Teach Yoga Nidra: Specialized

I love getting emails from people who are curious about my live or online Yoga Nidra teacher training program, Facilitating Transformation with the Yoga of Sleep. Usually, they ask one of two questions:

1. How is my program different from other Yoga Nidra training programs?

2. How do someone create a Yoga Nidra class for a very specific need?

Most Yoga Nidra teacher trainings leave you with only a small set of limited Yoga Nidra scripts to teach. These can be kinda nice but fall way short of fulfilling the specific needs of clients or students. My program also provides you scripts (over 100 pages of them, in fact) but they are designed to be used as guides as you are finding your own voice, templates that prepare you to design and effectively teach your own specialized Yoga Nidra classes, unique for the needs of their clients. My program is designed to first give you a personal relationship with the practice then teach you the principles and roadmaps to effectively build and teach your own classes. Even more, my program is different because it teaches you to speak from the power of your own voice, the way they would say it, and not as a version of me.

It's common for a Yoga Nidra teacher training, it’s common to learn to teach a basic Yoga Nidra class that leaves you feeling rested. But how does one tap the power of Yoga Nidra to make specific transformational change?

For example, how does one teach a Yoga Nidra class for insomnia? How is it different from a Yoga Nidra class for stress? What about designing a class to help with self-esteem, depression, or setting and accomplishing goals? What about Yoga Nidra for managing pain, clarifying your purpose, sourcing your own inner wisdom, or building your confidence? How is Yoga Nidra for kids different from Yoga Nidra for adults?

What are the specialized Yoga Nidra classes you want and need to teach to your students and clients?

And here’s the real kicker: Because of your unique perspective on, understanding of, and experience with the needs of the people in your sphere—be that of a school, community, or certain population— you are the most qualified and effective person to serve their needs. Your people desperately NEED you to learn how to effectively meet these unique needs with essential, accessible, and transformational practices like Yoga Nidra. And, unfortunately, you can’t do that with someone else’s script. You gotta learn to do that yourself. But, luckily, I’m here to help.

I’m really excited about a workshop I’m hosting on Saturday April 23rd via Zoom that will teach you exactly how to design your own specialized Yoga Nidra classes and to deliver them in the power of your own voice. It’s called Teaching Specialized Yoga Nidra. I would love you to join me. It’s an investment into yourself and an investment in your community.

When: Saturday, April 23rd 9 am to 12 pm MDT or 5:00–8:00 pm CET via Zoom. Counts as Yoga Alliance continuing education credit. Click here for details and/or read on to hear more of the back story.

My Journey of Teaching Yoga Nidra

So, I completed my first Yoga Nidra teacher training in 2008. As I started teaching Yoga Nidra, I quickly became frustrated as a teacher because I knew from personal experience just how powerful Yoga Nidra could be, but it soon became clear that I wasn’t nearly as prepared to teach Yoga Nidra as I needed to be.

First, I couldn’t make the impact I wanted to because the scripts I was given in my training were far too general—they didn’t meet my clients’ specific needs, and I was never taught how to deliver customized Yoga Nidra.

What any experienced teacher can tell you is that good teaching doesn’t come in one-size-fits-all.

Second, my Yoga Nidra training didn’t teach me how to leverage my own voice, so my teaching didn’t feel authentic and my students could tell. I knew I could make a bigger impact if I could teach from my own voice, experience, specialization, and interest, but I hadn’t a clue how to do this.

Third, though I’d had beautiful and transformational experiences with Yoga Nidra, many of my yoga students found Yoga Nidra to be, well… too boring. They may have enjoyed it the first time, but hearing the same tired script over and over again was putting people to sleep...in the wrong way.

But, my early struggles facilitating Yoga Nidra turned out to be an enormous gift, because it taught me that this ancient practice was in no way designed to be a rote experience. My struggles in teaching drove me to dive deeper in my studies and to practice more Yoga Nidra. And doing so, I learned volumes about the essential principles of this fascinating practice.

Soon, I began incorporating these principles into my Yoga Nidra classes, now with the ability to innovate, adapt, and deliver profound Yoga Nidra experiences that were customized to my clients’ needs. My teaching became fresh, authentic, engaging, and transformational. And faster than you can say “savasana on steroids,” my Yoga Nidra classes, workshops, and courses were packed. Even my clients who were previously bored by my Yoga Nidra classes came back to stay.

Since then, I have facilitated thousands of hours of Yoga Nidra for my clients, and this beautiful practice continues to reveal deeper and deeper transformation, both for my clients as well as myself, more than I ever realized was possible in those early days of teaching. I even discovered how teaching Yoga Nidra itself is a pathway to greater learning and spiritual awakening.

My approach to Yoga Nidra caught the eye of other yoga teachers and it wasn’t long before I developed a novel teacher training program, Facilitating Transformation with the Yoga of Sleep where I teach that once you have a deeper understanding of what the principles and techniques of Yoga Nidra are pointing to, you can deliver them in any context for any client, using the unparalleled power of your own voice.

Learning to Meet The Needs of Your Students

Your ability to customize Yoga Nidra practices for your clients is central to the design of my Yoga Nidra training.

In addition to teaching the fundamentals of this powerful yet gentle practice, I’m passionate about helping teachers learn how to use Yoga Nidra to meet the specific needs of their clients. I love the diversity of the people who take my Yoga Nidra training, all with different applications of the practice.

Check out all the ways people are using Yoga Nidra with their students, clients, and kids …

• One graduate of my program uses Yoga Nidra in her family law practice to help her clients be calm and centered as they are going through often very emotional legal proceedings.

• One of the teachers I mentor brilliantly uses Yoga Nidra to help her with her specialized work with the neurodiverse population, people who work with ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s, etc.

• Another graduate is using this practice with her high school students to help them manage the incredible stress of placement tests, the challenges of COVID, and of course the hurricane of hormones running through their teenage bodies.
  A recent graduate of my Yoga Nidra program who is a licensed therapist here in France is using Yoga Nidra to help her clients work through trauma.

• A different licensed therapist, this one lives in the States and specializes as a sex therapist, uses Yoga Nidra to help her clients work through shame, body dysmorphia, and to rewire harmful programing around sexuality.

• One graduate uses Yoga Nidra to help those who have lost loved ones work through grief.

• Another teacher uses Yoga Nidra to help world-class artists regularly enter into a state of creative flow.

The applications are limitless! and I’m so proud to be helping people learn to help others with the accessible and powerful practice of Yoga Nidra.

Whether you're a yoga or meditation teacher, a coach, teacher, or therapist, or any role in supporting others, Yoga Nidra can be a very powerful yet accessible tool to help you make transformational change for others.

My level 1 training (50 hrs.) focuses on developing your personal relationship with Yoga Nidra then teaches you how to apply your personal knowledge of the practice to serve the needs of both yourself and your students.

I’m currently busy building the curriculum for my level 2 training which will incorporate even more specialized information and practices centered around helping you become a master facilitator at Yoga Nidra, meeting the specific and varied needs of your clients.

My Teaching Specialized Yoga Nidra Classes workshop on April 23rd draws from the curriculum of my level 2 training and I’m excited to share it with you before it’s even available in my level 2 training.

You are most welcome to this workshop whether or not you’ve already taken my Yoga Nidra training. The Teaching Specialized Yoga Nidra workshop will serve as a great preview course if you are curious about my level 1 Yoga Nidra teacher training, Facilitating Transformation with the Yoga of Sleep. This workshop will also serve those who have already taken my training and would like more practice with this essential skill.

And, for anyone who takes this workshop and also decides to take my full teacher training program or who registers for my level 2 training, I’ll deduct the price of this course from either training.

Perhaps the best and most empowering thing about this workshop is that you get to bring your ideas for a Yoga Nidra class to the workshop so that we can build them together. This will be so cool!

You’ll leave this workshop with:

• Confidence in knowing how to build your specialized Yoga Nidra class

• Understanding of the Yoga Nidra Roadmap to guide your journey

• Surety of how to build a class using the Class Building Template

• Guidance from over 100 pages of scripts to use as templates as you build your own Yoga Nidra classes

• Personalized attention for your projects from myself as well as your with breakout sessions with your peers

• Organization in the form of a manual outlining the discussion points, maps, and resources

• Ideas of new and exciting Yoga Nidra classes the world needs to hear from you
  

The workshop will be live, on Zoom, and recorded and sent as a replay to give you maximum flexibility in how you take this workshop.

When: Saturday, April 23rd 9 am to 12 pm MDT or 5:00–8:00 pm CET via Zoom.

I hope you'll join me.

Missed Busses and Unexpected Opportunities

The button on my latest newsletter is accidentally linked to this page. Click above to listen to the post and click here to read it.

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How are you? I hope your week is starting well.  How is the spring showing up where you are? Are the blossoms popping on the trees where you live?

Here in Nice, France it’s been a little rainy and cool but very fresh and the new blossoms are making this already beautiful landscape even more breathtaking. I love this time of year because of the fresh air, newness, and rebirth that spring offers. 

This weekend we found ourselves on an unexpected adventure. We had intentions to take a bus journey to visit La Turbie, a quaint village perched in the rocky and verdant cliffs overlooking the Ligurian sea. About an hour's bus ride away, Sen had read about La Turbie’s medieval village as well as some ancient Roman ruins and we thought it’d be cool to see. Plus, hidden away up there in those cliffs is supposed to be a boulangerie that serves the best baguette in the region. We had to go.

Before heading out on our bus journey, we decided to get an espresso at the quaint little café and boulangerie we used to live above a few years ago, the one that would wake us up every morning with the heavenly scent of freshly-baked croissants. Though we hadn’t been to this café for a few years, the owner still recognized us and we were able to catch up a little as I ordered our coffee. 

One thing that I found so heart warming and incredibly human while we were sitting and enjoying our croissants and espresso, was how people (complete strangers, mind you) would come into the cafe, a small place of maybe 6 or seven tables, and upon entering, they’d address the entire café with a polite, “Bonjour, messieurs-dames.” They’d also offer a happy, “Au revoir!” as they were leaving, and on both occasions, everyone would stop their conversations at their table to respond.

I love this culture which often celebrates conscious connectivity as the default instead of indifferent individualism. I experience this phenomenon of addressing the room of people you’re entering or exiting in the doctor's office, on the bus, and even while standing in various states of undress in the locker room at the gym. 

After our coffees, we walked to the bus stop to make our way to La Turbie but when our first bus blew by us without stopping (obviously didn’t get the memo on conscious connection) and our alternate bus didn’t stop where we had intended, we found ourselves exiting the bus in Monaco and decided by default that we’d spend the afternoon enjoying lunch and going to a rather fantastic little Zoo instead. Our original plans of blue-ribbon baguettes and Roman Ruins were dashed revealing a fantastic alternative of aperitifs and armadillos. 

What a great lesson for life, right? I firmly believe in the practice of having an intention and direction in life and all our endeavors but not holding so firmly to them that you’re not present to the unforeseen opportunities that may arise along the way. I like to call that the cosmic chess game.

This story of missing our bus and ending up in Monaco illustrates one of the greatest principles of my work: as life’s unintentional circumstances occur, how do we maintain the kind of presence to see the hidden opportunities embedded in the situation? The part about people practicing conscious connection illustrates one of the greatest principles of Seneca’s work, namely how the quality of people’s lives is determined by the quality of their connections with others. 

We were discussing both of these principles just the other day a fantastic Italian café very close to our son’s school (I know, the entire country is cobbled together with magical little cafés). How is it that the Italians make the best coffee?!  Anyway, it’s common that I’ll drop off my son at school and then go there to enjoy a real cappuccino while writing in my journal and practicing my Italian in preparation for my Tucany yoga retreat later this year. 

Well, the other day, Seneca and I were enjoying coffee together at our Italian café and savoring the warmth of a heart-felt conversation about our own personal growth and our relationship and how much both of those intersect with our work. 

Our conversation reminded me how much I feel like my work of teaching meditation and yoga is really just me processing and learning what it means to be a happy and functional human being. In other words, I’m basically preaching what I’m practicing. Back in the day, sometimes upon entering my therapist’s office she would say, “I know what we are going to talk about today because you wrote about it in your newsletter.” Ha! 

The conversation I had with Seneca in the Italian café that day was a real gift to be in many ways including helping me to clarify exactly what my intentions are for my work. My intention in my career is to offer yoga and meditation to help you live your extraordinary life. That means taking you from feeling unwell, tired, or achey in your body, to being able to go on that hike with abundant energy, practically leaping up the trail, feeling as alive as the wilderness around you. It means transforming from that old mental feeling of being exhausted, stressed, and limited to your most natural mind state of feeling full of calm and alert, full of optimism, possibilities, and creativity. It means going from feeling a lack of spiritual connection, from feeling that your existence is meaningless or ambiguous, to feeling a beautiful and tangible connection to all beings with a sense of awe and wonder. 

In a phrase, really what I hope to do in my work is to help you savor your beautiful life. 

Thank you for your part in supporting me in my work. It’s a true honor to be on this journey with you!

