My Book Drops Today!!!!!

Today’s the day! I’m so thrilled. My publisher said that if everything goes as planned then my book would be published on December 10th. Well, everything has gone as planned and I’m so pleased to say that my book is LIVE!

So I’ve been talking about this for a while now but in case you have no clue what I’m talking about, I wrote a book called Practical Yoga Nidra: A 10-Step Method to Reducing Stress, Improving Sleep, and Restoring Your Spirit.

The publisher did a bang-up job on making it beautiful. I’m just so proud, I can’t even stand it! I really want to share it with you, and I’m even going to share with you an excerpt from the book, including a story about my dear, dear friend Kim Dastrup and her wonderful father and an unforgettable lesson he taught me about joy.

If you haven’t pre-ordered you book and are curious, you can get your copy on Amazon, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and other places fine books are sold. My publisher says that there might even be a chance that Audible will want to do an audio version of this book, which makes sense cuz it has over 20 scripts for guided Yoga Nidra meditations. The book only costs $12.99

If you want to give the gift of bliss for the holidays, perhaps consider buying a few of these and handing them out to your nearest and dearest and everyone in between. And hey, a great way to become a NYT Bestseller is to have every one of my friends go to every book store they know and simply purchase all my books (individually) you see on the shelves. Think of all the people you could make happy over the holidays with a CASE of these books.

Also, if you’re looking for ways to de-stress over the holidays, I’m so excited to announce that I’ve teamed up with the inimitable Rachel Posner, a teacher that I revere to co-teach a live, online class that will feature discussion, breathwork, poses, meditations, and journaling. This will be live and online on Tuesday, December 17th at 9 am MST. It costs $20 and we will be recording it so if you can’t make the time, you can watch the recording later. You can register for this at my website, scottmooreyoga.com. If you belong to my email list, I’ll be sending an email specifically about this workshop with more deets, or like I said run over to my website.

Thanks everyone for your wonderful support. I’ll finish by reading this excerpt from my book about one of the crucial steps in our Yoga Nidra practice which is to tap into joy.

Tap Into Joy

Tapping into your joy means practicing daily happiness and pleasure. It’s about learning to see the myriad things around you all the time that can cause you joy. However, your joy is not actually dependent on events and circumstances, and it’s accessible whenever you wish. In Yoga Nidra, joy is found beyond the mind. When you have the know-how, there is little or no effort to connect to this part of your being. Eventually, with practice, you won’t need a trigger to feel this joy. You’ll simply be joy. This limitless joy is your True Nature.

Despite whatever pain you may have experienced or whatever scars are on your heart, you have unfettered joy waiting to be dusted off. This joy is your essence. It has always existed the same way you have always existed. Learning to tap into the joy that is always with you opens your heart to inexhaustible prana, or energy. For example, in his audio program Clear Mind, Wild Heart, writer and poet David Whyte shares a story about a time when he felt utterly exhausted by his work for a nonprofit. He asked his friend Brother David Steindl-Rast (a Catholic Benedictine monk) half-jokingly, “What’s the antidote to exhaustion?” His friend looked at him for a moment and then responded with something Whyte found life-changing: “The antidote to exhaustion isn’t necessarily rest. It’s wholeheartedness.”

Whyte realized that, at that moment in his life, his heart was yearning for him to devote himself to poetry instead of the work he was doing for the nonprofit. From that moment forward, he started letting go of what didn’t tap into his joy so that he could put all of his energies into what did. Whyte has since become a world-renowned poet, speaker, and author. That’s not to say you need to give up the work you do, of course; you can begin tapping into joy by simply noticing when you smile or laugh, remembering what you love, doing the things you enjoy wholeheartedly, and of course practicing Yoga Nidra.

Learning to tap into your limitless joy can be fun and easy. It’s the momentary joys in life that reveal your unchanging joy, the feeling of your True Self. Make it a regular practice to notice the things you love about life. You have an immense power to create or interpret your reality, and focusing on what brings you joy and what you want to see in your life is key to feeling in love with life.

If you adopt a Hobbesian approach to life, that it is “nasty, brutish, and short,” you’ll find endless proof to support that view. But if you adopt an It’s a Wonderful Life approach, you’ll find just as

much proof.

If you get to create your reality, why not make it as beautiful as possible by noticing all of its joy, love, and sensuality? As you allow joy, love, and sensuality to become regular features in your life, you’ll soon find that your entire life becomes an expression of this joy. Doing this regularly will also prime you to invite these elements into your Yoga Nidra practice.

What This Practice Does for You

Your complete happiness and sensuality lie within the subtle layer of your being called the Anandamaya kosha (the bliss body). This kind of joy isn’t momentary happiness that comes and goes; rather, it is the unlimited bliss you experience as your True Self. However, learning to witness life’s momentary joys helps prepare you to feel your True Self’s natural state of limitless joy. As I mentioned in chapter 3, the mind makes little distinction between what plays out on a screen, in your mind, or in real life. Your brain doesn’t differentiate between what’s real and imagined, so visualizing what makes you happy can have the same effect as actually experiencing it.

While our True Nature is joy, ironically, we have been programmed to be pretty negative. In fact, humanity’s survival may very well have depended on it. Think about it: You’re less likely to jump into a shallow lake if you think you might hit jagged rocks at the bottom. Therefore, finding your joy through Yoga Nidra and similar practices is a process that essentially rewires the brain from its negative default to inhabiting our birthright to be unfailingly happy. It’s the kind of happiness you don’t have to wait around for. No one’s going to give it to you, and it’s not tied to any event. Like it or not, no one and nothing is responsible for your happiness. You must decide to see what is joyful around you and make it a regular practice to invite joy into your life.

Several years ago, my friend Kim’s dad, Warren, suffered a serious spinal cord injury. He’s confined to a wheelchair, has very limited movement in his arms and legs, and requires daily help from nurses, especially after his wife and caretaker passed away. A while back, Kim and I were staying at Warren’s house along with Kim’s sister and two daughters. Warren and I were sharing a room, and as we were tucking into our beds, he began to muse about how many of his friends enjoy luxuries like big houses, boats, and cars. With tears in his eyes, he said, “You know, when I see my daughters and my granddaughters, I can’t help but feel like I’ve won in life. I’ve won!” Warren sat there in the dark with a wide grin on his face. He didn’t say a thing about any of the challenges that beset his life and chose only to see the joy.

Sankalpa: Being Known By The Universe Through Our Desires

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I'm so excited!!!!!!!

My new book, Practical Yoga Nidra, hits the shelves December 10th. That's like in 5 days! This is really a dream come true for me. I'm really proud of this book and I can't wait to share it with you.
The following is an excerpt from my book. My book offers a simple, 10-step guide to developing a Yoga Nidra practice, one that will help you reduce stress, improve sleep, and restore your spirit.

Preorder your book on Amazon ($12.99) by clicking on the photo and I’ll give you a FREE live, online Yoga Nidra class ($12 value).

Enjoy this excerpt and let me know what you think about the concept of Sankalpa and intentions. Keep in mind that though I’m writing about setting your intention for a Yoga Nidra practice, the practice of Sankalpa could be used for starting a yoga practice, meditation, or any project or goal.

Also, in my upcoming volume of Yoga Nidra recordings (available in a few weeks), I’ll have an entire practice dedicated to using Yoga Nidra, and in particular the use of Sankalpa, or intention setting, as a deeply mindful way of helping you to visualize your goals to make them into a reality.

Step 1 of the 10-Step Method is to set your intention. Sankalpa is a Sanskrit word that could most simply be translated as your intention. However, the practice of choosing your Sankalpa is a bit more entailed than merely stating your intention for your Yoga Nidra practice. Your Sankalpa is like a personal mantra or a statement of truth that you repeat in your mind as you begin your Yoga Nidra practice. I encourage you to sincerely consider your Sankalpa each time you begin a Yoga Nidra practice. If there’s something big in your life you feel you need, your Sankalpa could be the same each time. However try to picture what specifically you need today in relationship to that desire. In other words, don’t get stuck in the past with a Sankalpa that is outdated for you.

To choose your Sankalpa, it’s best to pause for a moment, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and become present by opening to your senses. Then reflect for a brief few seconds about what you need most in your life in the moment. Your Sankalpa might be for something practical and physical, something emotional, or something spiritual. You may even set an intention for the well-being of another person or whole group of people. Your Sankalpa doesn’t even have to be about what you want but rather maybe for the ability to articulate a recognition, appreciation, or gratitude for what you already have. It’s important that your Sankalpa is as short a sentence or phrase as possible. This helps you to gain clarity on what you really need or want. When choosing your Sankalpa, be positive, specific, and be present.

First, be positive. The Universe is one big, eternal yes. It’s inviting you to merge into its path of awakening to a complete understanding of this positivity and this yes. Yoga Nidra is about aligning with your True Nature and you can begin this essential alignment by choosing a Sankalpa that reflects this Universal positivity.

When choosing a Sankalpa, focus on what you want rather what you want to avoid. I heard one of my teachers, Judith Lasater, say, “What is worrying but praying for what you don’t want?” I grew up in Utah where everyone mountain bikes in the summer and skis in the winter. Coaches in both sports teach beginners to look where they want to go rather than where the don’t want to go. It’s incredible how focusing on something, good or bad, brings about its realization.

The next consideration in choosing your Sankalpa is specificity. Being specific paints a bullseye for the Universe to aim for. Make your Sankalpa one short sentence. Choose the exact thing you want rather than sweeping generalities. Once, a friend in her 20s asked the Universe for a car. Her intention was to own something with an automatic transmission and a sun roof. A week later, her family inherited a Lincoln town car that indeed had both automatic transmission and a sunroof but smelled like an ashtray, was 12 feet long, and probably older than she was. She drove that car gratefully but was sure that the next time she made her automotive intentions known to the Universe, she was sure to add that she wanted something a bit more sporty and hip.

Lastly, when choosing your Sankalpa, it’s essential to be present. The part of you that you’re communicating your Sankalpa to only understands the present. Past and future are abstract concepts regulated by different parts of your brain and being. When making your Sankalpa speak to what is rather than what isn’t. This means formulating something you’re searching for in present terms and focusing on where you’re at, what you have, and who you are now in relationship to where you wish to go.

Here are a few samples of Sankalpas that you can modify to help you create your Sankalpa that is positive, specific, and present:

• “I’m on my road to ___________.”
  
  
  
  

• “I already have everything inside of me that I need for ___________.”
  
  
  
  

• “The Universe is ready to give me __________.”

What This Practice Does for You 

Your Sankalpa acts as a guiding star for how your journey of Yoga Nidra will unfold, what kind of awareness will be revealed, and which layers will be removed which obfuscate your ability to experience your True Self.

When you state your Sankalpa, you plant a living seed of spirit, hope, and desire inside your mind and heart as a clear and direct invitation to the Universe to reveal to you your true identity through that intention. Your Yoga Nidra practice cultivates the fertile soil for your seed of Self-Awareness to grow and bloom.

The beautiful and ancient Gayatri Mantra is one of the oldest mantras we know of and comes from the Rig Veda, part of a body of texts called the Vedas dating between 1700–1100 BCE. The Gayatri Mantra teaches how stating your Sankalpa before your Yoga Nidra practice works to help manifest that thing. The Gayatri Mantra states:

oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ suvaḥ
tatsaviturvareṇyaṃ
bhargo devasyadhīmahi
dhiyo yo naḥ prachodayāt

My favorite translation of this mantra from Donna Farhi goes something like:

Everything on the earth and in the sky and in between
Is arising from one effulgent source
If my thoughts, words, and deeds reflected a complete understanding of this unity
I would be the peace I am seeking in this moment.

As this mantra says, if I understood the essence of all things—including myself and the thing I want—I’d understand that everything comes from the same source. Ultimately, I’d see that I’m no different than the thing I want.

While this is nice to understand on a philosophical level, it will most likely take a lifetime of practice (or more lives if there are more to be had) to truly understand this truth. Yoga Nidra is a perfect way to practice coming to understand this truth, by aligning with our magnificent Source.

According to Yoga Nidra philosophy, everything in the Universe is boiled down to Awareness. When you align with your basic Awareness through presence, Yoga Nidra being my favorite way to practice presence, you align with the origin of all things, including you and including those things you feel separate from. Remember, Yoga Nidra is about remembering and experiencing our fundamental wholeness. This is why this is considered a practice of yoga or “yoking” together of all things.

Your Sankalpa speaks to the eternal part of you that isn’t dependent upon past or future. Therefore, planting the seed of Sankapla in your heart and mind is like planting iris bulbs in the fall—they bloom in the spring whether you remember planting them or not. Because your Sankalpa works for your benefit whether you remember it or not, it’s essential that we be mindful and deliberate when choosing a Salkalpa.

The practice of Yoga Nidra is simply about being present. Starting your Yoga Nidra practice with your Sankalpa makes you very present by first, taking a moment to recognize your needs and second, by alerting the Universe how to best awaken you to your ultimate Awareness. You do this by practicing Awareness and an understanding that you are no separate from what you seek.

It reminds me of Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem,” where the artist meditates on how through our perceived brokenness or sense of lack, we come to understand our own wholeness and illumination. We aren’t perfect despite our brokenness but because of it. Stating our Sankalpa is alerting to ourselves and the Universe the avenue by which we are coming to know ourselves as perfect, whole beings.

I'd like to share with you the powerful Yoga Nidra practice we had last week during our live, online Yoga Nidra practice. It's is a practice that is designed to develop your Sankalpa, your powerful intention and manifestation to the Universe for whatever you feel you need in your life right now.

It's about 21 minutes long. I hope you love it. Tell me what you think.

Also, you can click below to join this week's class on Sunday, December 8 at 9 am MST. This class theme is : You Are Bigger Than Your Beliefs

How To Improve Your Sleep Naturally Without Medication

The following is a guest post by author Dylan Foster

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Photo by Pixabay

We all know that sleep is good for us. In fact, Mayo Clinic states the average adult needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night. During those hours, our REM cycle helps process the events of the day. Lack of sleep, on the other hand, can contribute to issues such as heart disease and diabetes.

