It's Not Falling Asleep, but Staying Asleep That's My Problem!

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Many of you responded to my last blog post about sleep and said,

"It's not falling asleep, but staying asleep is my problem." 

For many people, falling asleep isn’t the problem, but it’s staying asleep. And what to do about it?

James Findley, Ph.D., CBSM, clinical director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the University of Pennsylvania says that sleep is cyclical and that we come in and out of sleep regularly. However, when we have an awakening (and not the zen kind we are searching for in our yoga and meditation practice), and can’t get back to bed for 30 minutes or more and it happens 3 times a week or more, then there’s most likely a deeper problem.

Some potential causes for waking up could be the following:

Sleep Apnea. Perhaps you’re not getting enough air as you sleep, causing you to wake up. If you sleep with someone else, they might be better at noticing if this is the case. CPAP machines restore this in a jiff.

Indigestion. Maybe you’re eating too much before bed or the wrong kinds of food for your stomach and it’s not allowing you to rest.

Active Bladder. Unfortunately, as you age, getting up in the night to use the bathroom becomes more frequent. Also, some medications for high blood pressure can act as diuretics and can make you need to get up and use the bathroom. It’s nice to hydrate before bed but notice how much you’re drinking if nocturnal bathroom visits become too frequent.

Environment. Dr. Findley (above) recommends you make your bedroom into a sleep cave, similar to what I describe in an exciting new product which launches on Friday, in a section called Pre-Sleep General Guidelines. Perhaps use an eye mask, blackout shades, and turn your alarm clock away from your face.

Noise. If you’re very sensitive to noise, what works better than trying to soundproof your bedroom is to listen to white noise. Through a process called habituation your brain stops listening to noise when it’s a repetitive and consistent noise. Nature sounds are irregular and don’t work as well as white noise.

Alcohol. Alcohol disrupts sleep and doesn’t allow you to pass through all the stages of sleep. You spend more time in Deep Sleep and less in R. E. M. and disrupts sleep in this stage.

Caffeine. Caffeine disturbs  sleep, specifically your ability to access the deeper stages of sleep, R.E.M and Deep Sleep, the stages where your mind and body rest and repair. Even if you feel you’re relatively unaffected by caffeine, especially in your ability to fall asleep, caffeine can stay in your system for up to 48 hours and might be inhibiting you from getting the really good sleep.

Stress. Dr. Findley emphasizes this as a big factor for disrupted sleep. In part, this is why Guided Meditations for Sleep is so effective because it not only helps you get to sleep but perhaps more importantly trains you to weed out stress and arrive and peaceful and prolonged sleep.
 

So, what do I do when I wake up in the night?

First of all, don’t stress about it and make it worse. I discuss this deeper in the Pre-Sleep General Guidelines in what's coming on Friday, (hold tight). Try listening to a guided meditations or lead yourself through the Countdown Meditation I mentioned in my last post.

If after 30 minutes you’re still awake, don’t stay in bed. Get up and go to a different room to do the Pre-Sleep Yoga Postures and Pre-Sleep Breathing Techniques (wait for it, wait for it). This could also be a good opportunity to do the Sanctuary Practice (you guessed it). Also, reading is helpful.

Avoid technology. It’s very stimulating for many reasons but mostly because of the blue light which most devices emit which makes your brain think that it’s daytime and ready to get up. 
 

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We spend a third of our entire life sleeping. The difference between good sleep, mediocre sleep, or no sleep can be a game changer for your fulfillment of the waking two-thirds of life. Much is riding on our ability for and quality of sleep so let’s learn how to do it well.

I’ve been teaching yoga and meditation for more than 15 years and one of the things I hear most from my students is the need for better sleep. I hear that need literally by the many snores in savasana.

As a culture that values productivity above almost everything else, the one thing we seem to sacrifice most is our need for good sleep. Therefore,  we are chronically under rested. Better sleep means a better life. It promotes wellness in body, mind, and spirit, and helps you to be alert, productive, and fulfill your purpose for being on the planet.

I'm so excited for what I'll be unveiling on Friday. It's going to revolutionize the way you sleep. Stay tuned . . .

Sweet Dreams,

Scott

Hey, How Did You Sleep Last Night?

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Does this sound familiar . . .

It’s the end of a very long day, you’re dead tired, and you want nothing more than to lay your head on your pillow and to drift off to a deep, relaxing, sleep.

But no sooner do you close your eyes than an arrant worry or thought bounces into your head, and then another, and another, until before you know it, you are lying in bed, with your mind lit up like a Christmas tree, wide awake. Despite your exhaustion, there’s no sleep in sight and your initial worries become compounded by anxiety over how you are going to function tomorrow without any sleep.

If you struggle with sleep, you’re not alone. The National Sleep Foundation says that 45% of Americans report decreased daily function due to insufficient or poor quality sleep. A 2013 Gallup Report said that 2 in 5 Americans have chronic sleep problems. And if a chronic lack of sleep isn’t bad enough, according to statistics from Harvard Medical School, lack of good or sufficient sleep also inhibits learning and memory, and contributes to a host of other serious health problems.

One of the largest reasons for sleeplessness is an overactive mind. And before you get a prescription to knock yourself out, perhaps try addressing the cause and learn to quiet your mind with a few simple yet effective meditation techniques, one of which I'll show you today.

“Why do I need meditation?” 

Meditation helps you sleep for one simple reason: presence. Often times, we can’t sleep because our brains are rehearsing the past or future. Our species has survived, in part, because we are hardwired to anticipate threats before going to bed, historically a time when humans have been most vulnerable.

But if during your brain’s nightly safety-check, a thought or worry lingers, your brain starts processing it as if it were an actual threat because our brains aren’t actually that good at knowing the difference between perceived and actual reality, like when we our body responds to a nightmare or an intense movie. Similarly, with the scene of our thoughts about past or future playing in our mind, our body responds by sending adrenaline throughout the system and before we know it, a thought about tomorrow’s board meeting has caused our muscles and minds to become revved up and ready to act when we should be sleeping. 

Knowing that our brains don’t distinguish well between the perceived and actual reality, we can leverage that function for our benefit. But more about that later. . . 

“Ok, I’m getting stressed just thinking about it. How does meditation help?”

Through meditation, your mind escapes the trappings of the past and future and sees that there is no present threat, giving your body and mind the all-systems-clear for sleep. You may have an important board meeting in the morning, but with the gentle focus of meditation, your mind simply rests in the here and now. So rather than inadvertently stewing in the anxiety of what tomorrow might hold, you choose to rest in the peace of what is present at this moment, perhaps the enveloping quiet and dark of your bedroom or the sensation of your body relaxing into bed. Meditation is as simple as being here rather than there. 

“Easier said than done. Besides, who has the time? Oh, and how do I meditate, by the way?” 

Well, meditation is easier than you may think and doesn't need to take a long time. Here's a very simple and effective meditation practice that you can use to focus your mind and create the conditions for deep, nourishing, and peaceful sleep. 
 

The Night Time Countdown Meditation
 

1. Prepare for bed and do everything you need to prior to going to sleep.

2. Brain dump. Before you climb into bed, set a timer for 5 minutes and on a notepad, write down all of the immediate things you have on your mind. Don’t let this go beyond 5 minutes lest this devolves into a fuel-for-worry fest.

3. Lie down, close your eyes and commit to a comfortable position. Relax your nervous system with one long sigh. Then spend a minute noticing your breath.

4. In your mind, start counting your breaths backward from 100. As you exhale, think, "100." As you inhale, think, "99." Exhale, "98," and so on. If you lose your count due to other thoughts, start over and if you get to zero start over. 

5. If you lose your count because you’re falling asleep, let go and enjoy the ride. Mission accomplished! We’ll see you in the morning, Sunshine. Don’t be surprised if you have to go a few times all the way through before you fall asleep. Most often, you’ll fall asleep during the first go.

By practicing this simple meditation technique, you can help your mind be more present to stay out of the past and future and create the conditions for deep, nourishing and peaceful sleep. The Countdown Meditation systematically powers down your brain by allowing it to focus on something singular and simple, like counting. Counting backward helps engage the mind just enough to help it from wandering but not enough to make it excited.

Do you ever have problems getting to sleep? I'd love to hear from you about what you struggle with and what has helped you. Try this technique and tell me how it goes.

There's so much more great information I want to share with you on this essential topic. Stay tuned for some more incredible solutions for great sleep coming very soon!

Namaste, and nighty-night. 


Scott

A Mindful Writing Practice to Source Your Magic

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I write. And I love it when I'm writing and something magical happens, like words that I didn't know could even come out of me start popping out onto the page. But writing takes practice. And what if you could also practice accessing the magic within you. 

I love this story. It's about just that. 

Once, Laurence Olivier, the master of masters, perhaps one if not THE best play-actors of our time, had just delivered his finishing lines of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The entire theatre was cupped in a quiet, magical revery, a rare experience that only happens when witnessing a spell-binding performance. Then after several long seconds of pure reverie, the audience exploded in exuberant applause.

Instead of graciously accepting such resounding adoration for his magical performance, Olivier stormed off stage, marched straight to his dressing room, and slammed the door in a huff.

Perplexed, the stage manager eventually gathered his courage and knocked timidly on Olivier's door.

"Mr. Olivier, what's the matter? You were absolutely brilliant!" the manager said. To which Laurence Olivier roared, "I know, and I have absolutely no idea how I did it!"
 

Have you ever read a poem, seen a performance, heard someone speak, or witnessed or something, where you sensed that the performer was tapped into pure magic, something enormous, much larger than just the every-day conversation? 

I'm confident that YOU have had an experience where you sourced that kind of magic within yourself to do say, or create something extraordinary.

Sometimes, experiencing that kind of magic is purely accidental. But what if you could practice sourcing that magical part of you so that you could somehow turn it on at will.

The Writing Practice

Well, my good friend, and writing facilitator, Nan Seymour and I have developed a beautiful method of accessing that magic within you through mindfulness and writing. It's called Dream and Write and it's brilliant.

Dream and Write is born from two practices: Yoga Nidra, a relaxing Awareness practice that feels like guided meditation, and River Writing, a writing practice of inviting words to flow, unobstructed from a river of inner-narrative. Paired together, this practice creates a unique mindfulness writing experience that taps profound Awareness for clarity and flow of writing. 

Nan and I have hosted several Dream and Write workshops and retreats. However, THIS Saturday, December 2, Nan and I will be hosting our first ever virtual Dream and Write workshop. This will be live but online and hosted in the comfort of your own home via the internet. This relaxing and heart-opening workshop will help you source the magic inside of you. 

Once you register, you'll receive a link to join us online at a virtual meeting platform called Zoom. 

Anders Carlson-Wee

As a writer, I've experienced first-hand the miracles of Dream and Write. Through this practice, I've witnessed incredible memories, stories, and beauty in the form of words spill across the page. I've had delightful ideas appear through this process. Those words were  already in there, I simply needed the process of Dream and Write to get them out, to  help organize them, and to cut them down to find their raw expression. 

There are several advantages to having this event be live but online. First, you can do it in the comfort of your own home on your computer, laptop, or smart device. Also, Nan and I can co-teach despite the fact that I will be in New York City she will be in Salt Lake City. And last but not least, we will get the pleasure of having the incredible poet Anders Carlson-Wee joining us live to share his astounding and beautiful poetry with us as prompts to inspire our own writing.