And I’m not the only one in the house who tries to help people discover the innate perfection within. Our conversation at the Italian café also turned to Seneca’s work. So what does Seneca do? Well, she’s the founder of a coaching and consulting firm that provides transformational group facilitation and 1:1 coaching to high-growth-potential women in the areas of leadership, impact, authentic confidence, creativity, and emotional thriving. 

Incredible, right?

Seneca believes our relationships are one of the greatest vehicles for personal development and upward change on the planet. During our conversation, she mentioned how much she appreciates how much her work highlights the fact that our relationships are our superpowers and how much our quality of life hinges upon our relationships. Essentially, Seneca is a relationship ninja.

She’s all about helping women create deeper connections for greater success and joy in your life and to operate at a higher level for all aspects of your life. These deeper connections fulfill a greater sense of belonging, support, and take you from a feeling of reacting to and merely surviving life, to truly thriving in life. 

Like metaphorical strangers popping into the café and immediately connecting with others, she helps people employ similar principles in every aspect of their lives to practice a life that flourishes at all levels.

Again, it’s about preaching what you practice. Seneca’s work has deepened our own relationship in so many ways. When we have conflict—cuz every relationship has conflict, though some may choose to respond or react to that conflict differently—we have learned to move through it and genuinely grow closer as a result rather than simply making peace or worse, drifting apart. 

I know I’m a tad biased here but Seneca is pretty damn amazing. I really believe in who she is and what she is sharing with the world. I can’t tell you how many of her clients have stopped me when they see me so they can rave to ME about the work she’s done with them. 

Because there is such a clear overlap in our desire to help people find a greater connection to the world by creating a greater connection to themselves, I want to let you in on what Seneca offers because she’s doing something really exciting in addition to her regular 1:1 coaching and consulting. This week, she’s launching a beta version of a 4-week course that will take place in May called The Extraordinary Connection Blueprint for Women, a course for cultivating greater success and joy in life through creating deeper and more meaningful relationships. 

This course is all about creating extraordinary connections with others, so you can feel, be, and do what you came here for.

I’m immensely lucky to have Seneca as my soulmate, partner-in-crime, and wife. I’m so proud of what she’s created and I hope you’ll take a look at it. 

At the end of the day, life is full of missed buses and unforeseen opportunities. It’s about learning to connect with others and savor the warmth of heart-felt connection as we evolve into our best selves. 

Don’t miss this bus! Regardless of how you feel things have gone as planned for your life, perhaps this course is a revealed opportunity for you to explore the joy, contentment, and wellbeing inherent to your being. 

Have a wonderful week and Namaste!

What's Happening

I hope your Sunday is starting well and that you're beginning a beautifully restful day.

About a week ago, I returned to Nice, France from a really wonderful work trip to the States. I loved being back in the states hosting a Yoga Nidra training as well as other classes, projects, and workshops as well as spending time with my twin brother and friends.

That said, I’m still working through the jet lag. Mon Dieu!

I wanted to jot off a quick note to keep you au currant of one or two things that are happening TODAY and also about some beautiful adventures going down this summer which I hope you’ll seriously consider joining.

Lately, I’ve had many students ask me where they can join my classes online and whether or not I'm planning any retreats this summer.

Here are a few options you may consider …

Gentle Yoga and Meditation: A Foundation for Wellness
While I was in the States I had the pleasure of filming a gentle yoga and Yoga Nidra class with one of my favorite yoga studios in NYC, Kula Yoga Project. This was a particular pleasure for me because I resonate deeply with Kula Yoga and the founders Schuyler Grant and Nikki Vilella have been very influential. The class I filmed is a 65-minute class called Gentle Yoga and and Meditation: A Foundation for Wellness. We start seated on the mat and basically stay on the mat as we explore an intelligent seated yoga sequence of mobilization and stretching along with breathing exercises before landing in a luxurious Yoga Nidra practice. If you’d like to take this class, Kula will be offering this today, Sun. March 27th at 10 am Eastern (7 am Pacific, 8 am Mountain, 9 am Central, 3 pm UK, 4 pm Central European). I loved teaching this class and Kula does a great job filming classes. Check it out!

Weekly Yoga Nidra Class
Next, today I’ll be hosting my weekly Yoga Nidra class at 9 am Mountain (8 am Pacific, 10 am Central, 11 am Eastern, 4 pm UK, and 5 pm Central European). Each week we explore a theme related to Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep. We explore what it means to wake up to your ultimate potential through this relaxing and illuminating practice of Yoga Nidra. Today, we’ll explore the idea of disentangling yourself from your ego so you can realize your true identity as Awareness which empowers you to remarry your every-day life in a way that turns the colors of your life up to 11. As always, we’ll do a few gentle poses and some breathing exercises before we settle into a nice and extended Yoga Nidra practice. Each participant will get access to both the live class as well as the replay. You can either pay for a drop-in, buy a pass, begin your monthly subscription.

Yoga Retreat in Bordeaux of Tuscany This Summer
Lastly, never before in the last 2 years has traveling to Europe been so accessible. Yes, Covid still lingers and the crisis happening in Ukraine is worrisome, yet despite all of that, travel is still the easiest it's been in a long time. Perhaps this is the year to join me for one of my European yoga adventures, either to Bordeaux, France (June 5–11), or to Tuscany, Italy (October 8–15). I've even planned extra days to tack onto the retreat in case you want to join me for some spectacular walking tours through some of Europe's most historic and beautiful cities, Paris and Florence, respectively.

In truth, I already sold out retreats to both Bordeaux and Tuscany so I booked additional dates to both locations. Currently, there are still spots in each retreat but they are expected to fill up so please grab your bestie and make your deposit to reserve your spot. Airfare prices may go up soon so you might want to book your spot soon. I'd love to have you join me!

So, whatever you may or may not have planned for today, I hope you have a wonderful Sunday! If it works for you to connect with me for my class with Kula, my weekly Yoga Nidra class, or for a retreat this summer, I'd be absolutely thrilled.

Live Classes in SLC and NYC

I landed in a snowy Salt Lake City on Tuesday and am loving the change of scenery from sunny French Riviera to Snowy Wasatch Mountains. It warms my heart to be back home and see so many family and friends. Also, I started my Yoga Nidra Immersion and teacher training yesterday which is going great. It's thrilling to me to be able to practice and discuss what it means to Wake Up with the Yoga of Sleep.

While I'm in the states, I thought it would be lovely to connect with students in-person and teach some live classes, something I've really missed during the pandemic and especially while living in France. I've arranged for some classes and workshops in Salt Lake City and New York City and would love to have you join me for any of these if you're able to.

Here's the schedule and Information:

Salt Lake City

• Friday, March 11th 6:00–7:00 am Rise and Shine at Mosaic Yoga 1991 South 1100 East, Salt Lake City, Utah 84105. Class by donation at the door.

• Friday, March 11th 7:15–8:15 am Mindfulness Meditation at Mosaic Yoga 1991 South 1100 East, Salt Lake City, Utah 84105. Class by donation at the door.

• Sunday, March 13th 9:00–10:15 am Yoga Nidra (in person and via Zoom) at InBody Yoga Academy 1597 South 1100 East Salt Lake City, Utah 84105. Register for class here

• Monday, March 14th 6–8 pm Flow and Rest Workshop at at InBody Yoga Academy 1597 South 1100 East Salt Lake City, Utah 84105. Class by donation at the door.

New York City

• Saturday, March 19th 11:00 am to 1:30 pm Rest and Renew: Restore Yoga + Yoga Nidra Pure Yoga 204 W 77th St, New York, NY 10024 Click here for more information and to register.

For all my New York friends, if you'd like to schedule a private session or even connect for coffee or a walk around the park, please reach out. I'd love to connect.

Have a wonderful week and may we all continually breathe deeply as we balance the steadiness and ease in the daily practice of life.

Namaste,

Cuttlefish, Codgers, and Cosmic Connection

I just landed in the States and it’s great to be back. I’m hosting my live in-person and Zoom Yoga Nidra training in Salt Lake City, March 9–13, a live in-person yoga class in Salt Lake City March 14th. Then, I’ll be heading to NYC for a Restore and Yoga Nidra workshop at Pure Yoga, March 19th, and a video project at Kula Yoga as well. It’s going to be a great visit and I’d really love to see you if you are anywhere near either Salt Lake City or NYC. You can see the details for all the events below.

Today, I want to explore an idea I came up with called Stereoscopic Consciousness and I’d love to hear your thoughts about this from you.

A few weeks ago, I shared a love story about Shiva and Shakti, two deities in the yoga pantheon that represent pure consciousness and form, respectively. They are fascinating symbols that can help us understand our own life and existence with beauty, perspective, and appreciation.

In my previous story called Love Notes and Chocolates, I shared how in the beginning, Shiva and Shakti existed as the only things in the Universe, compacted in the blissful ignorance of their seemingly perfect but vacuous world, one that only knew each other. But as their love for each other continually expanded, they invariably outgrew it like a caterpillar whose instincts are to evolve into her winged destiny. However, along their relationship’s journey toward flight, Shiva and Shakti experienced the pain and apparent separation of one another.

At first, they thought, “Man, if only we could have kept things the way they were, we wouldn’t be missing each other so much.” However, eventually through essential life lessons, they learned to perceive their situation with the correct perspective, one that changed their view from seeing their new state as a massive downgrade to was in truth the ultimate upgrade. Indeed they saw that the entire Universe was born as an evolution of their relationship and pulsed with the power of their love.

Shiva and Shakti evolved from a simple, singular, and flat relationship, to one that at first appeared fraught with divisiveness, separation, and pain, but which eventually revealed itself to be universal bliss and perfection, an expansion completely unfathomable to either of their imaginations.

This perfect and unimaginable world they evolved into is the world we live in now. It’s our reality.

Myths and religious stories like this are an enjoyable and insightful mode of understanding our own purpose for being. They help us understand how we too may change our perspective from seeing our life and world as one of separateness and strife and instead gain the vision to see our lives with vidya, or true sight, the clarity that all is One beautiful wholeness, beating with the steady heartbeat of love.

But how do we gain this perspective?

The other day, I took my son Elio to the magnificent Musée Océanographique de Monaco, the Monaco aquarium. We raced, 6-year-old-style, from exhibit to exhibit, marveling at sharks, cuttlefish, moray eels, and jellyfish. I even shared a moment with a nautilus; we looked into each other's eyes and both mused at what it means to be a creature in this wildly beautiful world.

I walked (kinda ran) from creature to creature, wide-eyed and in awe of this world’s Shakti dance of diversity, life, and beauty. Before we left, Elio told me that seeing the beauty of these oceanic creatures, “changed his life,” (all 6 years of it).

In addition to amazing sea creatures on display, there was also an exhibit showing all sorts of old gadgets, including an old-school “view-finder.” Remember those red goggle-looking things that looked something like a love child between a pair of binoculars and a Poloroid camera, with a circular disc you’d insert into the top and press a button to advance pics of the “7 Wonders of The World,” or some such thing, and with each click you’d see a new photo which looked strangely 3-D? Well, the gadget on display at the museum was the great-grandpa of those little red gadgets.

Anyhoo, Elio and I took turns staring into a big, brass double-eyepiece and turned a knob, rotating sepia photographs of salty old codgers on a boat all looking like characters of themselves, corncob pipe, scowling stoic faces, and all. When you look into the eyepiece, you see a normal sort of photo but what makes it novel, even today in the age of high-def resolution and virtual reality, (this was the original VR, mind you), is that when you look at what you know is a photograph in 2-D, it somehow magically takes on a 3-D appearance. It almost makes you wonder how they got a crew of miniature sailors on the deck of a ship to fit into that little eyepiece.

This gadget uses your brain’s ability to create stereoscopic vision to make a 2-D pic appear 3-D. This happens because both eyes each register separate images of an object to your brain, but from slightly different vantage points. Your brain blends those two images together and translates the two images into one singular image and as it does, the slight differences in each picture makes the image have depth in your perception of the object. Very cool. Yet, as cool as this phenomenon is, it’s really just the process that everyone with 2 eyes sees every day.

I like to use this principle of stereoscopic vision to explain what I call Stereoscopic Consciousness. Stereoscopic Consciousness is where in a meditation like Yoga Nidra, you focus on a singular object. An object can be anything from a thing, an emotion, a thought, or something physical—anything really. After focusing on this object for a while, you switch your attention to focus on a different object for a bit. Eventually you revert your focus back to the original object, then toggle your attention back and forth between the two.

Eventually, you loosen your tight grip of focus on either one or the other and perform the seemingly impossible task of holding both objects in your awareness at the same time. The same way your brain can merge two visual images into one and create visual depth, rather perceiving it flat like a photograph, your consciousness can blend two objects and also perceive them as one thing, or rather from the perspective of Oneness. Just like your visual faculties, this experience of being aware simultaneously of two objects also produces the perception of depth, but rather than visual depth, it’s a depth of consciousness.