You do have several options for combating sleeplessness. Prescription medications can help; however, they also come with their side effects. Sleeping pills can be highly addictive, and even those who aren’t addicted may experience side effects, which are enhanced with alcohol consumption.

Here are some natural ways to improve your — and your health — without the use of prescription meds.

Upgrade Your Bed

If you’ve been sleeping on the same mattress for several years now, it might be time for a new one. On average, you should change your mattress every 10 years. After that, it can contribute to aches, pains, and generally poor sleep.

Before investing in a new mattress, it can help to determine what type of sleeper you are. By understanding your sleeping habits, you can put your money to good use on the best mattress to support your quality of sleep.

For instance, if you sleep on your back or stomach, look for a versatile mattress can provide you with the necessary support you need. You should sink into the mattress just enough to feel comfortable, but not enough to misalign your spine or cause tossing and turning throughout the night. Along those same lines, side sleepers can benefit from choosing pillows that support the head and neck.

Learn the incredible practice of Yoga Nidra, the Yoga of Sleep

Another comfort concern is what you put on your mattress. If you’re trying to sleep on scratchy, sweaty sheets, you can still end up tossing and turning. With that in mind, ensure you top it with well-chosen bedding. You might need linen sheets in summertime, and flannel in winter. Choose according to your comfort and the season for the best results.

Exercise

Even if you have a fairly new, comfortable mattress, you may still struggle to fall asleep. That’s where exercise can help. As little as a half-hour of moderate aerobic exercise— like swimming, running, or cycling— can help improve your sleep that same night.

However, in certain individuals, exercise signals the body that it’s time to wake up. If you find that exercise increases your insomnia rather than decreasing it, make sure you end your workouts at least two hours before hitting the bed.

If you need a gentler form of movement, yoga, especially Yoga Nidra, can improve your sleeping habits. Yoga Nidra, in particular, is known for improving sleep habits and can help you feel well-rested.

If you have a tough time maintaining your fitness routine, you can use a fitness tracker or smartwatch to monitor your progress and make exercising more enjoyable. These gadgets can count the steps you take and the calories you burn and can even monitor your heart rate. Some even feature emergency SOS, fall detection, an altimeter, and a heart rate sensor.

Eating Habits

Although your eating habits might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of treating your insomnia, what you put into your body is crucial. Getting proper health and nutrition can benefit not only your waistline but also your level of shuteye.

To improve your sleep, try to eat a balanced diet consisting of plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. When it comes to protein, choose options that are low in fat and high in vitamins. Some healthy choices include fish, poultry, lean meats, dairy, and eggs. Mood-boosting foods like kale, spinach, quinoa, and avocados are also nutritious options. Additionally, avoid drinking alcohol if you can. If you do choose to drink alcohol, try to have your beverage earlier in the day, so it’s less likely to interfere with your sleeping cycle.

If you’re having trouble getting to the root cause of your sleeplessness, it might be helpful to start a daily journal. Write down your experiences or use an app to provide clues into what could be triggering your lack of shuteye. Anything from eating a meal right before bed, to taking certain medications, or feeling anxious at night could be the culprit.

Consider sharing your journal with your doctors and other medical professionals to help manage your care. Once you know what’s causing your symptoms, you can take steps to improve your quality of sleep.

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Luxury Yoga Retreat at a Bordeaux Château. “Savor Your Life!” June 2020

The Practice of Gratitude

REGISTER FOR THE GRATITUDE CHALLENGE, FREE!

Pic by David Newkirk

The challenge is simply to write in your gratitude journal every day for two weeks. You may do whatever gratitude practice you wish, however I might suggest as your practice to simply write three things you're grateful for and choose one of those to extrapolate upon in a paragraph. That’s it!

If you miss a day, be grateful for a second chances and pick up where you left off or start over. No judgement.

I'll be sending regular emails with encouragement and fun things that I and other people are grateful for.

Thanks and please share this!

The US is celebrating Thanksgiving this week. Our family is living in France so we’ll be missing our families, but will be celebrating in our own way with a gratitude ritual and by going out to dinner. Maybe we’ll open a nice bottle of wine. We used to buy nice bottles of wine to open someday. Nowadays we realize that today is someday, and we open all the good wine!

This is the perfect week for a quick note about the science and spirituality of gratitude.

Your Brain on Gratitude

The amygdala is our brain’s stranger danger detector. The book The User Illusion, a great book about the brain and consciousness, reports that the brain takes in 400 BILLION bits of information each second. Our consciousness, all the stuff we are aware of, only produces 2000 bits of information. We are actually wired for negativity because any self-respecting organism prioritizes survival above everything else and this means noticing the negative and potentially dangerous stuff first. Looking for it even. Studies at Berkeley even suggest that for every positive bit of information, the amygdala picks up 6–9 bits of negative information, priming us to be on high alert all the time in a way that doesn’t even register in our consciousness.

So yeah, it seems we are wired to notice that the turkey was tougher than last year’s and that guy cousin Suzzy brought to dinner smells like moth balls.

But there’s hope! In the 90s there was a revolution in the world of psychology, changing from mostly using it to study all the ways humans are broken (read Freud), to using it to study all the ways that we might use it to make ourselves happier. Beyond the most obvious habit of self-monitoring your critical self-talk, two practices stand out above the crowd as powerful and lasting ways to change our psychology for long term happiness: gratitude and mindfulness.

Doctors and scientists are now saying what sages and saints have been saying for millennia: gratitude needs to be a daily practice and that doing so will change your happiness in profound ways. Gratitude can’t be that thing you do begrudgingly, once a year, strongarmed by your aunt Marge who insists that all 37 people around the Thanksgiving feast take turns rattling off lukewarm tokens of gratitude while the mashed potatoes are getting cold and a skin is forming on the gravy. No, gratitude needs to be a daily practice. And you gotta feel it for it to work. And it does. In longevity studies, gratitude is listed as one of the primary traits of people who live past 100!

How to Do a Daily Gratitude Practice

1. Get a notebook

2. Every day, first thing, write three things you’re honestly and sincerely grateful for

3. Choose one of those things and write a paragraph about how and why you’re grateful for that thing and try to describe as best you can how it makes you feel.

That’s it! Now make it a habit.

As you develop the habit of beginning your day with gratitude, you start to manually tilt your brain to begin to notice more of the positive things about your life and less of the negative things. As you do, you’ll begin to see yourself experience real and lasting happiness. It’s scientifically proven. Regardless of what science says, you gotta try it for yourself.

The Gratitude Challenge

So, I want to offer you a challenge: Can you do a gratitude challenge for 2 weeks straight, 14 days, pulling out your gratitude journal and listing 3 things you’re grateful for then writing a wee paragraph on one of them? Sure you can. And if you’re willing, I’d like to help.

If you like the idea and would like a little followup and accountability, click here and enter your name and email address to join my Gratitude Challenge. It’s free. All this challenge consists of is some regular emails I’ll send you to encourage you to keep going as well as some heart-felt stories about gratitude and the benefits of gratitude. I will also encourage you to send me stories or lists of things you’re grateful for. With your permission I may share your stories with the group.

If you don’t want to join this challenge, no worries. I still encourage you to begin a daily gratitude practice in your own way for you to experience this life-changing and affirming practice.

Here’s my gratitude practice for today.

I’m grateful for:

1. My loving family, especially my beautiful life and spirit-partner, Seneca

2. My wonderful, satisfying, and joyful career of teaching yoga and meditation

3. The opportunity to live in France

Expanded paragraph on point 1

Life is a wild ride and I am extremely grateful to Seneca for being on this ride with me. We’ve weathered some rough waters, changing businesses, moves, kids, etc. and we’ve navigated our way into some immensely beautiful and happy adventures as well. One of the things that I love the most about Seneca is that she helps me be a better man. Her support, love, and insight inspires me and pushes my best self to the forefront. I love Seneca’s spirit. I think of myself as a spiritual person, but she is a spiritual powerhouse. She is a goddess. Seneca has really ignited an adventurous spirit in me. She was the one with the wild idea to move to France and even though I’m the one who speaks French, she was willing to come to this country to have the adventure and to learn the language and do whatever necessary for our family to have this amazing experience. Seneca, I love you and I’m so grateful for you in my life.

What are you grateful for?

Limitless Energy: Your Heart

Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

Several months ago, I was at lunch with my friend, Philippe. He told me about how a mutual friend turned him on to an incredible book called The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer to help guide him through some transitions in his life. Have you read this book? I can't recommend it highly enough. I’ve since read it and I gotta tell you that it's a total life-changer. Seriously. It’s a simple, non-dogmatic guide to consciousness and arriving at your happiest, most in-love, and energized self.

Philippe told me about this book at the exact time in my life when I needed to be introduced to it. Figures. I was freaking out about life and questioning life's purpose and what my role is on this big blue marble and as I read that book, it totally clarified some of life's major themes for me.

One thing that made this book so powerful for me was what Michael Singer said about how how there is limitless resources in our hearts, that we think energy is a product of the amount of rest we get or the amount of calories we consume, bla ,bla bla, but in truth, we have a resource of limitless energy within our heats if we will only access it.

My friend, Philippe, is also an Aikido Master and we've discussed at length and even done a few Yoga+Aikido workshops together, to explore the idea of approaching the limitless energy that exists within all of us, that which exists within our hearts, and can be sourced through movement, practice, and breath.

The Antidote to Exhaustion

Writer, speaker, and poet David Whyte is my homeboy. I live by his wisdom and words. He tells a story about once when he was feeling crushed by the weight of doing all "right" things in life but feeling exhausted in the process. He told a story of mentioning this dilemma to his friend, the wise Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine Monk, writer and lecturer, who told him that "The antidote to exhaustion isn't necessarily rest, but whole heartedness."

Have you ever experienced a time when you felt like you could do anything with the energy that you felt in your heart, when you really cared about something and that feeling caused you to act on something? Or have you ever felt crushed by putting all of your energy into something you didn't really care about?

Well, what if you could access that limitless resource of energy as often as you wished and what if you could direct your entire life from that energy?

This is precisely what I want to explore in my Live, Online Yoga Nidra class this week, Sunday, Nov. 17th at 9 am MST. We will discuss the topic a bit, do some powerful breathwork together, then do an incredibly relaxing and energizing Yoga Nidra practice that will access the limitless resources that already exist within you.

I've hosted two of these online Yoga Nidra sessions so far and I'm absolutely thrilled how they've gone down.

Please consider joining me for my next, live and online Yoga Nidra session happening this Sunday, November 17th at 9 am MST. If you're interested but can't make it work in your schedule, please register and you'll receive the recording after it's done.

Whatever you do this week, consider doing it with a wholeness of heart.

I Wrote a Book! Practical Yoga Nidra: A 10-Step Method to Reduce Stress, Improve Sleep, and Restore Your Spirit

Photo by Alex Adams

I’ve been so tight-lipped about some exciting news that I’ve almost given myself TMJ. Fortunately I’ve now been given the green light to open my mouth and tell you all about it.

Drum roll please…

I’ve written a book!

This spring, I was contacted by a publishing company who was curious if I might be the right person to write a book for them about Yoga Nidra. After a few phone interviews and me sending them a writing sample, we decided that we were a good fit for each other and we decided to push go on this project: Practical Yoga Nidra: A 10-Step Method to Reduce Stress, Improve Sleep, and Restore Your Spirit

What it’s about

Pre-order or Purchase your copy by clicking the above

This book is an easy-to-follow guide that gives you 10 steps to help you find wellness in body, mind, and spirit by developing an effective personal Yoga Nidra practice which you can start practicing from day 1. It’s written for both the total newbie as well as those in the know. In it, I break down each step, how it’s useful, and how to build a Yoga Nidra practice. I offer more than 20 Yoga Nidra meditation scripts that are each tailored to one of the 10 steps. You can read, record, and play back your own recordings for a relaxing and transformative Yoga Nidra meditation experience. At the end of the book, I put all the 10 steps together and give you a deeper, more integrated Yoga Nidra practice script to record. When all is said and done, you’ll have an impressive library of Yoga Nidra recordings.

I also share my own stories and experiences about life, Yoga Nidra, and mindfulness. Hopefully you will feel my nerdy personality come out through my writing. I wrote this book to put a very human face to an important but sometimes esoteric subject in order to help you create a simple practice that can transform your life. My deep desire is that this book teaches you more about yourself and through the process of reading about and practicing Yoga Nidra, you feel more alive, at peace, and excited about your life.

More about writing the book

Once my publisher and I ironed out the details, I had just about a month to write the thing, roughly three chapters a week. I spent many hours in outdoor cafes, holed up at the library, or at the kitchen table late at night pounding it out. For some authors, the writing process is easy—words flow from their minds onto the page in nice, coherent, and organized lines. Not me. For me, writing is hard work. I just don’t write good. But this book was different. It seemed to slide right out of my fingers onto the page. I felt a magical sense of flow while writing it.

Some mind-blowing things happened for me during my process of writing. Ignoring the fact that I wrote the entire thing in little over a month, one of the most profound things that happened was that I received some seriously prophetic and profound cosmic downloads about Yoga Nidra and the purpose of life during my writing process. I’m thrilled that those bolts of insight made their way into this book. I also often found myself writing this book in sense of timelessness. It’s very common to feel time dissolve during Awareness practices like Yoga Nidra, and writing this book was itself another deep practice of Awareness. It wasn’t so surprising that it had the same effect. It wasn’t until I was done writing that I realized the song I’d been listening to on repeat to put me into my writing trance was a jazz song called Timeless, by John Abercrombie. Obvious.That song must have repeated a thousand times and I’m sure I’ll always think of this book when I hear it.

It was a great pleasure to work with several editors and designers throughout this project. They were pleasant and professional and truly did stellar work with my book. I got misty-eyed the day that the graphic department sent me a visual copy of the book. They did a SMASH job and I feel that they made this book look as beautiful on the outside as the ideas and concepts within. I’m copiously proud of it and I hope you’ll love it, too.

Can I ask for your support?

