Everyday Mindfulness: A Guide To A Life Well-Lived

I was sent a book called Everyday Mindfulness: 108 Simple Practices To Empower Yourself And Transform Your Life and asked to review it. I found this book to be a breath of fresh air! 

Melissa’s approach to creating a every-day practice for 108 days is both simple as well as profound. Each day is a separate mindfulness practice with three headings: Purpose, Practice, and Reflection. It serves as a basic guide to establish a simple but regular practice of seeing experiencing your life with greater clarity and purpose. 

She’s broken the practices up into six different categories to practice mindfulness in a variety of ways so that we can truly begin to see lasting changes in our lives on all fronts. For example, there’s a way to practice eating mindfully, drinking enough water, and even creating a “Home Spa.” The book is helpful because it gives you a format to do some of those things that you know you’d like to be doing for yourself anyway. 

I like it too because it supports the notion that mindfulness isn’t just about meditating, but that it’s about living a more full life, like the like you know you always want to live and could live if you only had the focus to do so. 

I appreciate her warm and concise writing for its clarity impact. This is a great book of mindfulness both for the novice and the expert practitioner to help them move into a life well-lived.

I enjoy this book and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in a more mindful approach to life. 

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How To Live Your Life at 11!

Here’s an article that I just published in Conscious Life News. Take a look …

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I'm always talking about the balance between effort and ease in a yoga class. Understanding the balance between over and under exerting yourself is the secret to going the distance in your yoga asana. Likewise, it's a lesson that we can apply to our every-day life. 

When exerting or stretching, I always encourage students to do so at a level 7 of 10, or less. I invite them to find that place I qualify as "comfortably intense." It's counterintuitive but doing so will help them arrive much quicker, effectively, and safely to where they are attempting to arrive than just trying to effort their way to get there.

In a society that values productivity over almost anything else we confound doing more with getting more. Such is not always the case in practices like yoga. What's really happening behind the scenes is that we are working  just enough but not too much in order to place ourselves into the current of Prana, or life-force energy, that will take us much further down the path of where we are trying to go than forcing the path our way there.

Prana is a river of energy that is flowing within us and around us. Think of it like an actual river with the current traveling fastest in the center of the river and moving languidly on either bank of the river. One bank of the river represents effort and the other represents ease. If your goal is to move down-river and your efforts to swim only move you horizontally across the river, that is to say either toward one bank or the other, your job therefore is to swim just hard enough to get into the current but not so hard that you swim past the strongest part. When you find the balance between effort and ease, you'll find it relatively easy to stay into the current of energy and you'll find yourself quite literally in a flow state. 

This principle is applied on a physical level in our yoga asana classes but can also be applied to other parts of our lives, in body mind and spirit.  In our meditation practice, we can suffer from either too much or too little effort. In our spiritual practices we can suffer from too much or not enough effort.

Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, is a great reminder for this balance. His entire being is one of non-duality as he is half animal and half human, one long tusk and one short tusk, a large fellow who rides around on a tiny mouse. Often depicted in a Ganesha statue is a plate of cookies he is carrying with him. His ample belly shows that he's not a stranger to his plate of goodies. What he is saying by this is that no matter how serious you are about your practices in body, mind, and spirit, it's important that you always find enjoyment in them. Feed your soul in the process and allow your soul to get fat. 

Tantra is a school of thought that focuses on our growth. In fact, Tantra means to stretch into your greatest being as effectively as possible. I know what you might be thinking. Often, the word Tantra conjures of esoteric  " coupled yoga poses" that are reserved for the bedroom, or for some of you, any room in the house, as long as the kids aren't home. And while finding balance in your love life is a part of Tantra, the school of thought is much richer than just that. Tantra is to move beyond the realm of the ordinary to understand and embrace your full potential, in every area of your life, a potential which is probably much vaster than you think. The driver for Tantra, that is to say the way that we can optimize every part of our life, is Prana. Getting into the flow of Prana is the secret gateway to make every aspect of our lives (even "esoteric coupled yoga poses") thrive. Again the two things that most often prevent us from getting into that flow of Prana is either under effort or over effort. 

Here's the big reveal: by operating at a level 7 or less of effort in our lives, we find that our lives thrive at a level 11! Get more by finding the balance between effort and ease. 

This week, I encourage you live your life at a level 11 by exploring all the ways in which you might be able to find greater balance, including your job, play, exercise, your diet, your relationships. . . EVERYTHING. Let go of the doing more to get more attitude and instead try finding balance to get into the flow. In the flow, there's no limits to where you might arrive. 

I invite you to practice living FULL-OUT! DON'T MAKE ME GO ALL-CAPS ON YOUR ASS! Do it! And watch how by so doing, you'll see how those around you start to step up as well.     

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Heart In The Dark

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Live Yoga Nidra Training

Before we get into the story and speaking of getting to the heart of things, in about a week, I’ll be hosting my live, online Yoga Nidra immersion and teacher training by Zoom.

I’m really, really looking forward to it. I’ve got a few spots left, and would love to have you join. I’ve split it up into two weekends. The first is an immersion, designed for those interested in the transformative power of Yoga Nidra, a deep dive into this fascinating realm which quite simply is a practice that helps you wake up to realize your greatest potential and become the person you were destined to be.

Ultimately, this is an inquiry into your very nature of being to discover how beautiful and wondrous your life can be, and how much this yoga of sleep can benefit your stress, sleep, and perspective on the world and its problems. The next weekend is designed for those who might be interested in teaching Yoga Nidra and/or just really geek out on this fascinating subject. I want to show you how to facilitate lasting transformative for yourself and others through relaxing Yoga Nidra practices. I’m really proud of the robust curriculum I’ve developed and would love to have you join me.

Onto the story …

Running Into Darkness

Several years ago, some friends and I were spending an afternoon along the shores of the paradoxical desert of Great Salt Lake, the large and salinated lake that gives Salt Lake City its namesake.

If you’ve never been there, it’s a fascinating place, definitely worth the trip. Great Salt Lake exists now as the dregs of a 30,000-year-old ancient lake called Lake Bonneville which once spanned what is now half of northern Utah and eastern Nevada, a once-great lake held in a massive geological bowl known as the Great Basin. Everything’s “Great” in Utah! Even as a puddle of its former self, Great Salt Lake currently stands as the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere.

The salinity of the water is a whopping 27%, compared to 3.5% of typical ocean water, depending on the ocean. Day-travelers of the 1920s would flock by the train-load to the briny resorts of Great Salt Lake to float in, and almost walk on (faith depending), the uncommonly salinated waters. After a long day of floating, they’d rinse off to dance the night away doing the Lindy Hop and the Jitterbug in the desert days of prohibition and under the censoring eyes of Mormon church authorities.

The previous 30,000 years notwithstanding, in only the last century, the lake has receded considerably short-sighted legislation which amounts to nothing short of greed, stealing from the water inlets today so that there’s not lake tomorrow. Today, the landscape of Great Salt Lake would be utterly unrecognizable to our liquorless, Lindy Hopping great grandparents but more on that another time …

The receding lake has revealed its phenomenally flat and briny lake bottom which today attracts a new generation of tourists, not to its buoyant waters but to the lack thereof. Now, flocks of tourists come to what’s called the “Bonneville Salt Flats” to get high off a different natural resource: speed. The “Salt Flats,” (what happened to the ubiquitous “Great”?) is a several-mile-long, flat but grippy, salt-crusted terrain which acts as the perfect runway for thrill-seeking speed merchants striving to set new land speed records, the fastest being over 760 mph.

Even without the presence of an occasional rocket-propelled car, the shores of the Great Salt Lake offers a surreal landscape, even for the more pedestrian visitors: a flat, vast playa of endless white sand, crusted with salt which scintillates in the afternoon sun. To walk on this alien terrain is a sensational feast for bare feet.

On this day that my friends and I visited the wide, flat shores of Great Salt Lake, we were walking barefoot along barren brine and decided to conduct our own kind of race. We felt drunk with space and our feet yearned to explore every inch of this sand, flat and unspoiled in every direction. Each person agreed to close their eyes and run, completely blind and at full speed, in any direction for exactly 100 paces before opening their eyes. Eager for simple adventure, we closed our eyes and held our breath as someone shouted, "GO!"

Eyes closed, my legs began to sprint, bolting into the darkness of the afternoon sun. I noticed that with my primary sense muted, my other senses bloomed. A pungent potpourri filled my nostrils, one of sulfurous mud, dry salt, and miles of decaying brine shrimp. The salty air lit on my tongue, drying my mouth, and burning my lungs as they groped for breath between staccatos of unfettered laughter. My arms and legs scissored in orchestrated opposition as every muscle contracted to blast my body forward through raw space. With each step, the salty crust of the sand briefly pricked my naked soles before crumbling into a carpet of soft velvet. For several paces, my ears traced a steady decrescendo of my fellow racers’ feet, breath, and laughter dwindling into the quiet distance. Soon, I was running alone in the darkness.

Once alone, I was surprised to feel a primal and powerful fear kick in, the one that said in not so many words, “You’ll get hurt if you stray from the tribe into the unknown.” A sliver of worry lodged itself into my brain. “Didn’t you see some ominous-looking spikes sticking out of the sand somewhere in the direction that you’re running?” Horrific and gruesome images of running teeth-first into a post or impaling my bare feet on a sharp stick did wonders to dampen my sensory smorgasbord and all my attention now clutched the worry of what might happen to me as I ran blindly.

Steeling my nerves, I did my best to push these images from my mind, locking my eyes shut and quickening my pace. Suddenly, a spontaneous laugh burst from my chest, some automatic expression of wonder and worry.

. . . 53, 54, 55 . . .

My paces were whizzing by but with each step I couldn’t shake the fear of stepping blindly onto something dangerous. Worry had now evolved into genuine fear. “This is stupid,” I told myself, “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

. . . 71, 72, 73 . . .

New and more graphic images of dangers began infecting my mind, reaching for some emergency brake in my nervous system.

. . . 83, 84, 85 . . .

By now, panic had spiked. I felt the same as if I were running blind and headlong at full speed toward a cliff.

Only fifteen paces to go. Raw animal instinct clawed at my eyes to open, yet an iron resolve welded them shut. In one last burst of flying into the unknown, I let out all the stops. I pushed the throttle of my legs as fast they would go and sprinted madly forward into the darkness. Laughing was now replaced with a raw, full-throated scream, equal parts exhilaration and naked terror.

… 98, 99, 100!

On exactly my 100th step, my legs froze in space, refusing to take another step as my body wobbled to maintain equilibrium on the now unfamiliar feeling of solid ground. As I stood there panting, I slowly opened up my eyes and looked down to examine my feet to see them completely unmarred except for a generous coating of salt and mud. I stood there for a moment, feeling immense gratitude for these selfless feet, willingly thrusting me through unknown space as I ran through the darkness toward fear. After a moment, my gaze lifted to search for those ominous spikes that haunted my run. Nothing. Only flat, salty sand for miles. Of course. The misperception of my mind only invented the images.

What a rush! Who needs a rocket-propelled car?

This story reminds me of an important yogic concept called the Kleshas as explained in the Yoga Sutras, an ancient book of great wisdom. The Kleshas explore the relationship between perceptions and actions. Our misperceptions are called Avidya, a Sanskrit term literally meaning misperception. Unsurprisingly, one of the most common ways of misperceiving is Dvesa, misperception due to fear. Our misperceptions often cause us to react from fear, and in my case to completely invent beliefs, invariably causing suffering for ourselves and others. If we can avoid misperceptions and learn to see with true sight, we can respond to the vicissitudes of life with compassionate responsiveness instead of fearful reactivity.

On my blind run, I knew that there were no obstacles in my path yet my brain invented them based on past experiences causing me to run with fear. And while it was all fun and games that day on the shores of The Great Salt Lake, we tend to run through life with considerably less abandon, our misperception causing fears to push on the brakes of our higher selves and limit our strides toward what our destiny calls us to do and be.

But how does one learn to see correctly? Ironically, perhaps we can only see correctly when we attune our perception with something infinitely more refined than our eyes, a fine-tuned instrument designed to perceive truth. In The Little Prince, a modern book of great wisdom, this one masquerading as a children’s novella, one of the characters, the wise fox, shares his secret with the Little Prince when he says, “One only sees rightly with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.” Until we wake up from the misperception of fear and learn to truly see with the heart, we are destined to suffer as well as cause suffering toward others.

When we do learn to see with the heart, it will likely reinvent our entire concept of the world, or at least our relationship to it. At that moment you’ll be born into the The Great Truth (another “Great”), that everything in the Universe is boiled down to one single element: love. It’s what poetry and pop songs have been telling us forever. Funny how perhaps THE most important eternal truth can sound like a platitude plastered on a meaningless Hallmark card. Nonetheless, it’s Truth with a capital T, but one that must be experienced and practiced over a lifetime and not merely repeated mindlessly as you mouth the words to your favorite Beatles song, elbow cocked out the window, cruising down the 405.

The English title of one of my all-time favorite movies is a beautiful, life-affirming film called Wings of Desire, a German film by Wim Wenders. If you haven't seen it, find it and watch it immediately, but bring a glass of milk to wash it down cuz it's richer than an entire Black Forest Cake.

In the film, an angel named Damiel, played by Bruno Ganz, lives a black-and-white existence, one of only knowing and observing but categorically void of the spectrum of the human experience, notably of doing, feeling, and loving. As an angel, Damiel feels a bitter longing, for though he can read people’s minds (he likes to hang out with his angel friends in the library to hear the thoughts of readers), his attempt to do anything other than observe others, to help or comfort, falls pitifully short, a tragic truth illustrated in a heart-breaking scene where Damiel is sitting next to a suicidal man on the high ledge of a building, hearing his desperate thoughts, but can do nothing to stop the man from jumping to his death.

Besides helping people, Damiel also yearns for the human experience of love. Damiel falls for a woman, a trapeze artist, ironically wearing false angel wings as part of her act, and resolves to cash in his actual angle wings in order to live one life—fully-human, sentient, and loving—rather than suffer an eternity of the drab, albeit safe, existence of an angel.