This will be a unique and special event. We are limiting the size of this event to only 20 participants, for intimacy and efficacy. Please register today before the spots are gone; they've already started to go. This event will sell out and s.

Hey, you have gifts and the world needs your gifts. Practice sourcing the magic within you. 
 

Details

When: Saturday, December 2nd, 2017 from 12-3 pm ET, 11 am-2 pm CT, 10 am-1 pm MT, 9am-12pm PT. (There will be bio breaks.)

Where: Your house, via the internet

Price: $57.  20 spots

Thanks.

I hope you'll join us.

Join me for the yoga retreat of a lifetime. One week along the Amalfi Coast doing fantastic yoga and meditation, breathtaking ocean excursions, and eating authentic Italian food. Space is limited. 

May 26-June 2 2018

Take Me To The River: Yoga Nidra Meets + River Writing Makes Dream and Write

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I have a notebook full of words I will only read once.

It's dedicated to my River Writing practice. River Writing is a beautifully generative writing group that my good friend, Nan Seymour, hosts. She does so in intimate groups around a warm, wooden table, at her writing studio, in Salt Lake City.

I teach Yoga Nidra, a very relaxing form of guided meditation. Nan has been as profoundly affected by my Yoga Nidra as I have been by her River Writing. So we decided to combine the two practices and call it Dream and Write. 

The purpose is to create a writing practice of inviting words to flow, unobstructed from a river of inner-narrative. Paired together, this practice creates a unique mindfulness writing experience that taps profound Awareness for clarity and flow of writing. 

Over the past two years, Nan and Scott have offered several Dream and Write workshop, classes, and retreats. The intention of Dream and Write is to use mindfulness, poetry, and gentle encouragement to source the words that are within you in. We insist on a judgement-free, non-editing, and mutually supportive environment.

River Writing

Nan's true gift is creating a safe and inviting space to write. She nurtures a judgement-free environment, both from other writers but most especially from that harshest of critics, you.

She opens a session, sets the guidelines, and then reads a prompt to inspire or begin your writing ideas. Then, she starts a timer as asks you to write without stopping for 12 minutes. 

Your job is to keep your pen moving across your paper the entire time without edits, whether you're gushing words or simply repeating, "I don't know what to write. I don't know what to write. I don't know what to write," just to keep the pen moving. And if ever you feel really stuck, there's a life-saving phrase you  can write, "What I really want to say is . . .," and magically the words start to flow again. More often than not, it's astounding what River Writing coaxes onto the page.

After the timer has rung, you're encouraged, but not forced, to read to the group what's on your page, without qualifiers, without apology. No one is allowed to offer any critique or praise to your work other than a simple, "Thank you." We are simple witnesses to ourselves and each other, something which is much more abiding than praise.

Through River Writing, I've written some incredibly profound words, words that I didn't know were inside of me. This process has also helped me to generate brilliant ideas for my work that have literally changed my career. I owe it to the genius of River Writing and Nan's  warmth and skill of facilitation.

 

Yoga Nidra

I'm passionate about Yoga Nidra because simply put, it's a revelation. It's also incredibly relaxing. I love it because through Yoga Nidra, I've learned more about myself and the Universe than any other practice.

Yoga Nidra is simple: You lie down, close your eyes, relax, and listen to me guide you toward acute Awareness,  of yourself and everything around you. That's it. It's actually quite a bit more sophisticated than it sounds but the results can't be quantified. I'm telling you, after the clarity you gain through Yoga Nidra, your whole life feels like it makes sense. After, you feel energized and alert, like you took a satisfying nap while learning the meaning of the Universe. I'm not over selling this.

But I'm rambling, what I really want to say is . . . Since the birth of Dream and Write, we have hosted a suite of workshops and two multi-day Dream and Write retreats and the results have been nothing less than beautiful and inspiring.

Sadly, I moved 2,600 miles away from Nan and that warm, wood writing table to NYC. But thanks to the internet, we are closer than we appear.

What I really want to say is it would be our honor to invite you to experience our first ever Virtual Dream and Write Workshop, happening in YOUR living room, on YOUR computer, smartphone, or tablet, on December 2nd 2017.

This will be a unique opportunity to gather with people all over the country and world to meditate, write, and share in real time. Every Dream and Write have been touching, inspiring, and affirming. I have every confidence that this will be likewise. And, because on this internet meeting space we'll only see your upper half, you don't even have to wear pants!

Also, get this: Nan discovered a truly brilliant and accomplished poet named Anders Carlson-Wee who agreed to join us as our poet-in-residence for our Dream and Write Retreat. Anders is a very gifted but down-to-earth poet who read several of his poems as prompts for our writing and taught us about poetry and its embodiment.

Well, Anders has also agreed to attend our Virtual Dream and Write Workshop to share with us some of his sublime poetry as fodder for our own creative juices to flow. Anders Carlson-Wee's poetry, from his own mouth, in real time. Damn, you can't get better than this! Run don't walk, friends. (Read his poem Dynamite)

Even if you don't consider yourself a writer, there are words or a stories inside of you that need to get out. This workshop is the opportunity to do free those words in a supportive and nurturing environment with kind and experienced facilitators.

Oh, did I mention it's fun?

Please join us for this truly unique workshop.

We only have 20 spots available.

When: Saturday, December 2nd 2017 from 12-3 pm ET, 11 am-2 pm CT, 10 am-1 pm MT, 9am-12pm PT. (There will be pee breaks)

Where: Your house, via the internet

Price: $57

Dynamite

Anders Carlson-Wee

by Anders Carlson-Wee

My brother hits me hard with a stick
so I whip a choke-chain

across his face. We’re playing
a game called Dynamite

where everything you throw
is a stick of dynamite,

unless it’s pine. Pine sticks
are rifles and pinecones are grenades,

but everything else is dynamite.
I run down the driveway

and back behind the garage
where we keep the leopard frogs

in buckets of water
with logs and rock islands.

When he comes around the corner
the blood is pouring

out of his nose and down his neck
and he has a hammer in his hand.

I pick up his favorite frog
and say If you come any closer

I’ll squeeze. He tells me I won’t.
He starts coming closer.

I say a hammer isn’t dynamite.
He reminds me that everything is dynamite.

“Dynamite” originally appeared in Ninth Letter

Magic Words for Happiness

Throughout time there have been stories, myths, and legends where people merely have to utter some magic words, a spell, or mantra, and POOF! their desires manifest magically before their eyes.

Even if you don’t believe in “magic words,” I’ve discovered a real-life mantra which are magic words for unfettered happiness. Well, almost. Actually it’s even better than it sounds.

I don’t know how I discovered this mantra, perhaps it found me.
A few weeks ago, I was running around Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, pushing my snoozing two-year-old son in the jog stroller. The autumn temperature was beautiful and crisp, ideal for a run. The diffuse afternoon sunlight was filtering through the rice-paper sky of wispy clouds making the panoply of fall colors practically burst each tree into flames. My lungs were breathing deeply and effortlessly in sync with my footsteps making my head feel clear and my body feel alive.
 

That’s when these magic words just popped out of my mouth: “This is EXACTLY what I want to be doing in this moment!” I repeated it a few times, feeling ever more enthralled with each repetition.
A few days later, while at the playground watching my kid play with all the other kids, I stepped back and repeated that same magic phrase, “This is EXACTLY what I want to be doing in this moment.”

Again, a week or so later,  I was taking an ordinary walk and not really feeling much of anything and decided to try the phrase again to see what would happen.  “This is EXACTLY what I want to be doing in this moment.” Again, almost instantly a wave of happiness and contentment washed over me.

Then, I decided to really put this mantra to the test. A few days later, when I was feeling particularly crabby, and despite my own momentary cynicism about this mantra, I somehow found the fortitude to whip out these magic words, “This is EXACTLY what I want to be doing in this moment,” even though suffering these tight, constricted feelings in my chest caused by crabbiness wasn’t what I wanted to be doing in this moment.

I’ll admit, crabbiness didn’t disappear instantly: I didn’t immediately start dancing and singing around the streets of Brooklyn, like the Maria von Trapp. But it did have a remarkable effect on me by pulling me into the present moment and my crabbiness did subside by substantial degrees. The presence this mantra gave me was to look objectively at the emotions in the moment as physical sensation and adopt the vantage point of observer rather than victim of the circumstances which led me to being crabby.

Cuz, I think this is the thing, here: the magic of this phrase is that it locks me into presence. It wakes me up from projecting to past or future and opens my eyes to HERE.
 

We stop blackmailing our happiness by insisting that we will only feel happy when the circumstances in our lives align to ways we think they ought to be.

When we take a good look at HERE, we realize that this moment is not only void of the stressors or worries that past and future want to impose on our minds, but most often, this practiced attention to the present helps us to see all the beauty that surrounds us at all moments, perfection which is often masked by momentary emotions that cloud our vision.

The Yoga Sutras point to a foundational pillar of our own evolution called Santosha, which means the practice of personal contentment. When we practice this mantra, we are practicing Santosha in a practical and real way.

Taking it one step deeper, ancient yoga wisdom also states that our most natural comportment is that of boundless equanimity, a joy that exists despite the events or circumstances of our lives. 
 
By dialing in to the perfection of this moment, we cultivate our own capacity for contentment. Soon, we train ourselves to experience this natural contentment as the underlying natural way of being, which is always present, despite events and circumstances.

Warning: Crabbiness, and all the other negative emotions will continue to surface. But with practiced presence, we cultivate Santosha, contentment, and these emotions will have less and less power to pull you away from presence. In fact, with practice we can use those negative emotions, and all temporary emotions, as a way of feeling into this moment and becoming more present.

This may be a lifelong practice to perfect. Just take it moment by moment.

I invite you to practice these magic words, “This is EXACTLY what I want to be doing in this moment. ” Starting today, cultivate your own capacity for deep, lasting contentment and a happiness that isn’t dependent on events or circumstances.

I’ve recorded a Yoga Nidra (guided meditation) that feels amazing by cultivating this joy beyond events or circumstance. It takes about 30 minutes.
 

If you use social media maybe capture the moment with #thismoment

Join me for the yoga retreat of a lifetime along Souther Italy's Amalfi Coast, May 26-June2

The World Needs YOU to Teach Yoga

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Can you remember a yoga class that really changed you?

This email is for my everybody, but especially my yoga teaching friends or those who might be interested in teaching Yoga.

Have you had a yoga class that for some reason really moved you? What was it about that class that made such a difference? What did that teacher do that moved you so much?

If you're a teacher, do you realize that YOU have the power to powerfully touch people's lives like no one else can? It's true. Your unique, gifts, interests and talents make you uniquely qualified to touch people in a way that only you can. 

Ever wonder why your yoga classes aren't thriving, or you're feeling a little burned out with teaching, or questioning whether or not you even want to teach anymore? Do you wish you were making more money teaching yoga so you could quit your day job and only teach yoga?

One reason your teaching and opportunities aren't thriving could be because you're not tapped into and teaching from your own authenticity.

When you're teaching what you love, what interests you, and what you're not only passionate about but what you know a helluva lot about, teaching is not only effortless, it is abundant. 

If you read my 2nd to last blog post, I spelled out the formula for success as given me by my favorite business prof in college, which I live by, and truly believe. He said:

Interest breeds excellence. Excellence breeds opportunities.

When you are teaching what interests you, what you're passionate about, your excellence, your natural talent for teaching, rises to the surface. Opportunities arise as you attract the people who are pickin' up what you're puttin' down. 