So, I’m asking for your support. Pre-orders, early sales, and reviews make or break the success of a book in a publishers eyes. A physical book will be available December 10th, just in time for the holidays, BUT my book is available NOW to pre-order through Amazon. It only costs $12.99 and will look great in your library. Well worth it, in my humble opinion.

Would you mind showing me your support by taking a few seconds to click here and pre-purchase your copy of my book on Amazon? Maybe consider buying some as gifts for anybody you can think of who could use a dose of calm for the holidays.

As a way of saying thank you, if you send me a copy or screenshot of your purchase(s), I’ll give you a giant hug AND one free session to a live, virtual Yoga Nidra class. I’ll be starting these classes this Sunday, November 3rd at 9 am MST and they will be held online via Zoom at the same time each week. If it’s not this Sunday, let me know which one works for you. I’ll send you the nitty-gritty details when you let me know if you want to join. I’ll be recording each session so if the timing doesn’t work for you, I can still send you the recording of the class. These live, online classes will be a great opportunity to have a live Yoga Nidra practice with me. You can even ask questions about the book, if you want. This Sunday in class we’re exploring the theme Relaxed Alertness.

Thank You

Also, thank you for the great responses from the last email about which topics you’d like to see in the forthcoming volume of Yoga Nidra recordings. This is a completely different project than my book. Expect to see that available soon as a digital download.

Seriously, thank you for your unyielding support. Thank you for showing up for me as students, peers, and friends during my career of teaching yoga and mindfulness. It has truly been an illuminating and humbling process of coming to know myself and the Universe. One of the greatest things I’ve learned in this process is that we are all in this together.

Thank you and I love you.

And, I’ve already started writing my next book!

Online Yoga Nidra: The Practice That Makes You Whole

More than a decade ago, I took a Yoga Nidra training. If you’ve never done it, Yoga Nidra acts like a guided meditation where you lay down, become very relaxed, and listen to a facilitator guide you through deepening layers of Awareness. During my training, though I hadn’t done very much Yoga Nidra at all, I nonetheless experienced a session that led me through one of the most profound experiences of my life. It was cosmic. It was expansive. It was healing. It was pure happiness. The effect was like someone pulling back the curtain in Oz to reveal... ME. The TRUE me.

This was one of the experiences that told me that I’d be practicing, studying, and teaching Yoga Nidra for the rest of my life. Yoga Nidra has become a veritable passion of mine.

One of the things I love about Yoga Nidra is that you don’t need to “earn” you way to having a profound experience. Not that a dedicated practice of Yoga Nidra or any discipline isn’t very beneficial. It’s just that Yoga Nidra, maybe even on your first session ever, has the power to to remind you, by way of first-hand experience, of who you are.

Like it says over the gates at the Oracle of Delphi, “KNOW THYSELF.” Yoga Nidra acts like an oracle who tells you who you really are, whispers to you your destiny. Knowing who you are makes you whole. It puts you into a right perspective of your world, your problems, and your priorities. It shows you your heart’s gift to the world.

Yoga Nidra is an ancient practice that has found a renaissance today. It’s just as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago because no matter when you live on this planet, one of humanity’s biggest problems has always been the simple but pervasive misapprehension that you are anything other than what you came from. In other words, Yoga Nidra’s superpower is to show you by direct experience that what you are is Source—call that whatever you want, a child of the Universe, a child of God, a child of Krusty The Clown—whatever.
With this sure knowledge of your True Being, you see your purpose and your life with immense clarity, beauty, and gratitude. With this sure knowledge, your entire life feels different. You don’t react to problems in the same way. You see a connectedness in everything. You begin to see everything as love.

And while not every person emerges from every Yoga Nidra session with a “hallelujah” on their lips, it’s nonetheless quite often a profound experience.

Yoga is defined classically as the “yoking” of all things to Oneness. Nidra literally means sleep but Yoga Nidra is more about waking up to your True Self than it is falling into a stupor. Nidra more appropriately means that hypnagogic state between dreaming and consciousness. When you are led into this relaxed state, you open yourself into a keener state of Awareness. Indeed you arrive to a place of deeply relaxed Awareness, the natural state of your True Self. In this state you can gain clarity, and find peace. You can heal physically, spiritually, mentally. Yoga Nidra is one practice that can help you feel yourself as Source, and as Source there’s nothing you can’t do, be, or love.

I’ve seen hundreds of people receive profound benefits from Yoga Nidra. Most of the time when I conduct a Yoga Nidra class, instead of telling students the benefits of Yoga Nidra, I ask those who have done it in the past to share what they’ve experienced by practicing it. My students have told me that Yoga Nidra has helped them with:

• Stress

• Sleep

• Productivity

• Relaxation

• Anger

• High blood pressure

• Depression

• Creativity

• Spirituality (whatever denomination or non-denomination you are)

• Performance

• Confidence

• Self-worth

• Trauma

• Happiness

• Love

• Forgiveness
  

So how does it work? How does lying down, getting relaxed, and listening to someone talk you through a meditation help you achieve these things? In Yoga Nidra, you practice heightened Awareness. This aligns you with your True Self because according to its ancient philosophy, at the end of the day, what you are is Awareness. Yoga Nidra differs from other forms of meditation in part because of its emphasis to identify the practitioner as Awareness itself. It can work these wonderful benefits through your life because when you experience yourself as Source, there’s nothing you lack. You can know that you are whole. Whole is another way of saying healed.

Practicing Yoga Nidra is easy. You simply lie down, become relaxed, and listen to a facilitator lead you into deepening layers of Awareness. It sounds crazy but it still works even if you fall asleep. The part of you that I’m speaking to in a Yoga Nidra meditation is still paying attention, even if your waking mind is sleeping. You don’t need to have ever practiced yoga or meditation to practice Yoga Nidra.

While practicing it is easy, teaching it effectively can be quite complicated. That’s why I’ve spent the last decade learning to teach this practice well, and have taught thousands of hours of Yoga Nidra in the process. I’ve even created an Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training that has trained people around the world to teach this practice in their own voice to benefit the lives of their students.

One thing that my students have asked for regularly is to curate a Yoga Nidra experience that focuses on a particular benefit, like stress, forgiveness, or sleep. I’ve taught many private sessions to individuals where we go into depth on a personal issue and use Yoga Nidra to help them find their own solace, calm, and peace. Yoga Nidra helps people heal themselves.

With the idea that there are many people who need something particular from a Yoga Nidra experience, I’ve decided to create a volume of Yoga Nidra recordings that can be accessed anytime. These recordings will vary in length from 15–35 minutes, and will be curated around an intent or goal. One session for managing anxiety, another to manage anger, another to practice compassion, etc.

This will be a volume of around 15 Yoga Nidra recordings that can be downloaded to a phone, computer, or tablet. It will also come with a nice and neat booklet that gives information and helpful tips on getting the most out of your Yoga Nidra practice, and some supplemental breathing and mindfulness practices.

I’m currently building this project and I’m taking suggestions for subjects. If there’s a Yoga Nidra practice you’d like to have access to regularly, please let me know what you want. Say you want a Yoga Nidra practice to help you relax at the end of the day. Maybe you want a Yoga Nidra practice to help you have focus and clarity at the beginning of the day. Maybe you work with insomnia and would love something to help you sleep better. I’m open to suggestions, so please let me know what you’d like.

I’m also going to start holding a regular, live Yoga Nidra class online at the same time each week. This is open to anyone, no matter where you live in the world, and will start with each person registering for each class as a drop-in. Class will cost $12. This online Yoga Nidra class will be starting Sunday, November 3rd at 9 am MST. You can do this class from the comfort of your own home, wherever you live in the world. Each class will have a brief discussion about Yoga Nidra, will be centered on a theme, and will include some mindfulness and breathwork practices. There will be a 30–40 minute Yoga Nidra practice with each online session. The entire session will last 60–75 minutes. These live sessions will give you the chance to share your experiences with Yoga Nidra with others and ask any questions.

I will be recording these classes so if you love the topic of the class but can’t make it, you can still register and have the recording after. Everyone who purchases the class will have access to the recording.

Also, if you think you could benefit from a private, one-one-one Yoga Nidra session with me, we can arrange a live, virtual session. Or maybe you have a very specific need for a Yoga Nidra recording. I can make you your own personal Yoga Nidra recording tailored to meet your specific needs.

If you love Yoga Nidra or are interested in any of these offerings please:

Email me at scott@scottmooreyoga.com and let me know if there’s a practice you’d like to see on this first volume of recordings.

Register for the live Yoga Nidra class on Sunday, November 3rd at 9:00 am MST

Contact me to book your own private Yoga Nidra session.

Fill out this form to request your own private Yoga Nidra recording tailored to your specific needs ($100)

Please enjoy this Free Yoga Nidra recording I made about connecting to the heart. This is powerful

The Poison That Makes Us Holy

Happy Monday! I hope your week is starting off marvelously.

This morning I dropped Elio off from school and then decided to walk around a bit to record the audio of this post. Ultimately, I decided not to use that recording because there was too much traffic and it was too distracting so I re-recorded this and I think that is better.

Elio is getting used to his new school and is still having a little bit of a problem using the bathroom by himself so some mornings, like this morning, I drop him off at school, go to the gym or do some work at a cafe, then head back to school to encourage him to use the bathroom.

As I was walking around this morning, not far from Elio’s school, there is a beautiful, modern cathedral here in Nice. It’s got a very unique, rounded architecture and it’s gleaming while. This cathedral is dedicated to the Saint of Joan of Arc.

If you don’t remember the story of Joan of Arc, she was a peasant girl in the 1400s who as a teenager received a revelation from God that she was supposed to lead the French army against the English and the Burgundians, a French dynasty who were at the time in league with the English and who today produce lovely wines— but that’s neither here nor there.

So against all rationale, the prince Charles of Valois agreed to allow Joan of Arc to lead the army. She did. They won. She was lauded and revered. Unfortunately, about a year later, she was captured by the English and the Burgundians and was burned at the stake as a heretic. She’s been held as someone very special to the spirit of France and it wasn’t until the 1920s that she was actually canonized and considered a saint and this church is dedicated to her.

I’m so happy that I walked by this church because it relates to the myth I want to tell today:

Today, I want to tell my rendition of the ancient Hindu myth about the Asuras and the Devas.

Long ago, in time out of mind, there were two groups of beings, the Asuras and the Devas. There couldn’t be a different sort of people. The asuras were earthly people, thought mostly of themselves, were a bit selfish. They probably loved Nascar, ate pork rinds, and didn’t recycle. The Devas on the other hand were beings that were very heavenly and always thinking of their inner divine nature. I imagine them dressed in gossamer white clothing, subsisting on tofu and vegetable broth, meditating for several hours a day, and leaving behind a faint smell of patchouli or incense whenever they left a room.

Well, those two kinds of being were about as opposite as you could imagine but they both wanted one thing and that was Soma. Soma was the elixur of eternal life. The Asuras wanted it because it felt so good to be eternal and the Devas wanted it so they could further devote themselves to the Divine. Now, the only way to get Soma was to ask Vishnu and if on the off chance that he granted you to have it, he would allow Lakshmi, the goddess of fortune and gifts to bestow it upon you.

So united in this common desire, the Asuras and the Devas got together and timidly asked Vishnu if they could have some Soma. He agreed but told them what they must do to get it. He was going to lend them his Sesha, Vishnu’s giant snake. They were to wrap this snake around a mountain which was to rest atop the giant tortoise Korma. If you’ve ever done Kormasana in yoga class, this is where that gets its name. Once the snake was wrapped around the mountain and placed on top of the Korma’s shell, they were to pull back and forth and oscillate it enough that they should somehow get the Soma. Grateful, the Asuras and the Devas agreed and began their task.

The Devas being smarter than the Asuras opted to take the relatively benign tail of the snake, which had but four ends which some Sanskrit scholars say relate to the 4 bases of DNA structure, something that the ancients discovered long before Watson, Crick, both of whom studied the work of their colleague Franklin. The Asuras therefore received the head end of the sesha and were blasted by countless heads of a snake, each one shooting fiery blasts like a dragon.

The Asuras and the Devas began to pull on the sesha with all of their might and in their lust for Soma, they started to pull so hard that the sesha, as strong and divine as a character as he may be, became nonetheless very ill and began to vomit venomous bile which started to cover and poison the entire earth. Seeing the problem, the Asuras and Devas stopped their movement and decided that something must be done before the entire earth is engulfed with this poison.

They weren’t about to go back to Vishnu. He was kind enough to let them have the chance to get Soma in the first place. They didn’t want to return to Vishnu and tell him how in their blind lust for Soma, they made his snake sick and now the entire earth was starting to be covered in poisonous puke. Instead, they importuned Shiva. They asked him if he could help them out.

Siva surveyed the situation and gathered up all of the bile and drank it, neither swallowing it to digest it nor spitting it back up. Siva held it in his throat and sanctified it, turning his throat blue.

Saved, the Asuras and the Devas continued their task, this time taking great care to have a balance between steadiness and ease. After they developed a good rhythm, eventually the sea began to boil and riches started popping up out of the ocean. Soma was about to come at any minute.

Vishnu decided to give them one last temptation to see if they were worthy of the Soma and he sent a temptations out to see if the Asuras and Devas really had purity in their hearts to receive the Soma. I imagine Vishnu sending onto the beach a bunch of speedo and bikini-clad partiers, barbecues wafting the smell of rib-eye steaks, not to mention volleyball nets, beers, and music. To the Devas he sent over all the unicorn amulets, treasure troves of yoga pants, sensible shoes, and all organic produce that a healthy, spiritual person could ever want.

Well, despite all of their efforts to get to that moment, the Asuras caved and headed to the beach for beers and babes. The Devas stayed and soon Lakshmi gave them each a single drop of Soma which turned them into immortal beings like angels.

I love myths like that because we can interpret them in many ways. They speak to a truth that is large enough mean something different fo whomever hears it, regardless of spiritual orientation, practice, discipline, or period of life.

I love the idea in this myth about the balance of steadiness and ease. In the Yoga Sutras, the book where we get a lot of the philosophy of yoga from, there are really very few instructions for how we are to practice yoga, the physical practice. It does say, however that no matter what, you’ve got to find the balance between steadiness and ease. Whatever your physical, spiritual, and I would even say political practice might be, this story illustrations the value of balance. What’s more is how when you’re trying to improve your situation but approach your improvement with a fundamental lack of balance, how that can make things worse off than they were before.