The price to enter a human life is his angelic armor, his protection from the inevitable pain and heartache endemic to the human experience. The cinematic effect is perfect because as he becomes human, he leaves the black and white angel world and is born into an entire cosmos of colors, the full rainbow of a human existence.

Damiel is welcomed into his new human life by one of this world’s most well-known faces—pain. Gaining consciousness after his fall from angelic grace, he inspects a small gash on his head and pulling his finger from his wound, meets both blood and color for the first time. With a child-like inquisitiveness, he stops a passerby on the street and asks, “Is this red?” to which the man simply makes a wider birth so as to avoid this obviously crazy and bleeding person on the street. Indeed, someone who sees with such purity, unjaded by previous experience, would seem crazy to the vast majority of us who are locked in our tired and unconscious ways of seeing the world.

Next, Damiel has been watching mortals enjoy coffee for hundreds of years and can’t wait to drink some himself. He finds a street vendor who gives him a cup. It’s much too hot but he doesn’t know it yet and in his lust to taste this dark, aromatic elixir, he burns his tongue quite badly.

Yet, despite being greeted into his new life with the harsh hand of pain, the gash on his head and burning his tongue, instead of being disillusioned with human life, Damiel marvels at its richness and celebrates these sensations as the immutable truth of truly living.

At one point in the movie, the newly-mortal Damiel happens upon another angel-turned-mortal who, interestingly, is Peter Falk playing Peter Falk. Falk is on set in Berlin filming an episode of Columbo. Who better than a classic, salty sleuth to play out the mystery of what it means to be human? Peter Falk can recognize those who used to be angels who are now walking the earth and reminisces what it was like to be an angel but muses over the joys of life. After a brief conversation with Damiel, Peter Falk hears the call to return to the film set and as he is walking away, Damiel desperately calls after the angel-turned-TV-celeb to tell him everything there is to know about being human. Peter Falk doesn’t break stride and turning his head slightly, calls out over his shoulder, "You have to figure it out for yourself, kid. That's the fun of it!"

Sometimes, you have to shut your eyes and run full-out into the darkness of life to understand what it means to be alive.

As I’m writing this, the ominous cloud of COVID-19 has been darkening life for more than a year. It’s caused us all a lot of pain and covered the entire world with a heavy blanket of legit fear. It’s made the future ambiguous, it’s ruined plans, and worse, it has put a wedge between this world’s most valuable resource: each other. For me, it feels like we’ve been running in the darkness for a long time and I know I’m not alone when I say … I’m tired.

Global pandemic aside, doesn’t it feel so often that life is really one long journey into the darkness? Who knows what lurks over the next horizon or hell, even into next week? Yet, can we learn to see this ambiguity as something to celebrate if only to serve us to remember that we are alive? Even in our fears and failings and dying there can simultaneously exist wonder and beauty. Poet David Ignatow points to this paradox when he says, in his an excerpt from his poem, THREE IN TRANSITION (FOR WCW),

I wish I understood the beauty

in leaves falling. To whom

are we beautiful

as we go?

His poem points to the fact that even in our failing, in our most difficult times, there is a part of the Universe that finds us astonishing in that going. Having lost my mother to cancer days after Thanksgiving in 2020, during an already crushing year blighted with COVID-19, I saw first-hand how something so tragic as my mother passing bestowed a beauty to life. My mom’s death illuminated something Universal within the entire family, even and especially in my mom. Somehow she lives and spends her nights visiting me in my dreams. My mom’s death points to life. To whom are we beautiful as we go? Or to what?

Yoga and meditation are simple practices that point us inward to discover and remember that portion of the Universal that exists inside of us. Being familiar with the Universal part within us is in part what it means to see with your heart. Having heart-vision grants us the capacity to see a magnificence to the most difficult of circumstances, the beauty of a textured and well-lived life.

The late, great Leonard Cohen said, “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

Also, with this sure knowledge of the heart, we are less persuaded by Dvesa's power of misperception due fear. Another tired but nonetheless true statement is that love conquers fear. Perhaps this, too, is only something we can learn by closing our eyes as we lean into the darkness and learn to trust our most reliable sense. And from this courageous place, we will face what fears remain with presence and boldness. The Latin word for heart is Cor. To be courageous doesn’t mean an absence of fear, but to be full of heart.

As we run through the dark path of life’s journey, we will undoubtedly encounter fears.

May we learn to be courageous, seeing the world and the people in it rightly, as Universal elements of love. May our practices of yoga, meditation, and love wake us up to the Universal within all of us. And while we may not know exactly when this darkness will end, may we run through this uncertainty screaming, laughing, and loving, knowing that at very the least we are alive.

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

~Wendell Berry.

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Quiet The Mind

The Yoga Sutras by Patanjali is a collection of Sanskrit verses, compiled sometime between 500 BCE and 400 CE and directs someone toward how they might achieve the ultimate state of yoga called Samadhi, or Oneness with all things. The Yoga Sutras can get pretty esoteric but they start off quite straight forward by explaining very succinctly what yoga is. It says in the second verse, "Yoga chitta vrtti nirodhah," meaning Yoga is the cessation of fluctuations of the mind.Yoga Sutra 1:2. In other words, by learning to quiet the mind, you enter into the state of Samadhi.

Yoga Is More Than Poses

Often times when we think of yoga, we think of asana, or yoga postures. However, the postures are simply another tool to help practice achieving the real purpose for yoga which is to calm the mind and gain Awareness. Certainly, there are many benefits to an asana practice including health, reduction of stress, sleeping better, etc., but it should be stated that these are the fantastic byproducts of calming the mind. Whether by practicing asana, meditation, or pranayama (breath work), we are truly practicing calming the fluctuations of the mind to enter into the space of clear seeing and Awareness.

The Yoga of Good Work

Nowhere in the Yoga Sutras does it mention that a practitioner can only achieve this state of calming the mind while on a yoga mat, in the studio, or doing yoga poses. Therefore, anything that helps us to practice find focus, develop Awareness, and concentration could be considered a yoga practice. We can apply this notion of focus and concentration for any kind of work we might do and any work we might do could prepare us to arrive at Samadhi. You can see a person who enters into that state of Oneness when they lose themselves in a performance, dance, or any other work that transcends a person.

Getting quiet and drawing in to stillness is necessary for any good work to happen. It's this quietness, this stillness, that allows the busy waters of our mind and emotions to settle enough for us to see what's down in the depths our being.

When we can enter this state of Oneness, even momentarily, our work becomes effortless because we are no longer attempting to do the thing, we become the thing. Work on this level, be that our job, parenting, our passions or whatever, generates from this deep relationship with our true being. Our work, therefore is simply an extension of our deeper selves, the Self that knows everything.

Our work, our medium is, as one good friend says, the loudspeaker of the soul.

Here are a few simple practice that you might try before any work, be that yoga practice, contract law, or parenting, to practice calming the waters of the mind.

Practices that Quiet The Mind

Yoga Nidra

Yoga Nidra is by far and away one of the most effective and most relaxing ways of changing your state of consciousness, one that helps you uplevel your stage of consciousness and then… yes— change the world. Nidra is a Sanskrit word meaning sleep, and Yoga Nidra is often called “the yoga of sleep” because it is a form of guided meditation that uses relaxation and a system of organized and layered awareness to take you through a journey into a liminal state between waking and dreaming consciousness. It is here, in this liminal state, that you discover that your mind, body, and spirit together contain a pathway that leads to the gates of perfect presence, wholeness, and Oneness.

Yoga Nidra is a potent catalyst for massive personal growth, giving you the direct tools and direction to become the person you are destined to become...the greater You who is destined to change the world.

In a beautiful paradox, the yoga of sleep is actually about waking up to the powerful being that you are. Some of the most powerful forces in the world can also be the most gentle, just like a whispering wind and the soft laps of a river which carve massive and formidable stones from canyon walls.

Yoga Nidra openes your eyes and wakes you up to the very nature of your being, that of limitless power and beauty. It opens your ears to hear the ancient wisdom of sages whispering to you that your true identity is that of Awareness itself. The gentle practice of Yoga Nidra leads you down a pathway to feel your truest essence, one of boundless equanimity, pure love, and absolute clarity. This practice helps you feel yourself existing as a resounding and Universal YES!

There Is Practice

Simply sit, close your eyes, and acknowledge what you sense, all of your senses. Without value or judgment, simply state what you are experiencing. Rather than identifying with the pronoun "I" simply say in your mind, "There is the sound of traffic, there is fatigue, there is worry, there is an incredible urge to rush to Hatch Family Chocolates and eat 40 pounds of truffles." You know, whatever thought, emotion, sensation occurs. Simply state what is. Try not to identify with it. Just watch it.

Count Your Breaths

Choose a number and count your exhales down from that number to zero. When you loose your place start back at that number. If you get to zero, start back at that or a different number. Keep you mind only on your breath. This is a deceptively difficult practice, I feel.

Mantra

Mantra means to transcend through the use of your mind. Simply find a phrase that means something to you, a scripture, a poem, some tidbit of inspiration, and repeat it in your mind. Words are powerful. You are your word.

I invite you to practice stilling the waters of your mind before doing any work to see how it leads to you fulfill your purpose of becoming one with all things.

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The "E" Word

There is a new four-letter word, the "E" word. This word is "The Economy." Strangely, it's neither four letters long nor even one word. Regardless, hearing the phrase (brace yourself), "The Economy'' probably conjures worry and a knot in the stomach. Whether directly or indirectly, we are all being affected by what's happening with (here it is again) "The Economy."

Unfortunately, hard financial times often makes us feel like we need to circle the wagons, draw in our resources, and look out for our own interests. The scarcity of financial means sometimes leads to scarcity of good will toward each other.

But despite the fact that many of us are suffering a bit financially because of COVID-19, the loss of jobs, plans put on pause, etc, there is another form of abundance we can all cash in and rely upon. This abundant resource is each other. Us. You and me. Even with social distancing, instead of shielding ourselves from others, we can enrich ourselves and others during this tricky financial time by investing our sincere humanity, our love, compassion, trust, and laughter. We can invest in the coffers of the well-being and happiness of each other. We are each other's bail-out plan and support in the essential economics of human capital. We are a resource without a deficit and yes, one that is even more vital than dollars. We are each other's interest and one that will receive an immediate return on investment each time we share a little of love and care from our endless account of humanity. This is yoga's (read union) true meaning, the one-ness of all.

Tough financial times actually affords us an opportunity, the opportunity to draw together and build friendships and communities because sometimes that is all that is left. Community is what's essential. Community will get us through. Ask your grandparents who may have lived through the Great Depression. We can help each other out in myriad ways, even with the pandemic prevalent and vaccines still scarce.

A few ways we might help out could include :

• Telling your community of job opportunities you might be aware of.

• Declutter your space by sifting through unused stuff and both simplify your life by getting rid of anything you’re not using and offering it to those in your community who might need it. Take a look at the incredible work being done by my friend Courtney Carver and her book, Soulful Simplicity for excellent ways to be so much more by owning so much less.

• Do an online yoga or meditation practice. Your energy and spirit feeds each other. Be creative! Tough times move us toward fun creative solutions that we'd otherwise never have discovered.

I love my job. I love it because I am constantly fed by your generosity and spirit. One thing I treasure is connecting with you on a personal as well as group level. I am often allowed a sneak peak into many of your hearts and get to see first hand how yoga has affected your lives. Countless times, I have looked into your eyes as you've spoken volumes to me by the tender tears rolling down your cheeks and perhaps mixed in a few words to describe some of your unspeakable challenges. You've shared with me your immense peace and joy and your stunning moments of clarity. You've shared with me the ways in which yoga has been your lifesaver, an island, an oasis. I'm deeply honored to play a small part in your unfolding.

I’d love to connect! Let’s share some human capital by having a virtual coffee date! I’d love to hear about what’s going on in your life, how COVID-19 has affected you, and what you do to help you keep your spirits up. Wherever you are in the world, let’s connect and together we’ll invest in the account of human good will.
Also, reach out to others and stay connected with people via Zoom or phone. Social distancing doesn’t have to mean heart distancing.

email me to connect at scott@scottmooreyoga.com

Scott

Meditate Before Watching The News

Something that's helped me and might help you …

There's been a lotta news lately—A LOTTA NEWS.

So. Much. News.

I find it very helpful to meditate BEFORE reading, listening to, or watching the news. This has two purposes I can think of. First, it's likely that if you digested a bunch of news before your meditation, you'll be processing that for the duration of your sit. Secondly, if you meditate before the news, you'll be able to ground yourself mentally and emotionally so that you won't be so thrown into a tizzy by it.

While there are some very, very important issues that we need to be aware of around the world, remember that is designed to grab your attention. It's engineered to be scintillating and shocking. Yes, there are events happening around the world that need very little "dressing up" to be shocking, yet remember that you're in control of your news intake. Approach the news mindfully and then put it down and choose the ways to respond to that information with your best self, full of wisdom and compassion.

Be mindful of how much time you digesting the news. Realize that point when the news starts to digest YOU instead of the other way around. We've all turned into a news addict at one time or other. Be mindful about your intake and concentrate on those things you can do to make the world a better place.

Then, concentrate on something positive. Make a list of 3 things you're grateful for. Call someone to tell them how much you appreciate them. Don't stew in the negative headlines or the resulting emotions from them all day. I'm not suggesting that we ignore the important things going on in the world. Quite the opposite. Find those mechanisms (like meditation) that allow you ground into your best self so you can effectively respond to that information rather than simply stew in it.

Here's a radical invitation: Try meditating as long or longer than you watch, read, or listen to the news. You could likely grab all the important headlines without being thrown headlong into the drama machine which surrounds the headlines.

Try it out and let me know how it goes.

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Wind Blowing Through The Pines Part 3

The last few days, I’ve been sharing installments of my story of going to Songgwangsa, one of the principal monasteries in Korea, living with the monks for a few days, and sitting with a monk as he laid some deep wisdom on me. It’s been almost 20 years since I sat on that meditation sanctuary with the monk and my mind and spirit have been processing that experience ever since, especially that whole bit of, “What is the price of the wind blowing through the pines.”

