Close your eyes. Think about what makes you happy, or what will make you happy. Just sit with it, and explore what happiness means to you. No need to overthink or overanalyze. Open your eyes. Did you run through a list of things or conditions or situations that make you happy? I know many things make me happy. Finding out Rustan's now carries vegan ice cream makes me happy. I mean, no cows have to suffer and I get to eat ice cream? That's a win-win in my book. But this kind of happiness is not permanent. It's only a tiny fraction of the lasting bliss we are truly capable of. The anandamayakosha, the most subtle layer or covering of the bodies of the Self, is the bliss body. But the happiness that this body is capable of extends farther than we currently experience. It is what we thought of multiplied into infinity. It's not even about having the experience of happiness and bliss. It is about being that happiness and bliss itself. Our conditioned perception is that happiness is part of an equation. If this thing happens, then I will be happy. Suppose those conditions are taken away from you, can you still be happy? Let us try this. Be very honest and dig deep into the specific conditions that you may have set up for yourself. If my father finally approves of me, then I will be happy. If I can save my marriage, then I will be happy. If my kid does well in school, then I will be happy. If I make double my salary, then I will be happy. If this person says this to me, then I will be happy. If that person stops doing that, then I will be happy. What if, even if only for five breaths, you let go of that condition. In other words, what if you try to be unconditionally happy? Sit. Breathe. Do it. If you felt some relief and freedom in letting go of this condition, even if only for five breaths, why not consider letting go of this condition that makes you feel trapped- for good? We can be unconditionally happy. The question is, will we choose to be? Choosing to be happy without attachment to external conditions does not diminish the importance of the people in our lives or our relationships or our jobs etc. It does not mean we stop caring or we become apathetic or we stop taking action. It means that we have come to accept the bliss that is innate in us, and we draw from that happiness, from that peace, from that joy, and take action from that sacred place. We love others and do things and live our lives not because we seek an exchange for happiness, but because we have this happiness to give. If we can experience bliss without condition, then we can love without condition. If we can love without condition, then we see all others as holy beings without condition. Be who you truly are. Be blissful. Be happy.
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My dad was someone who liked knowing things. He was interested in anything from ancient hieroglyphics to cloud computing. His knowledge, though, was often more theoretical than practical. During the time instant messengers were widely used, he took it upon himself to get an account. One day I got a message from him. The first message said: hello. Shortly, a second message said: enter. So he thought that was how it worked. He understood how it worked, and yet he did not really understand how it worked. It is the same for us yoga practitioners. We understand how yoga works, yet we do not really understand how yoga works, not until we have the full commitment to practice it anyway. Our mind has the capacity to understand many concepts. We are intelligent that way. We could have great ideas- how to have a successful business, how to save the environment, how to change the world- but if we are stuck in thinking, and do not move to feeling and doing, then nothing is going to happen. We would just be involved in intellectual entertainment, a hobby of sorts. We can say we know all the reasons why we need to stop consuming animals and their secretions, but until we take action and live vegan, our knowledge is for naught. We can say we have the capacity to innovate technology that will clean up the seas, but until we collaborate with others to make it happen, the words in which we used to describe it would just be fiction. And so our intelligent minds can understand yoga and its philosophy and concepts of liberation and enlightenment, but until we practice it with all our five koshas or five bodies of the self, until we practice the yamas, until our thoughts, words, and actions are directed towards indiscriminate compassion, our yoga practice is just for entertainment. The intellect itself is neutral. Our species has invented things like electricity and airplanes and the internet. We have also invented guns and bombs and GMOs. Our intelligence can create or destroy, liberate or oppress, include or alienate. That is why the use of our intellect must be closely tied to our instrinsic connection with our heart. Imagine a world where we each used our intelligence in a way that benefits the collective well-being. Instead of upgrading our technology every 3 months, what if we upgraded our sense of humanity? What if, with the intelligence and skills that we already have, we take action to make a better world? If we choose to do that, then we use our intelligence not only on the theoretical level but on the practical level. If we choose to do that, then our yoga practice bursts out from the seams of superficial entertainment and starts to take on depth and meaning. At the end of the day, isn't purpose what intelligence seeks? At the end of our lives, would we not value the practice of intelligent compassion more than any kind of