This exercise of perceiving two objects simultaneously brings to the foreground the part of you that IS your inherent consciousness of Source or Oneness. This is the part of you that doesn't experience the world in a binary, the world of this and that, have and have not, good or bad. The perspective is a Universal perspective of Oneness.

So, remember how earlier I was talking about how Shiva and Shakti experienced an apparent separation which served them to eventually expand into a greater consciousness and therefore give birth to the trinity, a depth capacious enough to birth the entire Universe? Well this experience of Stereoscopic Consciousness is one of the methods of experiencing what I call one’s Both And Nature. Your Both And Nature is the blending of one thing with another not to create a third thing but to create a third dimension and in that magic of the trinity, create ALL things. It’s a quantum upgrade to our concept of Self and the Universe.

Yoga Nidra is a simple, relaxing, and enjoyable way of learning to achieve our Both And Awareness so that just like Shiva and Shakti, we too can wake up the magical truth that this entire Universe, including and especially YOU, exist as a part of a great Oneness. Experiencing your own Oneness in this way helps to remind you of your inherent wholeness, purity, and the indefatigable love that is at the center of your nature.

As you remember your own wholeness, your entire life takes on a wonderfully new perspective.

You can also use this Both And Nature to find beautiful resolution in any apparent separation, conflict, or duality. Indeed, experiencing an apparent problem from the perspective of Both And, will give you a Universal perspective over an issue and help you to compassionately respond to it from your innate source of love.

What kind of dissonance, problems, or conflict are you experiencing in your life right now? Is there a Both And perspective you might be able to take that could give you a quantum resolution far greater than “this or that?”

This is a simple yet profound technique I’ll be sharing in my Yoga Nidra teacher training that starts THIS WEDNESDAY, March 9th. You can join me for either the 2-day immersion or the 5-day teacher training.

If you’d be interested in accessing your own Both And Nature to truly live an extraordinary life, as well as helping facilitate this same magic, I invite you to consider joining me either in-person in Salt Lake City, Utah, or via Zoom from the comfort of your own house.

I’d love to hear from you about your thoughts and experiences around this idea of Both And Nature.

MARCH 14TH 6–7:30 PM AT INBODY YOGA ACADEMY 1579 S. 1100 E. SLC, UT 84105

Join me for an in-person yoga class in SLC! I’ll be hosting this by-donation yoga class at InBody Yoga academy at 1597 South 1100 East, Salt Lake City, 84105.

We’ll start with a smart all-levels flow, evolve to some resting poses, and end with a lovely, relaxing Yoga Nidra.

No reservation necessary. Pay what you want at the time of the class. Just come!!

Now's The Time To Teach Yoga Nidra

Everything that is going on in the world right now shows a desperate need for more qualified facilitators who can effectively help people calm stress, achieve a feeling of meaning and purpose in the world, and live their life in a spirit of compassionate responsiveness.

Are you a yoga, meditation, school teacher? Are you a therapist, coach, or parent?

Now is the time to learn how to teach Yoga Nidra. Help yourself and others create real and lasting transformation in body, mind, and spirit, by using one of most accessible, versatile, and effective methods of mindfulness I know. You don't need to be a yoga or meditation teacher to learn how to teach Yoga Nidra.

Help yourself and others:

• Gain self-esteem

• Sleep better

• Improve relationships

• Increase spiritual connection

• Become more productive

• Become more creative

• Process trauma

• Discover their purpose for living

I’ve spent years developing and teaching my Yoga Nidra teacher training: Facilitating Transformation with the Yoga of Sleep which is said to be one of the best Yoga Nidra teacher trainings in the world by Mind is the Master and Yogi Times.

This is my best Yoga Nidra training yet and I’d LOVE to share it with you!

Details:
March 9–13, 2022. 9 am to 5 pm MST in-person in Salt Lake City, Utah or via Zoom.

All sessions are recorded in case you have to miss part or all of a session.

All participants will also get access to a 160+ page manual, 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts, and all the recordings of the entire training, as well other supportive materials.

You’ll earn Yoga Alliance continuing education credit and receive a certificate of completion upon graduation. Most of all, you’ll leave feeling prepared to teach varied and specialized Yoga Nidra practices to benefit your students using the power of your own voice rather than being a parrot of your teacher.

I only offer this live Yoga Nidra training a few times a year. Plus for the first time in 2 years, this training even has the option to join in-person, if you live in Salt Lake City, Utah. Otherwise, you can join via Zoom. Now's the time to take this training!

This course is designed to teach you to not only become a Yoga Nidra expert but to learn to deliver this healing practice in the power of your own voice— because there’s no one who can teach like you can.

One of the things I’ve learned about Yoga Nidra is that even though practicing it is very easy and can lead to profound transformation, being an effective Yoga Nidra facilitator can be very difficult. This training gives you the step-by-step techniques to become an expert.

Also, If you’ve ever taken a yoga teacher training, you likely learned a lot about the subject of teaching a yoga class, but didn’t learn much about how to take your skill out into the world and and successfully share your new skills with the world.

In my course you’ll learn how to acquire and create excellent teaching opportunities such as:

• Live private or group classes

• Online private or group classes

• Workshops and courses

• Corporate teaching and speaking opportunities

• Retreats

• Creating digital products to sell

In short, you’ll learn how to make a massive impact while making a great living doing what you love.

Here's what others are saying …

“Scott’s 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 Yoga Nidra Graduate and Meditation Teacher

“I have studied with Scott for years, and his compassion, engagement, and base of knowledge makes him one of my favorite teachers. He was one of the first teachers to teach me Yoga Nidra. So when he offered a Nidra immersion and training I jumped on it. Only ... I wasn’t in the area. I was in Michigan. I attended the training remotely - in real time, using Zoom. It worked flawlessly, and the experience was wonderful. Do not hesitate to attend remotely. You will still be a full participant and receive the full impact of Scott’s clarity and teaching skills.”

— Lesley DuTemple Yoga Nidra teacher


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

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

— Jackie Wheeler studio owner and yoga teacher

Learn to become a powerful Yoga Nidra teacher to effect great and lasting transformation for yourself and for others with this ancient, fascinating, and much-needed practice.

In addition to the live training, you’ll also get:

• Full access to my online course content ($589 value)

• Over 100 pages in Yoga Nidra scripts ($39 value)

• Dozens of specialized Yoga Nidra recordings ($199 value)

• 30-minute private consultation ($100 value)

Now is the time to help the world with the gentle and accessible yet powerful practice of Yoga Nidra. Make and impact, teach Yoga Nidra.

This training starts in a week. Please register today!

Your Life—A Peaceful Protest

What’s happening in the Ukraine right now is nothing short of horrific. Yet, as individuals, how much can we change these tragic events? Spiritually side-stepping will not save us— we can’t just sit on our meditation cushions praying for peace, hoping that someone else will do the work to make lasting global change.We must learn to be the change in the world and we must learn to do so by fundamentally changing our hearts and minds.

Creating lasting global change is up to us as individuals and relies fundamentally on our ability to stay connected to love. Lasting global change is a Trojan horse that must conquer us from the inside. First it must take our hearts, then it will take our entire lives. It won’t stop until it takes the world.

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

The old hermetic saying, “As above, so below,” illustrates the truth that 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 starting from one of its smallest parts: YOU. Your destiny is to be the cell of humanity that thrives with such vibrant wholeness that you become viral, contagious enough to heal everything around you and eventually heal the entire being of humanity. 

While we can’t meditate the world’s problems away, I would assert getting centered is of the first order. Regular deep presence illuminates your own innate goodness as well as your connection to and as Source, a connection which is synonymous with love. 

Regularly connecting to your own goodness and love through meditation, you’ll naturally recognize it in others. World peace begins with you smiling at your neighbor, practicing patience in traffic, and leaning in to meet a stranger. It continues as you practice compassion and love for people who don’t believe the same things you do. It gets really solid as you learn to even hang out with your own family and decide not to make them wrong, even when they push every button you possess. 

As you do these truly simple but honestly world-changing actions, you’ll do so rooted in the power of your highest being, pure presence and love. You will be part of spreading a hyper-contagious condition that will eradicate the global pandemic of tit-for-tat.

To love without condition is the most radical protest of all. 

Yet, the first step toward wholeness isn’t creating different actions but creating a different level of consciousness.

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

— Albert Einstein

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

We must learn to change our mind, then we can learn to change our hearts. Then, we can change the world. 

By far, I feel that the most effective and enjoyable method of changing our mind for lasting personal and global change is Yoga Nidra, the so-called “yoga of sleep.” It starts by a relaxing change to your state of consciousness and with regular practice eventually helps you uplevel your stage of consciousness. 

Yoga Nidra is like getting a regular update to your mental and spiritual operating systems.

Indeed among the most spiritual moments of my life, when I’ve been overcome with powerful and enduring love for all of humanity, have come as the result of sourcing the limitless and loving consciousness within myself during a Yoga Nidra practice. 

Yoga is the practice of arriving at Oneness or wholeness by connecting all seemingly disparate parts. Nidra is the hypnagogic mental state between waking and dreaming. Therefore, the practice of Yoga Nidra is like a guided meditation that helps you to arrive at the experience of Oneness through the method of altering your mental state through systematized relaxation and layered awareness. 

 Yoga Nidra is a gentle, relaxing, and very effective way of altering your mental state to escape your otherwise rigid and outdated definitions of the world to help experience your true nature, that of living love. 

The true gift of Yoga Nidra is that once you have reacquainted yourself with your most natural way of being, that of loving consciousness, your true work is then to marry this loving consciousness to the beautiful and textured work of art that is your life and our world. 

 And even though it’s called the yoga of sleep, Yoga Nidra is really about waking up. It’s inviting you to wake up from the illusion of being separate from each other and separate from Source. It’s inviting you to wake up from the illusion that you are limited and powerless. It’s inviting you to wake up to the unimaginable power that is already inside of you, to fertilize the seed of your birthright and majesty, and act as a crucial and vibrant cell in this organism of humanity. 

Instead of using practices like meditation, yoga, and Yoga Nidra only to source our inner peace and cope with the pains and stress of the outer world, we must also use them to regularly access our birthright of peace so that we may learn to live our life from this place. We must learn to live as a testament to peace. Then, your very life turns into a protest against the very systems that are fueled by fear, hate, and control. 

We cannot wait for someone else to save our world. This is our purpose, to save ourselves. As we do, we will realize that power for personal and global change has always been within.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

— Alice Walker

Will you change your mind and change the world? Will you make your life a living and loving protest of division, hate, and otherness? 

I invite you to learn to change your mind and the world through the relaxing, illuminating, and life-affirming practice of Yoga Nidra.

Help yourself and others make this fundamental shift to impact the world for good by learning to facilitate the transformational power of Yoga Nidra by becoming an expert Yoga Nidra teacher. Please consider joining my next live, online and in-person Yoga Nidra training, March 9–13, 2022, in Salt Lake City or via Zoom. 

So make your life a peaceful protest. Learn how to source the best parts of yourself through the transformational practice of Yoga Nidra and serve the world by facilitating this same transformation for others. Will you join me?

Hafiz For The Win

It's a special day. It's 2/22/22, on a 2sday, no less. Did you know I'm a twin (true story)?

But if you read my piece on Love Notes and Chocolates, you might remember the story I shared that illustrates how in the cosmos of yoga and spirit and love, pairs are merely tools that ultimately illuminate the One.

I once had a dream, more like a vision, where God and I were both these enormous, luminous, winged creatures, perfect mirror images of each other, and we leaned into each other, pressed our foreheads together, and wrapped our wings around each other as we formed a cocoon of Oneness. Also a true story.

The illusion of separateness is what prevents us from seeing the truth, that all is One, yet I believe that we need practices like yoga, meditation, and of course the painful yet joyful teacher of life to illuminate that truth.

If you've ever held a baby, been held in the arms of a lover, or held the hand of a loved one as they left this world, perhaps you too know something of this Oneness.

14th century Sufi lyrical poet Hafiz was certainly an enlightened being and clearly understood the this truth about oneness and wrote about it incessantly with playful, provocative, and adoring poetry. After all, as the late great lyrical poet Leonard Cohen says, "If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash."

So, in regards to the world of 2s, in the end, it's Hafiz for the win …

May we all learn laugh at the word two as we wind the circuitous path toward ONE.

Love Notes and Chocolates

Happy Valentine’s Day! I love Valentine’s Day. Today I woke up and wrote a love note to my love and then we went to our favorite cafe to drink coffee, chocolate, and eat croissants. So lovely!

---

Onto Love notes and chocolates …

On Valentine’s Day when I was 11 years old, I was seriously in love with Brooke Anderson, a shy, grinning girl with pigtails and glasses, and shaking in my sneakers, I walked over to her house in the dark and drizzle, alone—our entire relationship consisted as a nervous exchange of tepid love notes—to perform what was to be, up to those brief years of my life, my most courageous act I’d ever performed which was to actually knock on her door, actually see her face, and actually hand her the token of my love, a Valentine’s present of yet another prepubescent love note, but this time, one that was also attached to a simple, heart-shaped locket on a cheap chain which opened to reveal a Polaroid cutout of my face.

