, The yoga Sutras, Autobiography of a Yogi, Miracle of Love and a large collection of books on the teachings of Ramana Maharshi. Those words filled me with awe and reverence for Presence, Truth and Consciousness. Study of the yogic teachings and scriptures is essential for fueling a practice that will last. Otherwise your life is tugging you in every other possible direction and it is easy to get lost, to forget why you came, to give up the practice in lieu of a dream world of your own making.

The other thing I did a lot was I kept a journal and in it I wrote quotes from the books I was reading, along with questions and epiphanies I had. I also took the liberty to color, draw, scribble or otherwise add design to my journal pages. Today there is no shortage of great yogic writings online and in bookstores and magazines. My favorite website these days is Stillness Speaks. Check it out. There you will find my teacher Francis Lucille along with other great teachers of consciousness. You can see videos and read words of wisdom there. But don’t forget the classic greats like the yoga sutras. Even if you don’t fully understand them, read them. I have read them many times because each time I do, my understanding is entirely different than it had been a year or two prior so I am able to digest and utilize that much more of it. But in order for that to happen, you have to start. Then you can create your own collection of words of wisdom gleaned from books, videos and your own epiphanies.

Emptiness

In the 17 years I’ve been teaching yoga, the most common complaint I’ve heard is that it seems impossible to develop and stick with a yoga practice. The main reason for that is that it seems people have filled their lives to capacity and perhaps a little beyond, to just shy of a breaking point – so that life is lived in a super stressed-out, high anxiety, push and shove sort of way, cramming as much as possible into every day, spreading one life very thinly over as broad an area as possible. It seems there is some kind of nobility or honor in MORE: doing more, having more, taking on more, accomplishing more, knowing more, talking more, collecting more stuff, more friends, more responsibilities, more demands, more problems, more music, more work. What most people seem to crave is more time, more peace and calm, more centering, more relaxing, more joy. But the move to fill every corner of space and time continues. Tapas (austerity, intensity) invites us to empty out. “Austerity”, in this sense, refers not to extreme austerities but of living simply. Clearing out your mind, your heart, your garage, your closets, your clutter, your calendar to make room for yoga – for a more affirming lifestyle, that is the intention behind tapas. If you’ve ever spent a day or even a few hours cleaning an over-stuffed closet or a garage full of junk, you know the wonderful feeling you get when the job is complete. All joking about the backache aside, there is normally a surge of energy that comes after emptying out a space or organizing a room or closet. Everything you have takes energy. Just sitting in a room with your stuff takes energy. You are seeing it. You have to look through it to find the stuff you are looking for. You have to clean around it. It is in your space. Start to discriminate about what you invite into your space. Just because you received it for a gift doesn’t mean you have to look at it for the next 20 years. Sometimes I use things like that (gifts) in a more seasonal way; bringing them out at certain times of the year, in memory of the giver, in celebration. That way I can rotate some of the things I have. If you want to invite yoga into your life, and you find you are struggling to keep your practice, try to clear out a place for it, and I don’t mean a small corner of a table filled with junk. I mean CLEAR OUT the riff raff. Otherwise, you are filling your life with a gesture that essentially says that what you really want to invest in is STUFF, BUSYNESS, WORLDLY PURSUITS.

You always start where you are. Look around. You can start anywhere – any little gesture of releasing, of clearing, will have its affect on you. Go ahead and try it. You will start to enjoy it so much you will want to keep going. That’s a good thing because tapas is not something you just do once and it is done. Like every aspect of yoga practice, it will become an ongoing part of your life – looking around to see what needs your attention. Shoveling STUFF out the back door as fast as you can, watching in amazement as it continues its march into your life, right through the front door! We live in the land of abundance – the land of plenty. There is no shortage of STUFF. Actually, some of the poorest people I’ve known in the USA have the largest piles of stuff. So if you want to make room for true prosperity and wealth of the most lasting kind, simplify your life. Start now and continue regularly to observe everything, including the flow of thought and feeling. What you take in, not only food and beverages, but also ideas, images, books and magazines, movies, videos, TV programs, it all becomes a part of you. And just like everything else, it can move you in the direction of peace and truth, of awareness and understanding or away from it. It can help you to understand and thrive, or it can add to the proverbial clutter of mind, emotion, and environment. Learn to discriminate. Learn to listen quietly, to watch, to see, and to say no thank you. This is not selfishness. This is managing your energy so you are not drained or distracted. It carves you out so you can be more fully alive, more fully present, much more available than ever before. It carves you out so, like a fine violin, you will resonate with beautiful vibrations.