meaningless pastime? When we experience pain in the body, many of us often relate it to the physical situations we have put ourselves in, and we also look for physical cures. It makes logical sense, we think. I have a good friend named Edwina who works for an animal rights organization. Part of her job is going through reports of animal cruelty, and so she spends her day seeing pictures or watching videos of the violence done to animals, so that she may take action and respond to the reports. One time, she told me she was experiencing shoulder pain and she was looking for an acupuncturist or someone who might be in a position to help her ease the pain. Again, another perfectly reasonable response to our desire to relieve physical pain. In yoga philosophy, we speak of having 5 bodies. Each body is a layer, or a kosha as it is called in Sanskrit, and the bodies affect one another. The emotional body or the manomayakosha makes up our emotional experiences of the world. Our emotions, when repressed or unaddressed, can be trapped in the physical body which we experience as recurring physical pain or discomfort. Thus, the issues are in the tissues. The common physical manifestations of emotional reactions are the following: Shoulders- burdened by responsibilities and feeling the weight of the world Upper back- anger and resentment (right side), guilt and shame (left side) Lower back- sense of inadequacy, financial insecurity (right side), emotional insecurity (left side) It may seem "new age-y" to those of us who are conditioned to think that the only rational way our bodies work is that it is an independent entity. Dig deep though through your own experience. When you had to do something you were unwilling to do, say, sing in front of people, did you not feel knots in your stomach? When you were stressed out at work, did you not lose sleep? When you underwent a difficult breakup, did you not want to go to sleep all the time? The point I am making is that our emotions do affect our physical well-being, from recurring pains to terminal illnesses. When we practice yoga asana, we have this opportunity to observe our emotional reactions. When we are challenged, do we feel irritated or angry or insecure? When we are asked to do something familiar, are we impatient or arrogant or bored? Do these tendencies recur in our relationships and our jobs and our day-do-day lives? Have they become our default reactions, so much so that we are not even conscious of it? Are our negative reactions so deeply embedded that we end up desperately gripping on to them, unwilling to let them go? Do we act as though we are holding on to dear life to these emotions, when these exact emotions are costing us the quality of our life? Let us draw attention to the body. Where are we holding tension? Let us draw attention to our emotions. Where might we still be holding on to anger, resentment, guilt, shame, jealousy, bitterness, envy, greed, or fear? Until we are conscious of the ways we keep holding on to these emotions, any physical relief will only be temporary. Yoga teachings are not fatalistic. It tells us the cause of our "dis-ease", and it also provides the cure. To purify the manomayakosha, the practices of satsang, chanting, yamas, compassion, nadam and bhakti are particularly helpful. All of these practices unburden the negative emotions and allow us to give them up. Instead of holding in negative emotions, we release them. Instead of thinking that we alone carry the sole burden of our load, we acknowledge that we are part of something bigger than us. Instead of being self-centered and being weighed down, we become others-centered and lift others up. May 18, 2014 marks 2 years from the day I graduated from Jivamukti Yoga Teacher Training. My heart is filled with gratitude that I found this path, or that this path found its way to me, depending on how one sees it. The 1100 classes that I taught from then until now are truly a gift. Prior to my life as a Jivamukti Yoga Teacher, a job felt like a job. And though I was good at many of the things I tried career-wise, something always felt lacking. I couldn't accept that making other people rich is what I was meant to do. Surely, there has got to be another way. When I became vegan and started to do advocacy work on my own- distributing Vegan Starter Kits, copying animal rights DVDs and distributing them, writing about veganism, giving talks etc, I discovered a part of me that I did not know existed. I pushed my shyness and insecurities aside to talk to people- mostly strangers- about what it means to make nonviolent choices. I was never good at small talk and I still am not, but speaking about animal rights feels natural to me. I also used veganism as a starting point to consider my other choices in life. Slowly, I transitioned to a simpler way of living. I gave up my car and either walked or used public transportation. I bought less things. My previous hobby- shopping- lost its luster. I decided I am going to be ethically child-free. I started to consider my carbon footprint. When I got laid off from my high-paying corporate job, I knew it was an opportunity to pursue a more authentic way of living. I decided I was going to be a yoga teacher. I almost took another yoga teacher training course because I did not think I could afford the Jivamukti Teacher Training, nor did I think that I was qualified at that point to take the training that appeared to be quite advanced and demanding. When Jules Febre, an Advanced Certified Jivamukti Yoga Teacher, held a workshop in Manila a year before my job redundancy, I told him how much I loved Jivamukti