Beyond Asana Blog

Use your own light and return to the source of light. This is called practicing eternity.

-Lao Tzu

One of the more interesting gifts I’ve received as a teacher was a bright-yellow Brazilian Melon. A student in a retreat gave it to me a few years ago as a symbol of the lightness she felt in the days following our time together. For me, it was a sweet reminder of the inner sun that yoga reveals within us.

This is the Prana Shakti. Like a sun inside ourselves, prana is the source energy that animates our bodies, enlivens our senses and powers our minds.

I spent a luxurious amount of time this weekend watching the sun illumine the fields and mountains around my home, everything bathed in ...

Today feels like the right day to revisit the story of Tikkun Olam as told by Rachel Naomi Remen:

In the beginning, there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand, thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. 

And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world was scattered into a thousand, thousand fragments of light, and they fell into all events and all people, where they ...

“The wound is the place where the light enters you” – Rumi

I learned recently that Rumi’s poem preceded this phrase that Leonard Cohen made famous. While I’ve contemplated this on my own internal level many times, it feels that now the collective wound is open. The wound of our society’s prejudice and injustice. It’s painful. It’s uncomfortable. It’s deeply unsettling.

And yet, necessary.

Necessary for the light to make its way in, for the reckoning to begin. For healing to become possible.

We have our work cut out for us. It starts with being willing to fully feel the pain of the wound itself, to take an unflinching look at what is being laid bare. It continues with being willing to ...

My word today is hope. There are many issues that need my hope today, many things that have me concerned, worried, even up in arms.

Those feelings are all there. And, yet, what I keep coming back to is that I can choose to cultivate how I wish to respond. I can choose the colour with which I want to paint the landscape of my mind.

Choosing hope doesn’t replace the need for concrete action, of course. Rather, I experience it as the fuel for conscious and purposeful action. It recharges me and allows me to move forward with vision, intentionality, and integrity. 

One of the greatest boons of our practices is that we gain freedom beyond the ups and downs of our minds. It's work though, it...

On days when fear or anxiety creep in, I often remember the words of a wise teacher who taught: There are only two things that cause fear:

1- You've forgotten the place of fearlessness inside you.

2- You aren't aware of God's help.

(you can replace God with the Universal Self, Spirit, Source or whatever other term you feel comfortable with.)

For me, it's usually a combination of both.

So, one approach to overcoming fear that I find helpful is simply to focus on inspiring fearlessness by remembering these two things. Some ways you might do this are:

Remember instances where the universe completely supported you, and you knew it.

Connect kinesthetically to the feeling of fearlessness inside you, l...

As luck would have it, it’s a good day for me to write about the quality of vitality. 
 
Why? Not to make anyone jealous, but I slept about 10 hours last night. There’s nothing like a good night’s rest to help us feel re-vitalized. Believe me, I’m grateful for it. A good night’s sleep can be hard to come by these days. I wonder why?
 
The quality of vitality – vibrancy, liveliness, and exuberance – is a support, almost a prerequisite, to all the other virtues. 
 
When I feel tired, lazy, and drained it’s harder to be kind, generous, patient, and compassionate. Without vitality, all the other virtues feel like more of an effort.
 
Conversely, when I’m rested and my energy is restored, all the othe...

In her book, The Optimism Bias, psychologist Tali Sharot writes about the disconnect between the things we think will bring us happiness and the things that actually contribute to our experience of lived happiness moment to moment.

It turns out that the big life goals we expect will lead to our happiness, things like career, marriage, and children, do not necessarily bring us very much actual lived happiness. Turns out, raising children doesn’t correlate highly to moment-to-moment satisfaction. (Wink, wink to all the parents reading this.)

Sure, our life goals are worthwhile, our dharma is important, but what her research showed is that lived experiences of happiness come largely from s...

Have you heard about doctors now actually needing to remind patients to put on pants when they show up for their virtual visits?
 
Oy. In times like this, it’s easy to let things go. Simple politeness and niceness included. At this point, we might all be feeling a little raw and rough around the edges. But let’s not forget the simple power of just being a nice person.
 
I remember once sitting next to the actor Danny Glover on a plane. I was surprised at how genuinely nice he was. Kind, respectful, human.

I’ve always been most impressed when those in the public eye, with power to be less than nice, are just really nice.  
 
Niceness feels good. It conveys respect and consideration. While...

First world hair problems aside, much more than our grey is being revealed right now.

In this time of all being laid bare, one thing that becomes clear for all of us I think, is:

Where we turn for inspiration when life feels hard and scary. 
 
Where we look for guidance, comfort, and meaning when we’re unclear and uncertain. 
 

Where we find stability when the ground beneath us feels shaky.

For yogis, I’m not sure we really need to look anywhere new or different. In fact, we already have a foundation of understanding that’s tailor made to help us make sense of uncertainty, to hold us steady in adversity, to anchor us in an unchanging, underlying ground of our own being.

To say this ...

A few days ago, I was listening to a story on NPR about a group of community organizers in Vermont who were putting new systems into place to coordinate their efforts. One of the organizers said something like, “This isn’t the time for thinking about things, it’s a time for taking action, there’s no time for philosophy, things have to get done.”

“No time for philosophy.” That phrase stuck with me. I suspect many of us might be feeling that way just about now. And when it comes to organizing food deliveries for homebound seniors I get it. But for the yogi, I’m not so sure.

I understand how in some ways yoga philosophy might not seem very useful or applicable right now.  At a time when so...