What Would Bruce Springsteen Do?

I just heard Bruce Springsteen say something that stopped me in my tracks. He said:

“… the price we pay as a society for our toxic individualism and patriarchy is our permanent estrangement from one another. If I can’t connect to you, I can’t connect to us. Whether it’s racism, class differences, or any of myriad other social plagues, its cost is always the same: a broken and dysfunctional system that prevents us from recognizing and caring for our neighbor with a flawed but full heart.”

Heart, brimming. Mind, blown.

No wonder they call him The Boss. 

So, allow me to put this into a little bit greater context.

The essence of any practice is interpersonal work. I relate to the wise words of one of my most influential teachers Judeth Hanson Lasater who said, “All my gurus share my last name.”

In other words, there’s positively no greater laboratory than intimate and personal relationships to do the arduous but joyful work of transforming into who we are destined to become. 

To that end, my wife and I love to read or listen to books that help us to stretch into the people and the couple that we are destined to be. Currently we are reading the book US by Terry Real. It’s about evolving past a you-and-me kind of mentality into a deeper relationship that builds an “US.” This has immense personal benefit as well as benefit for any couple. 

I have found Terry Real’s other stuff astoundingly insightful and directly applicable and even just a few chapters in, I would recommend US to anyone interested in uncovering then working through the unconscious programming we acquire as kids and perpetuate forward into our current relationships and to our own communities, partners, and kids, often with difficult or disastrous results for ourselves and our nearest and dearest. This book is designed to help us confront, then move past, our old ghosts, break the cycle of negative coping behaviors, and finally start acting like functional and emotionally healthy adults for feck sake!

One of the reasons this idea of US impressed me so much is because, kinda what The Boss was saying in not so many words, is that as we learn to see ourselves as an “US” in our most personal relationships, by extension we simultaneously discover how humanity is an “US.” 

Learning this lesson is how the world transforms from the you vs me mentality, through the you and me mentality, into the apotheosis of human relationship which is the US reality. “US” is Oneness. Doing so heals us from the natural but terminal human malady of the illusion of separateness. Doing so wakes us up to the truth of what I call our Both And Nature: I am you and me AND everything else. 

Cool. What does this have to do with The Boss?

Well, I love The Boss, the one and only Bruce Springsteen. So, what could be better than an incredible book like US than US with a forward written by the one and only Bruce Springsteen? That’s right. Perhaps the thing I love most about Bruce is his powerful and well-crafted lyrics. It’s no surprise, then, that his forward to this powerful book is also well-crafted and powerful. 

I was recently at the gym listening to this book and Bruce’s words popped into my AirPods and completely arrested me, leaving me standing there looking vacantly into my gym locker. As people were pumping iron all around me my mind was pumping the simple thought, “This is incredible! I gotta share this with everyone I know.”

And so I am taking the liberty of sharing this with you. Here is the forward in its entirety which I found on Oprah’s website: 

By my early thirties, I’d become aware enough to know, as things stood, I’d never have the things I wanted. A full life, a home, a wholeness of being, a companion, and a place in a community of neighbors and friends all seemed beyond my grasp. I didn’t have the judgment, the courage, or the skills to bring a real life to fruition. I was one of the most successful musicians on the planet, but work is work, life is life, and they are not the same. Even more frustrating, the things that made me good at my job—my easy tolerance, even hunger, for the isolation of creativity, my ability to comfortably and deeply reside within myself and put all my energy into my work for days, weeks, years at a time—doomed my personal life to failure. I lived a lonely but seemingly secure existence. Then at thirty-two I hit an emotional wall and realized I was lost in a deep dark forest, largely of my own making, without a map. So began forty years of trying to find my way through the shadowed trees, down to the river of a sustaining life.

With help I realized, in early middle age, that I was subject to a legacy that had been passed down from generations in my Italian-Irish family. A long and stubborn stream of mental illness and dysfunction manifested itself in my life as a deep, recurring depression and an emotional paralysis. I had a fear of exposing my inner life to anyone besides twenty thousand complete strangers at your nearest arena. The eye-to-eye democracy of real adult love struck fear and insecurity deep in my heart. Meanwhile I could feel my life clock ticking on the things I wanted to do and what I wanted to become.

So how do you transform that legacy? How do you break the chain of trauma and illness whose price is compounded with each successive generation? As Terry says, “Family pathology is like a fire in the woods taking down all in front of it until someone turns to face the flames.” Slowly I began to face those flames, mainly because I couldn’t stand the idea of failing my own children, my family, in the manner that I felt I’d been failed. And at the end of the day, the way we honor our parents and their efforts is by carrying on their blessings and doing our best to not pass forward their troubles, their faults, to our own children. Our children’s sins should be their own. It’s only through the hard work of transformation do those of ours who have come before cease to be the ghosts that haunt us and transform into the ancestors we need and love to walk beside us. Working even a small piece of this into my life took a long time, and I’m still a daily work in progress. My children will have plenty of work to do on their own, but we all have to learn and earn our own adulthood.

Looking more broadly, the price we pay as a society for our toxic individualism and patriarchy is our permanent estrangement from one another. If I can’t connect to you, I can’t connect to us. Whether it’s racism, class differences, or any of myriad other social plagues, its cost is always the same: a broken and dysfunctional system that prevents us from recognizing and caring for our neighbor with a flawed but full heart. Terry’s writing is loving and kind, clever and strong, and he’s written a beautiful and important book, particularly for the moment we are in. It helps lead the way to a more powerful and noble society based on the tenets of love, justice, and respect. He has laid out a process by which we can begin to understand our place in our own families and our society. I’ve worked hard, and I’ve been lucky. Over the years I’ve found some very good guides through that dark forest and down to that river of life. For my wife, Patti, and me, Terrence Real has been one of those guides, and this book is a map through those trees.

Be safe and journey forward, Bruce Springsteen

What a Boss!

If you do decide to buy this book, and I hope you do, might I suggest buying it from your local bookseller? There’s something special about books and actual bookstores and I believe that the people running them are like literary angels. Here’s my favorite local bookseller in Salt Lake City who would love your business and no, I’m not endorsed by them in any way. I just like to celebrate awesomeness. 