Yoga, and he told me I should take the teacher training. Aloud, I gave him the excuse of not having enough years of practice. Unspoken, I thought I loved taking Jivamukti classes but I was not sure I wanted to teach it. It seemed like a lot of work. But things worked out the way that they did. Cat Alip-Douglas, another Advanced Jivamukti Yoga Teacher and also the teacher who taught the first Jivamukti class I ever attended, gave me materials for the teacher training in London that was to happen later in 2012. Shortly after, Tomo Okabe, also an Advanced Jivamukti Yoga Teacher, and who is mentoring the April 2012 training at Omega, sat me down, broke down my perceived barriers and offered solutions. I remember during dinner that he told me I was a good fit for Jivamukti. I joked about my worry, that when I start talking about animals, I might break down in tears. He did not tell me that it will change with time or that I have to learn to control my emotions. Instead he shared this story about having attended a talk given by activist Julia Butterfly Hill, and when she cried at some point during the talk, it touched people with her sincerity. I went home and I realized it was true, that I was a good fit with things I already believed in. My doubts vanished. Once I decided I was going to take the Jivamukti Teacher Training, everything was smooth sailing. I got a partial scholarship, I crowd-funded and got the rest of the money I needed, I even got a free business class upgrade for part of my flight from Manila to New York. It was without question the path of least resistance. I knew one of the things I needed to get past is my fear of public speaking. I did not want to feel anxious about it that it would take the focus away from more important things I could learn from the training, so about a month before the Jivamukti Teacher Training, I taught yoga classes by the beach for two weeks. I did not teach anything fancy. I just repeated what I remembered from yoga classes I have taken at this point. It helped a lot that I just jumped in and did it. At Jivamukti Teacher Training, I met like-minded people who made me feel immediately at home. I was not a lone advocate there. Many of us were vegans who wanted to change the world in some way. It made me smile to know that in a room full of people, I am not the only one wearing an animal rights message shirt. My teacher David Life, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga, wore a hoodie that says Vegan. Like teacher, like student, I thought. I loved that the training was integrated and wholistic. It was really more than just asana. In fact, asana seemed like such a small part of it. Sharon Gannon, also co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga, was and continues to be such an inspiration. She really did revolutionize the modern practice of yoga by teaching nonviolence unequivocally and unapologetically. I often think of her when I am put in a challenging situation. I think, what would Sharon-ji do? I must have won some kind of spiritual teacher lottery because not only do I have Sharon-ji and David-ji as teachers, I also got Ruth Lauer-Manenti, lovingly known as Lady Ruth, as my mentor. Every time she spoke to us, she spoke with such sweetness. Her words were weaved with sincerity and kindness. One of the most memorable moments in Jivamukti Teacher Training was when we all had to go up the stage and give a 5-minute dharma talk. The thought made me nervous because at this point, I have not yet completely gotten over my fear of public speaking. I prepared a talk that was basically a summary of what my teachers have said in materials I watched or read. I thought it was safe, and I wanted to get up on the first night (of four if I remember correctly) to get it over with. The queue was long so I did not make it then. I decided to change my talk completely. I chose a different sutra and a different interpretation. When it was finally my turn the following night, I was extremely nervous. I stuttered giving instructions on which page of the chant book to turn to. I was even more nervous chanting. Will I be out of tune? Do I remember all the Sanskrit words? After the chanting, I looked down from the stage. I saw all my teachers, all the mentors, and all my classmates. They looked intently at me. No one was bored and wanted to be somewhere else. In that brief moment, I realized they all wanted me to do well. And that was how my fear vanished. So I spoke the words that I rehearsed while taking a shower. I had an outline of points I wanted to cover and I was able to say most if not all of them. For the first time in my life, speaking in front of a crowd felt easy. The talk was well-received, and I am grateful for that moment. I consider it the moment where I "came out" as a Jivamukti Yoga Teacher. My heart was filled with joy that I got to talk to my teacher Sharon-ji for a few minutes and received feedback about it. My memory is blurred so I am not sure if it was then or during graduation day that she told me, in emphasis to what was in the formal lectures, that my most important job as a yoga teacher is to speak to the highest in each person. Those days during Jivamukti Teacher Training two years years ago were special. I think of those days with fondness. I think of my teachers with so much love. The power of that satsang uplifted me. I have no doubt in my mind I became a better person because of it. Coming back to Manila, I was excited to share Jivamukti and I wasted no time. I practiced teaching to a few friends before I did my demo class, and in my demo class I deliberately inserted concepts of