Today, I want to tell you about the cosmic backhand I received after nearly 20 years of mulling over and meditating upon this question. I have to start with a little bit of meta, so bare with me …

To start, I have to give you a little info about my experience with Yoga Nidra. About a year or so after my experience at the monastery, I discovered Yoga Nidra and started teaching it soon thereafter. Part of my role as a teacher of Yoga Nidra is to attempt to define what it is, how it works and why it’s so transformational. Despite the fact that I’ve studied Yoga Nidra in-depth, have led literally 10s of thousands of hours of Yoga Nidra practices, have trained hundreds of other teachers to teach it and, hell, even written a book about it, I’m still chewing on exactly what it is and how to describe it. Perhaps that’s the hallmark of being a life-long student of the subject.

I’m just getting this now, literally as I’m writing this, (I know, I know, slow learner, just ask Tog-hyon, the monk at the monastery), but I’m realizing that one of the reasons that Yoga Nidra is so hard to define is because it’s a practice that attempts to give you a relationship with the ineffable, with Source itself. That Source is Awareness. Yoga Nidra reveals something that is at once everywhere, fundamental, real, and true yet completely indiscernible to the senses and any other of the typical ways of knowing something. Yet, once you become aware of it, you’ll never see your life, and the world in the same way again. So, no wonder an easy definition is hard to nail down.

Here’s a stab at a brief description of Yoga Nidra …

Yoga is the experience of Oneness in body, mind, and spirit. Nidra is a Sanskrit word meaning sleep, and Yoga Nidra is often called “the yoga of sleep” because it is a form of guided meditation that uses relaxation and a system of organized and layered awareness to take you through a journey into a liminal state between waking and dreaming consciousness. It is here, in this liminal state, that you discover that your mind, body, and spirit together contain a pathway that leads to the gates of perfect presence, wholeness, and Oneness. The presence, wholeness, and oneness you experience in this state is Source. It’s pure Awareness. It’s the experience of yoga.

We naturally tend to identify with and define ourselves by limited and changeable qualifiers—our bodies, emotions, mind, desires, opinions, etc. But according to ancient wisdom, these are all illusions. They can’t possibly define us because they are all changeable and finite. Yoga Nidra helps to illuminate the part of you that never changes, the part of you that is everywhere. That hidden part is Awareness, pure and simple. Yoga Nidra helps to shift your entire world view to realize that all the things you can be aware OF simply reveal the fact that you are aware. The illusions reveal the truth. So, in Yoga Nidra we develop focus by paying attention to all the illusory layers like body, emotions, thoughts, etc. to reveal that what you are is the thing that is aware of all those layers.

Ok, with that out of the way here’s the important part …

Two years ago, I’m sitting at my desk in my 5th story apartment in France, working on developing my curriculum for teaching Yoga Nidra. This is the fantastic apartment we rented which was perched above the most delightful boulangerie. Each morning around 5 am we would stir in our beds a little as the irresistible scent of freshly baked croissants wafted through our windows. Anyway, it was well into the post-croissant hours of the day and I’m hammering away on my keyboard, trying to describe the process of illuminating the invisible with the visible and I came up with a metaphor of a tree blowing in the wind. By seeing the movement of the tree, you come to know the wind. Though it’s invisible, it’s only by what is visible dancing with the underlying wind that you come to know the wind. Pretty soon you don’t even see the tree anymore, you only see the wind, though it’s invisible.

And then Tog-hyon’s words burst into my brain and almost knocked me out of my chair. In my stream of consciousness, on the page I wrote, “WHAT IS THE PRICE OF THE WIND BLOWING THROUGH THE F@#*-ING PINES!!!!!” After almost 20 years, I finally got it! Not only did I understand the koan, but I realized how I had developed a relationship with Source, what is otherwise unknowable. I understood that largely through my Yoga Nidra practice, I had developed a relationship with the invisible EVERYTHING.

I reeled in astonishment with this insight. As I leaned back in my chair, taking it all in I spoke out loud, “What is the price of the wind blowing through the pines?” and without hesitation I heard myself answer the question, “EVERYTHING. The price is EVERYTHING.”

Everything because to know the underlying Source of all things means to forever give up the simple notion of any object. Nevermore will I experience this desk, these words, the intoxicating smell of fresh croissants in the morning because forevermore I will only see Source in the form of this desk, these words, and the intoxicating smell of fresh croissants. Everything I can be aware of reveals Awareness itself.

Holy shit.

Then everything else Tog-hyon said to me that day started flooding my mind with significance.

"The peace we have can only come from within. Otherwise, it will always leave us. We are doomed for sadness if we base our happiness on things that are constantly changing."

“You must doubt. You must continually ask the question, and one day you will learn.”

“A message from me isn't necessary. Instead, you must find the message within your own self and share it.”

"I love Dunkin Donuts!"

And then I wondered if Tog-hyon might also like croissants.

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Thank you for hearing or reading this story. I’d love to hear about YOU’RE moments of clarity and illumination. Drop be a line. Share a story of your own.

If you’re interested in exploring “the wind in the trees” for yourself, you can either join me tonight for my twice-a-week Yoga Nidra class (Wednesdays 6–7:15 pm MST, Sundays 9–10:15 am MST), or please consider joining me for my live, online Yoga Nidra Immersion and Teacher Training. This will be a unique opportunity to dive deep into your True Being and to learn to share Yoga Nidra with the world.

Live, Online, and Recorded

Immersion Only, February 20–21, 2021 9 am to 5 pm MST

Immersion and Teacher Training February 20–21, 2021 9 am to 5 pm MST; February 26–28 9 am to 5 pm MST

Wake up to the person you were destined to become! This course is a beautiful, fascinating, and relaxing journey deep into Self.

Learn to teach this transformational practice using the power of your OWN voice and not as a rote version of your teacher. I’ll teach you not only how to teach Yoga Nidra but how to be a successful Yoga Nidra teacher. This training will pay for itself as you learn how to create opportunities for yourself to teach the transformational practice of Yoga Nidra all over the world.

If you have ever wanted to learn more about Yoga Nidra, now’s the time!

I believe this to be the best live and online Yoga Nidra immersion and training available.

Wind Blowing Through The Pines Part 2

Yesterday, I sent the first of three installments of a very impactful story I wanted to share with you. Today is the second installment. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Before we get into the story, I wanted to let you know that I had the privilege of being featured on the Yeah Podcast. In this episode, we talk about how I share yoga, Yoga Nidra, and mindfulness on digital platforms like Zoom. It's fun, funny, and interesting. I hope you'll listen and subscribe to this great podcast.

READ YESTERDAY’S POST FOR THE FIRST PART OF THIS STORY

Hey-am suggested we hike the half mile to visit Tog-hyon, the monk at the hermitage temple. The sun was well up by now and we hiked through the bamboo forest. We got lost but eventually found our way to the mountain dwelling. I felt as though I was walking through the peaceful folk dwelling in the movie Dreams by Akira Kurosawa. I saw that the monk living at the hermitage was completely self-contained. His plot had a well, an outdoor toilet, a private temple in a small wooden building the same size as his two-room house. I could tell by the details and obviously careful construction this was built by the monks themselves. We called out and knocked at his door but nobody was home so we decided to wait.Hey-am suggested we hike the half mile to visit Tog-hyon, the monk at the hermitage temple. The sun was well up by now and we hiked through the bamboo forest. We got lost but eventually found our way to the mountain dwelling. I felt as though I was walking through the peaceful folk dwelling in the movie Dreams by Akira Kurosawa. I saw that the monk living at the hermitage was completely self-contained. His plot had a well, an outdoor toilet, a private temple in a small wooden building the same size as his two-room house. I could tell by the details and obviously careful construction this was built by the monks themselves. Jin-soon and I sat and talked and enjoyed the morning sun.

Jin-soon and I had been sitting outside talking and enjoying the warm morning sun for about a half hour when Tog-hyon emerged from the forest. He was carrying a walking stick and wearing a Buddhist-chic patchwork vest, baggy, gray monks pants that tightened around the ankles with knots for buttons, and a large straw hat. He greeted us with a large smile and bow and before even bothering to learn our names, he invited us for tea and lunch. He spoke to me in rusty yet precise English. During tea he said that he'd learned English in law school before he became a monk, fifteen years ago.

We sat down on the floor as he prepared the tea. Eager to begin conversation, I mentioned that it was very peaceful there at his hermitage, and without my knowing it, my lessons had begun. "Why do you say that it is peaceful here?" he inquired with that sage smile of his. "I fumbled for something to say, sensing I had made a faux pas. "The peace we have can only come from within. Otherwise, it will always leave us," he asserted. "We are doomed for sadness if we base our happiness on things that are constantly changing." He stared deeply into my eyes.

Lunch was served. It was sticky rice mixed with the occasional yellow millet grain. It was two kinds of kimchi. It was assorted stringy vegetables. It was fried tofu squares. It was marinated mushrooms. It was a bowl of assorted assorted vegetables cooked with tofu. It was exquisite, even better than dinner the night before. Again I found myself chewing slowly and twirling my chopsticks in ultimate gastronomical ecstasy. Tog-hyon asked me, "Do you like Korean food?" "Um, yeah!"


Almost jokingly, I asked the monk if he liked American food. "I love Dunkin Donuts," he said matter-of-factly while simultaneously and miraculously producing a small box of powdered, jelly-filled Dunkin Donuts from a nearby cupboard. I stared in astonishment as he gave us each a donut. I may eat another Dunkin Donut in my life, but never one served on the proverbial silver platter of a zen monk in hermitage at one of the most revered monasteries in the world.

After lunch Jin-soon offered to do the dishes and I just before I jumped in to help, Tog-hyun looked me straight in the eyes and asked me if I would go on a walk with him. Whatever Tog-hyun was going to share with me, I felt bad that Jin-soon was going to miss it because of her offer to wash dishes. But it was just he and I.

Outside his little house, he began walking and met a thin, worn path. He quietly walked along the path through the serene bamboo forest. I followed on his heels. Instinctively, I began to do the museum walk, hands clasped behind my back. I do this when I don't want to disturb the priceless beauty and art around me. Again, I could feel myself having a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

We walked for a few minutes through the forest until we came to a bamboo barrier laying across the path obstructing the way. It was obviously constructed by him. There was a sign on the post written in neat Korean. He pointed to it and said, "This says, that this place is not for just anyone, but you're not just anyone," and lifted up the barrier for me to pass.

After another 10–15 minutes of walking down the mountain path, we came to a small building which overlooked a vast valley of pine trees below. The building was a meditation sanctuary, a large wooden deck covered with a curved, tiled roof. "I built this with three other monks. We had a very difficult time," he said laughing.

"Let's meditate."

He offered me the only mat on the porch and we both sat down, crossed-legged, and stared out into a vast, unspoiled mountain vista. West. Again, my meditation was deep and peaceful. My eyes were open. "What is this spirit inside me?" I thought. I became very peaceful. I stared at a lone pine tree in the distance. It was different than those surrounding it, a dark-green tree in an ocean of lightly colored spring-green trees. I felt as if somehow that tree was me.

After 20–30 minutes of meditating, Tog-hyun said, "Do you hear the wind blowing through the pines? There's an old Zen poem that says, 'What is the price of the wind blowing through the pines?'. So I ask you …" “Damn!” I thought, “Here comes another impossible question!” … "what is the price of the wind blowing through the pines?" Nervous, I rattled off some light-weight answer to the effect of, "The wind, the trees, they are part of us all—part of our soul. Our soul is priceless, it’s, um … yeah, the pines.

"You don't understand me, do you?" he asserted. "I don't understand," I cowed in agreement. "You studied English in university, and you don't understand?" kindly goading me with a warm smile that put me at ease. "Stop thinking about it,” he admonished. “You can't use theories to answer the question. You can't use language. You must doubt. You must continually ask 'the question', (who am I) and one day you will learn. It will take three days of constant meditation. Even while you are resting, your mind must be pondering the question of the price of the wind through the trees. Someday you will know. Let the blade of doubt cut through the blackness of the mind. Let's go back."

And with that, we stood up and he led us back to his house. He entered his house and this time he opened the wooden shutters to the only window in the room. It opened to the West and made me sit directly to his left, facing the window. "He's so young and makes many mistakes,” he pronounced to Jin-soon and another woman who had arrived in our absence, “but he is very spiritually minded. I can see that."

Just before entering the temple the day before, I had purchased a hand-carved bracelet which consisted of a circle of small skulls. Tog-hyun noticed it on my wrist and pointed at it asking, "What do you think that means?" Prior to buying the bracelet, Jin-soon and I discussed how the bracelet represented impermanence, how we are all a circle of beings, interwoven together, but are all impermanent here on earth. Though I feared that Tog-hyun would again use my reasoning as a latrine, I nonetheless had nothing else to say. All attention was on me. I paused for a second then repeated to him exactly what Jin-soon and I discussed. "Really? Very good!," he exclaimed.

Phew!

More tea.

It was time to go; we'd spent almost five hours with Tog-hyun. Before going, I told him that I'd be going home to family and friends in America and asked him if there was a message of wisdom that he would like to send with me that I could share with others. He told me that a message from him isn't necessary. Instead, I must find the message within my own self and share it. I guess I should have learned that lesson by then.

My new teacher again pointed at my bracelet and asked again, "What is that?" Considering my sketchy track record to his questions, and wondering why he was asking me again, this time I remained silent. I think that was the correct answer. Tog-hyun didn't probe further. He seemed content. Before leaving, Tog-hyun reached into a closet and gave me a very expensive box of tea. As he walked us to the edge of the hermitage he read the Chinese inscription on the box. "It says, 'Zen and the taste of tea is the same’." Then without a segue looked me directly in the eyes, seemed to grab by soul, and said, "Continue to doubt. Always doubt." And with that we bowed humbly to him, and left.

It was late. We hiked back to the temple grounds, stopped by the Great Hall one more time to make our final bows, grabbed our bags and took the first bus out. On the nearly 5-hour trip home, I sat quiet, staring out the window and thought about Tog-hyun's words.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the last installment of this story!