And just like I celebrate the awesomeness of The Boss, Terry Real, and great books like US and places that sell books, I also celebrate YOUR awesomeness. But you rising up to your potential isn’t just awesome, like let’s give each other a high five and say good job thinking our job is done so we go on our individual way thinking, “I’mna go make myself an ‘I’m Awesome’ tee shirt,” kind of awesome. It’s awesome cuz you becoming your best is what saves the world. It’s true. Regardless of whether or not we have met in person, I believe in you and the amazing potential you have inside to change the world. I know that as you continue to grow into the kind of awesome that you are meant to be, the world will be a better place for it. Changing the world starts with you inching your way toward your best self.

And yes, as humans are all fatally flawed, but like The Boss says, you learning how to accept and navigate your brokenness is the first step to “recognizing and caring for our neighbor with a flawed but full heart.” 

And as soon as we transform into an “US,” we discover that just like Alice Walker said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Truly an “US” is what we’ve been waiting for. 

My favorite way of practicing the “US” reality is through the transformational practice of Yoga Nidra. Please consider joining my next Yoga Nidra immersion and teacher training happening August 15–28, 2022 where we learn to master the art of facilitating this practice of our Both And Nature, this “US” reality, which is necessary for this world to survive and then to thrive.

My prayer is that we all continue being “a boss” in all that we positively benefit the world and that as we do so, we all wake up to this “US” reality that saves ourselves, our families, our communities, and the world. 

Yoga Nidra Training: Holding The Paradox of Peace and Rage

View outside my window at my château retreat

I recently wrapped up two incredible weeks of retreats in the French countryside, practicing presence as we savor life with flavors, terroir, and connection of body, mind, and spirit. 

One of the themes of my retreats was learning to see with the heart more than with the eyes. It’s been truly fabulous to retreat from the every-day and get to the heart of what really matters in life. I hope that you will be able to join me for either of my next upcoming retreats this late summer/early fall to Tuscany where we will be taking a similar approach to savoring life. 

Yet still, sometimes it’s hard to think about enjoying ourselves when there is so much trouble and difficulty in the world right now. And as individuals what can we do about the world’s problems? As a single person, can we even make a difference? 

First, I believe that the biggest problem we are facing as individual and collective human beings is nothing new. Our biggest problem is the false notion that we are separate from one another. We feel that there is a war “out there” that we must fight in order to somehow find harmony so we fight other nations, other political parties, and other people’s beliefs when the struggle has and always will be within.

We will never achieve harmony in our outer world until we first achieve it in our inner world. 

Yes, we have big differences and problems with one another and it’s part of the point of being human: to learn to work through these issues and allow them to act as a catalyst for our growth into waking up to our ultimate oneness. 

One of the greatest things we must learn as we wake up as humans is to respond rather than react to our personal and global circumstances. Reaction is the product of our lesser self and only perpetuates the fight moving us personally and collectively in a downward cycle of separateness and destruction. 

Compassionate responsiveness, however, is the product of being connected to our True Self, the person who is evolving as the product of our upward cycle of awareness. Practicing compassionate responsiveness rather than perpetuating reactivity helps us to use our energy and resources to build the world we want rather than fight against the one we don’t. 

Of course there is work to do, of course we can’t just sit on our meditation cushions and hope the world’s problems go away. But without a solid relationship to our inner-self we have no foundation to step from where we are into where we want to be. 

Honestly, I’m completely enraged by so many injustices that are happening in the world and specifically in the US right now. The cultivation of compassion through mindfulness doesn’t blanket these feelings. In fact, with connection to my compassionate ground my hearts actually wake up fully to this world’s problems and the intolerable injustices that those in power perpetuate toward marginalized people, women as a whole, and of course our dear mother Earth. But with connection to my compassionate ground, I may cultivate the superpower to alchemize my righteous rage into loving action that actually heals, both individually and globally.

Yes, any true change we wish to see in the world must start within and I can think of no greater way of creating necessary personal and global change than by learning and practicing the gentle but transformational practice of Yoga Nidra. 

Yoga Nidra has immensely impacted my life by showing me very clearly my personal wholeness and the connectedness of all things. It’s given me a personal and global perspective over problems. And because I’m human I’m going to mess it up so Yoga Nidra has given me a way of practicing learning how this compassion thing works. It’s empowered me with immense clarity of action while also helping me maintain an abiding peace while working toward the future I wish to build. 

Yoga Nidra has shown me that my anger about injustice in this world is actually a wonderful gift because it wakes me up from being anesthetized on auto-pilot and shows me that somehow everything is love. It shows me that I am responsible to ground my actions in this love and do the work necessary to build the future I want. It’s shown me that I can work to help end injustice in this world while also having peace in my heart. 

In short, Yoga Nidra has shown me the paradox that I’m powerful enough to hold both peace and rage simultaneously. 

I’m not alone here and I feel immensely honored and gratified to have done my part to help tens of thousands of other people likewise feel empowered to realize their own innate wholeness and power by teaching Yoga Nidra to them. 

I want to invite you to make a difference, to make a global impact by learning to teach Yoga Nidra.

My Next Yoga Nidra Training

In about 4 weeks, August 15–28th, I’ll be hosting my next Yoga Nidra immersion and teacher training. I’m really thrilled about this training because I’m constantly improving my trainings and this time around I’ve developed a completely new hybrid format that offers a more comprehensive curriculum as well as incredible flexibility. You’ll learn the core principles on your own timeline and will also have tons and tons of personalized live Zoom time to practice teaching Yoga Nidra, explore your personal questions, and discover exactly how YOU will use Yoga Nidra to make a positive impact on the world. 

If you’ve already taken my Yoga Nidra course and want a refresher or to sharpen your skills, you can join for a special repeat-student price.

If you've ever wanted to learn how Yoga Nidra can help you and others make serious life transformation, now’s the time. 

This training is perfect if you’re a yoga or meditation teacher, coach or therapist, school teacher, parent, or anybody who is passionate about making a positive impact for others and making a difference in the world. 