And when things are bad, and even when they seem like they are going to poison the entire world, like the snake’s venomous puke, that somehow the Divine can help you hold that in such a way as to sanctify it

You’ve probably heard me mention this more times than you can count but it is a truth that has become imperative to my own personal spiritual evolution, and that is Leonard Cohen’s lyric from his song Anthem that says, Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything and that’s how the light gets in. This says that just like the poison of whatever may befall us, we become sanctified, the light gets in, when we learn to hold our imperfections. That it’s because of these faults, this brokenness, this poison, that we are rendered holy.

CLICK ABOVE TO LEARN ABOUT MY LUXURY RETREAT AT A BORDEAUX CHATEAU 2020

It makes me think of our situation with Elio, learning to use the bathroom by himself at school. How he is struggling being the only kid at school who doesn’t speak French and how he is learning to have more independence and things and how we are the unique family at school because we don’t quite understand exactly how things work yet, at least not like the other French families. But how me going back to school is strengthening him and teaching him and how it gives me an opportunity to build a rapport with the directorice of the school and talk with his teachers regularly. This is building a special relationship between our family and the school.

It also makes me think about Joan of Arc and how she was killed for fundamentally backward, misogynist, and in my mind evil reasons, but how her spirit has endured and how she’s given hope and courage to countless French people and how she was like the original Wonder Woman in some ways and that she’s become a divine symbol which celebrates a woman’s power, intuition, and spirit and which is so strong that it’s still celebrated 600 years later.

I hope you enjoyed the myth. I’d love to hear about what you heard in this myth.

I hope that you can find ways in your life to celebrate balance in all of your practices. I hope that you’ll be able to find the divinity in the challenges that beset you and see how that all of our challenges are making us into the greater angels of our True Nature.

I hope you have a great week. Please stay tuned for some Yoga Nidra offerings I am going to announce coming up.

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My Heart Was Full

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Yoga Nidra

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Yoga Nidra is better than drugs. If you don’t know, it’s a guided meditation where you lie down and get extremely relaxed, and drift into that in-between state of consciousness to actually become very aware. As you listen to me lead you through the practice, you gain a beautiful and broad perspective about life, problems, and the simple joy of being awake to the beauties of this world. I’ve been studying and practicing Yoga Nidra for over a decade and anymore when I do Yoga Nidra I am led through the very same process of keen awareness as I am facilitating for my students.

So, one evening when I lived in New York, I had just finished a particularly beautiful and heart opening Yoga Nidra practice. I was teaching at Pure Yoga in Manhattan and as I was walking down Amsterdam Avenue to go and catch the red line back home to Brooklyn. And because of this Yoga Nidra practice that I’d just taught and simultaneously experienced, my entire being felt an absolute surge of well-being and love— I was absolutely brimming with joy. At that moment, it felt as if my eyes suddenly had a super-human focus, like I could see more than 77 blocks down Amsterdam Ave, all the way to the Hudson and that they could see every detail, from the birds landing on the light posts to the dirt in the gutter and all of it felt somehow like an expression of love. I floated down the street with a smile on my face feeling like nothing could ever be so perfect. As I passed people on the street, everyone from the homeless guy to the stressed out business guy, it felt like I could feel into everyone’s heart and could feel everyone’s inherent goodness. Experiences like this are not rare in Yoga Nidra and they are one of the simple reasons that I love this practice so much.

My Heart Was Full

It reminds me of a story that one of my favorite profs in college told me. His name was Leslie Norris and he was an old, wise, and brilliant poet. He knew the Romantic poets so well he could talk about them like they were his neighbors. By the way, if you’re curious what an English major does for a living, this is it. So, in this real-life story, poet William Wordsworth is feeling a lot of pressure from his guardians. His parents have died, as he is emerging into adulthood, he will soon be in charge of taking care of himself and his sister. All he wants to do in life is to write poetry but that doesn’t pay the bills so he’s receiving a lot of pressure to join the clergy instead. Well, one morning he’s walking home in the early twilight through the hills and grasslands near the sea. The landscape is blowing his mind, totally gorgeous, and his senses are completely alive. He’s about ready to burst from joy. And in that moment of intense beauty he gets a revelation from the powers that be that poetry was what he is meant to do in life. He clearly understood that the Universe was telling him loud and clear that poetry was his path. And from that moment forward never looked back. He went on to be, well, William Wordsworth, the Michael Jordan of the Romantic poets. The poem goes like this, it’s from his magnum opus The Prelude.

Leslie Norris

Magnificent

The morning was, a memorable pomp,

More glorious than I ever had beheld.

The sea was laughing at a distance; all

The solid mountains were as bright as clouds,

Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light;

And in the meadows and the lower grounds

Was all sweetness of a common dawn –

Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds,

And labourers going forth into the fields.

Ah, need I say, dear friend, that to the brim

My heart was full? I made no vows, but vows

Were then made for me: bond unknown to me

Was given, that I should be – else sinning greatly –

A dedicated spirit. On I walked

In blessedness, which even yet remains.

Expert from Prelude by William Wordsworth

All that to say, that on that day after teaching Yoga Nidra, as I was walking down Amsterdam Ave totally brimming with life’s fullness, I had a Wordsworth moment. I felt that this practice of sharing Yoga Nidra with the world is the way in which the Universe has blessed me to feel Universal love and the way in which I get to share it back to the Universe and that it was a responsibility to share it lest I be “sinning greatly.”

Yoga Nidra Training

So I have the privilege, and frankly the responsibility, to share Yoga Nidra. It’s totally my jam and I love it. I’ll be sharing it tonight at a Yoga Nidra class at 21st Yoga and for those who want to really go deep, I’m so thrilled to be spending 20 hours teaching Yoga Nidra in a teacher training/immersion—This. Weekend.

About the training, if you’re a yoga teacher, awesome—Yoga Nidra is an essential tool to add to your teaching tool belt. If you’re just interested in the practice, there’s no better way to understand it than diving deep. If you’re a parent, teacher, or therapist, this could be an essential tool to help you help the people you are privileged to guide and nurture. The last time I did this training someone joined so they could learn to help their therapy clients better deal with stress. Someone else joined because they wanted to lower the teen-suicide rates in their school district. Another person joined because she was a family law attorney and wanted something to help her clients meet the challenge of divorce as mindfully as possible.

So how does it work, how does this relaxing guided meditation have such a powerful effect on people? It’s so powerful because this practice very skillfully leads you experience your True Nature, the part of you that feels wholeness and Universal love. When you are in conversation with the part of you that is fundamentally whole, everything heals.

This weekend is going to be life-changing. I’m not over selling this. There will be a lot of Yoga Nidra practice, chances to practice teaching to each other. You’ll learn how to lead yourself through this practice. You’ll receive a really solid PDF manual with Yoga Nidra scripts that you can start using on day 1 and which will serve as a foundation from which you can learn to personalize and build your own practices. Also, I’m offering this either virtually or in-person if you’re in Salt Lake City. People from all over the world will be joining us. I’ll be recording the entire thing, both audio and video, so if the timing doesn’t work you can always watch it later. This recording will also give you an incredible Yoga Nidra library.

I really hope you can make it this weekend. Regardless, I’d love to offer this Yoga Nidra practice as a chance to experience Yoga Nidra’s power to open your heart, cuz hey all the love songs are right and all you need is love.

So as I’m wrapping this up, I want to let you know that Aug. 29–Sept.1 I’m hosting a Writing + Yoga + Nature Retreat in Harriman State Park with the one and only Nan Seymour. We’ve invited special guest, poet Maya Stein to blow our socks off with her incredible poetry. We are going to explore what happens when we open to deep awareness through Yoga Nidra and then put pen to paper and see what comes out. This is the 4th year we’ve done it and it’s been amazing every year. We have only 1 spot left and we’d love for that spot to be filled by you.

There’s no better way to practice Yoga Nidra or any other form of mindfulness than with my 30-Day Meditation challenge. It’s happening the entire month of September. The challenge is to simply meditate every day for 15 minutes or more using this great app called Insight Timer. All month I’ll be sending you instructions and encouragement. The challenge costs $30 and if you complete the challenge you can choose to either receive a full refund of your tuition or roll that into other cool meditation products that I have.

No matter what you do or don’t do with mindfulness, I just want to say thank you for picking up what I’m puttin’ down. I love doing this and it’s so nice to be on this journey with you.

May the Source be with you.

Namaste.

Please Listen to this heart-centered Yoga Nidra practice

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Human Doing vs. Human Being

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Your identity is your foundation of existence. Too often we tend to identify with things that don’t support the truth of what we are, our beingness. Too often we get caught up as human doings rather than human beings. Too often we equate our value on what we can do rather than the fact that we simply are. 

Tantra is a school of eastern thought. One of the many facets to Tantra is its emphasis on non-dualism or all things belonging to a larger whole. When you can expand your Awareness from being either this or that, you tap into what I call your Both And Nature. This Both And Nature speaks to your higher beingness and embraces all the elements of you for optimal expression. 

Ironically, the person who doesn’t know their Both And Nature, identifies only as body or with their actions, equates their existence with only what they can do. Ability and doing is by nature volatile and changeable so their sense of identity lacks a real foundation. This lack of existential foundation invariably affects performance because each act becomes a desperate grope for identity when there’s none to be had merely by performing an action. 

During my career, I’ve taught yoga and meditation to dozens of world-class athletes and performers. Often when these performers retire, still quite young, they sometimes go into an existential crisis if their entire identity was wrapped up in solely what they could do. Now that they can no longer perform at the level they felt defined them, they have no idea who they are. 

By contrast, the person who is identified as a Being rather than a doer knows their Both And Nature and can act invincibly from that place because they realize that they and each of their actions are an expression of their Being, of Source. The person connected to their Being through practices like the Yoga Nidra, graduate from a level of merely doing an action to Being it. 

Yoga Nidra is a form of Tantric guided meditation that is both relaxing and very useful to reinforce your sense of your own Being. The aim in Yoga Nidra is to disidentify from anything in the realm of the changeable, like body or thoughts, and learn to identify as Awareness itself. Typically, a Yoga Nidra session will last anywhere from 15–40 minutes where you simply lie down, close your eyes, and listen to a facilitator (or recording) lead you through paying attention to things like your body, your breath, energy, thoughts, etc. This process leads you deeper and deeper both into relaxation as well as into Awareness. 

Since it’s also true that while you cannot identify solely as body, your body is an important (though changeable) part of who you are. It also exists as one of the greatest tools you possess to open yourself to the experience of Awareness. As you learn to inhabit your body with deeper Awareness, you tune into your Both And Nature and from that place of embodied Awareness, you can go out and perform at your best. 

Click here to hear a free Yoga Nidra recording and experience for yourself the transformative of your own Both And Nature.

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Be The Shit

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“What does the mighty oak care if the warthog scratches its rump against its bark?

Right before I moved from Salt Lake City, I had my last session with a wonderful private client, and friend. She began our session with a comment about how difficult she found it to be around people who are constantly bragging about who they are or what they own. This comment sparked a wonderful discussion and subsequent Yoga Nidra practice dedicated to the differences between a human being and a human doing. We discussed the idea of aiming to be so secure in our being that we didn’t need to try to prove anything to anyone else. We could just be.

I said to her, “When you’re The Shit, you don’t have to go around town bragging about it. You just go be The Shit.”

It reminds me of something I heard poet and writer David Whyte say, “Constantly explaining who you are is a gospel of despair.” Why does it seem that when we are the least secure in who we are, we tend to brag about ourselves the most? Probably because when we equate our value based on what we can do rather than a sure sense of our own beingness, we’re constantly trying to affirm something that really doesn’t exist. By contrast, we as human beings are valuable simply because we exist. We don’t need to prove anything because we simply are. If we're identified as something as fragile as our action or a title, then we're constantly fearing not being that thing anymore, we fear annihilation.

It’s also true that when we can be secure in our own being, other people don’t ruffle our feathers. The best antidote in response to the braggart is to be so solid in our own beingness that another person could say or do whatever they wish and it wouldn’t bend us one way or the other. Like the fantastic German quote, “What does the mighty oak care if the warthog scratches its rump against its bark?”

This is what we are doing in our yoga and meditation practices: we are affirming our beingness, and steeling ourselves against anything that could arise in our lives by simply learning to pay attention, to have Awareness. Here’s the kicker: our beingness is somehow wrapped around our ability to pay attention to the world, to listen and be. Not to do. The doing comes as the response to the being. The ancient teaching says that consciousness precedes form.

That day, my client and I had a great session. I led her through a personalized Yoga Nidra practice that helped her to feel solid in her own being to go out and be the mighty oak so that others could say or do whatever and she didn’t have to worry about it one way or the other. I recorded the practice and left it with her so she could continue to practice this concept.

After the session, as I was rushing out to go home and pack for France, I was half-way out the door, when I heard her shout after me, “Hey Scott!” I turned back to see her with a wide smile on her face. “Be The Shit,” she said as wise parting advice.

So, may I also extend this invitation to you: Be The Shit.

Living On The Edge

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I’ve been practicing all my life. Since childhood I’ve practiced everything from music to magic, baseball to baking. So when I started practicing yoga and meditation it just felt natural to begin a new practice. One day when I was a kid, I was practicing the saxophone and I realized something essential about the notion of practice: practice is the end, not the means to the end. Sure, I get better at playing the sax by practicing it, but the point is to be playing. Practice is being at the edge, at the frontier of experience. Also, sometime in the last 20 years of practicing and teaching yoga, it dawned on me that there’s never a yoga performance, no yoga recital. It’s always only a practice.

Today I want to talk about the practice of living at the frontier. I’d like to invite you to reconsider the purpose of practice. Consider that maybe the goal of any practice isn’t to improve, it’s simply to be present at the frontier. I know, I know, I know, why do we practice if it’s not to grow? The thing is that you do grow when you practice but maybe growth is just the byproduct, not the purpose. Being at the frontier means regularly leaving the comfort of what we know, abandoning what’s automatic and easy, and stepping onto unsure ground to truly learn to know ourselves. Therefore, it’s our life’s practice to simply be at the frontier.