nonviolent and interconnected choices, because I felt that if a studio were to accept me, then they have to accept the whole package of Jivamukti. I was not and still am not willing to teach anything less. The demo went generally well with only a few hiccups, and within one week of my arrival back in Manila, I taught my first class at a studio. I made a lot of beginner yoga teacher mistakes with cues, and I was really hard on myself. The first weeks and months of my teaching, when I made mistakes even with things like breath count, saying inhale but forgetting to say exhale, I would feel bad. We were told during Jivamukti Teacher Training to let it go when it happens that we teach a bad class, and just to do better next time. Slowly and eventually, I eased up on myself. My first challenge came at the end of my first month of teaching. Because I wanted to illustrate the power of the mantra Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu, I used as my dharma talk the experience of my teacher training classmate Katherine. She had shared with us that she chanted the mantra silently while watching Earthlings, connecting to the love in her heart to feel love not only for the animals who suffer but also for the perpetrators of the suffering. It was a heavy talk that spoke about a heavy topic. I also distributed animal rights flyers in this class. That day, I was told a student complained. I had mixed feelings about it. But mostly, I felt that I did my job as a Jivamukti Yoga Teacher ruffling some feathers. I remember David-ji saying that we teach what must be taught, not what students want. I agree completely. Yoga is not like a spa where we massage the egos of students. To teach yoga is to teach about oneness, even if it means confronting norms. And so it also made sense what we were taught in Jivamukti Teacher Training, that we ourselves have to let go of our egos and the desire to please students or be popular. We were taught that we are not exercise instructors. We are yoga teachers. My challenge is not changing the message or even softening it. My challenge is in how I can be more effective in speaking to the highest in each person. I had made a pledge to teach free classes as part of my crowd-funding efforts, specifically to teach 300 hours worth of free classes as a way of giving back the 300 hours of education I received. In the first few months, I did some research on how to do it and where to do it and how to promote it and all that. I did not get a lot of positive feedback, or any feedback at all, from possible venues and organizations I could work with, so I decided I will just go ahead and do it on my own, with no support from any organization or venue or yoga studio. The first class I taught at the park was on September 22, 2012 and only my friends came. I was not sure how I could sustain it and my doubts were completely valid. For the first six months, the attendance was erratic. There were some classes where nobody showed up, or others where only one student showed up. Maybe a large part of it was also because I had no budget to promote a free class. I just posted the schedules on Facebook. Admittedly, there were times when nobody showed up and I considered just stopping it. It felt like a waste of time. I was frustrated. I thought, I was giving up a time slot that I could use to actually teach a paid class. But a promise is a promise. I made that pledge boldly because I wanted to make myself follow through even when I did not feel like it. I decided I will just show up week after week no matter what. If no students come, then I will practice. If at least one student comes, then I teach. I decided to put up my own website which you are reading now, and I think it made the difference in attendance. In retrospect, it worked out really well that I am doing this independently without any support from other organizations, because I do not have to promote any other agenda than the teachings of Jivamukti. In these free classes, I ask students to eat a vegan meal after the class, as payment for the class that they just took with me. Students came, some who knew me from classes that I teach from studios, but most of whom I have never met. These days, there is never a scheduled Sunday class where no one shows up. I am happy that some students are regulars who show up week after week, and they tell their friends, and their friends tell their other friends. It was in one of the these free classes that I decided to give my first satsang. Just as I had feared, I did cry speaking of the violence that happens to animals. It was not my best moment as a teacher, but I did the best that I could at that time. And guess what? Whether that particular satsang had anything to do with it or not, there are now a few transitioning vegans from the regular students. Meanwhile, I basically accepted all the classes that I was offered by all the studios that gave me the opportunity. I was teaching in Makati and The Fort and Greenhills and Ortigas and Katipunan. I was physically tired by the commute. I taught many classes, some really inspired, some bad ones, and mostly in between. After Jules Febre took my class in Manila in November 2012, he gave me valuable feedback that I incorporated into my classes. I rearranged my teaching schedule so that I have varied time slots per studio. That way, I only plan one class to teach and teach that same class for a week more or less. This worked better since I noticed that I got more consistent. I knew my talk and my sequence and my playlist. The first classes tend to be a gamble. They turned out either inspired because of the newness of