She gave me chocolates.

Our young love didn’t last. But several decades later, my adoration for love notes and chocolates still lives strong. Decades later, love notes and chocolates have become an incredibly rich metaphor which has given flavor to the very meaning of life and existence, one that grows deeper and more nuanced for me as time passes.

Love notes and chocolates are serious business and I’m not exaggerating when I say that they live at the center of our entire human experience. They imbue every object and moment of every day.

Love notes and chocolates are absolutely everywhere, but many of us haven’t learned to see them. And beyond learning to discern them, perhaps the more difficult task once they’ve been revealed is learning to savor them.

To learn to see the love notes and chocolates in your life, you might appreciate hearing a little of the back story. Or at least one of the stories ….

The story I want to tell you is even better than young Scottro quaking in his Converse to deliver a Valentine to his 11-year-old crush, but perhaps you’ll see some similarities between the two.

What I truly hope is that with this story, you’ll begin to see a few similarities between this story and your own love, your own life.

I love a good myth/story as much as I adore love notes and chocolates. I absolutely soak them up, in part because stories and myths relay truths which are larger than facts.

The story I want to tell you comes from the ancient Hindu tradition and is many thousands of years old, yet is as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago and I find it very applicable, whether you are Hindu or Christian, agnostic or atheist.

I love this story and it gets updated almost every time I tell it. Originally, I heard this story from a Sanskrit scholar many years ago, but in the age-old spirit of myth and storytelling, my version evolves with almost each telling of it because good stories don’t just portray facts or events. Rather, they illustrate truths which are constantly blooming, just as the flowering lotus of the very Universe itself.

You may have heard this story before, it’s well known. You may have heard it from other people or perhaps, if I am lucky, dozens of my previous recitations of it. Yet, like I’ve said, each telling makes the story new because the place we are speaking and listening from is constantly changing. Updating. And if you have heard me tell this story, this version will be undoubtedly different.

One of the things I love about this story—I’ll get on with it in a moment— is that stories like this often illustrate abstract concepts which are at the center of everything but sometimes need a few characters and a driving storyline to help them stick the landing.

Here goes … I like to call this story:

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

Before the beginning of the Universe, there existed Purusha, the Universal beingness of all things. This beingness was complemented perfectly by Prakriti, Universal energy, substance, and change.

In this story, Purusha takes the form of Shiva, a being characterized as sitting constantly in meditation, but with a lidless eye, his 3rd eye, in the middle of his forehead and resting in constant Awareness.

The Yin to his Yang, the Yoko to his John, is Shakti who represents Prakriti. Shakti is a dancer who is all things form, energy, and movement.

Shiva and Shakti existed in a most perfect love. They absolutely lived for each other. As pure Awareness, the only thing Shiva desired in all of his beingness was to give all of his love to his beloved by giving her what he did best, by pouring his complete attention upon her. Not a single hair could move on her head, neither a single twitch of her finger, nor a single breath could escape her body that Shiva didn’t witness it with his complete and rapt attention and adoration.

Likewise, Shakti was pure change, form, and movement and only desired to give Shiva her greatest gift and deepest love by dancing just for him, by constantly changing and creating for him. Her every moment was spent enticing the gift of his eternal awareness. One day Shakti would appear wrapped in the mist of a docile spring morning, sunlight kissing pink petals, and the perfumed scent of apple blossoms carrying kisses on a gentle breeze. The next day she’d rage through the room as black as a hurricane, thundering, bursting, and destroying everything in her wake. For Shakti, it was silk and sandals one day, leather and stilettos the next.

Shiva lived for Shakti’s movement and breadth of change. He simply couldn’t get enough of it. Shakti lived for Shiva's absolute and unyielding presence. She also couldn’t get enough of it. And together they danced like this in perfect and simple balance for eternities.

Everything was simple then. It was the honeymoon stage of their relationship. They lived very tightly but comfortably in a shoebox studio apartment. It was their entire Universe. It was all they knew. Though small and compact, they felt as if their world together was perfect. And while they felt that things could never get any better, that they were as happy as they could ever be, a love like this can only grow and thus they were constantly blossoming into higher and higher lovemaking.

Whether they knew it or not, their love would soon outgrow this shoebox apartment. And whether they knew it or not, Shiva and Shakti shared an immense destiny.

Each day their love grew and grew until one day, they looked at each other and without fully understanding exactly what it would mean, they both said in unison, “Let’s go cosmic!”

Shiva smiled as his bright 3rd eye gleamed, following Shakti’s lythe movements. Though Shakti’s entire gig is change, this time she really wanted to shake things up. This time, she wanted to do something to Shiva he’d never experienced before, something he’d never expect.

So on this day, as she was dancing for her beloved, she happened to dance around him in circles and once behind him, she had an impulsive idea to cover that 3rd eye. There had never been a moment when Shiva’s 3rd eye wasn’t always watching. It had never been closed before. Oh, the implications! As part of her dance, Shakti casually slipped her hands over Shiva’s eternally-open 3rd eye and as she did, for the first time ever in the history of the Universe, there was a split second where there was no longer a balance between energy and consciousness. There was only energy. The sheer volume of Shakti’s energy was so immense, so powerful, so absolute—something that Shakti didn’t even fully understand— that in that brief moment of pure energy, the entire Universe exploded into what we now call the Big Bang.

In an instant, everything went dark for Shakti and when she opened her eyes, she found herself reeling through space, terrified, and alone for the first time. In pure animal terror, she opened her mouth and released a desperate cry evoking the Oneness of herself and her beloved. It was first sound of the Universe, the sound, “Ooommmmmmmm.”

As the fundamental creator of matter, substance, and energy, Shakti did what she does best and began to create. She danced and made the light and darkness. She danced and made matter and space. She danced and made time. She danced and made the notion of opposites. All this she made in an attempt to create something to hold onto so she could unite again with her beloved.

She made this world with its elements, its flora and fauna, and its seasons and wandered the world ever searching for her beloved, as she cried, “Shiva! Shiva, where are you?” Shakti wandered the world constantly searching for her beloved with what felt like a stone where her heart used to be.

One day while wandering and searching for her beloved, she became very thirsty and passing by a very pleasant brook, she leaned down to quench her thirst. As she filled her mouth with the sweet, cool water it seemed to fill her soul, not only the taste of the water on her tongue but also the fluid cool against her skin, and the mineral smell in her nostrils. She closed her eyes almost in a trance and soaked up the dulcet sounds of the brook lolling over stones, a gurgling which almost seemed to speak to her. And as she listened more intently she began to indeed hear a voice … a very familiar voice. It was shiva!

She raised herself from the brook, looked around in every direction with wide and crazy eyes, and began calling out desperately to her beloved, “Shiva! Shiva, where are you? Come to me! I would have never done such a foolish thing as to close your 3rd eye if I’d have known it would separate me from you …. Shiva?” But there was no response and despite calling out many times and looking in every direction, Shakti did not see her beloved and became even more disconsolate.

Another day, Shakti was strolling through the forest, tears streaming down her face in pain as she longed for Shiva, when suddenly a gale-force wind swept through the trees, causing their trunks to sway, their boughs to dance, and millions of leaves to scintillate and rustle in the tumult. All of Shakti’s senses came alive and behind this cacophonous din, again, Shakti heard the whispering voice of her beloved.

“Shiva!” she cried out, “Where are you?!” and she began climbing the trees, looking around each trunk, and peered through the dancing limbs of the trees. Yet, as much as she cried and searched, she did not find her beloved and she sank into an even greater despair.

Finally, one day she was walking through a beautiful glenn. On this day, the sun was shining it’s magical first rays of morning sunlight and everything they touched seemed to come alive and sing. As the first rays burst over the mountains, she felt their warmth embrace her skin. The birds began chirping, the insects started buzzing, and soon the flowers were in bloom. Even the earth herself seemed to open up, offering shakti the sensuous scent of her intoxicating, earthy musk. And as the symphony of her senses was soaring, yet again Shakti began to hear the voice of her beloved whispering in her ears.

But this time, instead of calling out to her beloved, instead of searching, she decided that she would do something different. This time, instead of looking outward for her beloved, she decided to look where she hadn’t looked before—she looked inside herself.

She sat herself down on the earth and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths of the earth’s grounding scent while feeling the caress of the dewy grass on her skin, and hearing the arias of songbirds tickle her ears. She sat for long moments relishing in the sheer delight of her senses.

And to Shakti’s great joy, the more she receded into her own being, the more she listened, the more she became aware, the voice of her beloved became louder and louder until finally she could hear his voice very clearly.

“Shakti? Shakti.” he said. “I am here. I am here, Shakti. I never left you. I have always been with you. Remember, nothing in the Universe can exist without me, the same way nothing can exist without you. We have never been nor can we ever be separated.” Finally, with awe in his voice, Shiva said, “Seems like we’ve upgraded from our small studio apartment. Look, babe. Look what our love has created ….”

At this, Shakti opened her eyes. She no longer saw trees, birds, and sunlight, nor did she see any object in the entire Universe as singular or separate. Instead, she could only see herself and her beloved dancing in the form of trees and birds and sunlight as well as everything else in the Universe.

In an instant, Shakti’s entire being was quickened. She was delivered from this dark night of longing and loneliness and reborn through the fire of love. Her entire being felt as if it would burst with incalculable joy.

Rising to her feet, she again felt the sunlight on her skin but this time, felt herself wrapped in the warm and loving arms of her beloved, an embrace she knew would never cease and finally realizing herself to be in the eternal, familiar, and loving gaze of her beloved, Shakti continued doing the thing she does the best—she started to dance to entice Awareness.

Shakti is still dancing. Her dance is the rise and fall of the sun each day. It’s the change of seasons. It’s the spinning of the earth. It’s the birth of galaxies and the death of stars. It’s the breath of the smallest insect and the expansion of the Universe itself.

Everything in the Universe is the product of this cosmic embrace, including and especially YOU. Truly, you are the love child of this union and the divine is reaching new levels of expansion by experiencing itself through and as you.

Shakti’s dance is everywhere but perhaps it’s seen as the beautiful choreography that is your life with its ups and downs, it’s ebbs and flows, it’s unending changes. Shakti is doing what she has always done: enticing Awareness. Specifically, she’s enticing your Awareness, the Shiva Nature that is inside of you. Everything you can see, touch, smell, hear, and taste, indeed everything you can sense, feel or perceive, is Shakti dancing before you inviting you to wake up to the truth that all is one.

With practice, you’ll recognize that everything in existence is love notes and chocolate. When we learn to notice these love notes, we begin to recognize that Shakti is simply writing the same message in every possible language. Eventually we’ll learn to read the words, “Here,” and “This,” written in the language of the waddle of a penguin, the birth of a season, or the death of a loved one. You’ll read it in every sunrise and every bee dancing on every flower.

With practice, you’ll start to recognize each object in life is but one of the chocolates in Shakti’s box of chocolates and each is offered in love. Some of these chocolates are sweet and some are bitter, some contain honey and others contain cayenne pepper. You can never guess what you’re going to get until you take a bite but you must know each one comes from love and each one is made just for you, enticing your awareness as you too wake up to the truth that there never was any separation between you and the Oneness, that your life exists as the dance of the divine.

May we all learn to see the beautiful movement of our lives, as well as every object in our world, as Shakti’s enticing dance to help us wake us up, like she did, to the fact that we have never been separate from the divine. On this Valentine's Day, may we all begin to see and savor our world full of love notes and chocolates, no matter how bitter or sweet. And may we all wake up to the truth of this divine embrace of Oneness knowing that all of it is somehow wrapped in love.

Embracing The F-Word

Maya Christopherson Deftly Using the F-Word

I generally feel pretty good in my body thanks to yoga and staying active with running, the gym, and walking as much as possible. That said, one period of feeling particularly en form was when I was also regularly practicing Pilates.

When I lived in Salt Lake City, I had a sweet trade going with a friend, yoga student, and very gifted Pilates instructor, Maya Christopherson, now the founder and owner of Uplift Pilates. Maya helped me experience a greater feeling of freedom in my body; repetitive motions of yoga and running made me tight, bunched up, and kinda janky (technical term).

During our Pilates sessions, Maya led me through myriad routines and exercises but one of the greatest things that Maya did for me was help me learn to embrace the f-word … yes, the dreaded foam roller.

If you’re not familiar with a foam roller, they are foam cylinders with varying degrees of density designed for you to roll on to loosen up tight muscles, loosen bunched-up fascia, and help to realign your skeleton. I love to regularly roll my legs, spine, and neck.

Many people who have experienced foam rollers bristle at the mere mention of the f-word. I’ll admit, at first when Maya would pull out the foam roller in our sessions, often I’d mutter a different f-word under my breath and continue to do so through clenched teeth as my exceedingly tight muscles were kneaded mercilessly pliant by the less-than-forgiving foam roller.