Frontier=Presence=Self-Knowledge

To my mind, the word “frontier” conjures images of gritty people working with the land and wrestling with the unknown as they learn and grow. Our frontier could be our edge in a yoga posture, our edge in our awareness in meditation, or perhaps simply the edge of entering a new stage in life. Being at the frontier isn't always easy but isn’t that the point? While it’s not always easy, it is always real. Our frontier is a place we’ve never been before and being there helps us to truly come alive because it quickens our minds, makes our senses come alive, and forces us into radical presence. There is no coasting or autopilot at the frontier.

For me, traveling has been a practice of being at the frontier. More than geographical frontiers, traveling regularly takes me to cultural, philosophical, and humanitarian frontiers I would have never known had I lived out my days in Smalltown, Utah where I was born. But more important than learning about another place, traveling always involves a healthy dose of getting knowing myself—there’s usually a steep learning curve to making your way somewhere else, one that unavoidably makes you look inside. More than learning about someone else, traveling puts you at the rugged frontier of knowing whoever the hell YOU are, a frontier that is invariably west of wild.

While our goal in practice may not necessarily be to grow, it happens regardless and you can’t grow without challenges. I once heard someone say, “If you ever find yourself coasting in life it probably means you’re going downhill.” In yoga philosophy, this heat necessary for growth is called Tapas and is the driver toward self-knowledge. Experiencing Tapas, being a little on edge or confronted with challenges, is an essential part of our awakening because in a very real way it wakes us up from the anesthesia of easy, and puts us into a place of fierce presence, and presence is the secret that whispers to us our true, universal identity. Presence teaches you who you are.

Flowing At Your Edge

Sometimes breaking out of the stupor of easy to be present means doing something big, something drastic. I can tell you from experience that nothing wakes you up like a psychedelic trip with a shaman in the jungle or jogging around the conservative state capital wearing nothing but your best set of briefs, running shoes, and your hands-free device. But a regular practice of being at your frontier doesn’t mean regularly stepping to the edge of stupidity. For example, it’s hard to be present to the full grandeur of the Grand Canyon when your toes are dangling over its edge. Instead, you’ll grow far more from your every-day practice if you allow it to be a comfortable step away from both boredom and your absolute edge.

Steven Kotler is a NYT Bestselling author who studies and writes about how uber-performers thrive at their edge by achieving a state of flow, an optimal state of consciousness where people can both feel their best and perform their best. One of the ways he’s discovered that people can get into flow is by regularly stepping up to their comfortable edge. Steven Kotler has learned how to write while in a state of flow and through his words how to put his readers into the same state. In December of 2018, right on the frontier of embarking on my journey to live and work in France, I attended Steven Kotler’s Flow for Writers Workshop in San Francisco. For three days, our intimate group of writers holed up in a chic San Francisco loft as Steven revealed to us some of the secrets of good writing where he taught quite succinctly: write from your edge and readers will read from theirs.

And while performance maybe isn’t the point of practice, being at your comfortable edge is the secret sauce to great performance. Whether it’s writing or rock climbing, being at your edge and in flow stimulates your brain into a deeper awareness that illuminates the microscopic but essential details that would otherwise fly under the radar. Being at your edge and in flow releases all the feel-good chemicals in your brain. Chemicals that catalyzes your performance around the subject by focusing your mind on its subtleties and nuances, by illuminating long-chain connections to otherwise disparate ideas, and by unlocking your boundless creativity. In yoga class, I encourage my students to negotiate their edge of each pose by finding the version that is just north of comfortable, what I call the “comfortably-intense” version of every pose. Also, I often ask if they could become just 10% more relaxed.Flow simply can’t happen when you’re either bored or panicked to tears.

The Only Way To Get There Is To Be Here

After developing a regular practice of being present at our edge and bravely taking those essential, small steps forward, one day we’ll look back to see that we’ve covered a lot of ground. When you look back, it will feel like you’ve spanned a damn-near impossible distance. But here’s the deal with forward movement, whatever your next horizon—be it it be becoming more flexible, more focused, or more financially sound—the only way to get there is to be here. Be exactly here at the frontier that presents itself to you at this moment. But the thing about here is that it’s always changing. No sooner do you get comfortable with the grass at your feet than do you naturally grow toward your next horizon.

When you take ambition out of the practice, you give yourself the perspective of working with your actual edge rather than the edge you hope to be at one day. It’s being present at your actual frontier that gives you the firm ground to step forward into that next step, and the next, and the next… For example, I can’t learn to play Coltrane until I first experience the frontier of learning to play the sax, how to read music and the rudiments of jazz, etc. It’s not until I’m present at those frontiers that new frontiers will open up until one day I’ll find Coltrane’s masterpiece, Giant Steps, dancing out of the bell of my horn while wondering, “How the hell did I ever do that?”

It’s presence that promotes growth because it’s the only thing that’s real. Sure, find your star that guides you forward in your endeavors but the practice itself keeps you grounded in the frontier of the moment. Isn’t that what life is, being present at our frontier of experience while watching our own inevitable evolution? Growth will naturally happen as you’re present with your frontier and making the essential trek of 1 inch, the spot directly in front of your toes.

Finally, the paradox of the frontier is that you’ve already arrived and arrival means never stopping. We must find home by being comfortable in our discomfort. This home is our birthright and the eternal and joyful journey toward our highest self. We have arrived the moment we put ourselves at the frontier and open our vision to simply witness ourselves grow.

Conclusion

Several years ago, I experienced a great revelation about the importance of regularly visiting my frontier through practice. I was leading myself through a Yoga Nidra practice and wanted to hear the wisdom of my own heart to hear whatever it might tell me. I visualized the wisest person I could think of in order to tap into my own inner wisdom. A vision of my favorite prof from college popped into my mind with stark clarity. All my senses were popping: I was sitting in his office and could smell the oiled wood of his desk, see it’s tight-knit, tawny grain, and could hear the buzz of the lights and the squeak of his chair as he leaned back, pondering at the ceiling. There was a moment of generous silence between us as he stroked his beard. Then he looked at me out the corner of his eye. And with a sly, paternal, and loving air said something I’ll never forget. He said, “Whatever you believe in . . . practice it every day.” This event never happened except for in my mind but the truth of it became more real that if it actually had. This was my wise inner-self reminding me to always be at my frontier through practice.

If you’re interested, click here to listen to that same Yoga Nidra practice where I lead you hear the wise person inside of you.

I invite you to consider reevaluating your relationship to practice from being something you do in order to improve to something you do in order to regularly be at your frontier. I invite you to forget about the ambition of practice and simply be present at that frontier and watch how growth naturally happens. And I invite you celebrate the many frontiers you find yourself at in this moment of your life.

Whatever you practice, do it regularly. I hope to practice with you soon

PS

I used to drive around town with a sticker on the back of my truck that read 1,” a nod to a poem that speaks to the greatest frontier I ever hope to arrive at.

“A Spiritual Journey” by Wendell Berry

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,

no matter how long,

but only by a spiritual journey,

a journey of one inch,

very arduous and humbling and joyful,

by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,

and learn to be at home.

Mantras and Visualizations: Meditations that Sting Like A Bee

“Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee.”

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This was Muhammad Ali’s mantra. Perhaps yoga and mindfulness isn’t often associated with Muhammad Ali, yoga's first principle of non-harming and all that, but he was someone who was particularly adroit in his use of the yogic principle of mantra and visualization. His iconic mantra has become synonymous with a champion. What is the power of mantra and visualization and how can they be used to mold reality like they did for Muhammad Ali, and how can we use these tools to achieve our dreams?

Writing the Script on Reality

Although his mantra practically became his sonic name tag, it wasn’t just a pithy phrase he liked to throw around because it was catchy; it wasn’t his slogan or his attempt at branding himself. Maybe few understood that Ali’s mantra was his access point into his deep inner-source that believed he would be the boxing heavyweight champion of the world. Saying it over and over again was his craft, the practice of helping the logical part of his mind both believe and expect this belief to become reality.

In addition to using his mantra, Muhammad Ali visualized over and over his fight with Sonny Liston where he would win the heavyweight championship. He saw himself win the title thousands of times in his head before ever stepping into the ring. By the time he stepped into the ring, all that was left to do was the final step, the physical practice of what he already knew was true. And Muhammad Ali isn't alone. It was like he theatre of life—he knew the script and on opening night he simply needed to go on stage and perform the play.

It reminds me of a story in the Hindu scripture, The Bhagavad Gita, where the God-turned-mortal Krishna is instructing the warrior prince Arjuna about his duty to fight in an epic battle. At Arjuna’s reluctance, Krishna pulls him aside and informs him that truth and time is not so linear and that the battle has already been fought and won. Knowing this, Krishna told Arujuna that the important thing is that he must go out there and fulfill his dharma, his destiny. Similar to what Ali told himself through visualization and mantra, Krishna told Arjuna to tap into the source of belief of what was already true.

Thought Precedes Form

Many psychologists and neuroscientists will affirm that despite our trust in it, our mind isn’t necessarily the best preceptor of reality; it’s readily subject to prejudice, interpretations, and misapprehension. In yoga philosophy the name for this misapprehension is Avidya, the opposite of clear seeing. Like modern brain science suggests, two people might see the same facts and both have wildly different beliefs about translating those facts. They might even debate what is real. Thus our mind is subject to our own personal beliefs and prejudices. Our mind creates a "reality" from a dizzying array of options suggested by our perceptions, interpretations, and desires. This subjectivity tugs at the very fabric the notion of reality.

Yoga suggests that since our beliefs are so powerful in contributing to our reality, we can use things like mantras and visualization to help us create our reality, perhaps like Muhammad Ali and Arjuna, a reality that somehow in our hearts what we know is already true. We have a bigger part to play in creating our reality than we think. Mantra and visualizations can help.

Beliefs change all the time. One minute you believe in the Tooth Fairy and the next you don’t. In Vedanta, a school of yogic philosophy, the sheath or layer of our being that negotiates beliefs, both conscious and subconscious, is called the Vignana Mayakosha. Yeah, it’s a crazy name this part of our being is perhaps more powerful than we sometimes give it credit.

Dr. Bruce Lipton, an internationally recognized biologist and author who works to bridge science and spirit, says that 95% of our decision making comes from our subconscious. If we can learn to source and even manipulate our subconscious, there's no telling what power we might have over our own world. Visualizations and mantra are two very effective and powerful ways of shaping our world. Muhammad Ali powerfully demonstrated his ability mold his reality of being the heavyweight champion of the world using mantra and visualization.

The Power of Words

Words are powerful. Religious texts like The Bible even says that “In the beginning was the Word . . . and the Word was God.” In the Hindu scripture, The Yoga Sutras, the principle of Satya or truth is the second highest principle behind non-harming because of the power of words. For longer than recorded history, magic, mythic, and religious traditions have regarded certain words, whether vocalized or thought, as both sacred and powerful. I heard one of my yoga teachers, Judeth Lasater, say, “What is worrying but praying for what you don’t want.” Thus is the power of thoughts and words.

So put words to the test. I invite you to choose those words that, like Muhammad Ali, like Arjuna, will manifest your sacred destiny. And I invite you to find a way of reciting them to manifest their power in your life. Maybe you know already your mantra, what words you need to evoke for you to live into your true destiny. Perhaps words like: Power, Clarity, Forgiveness, Strength, etc. Maybe you need to discover what your mantra is.

I invite you to do a meditation in order to distill your clarity on which words are right for you. This meditation doesn’t have to come by spending months in the desert in deep contemplation. Rather, maybe 10 minutes concentrating on clearly answering a few questions for yourself. You’ll know it when it comes. Maybe it will take a few days of meditating for a few minutes each day.

Here’s the mantra-finding process: First, ask yourself what has been reoccurring in your life recently as a theme that you need to pay attention to. Another way to answer this question is to think about what ways the Universe is asking you to grow right now—what challenges are presenting themselves to you now, asking you to grow? Next, don’t allow your thinking mind to take over, here, but rather let the answer to this next question be instinct, the first thing that comes to mind: What does your heart know is your purpose for this world? Distill the answer to these questions down to a phrase or maybe even one word (don’t worry, you can change it if you need to, you don’t have to marry that word for life) but allow yourself to use that word or phrase as your powerful catalyst forward to what you already believe about yourself.

Then, if you’re inclined, grab a mala (you can get these at any crystal and incese, dragon and rainbows shop). They are beaded necklaces with 108 beads on them. The Mala’s will usually have a tassel on them representing the beginning and the end. Hold the mala on the first bead between your right thumb and middle finger, just beyond the tassel. In your mind or aloud, repeat your word or phrase then move to the next bead. Do this over and over again until you come to the end of the mala. If it’s short and you’d like a longer meditation, turn the mala around and repeat the mantra going the other way on the mala until you come back to the tassel. After your meditation watch to see how you see the world differently and how you live into the beliefs that you bring to your mind through mantra.

In addition to discovering your mantra, create a visualization where you see yourself perform what you'd like to arrive for yourself over and over. Remember to use all of your senses and think about it happening in the moment, instead of dreaming for a future. The part of our brain and the part of our consciousness that we are accessing only understand now. Spend a few minutes in visualization to see yourself succeed and just like Muhammad Ali, become the champion of your world.

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Meditations on Happiness

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We all just want to be happy. We all search to be happier. We are all scouring for clues to solve that mystery as to why we aren’t fully satisfied in life? So we turn to things like yoga and meditation to help solve the happiness mystery. Surely yoga and meditation will help us to be happy, right? Yes they will but maybe not how we think they will. Much of the immediate “happiness” we get from yoga and meditation is fleeting and finite: a nice yoga butt, the ninja-like ability to do a handstand, 5 minutes not worrying about your finances while sitting in meditation. And as soon as we’ve finished class, we often find ourselves disappointed to be in the exact same place we were before class.