When you complete this course you will:

• Feel confident to teach Yoga Nidra like an expert

• Understand Yoga Nidra so well that your delivery will be effortless 

• You’ll understand how to satisfy the unique needs of your students and clients

• Stand out as a teacher, therapist, or coach

• Make a deep, meaningful, and positive impact on the lives of your students or clients and the world

• Be prepared to start earning money as a Yoga Nidra facilitator either in person or online

Too many Yoga Nidra trainings only discuss what Yoga Nidra is and then send you off with a few rote scripts to teach with. The problem with that is that a teacher will be most powerful when they can teach from their own experience and their own words and not as a parrot of their teacher. 

Imitate then innovate

I believe that you must learn to imitate then learn to innovate so in my program, you’ll get over 100 pages of highly-effective Yoga Nidra scripts—like Yoga Nidra for Sleep, Yoga Nidra For Healing, and Yoga Nidra for Stress— so that you can start teaching great Yoga Nidra classes right away. But by the end of my program, you’ll feel so confident with the principles and roadmaps of how to build your own specialized Yoga Nidra scripts, that you will soon be able to innovate and make your OWN scripts to meet the specific and individual needs of your students and clients. This is so essential to be a transformational Yoga Nidra facilitator and I don’t know of any other program that prepares their students to make their own scripts like this. 

I’ve spent years developing my curriculum and as I’ve done some deep soul searching to explore how I’ve become an expert at teaching Yoga Nidra, I’ve discovered two complete game-changing principles that I can’t wait to share with you, that will help you to deliver excellency in your teaching and have you teaching like nobody else. 

Hybrid Learning Gives You More of Everything

Both the immersion and teacher training will be a combination of self-paced online learning as well as weekly live weekend sessions. 

Online Learning

You’ll learn the essential principles, lessons, theories, techniques, roadmaps, and practice Yoga Nidra via my robust pre-recorded online Yoga Nidra training. This allows you to digest this material on your own timeline and to review it as often as you like. I’m very proud and honored that my online Yoga Nidra teacher training is considered among the top 5 online Yoga Nidra trainings in the world. 

When you register you receive immediate and lifetime access to the online portion of the training which contains: 

• Engaging video lectures 

• Dozens of specialized Yoga Nidra audio recordings (some specifically designed to help you learn to teach Yoga Nidra) 

• Breathing and mindfulness exercises

• The Yoga Nidra Roadmap 

• The Yoga Nidra Dyad Roadmap 

• Class Building Worksheet 

• Helpful Tech Sheet 

• Pranayama exercises for yourself and to give to your students

• Mindfulness exercises for yourself and to give to your students

• Mindful poems 

• Essential props list

• Yoga Nidra Door hanger for privacy

• Over 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts

Live Sessions

These live sessions will be so valuable!

Because the core content will all be done on your own, this allows us so much more time on our live Zoom sessions for:

• Deeper and more personalized Q&A

• More peer collaboration

• More practice teaching Yoga Nidra and Yoga Nidra dyads

• Exploring specifically how YOU can use Yoga Nidra with your students and clients

• Building classes in real time together to see how ideas become effective Yoga Nidra scripts

Every cohort of trainees is different and each person has specific needs for learning Yoga Nidra. You have unique perspectives, talents, and reasons for teaching Yoga Nidra. That’s why I’m devoting the majority of our Zoom time (4 hours on each Saturday and 4 hours on each Sunday) to answer your personalized questions, go deeper on the topics that are important to you, to practice teaching Yoga Nidra, and to receive live Yoga Nidra practices. These live sessions will  allow you the opportunity to practice teaching yoga Nidra to each other. This will be so powerful!

Facebook Group

In addition to the online connection with your Yoga Nidra cohort via Zoom, you’ll also be connected to your peers via our private Facebook Group. Here you can encourage each other, ask questions, make contacts, upload your recordings and share resources. 

Two Segments

I’ve split up the training into two Segments. The first segment is the Yoga Nidra immersion, designed for those interested in developing their personal relationship with the transformative power of Yoga Nidra. Ultimately, this is an inquiry into your very nature of being to discover how beautiful and wondrous your life can be, and how much this yoga of sleep can benefit your stress, sleep, and perspective on the world and its problems. The immersion also serves as the foundation for the teacher training segment of the training. 

The next segment is designed for those who are interested in teaching Yoga Nidra or for those who just really geek out on this fascinating subject. For this week, you’ll have the chance to practice teaching each other Yoga Nidra and begin to master the art of teaching, creating the container, and using the tools that facilitate lasting transformation. 

In addition to all the things you’ll receive in the online learning and Zoom sessions, you’ll also get: 

• An updated 160-page manual to help map your Yoga Nidra training journey

• A certificate of completion (upon completion)

• Access to my weekly live, online Yoga Nidra class from when you sign up through the duration of the training ($48 value)

• A 30-minute private consultation via Zoom ($100 value)

The Training Pays For Itself

Most yoga or Yoga Nidra trainings may prepare you to teach but almost none of them show you how to create good-paying teaching opportunities for yourself. By the end of this training, you’ll have the confidence to go out and generate your own well-paying live and online classes, workshops, courses, digital products, and even retreats. No more begging yoga studios to teach classes.

Additionally, I’m going to let you in on the some key information I share with those whom I mentor, the foundations of building what I call your Mechanism of Influence. This is all about how to organically attract the clients you want to teach, create a global audience, and get paid what you are worth to share your gift with the world. Your Mechanism of Influence empowers you to make a huge and positive impact on the world while also making a great living doing what you love. 

Refresher

For those who have already taken my training and would like a refresher course, you can participate fully in all parts of this course for a fraction of the cost. This gives you the most updated information (including updated manual), gives you the chance to ask personalized and refined questions perhaps informed by your recent teaching, and allows you to practice teaching classes and dyads with your peers. Refine or refresh your expertise as a Yoga Nidra teacher.

I can’t wait for this training to begin and I’d really love for you to join me. When you register, you’ll receive a welcome email with immediate access to the online learning portion so that you can start learning right away. You’ll also get all the information for our live sessions. 