But, it wasn’t long, really after only a few sessions, that I began to actually look forward to the foam roller. Soon, it actually started to feel amazing. Now, I ask my private clients to invest in one so we can incorporate it in their yoga sessions because I think they are so useful.

I love the foam roller because it can do so much benefit my body in such a small amount of time. When my body is free, my heart and mind follow suit.

Maya would always tell me that it was the cheapest deep-tissue massage you can get.

Our foam roller lives on the floor in the living room so that whenever I see it, I can drop down and do a few passes over my legs or spine and emerge feeling great.

Seriously, I get a huge hit of energy when I’m done. In fact, I love the foam roller so much that I even travel with mine. Ours is small and light enough to fit easily into a suitcase. Plus, it’s hollow so I stuff the center with socks to economize space.

Here’s a little video I put together (with the help of my 6-year-old) of a few foam roller things you can do to ease tension in legs, back, neck, calves, and hips.

If you'd like to explore this a little deeper, TODAY (February 8, 2022), I’m going to incorporate the f-word (the foam roller) into some of my weekly online yoga asana class via Zoom at 12 pm MST. Please join me to feel the magic of the foam roller!

You can join me every week for my online Zoom asana class, though we don’t always use the foam roller. My good friend and fellow teacher, Kim Dastrup and I share a Tuesday/Thursday 12 pm class on Zoom—I usually teach Tuesdays and Kim usually teaches Thursdays. Suggested donation is only $10 and you can click here to see the details of joining class.

Also, you can check out Maya’s site where she has a downloadable video using the foam roller as well. Her videos are much more professional than mine, despite the fact that she doesn't have a 6-year-old climbing all over her like I did.

Have a great day and I hope you’ll join me as we all embrace the f-word for greater wellness in body, mind, and spirit.

Teaching, Tripping, and Truth

Happy February 1st!

Today, I’m feeling joyous and alive for a multitude of reasons. 

First, I’m writing as I sit looking out generous windows, past palm trees onto the greenery and mountains of sunny Nice, France. We’ve just landed in this new apartment and feel it’s a wonderful place to help us thrive in our new home of France. 

Next, I’m riding a high from the 31-Day Meditation Challenge which I hosted and which just finished yesterday. It was a worthy challenge which cultivated a beautiful global community, all working on making the world a better place by making ourselves better people through the inimitable practice of getting quiet and looking inside. Whether or not you were a part of this challenge this time around, please consider joining us for the next one. 

I’m also feeling very grateful because this Saturday, February 5th, I’ve been invited to offer a Yoga Nidra experience as part of an Open Class at an incredible studio called The Looking Glass Basel in Basel, Switzerland. 

I’ll be sharing the bill with the regular teacher and studio owner, Kristen Watson Geering, who incorporates her copious years of yoga teaching experience to match the students’ needs of the moment and offer something that is both needed and appreciated. 

This class happens every Saturday at 10 am CET and is offered both in-person and via Zoom. I’m very excited to be contributing to this class via Zoom with a unique Yoga Nidra experience that will reflect the namesake of the studio.  

I adore the name of this studio. In my estimation, The Looking Glass refers to the practice of allowing yoga and meditation to be a mirror of your Truest Self. The sequel of Alice In Wonderland, is also called The Looking Glass, and is a psychedelic journey into the inner world of opposites which ultimately resolves into a greater understanding of Alice’s ultimate truth. 

My hope is that the skillful poses led by Kristen and my addition of an extra-juicy savasana in the form of Yoga Nidra, will lead you on a beautiful inner journey (one hopefully less psychedelic than that of poor Alice) to reveal or refine your vision of the ultimate truth of who you are. 

If you’re near Basel, Switzerland, please consider joining the in-person class. Otherwise, like me, perhaps you’ll join via Zoom from wherever you are in the world. Also, if you live near Basel, Switzerland, stay tuned for a live, in-person Yoga Nidra workshop, immersion, or training happening hopefully soon.

Also, keeping with the theme of Truth, specifically speaking your truth to stand up for what’s right, I’m feeling grateful today because my dear friend Nan Seymour, soulmate/cellmate (we are convinced that we must have done time together in a past life), is an incredible poet and is wielding the power of her pen, and YOURS, in a valiant effort to raise awareness about the dying of the Great Salt Lake. She’s building a collective poem called Irreplaceable, 1700 lines of verse reflecting the number of square miles the lake needs for full restoration. This composite poem is about this diminishing natural resource, and Nan encourages all who would like to, to add their own lines to this poem. 

I have a deep personal connection to this Great lake and have written about in an more than a few blog posts, including this one. In an attempt to add my truth toward this subject, I offered a few humble lines myself, called The Arms Of The Great Mother. My friend, Alex Adams, is a gifted photographer and I was fortunate enough to be the subject of her lens at a photoshoot at the Great Salt Lake. One of her photos of me sitting at the lake graces my poem. Take a look at the poem and the pic here. 

Regardless of whether or not you think of yourself as a poet or even a writer, consider adding your own lines to this growing poem and speaking your truth on behalf of this honorable cause and submitting them to Nan. 

I hope this new month is catching you feeling alive, joyous, and present. I invite you to use the practices of yoga and meditation to inquire within and discover all the ways you might stretch into the best version of yourself. Furthermore, I encourage you to take small daily strides forward toward that end, knowing that we are all tied for first place and that somehow, we all get there in the end. We are all on our way to the top and we can’t get there without you!

Have a great week!

What's Your Zone of Genius?

How has your week been going? I know, I know. Covid is crazy. It seems like the world over is just going nuts. Fortunately the numbers where we are are starting to drop, so that’s great for us here.

You know, one of the benefits in all of this is that Covid has made learning online more mainstream. While teaching in person is so fantastic, making online learning more normal has been a fantastic opportunity to reach so many more people online.

Yes, I am thrilled to be able to teach yoga and Yoga Nidra to people all over the world thanks to this nifty thing called “The Internet,” but what I want to talk about today is actually about YOU sharing your Zone of Genius (phrase coined by Gay Hendricks) with the world. Let me explain …

So, practices like yoga and meditation are really tools that help you explore what it means to BE, to understand what your True Nature is, and get real with what you are destined to become in this life. The Universe put you here to be unfailingly YOU and to shine and contribute to the world in the ways that you do best. The way you shine and make the world a better place is your Zone of Genius. Consider that the Universe is coming to know itself and evolve to it’s highest Self through and as YOU. It’s true.

If you’re curious what your particular Zone of Genius is, there’s a simple way to find it, just ask yourself what you love. So, what do you love? I proffer that your greatest gift to the world is all the ways you love the world. And when you’re doing that thing you love and you’re in a creative flow with it, that’s you in your Zone of Genius.

Now if you’ll allow me, I’ve got to give you a little tough love here … if you’re not sharing your Zone of Genius with the world, you’re not doing what you placed on this big spinning blue marble to do, so c’um on! Get over yourself and share your awesomeness with the world, already.

And you can’t let Covid be an excuse, cuz if anything, Covid has made it more normal for you to also use this snappy new thing called, “The Internet” to share your Zone of Genius with the world. What are you waiting for?

For me, I love many things, including and especially Yoga and Yoga Nidra and I find it absolutely thrilling to share what I love with the world. Truly. Over almost 2 decades of teaching yoga and meditation, I’ve explored learning to share what I love through many different mediums including making and sharing digital products: audio recordings, video classes, trainings, and workshops, online courses, PDFs, etc.

A few months ago, I was having a lovely evening with some friends. We were catching up, enjoying ourselves, and talking. I got an alert on my phone and started to hoot and holler, pumping my fist in the air. “What happened?! You ok?!” My friends worried. “As I was sitting here having a lovely conversation with y’all, I just made $600.” I’d just sold one of my digital products, an online Yoga Nidra teacher training that was one of my projects during Covid 2020. I sat back into my chair and relished a moment of profound gratitude to be sharing what I love with people all over the world, to feel like I’m making the world a better place, and to even be doing it while enjoying a beautiful evening with friends.

So that’s a story of me sharing what I love but how can you share YOUR Zone of Genius? Whatever it is, I want to help you share it with the world by teaching you some of the things I’ve learned about creating digital products and offering them to the world. I’ll be doing just that with my live, Digital Products 101 online workshop Sat. Jan 22 from 9–1 pm MST. I’ll be recording it so you can also watch the replay.

My intention for this workshop is to empower you to understand how to make several kinds of digital products to share your Zone of Genius with the world by using simple tools and easy tech to build attractive and effective digital products.

You’ll get:

• The Confidence of understanding the many ways you can share your genius with the world using digital products, including PDFs, audio/video recordings, online courses, photos, music, art, etc.

• An understanding of how to use the simple tools you are already familiar with, such as your phone, and laptop that empower you to quickly make

• A manual complete with: the discussion outline, helpful links, essential concepts, ideas for digital products you can make today

• A list of simple tech items that could help you make what your products

• A detailed explanation of the simple marketing tactics I’ve used to organically attract people to buy my products using next to no paid advertising.

I’ll also be sharing a little bit about building what I call your Mechanism of Influence, the method I’ve used and have taught to dozens of mentor students which helps people share their Zone of Genius in a way that is natural, organic, and effective.

Please consider joining me. This will be a small investment with a huge return. More than even the money you’ll start earning right away by sharing your gifts with the world, you’ll be grateful and satisfied knowing that you’re sharing your Zone of Genius with the world.

Will you learn how to make the world a better place by sharing more of your Genius with it? Please join me for this workshop.

Cheesy Rock Was My Drug

It was mile 20 of my first trail marathon. My legs were useless, my lungs on fire, my feet felt like they were made of lead. I was only about 6 miles from the finish line but it may as well have been 600. 

Just as I was seriously doubting whether or not I could complete this feat of endurance, adding insult to injury, almost directly at 20-mile marker, I found myself staring up into the teeth of brutal mile-long upward climb for a gain of significant altitude. This crushed my spirits. I was done. Wrecked. Spent. Game over.

Prior to the race, my twin brother had made a playlist for me to listen to as a way of supporting me on what was to be my most intense physical endurance to date. The night before, I'd loaded the songs onto my iPod and had made a point to not look at the content so that each song would be a surprise. On the run, right about mile 7, I laughed out loud to hear that one track on his mix was simply my brother’s voice shouting at me, "Run! Run! Run! . . . Keep running! . . . Don't stop running." 

So there I was at mile 20, ready to expire and quit the race. At that point, my plan was simple: crawl under a rock to die. Just as I'm looking around for suitable rocks to call my final resting place, into my earbuds bursts the powerful and iconic power chords of the heart-pumping adrenaline anthem, Eye of the Tiger by Survivor (fitting), the theme song used in at least one of the Rocky movies.

I know that you know the song, so don't pretend you don't. Sing along with me, "Dun. . . dun, dun, dun . . . dun, dun, duuuun. . . 'Risin' up, back on the street . . . Just a man and his will to survive ." 

I'm embarrassed to say it but as cheeseball as that song is, and as much as my inner-hipster would have loved to just roll eyes or chuckle and continue on with plan A (dying under a rock), hearing that song caused something to stir inside of me. With Eye of the Tiger thumping in my ears, my eyes suddely focused, my legs found some steel, and I forgot the burn in my lungs. Fueled by some hidden and mysterious power, I started to CRUSH up that slope with singular resolve.

"It's the eye of the tiger, It's the thrill of the fight, rising up to the challenge of our rival. And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night and he's watching us all with the eye . . . OF THE TIGER!"

Now, I can't even read those lyrics with a straight face, however at the time nothing could have been more serious. At the top of that hellacious hill, I found myself even doing victory leaps, pounding my fist in the air as enthusiastically as Rocky Balboa himself.

Having conquered the hill, I continued to finish the run, which, incidentally, was my very, very  improbable plan B. 

So one minute I felt as if I was ready to die from exhaustion with absolutely no energy whatsoever left in me and the next minute I had crushed a mile-long monster hill and still had enough energy to run another 5 miles to finish the race. No fuel. No sugar. No caffeine. A cheesy rock anthem was my drug. 

So what is that about?! I mean really. This slapped the face of what I thought my legit physical limits were and suggests that maybe they are more plastic than I thought. 

The topic of limiters, specifically the plasticity of one’s limits, has fascinated me, especially as I've explored my limits as it pertains to running but can relate to all kinds of other limits we and others place on our capacity. The notion of your limits being plastic is provocative. 

Since my first killer trail marathon, I've been using some powerful techniques that help me understand limits for what they are: "perceived" limitations. I try not to see limits as Truth but rather beliefs. Beliefs are plastic. We’ve all verified this, we've all accomplished the impossible against all odds at sometime or other, right? When have YOU accomplished the impossible against all odds. I’d love to hear about it. 

I propose that we have much more power over our perceived limits than we think we do.

You can train a dog not to leave the yard for fear of getting a shock for doing so, a response that has been conditioned into that dog’s brain even when there is no longer a mechanism that administers shocks. Likewise, we fail to see the truth about many of our own perceived limitations. 