The problem occurs when we use yoga and meditation as self-improvement instruments. We say to ourselves, “If I could just improve my flexibility, forget my aching heart, and calm my busy mind, then I’d be happy.” But what if yoga and meditation aren’t for self-improvement at all? What if they are merely tools that help bring us to Awareness? And that’s it. These practices aren’t for self-improvement because the Self doesn’t need to be fixed.

But beyond that, in a very practical way this Awareness also helps us to find happiness by clarifying to our conscious mind both what we really want in life as well as helping us recognize it when we’ve received it. In truth, Yoga and meditation simply help us to practice Awareness which in turn reveals the true mystery of happiness: that happiness is presence.

Secret No. 1: Don’t Wait for Happiness, You’re Already Perfect

First, and this is one of life’s biggest lessons, yoga and meditation make you happy by giving you the Awareness that everything simply exists and is perfect in that existence. Including you. You’re already perfect. This Awareness also reveals that happiness just exists, the same way everything else does.

One of the secrets to happiness is to realize that we can’t wait for the events in our lives to align perfectly for us to be happy. You gotta stop waiting for the world to make you happy cuz the world just doesn’t care. You gotta start making the decision to be happy despite the events and circumstances in your life because there will always be something other than yourself to blame for the fact that you’re unhappy. You’re in charge of your emotions. Nobody else is responsible for that job, not your partner or spouse, your kids, your job, your teachers, God—nobody but you.

The stone-cold truth is that the events in our lives are neither good nor bad. They just are. It’s the meaning we assign to those events that triggers the emotions we associate as good or bad. And guess who gets to choose the meaning of each event that happens. You do.

Awareness shows you that this moment is all there is. Stop waiting for happiness. There’s never a more perfect time to be happy as the eternal now. Awareness shows you that you gotta stop looking for happiness outside of yourself. You’ll never find it. It doesn’t exist. If you can’t find happiness inside, you’ll sure as shit never find it outside. That’s just Truth with a capital “T.”

One of the oldest vedic mantras, the Gayatri Mantra, thousands of years old, says that if I truly understood the fact that everything comes from Source, I’d see that I’m no different than the happiness I seek, I’d see that happiness is my essence. (Click below to listen to me chanting this mantra.)

I know what you’re thinking, “That’s shit! life’s hard.”

Sure, life’s hard. Yet through Awareness there’s a happiness that can’t be touched by life’s difficulty. Life is beautiful even in our hardest moments because our struggles represent our growth-evolution of learning to see ourselves as the perfect beings we already are. Our life’s struggles are just like those of a new butterfly struggling to break out of its chrysalis, to unfold into its own magnificence. A butterfly won’t survive without those struggles. And like the joy of the butterfly bouncing triumphantly on the wind, one day we too will celebrate every stitch of pain that birthed our unknown wings.

The late, great Leonard Cohen said it perfectly in his lyrics to the song Anthem:

Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything,

And that’s how the light gets in.

Even the rhyme is broken yet these are perhaps some of the most succinct and poignant lyrics ever to remind us that we aren’t perfect despite our brokenness, but because of it.

In order to see our perfection through our brokenness, we must learn to be present when painful emotions arise, enough to feel them fully but without letting them define us. The practice is to realize that while we may experience emotions, what we are is fundamentally larger than emotions. And as much as you can be present with emotions, no matter which one, that presence actually serves to reveal the perfect, luminous thing inside of you which is larger than emotions, call it Awareness, Source, God, Spirit, your True Self— whatever. What you are is Awareness experiencing itself as an emotion, like an otherwise unknown being trying on a costume to understand itself. It’s by being present to your emotions through Awareness that reveals the happiness inside of you, a happiness that can’t be touched by events and circumstances

Being present with your emotions is opposite of pretending that emotions don’t exist, especially difficult emotions.They do exist. They just don’t define you. Plus, remember that every emotion is in flux, here one moment and gone the next. Just like everything else in this loving Universe, it’s part of an orbit. Emotions are part of the game of life, a part of the dream. Awareness is the part of you that’s having the dream, the part that never changes, despite any emotion that may visit. In fact, it’s things like emotions that help to reveal yourself as Awareness.

Yoga and meditation cultivate the Awareness that what we are is a spiritual being having a physical experience. We are coming to know ourselves as the Divine, a force that is fundamentally reduced to love. Divine love is in you and in everybody and everything else in the Universe. When you know that, when you feel that, come what may, nothing can touch you. You’ll even be able to experience things like heartache with love.

So while on the surface, yoga and meditation don’t make you happy, they do cultivate an Awareness which reveals some key secrets to happiness. Namely, it reveals that you are a perfect, Divine being, that you can only find happiness within, and that you’re in charge of defining the events that happen in your life. It’s the challenges in our life that help to illuminate our perfection. Awareness teaches you that what you are fundamentally is happiness (Gayatri Mantra) and that you can’t wait for life to align perfectly to “find” happiness. It also teaches us to be present to our emotions because they don’t define you but are valuable tools that help to illuminate the happiness that exists despite the events and subsequent emotions of life.

Secret No. 2: The Cosmic Taco—Place Your Order, Please.

Another way that Awareness leads us toward happiness is by giving us the clarity to know what we really want in life. Despite the fact that we are perfect just as we are, we are nonetheless hardwired to grow and to evolve. This means that it takes Awareness to realize when we’ve outgrown our current situation. Sometimes our growth is cued by a feeling of being disconnected or unsatisfied with what is. Often this is the Universe saying that we’ve outgrown our current condition and that we need to find something else, like a hermit crab whose outgrown their shell.

The dark side of being hardwired for growth means that for some of us, we are always looking for greener grasses. But with presence, we can hold the paradox that this moment is both perfect as it is and that the Universe is calling on us to grow and move away from it. With presence we also recognize that our current situation is the best and only platform for us to step into our next stage of evolution. In fact, failure to do so—both failure to acknowledge our current situation as well as our failure to grow into what’s calling us forward—ironically traps us in what fundamentally isn’t working for us, just like a prison cell. Failure to evolve from a place of grounded presence traps us in a vicious cycle of reliving our old lessons until we are ready to move on. It’ll be just like Groundhog Day but instead of Bill Murray, it’ll be us living out that drama.

Many of us mistake our itch for growth as unhappiness when it’s really just our own call for evolution knocking on our door. It’s like looking down and seeing that the pants that used to fit you just fine are now riding up around your shins. What’s worse is that most of us might feel the need to grow and look for something new but don’t even know what we are looking for. Here’s a perfect example…

Several years ago I needed to find an apartment. I had exactly one week to find a place and move out and I was really feeling the pressure. Despite the fact that I had looked at literally dozens of apartments I felt like my search was going nowhere. I realized that I was looking at apartments and not really knowing what I was looking for. After examining yet one more apartment that left me massively underwhelmed, I realized that I didn’t even know what I was looking for. So, I went home and wrote down precisely what I wanted, about 15 different criteria, everything down to which neighborhood, the price, what kind of amenities—even the architectural style and age of the building. The very next day, I looked at yet another apartment. It didn’t meet the majority of those criteria. That’s because it met ALL of them— Every. Damn. Detail. I went on to spend some very happy years in that apartment.

Many different yoga and meditation traditions say that consciousness precedes form. It was like the Universe was just waiting for me to put in my order, like the invisible person that lives in the speaker box at the drive-thru, happy to serve me as soon as I made up my mind and tell it what I want.

I believe that the Universe is constantly waiting to give us what we want and like any good teacher, if we’re not asking, it’s not giving. Asking for what we want, visualizing it in a way that is current, possible, and positive, is a way that alerts the Universe that we are ready to receive what the Universe has been waiting to offer all along.

I told this story to a good friend and she told me, “You could probably ask the Cosmos for a taco and open up your hand and, boom, a taco would drop into your hands.” Thus a new term was born, “The Cosmic Taco.” I now use this term to refer to telling the Universe exactly what you want. “Um, yeah, could I please get a beautiful place to live, in France, along with my adorable family, a great job that I love that makes me feel loved, fulfilled, and useful? Oh, and could I get that with avocado and hot sauce? Thanks!”

What do you want on your Cosmic Taco? Make a list. Be specific.

Telling the Universe what you want on your Cosmic Taco is useful for so many reasons, but specifically it clarifies to both your thinking mind and simultaneously to Universal Consciousness what you want so it can begin to dish it out. Like I said, most of us are walking around looking for something other than what we have and we don’t even know what it is we are looking for.

For many of us it’s a matter of what we feel we are worthy of. Remember, you’re the Divine having a human experience. It’s your birthright to have EVERYTHING. Don’t be afraid to ask for exactly what you want. You more than deserve it.

As you get clear with what you want, I promise that you’ll start to notice those thing coming to you from many directions. Don’t be surprised if you start to be bombarded by clues, synergies, and opportunities. Even the songs on the radio will start to get on board to somehow sing to what’s coming through for you. Recently I had a powerful experience where I was feeling overwhelmed by the simple perfection of the lyric, “All you need is love,” and a fucking beetle came and literally landed on my hand. “Yeah, Universe, I know it’s the Beatles.”

Has something like that ever happened to you? Probably. Why is that? It think it’s because the Universe operates in an order and once you get onboard with a trajectory, you’ll see how that ordered thing begins to play out. Chances are, these clues for what you wanted were passing you all along but since you had such a dizzying array of options in front of you, each one just as viable as the next, you were simply blinded by all the myriad options to notice them.

One of the things I’ve learned from Yoga Nidra, the fascinating and transformative type of meditation I’m so passionate about, is that the past and future are abstract concepts and the eternal part of us, the one that’s connected to Universal Consciousness, only exists in the now and exists in a universe of YES—always has, always will—so you have to talk to it in ways that is current and positive. It helps to put yourself on your pathway of growth by creating mantras, aphorisms, or prayers that make a positive statement of truth that will help you grow in that direction, like a pole lashed to a tree to help it grow straight. Don’t speak to your perceived lack or the incompleteness, speak to your inevitable wholeness, to what is real and true in the moment and what is leading you to the next thing layer of wholeness. I heard Judith Lasater once say, “What is worrying but praying for what you don’t want.” Pray for what you do want.

Here’s are two examples for a positive mantras that speak to the power of the moment:

“I’m currently on my road to _____________,”

“Inside, I already have everything I need for____________.”

Both of these examples are realistic, positive, and happening in the moment. Both reflect what my therapist has been telling me for years, “Reach for the stars and keep your feet planted on the ground.” Both are mantras that communicate to the Universe what we want and positions it to help us manifest those things.

Awareness therefore brings us happiness by helping us realize that despite being perfect beings living in a perfect moment, we are nonetheless hardwired to grow. It helps us to know when we need to move on, it gives us the clarity to know what we are looking for, and it does so grounded in the positive reality of what is.

David Whyte is a rockstar in my world. Check out what he says about growing into what we feel we are worthy of in this world.

The True Love

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,

and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them

and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love

so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don't
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don't want to
any more
you've simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.

~David Whyte

I love this because your True Love could be your partner/spouse, kids, job, beliefs, or anything.

What is YOUR True Love?

Secret No. 3: What We Need is Here

Not only must we be clear with what we want, but we gotta learn to recognize it when it comes. I think that between knowing what you want and recognizing it when it’s come, the later is the more difficult and will lead us more quickly to enduring happiness. We cant get so driven to see over the next horizon that we fail to recognize that what we wanted all along is actually lying at our feet. It’s the story of the hero’s journey.

Presence opens our eyes to see what is here and what is real. It teaches us that now is a perfect moment, despite whatever’s happening, and that there will never be a better moment than now. Presence shows you that what you want is here. What you want is not the thing over the next horizon, what you want is being here. Being here is being home. Check out what

I love poets because they have to be so present in order to articulate the moment that’s happening right before them. Check out this showstopper by Wendell Berry:

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye,

clear. What we need is here.

~Wendell Berry

I invented a magic mantra for happiness that helps me to see that what I need is here. It helps me to realize that this moment is as perfect as any other can be. That mantra is, “This is EXACTLY what I want to be doing in this moment.” I repeat this phrase even and especially if it feels like what I’m doing in this moment is pretty mundane or average because each time I do, it opens my eyes to the perfection of the moment. The perfect moment is defined by what’s happening but rather how I’m choosing to pay attention. Repeating this mantra instantly locks me into presence and takes me out of perpetual search mode. It helps me to lift my head, open my eyes and all the rest of my senses. As I’m writing this, a nice glass of Bordeaux next to me—fruity and bold—and some dark chocolate with sea salt, I feel myself swinging in the flow of this writing, the keys popping rhythmically under my fingers, and I acknowledge that, THIS is EXACTLY what I want to be doing IN. THIS. MOMENT. This is what I want. I can’t tell you how immensely satisfying it is to acknowledge that. This phrase helps to realize that I’m not waiting for the perfect moment, I’m watching it unfold before me.

And as I clarify what I want with presence, I realize that if I’m on my road to higher growth and I’m actively doing what it takes to move me along my path, then this is the only place I can be and therefore exactly where I want to be. So, yeah here is where I need to be and is the essential ground leading me to my next step forward on my path for growth and discovery. This is the harder lesson.

The last poem I want to share, a poem that has become a beloved friend to me, one which express this vital truth of presence, written by one of my heros—the woman, the wonder, the legend, drum roll please — Mary Oliver!

Mindful

Everyday

I see or hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight,

that leaves me

like a needle

in the haystack

of light.

It was what I was born for —

to look, to listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world —

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy,

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,

the very extravagant —

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these —

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean’s shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

~Mary Oliver

I love this poem because it points to presence as the key to happiness, to satisfaction. And that without presence, we will never realize it when what we are searching for has arrived at our feet.

It’s my prayer that you find yourself in the Awareness that you are perfect just the way you are. May you have astounding clarity about what you want in life. And may you find yourself reading this and repeating the magic mantra for happiness, “This is exactly what I want to be doing in this moment.”

Thank you for sharing this moment with me.

Going deeper:

• Remember that you’re perfect the way you are

• Put in your order for your cosmic taco, make a detailed list of what you want your life to be

• Regularly practice the magic mantra for happiness, “This is exactly what I want to be doing in this moment,” no matter what you’re doing in that moment.