Wind Blowing Through The Pines Part 1

Photo cred

Jin-soon and I trained it to Sooncheon, in southwest Korea. From there we took an old bus (with matching driver) to Songgwangsa, one of the three principal monasteries in Korea.

They offer people the chance to stay at the monastery and live with the life of a monk for anywhere from 1–7 days. After almost five hours of traveling, we finally arrived at the temple. Jin-soon took me on a careful tour of the temple grounds, the many buildings, pagodas, and artifacts. This is Jin-soon's favorite temple in the world. I was honored when it dawned on me that she was showing me around her most sacred place.

After our self-guided tour, Jin-soon asked a large and friendly monk if we could stay the night and join the evening and morning ceremonies. He agreed without hesitation and assigned us our rooms. I shared a small, empty room with four other temple male visitors, all Korean.

It had been a long journey to get to the temple and by now we were quite hungry. The only food we brought with us was an orange and some Green World sprouted wheat crackers. We looked at the activity schedule posted outside of our rooms only to discover that we were too late for dinner. Just as our moans of disappointment tapered, to our surprise the dinner bell rang. For some reason the schedule was changed for this particular time of year.

We shuffled happily into the temple dining hall and each grabbed a simple, white bowl, chopsticks and a spoon. We filled our bowls with aromatic rice porridge, a sour and orange-colored kimchi, marinated mushrooms and assorted stringy vegetables seasoned in sesame oil. Having filled our bowls, we sat in folding chairs at a long table with the other temple visitors. Although I had become very accustomed to Korean food, there was little to choose from in the Buddhist buffet and I was nervous--if it was disgusting I may starve for the next 24 hours.

Cautiously, I tasted a small spoonful of rice porridge. It was exquisite! And with that I dove into my meal eagerly. Maybe it was because I was tired, maybe it was because I hadn't eaten all day, but I soon discovered that this was one of those meals where every bite was thoroughly and completely satisfying. I couldn't help eating slowly and deliberately. I twirled my chopsticks in the air as I chewed, unconsciously conducting the sonata of simple culinary perfection in my mouth. We ate in silence, though inside I was moaning with throes of primal pleasure.

I took my last bite and looked at Jin-soon who had been patiently waiting for me to finish my sonata. I felt a little sheepish but the content look on her face comforted me. We picked up our bowls and walked down steep concrete stairs to the kitchen to wash our dishes. Downstairs, were young monks in tight rubber aprons wrapped around their grey robes. They were contentedly and energetically sloshing dirty dinner dishes into suds and water. We washed our own dishes and utensils, bowed to the monks and mounted the stairs again. As we stepped out of the kitchen, I looked to Jin-soon and confessed, " O.K. That meal alone was worth the train and bus ride."

The meal was free along with the stay at the temple. However, they do appreciate an unspecified donation.

We were enjoying the evening sun as we walked in the court yard and talked about Zen poetry. Jin-soon showed me a mural painted on the outside of a building. It was a colorful picture of men stirring gaunt, weak "sinners" in a giant cauldron. Jin-soon told me, to my surprise, that like Christians, Buddhists believe in hell, too. It is the penitence necessary before you come back reincarnated.

As we were talking about the mural, we couldn't avoid noticing a monk who was walking in our direction. Even from a distance, it was easy to see that he was not Korean. We approached him and his thin, pale face met us with a large, toothy smile. We bowed and he began easy conversation with Jin-soon in flawless Korean. Noticing my silent, stupid smile, he switched languages and spoke in English with a smooth British accent. He could only speak with us for a moment but asked us if we would like to meet for tea after the evening ceremony. Delighted, we agreed to meet in front of the visitor's lodging building.

The sun had just ducked behind the mountain trees and painted the thin clouds a golden peach. Soon, monks emerged from all corners of the monastery and formed long lines as they quietly walked to the Great Hall. Meanwhile, a small corps of monks, perched in a large open tower, evoked the end of day by beating on the one end an enormous Dragon drum. As they pounded complex rhythms on the drum, their loose grey robes furled like a flag as their arms blurred around the gigantic drum.

The monks finished their final cadence on the drum, and switched to ringing the bell, a 10 foot tall, 15 ton, ornate bronze cup turned upside down and held by the mouth of a dragon. One monk pulled a large log suspended on both ends by two thick chains and swung it a few times to the side of the bell to gain momentum. Then with all his strength, he swung back the log and threw it against the bell, blasting out a loud, long gong that sang for a full ten seconds before it began a slow diminuendo and rested as a low hum. After thirty seconds or so, the monk wielding the log had built up enough momentum for another strike and with the bell still humming, he rang it again sending another blast echoing off the temple buildings and into the surrounding mountain air.

Jin-soon and I followed the last monks into the Great Hall, where we were each issued a long, well-used prayer mat, and laid them in the only open space on the rough, wooden floor. We bowed three times toward the Buddha and remained kneeling in silence, our hands in prayer. A singular monk began to chant a low and lonely melody. Outside, I heard a humble stream that bubbled and churned, adding a playful descant on top of the monks textured riff. Then, as my mind was fully absorbed by the delicate counterpoint between the stream and the monk, to my surprise, 150 monks suddenly and simultaneously burst into a loud and deep refrain. Without thinking, I found myself singing along. My voice was drowned in the sea of monks and I could barely hear my own sound, but I could feel my chest and throat vibrate. It felt like strumming an acoustic guitar against my chest and feeling it resonate. I couldn't follow the words to the chant so I sang my own words. My own prayer: "Thank you. . . thank you for my family and friends who bless my life immeasurably . . .thank you for making my life holy."

Outside, thirty meters away, the bell tolled again and I could feel the hum vibrate through the wood floor (suspended from the ground by poles). It vibrated my legs the way my chest and throat were vibrating. Om.

As the monks sang, I closed my eyes and heard fifths, minor thirds, sevenths, bended notes, half tones, natural harmonics. It was hearing the ancient asian pentatonic, modal scale, music before it was influenced by the west. As I listened to the monks, I heard black slaves in work fields. I heard the blues. I heard soul. Later, Jin-soon told me that the chanting temple is called Han, meaning melancholy or blue.

Following the evening service, we met with the English monk, Hey-am (meaning ocean eye) who invited us to a small room, his master's personal chamber, where we sat on the floor and drank tea from a delicate Korean tea set. Hey-am was serious and spoke with Jin-soon most of the hour and a half we spent with him. He spoke most of the time and he spoke most of the time in Korean. He talked about touching the soul through meditation.

The clock struck the ripe hour of nine o' clock and we were off to bed. Before both feet had even touched the floor, I could feel, true to form, that this Korean room was much, much too hot for peaceful sleeping. My mind raced as I worried about spontaneous combustion. My spontaneous combustion. The other four men sharing the room had kindly lain out a spot for me. I took my place and the lights went off.

The snoring began two minutes later. The old man on my right was a beach cave— deafening echoes of the deluge rushing in and out with every breath. It had only been 10 minutes and the heat had already covered me in a thin layer of hot sweat. I turned onto my other side only to encounter a classical hisser-and-sucker, not a lot of nasal reverberations like Cave, just really loud air passing between his teeth with every inhale and exhale. I thought, "If only I had some balloons, an air mattress, or maybe a trumpet, I could have put him to some use."

Needless to say, I didn't sleep that night. I rested though, and all night I thought of snoring metaphors.

So at 3:00 am (yes, 3:00 … I pause for effect … AM) when the monks came around clicking their wooden fish bells, rousing us for the morning ceremony, I was more than eager to leave the sweaty, hissing, beach cave. I didn't realize that I'd actually have the chance to experience Buddhist hell. "Wow, they really give you the full experience, here." I grabbed my sweatshirt, put in my contacts and left.

I breathed in the cool, early morning air. The same monks were again perched in the tower taking turns waking up the earth, people, fishes, and birds by drumming on various drums and bells. We followed the monks inside the Great Hall and began a ceremony very similar to the one we experienced the night before. But this time, it was dark outside. I looked through the door and in the distance, I could see the, black silhouette of a monk in a separate temple as perfect as if someone had drawn his outline in the window.

In Zen Buddhism there are 108 different forms of suffering. Therefore, to pray for those who suffer, one offers to Buddha the submission of 108 bows. This is accomplished by kneeling to the ground from a standing position, crossing the left foot over the right, butt close to the ankles, hands close to the face, palms down, and lowering the forehead to the mat at which point one turns the hand palms up, lifting them a few inches off the ground, returning the palms face down on the mat, then with the hands together in prayer, standing up to a full standing position … 108 times.

In a row.

Without stopping.

I wonder if intense quadriceps pain is listed uniquely among the 108 as one of the forms of suffering. Truth be told, I lost count after about two bows and actually just felt the pain and submitted to a spirit of sacrifice and offering. I felt very moved. More bows, 500, 1000 and sometimes even as much as 3000 bows, might accompany some ceremonies.

Having bowed, chanted, and sung, I was feeling quite lucid. Everyone filed out of the Great Hall except Jin-soon and I who took our mats to the center of the hall and began to meditate in the morning silence. The monks closed the doors and turned off all but one or two small lights illuminating the giant Buddhas in the center of the shrine. I closed my eyes and began to search inside myself, to meditate. I wanted to experience, to some small degree, the seemingly elusive Zen that Hey-am had talked about. I went deeper and deeper into my core, into my ha dan jun, into that white space, that part of me that never ages, but still feels pain, sometimes. I peeled away layers of emotion and intellect and tried to feel whatever it is inside. My spirit. I released my worries, my ego, my sarcasm, my habits, my intellect, my opinions and just was. I was just present to the second I was resting in and aware of what I was doing. Each second was an hour. I noticed how my body felt. I concentrated on the peace inside me. It felt good. I became more focused. Honed. I was experiencing the meditation that I have been cultivating during almost six months of Kouk Son Do practice, meditation which was coming to a small fruition at that moment. And I went deeper. I prayed.

Eventually we got up and stacked our mats neatly stacked beside the door and left. We walked to the kitchen and asked the monks if we could help prepare food for breakfast. Happy for our service, the monks immediately put us to work separating a large plastic vat of mushrooms, ginger, and sea vegetables. Then with large kitchen scissors, we removed the stems from rubbery mushrooms. As I sat snipping the stems off mushrooms, I listened to the kitchen monks chant as they sweated and stirred black cauldrons of boiling rice. I got that lucky feeling I do when I'm experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

We finished our kitchen help and still had an hour before the 7:00 am breakfast bell rang, so we headed up into the mountains to do some Kouk Son Do. The pre-sun morning sky was grey like the monks robes. They say that the grey represents all of the colors mixed into one.

Breakfast. I recognized some of my mushrooms. It was a beautiful sequel to dinner the night before.

After breakfast, we met Hey-am again for more tea. This time, he was speaking to me. As he poured me another cup of tea, he looked at me with a cheeky smile and said, "Korean Buddhism is funky as hell. " He told me stories about a few monks who drink, have sex, and watch Korean soap operas, but who are still as “woke” as any other monk. "There's no one watching over your shoulder. It's personal." It was good to talk to a human this time, and not just the robes of a monk. I asked, "Don't you ever get the urge to put on a Stones record?" Another smile. "Sure. And I do."

Check out the second installment of this story tomorrow . . .

The Off Button

Where IsThe Off Button?!

In Walt Disney’s Fantasia, there’s a Mickey Mouse cartoon called the Sorcerer's Apprentice. In this cartoon, the Sorcerer is going out for the night, probably to play D&D with his pals, and decides to put his apprentice, Mickey, in charge of cleaning up the joint. Mikey’s not too happy about this until he finds the Sorcerer's magic hat and wand and puts some magic into the brooms, mops, and buckets to become animated and do all the work by themselves. In his desire to make his life easier, he replicates all the mops, brooms, and buckets until there’s a veritable army of animated cleaning tools. Soon, things start to get out of hand and Mickey realizes with horror that he doesn’t know how to turn it all off. Water from the buckets and teams of mops and brooms are flooding the place. In his desire to automate his life, he soon realizes that he’s literally drowning in a river of his own chaos. Luckily, the Sorcerer returns just in time to snatch his hat and wand back and return things to normal.

I often wonder how much we are all like Mikey. In our attempt to make our lives easier and to produce more, we often find ourselves drowning in our own machinations of being productive and we have no clue how to turn it all off. Today, I’d like to offer one way of finding your “off” button.

In a self-help world, where people are bombarded with myriad ways of improving themselves, a person can begin in earnest several different kinds of practices. These practices might range from yoga, meditation, pilates, cardio, etc. All too often, the underlying promise of these practices is that if I just do more, I’ll be happier, that it will improve my being in some way. While human beings are programmed to progress and grow, sometimes that growth can come through the least expected practices. One such practice is the practice of relaxation, the practice of not doing anything.

Just like meditation or yoga, practicing relaxation can be deeply illuminating and self-revealing. It refutes the damning notion that we are constantly bombarded with, that if we just DO more, we’ll be happier. What if we take the opposite approach? What if we practice NOT doing? I’m not talking about turning procrastination into a life-skill. I’m talking about deciding to actively relax, to regularly afford yourself the time and space to rest and to fill up the well.

The irony is that even though one might turn to a relaxation practice to purposefully step away from the insidious pull to always be doing more, by relaxing and recharging your batteries in body, mind, and spirit, you’ll naturally find yourself more alert, capable, and ready to produce in all the ways you choose to. In other words, because of your dedication to rest, you will do more.

Relaxation is Healing

One of my Ayurveda teachers told me that rest and relaxation is one of the first orders of operation for any kind of healing in body, mind, or spirit. As humans, we have an incredible capacity for renewal. If given the time to rest, muscles, skin and bones can heal, minds can become still, and even broken hearts can mend. Failure to allow injuries in body, mind, or spirit to heal can make injury or illness chronic and sometimes terminal. Practicing relaxation allows injuries of all sorts to heal.