What do you feel are your limitations in life? Do you have a boss you're tired of? Do you believe that you can never get ahead in your finances, or that you will never meet the love of your life? 

In Yoga his misapprehension about limits (or anything else, really) is called Avidya, or the antithesis of clear seeing. First, understanding that we might have a misapprehension about something we've previously thought as truth with a capital “T” is a huge step in the right direction. So, to call our limitations perceived limitations rather than iron-clad barriers is very powerful in itself.

One of my favorite learning modules in my online Yoga Nidra immersion and teacher training explores the science and psychology of Yoga Nidra and how we can use meditation to see past the perceived limitations that our mind imposes on us. 

In many ways, setting goals is simply an experiment in testing what you believe is possible. If you don’t believe a goal is even possible, that is a non-starter. Believing it’s possible is perhaps the first step to accomplishing it, or at very least gets you in the door. 

If you’re interested in exploring how Yoga Nidra can help you begin the process of accomplishing your goals and discovering the plasticity of what might be possible, whether that’s getting your finances under control, finding the love of your life, or crushing up an impossibly steep hill on a trail marathon, try my Yoga Nidra for Goals practice on the Resources Page. Also, you may be interested in my suite of Yoga Nidra recordings called Essential Yoga Nidra Vol. 1 which includes Yoga Nidra for Goals as well as several other specialized Yoga Nidra practices including, Yoga Nidra for Stress, Yoga Nidra for Grief, Yoga Nidra To Start Your Day, Yoga Nidra for Healing, and many others. 

Reply to this and leave a comment about those times that you’ve accomplished the impossible and what you think about your mind’s ability to redefine your limits. 

Namaste,

---

Yoga Nidra For Grief Can Help

Yoga Nidra for Grief

Here’s my weekly tid-bit. I hope you enjoy. It’s a Yoga Nidra for grief practice. I find that …

We Stand Stronger in Community

With the difficulty and isolation of the past few years that we’ve all endured, one of the things that people value and prioritize now more than ever is community. Naturally, humans need to feel as though they belong to a family, a tribe. Ironically, one of the things we can do that will benefit the tribe of humanity the best is to meditate because when we do so we stop acting from an egoic place and start to feel ourselves as part of the larger whole.

Meditation may seem like such a solitary activity, but it doesn’t have to be. Just like a yoga class where everyone is experiencing a personal benefit, albeit in tandem with others and therefore growing both personally and together, so too people who meditate in groups can also grow personally while also together with a group.

Through the Covid isolations, precautions which limit in-person gatherings, and lockdowns due to the pandemic, the human family has shown remarkable resiliency and ingenuity by learning to nonetheless find community through mediums like Zoom. Of course we’d all love to be in person with our yoga and meditation classes, and while some of these have resumed (I led a glorious retreat in-person retreat in Bordeaux this year), a happy byproduct of this forced online connection is that we’ve become more comfortable building a truly global community. My sweet mother-in-law in Utah takes harp lessons from her teacher in Scotland thanks to both of them becoming more comfortable with technology because of the pandemic.

It seems that it took the loneliness of isolating in our own homes to realize that we actually have such a ready and vast connection to the larger human family. For example, during my weekly live Yoga Nidra classes on Zoom, it’s commonplace to have people attending live and watching the replay from several different countries, continents, and time zones.

The power of meditating in groups is astounding and demonstrated by some unbelievable but true stats from peer-reviewed articles. One statistic shows that in communities where people have meditated as a group (groups of like 1200 people), the murder and homicide rates decreased by a whopping 28.4%. (Click here to read the article). Plus, the benefits of regular meditation practice has a ripple effect and doesn’t just stop when you stop meditating. And even with smaller groups who meditate together, there is an incredible power given to families or friends who all commit to meditate for a particular cause, like the wellbeing of a person, people, or the environment.

Individuals also benefit from meditating together. People who meditate as a close group of friends or family, whether in the same place or time or not, are more committed to doing a practice as well as feel a greater sense of purpose in the practice.

I’m beginning a meditation group for the month of January and I’d be honored if you would join. Will you join my global meditation community who will all be meditating every day during the month of January during my 31-Day Meditation Challenge? The challenge is simply to meditate every day for 15 minutes or more in any style and at any time you wish. You may not be in the same room, time zone, or even continent as the others in our meditation family but knowing that we are all around the world meditating at different times during the day will make a connection to us all that will likely be palpable.

If you are new to the practice of meditation, the energy of our global meditation family will buoy you up as you start this new healthy habit. Plus, I’ll be giving you resources, support, and instruction every step of the way. If you are already a regular meditator, your energy and experience will contribute to the power of us all.

To emphasize the important community element of this challenge, I’ll be hosting a live, online meditation on New Year’s day to kick it off. Plus, once a week, I’ll host a global meditation where we can all log in from different parts of the globe to see and meet each other as well as meditate together. This is in addition to the daily email you’ll receive with encouragement, interesting articles, and specialized meditations. This challenge will be powerful, positive, and fun.

I am so excited to do this 31-Day Meditation Challenge and I want YOU to be a part of our mediation group. The last time I hosted this challenge people joined from all over the world: The US, England, Ireland, Belgium, France, Spain, Canada, Columbia, Iceland, The Philippines, and many other countries. Where do you live? Join and represent your region, city, or country and join our global mediation community.

Also, do you know of others who you’d like to join with you? Invite them along and make your own meditation posse. Many past participants have taken it upon themselves to build their own meditation groups, friends and family who all register together to support and encourage each other in this worthy endeavor. I can assure you that you will grow together as a group or family if you do.

Please reach out with any questions. I hope you’ll join this global mediation community.

My Mind Is Too Busy To Meditate

Meditation is supposed to be great, right? It helps you to quiet the mind, become less reactive, and feel calm … right? 

But one thing I hear all the time is, “My mind is just TOO busy to meditate,” like the ability to gain a calmer mind is only available to those whose minds are already calm, or something. What’s worse, many of us feel inadequate or somehow broken if we can’t magically turn our busy brains off at will. 

Can you relate to this? Do you ever feel that your mind is just too busy to meditate? Well if so, you’re actually quite normal.

Consider this: while focusing your mind is ONE way of meditating, it’s by no means the ONLY way to meditate. Think about it, our brains are meant to process information constantly, even when we sleep. It’s disingenuous to think we can suddenly switch off our brains. Our brains are computers that are designed to constantly process the millions bits of information we perceive each second. Perhaps clearing our mind is the wrong objective. Perhaps, we should instead learn to embrace our busy mind and find the calm that exists with that endeavor.

Have you ever considered that perhaps your busy mind could actually be a tool for meditation rather than a hindrance? In fact, it could be your greatest tool to acquire the calm you seek. And to explore this idea, maybe we should examine what meditation is. 

At its essence, meditation is simply the ability to remain present with exactly whatever you’re experiencing in the moment. That’s it. Meditation is not just clearing your mind, it’s being aware. What’s more, meditation can actually help you become aware of the part of your being that is larger than your thinking mind.

Back in the day, French philosopher René Descartes said, “I think therefore I am,” asserting that the proof of one’s being was invariably tied with their ability to think. But he was too tied to the idea of the mind equating our quality of being. Another and more recent French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, edited Décartes words radically and pared them down to: “I am.” This drastic revision asserts that what we are is fundamentally larger than our ability to think. In effect, Sartre is saying that our essence is simply being, and specifically to be present, is what lies at the essence of our being. We can practice this essential being, this being present, with any object, be that a person, a sunset, or even a busy mind. 

This presence is what we are ultimately doing in meditation. We are being with what is. And if what seems to be most present in your awareness is a busy mind, then so be it. That’s the object that is going to help you practice being at your most fundamental essence. I would also proffer that our most natural comportement, one that is tied fundamentally to our presence and therefore our being, is that of relaxed alertness. This is the calm that people talk about as the byproduct of meditation. 

But how do you put that into practice? How does one achieve this calm, especially with a busy mind? One way to use and even appreciate a busy mind is with a simple form of meditation I call the “There Is” practice. To do the “There Is” practice, set a timer for 5 minutes and close your eyes (regular but short bouts of meditation are the best way to start meditating, in my opinion). As you begin to meditate, in your mind, announce whatever you happen to be most aware of at the moment with the phrase, “There Is.” e.g., “There are thoughts of work. There is the smell of coffee. There is a cat licking my toe . . . .”  

Now, There are two basic rules with the “There Is” practice. First, try to avoid personal pronouns like I, me, and my. Instead of “I am thinking about work,” or “I smell my coffee,” change it to, “There are thoughts of work,” and “There is the smell of coffee.” This changes you from being conflated as the object you’re aware of to become identified as the observer of it. 

The second rule is that for the duration of the “There Is” practice, nothing is neither good nor bad. It’s all just information. This includes the meditation itself so there is no achievement in it. When your mind wanders (squirrel!), cuz even the most skillful of meditators mind wanders, simply bring it back to the practice without any judgement, perhaps even with the phrase, “There is wandering mind,” or “There is busy mind.” You are not trying to change it, you are simply observing it. 

Soon, you will learn to observe your mind rather than trying to control it. If your mind is busy, let it be busy and watch it flutter from one thought to the next, just like it loves to do, all the while simply observing it like watching someone flip through the different channels on a television. In no time at all, you will become grateful for the beautiful object that is your busy mind because you will realize that it has led you to an incredible presence. And since what you are is larger than your thoughts, you may start to realize that your natural way of being is calm, collected, and steady, despite the fact that your mind is still buzzing away. And you came to this awareness through the ability to watch your mind rather than identify with it. 

I’m starting my 31-Day Meditation Challenge on January 1, 2022. I invite you to join me and create an incredibly bold and positive foundation for a conscious new year.The challenge is simple: meditate every day for 31 days for 15 minutes or more in any style you wish. It costs $31 and if you finish the challenge, you can even opt to get your tuition back. I’ll be supporting you with emails, resources, and weekly live and virtual meditation sessions with our global meditation group. 

Even if you feel your mind is too busy to meditate, this is your chance to prove to yourself that your busy mind could in truth be the perfect tool to help you find the calm that is your natural way of being. I encourage you to meditate with us during this challenge and discover your natural calm, despite your busy mind. 

Apollo, Jesus, and You Walk Into a Bar …

Happy Solstice!

I love the Winter Solstice. I’ve always been fascinated by the movement of the sun, moon, and stars. When I was young, I loved sleeping outside in the backyard on summer nights with my brother and my cousins. Specifically, I loved looking up into the black mystery that is the stars, that pointillist painting of light which magically illustrates stories of Greek and Roman gods through the constellations and which somehow also functions as a clock that never needs winding and which has been silently ticking away time since time began.

But if we can train our vision, we might also notice that this royal procession of the sun, moon, and stars isn’t limited only to the illumination of the stories of Greek or Roman gods, but that your story is written up there as well. It’s the story of the divine light that rests inside of you. So that you don’t forget it, the sun, moon, and stars tell this story each year at the Solstice.

The word Solstice derives from Latin and means “sun stands still” and refers to the yearly rhythm of the movement of the sun as it rises and sets up and down the horizon. In the northern hemisphere, at the Summer Solstice (around June 21st), the sun rises and sets at its highest point along the horizon. Here, the days are the longest and the nights are the shortest. From that moment on, each day the sun begins to creep down the horizon each day until Winter Solstice when the sun rises and lowers at its lowest point, the days are the shortest and the nights are the longest. On both the Summer and Winter Solstice, for three days, the sun rises and falls in exactly the same place, appearing to stand still along the horizon.

I love symbols and relish this symbol of the Solstice, celebrating the moment when the sun, that which gives light and life to all beings on the earth, stands still for 3 days as if to say, “Whoa, hold up! Papa’s gotta put his dogs up for a bit, kick back, and watch some Neptune Flix.” After a good rest, it starts it’s long journey along the horizon again, just like it’s done every year for time immemorial.

But more than just rest, the Winter Solstice truly symbolizes a necessary and unavoidable death, and not just the death of its own cycle. It symbolizes a death for each person, the passing of everything that must and will die. The 3 days of stillness is the necessary mourning and composting period. It symbolizes our darkest moments, both in terms of sunlight, as well as the dark night of the soul. But the Winter Solstice also holds a promise of rebirth, a cosmic symbol for the myriad resurrections we will experience during our lifetime and portends the light, wisdom, and enlightenment which is to come and which exists within us already.

Nice, France was built by the ancient Greeks and gets its name from Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. Nice’s connection to her Greek gods are proudly displayed in the central square with a giant statue and fountain depicting Apollo, the sun god, surrounded by other statues representing the planets that circle the sun in elegant harmony. You can’t miss him, he’s 23 feet tall, naked as a jaybird, and has a fantastically chiseled ass that would make any model jealous.