it or awkward because I have not organized my thoughts that well yet. In any case, it was a system that worked better than the previous no-system one. Recently though, I decided to give up the classes that are too inconvenient for me to get to for practical reasons. It was a difficult decision to give up classes where students are so dedicated, but I realize a few things as well. I need to conserve my own energy. I need to be able to let go of my attachment to students who made me feel good about myself. And maybe my absence will prompt dedicated students to go deeper into their spiritual practice the same way that the absence of Jivamukti in Manila prompted me to make it happen myself. Students will test you, my teachers said. They are right. Students have tested my knowledge and my skills, my ego and my patience, my practice and my compassion. I am fortunate that most students who come to my class are open, enthusiastic, respectful and sincerely willing to learn. When students like the class, it is a test of my ego not to be attached and remain humble, recognizing that what they like are the teachings of yoga and they only happen to be coursed through me. When students do not like the class, it is also a test of my ego not to be attached, to remind myself that what we teach in Jivamukti will not resonate with everyone, that people are interested in other things and I am not offering those other things. I had to give up classes here and there, sometimes for practical reasons, sometimes for schedule conflicts, and one time because I acknowledge I am not the teacher for the group. I feel that there are very few requirements in yoga. We do not require students to be flexible or strong. We do not even require students to chant or do all the poses. The only requirement is to be present, not just with the physical body but with the intention. It dawned on me that just as not every teacher is right for every student, not every student is right for every teacher. Teaching Jivamukti Yoga full-time is such a privilege. To me, there is no separation between what I do and who I am. I teach and practice yoga not as a hobby, not only as a source of income, but as my life. The path of yoga is the search for enlightenment and freedom, and I thank my karma for leading me to this path. Teaching Jivamukti challenges me to study and become more eloquent in expressing the teachings of yoga. It pushes me to look into topics I am not comfortable speaking about in public, like devotion to God, or to do research into topics I was completely unfamiliar with like sacred geometry or Gopal. In an unexpected way and in a different format, I ended up doing what I have always wanted to do but was too afraid to actually try- which is to write for a living. Except now, I write mostly for spoken word in the form of the dharma talks. And even though in the beginning, my agenda as a Jivamukti Yoga Teacher was mostly about making the world a little bit more vegan- at least in Manila- I am now grateful for the other ways that yoga touches the lives of people. When I witness students overcome their fear of inversions and experience coming upside down for the first time, I know that this experience will give the student more confidence in confronting future changes. When students who are seemingly restless finally relax in savasana, I think that they may be a little bit more prepared to let go of control. When students cry in class or share a personal struggle, I feel that yoga has in some way provided the relief that they need and deserve. So even though I talk about animal rights often in class, I no longer feel the need to talk about it in each and every class. If I cannot make students who come to class save animals, then maybe at least I can make them see that everything that they search for is already within themselves. After all, yoga is about finding wholeness, whether it takes 1100 classes or 1100 lifetimes. And when we come closer and closer to touching that wholeness in ourselves, it becomes second nature too, to see the wholeness in other beings. I am grateful to my Jivamukti Yoga Teachers Sharon Gannon and David Life, to all of the Jivamukti community, to all the studios who have given me the opportunity to serve, to teachers of yoga whose classes I attended, to all students of yoga who have attended my classes, to all who are searching for that connection. I hope to be able to teach many more Jivamukti Yoga classes in many more years and in many more opportunities and places. May we all be liberated. Sat-sangatve nissangatvam nissangatve nirmohatvam nirmohatve nishchala-tattvam nishchala-tattve jivanmuktih bhaja govindam bhaja govindam mudha-mate - Shri Adi Shankaracharya from Carpata-Panjarika Good and virtuous company gives rise to non-attachment. From non-attachment comes freedom from delusion. With freedom from delusion, one feels the changeless reality. Experiencing that changeless reality, one obtains liberation in this life. I-AM is the ocean of awareness. Realizing this, one feels, "I am not the body and mind, although I have a body and mind." Realize Govinda, realize Govinda, realize Govinda in your heart, O wise one! - Interpretation by Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati Guess what? Yoga poses- of the selfie variety anyway- are posed. I did a little experiment on yoga selfies this week. I posted a short yoga video on Facebook to see what kind of feedback I will get. The result? I got more likes from one video than, say, the cumulative likes of any 10 animal rights links that I often post. What is with the obsession on yoga selfies? I suppose part of it is because yoga asana is aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Another part of it is that it feels good to show the world how far we've come in our practice and we think a little validation won't hurt. Many of us forget that in many ways these pictures are staged. We actually had to ask someone to take our photos or videos, disrupting what could be a normal flow in our practice. We could be posing before we are warmed up or we could be posing after we're done with our regular practice. These are the steps I took in order to have the posed yoga pictures above. Just to be clear, it was not spontaneous. I knew I was going to have pictures taken for this essay I wanted to write. 