Mindful Speaking

“There is only one decision you need to make: either you are working at your freedom or you are accepting your bondage.”
Robert Adams

Some of the habitual actions and thoughts you have each day are only adding to the coat of illusion you are wearing. How do you start your day? What are your activities and what are your thoughts and what are the first words to come from your mouth? Make them beautiful. Make your morning ritual beautiful by listening to something inspirational or something beautiful, or by simply moving into a meditative mind set whereby you observe your thoughts and feelings in an objective fashion and choose your first words with care. Say something loving and beautiful to someone. Or if you find yourself alone when you arise, then let your internal dialog be one of encouragement and support. Even if you have an inner (or outer) critic who abuses you first thing, still, find some goodness to comment on as well. At Kripalu, where I took my first yoga teacher training, that practice was built into the programs. Each time we had our practice teach, before we received any comments from our peers, we were to share our own experience with the group. First, we shared what we felt our strengths were in the practice teach, then we shared where we saw our teaching “edge”, or where we felt most challenged. It was a great feature of their program and it taught me to be able to find good even when things might seem to have turned out disastrous. It also helped me to recognize my inner critic’s voice in a more objective light, become my own best advocate and to see myself with a more balanced eye. It is a practice that helps to keep me grounded in reality, as opposed to being lost and confused in self-criticism and judgments.

So when you start your day, start it out by aligning with the way you want to feel. If you have a habit of grumbling first thing about what’s wrong, change your habit to one of offering words of love and praise, and give voice to what’s RIGHT, regardless of what others around you are saying. That way you set the stage for a day of beauty and joy. Then, at day’s end, you might decide to try a Kripalu-style evaluation where you first go over your day with an eye for what went right, where your strengths lie, and any little ways you made the world a better place. Then you might also notice, with the same objective mind, areas where you will want to practice being more mindful and aware of your words, actions, and intentions. I enjoy ending my day with a note of gratitude. No matter what your circumstance, there is always something to give thanks for: possessions, friendships, opportunities, skills, experiences, and even hardships (they, too, have their gifts).

Happiness

When you take the time to settle into the silence regularly, and listen deeply, you will begin to realize that your happiness is not dependent on outside forces. You will begin to develop a relationship with Life as it unfolds, a relationship firmly grounded in reality (as opposed to fantasy created in the mind about the way you think it should be or the way you want it to be or even the way you perceive it to be). You will no longer feel that you can be happy only when everyone around you acts the way you want them to, or only when the weather is just so and all your planets line up perfectly. Ramana Maharshi once put it this way: “Trying to change the world without first changing yourself is like trying to cover the whole world with leather to avoid walking on stones and thorns. It is much easier to wear sandals.”
In your meditation, accept all things: thoughts, feelings, memories; all things with equanimity. This is the practice of vairagya. Abhyasa and vairagya – practice and equanimity - work together to keep your sails moving with the wind in a way that moves you effortlessly toward freedom. To practice equanimity is to see the world without opinion and preference. Whether the room is too hot or too cold, too noisy or too stuffy, practice sitting quietly without needing to change everything to suit your needs. Increase your comfort level by accepting life, and all of its ups and downs, with equanimity. Soon you will discover that you feel more content with the world, with yourself and with others. You will expand your awareness and acceptance of other ideas, and other ways of seeing things. From that place of real understanding you can make a difference in the world. You can act from a place of clarity and wisdom instead of reacting out of habit or fear.

Don’t worry that you will turn into a door mat with this practice. Quite the contrary. If you are acting on auto-pilot, and auto-reactions, then you are already more of a door mat than you might realize. Without the practice of vairagya, you are at the mercy of your desires, you are being held prisoner by your own opinions and preferences, so that if things aren’t exactly comfortable, you aren’t exactly happy or content. If you merely change your surroundings to suit your preferences, it is like being in prison and putting up a picture of beauty. Nice, but the prison is still there. So it is with your judgments, preferences, desires, criticisms and opinions; unless you are able to observe yourself beyond them, you will always be held captive by them. The stronger you hold on to them, the more intense they get and the more you suffer. Learn to find beauty everywhere... at least, practice being neutral in difficult situations. When you aren’t wasting energy spouting off, complaining, blaming or otherwise expressing your opinions, you are able to see more, hear more, observe more (in yourself and your surroundings). You are also more likely to move through the situation in a logical, systematic way, one obvious step at a time. Less flailing about, less damage done. Listen to yourself. Be willing to lay aside all your preferences, opinions and ideas of how things SHOULD be in lieu of being present in the world AS IT IS. This is vairagya, the practice of equanimity. It can be practiced continually and it won’t take away your preferences or your ability to change things for the better in the world. It will merely be freeing you from the bondage of your unconscious thought patterns. It will be freeing up more of your energy to do your work in a more efficient manner. In other words you will not be all wrapped up in angst when things don’t go the way you desire them to go. For you, happiness will be a steady state of consciousness free from the events around you. You will feel a deeper, fuller quality of grief, of joy, of richness in your life, because you will always be grounded in reality, in truth, in light and in love.