Despite it’s Greek roots, today Nice displays a very rich and beautiful Catholic presence—seriously, there are no fewer than 8 different Catholic cathedrals, churches, or sanctuaries, all within 100 meters of our apartment. Whether it’s the heavy and unctuous chimes heralding the hour or the celestial peals celebrating the sabbath, hearing these bells never, ever stops being charming. And just like the Greeks, the Catholics have their own sun god, Jesus the son of God who is the light and life of the world.

Undoubtedly, there are some fascinating parallels between this celebration of the cycle of the sun of the solar system and the day that celebrates the birth of the son of God. The sun symbolically dies on the 21st, doesn’t move for 3 days, and on the 25th, is born anew to set along its path to bring greater light to the world. Though usually celebrated around Easter, the son of God also died, rested for three days, and rose again on the third day. In Christianity, the 25th of December represents the birth of the son of God, the light that is destined to enlighten the entire world. Whether it’s Apollo or Jesus, the son of God or the sun god, a god surrounded by the 12 constellations of the zodiac or by 12 apostles (and by extension all of his followers), both of these symbols are foundational to this culture and both are celebrated at this wonderful time of year.

Personally, I celebrate both Apollo and Jesus (and a suite of other gods, goddesses, and symbols) because I believe they all poignantly represent the bright light of Source that exists within all of us. I believe that our journey to becoming who we are destined to be requires cyclical wanings and deaths in the unavoidable process continually being reborn anew. I believe that our mothers gave birth to us once so that we may forevermore give birth to ourselves through this slow and beautiful wisdom-practice called life. I believe that to fully embrace life, we must have a ready relationship with death.

Yoga and Yoga Nidra is an effective and even enjoyable method of practicing building a relationship with death in order to practice fully living. Known as corpse pose, Savasana, whether practiced at the end of an asana class or during a Yoga Nidra class, is the symbolic death we submit to where we must surrender our ego, our doing nature, and everything else that needs to die, so that we can be reborn anew. I think of Savasana kind of like a software update for your computer or phone: it doesn’t change your system that much each time but after a while, your system becomes completely incompatible with its older self. Each time we rise from Savasana, we are slightly different, ready to process the world with greater clarity and resolve as we move along our pathway to discovering our purpose.

Do you ever feel like you’re a completely different person than you were just 5 or 10 years ago? I know I do.

The Winter Solstice is a time we must use to compost what has died and to learn from it so we can grow stronger next season. This regular cycle of death and birth moves us, season by season, year by year, along our path of wisdom as we seek greater light and ultimately discover the truth that the light we seek is born inside of us. The ancient hermetic phrase, “As above, so below,” pertains not to the light represented in a naked god in the central square with its fine chiseled ass nor the one shrouded and demur, cached under arched cathedral ceilings, but to the divine flame that exists within your own immaculate heart.

Today, may we all celebrate the darkness as well as the promise of light to come. May we embrace and compost that which has passed in our lives and prepare for what’s to come. And may we wake up each day with a greater knowledge of the light that exists within.

Today, let’s simply practice dying. Let’s practice Savasana.

The Ghost of Christmas Presence

I LOVE Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, where the shrewd and crotchety Ebaneezer Scrooge literally gets the bejesus scared into him by three ghosts, Christmas Past, Present, and Future. The Ghosts of Christmas Past and Future are the sad and scary ones but the ghostest with the mostest is, of course, The Ghost of Christmas Present, displayed in the George C. Scott adaptation of the story as the larger-than-life jolly joe with alluring opulence, and whose hairy and barreled chest could incite jealousy to the most virile of reindeer. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, this tale offers many valuable life lessons that have the power to make every day, not just the holidays, merry and bright. In my opinion, the greatest lesson in this tale is offered by the Ghost of Christmas Present, and that, of course, is the gift of presence. 

When I was in my mid-teens, I had a Christmas that I think I’ll remember for the rest of my life. There was nothing particularly special about it. It’s just the one I remember the most fondly. I remember putting together puzzles with my family, a fire in the hearth, and Christmas tunes on the stereo. I remember watching movies like, It’s A Wonderful Life, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and of course, A Christas Carol, all while eating Christmas goodies and generally being wrapped in the beautiful spirit of winter wonder and cheer. 

One of the things I loved about that Christmas was the next-level gift wrapping we did. You know when you wrap a gift and it’s something with an uber-obvious shape like a tennis racket or something, and even though it’s wrapped up, it’s still uber-obvious what the present is? Well, my twin brother and I developed a method of wrapping gifts to uber-obfuscate the shape of any present while also making the presentation just as (and sometimes more) important than the actual gift. We were putting the presentation into the present and we called this over-the-top method of present wrapping, “Appendage Wrapping.” 

I wrapped one present to function as working a catapult, a low-tech engineering feat which employed wrapping paper tubes and rubber bands to hurl balls of wrapping paper scraps across the room. My step-mom loves Diet Coke so I fashioned a working Coke machine from a refrigerator box—push a button and out popped a can of Diet Coke. Also, the American businessman, billionaire, and philanthropist Ross Perot had run for president about that time and I had created a present for my brother in the shape of Ross Perot, a puppet made from newspaper, Scotch tape, and dressed with an old sweatshirt. It really looked like Ross Perot, except I doubt that Ross actually wore oversized Goth sweatshirts adorned with the pallid apparition of Robert Smith from The Cure printed on the front. The puppet featured a plug emanating from its back with a sign that read, “Plug me in!” When you did, the puppet began speaking in the unmistakable voice of Dana Carvey from Saturday Night Live who made a hilarious Ross Perot parody, all of which emanated from a stereo buried somewhere in the dummy’s chest. I don’t even remember the gift I buried under all that flamboyant wrapping but I will always remember the way I wrapped it. 

That was a truly magical Christmas for me, one that I will always remember with fondness. Yet if I’m not careful, those memories will haunt me like a curse of the Ghost of Christmas Past. This is because while it’s human nature to want to reproduce those things we felt were happy and good, it’s impossible to do so because all elements of that experience change and we become disappointed next year when we do all the same things but it doesn’t hold the same magic. Therefore something tragic occurs: we sacrifice the moment we are having now trying to reproduce the one we already had. Essentially, we attempt to “Appendage Wrap” the gift of this moment to make it look like something else and the sad result is like throwing away the gift with the wrapping paper. 

Of course traditions are great and past memories are beautiful but I can give myself and my loved ones an incredible gift, one that’s somehow even better than a fabulous talking Ross Perot, by simply learning to be unfailingly present with what is, with the moment we are creating right now. With the joy of past memories as a guide, I can excitedly make new memories in this moment with the possibility of every year being the best holiday to date.  

It is perhaps a little gratuitous to cajole you to be present during the holidays because it’s human nature to be conditioned to be otherwise. In truth, this kind of presence takes a little dedicated and regular practice. 

This year, give Christmas presence. 

Here are a few simple things to practice as safeguards against the curse of The Ghost of Christmas Past (or Future, for that matter).

First, mitigate your expectations. A student at a yoga retreat once taught me, “What are expectations but premeditated disappointments.” Amen to that! Without any expectations, you can be free to enjoy things simply for what they are. 

Second, no comparisons. Teddy Roosevelt and others said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” It takes perspective, openness, and willingness to see that each moment can be as beautiful as any other moment. Appreciate the past and hope for the future but don’t compare them to the present.

Third, be curious. Curiosity saves you from the confinement of comparison and allows you to open up to the possibilities of the present. Ask yourself questions like, “What am I appreciating at this time,” “What is illuminating my senses,” and “What can I be grateful for right now?”

Fourth, my magic mantra for happiness is, “This is exactly what I want to be doing at this moment.” Telling yourself this at any moment declares to the Universe and yourself your choice to be in the here and now and to appreciate it for what it is. It will enable you to look around and ask yourself why this moment is so great. You’ll be surprised at how even in the most challenging times how you can nonetheless find something miraculous. 

Fifth, connect to simple pleasures. A simple pleasure could be simply delighting in your senses: enjoying the lights, smelling the pine trees, enjoying the colors. When I was a teenager, I used to walk through my favorite florist once a week or so, just to delight in my sense and treat myself. I never bought anything. Plus, the florist was located in an old Victorian house and I’d read that there was an actual ghost in the attic named Edna, apparently the original owner of the house, and I secretly hoped I would somehow see her. I enjoyed going once a week or so and literally stopping to smell the roses, all the while keeping my eyes open for a chance encounter with an apparition. I also practiced mitigated expectations vis a vis seeing the ghost which was good cuz I never did but still went for the roses. 

Sixth, be creative. Creativity is it’s own gift. It is the art of using what’s currently at your disposal to make something new at the moment, like turning newspaper, a boombox, and a sweatshirt into a talking Ross Perot. Using our essential resource of curiosity, we open to possibilities and make something whether that be a unique gift, a curious way to wrap it, or simply create a moment. 

Seventh, practice not having an opinion about things that really don’t matter. You may have read my story about how Lionel Richie is my Guru because he taught me that I don’t need to have an opinion about Soft Rock. I discovered my simple mantra, “I don’t need to have an opinion about that.” I told this story to a couple at a meditation class around the holidays one year who emailed me a few weeks later only to exclaim, “I don’t need to have an opinion about that” SAVED Christmas. God bless you, Lionel Richie. 

Lastly, stay connected to your heart. The quote I live by is by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in the Little Prince which says, “One only sees correctly with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.” As you are planning and executing this holiday season, be connected to your heart in all you do and you can’t go wrong. Being connected to your heart facilitates gratitude and generosity. Ask yourself, “What do I love?” and go follow that because that will both anchor you to the moment and to what I believe is the ultimate truth: Love. Turns out the Beatles were right. 

Do you have a favorite Christmas, one year that has stood out from all the rest? And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, maybe you have a different holiday, celebration, or birthday that really stands out as supreme. I’m sure if you took a moment to reflect you could practically bring this memory alive by remembering the events, colors, smells, people you were with, or perhaps just the way you felt at that moment. 

After reveling in that memory, might I invite you to use these suggestions above to create a truly beautiful and new experience during the holidays this year. I will certainly lean on this list as a recipe for a merry holiday. 

This year, living in France, we bought a Christmas plant rather than a tree. I might try my hand at some more “Appendage Wrapping.” We will certainly be remembering old traditions while making beaucoup new ones as well. This year, I’ll be practicing presence right along with you. 

My prayer is that this year, we are all spared visitations from the Ghost of Christmas Past or Future but are treated to a royal visitation by the inimitable Ghost of Christmas Presence. 

And hey, if you’re prone to seeing ghosts during the holidays and just happen to bump into a little ghost who lives in an old Victorian named Edna… tell her that I’m a big fan.

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We are in full swing with the holidays and if you’re like me, sometimes it’s easy to get overwhelmed with gift giving. This is because:

We’re worried about the planet and we hate the idea of buying more “stuff” that is likely to end up in a landfill and cause our poor mother earth to shed yet more tears.

We have people on our list who are really, really hard to buy for.

We want to give something that will really benefit your loved ones but, what can do that?

Everyone needs less stress, more inner calm and is it possible to buy that for someone?

I’ve had so many requests to make my offerings easy to gift to others that this year I decided to create the Online Body Mind Spirit Boutique. Here, you can find a lovely gift for all those on your “nice” list, and some that might even help those on your “naughty” list.

You can set these gifts to drop down your loved one’s digital chimney on Christmas morning so they have a fun email to open on the big day with their gift attached. If you want something physical, you can also print a PDF graphic that comes with your purchase to wrap or put in a stocking.

Speaking of stocking stuffers, I even have a few freebies that you can give away with abandon like you are Ebaneezer Scrooge on Christmas Day. Plus, on the night before Christmas, when all through the house, when everyone’s sleeping, even you and your spouse, you will sleep extra peacefully that night knowing that this year you’re giving carbon-neutral gifts, with zero shipping time or environmental impact, and you're putting money into the pockets of someone OTHER than Jeff Bezos. Most importantly, you’ll be satisfied knowing that your loved ones are getting something to support them to be the person that they are destined to be.

I can’t wait for you to check these out.

• Restore + Yoga Nidra Workshop Saturday, December 18th from 9–11 am MST.

• 31-Day Meditation Challenge

• Intensive or Intermediate Private Yoga Sessions Package

• Yoga Nidra Training: Live, Online, and In-Person (Jan. 19–23, 2022 in Salt Lake City, Utah) and/or Self-Paced, Online Training

• Yoga Teacher/Business Mentor Package Hire me to mentor you 1:1 to achieve your teaching and or business excellence.

• Yoga Retreat of a Lifetime in Bordeaux or Tuscany: Reserve your spot by only paying your $500 deposit

• Yoga Nidra Scripts: over 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts to jump start your teaching today.

• Essential Yoga Nidra Volume 1: 8 hours of specialized guided meditations with varying purposes i.e., for stress, sleep, energy, grief, healing, etc.

• Guided Meditation for Sleep Program: over 3 hours and several PDFs to help you achieve, deep, restful, and nourishing sleep

• Yoga for Stiff Bodies Video Instant Download

• Live Online Yoga Nidra Class: 4 or 8 Class Pass

• Yoga Nidra for Sleep: a specialized 25-minute guided meditation to help you set the conditions for deep, peaceful, and nourishing sleep.