We’ll have our live welcome meeting via Zoom on August 15th. By August 28th you can be a certified Yoga Nidra teacher with the power to make a large and positive impact on the world. 

Be the change and help others do the same. Make an impact and help build the kind of world we all want to live in by learning to facilitate Yoga Nidra. 

Please join me. 

Peace, Providence, and Plum Village

How are you?!

It’s been a while since I’ve sent out a newsletter. I’ve been enjoying practicing savoring life through presence in body, mind, and spirit as I’ve led 2 different retreats at a chateau in the Bordeaux region of France as well as a pre/post retreat in Paris. It’s been lovely!

Then, we were called to the States unexpectedly to attend the funeral of a dear family member—another great opportunity to practice savoring life but from a completely different perspective. So after the retreats we flew directly to the US. 

This learning to savor life reminds me of part of one of my favorite poems from Mary Oliver, Bone, where she says:

“…and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.”

May looking, touching, and loving be the way that we learn to understand the great mystery of life. 

I love teaching yoga and meditation retreats for so many reasons but especially because of the rich lessons I personally learn in the process. As the facilitator and leader of the retreats, I sometimes feel like I stand to learn the most. 

Today, I want to tell you a story about something truly incredible that happened on one of my retreats that has me celebrating the connection of it all. 

To set this up, rewind almost 20 years ago. I’m in Korea, teaching English, studying meditation, and doing a lot of self-discovery. It was 2003 and the US had just declared war on Iraq and despite the anti-American sentiment in Korea at the time, I decided to take a train up to Seoul to attend a peace rally. Peace advocate and Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh was going to be there to offer a peace march, a slow walking prayer for peace. I LOVE Thich Nhat Hanh, had read several of his books, and couldn’t believe that I was going to finally see him. 

There were more than 10,000 people at this peace rally and as one of the only white people there, I stood out making me a potential target for anti-American sentiment. But I figured that being a peace rally and all, I’d hopefully be ok.  

While I was waving my hand-made sign which read “American for Peace,” a kind Korean monk began talking to me, sharing his warm smile and words, acknowledging my decision to be there. 

Soon, the crowd hushed as Thich Nhat Hanh took the stage and instructed us on how to breathe in peace and breathe out peace as he and a select group of about a dozen monks would walk slowly along a cordoned-off path in the center of the crowd of 10,000 people.  

Thich Nhat Hanh began his peace march through the silent crowd. As Thich Nhat Hanh and his posse of monks approached where I was standing, I heard my new monk friend whisper in my ear, “Stay close to me.” “Sure,” I thought, “we are packed in here like sardines. Where am I going to go?” Then, as Thich Nhat Hanh and his wake of monks passed in front of where I was standing, my kind Korean monk friend lifted the rope separating the crowd from the small double-row of monks performing the peace walk. I felt a gentle hand on my back pushing me into the slow procession of monks and before I knew it, we took up the caboose position in the peace walk with 10,000 pairs of eyes watching us. 

We completed the peace walk with the monks and ended up on stage facing the entire crowd. Thich Nhat Hanh gave some final remarks and everyone erupted into celebratory applause. 

I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. Read the entire story here (blog)

Now, fast forward to January of 2022 and I am living in France. I was crushed to hear that at 95 years old, Thich Nhat Hanh had died. I knew he had Plum Village—his headquarters, meditation halls, and retreat center—was somewhere in the South of France but I was shocked to learn that it was only about 20 minutes from where I’d be hosting my retreats in June. I had to go and I desperately wanted to bring my retreat attendees with me. 

I scoured the Plum Village website to make arrangements but couldn’t quite discern whether or not we’d be welcome to visit Plum Village. I’d written an email to the administration of Plum Village which went unanswered. One page on the website said that we could show up and that lunch would be provided and on another part indicated the contrary. There were so many variables that I thought we should simply show up, trust fate, and be ready to roll with whatever presents itself. 

So one beautiful June morning at my Bordeaux retreat, the bus picked us up from the chateau and we headed to Plum Village. We had all packed some fruit, granola bars, and whatever other food we could in our bags to be prepared regardless of whether or not we were served lunch. 

As we unloaded from the bus we saw a busy but easy going community of monks, practitioners, and lay people on a meditation retreat. I’m not sure if any of them were also visiting for just the day. Some people were volunteers on their Happy Farm project, others were lounging in hammocks or meditating as they sat in the grass. 

We milled about for a bit as I tried to catch my bearings and figure out what to do and where to go. I introduced myself to a few monks, told them who we were, and I asked them if we were welcome and how we could participate. They kindly indicated we were welcome for the day, that we could join for a meditation and Dharma talk offered by some of the senior monks, but that we were on our own for lunch. Score!

As we waited for the meeting to start, we were all standing around and taking in this incredible fact that WE WERE AT PLUM VILLAGE. While we were standing there, a big warm-hearted black man who was attending the meditation retreat at Plum Village saw one of the attendees of my retreat, a black woman, and he jumped up in the air and shouted, “Yes! Now there’s two of us!” He walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her with a big, long, hug. We all met and introduced ourselves before the two of them celebrated their blackness together and immediately dove into deep and warm conversation about the need for meditation in their communities. 

His name is Ofosu and I eventually learned that he is a Ghanian-American hip-hop and electronic musician in the Washington DC area and calls himself Born I. He teaches meditation, is a practicing buddhist, and devotes much of his music to waking up. Incredible.

Eventually, we entered a large meditation hall. There were chairs set up as well as meditation cushions on the floor and in several sections of the hall there were chords and headphones so that the talks could be translated into several different languages. 

The warm tones of a large bell greeted several of the head monks who entered and took their seats on the stage. We meditated. After, they hosted a moving Q&A session. One man asked the monks through tears how we can meditate when there is war going on. Then Ofosu approached the stage and asked a heart-felt question about how to reconcile racism through meditation. I was blown away by how compassionately the monks answered the questions. 

