Starting Over

One thing I teach in my online Yoga Nidra training is the value of starting over. Tell me if you relate to this story.

I attended college back in the era of “floppy disks” and one day I got a hard lesson on just how "floppy" these disks were.

One evening, after a grueling day of wrestling with an essay I'd been writing for weeks, what was to be my pièce de la résistance, my magnum opus, and intended to be both my senior thesis AND my entry into a prestigious essay contest, I sat down at my desk to print off my essay so I could submit it the following day and as I clicked the floppy disk into my computer and looked at the contents to find the file to print … nothing. Nada. Rien.

Floppy. 

 Everything on that disk had been mysteriously obliterated.

So, what did I do? What could I do?

Sitting there at my desk, I simply started over. 

The words were fresh; I’d practically memorized the thing. 

But this time instead of wrestling with the words and ideas, they tumbled out of my brain and danced through my fingers onto the keyboard fast and fluid. This time it formed more clearly with ideas I hadn’t even thought of the first time. This time, it had soul. 

I finished the essay (again).

I graduated with my degree.

I took 1st place in the essay contest. 

Starting over can be a gift. 

Regardless of how many times you have to come back to your presence in meditation, it doesn't matter, starting over is a gift.

Even if you've let your meditation or yoga practice go, it doesn't matter, starting over is a gift. 

No matter whatever we've lost, tried, and failed at, no matter what didn’t take the first time (or several times), starting over is a gift. 

May we all celebrate the opportunity to come back to presence and start over again and again and again. 

This time could make all the difference.

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Online Yoga Nidra Training

I’m absolutely passionate about Yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra has taught me more about myself, the Universe, and my purpose in the world than any other practice and I can’t wait to share what I’ve learned with you.

If you’ve ever thought about teaching Yoga Nidra, now is the time—the world needs it more than ever. Also, the world needs more qualified Yoga Nidra teachers, and this course is designed to teach you to become a Yoga Nidra expert, delivering 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 is why I’ve created Facilitating Transformation with the Yoga of Sleep, an enlightening, engaging, and enjoyable online Yoga Nidra teacher training where you will learn the art and science of teaching Yoga Nidra using the power of your own voice. You’ll also learn how to apply your expertise to acquire and create excellent teaching opportunities through live or online group classes, workshops, courses, private sessions, and even how to lead yoga retreats and other paid events. I’ll even teach you how to create digital products to sell and share your teaching gifts with the world. In short, you’ll learn how to make a massive impact while making a great living doing what you love.

Guides From Beyond

It’s almost the 2-year anniversary of my mom’s death. About 10 days after she passed, she came back to me in a dream.

She looked radiant, so happy and vibrant and only wanted to say one thing:

“I’m just so grateful!”
“I’m just so grateful!”
“I’m just so grateful!”

Then she burst into flames.

Totally serious.

It was her moment of transformation into the great beyond and this vision seared the message of her gratitude deeply into my heart and mind.

What do you think you’d say if you could come back from the dead and say one thing?

Gratitude is one of the most important things we can cultivate in our life.

Instead of waiting for things to happen in our lives to be grateful for, we must make a point of choosing to find things to be grateful for no matter our circumstances. Practicing gratitude in this way will soon help see that your life is non-stop blessings.

Maybe this is what my mom was saying.

Thanksgiving is this week in the US and regardless of where you are in the world, I invite you to practice gratitude with me this (Saturday Nov. 26th 9–11 am MT; 5–7 pm CET) at my special Gratitude Workshop where we will practice some all-levels poses, expansive breathwork, journaling, and of course Yoga Nidra.

Join live via Zoom and/or catch the replay.

You’ll float away from this practice feeling alive in your body, calm in your mind, and your heart brimming with the truth that your life is an incredible gift.

I hope you'll join me on Saturday.

In the meantime, here’s a poem to brighten your day and which hits home with the message of gratitude, despite whatever visits us in life.


The Guest House
By Rumi Translated by Coleman Barks

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
​
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
​
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
​
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
​
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

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.