In the realm of psychotherapy, relaxation has proven to be the catalyst for deep healing of trauma. Joseph Wolpe was a leading psychiatrist and a leading figure in behavioral therapy in the 1900s. He treated many people affected with PTSD through systematic desensitization using relaxation as a primary agent. He realized that a person cannot be relaxed and stressed at the same time. So, he used a process of systematic awareness, similar to a Yoga Nidra practice, to help people arrive in a deep state of relaxation. Then, once his patients had facility with relaxation, he would begin to present stressors in very small doses. In a state of relaxation, what would normally cause stress didn’t even phase the patient. Incrementally, he would increase a person’s tolerance to that stressor until it was no longer a stressor at all. Relaxation was a safe and effective approach to helping heal some deep wounds of trauma.

Relaxation As A Practice

Believe it or not, relaxation is a skill. Some people can become relaxed very easily and others, not so much. Come on, are YOU one of those people who just cannot relax? There’s no greater hell than not being able to to relax , especially when we need to. Sometimes, we know we need to relax but our habit of being constantly on overrides our ability to let go. We just can’t get ourselves to quiet down in body, mind, and spirit.

Learning to relax might include choosing to turn down appointments or social engagements. It might also mean turning off the television and your phone for a while. I know, many of us turn to our phones and TV to veg out and relax, though oftentimes, these avenues don’t provide the kind of deep relaxation we need, they only serve as distractions. We might also need some formalized relaxation practice to follow.

To do a relaxation practice, might I suggest arranging a time in the middle of the day when you can have 20–30 minutes alone. Let those who share space with you (including pets) that you’ll be unavailable for 20–30 minutes. Try lying down on the bed, couch, or floor (hammocks work nicely, too). Cover your eyes with an eye mask. This reduction in light, quiets the nervous system and tells your brain that it’s time to relax.

During your relaxation practice, you might try counting your breaths down from 100. Begin by simply noticing your breath. On the exhale count the number 100, inhale and count 99, exhale, 98, etc. If your mind wanders, there’s no judgement good or bad. It happens to everyone, just start back at 100. If you get all the way to zero, there’s no judgement good or bad. It happens to everyone, just start back at 100. The difficulty is to let go of the achievement in the practice. Sometimes for this reason, I’ll start at a number like 1000 with no hope of getting to zero before my practice is over. This helps me to simply rest in the practice of focusing on the numbers without achievement.

You may also practice doing a relaxing body scan. You can do this by spending a few seconds by noticing each body part from head to toe in succession as you watch yourself become more relaxed. Take a few seconds to rest your attention on each body part. When you get down to your toes, just start back at your head and consider that you’re taking yourself deeper and deeper into relaxation with each pass of the body. Our most natural state of being is one of relaxed alertness so as you begin to practice simply being Aware of your body, you’ll naturally find yourself relaxing your body deeper and deeper.

It’s likely that your mind will want to process something during your relaxation practice. It might be frustrating to try to turn your brain off, especially if it’s in the habit of being turned up to 11. In truth, our job in a relaxation practice isn’t to deny our brains from doing what they are programmed to do. Instead of trying to prevent your mind from doing what it’s designed to do, give your mind a job. Allow it to focus on something simple and singular like your breath or your body. I find this to be a valuable pointing.

If you think your mind might be too worried about time to relax, set a timer for 20–30 minutes so you know that there will be a definitive ending time, allowing you to relax into the experience.

No matter what other practices you do in your life, few other practices will help you to be your best like a regular practice of relaxation. A regular relaxation practice will help you heal in body, mind, and spirit, you’ll be more pleasant to be around, and it will ironically even make you more productive. You’ll find yourself being less reactive to life’s events and more responsive to them. In truth, this could be the “off” button you need to prevent you from drowning in the river of your own chaos.

Start a relaxation practice and tell me how it goes!

A Life-Changing Practice

One of my most impactful teachers, Dr. Judith Hanson Lasater, suggested I do a particular practice once a year, during the days between Christmas and New Years: Savasana.

Savasana or corpse pose is the resting pose you get at the end of asana practice, which hopefully lasts for more than 2 seconds if your teacher has any love in their heart. Judith suggests a week of practicing JUST Savasana.That’s it. No other pose. She promises, “It will change your life!”

Louis Armstrong said, “What we play is life,” and it seems fitting that after the year we’ve “played,” fraught with difficulty, strain, and shakiness, we need a good, solid, lengthy savasana … and then maybe a stiff drink (click here for the original recipe of my CORONA Cocktail).

And so, may I suggest this practice to you. Take a rest. Do a week of Savasana.

Close the door and put a “Do not disturb” sign outside. Set yourself up on a yoga mat, couch, or bed. Put a cushion under your knees and head and an eye pillow over your eyes. Incidentally, if you don’t have an eye-pillow, a COVID mask doubles nicely as an eye mask. Perhaps a blanket might feel nice on top of you. Set a timer for 30–90 minutes, so you’re not worried about time. Then lay down and rest. Don’t worry about poses. Don’t fret about burning off all the cookies that Santa didn’t bother to take with him. Just relax.

If you like, download this wonderful, end of the year Yoga Nidra practice (relaxing guided meditation) and let it lead you through past, present, and future as you create what you’d like to see for yourself moving forward into 2021 and beyond.

You’ll emerge from each practice feeling clear-headed, energized, and rested.

“God REST ye merry gentlemen (and women and non-binary folks, thank ye very much)”

Let me know how it goes!

Laying The Foundation for Our Future

This is a wake-up year. Unfailingly, this year has impacted you both on an individual and collective level. The old can’t die quick enough and it takes time for what’s new to be born. What’s left is a lot of pain and discomfort. This pain is helping us to wake up to the truth that the world is changing and it’s asking you an essential question: are you going to wilt or thrive with these changes?

I know I’m not alone when I say that I just want COVID-19 to be over and for things to go back to normal. You know what I can’t wait for? I can’t wait to see people’s mouths when they smile. I can’t wait to give hugs again. I can’t wait to go to the movies. I can’t wait to be in a crowd of people without feeling worried that I’m going to get sick. I can’t wait to leave the house without a mask. Wait a minute … I can’t wait to leave the house, period!

But staying inside actually gives us a rare opportunity, the opportunity to do some essential and overdue building. You see it all over the place. Restaurants are using this time of being shut-down to finally do that neglected remodel. Instead of touring, musicians are taking this time to practice and create new music. Writers are hunkered down, writing their next masterpiece. Personally, I’ve spent many months during this time at home to write, film, and build my exciting new Yoga Nidra course and Yoga Nidra teacher training.

This rebuilding applies to us personally as well. At a time when we would otherwise be too busy to take care of essential maintenance for body, mind, and spirit, this year has actually presented us with an invaluable opportunity to do some essential building for the future we want to see for ourselves.

And as much as I hope for things to go back to normal after COVID-19, I know that there’s no going back. There’s only going forward. Sure, someday we will be able to do things like give hugs again, and they’ll be tighter, longer, and sweeter when we do, but one thing this difficult year has taught us, is that we gotta get comfortable with being inside. Yes, that means being judicious about leaving the house and even being subject to a full-on lock-down, but with a little insight, we might see an invaluable and deeper lesson, here. The lesson is that regardless of a global pandemic, we must get comfortable going inside, getting quiet and tuning into our hearts, minds, and spirits. We need to go inside and meditate in order to discover that the changes we wish to see in ourselves and the world exist inside, not out.

Especially as we are on the cusp of a new year, what are the tools, resources, and practices that will help you to build a new future for yourself and therefore for the world?

Meditation is a simple but powerful tool that can help to moor you against the storm of life’s changes. It can elevate your state of consciousness to make you happier, less stressed, and more compassionate. Regular and consistent meditation practice has the power to change your stage of consciousness, your irreversible stage of cosmic understanding, and your basic ability to see the goodness of the world.

Now is time to lay the foundation of a new year and your future with the power of a simple but consistent meditation practice.

So, let’s do it together!

Starting January 1st, begins my 31-day meditation Challenge. This challenge is simple, effective, and fun. Join the challenge and become a part of a global sangha (a group of meditators) as we lay the foundation for this new year and new future with a more mindful YOU, the you that will change the world by becoming the person you are destined to become.

The challenge is simple: meditate every day for 15 minutes a day in any style you wish, any time you wish. That’s it. I’ll support you with plenty of instruction, tools, and encouragement along the way, including several guided meditation practices, including Yoga Nidra, the relaxing and transformational form of guided meditation I’m so passionate about.

If you’re newish to meditation, this is the perfect opportunity to develop a simple practice and feel the compounding benefits of a regular meditation practice. I’ll give you simple, step-by-step guides to help you start a daily mediation practice. If you’re an experienced meditator, please join our group and add your experience and spirit to help raise the vibe! If you’ve ever been at a mediation group or retreat, you’ve probably felt the exponential power of meditating as a group. Join this group!

I’ve absolutely loved doing this meditation challenge in the past. If you’ve joined me in the past for this, then hopefully you know how fun and beneficial it is and want to join me again.

With this meditation challenge, I’ll be providing:

• ALL NEW content, recordings, and meditations

• A daily email with encouragement, insight, poetry, and resources

• Weekly live, online sessions for 30-minutes to meditate together, for Q&A, and meet those across the globe who will be doing this. We’ll get to meditate together in real-time with others across the globe AND we’ll be able to celebrate and meditate on the last day of the challenge together.

When you register, you’ll receive a welcome email with all the information, including the specs of the challenge as well as a page of resources like meditation guides, guided meditations that you can listen to or download, and helpful pranayama (breathing) practices.

The challenge starts January 1 but you can start to meditate today and feel the compounded benefits of a regular, simple meditation practice.

Make a meditation posse! Several people in the past have decided to do the meditation challenge as a family, a work group, or as friends. What better way to raise the vibe of the people you work and live with than to be meditating together.

For me, I feel less incentive to complete challenges like this unless I’ve got some skin in the game. Every time I run a marathon, I think of the money I paid for to register and it motivates me to keep training and to run the damn thing. So, to help you put a little skin in the game, I’m charging $31 for this meditation challenge. But GET THIS, I’m committed to your success so, if you complete the challenge, if you meditate every day for 15 minutes a day, all the way through January, you can opt to get your $31 back, or apply it to other cool stuff. That’s right! $31 is an easy investment into a solid foundation for the new year and the new YOU.

If we’ve learned anything from this difficult year, hopefully we’ve learned that we gotta get comfortable with going inside in body, mind, and spirit. While we are weathering this storm of COVID-19 and practicing social-distancing, though we may not connect in body, we can still practice coming together in mind and spirit as we meditate together and lay the foundation for a great year and a great future.

Please join me!🙏💕💛

Will you please forward this to those you want in your posse.

Waking Up to Your Power and Purpose

In the past few emails, I’ve been talking about how this year we’ve experienced the pain of death and birth. I’ve been talkin’ about how the whole is represented in each of its parts. I’ve been talkin’ about how as individuals, we can change the world because the solutions to the world’s problems only lie within, and that just like Alice Walker said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

It’s clear that there’s a movement of consciousness happening throughout the world and it’s calling on you to step up to become the person that you are destined to be.

But how? Sometimes finding the solution for personal and global problems seems impossible. Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

To save our planet and ourselves, we must change our fundamental state of consciousness.

Before we turn on, tune in, and drop out in the name of global reform, may I suggest another way of changing our essential mental state …

Yoga Nidra is by far and away one of the most effective and most relaxing ways of changing your state of consciousness, one that helps you uplevel your stage of consciousness and then… yes— change the world. Nidra is a Sanskrit word meaning sleep, and Yoga Nidra is often called “the yoga of sleep” because it is a form of guided meditation that uses relaxation and a system of organized and layered awareness to take you through a journey into a liminal state between waking and dreaming consciousness. It is here, in this liminal state, that you discover that your mind, body, and spirit together contain a pathway that leads to the gates of perfect presence, wholeness, and Oneness.

Yoga Nidra is a potent catalyst for massive personal growth, giving you the direct tools and direction to become the person you are destined to become...the greater You who is destined to change the world.

In a beautiful paradox, the yoga of sleep is actually about waking up to the powerful being that you are. Some of the most powerful forces in the world can also be the most gentle, just like a whispering wind and the soft laps of a river which carve massive and formidable stones from canyon walls.

Yoga Nidra opens your eyes and wakes you up to the very nature of your being, that of limitless power and beauty. It opens your ears to hear the ancient wisdom of sages whispering to you that your true identity is that of Awareness itself. The gentle practice of Yoga Nidra leads you down a pathway to feel your truest essence, one of boundless equanimity, pure love, and absolute clarity. This practice helps you feel yourself existing as a resounding and Universal YES!

“As above, so below,” so as Yoga Nidra helps you heal yourself and come alive, the world heals and comes alive.

“Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

-Howard Thurman

One of the things I love so much about Yoga Nidra is that anyone can do it. You don’t need any prior experience. You don’t need to prove yourself by meditating in a cave in Tibet for 40 years to gain any benefit or insight. This is a practice that is as pleasant as it is illuminating. It’s as easy as lying down, closing your eyes, and getting obscenely relaxed while I guide you through an exquisite, layered exploration of Awareness. You will likely enter a state of deeply relaxed clarity and alertness. Even if you fall asleep that’s ok, you might need it. And hey, if after Yoga Nidra, the world gets a more-rested version of you, it will be better for it. Regardless, if you get so relaxed that you fall asleep, the part of yourself that you source in Yoga Nidra is always paying attention.

Yoga Nidra is a two-fold path. While opening a profound doorway to the Universal You, it also addresses the immediate needs of the not-so-universal you. It has become an essential resource for millions across the globe because it’s such a powerful, natural, and effective agent to counter stress, sleep like a champ, and conquer your inner asshole (aka helps you be the version of yourself that can respond compassionately to life’s challenges rather than reacting to them)— all absolute musts for the year we’ve had.

Perhaps best of all, Yoga Nidra facilitates clarion insight about your life’s purpose and problems. It evokes your deep inner-wisdom and gives you the clarity necessary to make practical and actionable changes in your life, not only for how you act in the world, but also how you relate to it. It wakes you up to the truth that the solutions to personal and world problems exist inside of you, not outside, helping you to heal body, mind, and spirit. As you heal yourself, you heal the world. And just like the gentle forces of wind and water, this relaxing but powerful practice is quietly helping to shape a new world … one nap at a time.