Please share this with someone. Comment below about what you feel are YOUR secrets to happiness.

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Tuition for Life Lessons: A Mediation on Resentment

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Several years ago, while I was still in college and before I started on my yoga career, I worked in a little loan company processing loans. The man who owned this company (we'll call him "Jeff," mostly because that was his name) taught me several valuable things, many about people and others about myself. While some of the lessons he taught me were very costly both in money and in hurt, it was all great tuition for some essential life lessons.

One of the valuable things Jeff taught me, something I'll remember for the rest of my life, was that even more important than processing people's loans, my real job was connecting to the people I served through the loan business. He taught me that It doesn't matter if you're a doctor, teacher, or loan processor, you're real job is to connect to people. Your 9–5 is just the particular lens through which you're called to connect to others.

He also taught me how to focus under pressure and how to organize my tasks around priority. He taught me things about working with people that I've used everyday since I worked there. He showed me parts of myself waiting to come out.

But this article is about what he taught me about forgiveness. 

Everybody has their Kryptonite. Despite Jeff's shining attributes, he wasn't a very good business person. I grew very concerned the day that my paycheck bounced. When I approached him with this dilemma, he asserted that even though the company was in a little slump, everything would soon be ironed out.

It never was.

I liked Jeff and wanted to hang in there for him until he got things figured out. But eventually, I could see the writing on the wall and after a few months of not getting paid, I finally left. When I walked away, he owed me these few months of back pay. What he owed me was a lot of money for a starving student, not to mention that all this happened coincided with Christmas and the tuition deadline for next semester. 

Even though I was the one who offered to stay, I really thought that Jeff would come through and was really hurt when he didn't. I felt really betrayed. Jeff stopped returning my calls. My feeling of hurt turned into betrayal, turned into a bitterness, turned into obsession. I just couldn't let it go. For a while it was all I could think about.

I wanted some recourse so I called the Labor Commission and filed a complaint, adding to the other employees at the failed loan office.The process was fraught with bureaucracy and dead ends—unfruitful and painfully slow. Eventually, the courts began to subpoena Jeff to arrive in court. I soon realized that I could easily gain my money back if I were only paid five cents every time I heard the Labor Commission say the phrase, "Your file is under review and we'll notify you once we know anything different."

This empty search continued for over two . . . (I pause for effect) YEARS. Each new attempt to resurrect my file brought me more pain and frustration.

Then one night I had a dream. I dreamed that I met Jeff. I saw him not as the evil person I'd made him out to be but as just a simple dude with a five-o'clock shadow (that's the way he always looked, even at 8 am). In my dream, as soon as I saw him, I suddenly got tired of holding this grudge. I forgave him of the whole thing. Completely. In my dream, Jeff didn't seemed very thankful or changed by that fact, nor did he seem really to even notice, but that didn't matter because I had changed. Instead of angry and dark, I was light and free. So, I woke up that next morning let it go. I let it all go. I was astounded how easily it was to forget about after that moment.

It took me several years to understand that even though Jeff had done me wrong, he still taught me some very valuable things. I began to think that my lost wages as a tuition paid for some very valuable lessons. Unbeknownst to me, my lessons weren't over yet.

One day, more than a decade later, I heard something on the radio that reminded me of Jeff. I hadn't even thought about Jeff since I'd had that dream about a decade previous. By this time in my life, I lived in a completely different town more than 50 miles away and had given up the world of mortgage lending for yoga teaching. I don't even remember what it was on the radio but whatever it was reminded me about all the great things that Jeff had taught me. I felt not only healed from all the resentment and pain but like I'd even grown from the experience I'd had at the failing mortgage office. Proud, I said to myself, "If I ever meet Jeff again, I promise that I will vocally forgive him and thank him for what he has taught me."

Something else I've learned is that when you call out to Destiny, prepare for an all-out a bare-knuckle brawl. She'll come and she'll test you just like you asked her to. She'll give you what you wanted but expect a little more blood—your blood.

Beehive Tea Rom, the cafe where I saw Jeff

So, almost exactly an hour later after calling out to the Universe that I'd forgive Jeff if I ever saw him, I was nursing a cup of Raspberry Mint tea in a cafe when over my shoulder I heard a disturbingly familiar voice. I didn't have to turn my head to know that it was Jeff and despite the warm tea, my insides turned to ice. 

I sat there listening to his voice as I burst into a cold sweat. And despite the fact that I'd just told Destiny that I'd forgive Jeff if I ever ran into him, now that it came to it, I wasn't so sure. I hadn't seen him in a decade. There was bad blood between us. I'd even subpoenaed him in court. Would he even remember me? Would he want to hit me?

As I debated within myself, he started to get up to leave. If I was going to act, it had to be now. I took a deep breath, stood up, and stepped toward him. "Hey, Jeff. I don't know if you remember me but I used to work for you at the mortgage company." He paused for a moment with a stunned look in his eyes. He took a step back probably wondering if I wanted to hit him. I explained to him quite frankly how he had hurt me then just as mater-of-factly said, "But you know what? I forgive you." I then explained to him all the things that I learned from him and that if I ever ran into him, I'd thank him for those valuable life lessons.

He just stood there stunned. He made no apologies, no explanation. He simply told me that I made his day. I made mine, too.

And no, he didn't write me out a check for the back pay.

That day, I realized that the money I'd lost was a relatively inexpensive tuition for the life lessons I'd learned. Some of the biggest lessons I learned through that experience were that holding a grudge only hurts me and forgiveness heals that hurt. That and to watch out when you call out to Density.

Our yoga and meditation practice is one way of creating intention and therefore dancing with Destiny. It's a way of producing an Awareness to see that even the muddy waters of our bitterness and pain can lead us to see the lotus of our own love, the nature of our True Being. Ultimately, we'll find that our blossoming love rests in our ability to be flexible and teachable to the lessons that beset us each day.

Would you mind sharing this?

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Yoga Nidra: An Online Certification

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Learn About The Training Program (5 min)

I Invite You on a Yoga Nidra Journey with My Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training

The world needs more Yoga Nidra and it needs more Yoga Nidra teachers. I’ve developed an online Yoga Nidra training that can be done completely online, on your timeline, and will certify you to be an effective Yoga Nidra teacher. At the same time that you are learning to teach Yoga Nidra, you’ll also learn more about your own True Nature and deepen your relationship with Source. Yoga Nidra is perhaps one of the most powerful forms of meditation that I know.

Upon completion of this training you’ll be ready to teach Yoga Nidra in a way that is authentic to your voice and in the way that only you can teach it. This way, you’ll be most effective to your students. You’ll get a certificate of completion when you’re done. Plus, if you’re looking for continuing education credit with Yoga Alliance, this will count as 20 non-contact hours.

People love the fact that this training is interesting, affordable, and such good quality.

This 20-hour Yoga Nidra intensive is perfect both for teachers as well as students who simply want to deepen their practice of Yoga Nidra.

My teaching style uses tools like knowledge of the koshas, a skillful counterpoint of opposites, and evoking deep relaxation to illuminate one’s True Self. This knowledge and experience you gain from practicing and teaching Yoga Nidra will help you live your life more fully, with greater compassion, and with deep purpose.

Some of the topics we will cover in the Yoga Nidra training

• Philosophy of Yoga Nidra

• Myths and Chants

• Yoga Nidra for Healing/Trauma/Stress

• Yoga Nidra for Performance

• The Power of Visualizations

• Subtle Body Study and Practice

• Chakras

• Koshas

• Pranayama

• Incorporating Yoga Nidra into Asana Classes and Restore Yoga

• Mindfulness

• Effective Teaching Methods

• Role as Teacher

• Self Practice

• Group Teaching

• One-on-one Teaching

Upon completion of this Yoga Nidra Training you’ll receive:

• A deeper understanding of Self through Yoga Nidra

• A course full of profound relaxation

• A full audio/video recording of the training to accomplish whenever you wish

• Several Yoga Nidra scripts to use

• A library of dozens of Yoga Nidra recordings

• Yoga Immersion PDF workbook

• A certificate of completion (upon completion)

• Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Credit (if needed) You’ll get 20 non-contact hours.

This training is the full audio/video recording of a live training I taught. You’ll hear comments, questions, and discussion as if you were in class— probably similar questions you might ask. Along the way, if you have your own questions, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll answer them as soon as possible.

As soon as you register, you’ll receive immediate access to all the content: the audio and video recordings as well as a very helpful 23-page PDF manual that includes Yoga Nidra word scripts, hyperlinks to other resources, chants, etc.

Thank you for your interest in this training. I loved putting it together and I hope you love it as much as I do.

I offer a money-back guarantee. If this isn’t what you hoped it would be, I’ll return your money without questions.

Once you register and purchase this course, you’ll receive the link to download the information. You will need to be able to access Dropbox.

“Scott’s Yoga Nidra Teacher Training was an excellent blend of information, inspiration, and application. I love his way of organizing and presenting of the abundance of material. Scott is very authentic and has a way of connecting and empowering his student to feel confident to utilize the tools he provides. I am so thankful to have the Yoga Nidra as part of my toolbox of offerings!”

— Jackie Wheeler, Yoga Studio Owner/Teacher

“I have studied with Scott for years and his compassion, engagement, and base of knowledge makes him one of my favorite teachers. He was one of the first teachers to teach me Yoga Nidra. So when he offered a Nidra immersion and training I jumped on it. Only ... I wasn’t in the area. I did the immersion, training. It worked flawlessly, and the experience was wonderful. If you are interested in any classes he offers, but can’t physically attend, do not hesitate to attend remotely. You will still be a full participant and receive the full impact of Scott’s clarity and teaching skills.”

— Lesley DuTemple

What is Yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidra is the relaxing and mystical journey deep into the inner-realms of consciousness where through a guided meditation, you get to experience your True Nature, something that feels one with all things, infinite, and whole. Such wholeness leads naturally to profound healing, boundless equanimity, and and understanding of your life, unparalleled by every-day thinking. Stress, trauma, and scarcity seem insignificant after you've experienced the part of you that is infinitely larger than any of these smaller experiences. Truly, through Yoga Nidra you see into the vastness of the Universe that is within you.

One of the things that differentiates Yoga Nidra from other forms of mindfulness is its emphasis on getting relaxed as the gateway to experiencing your True Nature, that of Awareness itself.

The effects of Yoga Nidra are as profound as they are relaxing. Through practicing awareness, you experience yourself, your REAL self, without boundaries, fears, or limitations. You open up to astounding and beautiful clarity about who you are. It opens you to feel at one with all things, increases your capacity for love, and helps you to be more compassionate. It shows you your gifts for the world, shows you your strength and power, and helps you feel as though someone has turned up all the colors of your life. Yoga Nidra is perhaps the most effective way I know to manage and eliminate trauma and stress.

Indeed, Yoga Nidra has been one of the most profound and spiritual practices I’ve ever encountered. And I’m not alone. Millions of people love this practice. One of the reasons why is because people often receive expansive insight, nurturing relaxation, and deep healing from just one session.

Personally, I discovered Yoga Nidra in 2004 and have had the privilege of learning this important practice from some of the worlds leading Yoga Nidra experts. I’ve spent the last 10 years mastering the art of teaching of Yoga Nidra and I’ve been privileged to work with literally 20s of thousands of students worldwide through live classes, recordings, workshops, webinars, lectures, and online courses.

The world desperately needs more Yoga Nidra and more qualified Yoga Nidra instructors. Practicing Yoga Nidra is easy but teaching it effectively can be complex. I’d love to share my knowledge of teaching Yoga Nidra with you.

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Yoga Nidra: Yoga for Anxiety

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Yoga Nidra is a relaxing form of guided meditation that helps you feel amazing. Better than amazing, Yoga Nidra helps you feel like your True Self, the qualities of which can only be described as invincible, expansive, and limitless-calm. Yoga Nidra helps us to see correctly again, in part by using things like emotions, even anxiety, as catalysts to experience our True Selves. We’re hardwired to feel this way all the time, except somehow we all allow things like thoughts, sensations, and emotions to cloud our vision of our True Self. For anyone who is interested in learning to become a certified Yoga Nidra teacher, please read to the end.

“To catch the mind and keep it still,

Is no small problem for my porous will;

As many times as I shut it down,
Unceasing thoughts on me rebound

In youth I tried through alcohol,
To ease my stress and cool my gall;
In later years I turned to grass
The effects were good – but did not last.

At last with fading hopes I turned,
To Eastern paths, and my soul yearned
To scale the mystic heights of bliss.
Alas, no easy method this.

And now with age and turmoil weary,
All that’s left me is this query;
Will heart break or mind implode,
Before my vrittis do nirode.”

— Swami Shankarananda

Yoga is defined in the Yoga Sutras as the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind, or to come into complete stillness and unperturbed by disruptions of thoughts, sensations, and emotions. Nidra is a state of mind. It’s that interesting liminal, hypnagogic state between waking and dreaming consciousness. Yoga Nidra, therefore is the practice of coming into the Awareness of our True Self through achieving this Nidra state in deep relaxation.

What is Yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidra is a deep form of self-discovery, like meditation, where you experience your utmost nature of being. It's a very relaxing way of attuning your awareness to all things. Indeed it is the practice of experiencing yourself as Awareness itself.

Yoga Nidra does this by training us to relax and practice deep awareness. In fact, it helps us actually experience ourselves as Awareness itself. According to Yoga Nidra philosophy, our True Nature is Awareness. We feel into our True Nature by learning to relax and simply observe whatever presents itself to us at the moment, be that a thought, a sound, or an emotion or anything else. When you learn to merely observe something rather than react to it, you gain a universal perspective about it and it doesn’t have the power to control you because you’re not identified as it. This is particularly useful for emotions.

Yoga Nidra For Anxiety

Modern psychology helps us to understand how this works, particularly vis-à-vis our emotions. In the late 1950's, Joseph Wolpe, a leading behavior therapist at Stanford University, added to Pavlov's previous ground-breaking work on conditioning by helping those with anxiety using counter-conditioning. Wolpe demonstrated that the symptoms of anxiety were greatly reduced or eradicated when things that would otherwise stress people were presented systematically, bit by bit and paired with a relaxation response.* He showed that anxiety and relaxation cannot be present simultaneously. Therefore, if you can achieve deep relaxation and practice Awareness, then slowly and gradually present to your Awareness what triggers your emotions, you you experience yourself and identify as Awareness that is momentarily experiencing emotion, not emotion itself.