Don't worry about the rest of the people who aren't interested in your offering. Other teachers with other gifts will teach them.  

If you're interested in optimizing your teaching and learning how to grow your opportunities to teach yoga, and get paid what you're worth, I'd like to invite you to attend my live and online Yoga Teachers Workshop this Saturday, November 11th at 2 pm ET, 1 pm CT, 12 pm MT, 11 am PT.

It's virtual so you can do it from your own home. Besides learning key principles about teaching and the biz of yoga, you will meet with teachers from all over the country for discussion and networking.

Also, if you can't make the time, I'm recording the audio/video so you can still register and watch it later. 

In this workshop, I want to share with you some of the invaluable things I've learned over 17 years of teaching yoga, not only about leveraging your gifts for extraordinary teaching, but also about some of the industry secrets to make a living which I've learned over in the past 17 years.

There's a good chance you can write this off on your taxes, plus it counts as hours for continuing education for Yoga Alliance.

This could be the most valuable workshop you will ever attend for you yoga teaching and your career.

Plus, I'll give you your money back if you don't think it was worth your time.

Join me!
 

Check out what one of my Mentor Students said about my yoga teachers coaching:

“I have followed Scott’s career for years. He is someone who walks his talk and shows his deep knowledge for all things yoga in every class or conversation. He is extremely grounded and dedicated to this work. As a mentor, Scott was literally “an all things” coach to me. He helped me overcome mindset of owning this soul calling of teaching and supported me in times of doubt. He helped me discover my strengths as a teacher, ways to make this into a thriving business and conceptualize an idea into a breathing business. From technical help on my website to marketing and deepening the mechanics of teaching, he helped me with all of it. He is extremely professional with a very personal approach. He truly cares about his clients and the integrity of this work. I am so grateful for this program to work one on one with such a well-rounded leader in the yoga space. ” J.J.

Details

How much: $45

When: Saturday, November 11th 2-4 pm ET, 1-3 pm CT, 12-2 pm MT, 11 am to 1 pm PT

Where: Your house, via our virtual learning space. You'll need a laptop, computer, iPad, or smart device with an internet connection. 

Meditation to Help You Sleep

I’ve been teaching meditation techniques to help sleep for 15 years and I’d like to share with you this very effective, and simple technique.

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Tell me if this sounds familiar . . .  It’s 2:30 am. You’ve been lying in bed for hours feeling miserable, tired, and stressed because tomorrow (actually, just later today) you’ve got a very important day but you JUST. CAN’T. SLEEP. The more you lie there not sleeping, the more worried you get about not sleeping, and you start the downward spiral of sleeplessness. If you’re lucky, you might eventually fall asleep only to wake up from a few hours of fitted sleep, feeling exhausted. Or worse, you sleep like a mummy through your alarm and are late for your important day.

If this has ever happened to you, you’re not alone. Millions of people are plagued with the lack of good sleep. But what do you do? There are many solutions to sleeplessness, including drugs, cleaning up your diet, and cutting out caffeine, but have you considered meditation?

Meditation helps sleep for one very simple reason: presence.

ften times, we can’t sleep primarily because our minds are playing out the day we just had or are about to have. Our brain can’t tell the difference between real threat and perceived threat. The thoughts and worries about tomorrow make our nervous system react as if the threat were real and present.

Your nervous system doesn’t want you to sleep if there’s a perceived threat; you’ve evolved not to sleep through being stalked by a predator. Consequentially, thinking and worrying makes adrenaline starts to pump through your body, increases your heart rate, and makes your mind sharp and active. Thinking and worrying is the recipe for NOT sleeping.

Meditation’s primary objective is to allow you to get out of the past or future and inhabit the present moment ONLY. The more we practice regular presence through meditation, the more we are able to be present in every-day life. This presence will also train our minds to stay out of the past or future when we are trying to sleep.

Ok, that sounds great but how do I meditate? Here’s a very simple meditation practice that not only helps you to practice daily presence but can also help you get good, consistent sleep.

The Countdown Meditation 

For every-day meditation, do the following:

1. Set a timer for 5 minutes (you can extend the time the more you practice).
2. Sit upright.
3. Close your eyes.
4. Watch your breath move in and out for a few rounds
5. In your mind, start to count your breaths backward from the number 30, e.g., exhale “30,” inhale “29,” exhale “28,” etc.
6. When you lose your count, start back at 30.
7. When you get to zero, start back at 30.
8. When the timer rings, you’re done.

It’s important to remember that the goal is presence, not getting to zero so it doesn’t matter if you go 3 times all the way from 30-0, nor does it matter if you start over 20 times.

For getting to sleep, do the following:

1. Prepare for bed and do everything you need to prior to going to sleep.
2. Brain dump. Before you climb into bed, set a timer for 2 minutes and on a notepad, write down all of the immediate things you have on your mind. Don’t let this go beyond 2 minutes lest this devolves into a fuel-for-worry fest.
3. Fold up the paper and put it aside. Tell yourself that you don’t need to think or do anything about that list until tomorrow.
4. Put the timer away.
5. Lie down, turn off the light, and notice your breath for a few rounds.
6. Start counting your breaths (just like the every-day version of Countdown) but start at 100.
7. When any thoughts or worries come up, let them go knowing that you’ve already done your brain dump. Tell those thoughts that they should have presented themselves when you were writing them down, and start over counting your breath. If the stillness of mind reveals something that requires absolute immediate action, ask yourself if it REALLY needs immediate attention. If so, get up and do it quickly but then come back to bed and resume the Countdown Meditation at 100
8. If you lose your count because you’re falling asleep, let go and enjoy the ride. Mission accomplished. We’ll see you in the morning, Sunshine. Don’t be surprised if you have to go a few times all the way through before you fall asleep. Most often, you’ll fall asleep during the first go.

By practicing this simple meditation technique, you can help your mind be more present every day and train yourself into better, more regular, and deeper sleep.

I’d like to offer you a challenge to do the Countdown Meditation, either the every-day sitting or going to sleep version, for seven days, for at least 5 minutes a day. Write me at scott@scottmooreyoga and tell me how it went.

Join me for the yoga retreat of a lifetime along Southern Italy's Amalfi Coast May 26-June 2 2018

Learning My Calling

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In 2003, I had only been teaching yoga for a few years.

I was a new yoga teacher trying really, really hard to make my living by only teaching yoga. My skills were average, I didn't have many teaching gigs, and the ones I had didn't pay very well. I was in a bind because while I loved teaching yoga, I needed to provide for my family. I had to make a change.

So one evening after class, I announced to my students that sadly, I was going to have to quit this yoga thing and get a "real job."

After class, a student and friend named Cristy, approached me with tears in her eyes and pleaded with me, "you CAN'T quit! You do what you do so I can do what I do. I'm a mom of 4 kids under the age of 5 and I need you to teach yoga." This conversation would change my life. 

True, I needed to start earning a living, but my conversation with Cristy showed me just how important yoga is for people, that the world needs good yoga instruction. Suddenly, I felt as though the world was callingme to teach yoga. And while I didn't even know if one could support themselves on something like teaching yoga, I was going to give it a try. 

So, rather than quitting the yoga thing and finding a different job that would simply pay the bills, I decided to take a risk and go all in with yoga. And bit by bit, I started to get more teaching opportunities. The more I taught, the more skillful I became. It took a while, but eventually I was thrilled to be making a living by teaching yoga.

Norm Nemrow

After a few years of teaching yoga full-time, I had learned those essential tools I needed to help me be a more effective teacher. The better I got at teaching, the more opportunities came my way. Eventually, I had more great-paying teaching opportunities than I could handle and had to give most of them away to other teachers!

It reminds me of something that Norm Nemrow, my favorite business prof in college told me. He gave me his simple formula for success:

Interest breeds excellence. Excellence breeds opportunities. 

Certainly, I was experiencing the fulfillment of this promise. And all these years later, I'm still at it.

I'll never forget Cristy who reminded me how important yoga can be. I take that very seriously and endeavor to give my all in every class I teach. 

I believe that the world needs good yoga. I feel like teaching yoga is how I do my part to make the world a better place. I believe that when people are skillfully guided to to connect body, mind, and spirit through yoga, they can meet their personal conditions to do what they do to make the world a better place, be that being a mom, lawyer, doctor, Crusty the Clown, or whatever. 

Thank you to all of you who believe in me and have encouraged on this path. I truly love it!

I'm truly passionate about teaching yoga. If you are too, I'd love to continue to make the world a better place by helping other teachers learn what took me so long to learn about how to teach effectively and make a living doing so. 

I'm offering an online Yoga Teachers Workshop this Saturday. I'm doing it online and recording it so you can join from wherever you live and if you can't make the time work for you, you can watch it when is most convenient for you. 

Do you have a calling? Is it also to teach? If so, how did you know you were supposed to teach yoga. If not teaching yoga, how did you know the calling when you did? Leave messages in the comments section below. 

 

Join me for the yoga retreat of a lifetime along Southern Italy's Amalfi Coast May 26-June 2 2018.

Nothing But My Underwear

In September of 2011,

I participated in Salt Lake City’s first ever Undie Run. The concept is simple: run with thousands of other people . . . in nothing but your underwear.
 
Why? Some people tried to make the Undie Run, this display of flagrant deviance, of wanton exhibitionism, demonstrate some deeper meaning. They tried to assign it as a protest by uncapping Sharpies and scrawling half-hearted grievances on their nearly-naked bodies. But it was clear by the gayety and silliness of everyone involved that this was really about simply letting your hair down in a city known for its tight-laced morals and demur etiquette.
 
I had agreed to meet a friend of mine at the starting line of the Undie Run, at a place called The Gallivan Center. The Gallivan Center is a large public space, in downtown Salt Lake City, perfect for concerts, festivals, and as fate would have it, thousands of people dressed in nothing but their bras ‘n panties or tighty whities ready to run to the State Capitol and back.
 
I’m not normally prone to public nakedness but thought the Undie Run might put me a little out of my comfort zone and be a lot of fun. I know that getting out of my comfort zone is often the key ingredient to personal growth. Little did I know, however, just how much out of my comfort zone this would put me and how much personal growth I’d experience.
 
I drove to the Gallivan Center and parked in the parking garage. Nervous, I got out of my truck, and with a brave and bold resolve, stripped down to nothing but my favorite pair of unds, running shoes, and just to play it safe, my hands-free device—you know, in case I got an important call while on my run.
 
Feeling very exposed, nervous, and alone, I walked by myself through the parking structure toward the entrance point of the Undie Run. Once at the Galiivan Center, I’d luckily be met by the thousands of other people also in their underwear and I’d feel a little less conspicuous.
 
But to my horror, there was a police officer blocking the gate between the parking garage and the Gallivan Center who instructed me that I couldn’t enter the event from this gate and would have to walk two and a half city blocks, long blocks mind you, around the Gallivan Center to enter the event at a different gate. I saw no reason for this detour but when pressed and the cop didn’t budge nor so much as even grace me with an explanation.
 
So out into the crowded city streets I went. Alone and wearing only my underwear (and hands-free device).
 
I knew I would soon enough join several others in a similar state of undress, but for now it was just me.
 
Longest.
Walk.
Of my life.

Fortunately, after only a few steps down that lonely sidewalk, I remembered one of my deepest values. No, not the value of modesty, but a value I believe to be much more important which is:

It doesn’t matter what your wearing, what you look like, or what your circumstances as long as you OWN IT.
 