I’ve spent the last two years creating my most engaging and powerful online Yoga Nidra course yet: Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep.

This course is a beautiful, fascinating, and relaxing journey into Self. If you are feeling powerless, afraid, or vulnerable, this course will help you wake up to your True and most powerful Self. Instead of being afraid of what may come, this will give you a resource to find your genuine optimism and openness to life’s possibilities and opportunities to grow. As you start to experience and exercise your personal power, you’ll grow and want to share your momentum with the world. Your mantra for the world will be, “I’m on my way to the top and if anyone gets in my way, they are coming with me!”

If you are feeling alone, not feeling supported, or feel as if you lack deep connections, this course will help you to experience the perfection and limitless love that is already inside of you. You’ll experience yourself as the lovechild of the Universe, that all the presentations of life are love notes to you, saying, “Wake up, I made this for you— watch, listen.” You’ll see that you ARE love itself with limitless opportunities to share your love-essence with the world in ways that never diminish. You’ll see that the love you feel is not dependent upon other people, external events, and circumstances. You’ll see that the love that you are and the way you love the world is your greatest gift to the world.

If you feel that you lack resources— energy, money, job, supportive friends— this course will help you see that you are the very thing that you seek. You’ll experience the limitless flow of energy both inside and outside of you. You’ll see that energy cannot be created or destroyed but that you have the power to direct energy to all aspects of your life, including your finances, relationships, and your spirit. You’ll discover the internal wellspring of limitless energy within your own heart.

Ok, sounds great. What does this online course look like? How do you do it?

When you enroll, you get immediate and life-time access to a sleek and simple-to-use teaching platform. 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 10 teaching modules, complete with specialized and relaxing Yoga Nidra recordings, breathing and mindfulness exercises, as well as hours of engaging video lectures (and transcripts). This content explores:

• The every-day application of how Yoga Nidra helps you to wake up to your best self

• A collection of 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

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

Check out these modules:

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.

I’ve also created a robust bonus section to support you on your journey. In addition to the 10 modules of practices and lessons, you also get a rich library of resources, you’ll have access to dozens of specialized bonus Yoga Nidra practices to help with practical, every day needs like:

• Deeper, more restful sleep

• Healing from grief

• Setting goals

• Cultivating abundance

• Rewriting the past and creating a new future as you transcend time

• Connecting to the vital web of wisdom of your entire life — past, present, and future

• Access to your own divine Oracle

In addition you get an entire library of supportive resources, including:

• Other specialized YN practices practical, everyday support

• Gentle yoga videos

• Articles, poetry, links to engaging material

• A printable door hanger that reads, “Shhh...I’m napping my way to enlightenment.”

If you have questions during the course, you can reach out to me for personal support, or post in the lively online community forum that’s included in the course. I’ll even be offering live, online Q&A sessions starting in January 2021.

The lessons and practices are all downloadable and accessible from any computer or smartphone or device, whether or not you’re connected to the internet. With lifetime-access, you can go at your own pace and take your time to absorb the content as well as review the lessons and practices as often as you like.

This course will brighten your every-day life. Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep is a rich and restful journey into Self that is as relaxing as it is illuminating. It reveals every moment of your precious life as beautiful and miraculous. This course helps you feel as if someone has turned up the colors in your world to 11. Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep will help you be more present with those you love, more creative and productive, and less reactive to life’s challenges.

This journey is about you taking care of yourself. When you take care of yourself, you gain an abundance of energy and resources necessary to take care of everyone else in your life. Selfcare means world care.

Truly, you’ll learn about waking up from the illusion of being a limited being into the truth of your own power, beauty, and magnificence. This course will be perhaps the best thing you’ve done for yourself in a long time. As you support and uplevel your own consciousness, you’ll feel happier, more confident, and more aware. Plus, doing so, you’ll also quietly raise the consciousness of your family, work, community, and the world.

Do this course for yourself and do it for the world.

This is my best work yet and I can’t wait to share it with you!

I believe in this course because I believe in you and I built it to tap the immense power within you. I built it as an effective, powerful, and enjoyable tool to help you become the person you were destined to be, to source your highest Self and to change the world.

Here’s what others are saying about this course:

“Your Yoga Nidra course is absolutely fabulous. You explain everything in such a great way, logical yet sensitive and deep, and I can feel you lived and experienced what you are talking about which is really important for me. I am passionate about yoga nidra. It changed my life and you are making it even more profound now. I love your course! ” A. G.

“I have another course on teachable and yours absolutely blows that one away in terms of content, quality, videos and the passion you have and experience really comes through. I don’t know how you’ll follow this up, it’s such a mind blowing amount of content! I’m definitely going to be working through it all for a while.” Rebecca Moulton

“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

“It was a wonderful, thorough and rich experience. I know I will listen to the Nidra recordings over and over again.” Joan D’Amico

“You have a way with words. I enjoy being able to take notes and mark which video I gleaned it from.” Loreen Lewis

“I absolutely loved it. The course was very relaxing and easy to follow. I felt like I was in the room with you. The price was very reasonable and Scott is so generous. I now have a fantastic Yoga Nidra library that I can tap into whenever I wish. This course really helped me to become connected to my inner-self and I’m more fully aware of the power we all have inside of us. Thank you, Scott Moore, for everything!” Amy Pope.

At the end of the journey, in my deepest heart, I know that we all make it, that humanity figures it out, that enlightenment doesn’t happen for one of us if it doesn’t happen for all of us. Yoga Nidra has helped me realize that somehow, we have already arrived, and that perhaps this life with its ups and downs is like God or Source rewinding the tape to see how it was all done, as if sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and watching reruns of the most magnificent story of all time. I know that YOU are an essential part of this story.

Either way, despite an extremely challenging year, and probably because of it, now is a rich and beautiful chapter in your life. You will look back at the decisions you made during this time and see how they shaped the rest of your existence and helped to transform you into the magnificent person you were destined to become.

Now is the time to wake up to your own power. The world is on its way to the top and we can’t get there without you!

Will you join? Wake up with the yoga of sleep.

You're Our Only Hope

photo by alex adams

Yesterday, I wrote about how much of the pain that we are seeing in the world this year is the result of things dying, and how other pain we are experiencing is often the birthing pains of what’s coming.

One thing that is being born in this moment is a global movement of individuals and institutions becoming more conscious. Despite how broken the world seems to be, we are more capable than we can imagine to make things right. This global movement of consciousness is about learning how to set things right by setting yourself right.

But I’m only one person, how can I make a difference?

This summer we were practicing some extreme social distancing by going on a secluded river trip with a very small group down the down San Juan River in Southern Utah. As we floated downstream, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream …,” beers nestled in hand, we spent long hours simply staring up at the breathtaking landscape of the canyon walls. I couldn’t take my eyes off the canyon walls, specifically the patterns of erosion: enormous, almost perfect squares the size of elephants, and rectangles the size of semi-truck trailers, all with very straight lines, that had sometime in the last several thousand years detached themselves from the canyon wall and were now being washed in the lazy current of the San Juan. It looked as if some giant was playing with the canyon walls, carving each perfect shape out, and plopped it into the river.

A couple on our trip were environmental scientists with a passion for geology and I asked them how these large rocks could be shaped so perfectly with what looked like chiseled corners and almost perfect lines. One of the scientists offered her best SWAG, (scientific-based wild-ass guess) and proffered that perhaps the microscopic, individual particles of the principal mineral in the rock were shaped in squares and rectangles so the larger stones merely reflected the composite of the smallest possible elements. Fascinating!

This SWAG resembles the old hermetic saying, “As above, so below,” and vice versa. In other words, the whole is represented in each of its parts. Since the world is the composite of individuals, the best and only way to change the world is from within. You must change yourself, and when you are whole the world becomes whole.

There’s a critical mass of those who are waking up to their highest beings. This critical mass, along with the winds of change, has eroded the old and weathered facade and those who are waking up are breaking from the old. We are rolling toward the living waters of a more just, prosperous, and sustainable existence.

We are the epitome of rock and roll.

Yes, there’s a movement that is underway and it’s begging you to join. It's calling to you to wake up from the illusion of being a limited, powerless being and wake up to the unimaginable power that is already inside of you, to fertilize the seed of your birthright and majesty, so you can be a crucial cell in this organism of consciousness that is changing the world.

We cannot wait for someone else to save us. Our purpose is to save ourselves.We must be the change of the world because the solutions to the world’s problems only lie within.

Like Alice Walker said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Tomorrow, I can’t wait to share with you a very powerful resource that I’ve created that will help you realize your innate wholeness and will help you to make the world whole.

The Reckoning

This has been a really, really, really tough year. It’s been Covid-19 with 1.42 million deaths around the globe, also causing world-wide financial disruption and disaster. It’s been George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and scores of others fueling Black Lives Matter and sending millions to streets to march against oppression. It’s been a bitter and divisive fight between Trump vs. Biden, right vs. left. It’s been natural disasters ravaging the US with massive hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes. And all of the global disasters have felt like gasoline poured on the fires of our regularly-scheduled personal crises. I am feeling the toll of a very difficult year stacked on top of the recent passing of my sweet mother after a 3-year fight with cancer. It was an honor to be with her as she died. I know I’m not alone, we have all felt the oppressive pain and pressure of a truly unforgettable year.

But as we are getting ready to tell 2020 to shove off (a nicer word than I’d normally use considering the year we’ve had), it’s important to remember that just like many forest fires, we will grow back after these personal and global disasters. And when we do, we will be much stronger because of it. In fact, some trees actually require the inferno of a wildfire to break open their cones and seed a new generation. Some of the pain we are feeling this year is the necessary fire we need to seed a brighter future. Other pain we’re feeling this year is the pressure of new things now being born. One of these things is a global movement of consciousness. We can no longer stand by and watch to see what happens for our future. There is a reckoning happening. There is a global movement being born and the world is calling on you to join this movement, to wake up to your potential, to step up your Awareness or to step out of the way. The world needs you to seed the future.

As a world, we are waking up to our potential and purpose, causing many old paradigms and institutions to disintegrate under the strain of this change in global consciousness. Right before our eyes, we are watching armies demobilize, countries working together more than ever before, and institutionalized racism, bigotry, sexism, and disregard for the environment begin to crack and crumble. As a world, we are recognizing those things which are fundamentally opposite of our highest potential, and in the immortal words of Twisted Sister, “We’re not gonna take it … anymore!” You can be sure that at many of the funerals for some of the old ways of the world, you will see me dancing on the pews, and singing this refrain.

But despite the joy in the passing of some old and broken institutions, we are nonetheless in the dying process of old ways of being and we all feel the pain of that revolution. We feel it in the form of collective rage, disgust, and an uneasiness or confusion of what the future will bring.

All this death reminds me of the Hindu goddess, Kali. In representations of her, she looks like she could be the lovechild between Gene Simmons and a pirate. She has wild eyes, a skirt made of severed arms and heads, a threatening sword raised above her head, and blood dripping off her long, serpentine tongue. Yet, Kali is regarded as a compassionate deity. That’s right. She’s the one who says, “Enough, already!” and severs what needs to die. In truth, what she represents is killing our unconsciousness, putting asunder our old self so that we can be resurrected as our most conscious beings. Still, blood is blood and even though some things do need to die, this year has shown us that even necessary deaths can still hurt.

While some of the pain we feel this year is from things changing and dying, it’s also true that some of the pain we are experiencing is actually birthing pains. Whether we asked for it or not, we are being born into something new. After the death of what didn’t serve us any longer, it’s normal to feel the pressure of confusion about how to reinvent ourselves. We have identified as that old and broken thing for so long, we don’t know who we’d be as something else. Though we are being born into something new, we may experience the pressure that comes with that newness.

Yet, in truth, there are powerful resources that can be a tremendous asset in times like these, such as a robust internal sense of empathy, a broad perspective over life’s purpose and problems, and a ready capacity to be present with what is. When we can draw upon our ability to be compassionate, responsive and not reactive, empathetic, and loving to self, we can better access the greater love that is available outside the chaos or trigger.

But even with the world waking up to Awareness, who’s going to clean up this messy world?

What have you discovered about yourself during this year and what has helped you to resource your best self to manage this difficult year?

I want to keep this conversation going so over the next few days, I'll be sending you information about a new offering you can use to help you step up to the challenges of the world as the person that you were destined to be.

Be safe. Be well. Talk Soon.

The Many Paths of Yoga Nidra

People often inquire about my Yoga Nidra Teacher Training and wonder why I don’t teach in this way or that way and I remind them that just like there are many ways to teach asana, there are many ways to teach Yoga Nidra. Instead of being dogmatic about one particular style, I train teachers to understand the essentials of the practice, what it’s pointing to so that they can eventually teach powerfully from their own assimilated experience and not as a rote version of their teachers.

It reminds me of the beginning of my yoga journey, as I was just discovering this incredible practice. I used to be fundamentalist about the way I thought that yoga “aught” to be taught. If I went to a yoga class and it didn’t have certain poses or wasn’t conducted in a certain way, I would leave complaining, “That wasn’t yoga!” Have you ever done this? It’s natural. I think that this mind set is common when we are learning a new discipline—we want to try to understand it so we narrow its definition to distinguish it from other practices. But very often, with any subject, once you try to analyze it in depth, the definition of it tends to open up to be exponentially more expansive than you can imagine. One of my earliest yoga teachers said, “If you understand one thing all the way down to its root, you will understand everything.” What he meant was that everything is pointing to the same thing, Source. This conversation inspired me to write an article posted in Conscious Life News.

Just like in yoga asana schools, in Yoga Nidra there are many different approaches to practice setting the same condition for the same end. I approach my trainings with this essential principle: if you understand the big picture of Yoga Nidra—what it is, how it facilitates your own relationship to understanding Self, know some of its history, and the essential elements of why it works—then I believe you will use the principles, tools, and tactics that suit your teaching style the best to be the most effective for the individual needs of your students. That way, you will powerfully impact your students through the power of your own experience and voice and not a rote version of your teacher. As I'm sure you agree, there's no one "right" way to teach Yoga Nidra. That's why I think it's important to understand Yoga Nidra at its root to understand how each principle (like the using the koshas, for example) may effectively lead students to experience the benefits of Yoga Nidra.