After the Q&A, the monks indicated that today was the celebration of the 40th anniversary of Plum Village. My heart leapt. I just happened to bring my group to Plum Village on this momentous day! The monks talked lovingly of their leader Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh’s familiar name), and illustrated the origins and evolutions that Plum Village has experienced over the years. They showed a video montage of Thich Nhat Hanh’s life as well as the ongoing life of Plum Village and even though none of the pictures were of the peace march I’d attended in Seoul in 2003, the photos took me back there as if it were yesterday. 

Eventually, we shuffled out of the hall and I was moved to find my new friend, Ofosu. I gave him a big hug and thanked him for his question about reconciling race issues with meditation and mindfulness and told him how his question invited me to be more mindful about race. We had a warm moment and a brief chat.  

Then the few hundred people in attendance at Plum Village that day, went outside to participate in our own peace march. We started at a large tower with an enormous bell which they rang several times as they evoked a prayer. Then we walked in silence in a thin line through the forest breathing and thinking peace. I felt as if I were reliving my impromptu peace march with Thich Nhat Hanh almost 20 years prior.

“It’s this.”

Thich Nhat Hanh was a master calligrapher and the organizers had hung many of his sayings up in the trees so that passersby could read them along the way. They were written in French, English, and Vietnamese. It took perhaps 30 minutes of slow walking to reach the end of the path through the forest, each step more inspiring and peaceful than the last. 

On the other side of the path, we were all greeted by beautiful classical music. We sat in the sun of this beautiful June day and soaked it all in. A few of the monks began playing Bach— a monk playing the cello, violin, piano, and flute, though the flutist was the only one not wearing the brown habit of a monk, so maybe they outsourced the flute. Several female monks performed a dance. 

I don’t know how I missed this, maybe it happened later in the day, but Ofosu performed a number with the monks as well. If you use Facebook, you can see it here. 

Born I and Phap Huu performing “Little Star”

Our group connected and together we marveled at our incredible fortune to be at Plum Village at all, let alone on this 40th anniversary celebration. We sat down on the grass and began to eat our lunch, the fruit and various things we’d brought with us.

Then they served cake, chocolate cake!

On display was a gallery containing many of Thich Nhat Hanh’s original calligraphy. I stood and marveled at Thich Nhat Hanh’s perfect, harmonious circles, his simple but wise phrases, all of it a legacy.

Eventually, we made our way back up the hill to meet our bus driver who picked us up and took us back to the chateau and our regularly scheduled retreat. 

What an incredible day!

I hosted another retreat at the chateau the following week and we also went back to Plum Village for another magical day, though this one with decidedly less surprise and celebration. 

On this second trip to Plum Village I bumped into the Ofosu again and he said that it was the last day of the retreat for him at Plum Village, he’d be going home soon. I asked him if he had any major take-aways from his experience at Plum Village and he said that what he learned most was how even though he will always be fighting racial inequality as long as it exists he can still be happy in this moment. He can fight for justice and have personal peace. 

I love this insight!

May past, present, and future all wrap itself into this moment, even if we don’t have everything figured out. May we tirelessly strive for justice and equality while also keeping the peace within ourselves and outside of ourselves. And may we be open to those unforgettable moments that present themselves along our way. 

Expecting The Unexpected

I often plan retreats years in advance. Yet, despite all the many months and sometimes years of planning, one thing I’ve learned over the years is to expect the unexpected, that some things are impossible to plan.

In 2018 I led a retreat in the breathtaking Amalfi Coast in Italy. We stayed in a 16th-century convent turned into a retreat center, a stone’s throw from the Mediterranean, and loved eating outside under the trellises thick with summer flowers, practicing yoga in the open air yoga shala, and eating the sumptuous, home-cooked meals by our Italian chefs. It was a complete paradise. 

One day, all I had planned for the day was leading a morning meditation and a mid-morning and afternoon yoga practice and other than that we’d simply be hanging around the convent relaxing, reading or journaling, and maybe walking down to the sea. 

Our host approached me after our early morning meditation and asked off-handedly if I might be interested in taking the group to hike near some ocean cliffs during the late morning and early afternoon as well as perhaps going to Naples in the evening to hear some outdoor music and eat some pizza, an informal event organized by his “cousin.” I say “cousin” because it seems that our Italian host is “cousins” with half of Naples. Anyway, it would cost everyone €15. 

At first, I was a little hesitant to add anything to our schedule that day for two reasons. First, I’ve learned that too many excursions at a retreat can blur the container and can sometimes distract from the overall spirit of the retreat. Plenty of scheduled down time is necessary for the message and experience of the retreat to really sink in. Secondly, we’d already paid for a very nice meal to be prepared by our chefs that night and I didn’t want everyone to pay an additional €15 for an experience they hadn’t planned on. Also, I freely admit that what I had envisioned when our host had described “outdoor music and pizza” was our group sitting on the curb in a dirty piazza in Naples listening to some loud Italian garage band and eating whatever local cheap pizza shop happened to be nearby— which admittedly, being in Naples, would probably still be amazing. 

Maybe I was feeling capricious or maybe the allure of real Napolese pizza caught my fancy, but on a whim I decided what the hell, we’d do both the hike and the dinner. 

That morning we did our usual morning movement and meditation practice, greeting the sun as it crept over the mount Vesuvius casting the convent in its shadow. Later, in our morning asana practice, we were invigorated and opened as we stretched, moved, and breathed. 

After yoga, we all loaded into a van and drove a short distance to do our hike. The natural landscape was breathtaking as we skirted the rocky cliffs that edged the cerulean blue waters of the bay of Naples. Wild flowers grew from rock crevices and tantalized our eyes with their panoply of colors. The kiss and scent of the fresh sea breeze caressed our faces. 

We hiked a steep downhill mile and arrived at a natural rock platform and marveled as the entire ocean seemed to heave and swell as if watching the ocean’s watery and profound breaths. A feeling of pure giddiness and abandon took over the entire group and soon we were screaming and laughing as we bobbed in the lapis waters trying our best to avoid the errant jellyfish. 