So, own it I did.
 
With no other choice, I strutted down Salt Lake City’s prim and proper streets with my head held high, looking people in the face and saying hello like it was any other day. I fucking owned those streets in my Calvin Kleins and hands-free device!
 
After several long minutes of walking solo, I eventually met the thousands of other Undie Runners and felt relieved not to be so singularly exposed.
 
Isn’t it funny how what seems so scandalous, like walking down the streets alone in your underwear, changes to something completely ordinary when you’re surrounded by the social proof of thousands of other people doing likewise?
 

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Notice the hands-free device. Very hot!

The lesson I learned by walking alone down the street in my underwear was this: There will be moments in your life when you will be all alone, subject to scrutiny, doubt, ridicule, and judgement, when you’re completely exposed, vulnerable, and with nowhere to hide. And at times like these, you have to simply “own it,” hold your head up high, and keep walking.
 
So, whether you’re embarking upon an unknown chapter of your life, or busting out a yoga pose that seems to defy you, or strutting down the street in your underwear, hold your head up high, do your best and keep going. Whatever you’ve got, wherever you’re at, just own it.
 
Most of the time you won’t be met with throngs of people who are in a similar situation or even understand your situation. That doesn’t matter.  Simply keep your head high and your feet beneath you, grounded in a sure knowing of Self.
 
And in such moments, if you don’t have pockets, consider a hands-free device.
 
Namaste

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Join me for an unforgettable yoga retreat along Italy's Amalfi Coast. May 26-June 2 2018

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The Gayatri Mantra: A Love Supreme

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The Gayatri Mantra

Oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ

tát savitúr váreṇ(i)yaṃ

bhárgo devásya dhīmahi

dhíyo yó naḥ pracodáyāt

Watch a short video about understanding the Gayatri Mantra by looking at John Coltrane’s masterpiece, ALove Supreme.

Translation:

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, I would be the peace I am seeking in this moment.

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I've been working on understanding the The Gayatri Mantra for several years. It's one of the oldest mantras in existence, more than 12 thousand years old, and comes from the Rigveda, an ancient Sanskrit text containing hymns and mantras that are mythological and poetic accounts of the origin of the world.

I struggle to understand it because it suggests that when I’m feeling freaked out by something, I already have peace or am the peace that I feel I lack. Likewise, this mantra suggests that somehow through one Source, we are everything else. And to any mind that is caught up in limited a conception of Self, this is hard to understand at best and ridiculous at worst.

Join me for an unforgettable yoga retreat along the Amalfi Coast Italy May 26-June 2 2018

One experience I had that helped me to understand this mantra a little better happened several years ago while I was on an early-morning run in Hawaii. Because my body was used to a different time zone, I was up and running early while most of everybody else was sleeping. On that beautiful morning, I ran along a paved trail that contours the ocean and stretched for miles.

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All the elements were harmonized to make a perfect storm of physical, mental, and spiritual bliss. My mind was clear, the weather, temperature, altitude and humidity were all perfect. As I ran, my mind opened up to incredible clarity. In this clarity, I began processing some of the jazz improve theory that my sax teacher had been teaching me, specifically regarding works by John Coltrane. My feet tapped along the trail and my lungs bellowed the humid ocean-air while my mind thought about scales, intervals, harmonics, chords, and all of the underlying structure of jazz.

My sax teacher tells me that if I want to find those notes coming out of my horn, I have to not only feel them in my soul, but I also gotta know what is possible to feel and that takes a little head work. With all this mental clarity some fairly complex music theory simply started to make sense to me. Deeper musical ideas began to percolate to my mental surface causing new lights to go on. I was figuring it out and it was happening without any teacher or even the reference of my sax or even music paper.

I was amazed to realize that somehow, a lot of this understanding was already in there. Astounded by these musical revelations, an immense thought dawned upon me: even if it’s waaaay down there, there is a John Coltrane in me somewhere.

The perfect run with all the harmony of elements connected me in some way to Source which led me somehow to understand Coltrane a little better. If I truly understood the connection of all things, if I were truly tapped into Source like the Gayatri Mantra suggests, I’d be able to access that same power, soul, and knowledge that John Coltrane did. Me! John Coltrane! Ultimately, I'd see that I'm no different than John Coltrane.

Coltrane was connected to Source. He demonstrates this plainly in his most spiritual work, some say the most spiritual of all of jazz, his album called A Love Supreme. In it he makes circles both in the arc of the sound in music as well as in its form; this chord and this phrase makes a logical, mathematical, and aurally pleasing transition to the next, and the next until the formula causes it to arrive back to where it started.

Just as you might hear Brahman priests chanting the Gayatri Mantra from the Rigveda, in this recording you hear these priests of jazz chant, “A Love Supreme” repeatedly in the background evoking Source.

In certain disciplines initiates get a new name. In yoga your name might become Yogananda, or Ram Das. Jazz is no different. It might be Trane or Bird or Fathead. I believe that another name for God, like God's own moniker, could be, A Love Supreme. I think God uses it as a social handle, or something.

In part, Coltrane’s message was that everything is inscribed within A Love Supreme. A Love Supreme is The Effulgent Source mentioned in the Gayatri Mantra and to fully comprehend this Source means to understand everything, including peace, including jazz, including yourself. This is enlightenment and whether your path there incorporated practicing either poses or jazz theory or anything else, you still end up at the same place.

Alice Coltrane, J.C.’s wife at the time, said that one day Trane locked himself in the attic and didn’t come down for three days. He spent the entire time meditating (understand that Coltrane meditated with his horn in his mouth) and when he came down, I imagine that it was like Moses coming down from the mountain after talking to God, he looked at his wife and said, “I’ve got it!” A few days later he was in the studio with a few hand-picked musicians to record A Love Supreme, which quickly became one of the greatest pieces of music ever conceived.

We are still chanting the Gayatri Mantra 12 thousand years later. I hope people are chanting A Love Supreme, or at lease spinning the record, 12 thousand years from now.

Understanding, even theoretically, that knowing Source means to know everything, doesn’t discount the hours, weeks, years, and lifetimes of work and practice necessary to get there, but still the idea is provocative that our work isn’t to build or gain anything new, rather to dismantle that which prevents us from seeing what’s already there.

What we practice in yoga is paying attention and we use breath, poses, and mediation to open our eyes and to take off the bandages to reveal what’s underneath.

Another reference to understanding this universal Source comes from the story about the day Zen came to be. It is said that long ago an assembly gathered to hear the Buddha’s Dharma talk. Instead of a discourse, The Buddha simply held up a flower saying nothing. He stayed like that for a long time much to the confusion of most everyone.

Only the sage Mahakashyapa understood, and noted it with a wry smile. With his flower, the Buddha was saying that which could not be spoken by words. He was showing the assembly that Being or Reality had no boundaries and was found in everything, including a flower, and to even try to define Being or Reality by words would create a boundary for something that had none. Anything defined would have been a contradiction yet at the same time he was revealing that which was everywhere, if your understanding would allow you to see.

“If my thoughts words and deeds reflected a complete understanding of this unity,” . . . I would realize that I’m no different than this flower, or my sax, my music, or you, and I would understand that peace is already within me. And yet to understand this, like myriad myths throughout history also suggest, it might take me traveling the entire world to realize that what I was searching for was at home all along, locked within the vault of my heart.

I invite you to practice understanding the Gayatri Mantra better and practice unraveling anything within yourself that would prevent the world from seeing your own manifestation of the Effulgent Source, your True Nature, your Love Supreme.

And since it is said that Visvamitra was the one who gave us the Gayatri Mantra, we’ll work on exploring Reality through Visvamitrasana. Speaking of “getting Real,” once I start working on my inflexible hamstrings, something necessary for that pose, things get real, really fast.

Might I suggest listening to A Love Supreme this week.

Finally, A Yoga Nidra Training Online!

Live, in-person Yoga Nidra training coming SOON! If you’re interested, please email me.

The Best Online Yoga Nidra
Teacher Training !

For teachers and practitioners alike!

Rated in the top 2 in the world by
Mind Is The Master.

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If you don’t love this training, I’ll completely refund your tuition!

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Become a skilled Yoga Nidra facilitator.

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Start Your Yoga Nidra Training Today!

Instant access.

Earn continuing education credit with Yoga Alliance.

Make a difference as you help facilitate transformation for your students and yourself. Learn to teach your own Yoga Nidra scripts. Teach Yoga Nidra like an expert. Learn to teach this transformative and healing practice in YOUR own voice to meet the unique needs of yourself and your students and not as a rote version of your teacher.

Learn both the what and why of Yoga Nidra as well as the essential pillars to teaching expert classes. By the end of this training you will be a certified Yoga Nidra teacher!

Not only will you learn how to teach Yoga Nidra, but you’ll learn industry secrets to help you start making an impact with your teaching while ALSO making a living. This training will pay for itself with simple, actionable tools you’ll learn begin to share your talents to facilitate transformation.

You’ll even know how to write your own scripts and effectively improvise a Yoga Nidra class. Unlike other trainings, you won’t need to wait for a more advanced training to learn to write your own scripts or improvise a Yoga Nidra class.

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“I really lucked out when I chose your course. I appreciate your help through this course, which has been pure enjoyment for me.””

— Andrea Mathwich

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When you enroll, you get immediate and life-time access to a sleek and simple-to-use teaching platform. This go-at-your-own-pace curriculum is accessible from any computer, smartphone, or tablet. In fact, you can even download the materials so you don’t need to be connected to the internet.

You’ll get a veritable library of supportive, calming, and illuminating practices, lessons, and materials.

In this course, I lead you through an exciting journey of 5 major sections, each with several teaching modules, complete with specialized and relaxing Yoga Nidra recordings, breathing and mindfulness exercises, as well as hours of engaging video lectures. This content explores:

• The every-day application of how Yoga Nidra helps you to wake up to the person you are destined to be.

• In-depth Yoga Nidra eduction including myths, history, science, psychology, poetry, and philosophy as well as dozens of my own personal stories and humor, all supporting your journey of waking up with the yoga of sleep.

• Specialized Yoga Nidra practices to help you wake up to the hidden jewels that are inside of you.

Only $589

payment options available.

30-day money-back guarantee!

Includes over 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts! You can start teaching effective Yoga Nidra classes today while you’re learning to find your own voice.

Yoga Nidra Teacher Training Curriculum:

Section 1: Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep

Discover how Yoga Nidra helps you wake up to be the person you are destined to be.

Module 1: Begin The Journey

Start along your path as I show you the map and trails you’ll follow on the course of your Yoga Nidra adventure.

Module 2: What Is Yoga Nidra? Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep

What is this ancient practice and how does it help you wake up?

Module 3: Yoga Nidra: An Inquiry to “Know Thyself”

Socrates will be your guide on this inner odyssey to hear the Oracle’s special message just for you.

Module 4: The Greatest Love Story of All Time: Shiva, Shakti, and YOU

You are the lovechild of consciousness and form. See how the world exists as a love note to you.

Module 5: The Koshas: Mapping the Beautiful Illusions

See the world dancing before your eyes, evoking your consciousness to wake up.

Module 6: Non-Dualism and Your Both / And Nature

Ancient myth illuminates the higher dimension of your True Being.

Module 7: The Secret to the Universe is HERE: Presence

The secret to the Universe is literally at your fingertips as you learn to practice presence.

Module 8: Stages and States of Consciousness

Upleveling your state of consciousness uplevels your stage of consciousness.