Ego vs. True Self

In our quest to understand ourselves, we tend to identify with anything that seems real. To our rational consciousness, what we can feel, see, smell, etc. seems real. However, all these things are inevitably locked in the realm of the changeable, the Ego. A misapprehension of what I think I am, a definition I learned from Eckhart Tolle in his book A New Earth

Anything you identify with tends to perpetuate. After all, we are hardwired to stay alive and if in someway we misunderstand our being as an emotion, even though it may not be our favorite emotion, we keep wrapping it around ourselves metaphorically, subconsciously afraid to let it go for fear that we will no longer exist without it.

But Yoga Nidra helps you experience and identify as Awareness that is momentarily experiencing emotion, not emotion itself. Then when emotion arises, it doesn’t have the power to overtake you. You see it as just one of the other things in the Universe that has an orbit.

It’s just like everything else in this Universe, making a drive-by along its own orbit.

I invite you to experience your own True Being with Yoga Nidra. I created a free learning module that uses Yoga Nidra to help you with stress. I loved putting it together and I hope it helps if you are working with anxiety.

Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training

If you are interested in learning how to lead yourself and others through this transformational practice, please consider registering for my Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training program. By the end of this training you’ll be prepared to teach Yoga Nidra to help countless students discover their True Selves and see beyond momentary emotions like stress and anxiety.

If you know someone who is working with stress or anxiety or who is interested in Yoga Nidra, please forward this. Thank you!

* Wolpe, J. (1958). Psychotherapy by reciprocal inhibition. Stanford. Stanford University Press.

Can We All Just Calm Down?? Cannabis for Anxiety

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I’m passionate about helping people learn to manage stress and anxiety. There are several ways to help with anxiety including Yoga Nidra and other forms of guided meditation, yoga, and getting out into nature.

One Natural way of helping alleviate anxiety is by the use of cannabis, including CBD oil.

I think we can all just chill out about the use of cannabis. It’s common knowledge that the health benefits are wide and plentiful. I know so many people who use it responsibly and who receive immense health benefits from it.

One of the best uses for cannabis is stress reduction. I think cannabis is such a better alternative than what big phat pharma offers.

Have you ever tried CBD oil? Here’s an article that I think is very worthy of review.

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Photo by Michael Fischer from Pexels

Emotions are part of human life and throughout the course of our lives, we will go through the entire spectrum of feelings. There are some emotions that are directly related to events such as post-traumatic stress disorder and others that seem to pop up from nowhere. Anger and stress are two of the most powerful feelings that we can experience and if one is present, the other will be too.

Stress and anger are often accompanied by underlying anxiety and this is what makes it difficult to find an appropriate treatment. When these three emotions are all present in someone’s life, things can get out of control rather quickly and your quality of life is in jeopardy, especially if you don’t seek treatment. It is easy to overlook the fact that your anger could be a side effect of anxiety, especially if you haven’t been eating or sleeping properly and you may find that even the smallest of issues will suddenly seem like the end of the world is nigh.

Stress shouldn’t be taken lightly as, in severe cases, it can kill you. It causes hypertension, affects your nervous system, and can lead to depression. Furthermore, as there is still a stigma attached to those who seek medical treatment for seemingly minor emotional issues, many people choose to ignore the symptoms of stress and anger and hope that they will go away on their own.

The Effect of Pharmaceuticals on Mental Health Issues

Instant calm with this free Beach Paradise Guided Meditation

When we feel like we are under a high level of stress or anxiety, there will likely come a point where a friend or colleague will point us in the direction of a physician to help us address our issues. It could be caused by a social anxiety disorder, increased stress levels through work, Post-traumatic stress (PTSD), or even because of chronic pain. And one of the most commonly prescribed treatments for anxiety is a benzodiazepine like Xanax. These pills will treat your symptoms almost immediately, but they are accompanied by a long list of harmful side effects—especially when used for long periods of time. Benzodiazepines are highly addictive and they can cause the following symptoms:

• Shaking

• Paranoia

• Loss of appetite

• Acne

• Nausea

• Depression

• Dry Mouth

• Incontinence

• Headaches
  
  

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How CBD Works for Anger and Stress

Photo by Nathan Cowley from Pexels

The past couple of years have seen the rise of alternative medicines such as CBD products like hemp seed oil, cannabis oil, and medical cannabis becoming increasingly popular. Medical marijuana and hemp oil (and all their derivatives) have been proven for use as an efficient and effective natural treatment for disorders like anxiety, depression, and stress and it is currently a hot topic in the medical industry. This has led to more studies being performed on cannabinoids and its potential therapeutic uses, as well as much more research scheduled to take place in 2019. While CBD oil is relatively new to the medical market, it has been used in ancient traditions for thousands of years to cure illness and provide relief from emotional issues like anger, stress, and anxiety.

Here are some of the ways that CBD is thought to alleviate the symptoms of anger and stress:

• CBD is thought to cause pleasure hormones in the body to be released. These particular hormones are incredibly powerful, as they are responsible for inducing feelings of calm, reducing stress, and eliminating underlying anxiety.

• Research has shown us that CBD positively affects the basolateral amygdala receptors that we naturally have in our bodies in order to process most of our sensory information.

• The hippocampus is the part of our brain that is basically an emotional control center. CBD interacts with receptors in the hippocampus to stimulate positive emotions and the necessary chemicals to provide us with therapeutic comfort.

• A daily dose of CBD oil has been found to reduce cognitive impairment.

• CBD has powerful anti-inflammatory properties that help eliminate the effects that stress can have on our heart and arteries.

Another major factor to take into account, when looking at CBD as a viable treatment for emotional disorders, is the effect that CBD has on Serotonin levels in the brain. Science and anecdotal evidence have both demonstrated the positive effect that CBD has on the mood-enhancing chemicals in our brain. It triggers the release of these necessary chemicals and works to ensure that they are balanced in an entirely natural way. As an added bonus, it is not accompanied by any nasty side effects.

Photo by Andre Furtado from Pexels

CBD Is not Addictive

CBD oil is a cumulative substance, meaning that it builds up in our body and works away behind the scenes. This is why it should be taken as a routine supplement each day, instead of when you are right in the clutches of a panic attack. Good quality CBD oil is extracted and processed in a way that allows it to override the psychoactive effects of THC (another important compound in the cannabis plant—the one that gets you high) this means that you won’t be walking around like a zombie and CBD oil is perfectly safe to take at work and it won’t impair your ability to drive or be productive. One of the primary risks of treating anxiety with traditional pharmaceuticals is an addiction and this, in turn, contributes to even more stress! CBD is completely non-addictive and you can take as much or as little as you like, without experiencing withdrawal symptoms.

Final Thoughts

While CBD oil is an incredibly powerful natural substance, not all oils are created equal. Before making a purchase, always check that the oil you are looking at is full spectrum and extracted in a chemical-free process. One of the biggest appeals of using CBD oil is the fact that it is completely non-toxic, so making sure that it is as pure as possible is going to be the key to success. It is also not a quick fix and should ideally be taken as part of a balanced diet and combined with exercise, which is also another incredibly effective way of eliminating stress from our lives. Finally, know that it is completely safe to experiment with dosage. What works for one person, might not be effective for another. Therefore, always start by taking a lower dose and increase it until you notice a positive change with regards to your anger and stress.

This article by Madeleine Taylor is originally published at SundayScaries.

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Spring Cleaning with Yoga

We are well into spring and for many of us it’s time for some deep cleansing. In Ayurveda, you must first cleanse before you can add strength and power. Here’s a few yoga poses that will help you do just that by heating the system, twisting the torso, and inverting the body. These poses are great to help cleanse the system by moving lymph fluid. They also help with spinal decompression and organ cleansing.

Before cleansing, it’s necessary to add Tapas to the system. Tapas is both a word meaning  tasty Spanish dishes served on little plates as well as a Sanskrit word described in the Yoga Sutras as the heat necessary for transformation. Getting the body to heat up with poses that warm up the body (without overly challenging it) is very useful before cleansing the body. These poses include standing poses like Warrior I, II, and III, Side Angle Pose, and Chatarunga. Once the body heats up, it’s ready for cleansing.

Twists: Cleansing Poses

Photo by Dan Morris

Twists are the best poses for cleansing. One of the reasons we want things twisting is to circulate our lymph. Sort of like nymphs, the spritely libido-rich fairies so abundant in enchanted forests, this kind of  "ymph" are like the body’s fairies that flutter around the forest of your body's fluids systems and with their rich source of white blood cells, put magical spells on bacteria and other disease-causing microorganisms, spells that send these unwanted guests into your eliminatory systems. The problem with the lymph system is that unlike our circulatory system, lymph depends on movements. Therefore, poses like twists help to get your lymph moving to do their work. Some yoga postures that help with this are seated and standing twists like Ardhamatsyandrasana and Twisting Crescent Lunge Pose. is one of  the best ways of keeping the lymph moving and thus keeping you healthy.

Twists are really excellent for the overall health of your back. They keep the body healthy by rotating the vertebral bodies of your spine and building strength and flexibility in the deep and superficial spinal and abdominal muscles. Twists maintain elasticity in the disks between the vertebrae as well as the ligaments of the back. Twists alternately compress and stretch the hemispheres of the chest, stimulating respiratory function. They also give a healthy massage to other vital organs, like the stomach, liver, intestines, and kidneys. Plus, twisting can help restore symmetry between the shoulders and pelvis which can be the problem of some kinds of back pain.  

Your nervous system literally revolves around your spinal cord so doing twisting poses helps wring out the nervous system. Your nervous system is one of the interesting junctures of mind and body. Twists and other tension-relieving poses do wonders to help relieve emotional tension that gets trapped in the body in the form of tight muscles.

Inversions

Inversions are poses that turn you upside-down. Common inversions are Headstand, Handstand, and Legs-Up-The-Wall Pose. Just like twists, inversions are great to help you cleanse your system. Our digestive system sometimes get compacted and turning things upside-down helps to get things moving again. Inversions are also excellent for decompressing your spine, strengthening your arms and shoulders, and strengthening both the deep and superficial core muscles.

Getting upside-down is perhaps the best way of moving lymph through the bod and cleaning house. Inversions also build muscles in the neck and shoulders. They tone vital organs and stimulate glands. Like twists, inversions build strength and flexibility in the superficial and deep muscles and connective tissue along the spine and rib cage, most notably in the diaphragm and abdominal muscles. With all this muscular toning along our spine and ribs, our posture shapes up. When done properly, inversions can lengthen our spine. Inversions also help out your digestion, respiration, and circulation systems. Last, inversions can maybe help you look at this sludge in the air in a different way, when you see it from upside-down.

Consider some gently-heating poses, twists, and inversions as you’re mindfully planning how to spring clean your body, mind, and spirit.

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Yoga Nidra

Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training

Become a qualified Yoga Nidra teacher

Yoga Nidra is form of Self-inquiry where we come to know our deepest, truest selves as Awareness. We do this through conscious relaxation and through a vivid exploration of the ego to understand our “Both And” nature which is truly the Divine essence of the Universe as it seeks to know itself through and as us, a beautiful and localized version of this divine Source.

As you experience your True Nature you feel one with all things—infinite, and whole. Such wholeness leads naturally to profound healing, boundless equanimity, and and understanding of your life, unparalleled by every-day thinking. Stress, trauma, and scarcity seem insignificant after you've experienced the part of you that is infinitely larger than any of these smaller experiences. Truly, through Yoga Nidra you see into the vastness of the Universe that is within you.

Yoga Nidra vs Other Meditation

What’s the difference between Yoga Nidra and guided meditation? I often describe Yoga Nidra as a guided meditation. However, one of the main differences between Yoga Nidra and other forms of mindfulness is that in this form of mindfulness you try to get relaxed as possible. Unlike other forms of meditation, it’s ok if you fall asleep—the part of you that we are working with, your deep Awareness, is still paying attention, even if your waking mind is asleep. In fact, Nidra means sleep. More appropriately, Nidra means that liminal realm of consciousness that lies between waking and dreaming, between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. Sometimes the deep conscious work that is going on in Yoga Nidra requires that the rational, thinking mind fall asleep and become anesthetized, as if there were a surgery that needed to occur on the soul and the rational mind simply would be best to check out for a while.

Yoga Nidra is Identifying as Awareness

Another main difference between Yoga Nidra and other forms of meditation is that one of your primary goals is to identify as Awareness itself. A Yoga Nidra practice is one where you lie down and are led through a layering of deeper and deeper awareness. You’ll first become aware of your immediate surroundings and then you’ll start to notice the many different things that filter through your attention in any given moment. Soon you start to notice that the changing things you’re aware of all point to a constant Awareness. Then, as you begin to feel and experience yourself as Awareness, you move into a more profound experience of Self. You feel yourself as Awareness, coming to know itself as whatever you’re aware of in that moment, like different costumes you can wear to practice knowing yourself.

Therefore, the effects of Yoga Nidra are as profound as they are relaxing. Through practicing this deep awareness, you experience yourself, your REAL self, without boundaries, fears, or limitations. You open up to astounding and beautiful clarity about who you are. It opens you to feel at one with all things, increases your capacity for love, and helps you to be more compassionate. It shows you your gifts for the world, shows you your strength and power, and helps you feel as though someone has turned up all the colors of your life. Yoga Nidra is perhaps the most effective way I know to manage and eliminate trauma and stress.

The world desperately needs more Yoga Nidra and more qualified Yoga Nidra instructors. Practicing Yoga Nidra is easy but teaching it effectively can be complex. I’d love to share my knowledge of teaching Yoga Nidra with you.

If you are interested in learning more about this profound and illuminating practice, please take a look at either my Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training or my Online Yoga Nidra Course: Sourcing Your True Power.

Enjoy this Yoga Nidra recording!

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