Waterlogged and tired and nursing only a few minor jellyfish stings, we emerged from the ocean to make the mile-long slog back up the hill to the van. I was carrying Elio (not quite 3 at the time) in my arms and he fell asleep as I sweated up the hill. Some kind and enterprising locals saw us trekking up the hill and as we summited the plateau, we saw that they had erected a crude table with small glasses for us to enjoy some limoncello and beers. After the invigorating swim and exhausting hike, the sweet lemon liqueur tasted like pure soma, the elixir of the gods. 

Eventually, we made it back to the convent, showered, and enjoyed a hearty lunch before resting deeply with a lengthy Yoga Nidra practice, the yoga retreat version of a siesta. After Yoga Nidra, several people reported feeling more light and open than they could remember and a few even translated that feeling into being among the most spiritual feelings of their lives. 

Feeling restored and rested after Yoga Nidra, we got dressed up for our night out of pizza and music. We mounted the vans and as they began to move, I expected our drivers to steer us toward the busy and crowded streets of Naples but instead they began winding their way through the hilly terraced vineyards in the mountains encircling Naples. 

Eventually we stepped out of the van, not onto some dirty piazza, but onto the manicured grounds of an old, stately, and beautifully restored villa and vineyard, basking in the setting sun as it dipped into the bay of Naples. We met a handful of other guests to this soirée and strolled on the lawn toward the back of the villa where we saw a few small rows of chairs facing the pool. After grabbing a glass of wine, we took a seat and waited for the music to begin, which it did shortly.

Yes, just like I had envisioned, there were guitars at this concert but they were not “3-chords-and-the–truth” kind of guitars turned up to 11. Instead of ripped jeans and safety pins, onto the stage of this “informal” concert came two men wearing tuxedos and carrying classical guitars and a mandolin. They sat down and our intimate crowd clapped a joyous welcome then hushed, clearly in surprise and awe at the treat that was presenting itself for us. After a few seconds of silence, they began to play and continued for almost two hours, filling the early evening air with the mellifluous and warm song of classical guitar and mandolin. 

After a dozen or so numbers, the guitar and mandolin players were joined by another man in a tuxedo who sang select opera numbers in an impressive operatic baritone. What struck me was the look of pure joy and pleasure on the singer’s face, as if he would rather be doing nothing else in the world at that moment than singing his heart out into the night for our small assembly. His joy was infectious and as I looked around our group, I was pleased to see everyone grinning with unabashed delight. 

After the musicians took their bows and left the stage the next act was about to happen. Onto the scene appeared a small, happy, and old woman with a face deeply creased by decades of smiling. She almost looked old enough to be an original inhabitant of the villa. But instead of music, her gift was offering us a symphony for our senses. 

Soon she began a pizza processional. Every few minutes she would march from the kitchen and its original wood-fired oven outside to our hungry table, presenting us with freshly-baked pizzas, still steaming on her long wooden pizza paddle. She presented each pizza with bashful smiles as we boisterously clapped and cheered this opulent pizza performance. The freshly-baked pizzas were absolutely decadent, an opera of perfectly chewy crust, deep and rich sauce made from fresh tomatoes and oregano, a generous covering of fresh, local, mozzarella, and of course garnished with a few fresh basil leaves in the Napolise way. Buonissimo!

As we segued from Puccini and listening to pizza and laughing, little Elio took my hand and stole me away. Together we ran into the burgeoning darkness, around the grounds of the villa, through the olive trees and grape vines, chasing the blinking fireflies that lit up the night like fairies. 

That night, we all drank, ate, and laughed in the shadow of this impossibly perfect and completely unplanned day we shared together. And as I soaked it all it in, I raised my eyes above the twinkling fireflies to the winking of the stars above, and mused at the power of a simple “yes” and how sometimes you have to expect the unexpected. 

When I teach others about leading retreats, we often explore ways to add value to the experience. Sometimes that’s learning when to have a rigid structure and when to go with the flow. One of the things I had the foresight to plan for my Amalfi retreat, something that I felt added immense value to the attendees of this retreat, was to invite my friend and professional photographer Reed Rowe along so that he could snap incredible photos while we were practicing being present to the experiences we were having without feeling we had to capture them by pulling out our phones the entire time. See some of the incredible pics Reed took for us that day. 

Please join me this Sunday, May 29th for an online workshop where I’ll teach you all about the magic of leading your own retreats. 

Also, if you feel like expecting the unexpected, please do something impetuous and grab your bestie to join me for my Bordeaux yoga retreat, June 5–11, where we will practice savoring life! I have only two spots left and I’d love to have you join me. 

I also have a few spots left for my Tuscany retreats, September 3–10 and October 8–15. 

Thank you!

Waking Up to Truth and Absurdity

photo cred: https://www.ville-imperiale.com/napoleon/nice/la-place-garibaldi/

Over the weekend, Elio and I went to the park and played a rousing game of Zombie Hide And Seek. This is a game that Elio invented where the zombie (me) chases the cute little boy (Elio) and if the zombie catches the cute little boy, then the zombie must carry said cute little boy off to his zombie cave and put him down to wait to be eaten, but not immediately because the zombie needs to take a little nap after all that work of catching a little boy. So, before taking his lunch, and to savor what will surely be a fine meal cuz it’s not every day that you get to eat the delicacy of a cute little boy, the zombie falls asleep whereupon the cute little boy inevitably escapes from the zombie’s cave (again) and the zombie must therefore find the little boy anew if he wishes to have his lunch. 

After 90 minutes of this zombie not eating his lunch business, both zombie and cute little boy had become quite famished and decided to abandon this morbid game of deprivation and actually seek some more reliable calories. 

We ventured to one of our favorite outdoor cafes located at Place Garibaldi—a square honoring the birthplace of the Italian revolutionary, general, and patriot, Giuseppe Garibaldi. In case you need a history refresher, this is the guy who is credited as Italy’s greatest national hero, a guy who united Italy to what we know of as Italy today, and a true master of strategic advantage. 