Module 9: Why Yoga Nidra Works: Science and Psychology

Take a look under the hood and learn how spirit and philosophy is supported by science and psychology.

Module 10: The Big Message & FAQ

The simple and profound truth, how does Yoga Nidra apply to every-day life, and listen to me answer some common questions.

Section 2: Facilitating Transformation with the Yoga of Sleep.

Learn to become an expert at the subtle art of facilitating Yoga Nidra

Module 1: Introduction and Overview

Familiarize yourself with the tools to find your voice in this practice

Module 2: The Yoga Nidra Roadmap

Learn to read the map of an effective Yoga Nidra experience to facilitate transformation for yourself and your students

Module 3: Creating the Container & The Role of the Teacher

Learn the subtle and essential art of set and setting for a transformational Yoga Nidra experience and understand your primary roles as a teacher.

Module 4: Facilitating Observation & the Three Heavies

Facilitate Transformation by effectively pointing to presence with 3 key objectives.

Module 5: Essential Tools Part 1

Master the tools that will help you facilitate transformation in a Yoga Nidra practice.

Module 6: Essential Tools Part 2

Master the tools that will help you facilitate transformation in a Yoga Nidra practice.

Module 7: Essential Tools Part 3

Master the tools that will help you facilitate transformation in a Yoga Nidra practice.

Module 8 2 Yoga Ninja Tactics

Uncover the 2 GAME-CHANGER tactics that completely revolutionize the practice of teaching Yoga Nidra and will help you to teach like an expert almost immediately.

Module 9: Connecting The Dots—Building an Effective Yoga Nidra Class

Together we’ll work through the step-by-step process of building specialized Yoga Nidra classes for yourself and your clients.

Module 10: Yoga Nidra Dyads and Self Practice

Turn facilitating Yoga Nidra on its head and the transformational power of allowing the practitioner to direct the Yoga Nidra experience as you learn the road map and art of Facilitated Awareness.

Module 11: Accessibility and Healing with Yoga Nidra

Reveal how to make this beautiful practice available for all by eliminating discriminating language, marketing, and practices from your teaching. Discover the role of Yoga Nidra toward healing.

Module 12: Integration

Provide the essential integration tools for your student to learn to apply Yoga Nidra in their every-day life and discover the miracle of their own life.

Module 13 FAQ

Clarify any questions you may have about teaching Yoga Nidra.

Section 3: Sharing Yoga Nidra with the World

Module 1: Introduction

The world needs you to share this practice in only the way that YOU can.

Module 2: Developing Interest

Make your skills available to those who need it.

Module 3: Formatting Classes, Workshops, and Courses

Presentation is everything. Create an offering that will give your students what they need and keep them coming back for more.

Module 4: Virtual Offerings & Supportive Tech.

Broadcast Yoga Nidra to the world with simple and effective tools. Use the “minimum viable product” and learn to scale your offerings.

Module 5: Private Sessions

Tailor a Yoga Nidra experience to the specific needs of an individual. Intake, format, and support for private individuals and groups.

Module 6: Retreats

Learn the insider’s tips to leading retreats and provide life-time memories and transformation for your students while giving yourself a “paid vacation.”

Module 7: Supporting Your Students

Establish the learning trajectory for your students to support them along their journey.

Module 8: FAQ

Questions and insights about the course.

Section 4: Finishing Up and What’s Next

Module 1: Recognize and Recap Progress

This broad recap will cement the knowledge and experience into your soul to ensure your confidence in teaching right away.

Module 2: Resources Reminder

Re-familiarize yourself with the vast array of supportive resources that come with the course.

Module 3 Finish Line

The big fat message. What it all means. What’s possible.

Module 4: Graduation Requirements

Prepare for your graduation: assignments, requirements, and certification.

Section 5: Building Your Mechanism of Influence

Module 1: Make and Impact and Make a Living

5 simple, actionable tools to help you make an Impact and also make a living doing what you love to do.

During the training you can contact me anytime with questions!

Plus, during and after the course join our regular live support sessions and our wonderful, global Facebook group to connect with others in the training for support, ideas, and teaching practice.

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Your Teacher: Scott Moore

Hi! I’m an E-RYT 500, RYS, YACEP and the author of Practical Yoga Nidra: A 10-Step Method to Reduce Stress, Improve Sleep, and Restore Spirit. I’ve been a professor at colleges in Yoga and Mindfulness Studies for 9 years. I’ve owned 2 yoga studios and have worked at dozens of others, developing curriculum for teacher trainings and studio operations.

I’ve had the pleasure of teaching everyone from rock stars to recovering addicts, from young to old, ultra-athletes to the ultra-stressed out, and I've learned one essential fact: EVERYONE has an extraordinary life to live and EVERYONE'S path to wellness is unique.

I believe that my greatest qualifications are that I love Yoga Nidra! I’ve been practicing and teaching since 2008 and I’m passionate about helping you share YOUR unique gifts and personality to help others share this incredible practice of Yoga Nidra to the world.

Yoga Nidra has changed my life! I’ve learned from some of the best teachers in the world but have honestly learned more about Yoga Nidra by the thousands of hours of practicing and teaching this incredible practice.

What I want to share with you is what’s taken me many years and thousands of hours of practice to learn. I want to teach you, much faster than it took me to learn, the ways of teaching this transformation practice that feel 100% authentic to your personality and that are powerful for yourself and your students.

I’ve been a yoga professional since 2000. I’ve owned studios, worked at dozens of others, graduated hundreds of yoga teachers, and I love to travel across the globe to offer trainings and retreats. I’d love to help you find your own deep relationship to this transformative practice to make an impact on the world and make it a better place. I want to help to empower you to teach Yoga Nidra and make an impact while also making a living.

You’ll Love This Course!

I believe the world needs more Yoga Nidra. I believe you’re the one to offer it, in your voice, speaking to your students in only the way you can.

This 50-hour Yoga Nidra intensive is perfect both for teachers as well as students who simply want to deepen their practice of Yoga Nidra.

This could be the most important work you do in a great long time.

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.

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Listen to what others are saying about this course!

Recent graduates have said that this training is not only such high quality, but that is also affordable, accessible, and can be done on your own timeline. Here are some testimonials of other graduates:

“I have finished the online training and it was a wonderful experience! I love your teaching style and found I resonated with what you were sharing! I am excited to practice more and start sharing my knowledge with my students! Thanks again! I really feel like this was one of the best decisions I’ve made.”

— Shawna Farrow

“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 recommend this Yoga Nidra Teacher Training to absolutely everyone- and I have! Whether or not you plan on actually teaching- this practice is something that everyone needs. We all need to tune in deeper and into our true selves. I have found peace and an uncluttered mind in this practice- it is the most beautiful thing. Scott’s passion for Yoga Nidra is evident in the careful construction of the information as well as the organic flow of the conversation that he facilitates. The information and training was so easy to follow, which isn’t always the case in an online training scenario. He brought up engaging and provocative points and always applied the information back into everyday life. I left the training feeling very confident in my ability to lead classes and to help individuals get to a point where they can truly discover themselves. This training is 100% life changing and totally worth it. Thanks!”

— Robyn Hiebert

“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

“Scott’s online training was an absolute joy. Not only does Scott possess a wealth of knowledge about the practice, he brings the teachings to life through his energetic presence, compelling storytelling, and heart-centered teaching. This offering is truly unique, and I’d highly recommend Scott’s guidance to anyone interested in going deeper with the incredible practice of Yoga Nidra.”

— Eden Orion

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Yoga Nidra Scripts Included with Your Training

Plus, included in the tuition you’ll receive my latest book (100-page PDF) of over 20 Yoga Nidra scripts:

• Yoga Nidra for Grief

• Yoga Nidra for Goals

• Yoga Nidra for Healing

• Yoga Nidra for Sleep

• Yoga Nidra for Grounding

• Yoga Nidra for Sankalpa (Intentions)

• Basic Yoga Nidra Practice: Body

• Yoga Nidra for Energy and Chakras

• Yoga Nidra for Anxiety Management

• Full Yoga Nidra Practice (all Koshas)

• Yoga Nidra for Heart Energy

• Yoga Nidra for Stress

• Yoga Nidra for Relaxed Alertness

• Yoga Nidra for your Trinity Nature

• Yoga Nidra for Compassion

• Yoga Nidra for Abundance

• Yoga Nidra to Start Your Day

• Yoga Nidra for Bliss (Anandamaya Kosha)

• Yoga Nidra for Happiness

• Yoga Nidra for Inner Wisdom

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Upon completion of this Yoga Nidra training you’ll have:

• A certificate of completion

• A deeper understanding of your deepest Self through Yoga Nidra

• A course full of profound relaxation, deeper knowledge, and teaching skills

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

• 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts to use immediately

• An in-depth Yoga Nidra Training PDF workbook

• Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Credit (if needed). You’ll get 50 continuing education hours.

• 30-Day Money-back guarantee. If you can show you’ve listened to all the materials and still feel it wasn’t for you, I’m happy to refund your money.

By the end of this training you’ll be ready to teach Yoga Nidra.

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

Contact me with questions

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Headaches Stink!

Do you ever get headaches? Do you get regular headaches and not even know why? Did you know that headaches can sometimes be the result of unconscious tension in your hips, back, neck and shoulders?

Don't hate me, but I'm the kind of guy who almost never gets headaches. Well, not unless there's something really wrong with me. So when I do get a headache, it's an automatic red flag and I pay close attention to what's going on with me. Even having a headache is an opportunity for mindfulness.

There are a bunch of reasons for headaches, like dehydration, sinus congestions, and viruses. But like I said, sometimes, headaches are caused by unconscious tension, especially if your headaches are chronic.

Here are a few of my favorite techniques to remedy a headache. I use these myself and teach them to my students. 

First, check in and listen. Try hearing your headache as a message from your body. Close your eyes and give yourself a few slow rounds of deep ujjayi breaths. This technique is often powerful enough to remedy a headache all by itself because of the ujjayi breath's ability to calm the nervous system. 

As your breathe, bring your attention directly to your headache and see what you can learn from it. Where exactly do you feel it? What is the quality of your headache. What are the emotions, thoughts, or sensations which correspond to your headache? If your headache were a message, what might it be? 

And then try these three yoga poses to see if they help your headache.

Quick info before you do any yoga poses: remember that you are aiming for quality over quantity. You don’t get better results by doing a pose more intensely. Keep your stretches at the quality of I call “comfortably intense.” Aim for duration and feeling a solid, sustained stretch rather than a quick fix.  And always with every yoga pose maintain your ujjayi breaths.

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Pose #1

Eagle Arms: to stretch upper-trapezius, lateral deltoids, triceps

This posture stretches a few of the most pernicious muscles when it comes to tension headaches. The upper-traps, the big muscles right at the top of your shoulders which connect to your head, are particularly responsible for causing tension headaches. When these muscles get tight, they pull on the tension balance of your upper skeleton as well as the muscles in your neck and scalp resulting in headaches. These muscles, as well as the lateral deltoids and triceps, tighten if you are prone to doing repetitive actions with hands and arms such as typing on a keyboard, driving, or texting (hopefully not all at the same time. I LOVE this pose.

Try wrapping your arms and then lifting your elbows slightly above your shoulders. Do this with your deep ujjayi breaths flowing. I like to slowly turn my head side to side. Oh, and makesure you’re not clenching your jaw. Sometimes when I'm trying to release tension in my body, I clench because I'm pushing too hard and this is an unconscious tension response.