1. I highlighted my eyebrows (which I don't really do to practice yoga asana). 2. I did about 30 minutes of yoga asana by the pool area of my condo building. 3. When I saw the maintenance staff, I asked him to take my pictures. 4. I kicked up several times in handstand. I was able to hold it three seconds tops, but the picture captured it forever and nobody has to know I barely held it. 5. I came into a bound variation of standing spinal twist. Then I switched sides because the Jivamukti logo in my yoga pants is on the left side and I wanted that to be visible. 6. I thanked the guy who took my photos. I resumed my practice for another 20 minutes. 7. I realized that three pictures would look better than two in a collage, so I asked the same guy to go back and take other pictures. 8. I tried to do flying crow but I kept falling on my face. Worried that I am taking too much of his time, I did crow instead. 9. I used an app to get the three pictures together. I checked out options on lighting to see how tanned I could look in the pictures. 10. I practiced a bit more, packed up, and went back to my condo unit. Even though the pictures happened, they do not show the complete reality. They showed a tiny part of the process. The reality is that I was sweating in the heat, I was a bit insecure about my belly fat, and that I had deleted other pictures because I had the luxury of selection. It brought out the vanity in me. But yoga is about being real. It is not about editing who we are to look good or appear a certain way. In fact, it is the opposite. It is accepting where we are and who we are meant to be without regard to how we may appear to the rest of the world. It is about falling and rising back again. It is about the imperfection, the process, the steps, the single most important moment which is the present. It is about looking inwards rather than outwards, which my little adventure on yoga selfies did not do for me. We can pose for yoga or we can be the yoga that we seek. We can tread lightly on asana or we can dive into the depth of the yoga practice- the yamas and the niyamas, dhyana, bhakti, satsang, nadam, shastra. The yoga practice is beautiful. Let us do ourselves a favor. Let us pose less and practice more- not just the practice of asana but the practice of compassion towards all beings. Sometimes we hear people say, "She has great energy" or "The energy around him is radiating" and some other things about this so-called energy. What is it anyway? Is it just a lot of fluff? Some new age concept we like saying that doesn't really mean anything? Let's explore it. Bring your hands together in front of you, then move the hands away from each other with the palms still parallel. Do this a few times, moving the hands closer together but not quite touching, then apart, then closer, then farther apart. You might notice soon enough that there is something contracting and expanding in between your hands, the sensation not so different from having your hands under water and feeling the water expand and contract as you move your hands. That is the energy that we speak of. In Sanskrit, it is called prana. It means life force. This energy flows inside us, through our energetic body or pranamayakosha to be exact. To purify the pranamayakosha, we use the yogic techniques of pranayama or breathing exercises. One such exercise is called kapalabhati. It means skull shining. It cleanses the skull by moving the energy up. Kapalabhati is practiced by short forceful exhalations through the nose, similar to blowing the nose. Using this technique can uplift us emotionally and spiritually. A breathing technique that we use while we practice the physical poses or asana is ujjayi breathing. Ujjayi comes from the word jai which means victory. The breath is a victorious intentional breath where there is constriction at the back of the throat and we breathe in and out through the nose. The inhalations and exhalations are even, and we do not hold the breath while moving from pose to pose. Pranayama has the power to transform the energy that moves within us. And in this regard, we can consider what it is that we wish to transform in ourselves. What qualities do we want more in our lives? More kindness, compassion, and patience perhaps? What qualities do we wish to release from our lives? Judgment, anger, fear? We can use our yoga asana practice as a moving energy meditation by breathing in the quality we want and breathing out the quality we do not want. Inhale kindness, exhale out judgment. With every breath, we transform ourselves little by little into our highest selves. This prana or energy or life force can be transformed. We ourselves make this transformation. Try this. Close your eyes. Rub your palms together until you feel the heat in between your hands, then bring your palms to your eyelids. Feel that comfort. On a practical level, whenever we feel that life is weighing us down, remember