What is Yoga Nidra?

I define Yoga Nidra like this: Yoga Nidra is the yoga of sleep: its goal is samadhi, experiencing yourself as Oneness and achieves this through a method of entering the Nidra mind state, the hypnagogic, in-between state, of waking and dreaming, through systematized relaxation and layered Awareness. Yoga Nidra is the meditative process of learning to identify yourself as Awareness itself. By layering your Awareness systematically through the maya koshas, or layers of illusion— what we typically identify as “us” such as body, emotions etc.— we come to experience our infinite Self, our True Self, that of Awareness itself.

Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training

There are many ways that a teacher could facilitate Awareness through Yoga Nidra. My Yoga Nidra training approach is to leverage the koshas heavily as perhaps the most effective way to disidentify as ego and identify as Awareness itself. I teach myriad approaches to bring awareness to each kosha. For example, in the Anamaya kosha, one could use the 61-points of awareness in the body, or explore Awareness through the body by following the pattern of the homunculus, the parts of the body which have a ready access to the brain or in other words which those spots which are the most accessible for Awareness. After all, the Anamaya kosha is but one of the filters through which to practice experiencing yourself as Awareness. Also, I understand that the body is a powerful conduit for Awareness and can help to anchor other things like thoughts or emotions in a way that makes the information you may be aware of more salient and available. For example, one might inquire into an emotion and become curious to it in Awareness by also exploring which part of the body seems to resonate with that emotion.

As for the application of the body scan, in the beach paradise meditation I used a basic body scan to help relax the body while bringing awareness to the Anamaya Kosha. As you pointed out, this is a meditation that uses the Anamaya kosha and Vijnanamaya kosha (both implicitly rather than explicitly) to gain a great sense of relaxed alertness. It's not a typical Yoga Nidra practice that I might teach in a class.

Yoga Nidra in Your Voice

I am confident that even if you don't think your voice is all that awesome, YOU have a special knowledge and approach to Yoga Nidra that people need to hear. There's only ONE of you and the world needs your approach to this vital practice. You will impact students in a very unique way that only you can, with whatever voice the Universe has given you. I'm sure your voice is awesome but in my training, I do go into depth how to use your voice as a tool to facilitate Awareness, you know avoiding serial gerunds, upturns, and sounding like the hold music at the bank 🙂. Yes, you can certainly work on your voice in my training there's a module that assigns you some voice work to practice. Also, one tip to help you cultivate your voice, starting with simply recording yourself teach (even reading a script) and listen to the tone of your voice.

Below is a Yoga Nidra which I think you might enjoy. While not all Yoga Nidra practices need to explore each kosha to facilitate Awareness, this practice is a little more indicative of my regular way of teaching, one that employs using all the kosha. I hope you enjoy it. You can listen directly or download it to your computer or smart device.

Brand New Yoga Nidra Trainings!

I’ve got some really exciting news!

Short back story …

So, a long time ago, I was that kind of depressed person who was afraid of emotions so I just turned them off. Consequently, for the space of about a decade, I didn’t feel happiness, sadness, grief, or loneliness. I didn’t feel anything. I remember during that time thinking that I couldn’t remember what it felt like to have fun.  

After about 10 years of feeling like this, I discovered Yoga Nidra, or the yoga of sleep. This is the guided meditation where you lie down, get very relaxed, and follow the facilitator’s words as you become increasingly more aware of the different layers of your being. 

During one of my very first Yoga Nidra sessions, I had a life-changing experience. I became very, very relaxed and began to experience myself as pure Awareness. I know, what does that even mean? For me, it felt myself flying through the cosmos, outside of time and space. I felt as if the Universe and I were one and the same. I felt that though this thing called “Scott” had a finite body, emotions, and thoughts, and that my true identity was something so much more immense, complete, and beautiful than any of those other parts of my being. 

This one Yoga Nidra experience dropped some massive and cosmic clarity into my lap. It helped me to understand my human existence with all of its vicissitudes is nothing to avoid, but rather to live out to the fullest. And just like that, I felt safe to feel emotions again. It was like a miracle healing because that night I went home and the floodgates of emotions opened. Oh, the boxes of Kleenex that absorbed more than 10 years of emotions! From that moment forward, I’ve bravely met every emotion that has come my way. I love and have fun again! 

Yoga Nidra does so much more than help you heal from emotional repression. The most common benefits of Yoga Nidra include less stress, better sleep, decreased anxiety and depression, increased self-confidence, lowered blood pressure, increased production, creativity, and learning. Mostly what Yoga Nidra does is help you wake up to your innate power and perfection and it does it in the most relaxing way imaginable. It’s seriously like napping your way to enlightenment. 

In addition to my own transformation, I’ve seen countless other people who have benefitted in large and small ways through this accessible and non-dogmatic practice of deep and relaxing mindfulness. Therefore, I decided to devote much of my life to this fascinating and transformative practice. So, for the previous dozen or so years, I’ve been practicing, studying, and teaching Yoga Nidra. I’ve been featured in podcasts about Yoga Nidra, written a blog largely devoted to the subject, written countless articles, and even written a book about Yoga Nidra. I host regular Yoga Nidra classes, workshops, courses, and I’ve traveled all over the world offering Yoga Nidra trainings.

While teaching a live Yoga Nidra training, it dawned on me how much the world needs more Yoga Nidra and to do that how much it needs more qualified Yoga Nidra teachers. So I began to make the recordings of my trainings available as a digital download on my website. I was proud of this training product but it was very DIY. Before long, though, people around the world were learning my method of Yoga Nidra. 

During the few years since my training went global, something thrilling started happening. Graduates of my program began sending me their original Yoga Nidra recordings in their native languages of Spanish, French, German, Chinese, or Thai. I began to see that this Yoga Nidra training is bigger than me. Truly, my training was spreading across the globe and deserved an upgrade. So, I began to revise. 

After two years of growing, learning, and updating my curriculum, I still felt miles away from building the new program. Then, in July of 2020 I caught wind of a Product Creation Boot Camp hosted by Eric Edmeads and Speaker Nation. If you don’t know him, Eric Edmeads is an absolute force of nature. He is one of the world’s most successful speakers, entrepreneurs, business and health coaches and an absolutely phenomenal online product creator. He created perhaps the world’s most successful health program called Wildfit. He works in the company of powerhouses like Richard Branson of Virgin Records and Virgin Airlines, and Vishen Lakhiani of Mindvalley, and Tony Robbins of, well, Tony Robbins. I absolutely love Eric’s stuff and I really trust him as a guide and so when I heard about this Product Creation Boot Camp, I felt it was exactly what I needed to give my current online Yoga Nidra training the wings that it deserved. 

A few weeks later, I holed up solo in a friend of a friend’s house in Moab, Utah for a week with little or no distractions so I could engage with this roughly 60-hour live, intensive course production training. I’m glad I did because it gave me the time and space to learn volumes, not only about how to offer my new online Yoga Nidra training in a way that it deserved, but I also had many eureka moments about the practice itself, not to mention great illumination about myself. 

But we all know that learning and doing are very different things. One of the things that makes Eric Edmeads such a remarkable facilitator of online courses is his ability to inspire people to follow through and finish the damn thing! This Product Creation Boot Camp course was no different. He promised that for anyone who could finish their project by October 15th, they would be entered into a contest to win 1 of three spots on an Instagram Live event to help bring a broader audience to their project. 

I wanted one of those spots badly, so I immediately came home from Moab and got to work. I spent weeks completing and fine-tuning my 120-page outline and working on the course details. I soon realized that it was waaaaaay more work than I had anticipated. 

About 10 days before the October 15th deadline, my wife and I were sitting outside early one morning during our daily coffee date when my wife asked, “Are you going to make your deadline?” With a pang of disappointment I told her that I thought it would be too difficult to complete in time: I had to film, edit, and compress about 35 hours of lectures, record 25 Yoga Nidra recordings, create multiple PDFs—oh and build a site and upload all of my content on Teachable, a site for online courses which I had never used before. So, no. This project was too big. I could finish in a month or two maybe, just not in time for the deadline. 

She looked at me in the eyes and in not so many words essentially told me to get my ass inside and get to work. So I did. 

Something you need to know about me is that I’m stupidly optimistic. Despite my unrealistic hope for the impossible, completing this project seemed beyond even my warped conception of possible. Regardless, for the next 10 days I put my head down and cranked out 12 to 18-hour days working on this project. During the process, I’d get a momentary glimpse of hope, that maybe, just MAYBE, I might be able to finish. Then, that hope would fade as new issues or problems arose. I’d continue to work through those issues and hope would return, then fade, and return … all the way to the date of the deadline. I was a wreck!

To qualify for the chance to have an IG Live spot with Eric I needed to submit my completed project by 10pm on October 14th. At EXACTLY 10pm on the 14th, I pushed send and submitted my project. Done. It was a fucking miracle, the product of raw, stubborn, and dumb persistence. Thanks to my wife who could see something inside of me that I couldn’t see myself. 

I took a day or so to rest and be a dad again. 

Then, a few days later, to my complete astonishment and surprise I was informed that I was one of the three chosen to be featured in Eric’s Instagram Live feed!!! I did the happy dance until my legs were exhausted. I’m still doing the happy dance. Mostly, I am thrilled to have been pushed by something to finish what I feel is a worthy and much-needed project, one that ended up being much bigger than I had expected but which I feel is to the scope that it deserves. 

So, what’s in this new course? 

There’s something for everyone, regardless if you want to teach Yoga Nidra. One of the things that Eric taught me to offer in all courses was to answer the questions, “what,” “why,” and “what if,” as well as “how.” I believe that to be a good teacher of any subject, you need to deliver the message from your own assimilated experience and not as a rote version of your teacher. I believe that you gotta learn for yourself the “what” and “why” before you learn the “how.” That way, you’ll eventually find your own way to do it and when you do you’ll be more impactful. 

By addressing the “what” and “why” of Yoga Nidra separate from the “how” to teach it, I realized that I actually have not one but TWO courses— one for those who are interested in receiving the vast array of benefits from the practice including healing from stress, sleeplessness, and self-limiting beliefs as well as learning about Yoga Nidra’s power to help you to source the power that is already inside of you to live an extraordinary life, and another vast course for those who wish to take the information of the first course and leverage it to learn how to expertly share it with the world. 

The first course is called Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep. This go-at-your-own-pace course is about waking up to who you really are. It uses Yoga Nidra to help you remember and experience your birthright of infinite power. Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep helps you to deeply relax while you gain a universal perspective about your life to experience it as miraculous, extraordinary, and rich. In this course, you will learn about waking up from the beautiful and necessary illusions of body, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and circumstantial happiness. It guides you to wake up to an eternal joy that is fundamental to your being and helps you arrive at a cosmic perspective of life’s problems. This course helps you to truly experience yourself as Oneness. In addition, you’ll also be receptive to the vast other possible benefits of the practice including but not limited to less stress, better sleep, decreased anxiety and depression, increased self-confidence, lowered blood pressure, increased production, creativity, and learning. This course is about creating some YOU time for yourself. It is relaxing, illuminating, empowering, and fun.

Contained in Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep is a curriculum of relaxing Yoga Nidra practices, energizing breathing practices, and focusing mindfulness practices before and after fun and engaging teaching lectures. You get a copious library of resources to support your journey including: Yoga Nidra recordings, breathing practices, mindfulness practices, gentle yoga videos, links, PDFs, podcasts, blog posts, and more. 

The second course expands greatly on the first and is called Facilitating Transformation with the Yoga of Sleep. This follows up the foundational “what” and “why” of the first course with essential information with the “how” of to teach it. This course uses Yoga Nidra, pranayama and mindfulness practices, PDFs and detailed lectures to lead you step-by-step toward not only how to create your own effective Yoga Nidra classes and scripts, but how to so with your OWN voice to truly facilitate Yoga Nidra as an expert in only the way that YOU can. 

In this course, I share the essential tools, tactics, and roadmaps to guide you to being a truly effective teacher, not as a rote version of me but with your own voice. In this course, I teach:

• The role of the teacher and how to create an effective teaching container.

• The Yoga Nidra Roadmap: how to create an engaging, relaxing experience that meets the specific needs of your students. 

• 15 essential tools and tactics to teach effective Yoga Nidra classes and write Yoga Nidra scripts.

• How to connect the dots to build a Yoga Nidra class or write scripts using your own voice.

• Onboard and leading 1:1 led and dyad practices and even teach you how to self-practice. 

• The science and magic behind how Yoga Nidra facilitates healing so you can benefit the needs of yourself and your students.

But it doesn’t stop there… Most yoga and Yoga Nidra courses only instruct you how to teach a class. Not this one. As a career yoga and Yoga Nidra instructor with almost 20 years of experience, a former yoga studio owner, and the owner of a registered Yoga School that has taught graduated hundreds of yoga and Yoga Nidra students, I recognize the unfair gap between someone who is new or newer to the industry and someone who has 2 decades of experience. I want to share what’s taken me thousands of dollars of personal and business coaching and the blood, sweat, and tears of almost 2 decades of trial and error in this industry to help you catch your stride in a fraction of the time it took me. This course gives you the actionable, practical, and real-life information about how to really go out and share Yoga Nidra with the world like a boss. 

This is why after learning how to teach Yoga Nidra effectively, I also offer and several additional modules about how to: 

• Generate interest for Yoga Nidra in the yoga studio, community, and online. 

• Format and price classes, workshops, courses.

• Teach online with easy, effective and inexpensive tech, Zoom classes and workshops, audio recordings, etc. 

• Conduct private 1:1 and group sessions and courses.

• Organize and execute fun and engaging yoga retreats. Give yourself a paid vacation and make a huge impact for your students

• Make Yoga Nidra accessible to your students with non-racist non-sexist language, in teaching and marketing

• Support your students with added value of recordings, follow up, and integration tips. 

I even provide a video series with 5 career-building tools that you can start using today to build your own “Mechanism of Influence” that allows you to make a global impact while also making a great living. These are tips that I usually reserve for my 1:1 mentor students which have helped make my career. In truth, the tuition for the course is worth just this module alone!

