I write, therefore I am

When I was a Junior in high school, my English Teacher, Duane Clark, had us keep a journal. I am forever indebted to him for that. We used our journals for exploring our lives, our thoughts and feelings, and for trying different styles of writing and self-expression. Can you think of a more beautiful gift to give a teenager?

I’ve written countless volumes of journals since. I’ve written my way through difficult situations, laying my thoughts and feelings out on the page so I could sort them out. I’ve used my journaling as a way to understand yoga, the teachings and my direct experiences in asana and meditations. I’ve shared entries over the years in many of my classes.

I write to understand - myself and my world. Writing gives voice to the whole gamut of being human: thoughts, feelings, perceptions, ideas, experience and spirit itself. For me, writing is prayer, contemplation, meditation and celebration. It is a gift that is at once, given and received.

I made a little video to go with this but blogger is having trouble uploading and processing it so you'll just have to hop on over to my website blog here and see it there. Sorry! :(

What is Yoga?

Yoga is to settle the patternings of the mind so that we can see ourselves and others as we really are. The main cause of our suffering is due to considering ourselves as separate from one another; a separate being to whom things happen. Our main suffering comes from believing we can do something to someone else and not have it affect us, or that we can do something to the earth and not have it affect us. The Yoga Sutras say the main source of suffering is ignorance of our true nature.

The mind patterns obscuring Self-realization consist of everything that makes up your ego: defenses, opinions, preferences, interests, beliefs and desires. Those patterns are what cause us to take an event and overlay it with our own meaning - “if he did that, it means he doesn’t care, or it means he thinks this or that and then something else will happen” and ya da ya da, you can fill in the blanks with your own unique brand of mind patterns.

The whole gamut of yoga practices and teachings is all for Self-realization - to settle our current ongoing, internal banter long enough for us to realize the truth of who we are. It’s a coming home to our dearest, nearest, truest selves. Like waking up from a dream.