that we have the power to transform our own energy, and that we ourselves have the power to lift us up. Back when I used to drive a car, I could never keep up with what I needed to do to it for maintenance. I knew I had to change oil, tune up, check the air and water, and all that, but I was so bad at it that the car constantly broke down. I decided to just give up the car and use mostly my own legs to get from point a to point b. That is what our body is for anyway, it is a vehicle to get from point a to point b, and I don't just mean from our house to the yoga studio. According to yoga philosophy, this body is a vehicle that will take us from here to enlightenment. Many of us are already inclined to take care of this vehicle we call a body. After all, we take this physical body, called the annamayakosha in Sanskrit, to yoga class. While yoga asana or the physical exercises of yoga are great, there is another factor in taking care of this body that we often forget about. It is the food that we eat. We are what we eat. What we eat affects our health, our energy levels, our emotions, our mental alertness, and even our sense of contentment. If we choose to eat a plant-based vegan diet, we ingest fruits and vegetables that were nourished with sun and water, and hopefully no pesticides. If we eat animals and animal products such as meat, fish, dairy, eggs and honey, we endanger our health. Many degenerative diseases like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and many types of cancer are associated with consumption of animal products. You can read more about it from the book The China Study. Furthermore, if we put living beings who had to experience fear and suffering into our bodies, we ingest that fear and suffering energetically too. If we want to use this body in an efficient way, to take care of it to minimize diseases, then we consider both the exercises of yoga and the diet of yoga- not just one or the other, but both at the same time. There is a flip side to this maintenance though. We may have a tendency to take care of the physical body but forget that it is only a vehicle. It is like giving a car a good paint job, accessories, all the bells and whistles, but then choosing to park it in the garage, only for show, and not taking us anywhere. We need to be mindful that our yoga asana practice does not become a spectator sport where we only show things off. If we want enlightenment, then we always keep it in our consciousness that we are using this body as a vehicle to serve the missions of kindness and compassion in the world. As we practice yoga consistently, may we always feel gratitude for the physical body we have been given. And may we open our hearts and minds to the possibility of becoming a vegan to be kinder to our own body, to be kinder to other beings, and to be kinder to all of nature. Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu. Dear Holy Being, First, thank you very much for visiting my page or taking Jivamukti yoga classes with me. I am incredibly grateful that I get to share what I love- the beautiful and inspiring practice of Jivamukti Yoga created by my teachers Sharon Gannon and David Life. As a Jivamukti yoga teacher, I take my job seriously. Every week, I teach 11 scheduled classes at different yoga studios. In addition, I teach 1 free class at the park on Sunday mornings to make Jivamukti yoga available to students who may not have the disposable income to pay for studio fees. I also document my dharma talks in the blog section of my website to make my reflections on the Jivamukti Focus of the Month available to everyone. I value the work that I do, and I am constantly inspired to improve my teaching skills to be of better service to students who come to class. My time outside of teaching classes is mostly spent on planning classes whether directly or indirectly. As I am earning Philippine wages, the cost of my continuous education in Jivamukti Yoga is inaccessible to me despite teaching full-time. To maintain my certification as a Jivamukti Yoga Teacher, and more importantly to continue learning from my teachers, I am required to spend a minimum of 10 hours per year studying with Sharon Gannon and David Life or one of their designated teachers Yogeswari, Patrick Broome, Gabriela Bozic, Jeffrey Cohen, and Jules Febre. The continuous education plan that I have in mind is to take classes with Sharon Gannon and David Life at the Wild Woodstock Jivamukti Ashram in New York once a year. I also intend to take the 800-hour Jivamukti Teacher Apprenticeship Program and eventually apply to take the Advanced Certification Board Exam, which if passed, would qualify me as an Advanced Certified Jivamukti Yoga Teacher. I am asking for your help to assist me financially to be able to achieve my Jivamukti yoga education goals. There are several ways that you can help me pay my tuition and ease my financial load: 1. Donate to my tuition via paypal account [email protected]. 2. Transfer your air miles to my SkyMiles account 6105938069. 3. Book a weekly private yoga class for you or your company. I wholeheartedly believe that the practice of Jivamukti yoga has the power to awaken us to our full potential. I give my complete commitment to be the best Jivamukti yoga teacher that I can be. Your support will help me fulfill my goal, make me a more effective instrument for the teachings of yoga, and will allow me to reach out to others even more. Thank you very much for your support! If you wish to get in touch with me, please send me an email at [email protected]. Namaste, Nancy |
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