In both courses, I feature something really remarkable. While taking Eric Edmead’s course, I realized something extraordinary about the way that I teach Yoga Nidra. It was so intuitive and behind-the-scenes to my own experience that I didn’t even recognize that it was happening. Through a mental exercise, I realized that I get the same calming and cosmically-illuminating  experience whether I’m practicing, writing about, or teaching Yoga Nidra. I realize that after putting in the more than 10k hours to become an expert in this subject, I have developed a unique ability to teach Yoga Nidra while in the very state I’m facilitating for my students. I’ve had some incredibly beautiful and illuminating revelations while teaching. This is huge! 

So, in both of these courses, I teach you how to use the Yoga Nidra state of mind to facilitate your learning of the subject. In the teachers course, I even teach you how to get yourself into state while teaching Yoga Nidra so that you can lead the experience from the place you’re inviting your students to experience. In such a state, you cannot teach a bad class. This technique is revolutionary and I can’t wait to share it with you!

My stuff is going live and I can’t wait for you to check it out. Regardless if you are interested in these courses, I’d be honored if you would please tune in to watch my interview with Eric Edmeads on Thursday, November 12th at 8:30 am MST (10:30 am EST). 

I hope you’ll also check out my two courses which I am so so so so excited about. I’m confident that you will love them while also gaining much needed relaxation and learning volumes about yourself and the Universe in the process. 

Yoga Nidra: What and Why, Training and Scripts

What Is Yoga Nidra and Why Practice It?

Yoga Nidra is the yoga of sleep. It’s goal is samadhi, experiencing yourself as Oneness and achieves this through a method of entering the Nidra mind state, the in-between state of waking and dreaming, through systematized relaxation and layered Awareness. I offer online Yoga Nidra trainings to help people learn to write their own Yoga Nidra Scripts and make a powerful impact in the world through this transformational practice.

What Is The Goal of Yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidra is the meditative process of learning to identify yourself as Awareness itself. By layering your Awareness systematically through the maya koshas, or layers of illusion— what we typically identify as “us” such as body, emotions etc.— we come to experience our infinite Self, our True Self, that of Awareness itself.

Source is Awareness— the fundamental Grand Singularity of the Universe. It’s what’s all around us, it’s in everything, it’s our origin. It’s where we came from before we were born and where we go after we die. Yoga Nidra is a relaxing method of exploring all the things we might be aware of, to feel them pointing us to experience our innate purity and consciousness, to Awareness itself.

Since Source, Awareness itself, is omnipotent (can do anything), omnipresent (all present), and omniscient (all knowing), with practices such as Yoga Nidra, when you align with your True Self, that of Awareness itself, you experience your birthright of your own fundamental and innate wholeness, the wholeness of Source. This wholeness is not dependent on time, events, circumstances, or conditions. It just is. Therefore, the byproduct of experiencing your fundamental wholeness through Awareness practices like Yoga Nidra, is healing in body, mind, and spirit After all, wholeness is synonymous with healed. Mostly importantly, what heals inside of us is the fundamental human malady—one which transcends all civilizations, time, and technology— which is the false notion of being separate from Source.

Gayatri Mantra suggests that if we were to understand that everything comes from Source, we’d understand that we are no different than the very thing we seek.

Up-leveling Your Consciousness: Waking Up with The Yoga of Sleep

Yoga Nidra is a process of leveraging your mind state and to evolve your stages of consciousness to achieve this understanding as mentioned in the Gayatri Mantra. Its systematic relaxation and method of layered Awareness helps to down-regulate your nervous system providing deep rest while simultaneously accessing certain brainwave states which can put practitioners into a flow state. Mostly, Yoga Nidra puts people into the Nidra state (low alpha, high theta) which acts like a secret doorway to experience the part of you that exists beyond your rational, linear thinking. It’s the doorway into your infinite Self.

Though Nidra means sleep, it’s more about learning to wake up. Yoga Nidra helps us wake up from the illusions of our false identities, and helps us wake up to the truth, that we are Source itself that what we are fundamentally is Awareness.

Unlike other forms of meditation, Yoga Nidra encourages relaxation—indeed it’s the driver for this expansive state of consciousness. Unlike other forms of meditation, practitioners are not trying to focus the mind at the exclusion of other stimuli. Instead, in Yoga Nidra one learns to welcome each object that arises into one’s field of Awareness, recognize it for what it is, and merely be the witness of it. These objects could arise either by the facilitator’s suggestion or may occur spontaneously. Objects can be internal or external, physical, mental, or emotional, and each exists as another yet beautiful pointer, constantly pointing to this moment, enticing Awareness to know itself through all that it can be aware of.

Ultimately, we have the pleasure and responsibility to apply the Awareness we reveal during practices like Yoga Nidra into the day-to-day reality of our human lives. With this greater Awareness it feels as if the colors have been turned up in our life. With this greater Awareness we become more present to the miraculousness of even the mundane. With this greater Awareness, we see everyone and everything around us as a constant reminder to wake up to the truth: that we exist inside the eternal pocket of perfection.

One of the great things about Yoga Nidra is that you gain the benefits of this profound and transformation practice regardless of whether or not you’re seeking to “wake up.” Yoga Nidra is such a powerful practice because its benefits are so readily available, even if you’ve never experienced meditation, mindfulness, or yoga. All one has to do is lie down, close their eyes, relax, and practice witnessing whatever arises into one’s field of attention. You don’t even need to call it yoga or Nidra or anything. Call it guided napping!

Benefits of Yoga Nidra

Both empirical studies as well as countless anecdotal stories point to the benefits of Yoga Nidra. The benefits of regularly experiencing Yoga Nidra and the systematized and prolonged state of Awareness, include but are not limited to:

• Better sleep

• Concentrated rest: for all of us but especially the chronically under-rested

• Managing emotions—stress, depression/anxiety

• Eliminating compulsions & addictions

• Healing self-limiting beliefs

• Reprogramming the unconscious mind

• Lowering blood pressure

• Calming the mind

• Building confidence

• Improving your mood

• Healing trauma

• Managing grief

• Clarity and perspective over problems

• Massively increased learning, creativity, and productivity

• Spiritual advancement

• Healing physical, energetic, emotional, and spiritual maladies

As facilitators of Yoga Nidra, we have a great opportunity by sharing this practice: we get the chance to wake up to our own innate perfection while helping others do likewise. Through many years of practice and teaching, I realize that facilitating the practice is itself a deep practice of Awareness, replete with all the same benefits. Again, regardless if enlightenment is on your radar or not, the world desperately needs the aforementioned benefits of the practice…and whether practitioners are looking for it or not, they’ll get the enlightenment part too.

While practicing YN is easy, learning to teach it effectively and skillfully is difficult. I’ve dedicated the last 12 years of my life to exploring this fascinating and crucial mode of self-discovery. I’ve written and published a book, I offer regular trainings, classes, and workshops around the world as well as online, I write about Yoga Nidra in online journals, magazines, and my blog. I practice Yoga Nidra regularly and I’m thinking about Yoga Nidra ALL. THE. TIME.

Yoga Nidra has taught me more about myself and the Universe than any other practice and I’m thrilled for the opportunity to sharing some of my experience and knowledge with you.

Yoga Nidra Training: Learn to Make Your Own Yoga Nidra Scripts

Over the years I’ve learned a few things about Yoga Nidra and today, I’d like to explore some of the key elements to this fascinating practice to help give you some of the tools to create your own transformational practices in the form of Yoga Nidra scripts, both for yourself and others.

My intention for doing Yoga Nidra trainings to help you find YOUR voice as you facilitate powerful transformation for yourself and the world through Yoga Nidra classes and scripts.

Reading someone else's script can be good, sometimes even great. I’ve created a book of Yoga Nidra scripts. But your true power lies within your ability to facilitate this practice with your own voice. I want to teach you some of the tools and tips to access your true power of transformation through the fascinating practice of writing Yoga Nidra scripts.

I can tell you from experience that by crafting well thought out scripts, you’ll find yourself also transforming in the process.

Yoga Nidra for Stress

Want to find an easy, effective, and enduring solution to stress? Perhaps you’re even interested in helping others reduce the stress in their lives? Well, tonight, I’m offering a live online Yoga Nidra class devoted to stress and this weekend, I’m hosting a workshop on how to write your own Yoga Nidra scripts to help people with stress, sleeplessness, grief, or any other topic.

Stress. We all have it. What to do about it … that doesn’t involve avoidance techniques such as binge watching Netflix, drinking, and eating Ben and Jerry’s by the truckload?

Yoga Nidra, the yoga of sleep, is a great alternative to mind-numbing dumbness and, potentially, Type 2 diabetes. Yoga Nidra is a form of guided meditation that uses layered Awareness and systematic relaxation to put you into a mind state called Nidra, the space between waking and dreaming consciousness.

Yoga Nidra for Stress

What world-renowned psychologists like Joseph Wolpe discovered is that you cannot be stressed and relaxed at the same time. Furthermore, getting comfortable with the ability to regularly enter the Nidra state, helps to strengthen your ability to practice merely witnessing what would otherwise be a stressor. Over time, such practices help you become increasingly less triggered by the same stimulus that would otherwise send you straight for Netflix and diabetes.

It’s easy to do. All you have to do is show up, close your eyes, and I’ll take it from there. Practicing it doesn’t require any previous experience. In truth, you don’t even need to stay awake for it to be effective. Besides, I always make a recording so you can practice at home and perhaps catch anything you missed on your subsequent meditations.

It’s nice to have a resource like Yoga Nidra recordings on your phone that you can tune into whenever you wish.

Please join me tonight for Yoga Nidra for Stress Zoom 6–7:15 pm MDT. Even if the time doesn’t work for you to join live, you can still watch/listen to the recordings later.

Yoga Nidra Training

While practicing Yoga Nidra is super relaxing and easy, guiding others through this transformative practice can be difficult. That’s why I offer a Yoga Nidra online training, and am also offering a LIVE YOGA NIDRA SCRIPT WRITING WORKSHOP this Saturday, 9–11 am MDT on Zoom. Again, I’ll be recording it so you can watch it later if you can’t make it live. Learn to write your own scripts! Click here for details.

I hope to see you tonight and/or this weekend for some great Yoga Nidra instruction!

Yoga Nidra Script Writing Workshop

Yoga Nidra Scripts Workshop

Yoga Nidra Script Workshop

I hope your week is starting off well, full of opportunities, broad perspective, and loving the world. 

We all have different ways of loving the world. One of the ways I love the world is by teaching Yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra has changed my life. It's made me understand the world and MYSELF to such a deep and profound way, I believe the rest of my life will be dedicated to this practice. 

Yoga Nidra is a mindful inquiry to know your deepest being through the practice of layered Awareness and relaxation. While it acts as a pathway to awakening, the practical applications and benefits are extensive. Even if you don't speak "Awakening," Yoga Nidra is an excellent resource to manage stress, get better sleep, support emotions, and to give you a beautiful perspective on your life. 

Practicing Yoga Nidra is easy—all you do is lie down and listen to a teacher help you pay attention to all the parts of your being like body, thoughts, emotions, etc. to see that while you have those elements, what you truly are is much bigger than those elements. Ultimately, the practice is a profound and relaxing way of understanding yourself as Awareness itself. 

While practicing Yoga Nidra is easy, teaching this transformational practice is complex. It requires a deep understanding of the underlying principles and tools to effectively facilitate transformation. This is why I’ve created my online Yoga Nidra teacher training program and why I’ve written over 100 pages of scripts, to help teachers lead effective Yoga Nidra classes. 

One of the biggest requests I get from people who want to offer Yoga Nidra is to learn how to write their OWN Yoga Nidra scripts. People across the globe are hungry to learn how to use the principles, tools, and philosophy of this ancient practice to help create specific transformation for others. 

Yoga Nidra Script Workshop: When & Where

So, this weekend, Sat. 31st, 2020 9–11 am MDT , I’ll be hosting an online workshop all about how to create your very own Yoga Nidra scripts, using the tools and format that I’ll show you to capture your own voice to make a lasting impact with this fascinating practice. 

I’ll be recording it so if you can’t make the time, you’ll be welcome to watch it later. 

In this interactive, fun, and informative workshop, we will explore the key elements of writing your own Yoga Nidra scripts including:

• How to create scripts for healing, performance, presence, and peace.

• The Yoga Nidra Roadmap

• The magic words that guide Awareness

• Which words to avoid and why

• How to structure your script for general purpose

• Pace and rhythm: ow to use the rhythm of your voice  to facilitate mind state change (Nidra state)

• How the Koshas act as destinations for Awareness

• How and when to use visualizations

This workshop will happen over zoom. You’ll receive essential materials about the key principles of Yoga Nidra and how to use those to write an effective Yoga Nidra script.

If you’re interested in Yoga Nidra, I think you’ll find this workshop very beneficial. I’d love to have you join me. 

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Yoga Nidra Teacher Training

Fascinated with Yoga Nidra? Consider my instant access digital download Yoga Nidra training! You’ll love the discussions, the practices, and the deep dive into your True Being! Do this for YOU. This is a solid training. And, if you’ve ever thought of learning this incredible science and art, now’s the time. I’m putting the finishing touches on my ALL NEW program that is going to be so much MORE incredible than my already wonderful training. For everyone who purchases my existing program they will get the new, more amazing one, for FREE, and save hundreds of dollars.

You may register and pay for the training here. When you do, you will receive an immediate download to access the course and start your journey today. You’ll love how versatile this course is. You’ll also love the informative and helpful manual which is 60+ pages instruction, tools, links, discussion points, a Yoga Nidra road map for teaching, chants, and even some supportive mindfulness and pranayama techniques that you can print off and give to your students. PLUS, you’ll receive over a 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts so that you can start to study and practice teaching effective and helpful Yoga Nidra practices right away. The scripts in addition to the audio/video course which explains what Yoga Nidra is and how to effectively teach it, will set you apart as a Yoga Nidra facilitator, able to teach authentically from your own voice according to the essential principles of the fascinating and expansive practice of Yoga Nidra.