Try this pose for 10 breaths on each side.

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Pose #2

Side Neck Stretch: to stretch the scalenes and sternocleidomastoid (SCM)

Other muscles that sometimes contribute to headaches are the SCMs and the scalenes. These muscles run along the sides of your neck.

To stretch these muscles, put your left hand on your head and tilt your left ear toward your left shoulder. Reach your right arm toward the floor but several inches away from your hip so that your middle finger almost touches the floor but not quite. It's like you're trying to get your right jaw and right fingertips as far away from each other as possible.

Do your ujjayi breathing.

Visualize your breath moving down into your fingertips and releasing any tension that exists from your head to your fingers. I'll visualize my tension dripping out my fingers like drops of water and pooling onto the floor.

Again, don't clench your jaw.

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Pose #3

Seated Twist: to stretch the paraspinal and piriformis

Sometimes the pain you feel in your head originate from a place entirely different than your head, like your back or even your hips. The paraspinal muscles are the vertical  muscles that run along either side of your spine and the piriformis muscle run deep under your glutes and connect your legs to your sacrum. Again, when either of these muscles are tight, they add to an imbalance in the skeletal tension and can radiate tension into your head. Plus, since your spine houses our spinal chord, the primary conduit for information moving via the nerves to the brain, by gently twisting the spine, you wring out our nervous system. Twists are great to release tension!

Sit down and cross one leg, bent at the knee, over the other leg, also bent at the knee. Bring opposite elbow across opposite leg. Sit up tall with your spine erect and buttocks grounded firmly on the floor. If one of your buttocks lifts, try extending your bottom leg straight. As you initiate the posture, breath in deeply and sit tall. As you exhale, gently twist to a comfortable level. Hold each side for 10-15 long breaths.

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If you get headaches, try first checking in, listening to your body, and doing a few rounds of ujjayi breath. Then bust out these three poses and see if they help. If you do them regularly, you'll most likely find that your headaches will come less frequently and will be less severe when they do.

And remember, sometimes your headache is trying to tell you something so practice listening. 

Do you get headaches? Use the comment section to tell me what you do to help remedy headaches?

Dancing with Maya

This is a provocative subject and it has everything to do with Yoga Nidra which at its heart is a deep inquiry into what it means to be.

Humankind has evolved looking at itself and wondering, "who am I?" What does it mean to Be?

We explore every avenue to help answer and express this question of being, including art, science, politics, religion, etc. Surely something can help me solve this mystery, right?

Consider: what you are is more of an idea than a thing. Stay with me . . .

If you were to look out your window and see a mountain, it looks pretty solid and real, right? But try to define it. Find the place where the mountain definitively starts and stops. Try to find how the matter of the mountain is different than the matter of the valley. Isn’t it all just dirt, rocks, weeds, trees, and rivers?  Go on a hike and find a pinecone. Is that part of the mountain? If yes, then if you were to take it home with you back into the valley, would it still be the mountain? What about the rains that fall on the mountain? Moments before the rain fell, it was cloud. But from afar the rain looks like part of the mountain. My point is that there's nothing that could be definitively and categorically called "mountain." Mountain is more of an idea.  

And so are you. We all are. That's because anything we tend to identify as "us" is in constant flux. Just like the pinecone that is part of the mountain one moment and decorating our mantle at home the next, these volatile elements can't identify us and can’t answer the question “who am I?”

We tend to identify ourselves with things that feel relatively concrete like our bodies, our thoughts, our beliefs, etc. But these things, just like the rain or pinecone, are invariably changeable. In yoga, these false identifiers are called Maya or illusions because while they hint at defining us, truly they can't point to the real us, our Being. 

Speaking to the ever-changing illusion of our bodies, there's a really cool Radiolab podcast that explore carbon dating in the cells in our bodies. On the show, experts say that the oldest cells in us are about 23 years old. Since our cells are constantly dying and new ones are being born, we are in a process of constant metamorphosis. Essentially if you're 23 years or older, every cell in your body has been born after you were born. You are literally not the same person you were when you were born. What a trip! Take your fingernails. They feel like us, right? But as soon as we cut them, suddenly they aren’t part of us anymore?
So how can we possibly "be" something that is one moment and isn't the next?

A better question is what is that thing that is "us" which never changes? Is there anything?

Yes, there is. I’ve experienced it and so have you. There are several ways to experience this part of us that never changes but I’ve experienced it most often and profoundly by practicing Yoga Nidra, this relaxing, meditation practice of self-inquiry that I’m so passionate about and can’t stop talking about. Yoga Nidra has completely blown my mind because of how it as enabled me to experience my True Self. And the best way to describe this True Self is Awareness.

Yep, I'm Awareness. And so are you. That might seem pretty abstract, but when you boil it all down, the one thing that doesn’t change is your Awareness. When I experience myself as Awareness, and I proffer that we all have at some time or other, it feels like the most natural thing in the Universe. I feel as if I’m bigger and smaller than my body. I can see my thoughts and emotions as an interesting part of me but not anything that can define me. As Awareness, I feel both large and small. I feel limitless and compact at the same time. I feel like I can do anything.

As I experience myself as Awareness regularly through practicing Yoga Nidra, I gain a perspective of my life that ordinary living can't give me. As Awareness, there's nothing I can't do, nothing I need, and no such thing as time. It's an experience of happiness beyond bliss. 

This shit is real! And all I have to do is lie down, close my eyes, and listen to the teacher guide me into Awareness. Really, it’s just about learning to pay keen attention, though a teacher is nice.

It’s not hard. The channel that propels me into this Awareness comes through that liminal state of mind between waking and dreaming consciousness, similar to a daydream. That state is called the Nidra state. In fact, even if I fall asleep, the Awareness part of me is still paying attention. I might therefore wake up from a 30-minute Yoga Nidra-induced nap feeling lucid and relaxed. I  may not even remember the session.

After practicing Yoga Nidra and experiencing myself as Awareness, I go back into my world, full of its illusions, and see clearly how everything but this Awareness is simply part of the illusion. With this immense perspective, my problems make sense, I’m not freaked out by stress, I feel closer to my family, and I feel an enormous sense of purpose in the world and energy to go out and share my gifts. And when problems come around, I’m grounded knowing what I truly am is Awareness and that anything I’m experiencing in this moment is just another opportunity to practice Awareness. I then have the wherewithal to then respond to the situation rather than react.

So, there’s the True Self which is Awareness, and there’s Maya, the illusion. And here’s the interesting thing about the relationship between Maya and Awareness, Maya isn’t something to transcend on our way to the True Self, this happiness beyond bliss. Maya is a vital tool which is inextricably married to experiencing myself as Awareness. I am Awareness manifesting itself by way of body, emotions, breath, sensation, beliefs, etc. Without these changeable parts of me, without the Maya, I would never come to know myself as Awareness. Thus the marriage between Being and Illusion.

If you’d like to hear me recount an ancient myth that illustrates this marriage between the illusion of form and the Beingness which underlies all things, please click the button.

Then, please read this marvelous poem written by Meister Eckhart (translated by Daniel Ladinski) in the 1200s. It sounds like it could have been written by Shakti from the myth.

Consider joining me for my Virtual Yoga Nidra series starting THIS Sunday, October 8th, 2017. 12 pm Eastern. For six weeks, and in the comfort of your own home, we will be exploring this theme The Magic of Maya: Working Through Illusion. Each session will have a brief discussion, a gentle asana and breathing practice, followed by me leading your through a 30-minute Yoga Nidra practice so you too can feel yourself as Awareness, experience yourself as larger than body, emotions, and thoughts. Experience a happiness beyond bliss. Allow your entire Universe to be opened up. It will be relaxing and profound.

Join me as we explore the Magic of Maya and how to use the illusions of what you might think of as you to uncover your True Self.

“When I Was the Forest

When I was the stream, when I was the
forest, when I was still the field,
when I was every hoof, foot,
fin and wing, when I
was the sky
itself,

no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever
wondered was there anything I might need,
for there was nothing
I could not
love.

It was when I left all we once were that
the agony began, the fear and questions came,
and I wept, I wept. And tears
I had never known
before.

So I returned to the river, I returned to
the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,
I begged—I begged to wed every object
and creature,

and when they accepted,
God was ever present in my arms.
And He did not say,
“Where have you
been?”

For then I knew my soul—every soul—
has always held
Him.”

— –Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328)

Mastery

“In order to gain mastery, you must dismantle as much as you build.”

— ~Master Sinon. The Architect's Apprentice by Elif Shafak.

What is mastery?

Author and poet David Whyte illustrates mastery with a great story about an old welsh sheepdog named Kumro. According to David Whyte, Kumro was “the Joe Montana of the canine cosmos,” despite the fact that he was ancient in dog years, limped on a gimpy leg, and was missing key visual and hearing functions.

David Whyte describes seeing the younger, spry dogs trying fruitlessly to direct the sheep by spending enormous amounts of energy all the while Kumro stood back and simply watched (with his good eye).

Finally, Kumro decided something needed to be done. He took merely two or three steps in one direction, slightly turned his body a few degrees in the direction of the sheep, and almost like magic the entire flock funneled obediently into the narrow opening in the wall where he had wanted them to go.

Kumro’s edge, his mastery, was his radical simplicity—minimal effort for maximum benefit.

In decades past, the mantra for mastery was “Mind Over Matter.” As I’m writing this, I’m conjuring visions of high-waisted leotards, leg warmers, and headbands. It was conquer and conquest of body and nature. But to mistake body and nature as our foes unfortunately results in broken and bodies and annihilated environments.

Today we live in the Information Age. By applying correct information, we can achieve and practice mastery by doing less to get exponentially more and without the high cost of conquering ourselves. Instead of “Mind Over Matter,” the new mantra is “Mindfulness With Matter.” The information we gain for mastery doesn’t come from the internet, a course, or a book (remember those, or did they go out with the leg-warmers?). The profound and life-changing information I’m talking about comes only by learning to listen to the master within, like your own personal Yoda, the quiet and wise whispering of body, mind, and spirit. While a teacher can help, they can never substitute for that inner master. Mastery, therefore, involves learning to listen to the wisdom already inside of you.

John Coltrane had mastery. He had teachers, yes, but who taught Coltrane to be Coltrane? Coltrane did.

Learn to listen. Listen to learn.

Of course, this applies directly to our yoga practice. In my mind, there is no “achievement” by putting your foot behind your head. That mentality is so “Mind Over Matter.” In class I like joke that if there is a pose I can’t do, that pose is overrated. Sure, I’ll keep practicing it because of what I can learn in the listening, but I have no delusions that by putting my foot behind my head will make me more spiritual, more valuable, or a better person.

Instead, the achievement is all internal and mind-bogglingly more expansive than flexible hamstrings. It’s the invisible flexibility of my constant growth into Awareness, a mastery which is facilitated by the tools of my body, mind, and breath but which fundamentally isn’t body, mind, and breath. And this expansiveness can only come from a mastery of what is most subtle.

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“Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away. ”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Author of Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince)

“One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.”

— Bruce Lee

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So, if mastery is minimalism, what do we need to cut in order to practice it? Start by cutting everything that isn’t absolutely necessary. Start by radically cutting everything but the breath.