• Tranquility Tool Kit: a catalogue of resources to keep you feeling good, calm, and on top of the world, including breathing exercises, guided meditations, yoga videos, music, blog posts, and more.
  
  
  

Revelations, Heartburn, and Transformation

How are you today? I hope you’re feeling well, happy, and centered in your heart.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving for the United States. We had a truly unforgettable expat Thanksgiving with our small family of 3 and our adopted Nana. Sen and Nana Chris made a lovely free-range chicken, beautiful goat cheese and pomegranate salad, creamy mascarpone mashed potatoes, a truly mind-blowing stuffing with pecans, sausage and bread made from the world’s best baguette. Pics on IG.

This year, I didn’t personally cook anything. I was in charge of bringing the wine and some of Nice’s best pastries, including the finest macarons we’ve ever eaten, and we’ve tried dozens of macaron shops.

Though everything we ate was truly gourmet, the most pleasant surprise for me, the thing that completely took me off guard, was the cranberry sauce. Who knew, right? It was so good, it made me want to name my next child after it. Ok, if not a child, then at least a pet. We’re not having another baby, BTW. Did anybody else not know that the secret ingredient for astoundingly fabulous cranberry sauce was bourbon? Growing up, cranberry sauce was the part of the Thanksgiving meal that nobody touched, the pariah of the feast relegated to some far corner of the table. Maybe it’s because of its gelatinous appearance. Maybe it’s because of its color. Or maybe it’s because it stands unnaturally vertical sans support and retains the exact shape of the can it’s been resting in since 1989. Either way, I didn’t grow up enjoying cranberry sauce and never knew cranberry sauce could be this amazing, it paired so well with all the other dishes.

But in all seriousness, what’s difficult to swallow at Thanksgiving, more difficult than canned cranberry goo from a can, is the complicated affair of why we celebrate Thanksgiving in the first place. I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that Thanksgiving is at its core a celebration of colonialism whose damaging effects include the disenfranchisement of indigenous people. It’s a complicated issue to be sure but one that gives me heartburn. Yet, despite the sourness of this important issue, what I absolutely adore about Thanksgiving is that regardless of its origins, it is a day devoted to GRATITUDE, a powerful spiritual practice that has the power to steer ourselves as well as current and future generations toward the true Oneness of all people.

My opinions and reviews about Thanksgiving aside, today I wanted to write to you and let you know that even though I’m not offering any Black Friday deals, I do want to let you know how excited I am about a workshop I’m hosting that will help you to facilitate this Oneness of humanity. Please join me for my Yoga Nidra dyad workshop that I’m hosting online via Zoom Saturday, November 27th from 9 am to 12 pm MST. I’ll record it so you can join live, watch the replay or both. It’s going to be a very special workshop dedicated to the art of facilitating 1:1 Yoga Nidra with your clients in a way that is quite transformational. If you don’t teach Yoga Nidra, this will be a great introduction to a very powerful way of helping people become their best selves.

Do you teach Yoga Nidra or desire to? Make a bigger difference with you students by expanding your Yoga Nidra toolbox and becoming an expert Yoga Nidra Dyad facilitator.

What’s a dyad, already?

As you may know, Yoga Nidra is a unique, effective, and relaxing form of guided meditation which can facilitate a truly magnificent presence in life. It can also help with healing in body, mind and spirit, and can offer clarion insight into your purpose and the very nature of your being. In a Yoga Nidra dyad, a facilitator leads the practitioner through deepening layers of relaxed Awareness via a mindful dialogue which helps the practitioner illuminate their greatest Awareness. It’s a very powerful and beautiful process, but one that requires a bit of know-how and practice.

Typically Yoga Nidra is led by a facilitator who directs either one person or a group of people through the detailed process of layered and relaxed Awareness. However, leading a student through a 1:1 Yoga Nidra dyad can be exponentially more effective at facilitating transformation because it is personalized and tailored to specific needs of the individual student.

Typical Yoga Nidra is led by the facilitator. A dyad is led by the practitioner.

You’ll learn:

• Why dyads are so effective

• How to practice them safely with your clients

• The Yoga Nidra Dyad Roadmap, the essential guide to dyads

• How to ascertain your student’s needs in the pre-screening

• How to use the koshas as tools to affect transformation

• The art of Reflective Awareness

• How to ground and navigate your student’s awareness

• How to manage and facilitate emotions

• How to help your students process and integrate the experience

• Helpful professional, logistical, and tech tips.
  

You’ll receive:

• Recordings of the entire workshop (except others’ dyad practice)

• A detailed manual with discussion points and resources

• The Yoga Nidra Dyad Roadmap

• Partners to practice Yoga Nidra dyads with!
  

This will be a virtual and recorded workshop via Zoom. In this interactive workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to practice dyads with each other in breakout rooms and receive feedback about your teaching.

The world needs expert Yoga Nidra teachers. Become a masterful Yoga Nidra facilitator by learning Yoga Nidra dyads

Each person who registers will receive a recording of the workshop so even if you can’t make the time work for you, you may register and watch the training at your own convenience.

Counts as continuing education with Yoga Alliance!

Direct any questions to scott@scottmooreyoga.com

Thank you and I hope to see you tomorrow

A Vision of Gratitude

My family and I are living in France but are gearing up to have an expat Thanksgiving. I’ve been thinking of a few very important Thanksgivings for me as well as the importance of gratitude and feel that this email is kind of important, one that points to the essential spiritual practice of gratitude.

The first Thanksgiving I want to tell you about is when in 2002 I’d just arrived in Korea with a 1-year contract to teach English. The school was composed of both native Korean teachers as well as native English-speaking teachers from many different countries around the world. Though there were only a handful of American teachers, the owner of the school thought it would be a great bonding experience for all the teachers despite their nationality to come together and celebrate Thanksgiving.

The biggest problem was that Koreans don’t eat turkey— don’t even know what it is, really. But, thanks to a large US military base stationed in Seoul, about 2.5 hours away by train, nothing was out of reach … if you were willing to pay for it (read black market). One of the teachers of the school grew up in a military family and was no stranger to the black markets that often surrounded military operations.

A full-day’s journey and several hundred dollars later, he arrived back to the school with a mostly-frozen turkey. One problem remained: nobody had cooked a turkey before and given the cost of money and time, everyone was paranoid that they’d mess up the turkey. I volunteered.

I researched the many different ways that one can cook a turkey and chose a way that I hope would produce a nice bird. The pressure was on but I cooked it and it turned out wonderful and nobody got food poisoning. Despite how perfectly cooked the bird was, Turkey didn’t translate for the Korean teachers who passed with a hard “no.” The English-speaking teachers couldn’t understand the roasted silkworm larvae, the fermented soybean paste, and the cornucopia of squid presented in every form imaginable (and many unimaginable.) Everyone found common ground on the roasted veg, the rolls, and the desserts (despite how sickly sweet they were). I’ll never forget that Thanksgiving.

Another Thanksgiving I’ll never forget was last year, 2020 in Utah. After what had already been one helluva year with the pandemic, around the beginning of November, my mom began in-house hospice as the result of run-away cancer which started in her colon and had eventually riddled her body.

By Thanksgiving, she hadn’t left her bed in a week and hadn’t eaten in several days. In my family, my mom is the Queenpin of Thanksgiving so without her at the helm, the crew was going to have to steer that ship. My brother did most of the cooking but Sen and I stepped in as well; I was in charge of making mom’s famous rolls, a crucial and beloved element of our Thanksgiving dinner which, I must say, turned out beautifully.

The meal was a very special and tender-hearted affair—small and meaningful with only 6 of us, those who were closest to my mom, gathered around the table with my mom on a respirator in the other room. And though my mom wasn’t conscious and couldn’t join us at the table nor eat, it was nonetheless heartwarming to know that she was with us for this last Thanksgiving. My mom died two days later.

A few weeks later, I had something like a dream about my mom. Actually it felt so much more meaningful than an ordinary dream that I can’t help but call it a vision. In my vision, my family and I were sitting at something like a meeting in church and my mom was at the pulpit looking happy, well, and absolutely radiant. She was dressed in a beautiful emerald green skirt and jacket, the color of hope, renewal, and rebirth. She was speaking to all of her beloved family and friends in the audience with genuine joy. “I’m just so grateful. I’m just so grateful,” she repeated over and over again with absolute sincerity. This was her only message. Around her were a small band of Native American shamans who were chanting and drumming, building in an incredible crescendo. At their apex, my mother suddenly burst into flames. She didn’t catch fire but rather became transformed into flames—a phoenix reborn through fire. Everyone in the audience was taken aback with shock, everyone except the shamans who seemed to know exactly what would happen and who simply continued their rite of drumming and chanting.

As we prep for Thanksgiving, the bitter-sweetness of last year lingers; it is difficult to be without her. Still, her gift of gratitude survives her. Truly, my work, both vocationally as well as my personally, is one where I get to explore that eternal part inside of each of us that never dies. I believe that what my mom was telling me in my vision is that an eternal element that links us all together is gratitude. Surely gratitude is one of the greatest practices one can practice in this lifetime.

This year, we are living in Nice, France and we get to spend this Thanksgiving with adopted family. Nana Chris is also from the US and is the mother of one of my yoga students and dear friend from Utah. Nana Chris happened to be living in Nice the first time we came here to live around this time in 2018. Having never met us previously, she showed up to an introductory lunch at one of her favorite restaurants with a large bag full of gifts for us and our little Elio, and took no time to adopt us as her family. It was so nice to have someone we could relate to while we were being brand new in France, our first time living here as a family.

Being back in Nice, we are so grateful for her and are looking forward to a very French Thanksgiving with her. We couldn’t get a turkey this year so instead Chris’ butcher, Demian (she’s on a first-name basis with all of the shops in her neighborhood) has ordered us a very special and particular French chicken. We’ll also be serving and making stuffing from what we consider the best damn baguette in the known world. In fact, when I told the man at the boulangerie that this was the best baguette I’ve ever eaten, he blew off the statement as if it were already a proven fact. I may as well have told him that they have discovered that the earth is in fact round. Instead of pies, we will be buying some truly exquisite French pastries. We also bought a beautiful bottle of wine to share. Adopted food, country, and family will certainly be the theme to this year’s Thanksgiving.

Do you celebrate Thanksgiving? Regardless, do you have any very special holidays you can remember? Regardless of whatever holiday you celebrate, what I think is a more important question is what are YOU grateful for? If you’ll permit me, I’ll start …(a-hem).

I’m so grateful for my love, my partner, my muse, the Goddess who is my wife, Seneca. We are great partners and she supports me, loves me, and helps me grow in every way. I’m so grateful for her vision and sense of adventure. I’m also infinitely grateful to be the papa to little Elio and the stepdad to our older son Liam (1st grade and grad school, respectively).

I’m immensely grateful for loving and supportive family members, including parents, siblings and truly fantastic in-laws. I’m grateful for friends, many of whom are the kind of family you get to choose rather than what you’re born or married into.

I’m grateful for YOU! I love to have a job that connects me with you, wherever you are living on this globe. Truly we are connected in small and large ways through the inimitable practice of sharing ideas, life, and spirit. Thank you for who you are to make this world a better place and for your connection, kindness, and support to me.

I’m grateful for a career where I get to share my ideas and share spirit in a way that I hope makes a difference in the world by helping people to become their best person. I’m grateful that my career helps me as much as anyone else by driving me along my own path toward self-understanding.

I’m grateful to be able to travel, to be living in France (a country I adore), and for the opportunity to learn more about what I find to be a fascinating culture and a beautiful language.

Drop me a line, I’d love to hear about your memorable celebrations as well as whatever you are most grateful for at this moment.

May gratitude be among our essential spiritual practices as we work our way through the fierce heat of living and may we all transform into the angels of love we are destined to be.

PS

Also, this weekend I’ll be hosting my most requested Yoga Nidra workshop: Teaching Yoga Nidra Dyads. A Yoga Nidra dyad is a transformational, 1:1 Yoga Nidra experience where a facilitator leads a practitioner through deepening layers of relaxed Awareness via a mindful dialogue which helps the practitioner illuminate their greatest Awareness. This unique form of guided meditation is a very powerful method to work 1:1 with your clients. It can also help with healing in body, mind and spirit, and can offer clarion insight into one’s purpose and the very nature of their being. This will be hosted via Zoom and recorded so you can either join live (and even practice with other participants) and/or watch the replay. Please join me! Counts as Yoga Alliance continuing education credit.

I’d like to remind you that today, I’ll be a part of a free open mic meditation session via Zoom where I, along with a few other meditation teachers, will offer some wonderful and calming guided meditations. This will be happening from 8–9 pm GMT (3 pm Eastern, 2 pm Central, 1 pm Mountain, and 12 pm Pacific). The event is hosted by meditationcourses.co.uk and while it’s free, you will need to reserve a ticket. No matter where you are in the world, you can join from the comfort of your own home.