Remembering

If yoga is to settle the mind into silence – to still the busyness of the mind so that you can know your true nature, then to practice yoga, in any form, is to remember that and return to the stillness, the interior silence moment to moment. The Sanskrit word Abhyasa means practice, and the practice is to renew your commitment many times each day. How will you remember to do this? When we had the yoga studio, just walking into the space was enough to put you into a very peaceful, quiet interior space. You walked in and you could feel all the jumbled up tensions, thoughts and feelings of the day dropping away as you prepared your space. Maybe you perched yourself near some plants or flowers and settled in to the relaxed atmosphere there. If you participated in classes at the yoga studio, at any of the three studios we had in that 15 year span, then you have a piece of the studio inside you. You participated in creating the amazing sense of expansion and peace that was so easily felt in that space. Let your life be an expression of what you care about and what you love. Let yourself be surrounded by the things that inspire and support your highest aspirations. You may keep an object in your car, to remind you each time you enter it, of your commitment to Presence. Some people like to begin their meditation with japa; the repetition of a mantra, usually with the use of mala beads. Having the beads to carry with you throughout the day can be a lovely tactile reminder to remain steady in awareness and not get caught in the dramas within or around you.

Create altars, and spaces of beauty to remind you and support you in your new commitment. You can use anything that reminds you to keep your mind and heart open: a picture of your teacher or loved ones, a picture of a person in meditation or in a yoga posture, or objects from nature. A simple, clean and serene setting in a corner of your living room might do it for you. You might begin by de-cluttering a space you see daily. And while you’re at it, you could also set up a little space for meditation. I have often marveled at how here in the US, most people have their living room furniture arranged around a TV set, as if it were some holy altar that they must pay homage to daily – many times each day, or even continuously. Is that the altar you want to invest in? Make little statements all over in your life that will remind you, the way the studio did, that there is, in addition to all the outer disciplines and responsibilities and enjoyments, an inner life that is waiting with nourishment for your soul and when you give it your attention, it will change the way you enjoy and appreciate the life you live.

Meditation: Take an active role in your awakening. Rather than passively sitting and absorbing information, filling your brain with stuff, take some time to empty out, to listen deeply to yourself, to begin to allow the chitta vritti (mind stuff) to settle. Sit quietly and allow summer to enter you deeply. You will not regret it.

Just Show Up

Since closing the Yoga Studio almost two years ago, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with a number of people who have lamented that their practice wasn’t what they would like it to be. They say they have gotten away from it and yearn for inspiration. Come to think of it, I heard a lot of that even when the studio was in full swing. Sound familiar? It is a common thing in our busy culture to struggle to develop a practice of contemplation and meditation – especially when the kids are in soccer and various lessons and you are involved in transporting them, feeding them, cleaning up after them and probably holding down a job yourself. If not family, then it might be work or other basic living demands and life-dramas that keep you in constant motion. On the other hand, I’ve also heard from people who have the time, but still find themselves cutting the practice short just to get on with the day. Now you all know that there is more to yoga than simply doing the postures. There is meditation and pranayama (whoa, you say, that’s even further from my reach!) Then there is that thing we refer to as yoga “off the mat”. That’s when everything you learned and realized while in the practice of asana and during your studies, comes to life in the world. When that happens, your yoga practice is not an isolated period of time when you feel great while the rest of the day is still the same challenges and foibles.

Yoga is settling the constant chatter and busyness of the mind into silence. The purpose of settling the busyness in the mind is to know your true nature. There are many different words that try to describe what that is: Presence, Silence, Truth, Love, Beauty. When you are open to, aligned with, and inspired with Presence, you begin to see and hear and feel more clearly and more deeply and more richly and live more fully alive. You are more yourself. Less life energy goes into worrying about the future or worrying about anything at all. Less life energy is wasted holding back and keeping yourself small. Less life energy is contracted and constricted with self-limiting beliefs. You no longer are at the mercy of your mind but the mind serves you and helps you to live life at full throttle. When life is lived fully alive, awake and aware, there is a fulfillment that wants for nothing. There is an overwhelming sense of beauty and love and light and illumination and causeless joy. There is an ease of living, a continuous sense of gratitude and grace. There comes a natural desire or a natural movement toward the highest expression of a human being you are capable of embodying. There is a natural easing toward a full appreciation for all that is. You begin to listen more fully, and love pours freely into your life… you struggle less and breathe more freely. You are nourished by the breath and by your senses. The first step to having that kind of aliveness and awareness is to want it. I know that sounds too simplistic to even print it, but that is the first step. You have to want it and it has to be on top of your list of “wants”. The yoga sutras tell us that we don’t have to wait lifetimes for self- realization. It says that realization is very near. How near, it tells us, depends on how intensely it is wanted. So you have to decide that you are ready for a change and that you are willing to invest in it and that it is very important. You have to decide that you want it now. You decide and then you begin living your life in alignment with that decision.

Write yourself a note in your own words (or copy mine). This note will be for you to read in those moments when you get lost or find yourself choosing unhappiness, choosing unconsciousness, choosing to go into auto pilot reactivity or simply choosing not to show up for yourself and your practices. Write all the reasons you have for choosing to practice yoga, for choosing happiness and health, consciousness and freedom, and pure causeless joy. Do it. Put the note away in a safe place where you will be able to find it. I always kept mine in my yoga space, or rolled up in my mat. My only rule is to show up. If on any given day I get the feeling to skip out, the very minimal requirement is to sit down and read my note.