Try this experiment:

Sit. Close your eyes. Breathe slowly in and out. Listen and feel. Visualize your breath as a color or texture and localize your breath to any place on your body you choose. You’ll soon feel a tingle, a heaviness, a lightness, or something else. If you chose a hand, it might feel as if that hand is larger or lighter than the other. This kind of attention and focus on the breath will localize Prana, the yogic term meaning life-force energy. You can feel Prana. Also, this focus brings Awareness. Now what if you could breathe this Prana, this life-force energy and Awareness in into your mind, your emotions, or hell, your finances or love life? That’s mastery.

“Dude, how did you finally let go of all of your anxiety?”

“I found my breath.”

I invite you to practice and cultivate mastery by cutting everything but the essentials. Practice breathing and meditation. Practice styles of yoga like yin, restore, and pranayama that celebrate getting much more by doing much less. There’s nothing wrong with vigorous yoga. And as you approach whatever poses or life situation, try simplifying down to the essence. Learn to breathe life into whatever you are experiencing at the moment.

Next week I’ll continue on this theme of mastery with even more practical ways of using our breath, and Prana to develop mastery in our yoga and meditation practice, our love life, and our work.

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Virtual Yoga Nidra Series October 8-November 12

Find Your Inner Wisdom

There is a part of you that just knows. Call it intuition. Call it your gut feeling. Call it your inner-guru. Call it what you want but I’d wager that sometime or other we’ve all had an experience that feels like we’ve tapped into some deeper wisdom within ourselves. Sometimes information or something a friend says hits you between the eyes. Other times as you might be considering which option to choose, you’ll land on one and your whole body completely relaxes. For some, this inner-wisdom is the feeling you get when you are connected to a divine source. And when we have these experiences, it feels like this wisdom is coming from somewhere different than our conscious mind of rational thoughts. It’s not an analysis. It’s deeper.

In yoga we call this the Wisdom Body or in Sanskrit the Vijnanamaya Kosha (pronounced vig-nyana-my-ah). The source of this inner-wisdom is the place between dreaming and waking consciousness. Many cultures and spiritual traditions have different names and explanations for this place of inner-wisdom. For example, in Native American spirituality it’s said that this wisdom realm is very mystical, a source of visions, and ruled by the spiritual powers of the fox.

Like all things in yoga, through practice we can develop an ability to better hear or recognize this inner-wisdom. Personally, I’ve also found a profound practice in learning to trust and act upon this inner-wisdom when I do hear it. Yoga, meditation, and Yoga Nidra, are all ways to practice accessing our Wisdom Body. In the yoga system of subtle body, you can access this inner-wisdom by meditating or performing breathing exercises while focusing on the Ajna Chakra, sometimes called your Third Eye (looks inward), the energetic and symbolic spot in the center of your forehead. Another way to access the Wisdom Body is through the symbols and feelings of your dreams. Keeping a dream journal is a fun way to practice hearing your inner-wisdom. Often you tap this Wisdom Body when you clear your head and do something simple like folding the laundry, going on a walk in the park, or walking your dog.

Here’s a simple practice, to experiment tuning in to this inner- wisdom.  Just have fun with this and don’t be too serious about it.  Read through this first and then give yourself 10-15 minutes or so to try it.

Practice:

Lie down and close your eyes. Practice first focusing as you methodically bring your attention to all the different parts of your body: start from the top and go part-by-part to the bottom. Spend about at least 5 minutes doing this, you’ve got to let your body relax and tune in. When you’re relaxed, picture yourself sitting with someone very wise and loving. This person could be imaginary, living, passed on, young, old, whatever; it’s your inner reference so you can choose whoever you want. Sometimes, I choose Gandalf from Lord of the Rings as my wise person(can we keep that just between us?).  Picture in detail where the two of you would be, what you would be doing, and most importantly the feelings between the two of you. Imagine that this wise person knows you inside and out, they know your personality, your likes and dislikes, your past and even your future and they love every part of you. They are your biggest cheerleader. Now, imagine that this person is excited to tell you something profound about you. They turn to you and with a smile say, “You know . . .” Now, let your mind fill in the blank with the first thing that comes to mind, what they would say about you. Don’t try to think about it, let it be instinct, that’s the point. Pause and take it in. Notice the way your body feels after this bit of advice or wisdom from your inner-friend. Notice any emotions, sensations, symbols, images, or anything that spontaneously arises for you, if any. Remember, this person is just the symbol of your deep inner-wisdom. They are a part of YOU. Repeat it to yourself. This is part of your subconscious speaking to your conscious mind through the symbol of your friend. And if what this person says doesn’t resonate with you, don’t take it personally, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Or perhaps notice where the resistance is to what they said, sometimes there is a message in that, too. Or, just tell your wise inner-friend, “Thanks for the advice” (you’re choosing a different wise friend next time, but you don’t have to tell them that). Continue on with this meditation until you feel ready to get up. You might want to connect briefly with your body to get grounded before you leave your meditation. Sometimes this mediation can be profound and sometimes nothing happens but it is a great way to practice hearing this inner-wisdom. At very least, it will be relaxing.

Or listen to me guide you through this practice. It's hosted on the meditation website, Insight.

A Moveable Feast

“We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.”

~Earnest Hemmingway. Excerpt from A Movable Feast

In Paris, we rented a very small and completely perfect half-room apartment on the third floor. To call it a one-room apartment would be to grossly exaggerate its scale. Our only window looked out onto a common space, a sort of chimney of light that allowed each apartment both the pleasure of natural night and the pleasure of being a voyeur into the lives of our neighbors. For breakfast we ate warm omelets with fresh melted goat cheese that Seneca cooked on the hot plate. Seneca said the cheese was too strong and tasted like a sheep’s utter. I loved the strong cheese and we both swooned over a small salad of fresh arugula and the freshest tomatoes and strawberries so flavorful that it made me feel like I’d never before eaten something called a strawberry.

Photo by David Newkirk

After breakfast we left the apartment and descended the old but sturdy stairs down the narrow, winding staircase and made another day of walking the streets of Paris. Walking down our street I again felt like a voyeur looking into the lives of the people around me, like those sitting outside in the small seats of the Café Italien on the corner that served fresh-squeezed orange juice and delicious smooth coffee by the owner who was as warm as her coffee one day and as cold as her orange juice the next. Sitting in his usual seat was the middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and neat moustache who seemed not to mind to run the errands on his scooter, nor mind being readily criticized by the other regulars of whom there seemed to be the same three or four, always with their commentary of the goings on in their petite corner of the world. We walked along the Rue Du Pont Aux Choux to Rue Vieille Du Temple, the small road which seemed to my navigational senses a main artery into the colorful quarter of the Marais and 3eme Arrondissement with its small, bright shops, historic buildings and boulangeries. This road led us directly to the Rue Des Rosiers, the small jewel of a street, like a vein of gold in the rough, that was home to the both the orthodox Jews and the gays, a street that served the finest falafel from boisterous Israelis, and where you can find the tidy shop of the most master crêpe-maker I believe I will ever know. 

Sourcing Your True Power: an online Yoga Nidra course

Discover your untold possibilities through the relaxing practice of Yoga Nidra. 

Later that day as we left the Musée d’Orsay, the canvas of our mind painted by the colors of Cézanne, Monet, Van Gough, and Renoir, we walked down the narrow streets searching for the artisan pâtisserie and some mineral water. Looking around, the thought entered me that people are just people wherever you go. Whether in Paris or anywhere else, people need to belong. We all need to be loved. We all need to find purpose and beauty in the world whether that is through art, music, architecture, numbers, teaching, children, nature, or all of it. And looking around at this city showed me the miracles that people can perform when they believe in something. Everywhere I turned, I saw a spirit of strength and determination and capacity for beauty and meaning. I saw it in their architecture, their cathedrals and palaces and their houses and most poignantly by simply watching them live out another day in their regular lives. I saw it in the way they decorated their little shops and showed great care about their cafés and restaurants, the prim waiter with his pressed shirt and manicured mustache and his full-length apron, standing at elegant attention hoping to show off his mastery of service because that was his art, to impeccably serve un café and croissant and make correct change and whisk you away when you were finished with a polite “Merci. Bonjour!” The next evening we sat in the small wooden pews of Nôtre Dame at the free organ concert. Here, I felt the beauty and strength of the human spirit, past and present, like a weight in my heart and lump in my throat as the deep pedal tones of that organ shook that holy palace at its foundation and opened my eyes perhaps for the first time to the height of the ceiling and light of the stained glass windows, a peach sunset at our backs making color dance upon the giant grey stones. I felt the strength of those rough hands that built that edifice of solid rock hundreds of years ago which stands in the form of a giant cross to remind us all what is directly in the center of vertical and horizontal, that magical place between what is spiritual and what is temporal, that place that is now. And whether on the yoga mat or at Nôtre Dame, presence allows us the same vision into the divine part that is within all of us.

Whether it’s the tourist who snaps a photo of the Mona Lisa on their phone and rushes off to something else hoping somehow to take it now and maybe look at it some other time, or it’s the local who never takes the time to get up into the mountains because there will be plenty of time later, it all speaks to the same thing: presence. It’s about this moment which if lived fully might express itself into something that could last into centuries or if wasted by living too much in the future or past never really happens. Without presence, we will never have our movable feast, we will never taste the cheese, see the stained glass, or feel the beauty of anything.

I invite you to come to yoga this week and practice presence. I invite you to move about your daily life with presence and experience your own movable feast. 

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet black bough.

–Ezra Pound

Written in 1913 in a Parisian metro station, for me this poem suggests the transience and beauty of human experience. It is the anonymous crowd but highlights the faces of individuals, key part of a person’s identity. It speaks to that question of uniqueness vs. sameness.

Speaking of uniqueness, I’m just now discovering Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Guns N Roses. When I was in high school and junior high those bands were popular. Really popular. That kind of popular precluded my interest. Cuz my merry band identified with being different. We were unique. Those other bands were the clarion of a different crowd, in my mind musical and cultural lemmings that could all run off a cliff with their Teen Spirit or Appetite for Destruction and what would I care because I enjoyed a smug uniqueness that they wouldn’t appreciate let alone understand. Or at least I thought so. Stupid I know because in my quest to be unique, I missed out on some great music. I mean really, Slash’s solo on Sweet Child O’ Mine has to be one of the greatest guitar solos in Rock history. It’s an institution. Decades later, I rock to those bands like everybody else.

So what is it about the need to be unique? Are we really as individual as we think or hope we are? In this social media age it’s so easy to project the image of how you want to be seen and identified as special and unique. The irony here is that as poet and speaker David Whyte says, to be constantly explaining who you are is a gospel of despair. But to simply BE yourself, that is more like what it is to experience a real existence. Like the guy who parked next to me at the trailhead the other day. I came off a run and was stretching next to my car and looking at someone’s ride. This thing was a piece of work, like an election billboard but less subtle. It was a hummer with all the super rugged equipment on it: lift, tinted windows, gnarly hitch, exhaust snorkel, front wench, industrial jacks, extra gas tanks on top, mauls, hammers and axes hanging on like he was on a fire squad (maybe was and wanted everybody to know) cuz who knows what kind of trouble you might run into on the way to Dan’s, you know? This dude was prepared to forge his own trail across Africa. And by the stickers plastered over his car I could easily read that the driver was a proud whiskey drinkin’, apple computer using, Black Widdow bike shop sportin’, Alta Skiin’, Hummer Drivin’, Back Country shoppin’, outdoor lovin’, The Front climbin’, adventure seekin’, Patigonioa wearin’ . . .person. Ego in the most pure way, a misidentification with what we think we are. A real mountaineer just is without needing to broadcast it. Like nature is just nature. A horse doesn’t prance around all day shouting, “I’m a horse, people!” It just does its thing and in so doing shows its regal majesty. And who isn’t like this this Hummer dude in some way? I know I am. We all want to be known and seen, right? We all want to be unique. Does that make us all the same?