Elio and I decided to go to this particular café in Place Garibaldi partly because it was close to the park but also because they serve very good sourdough pizzas and, dare I say, the best burger in town. It’s the kind of burger that you can’t put down, both because it’s so delicious that you can’t stop eating it, but more urgently because it’s so messy that it becomes “strategically advantageous” to just keep it nestled in your hands until you have enjoyed every last morsel. 

After eating this burger, one is left in desperate need to wash their hands (and perhaps entire face … and maybe shirt). No, a simple dinner napkin won’t do. In fact, 5 dinner napkins won’t do. And if after one has finished Nice’s finest burger and is in dire need to freshen up but the café bathroom is occupied, one may be forced to venture instead to the nearby fountain that circles the formidable statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi leaning on his sword in triumph, so that as one washes the grease from their face, he may look down upon you, reveling in a worthy burger victory, won by strategic advantage no less, and nod his silent approval, probably while thinking, “Yes, this my legacy to celebrate such a victory.”

Though Elio and I shared some pizza and fries, we noticed a guy at the table next to us who was tackling the infamous burger. We are always working on good restaurant manners with Elio so when Elio saw the guy next to us wrestling with his burger, he commented on the grease dripping down his chin and mentioned how he lacked resto manners. Having personally eaten this burger, I offered a little compassion as I mentioned how difficult it was to keep this meal polite. 

As we were leaving the cafe and walking under the approving but stoney gaze of Giuseppe “Strategic Advantage” Garibaldi, Elio announced that he’d like to see something really incredible that day. At the risk of being a little didactic, I told him that if he had the eyes to see it, he would surely witness something extraordinary, that we are continually surrounded by the miraculous, the sublime, and the unbelievable, it’s just that often we don’t take the time to notice. 

Later that night as I was putting him to bed—the lights off, our list of gratitudes recited— there was a moment of quiet where I could sense that Elio’s brain was whirring. Soon his little voice broke the pregnant silence.

“Papa, I didn’t see anything amazing today.”  

“If you have the eyes to see them, there are incredible things happening all the time. With the right kind of vision, everything is amazing.”

“Whaddya mean, Papa?”

So, perfectly poised for a bedtime story, I retold an abbreviated version of the Shiva Shakti story I love to tell …

In the beginning, even before the Universe began, there was only Shiva and only Shakti. Shiva was all consciousness and spirit and Shakti was all movement and matter. She was the dancer and he was the watcher. 

All Shiva wanted was to continually watch his beloved Shakti with his lidless 3rd eye positioned in the middle of his forehead. All Shakti wanted to do was to dance for her beloved, continually moving and enticing his awareness. 

Well, their love grew and grew until they felt that they were on the verge of transforming in some incredible way but didn’t know exactly how until one day, Shakti decided to dance around behind Shiva and place her hands over his eternally open 3rd eye. 

Boom! Never had the balance between consciousness and energy been so one-sided and suddenly, everything exploded in a massive ball of unfettered energy. Shakti was reeling through space but eventually found terra firma on earth but was devastated when she couldn’t see her beloved Shiva. As she roamed the earth, she thought she heard his voice in the babbling of the brook and in the rustling of the trees, but each time she looked and called out to him, she saw nothing and this made her increasingly very, very sad. 

One day, she was walking and everything on the earth was so alive and beautiful: the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, the bugs were creeping (read: 6-year-old audience) and everything seemed so perfectly perfect. Then, she heard it again, the sound of Shiva’s voice but this time, Shakti decided that she would do something different. This time, instead of calling and looking outward for Shiva, she sat down, closed her eyes, and went inside. 

Soon, she heard the sound of her beloved again and the more she listened, the louder it became. Eventually, she could hear the unmistakable and steady voice of her beloved Shiva, “Shakti! Babe! Shakti!”

Elio: “Did he REALLY say that?!”

Me: “Shh! It’s MY story, I can tell it how I want to.”

Shiva continued, “Babe, I’m right here. I’ve never left. Nothing in the Universe can exist without me the same way nothing can exist without you.” Then after a long pause, Shiva said, “Look what we made with our love.” At this, Shakti opened her eyes again and she no longer saw ordinary birds and bugs and sunshine but rather saw herself and shiva dancing in the miraculous form of every object in the Universe. Suddenly, every object in the entire Universe was amazing. 

“What?! You mean the birds are God?” Elio said with incredulity 

“Yep.”

“Bugs are God?!”

“Yep, and guess what else is God.”

“What.”

“The guy at the restaurant eating the sloppy cheeseburger with grease dripping off his face is God.”

With this image in our brains, the darkness exploded with unrestrained laughter and for several minutes we were both seized with the spasm of hilarity, tears streaking our faces, our hands clutching our stomachs as if to control this bucking bull of truth meets absurdity. 

It took several minutes before we could calm down enough for Elio to fall asleep. And as I lay next to Elio listening to his soft breathing deepen into sleep, I silently prayed that he’d wake up the next day, rub the sleep from his eyes, and see a little better the miraculousness of each dawning day.

May we all learn to see the Divine in everything we encounter, first within ourselves and then in short order everyone else. And may we learn to love and laugh as our own story of waking up unfolds, invariably steeped in both truth and absurdity. 

Remembering Who You Are

A book I truly love, one that has been very influential in my life is Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth. Have you read it? 

One of the things I learned from that book, something that has changed my cosmic understanding, is the idea that as human beings, whether consciously or unconsciously, we are constantly trying to figure out what it means to just be human. We explore many ways of answering that question and almost anything we encounter in this human life can be something for us to hold onto as a way of identifying ourselves. We tend to identify as our name, our bodies, our perceived personal success or failure, and even define ourselves by our problems but all of these things fall flat because they don’t explain what our true self is. Who we really are cannot be described by anything that changes. 

In A New Earth, Tolle defines the ego as the misapprehension or mislearning of what we think we are, all the things that change in our life. Tolle mirrors the yogic idea that what we really are is Awareness. 

The part that really got me in his book was how often we tend to identify with layers of our ego he calls our painbody. What he means is that though we may not outwardly love being in pain—feeling jealousy, bitterness, or suffering—but it does exist as something we can feel, we therefore tend to call it “real” and mislabel this object of pain as “us” and kind of walk around life defining ourselves as that thing. Can you relate to that? Everybody can to some degree or other. 