When you step back we are like Ezra Pound says in his poem, just “faces in the crowd.” We are all part of the masses trying to make our way home. But when you zoom in and look at the individual, there is something special about each person. I believe that our individuality and therefore identity isn’t based on what we do as much as how we are uniquely paying attention to the world. There was only one person in all of existence who paid attention to the world the way Monet did. Or Dali. Or Miles Davis. Or Mary Oliver. No one else in history will ever see the world the way that YOU do. So how are you paying attention? What do you see? For me, I notice movement, jazz, kindness in people, the smell of a chocolate shop. Ah, but there I go, just like Hummer Guy, broadcasting my identity. Maybe not. Maybe it’s different because I can like those things regardless if anybody else is watching. Maybe that’s the test.

So if we are all unique by how we are paying attention to the world what is this malarkey we hear in yoga about us all being one? I have tried my whole life (at least through high school) to be singled out from the crowd, to find a unique identity that could be distinguished from the faceless crowd. The truth is that we are both. We are the unique person who likes the music and sees the world just as we do, but we are also all made of the same matter. We are individual members of a larger organism. You are part of a being which has 2400 eyes that is reading this newsletter. We belong to the yoga community. And yes we are all part of that large thing too, made from the same star dust, the same basic elements but we express those elements differently. The hostas and the hibiscus might be in the same garden but they need different things to flourish. And when you step back it is all one garden. So yeah, we’re unique expressions of the same thing. Would you agree?

For me, that’s how we contribute to the larger organism is by watching the world exactly the way we do and sharing those gifts of perception with each other. This way the whole organism grows. If you are happy, healthy, and well, you are contributing to the wellness of the greater being. That’s what’s so wonderful about the many souls in a yoga class, everybody is so different but all part of the same thing.

This week, I invite you to contemplate sameness vs. uniqueness and notice the way you are paying attention to the world. Come practice paying close attention to body, mind, and heart in yoga class. I’ll be there. And you can bet that this week when I’m not teaching yoga I’ll be paying attention Guns N Roses, particularly to Slash’s face-melting guitar solo. 

It's Been a Year

It's been a year . . .

Hey everyone. Today is the one-year anniversary of my sister Charity's death. She died one year ago today,  unexpectedly, in a motorcycle accident. Above is a picture of us in Central Park, on our way to my yoga retreat in Spain last year. It was taken about two months before she died. Who knew that a year later I'd be living in NYC and visiting Central Park regularly?

My heart is heavy and my throat is thick today thinking of her. But mostly I'm grateful for the awareness that the experience of her death has given me, the awareness of life's beauty and fragility.

It's easy to get rubbed wrong by the dense throngs of people in NYC, out in mass, surging to get to work. Often during the morning commute, people's coffee hasn't kicked in and many people left their goodwill towards others at home.

But I've been doing an experiment, one which has everything to do with remembering Charity. Whenever I find myself getting a little frustrated about all the people in the subway or miffed at some people's rudeness, I start to go out of my way to look at people in the face, the big tough agro dude, Rude Guy, the strung out homeless person, and the struggling single mom, and imagine each person as a brand new baby, held in the arms of their mother, and I remember that the strung out homeless person was once the most important thing in the Universe to that mama. I remember that every single person has needs, fears, loves, and hopes. I remember that every single person, sometime or other, will face death. And I remember that every single person has the capacity to reach their highest self. This changes my attitude from bugged to love.

Charity's death reminds me that love matters most. The legacy that Charity left behind was her unparalleled generosity, unyielding loyalty, and unabashed love for those around her.

May we see everyone we encounter, both the grouchy and the grateful, through the lens of love and light. And because we never know when our number will come up, go out and live the life you've always wanted to live. Let everything you do be driven by love and no matter what happens, you will have no regrets.

Hey, I love you. You're an incredible person.

Scott


"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return."

~Nature Boy written by eden ahbez and sung by Nat King Cole

False Gatekeepers

Fearsome statues often stand as sentinels at the gates of Buddhist temples. They are placed there keep out the timid and those unsure of whether or not they up to the task of fulfilling their dharma, their purpose, and dreams. But ultimately, these menacing statues are false gatekeepers, for those who are brave enough to step up to them realize that, while terrific, these statues are merely stone and one must simply walk past them into the sacred space.

What are the false gatekeepers that keep you back from achieving your purpose and dreams? Is it learning to build your website to launch your business idea? Is it getting comfortable enough with your craft to put yourself out there and drum up opportunities for yourself? Is it the fear that people won’t like what you’re offering?

When I mentor other yoga teachers about how to make a living doing what they love to do, together we look at their false gatekeepers that prevent them from fulfilling their purpose and dreams. We face their stony gaze and walk on by. Yes, there’s work involved but it’s often much easier than you might think. My job is to walk right next to you, encouraging you the entire way, and empowering you with specific, actionable steps that yield quick and profound results.

What are the false gatekeepers keeping you from fulfilling your dreams of becoming an extraordinary yoga teacher and making a living doing what you love? I’d love to help you start taking those brave steps past those today.

The world needs what you have to offer. As you learn to share your talents and passions with the world, you’ll find that the world will in turn feed you.

What’s holding you back? Give me a call or email me today and let’s talk about we can start to move past some of those false gatekeepers and what a yoga mentor program would look like for you 801-891-8365. scott@scottmooreyoga.com

Three Chords And The Truth

I was at the Newseum in D. C. not long ago. It’s the museum dedicated to journalism and the history of the first amendment. Whether or not journalism always achieves it, its objective is to report the unbiased truth. The principle of Satya means truth, which is one of the core pathways to arriving at yoga’s goal of oneness with all things. I felt as if walking around the Newseum was in some ways an homage to Satya and a practice in truth.

The Newseum displays brave and honest journalism. I saw through a poignant gallery of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs how telling the truth can be both beautiful and bellicose.

I was interested to see actual copies of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and to learn about America’s early struggle for freedom of speech. But the special exhibit called Louder Than Words: Rock Power Politics, not surprisingly, the display with all the electric guitars, was the one that caught my ear.

Louder Than Words featured a few short documentaries including one about the nation’s political gasp after Jimi Hendrix, a symbol of hippie anti-establishmentism, spontaneously rocked out with The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock. Also celebrated in this exhibit was the hallowed and hand-written lyric sheet for Bob Dylan’s “The Times, They Are A Changin' ,” a commentary on the assassination of JFK. But my heart skipped a beat when I came around a corner and perched in front of me was a glass case holding the sacred relic of a beat-to-hell guitar belonging to none other than Joe Strummer from The Clash.

If you aren’t familiar with The Clash, then on behalf of all humans: Welcome to the planet Earth. We're happy you’ve come. The Clash was an important band from England in the late 70s. They were midwives for the birth of Punk, a “stick-it-to-the-man” movement born of the frustrations of a generation. Punk gave voice to a host of people who were angry at what they felt was a conservative, bleak, and expressionless era leading them hopelessly forward toward a vacuous future. Punk protested social norms, the economy, art and style, and of course, politics. They were not afraid to sing, and often scream, their truth.

By the way, I just discovered this cool site about learning to play Punk.

Check out these environmentally proleptic lyrics from “London Calling,” the title track of The Clash’s 1979 album:

"The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growin' thin
Engines stop running, but I have no fear
'Cause London is drowning, and I, I live by the river."

Yoga has broad definitions and “a yoga” can be defined as an action or response to pure observation. Therefore, Punk was “a yoga” of Satya in response to the politics of the day.

Yes, there must be a distinction drawn between spewing opinions into a microphone, and striving for an objective truth. But isn’t that the distilled practice of yoga, to ultimately discern between observation and assessment about any information, be that the tight hamstrings or a tight-ass politician?

The Clash are not the only ones to have spout off into a microphone. Today, there are many television and talk radio rockstars like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and others, who, just like The Clash, have their spotlight and their audience and wield their right to say whatever they want. While I may not agree with much of what some of these people say, because I believe Satya is a pathway to Oneness, a foundational pillar to yoga, I’ll defend their right to say it, even if they manage to offend the entire world in a mere 140 characters.

Wandering through the Newseum, I couldn’t help but become agitated as I thought about the emerging “war against the media,” waged by Trump, Poland, China, and others. It worries me because I believe such an attack on the media threatens the institution of journalism and so directly threatens what I feel is the sacred notion of freedom of speech. By controlling the media, ultimately Satya gets hijacked.

We stood in front of Joe Strummer’s guitar, me reading the plaque and two-year-old Elio shouting, “Guitar! Play it!” I leaned close to Elio and said, “Remember that guitar, Elio, it changed the world.”

Little did I know what an impression this display of “stick it to the man,” noise, and freedom of speech had made on little Elio. The next day at the hushed halls of the National Gallery of Art, Elio decided to practice some of his own freedom of speech.

While we were strolling this cavernous edifice of art, Elio became drunk with glee over the sound of his own tiny screams echoing off of the gallery’s walls. Each time I asked him to please use his “inside voice,” he happily screamed louder (at The Man, read: me, I had become The Man).

Once, as we were taking in the art, walking in a large crowd of tourists, we passed a next-to life size nude statue and Elio squealed with delight and screamed, “BUM BUM!” Feeling quite self-conscious about the raucous he was making, I told Elio gently but firmly that he needed to lower his voice or we were going to have to leave the museum, a textbook The Man mandate, or The Man-date. Elio responded to my reproach by hushing just long enough for me to begin pushing the stroller again. Then, with perfect timing, his piercing, tiny voice burst out even louder with, “Papa tooted!” This was followed by his menacing peal of laughter.

My face blushed more crimson than Childe Hassam’s poppies and in an attempt to recover some dignity, I retorted to Elio, but decidedly loud enough for others nearby to hear, “Ha ha. No I didn’t,” but my worlds fell flat upon the stony faces of both the tourists and statues alike. So childish, so Punk. I considered attempting to teach my two-year-old about the concept of libel but then thought better of it and simply pushed the stroller to another wing of the museum, Elio chuckling the entire way. This was Elio’s foray into the freedom of speech and stick it to the man and Punk in the face of “established culture.” And while I might appreciate it if he could say it more subtly, I must respect his right to say it.

So, whether it’s a little voice piped from a stroller or an ear-splitting voice screaming above an electric guitar, whether it’s cynical opinions about politics or capturing a split second through the lens of a camera, I believe in your right to speak your truth. I believe this moves us toward Satya and ultimately toward Oneness. 

I invite us all to practice pure observation in the world and strive practicing the yoga of discerning the truth in what we see and hear. As you practice discerning truth, let’s cheer for the freedom of speech. And because of this freedom, choose whichever source you like for your information, but for me, I choose to listen to both a particular tiny voice and The Clash.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

~ Bob Dylan

Also, if you love guitars, check out this post:

Unique Tunings for Guitars

Guitar Jimi Hendrix Played at Woodstock

Lyrics for The Times They Are A Changin'

Joe Strummer's Guitar

The Clash

Elio Sticks it To The Man

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San Francisco Yoga Tour Sept. 21-24 2017

Yoga and Writing Retreat Aug. 27-20 2017. 1 Spot Left