Again, our true self is Awareness itself and cannot possibly be defined as an emotion, either good or bad. Identifying as anything other than this Awareness is going to be problematic because it exists unfailingly in a state of change. No sooner do you want to hang your hat on something and call it you, than that thing changes and leaves you feeling empty. 

The crazy thing is that these pain bodies seem to have a life of their own. It’s like they know they aren’t real and are trying to keep themselves “alive” by begging us to keep a hold of them. We know it doesn’t serve us to be angry or sad or depressed all the time but we kinda don’t know who we’d be without that part of us. So somehow we keep it alive simply because it serves us in someway to define us. “It’s not great being sad but at least I understand it.” 

That in a nutshell seems to be one of the most profound human problems. 

That may sound depressing but it’s actually really hopeful and I’ll tell you why. Surely, Tolle explains what to do about this dilemma in his book, however, I’ve found the best, easiest, and most effective solution to overcoming this issue of the ego—or false identity—with Yoga Nidra. 

Instead of pain bodies, Yoga Nidra calls these different bodies, Maya Kosha, or illusion bodies. They are illusions because they seem real but aren’t. What’s real is Awareness. However, what I love about Yoga Nidra is that it doesn’t suggest you try to forget about the pain bodies but instead invites you lean into them to understand them as the beautiful illusions that they are through systematized relaxation and layered awareness. Yoga Nidra shows you how to practice deep awareness of your body, of your emotions, of your thoughts—all to show you that by all the things that you can be aware of, you reveal Awareness itself. Awareness is what these all have in common. 

And here’s the exciting thing…

As you practice experiencing yourself as Awareness, you remind yourself of your innate wholeness, purity, and being. You don’t need to define yourself by your ego—what you do, how much money you have or don’t have, or even (and especially) what kind of pain you may have experienced in your life. Instead, when you understand your true nature, that of Awareness itself, you realize that this entire human experience all points to the beauty of what it means to be and that every object in the world is another invitation for you to practice waking up to your true self. 

Practicing and understanding yourself as Awareness really is the ultimate healer. 

Knowing how to facilitate others to experience themselves as whole through Yoga Nidra is an art form in and of itself. I’ve dedicated almost 15 years of my life studying, practicing, and teaching how to do this and I have personally experienced and facilitated myriad modes of healing and wholeness through this incredible, relaxing, and accessible practice. 

I feel it a calling in my life to help you learn how to help those people in your life whom you have the privilege to influence how to remember who they truly are by helping them practice awareness through Yoga Nidra. 

I guess if I were a really good teacher I could simply tell you, “Hey, you’re perfect as you are. Let’s go get a beer,” but I don’t think it’s that easy. We need a practice to help that truth land, to be taught this truth in a way that we will understand and recognize. This is why your particular voice and your particular experience with the people and population you know is so essential. Only you know the kind of specific issues they work with and can speak their language. It’s on you to help these people remember their own wholeness. 

On Saturday, April 23rd I want to teach you how to facilitate specialized Yoga Nidra classes for those people in your life who need to understand who they are in a way that only you can understand. 

I’ll be leading a workshop where we are going to spend 3 hours together on Zoom building your specialized Yoga Nidra classes to meet the individual needs of your clients, students, and family members. You’ll be given the tools and roadmaps to deliver the classes you need in your own voice. 

If you are interested in making this kind of an impact for others, I hope you’ll join me. 

If you’re not interested in facilitating this for others, perhaps you’d be interested in deepening your relationship to Self in my Yoga Nidra course called Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep. 

Also, if you’re looking for your next great read, I might suggest A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Pick it up at your local bookstore. 

Have a great weekend!

The No Hustle Summit

Yesterday, I posted about how some graduates of my Yoga Nidra teacher training program are changing the world for the better with their unique application of Yoga Nidra. I also shared how I’ll be offering a workshop to help you explore the ways YOU can also create specialized Yoga Nidra classes for your clients, students, and family. 

One of the students I’ve had the great pleasure of working with in my Yoga Nidra training is Andrea Cristancho, a holistic business coach and mompreneur. Her mission is to change the “hustle” narrative in business. 

She asked me if she could interview me for her No Hustle Summit audio series where she conducts audio interviews with people who are striving to work smarter rather than harder with their online business. 

We had the BEST interview! We talked about what I’ve discovered about making a positive impact in the world while also making a living doing what I love. I also shared some of my favorite tips that I teach those I mentor to build their businesses about how to leverage their passion and authenticity in their work to stand out from the crowd as well as truly achieve excellence in their endeavors. 

I think the most important thing I shared with Andrea, something I truly and deeply believe, was that your greatest gift to the world is the ways in which you love the world. 

The No Hustle Summit is a free audio series with just a few well-chosen interviews you can listen to podcast style. Because there were only a few people chosen to offer this summit, I was super thrilled to be asked. In addition to our interview together, you can hear other people from around the world telling their stories of success, wisdom, and tips. 

Andrea is doing some wonderful things in the world and I’m really proud to be a part of what she’s offering. 

The No Hustle Summit it’s a high-vibe offering and I highly encourage you to take a look. Let me know what you think!

Also, if you haven’t registered yet for the Teaching Specialized Yoga Nidra workshop, please do. It’s going to be a really special event. 

Have an amazing day!

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.

---

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!

I want to talk about love notes and chocolates today but before I get into a story I hope you will enjoy, I want to express my excitement about co-hosting a yoga and mindfulness workshop this Sat., Feb. 19th, 10 am to 12 pm MST, with my friend and rock-star of a teacher, Rachel Posner. Together, we are going to explore lasting resources to ease anxiety by sourcing tools like poses, breathwork, and meditation to feel safe through exploring the present. Rachel is a genius and will bring her many years of experience of yoga therapy, meditation, and neuroscience. I’ll be bringing my passion for relaxing poses, pranayama, and Yoga Nidra to add my two cents and together, I hope you’ll leave feeling happy, calm, and ready to face your world. Please consider joining us.

---

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.