Travelblog: Thailand

Greetings from Bangkok! This morning we got up for sadhana and headed to Lumpini Park in the heart of Bangkok to join our yogi brothers and sisters in the Amrit Vela. When we got to the park at 5am, it was FULL of people! Stretching, running, aerobicizing, old and young, there were people getting in shape before the sun was up. Loudspeakers broadcast the 1,2,3 of step aerobic workout routines, and we couldn’t help but notice that most of the people out were older folks! What a difference from the U.S., where lifestyles can be so sedentary and parks at night are where we are afraid to go!

We miscalculated, and, unfortunately, sadhana had been scheduled for Saturday instead of Sunday. I blame it on jetlag… anyway, we did OUR sadhana out there on the grass, our long Ek Ong Kars blending with the step aerobic chanting in the beautiful Thai language our ears have adjusted to since arriving.

It was so nice to share our routine with the local Thai, and to realize that kundalini yoga may prescribe a crazy schedule for us (waking up before dawn, taking cold showers), but to the rest of the world, it’s not so crazy to get up before dawn and move the body in order to start the day.

Maybe WE are the crazy ones, we Americans who have been socialized into a “normal” that includes obesity, cancer, and heart disease; sedentary life with minimal social contact and maximum escapism and fantasy. Maybe WE are the ones who need to get up to date with the rest of the world, and get our butts up earlier! Just a thought…

Special Guest Teacher: Roger/Bagwandt Singh!

Sat nam dear ones,

You’ve probably been wondering where we’ve been these past few months, and we don’t blame you! Well, as many of you know, we’ve been busy getting married! So, our newsletter has had to take a backseat.

In just a couple hours, we’ll be on our way to Thailand for our honeymoon. We’re looking forward to enjoying a couple weeks on a tropical island, and then returning refreshed and renewed in early June to teach some great classes (and a new series as well — more info on that coming soon!).

While we’re gone, our good friend Roger/Bagwandt Singh iscovering our classes. He’s planned several special guests and activities, including guitarist Sean Campbell displaying his musical talents, and Tibetan singing bowl meditations!

Roger’s themes for the coming weeks are:

“Energizing the Self”
“Awakening the Dormant Power Within”.

So come and be elevated so you can fully enjoy your weekends. Roger, who will be assisted by our friend Gina, promise to make it a great start for a Friday night, with trance music from Goa and some partnership yoga kriyas as well!

The class info remains the same, but in case you forgot:

7-8:30 p.m. Fridays
The Awareness Center,
2801 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena
(626) 796-1567

Love,

Baba and Nimrita

The search for inspiration

Last night we went to a movie together, and afterward decided that what we liked the most about it was the special effects. Looking around us at the flat, uninspired faces of the departing moviegoing crowd, it seemed like we were not alone.

As we slept that night, visions of the movie continued to play in our consciousness, and it was difficult to get to sleep. And there came a realization that it is the mind’s desire to be entertained, to space out before bright lights and thunderous sounds and emotional intrigue. All that time, effort and money had been spent to entertain the mind, while the consciousness went along for the ride.

One of the most insidious enemies of spiritual practice is boredom. Boredom counts the minutes, forgets the past, and dreads the coming hour. It saps our passion and invites us to retaliate by finding inspiration. This is just another game of duality.

Don’t get me wrong. Reading a book, listening to music, or going to a certain teacher’s yoga class in order to kick start our personal mojo is a great thing, and we need it. But some of us do crazy things in order to find inspiration, like move across the world, leave a lover, or quit a job. All of us know someone (maybe ourselves!) who seems to always search and never find.

The search for inspiration usually leads us to sever ties or form new ones, to abandon or join, or both at once. It could be that we have found something wonderful in our lives, like the first yoga class that moved our souls to practice at home, or the first meditation in which we found peace, or the first dharma talk that summed up our most personal pain. These first experiences of inner awakening are priceless, and we would do most anything to re-experience them, especially when boredom pecks away at our practice.

But practice means commitment, and we must understand that commitment will sooner or later bring us face to face with the boredom-inspiration duality. Will we transcend this maya? Or will we backtrack, abandon our practice, and search for a new way to remember that initial spark that started us on our path in the first place?

It’s important to keep in mind that our attempts to remember this spark should give us forward momentum in our ability to commit, rather than drive us to abandon and join, repeat and forget, over and over. As yogis we will necessarily tread the fine line between breakthrough and backtrack, and be deceived by our feelings as each approaches.

There may be nothing harder for us than finding that our meditative center has moved somewhere else, and for us to feel as if we don’t know how to find it again. But in these moments of uninspiration, boredom and even anxiety we can become again the new student we were, without abandoning, without joining, without searching. Don’t forget that when we commit to using yoga to connect to our Source, the Source commits to us as well. Be still, feel what you are feeling, and wait for the creation to serve your prayers.

spring forward…

Creation is waking up, and dragging us along with it. Spring is a beautiful time, but can be a tempestuous time. It is a transition, and transitions call for decisions… or resistance.

We can mark our progress on these points by taking an inventory of the physical body. How are our histamines reacting to the change in seasons? What is our energy level like? Our appetite? Have we been using more coffee than usual? Less? The body can tell us if we are really ready for change or not.

As yogis, we can also tap into the pranic body this season. If we have the good fortune to have survived the sinus attacks of newly pollinating flora, bringing in new prana is the best way to adjust to the environment. Breath of fire outdoors is the best!

Remember that change sometimes calls for surrender, for letting go. Our bodies – all ten – have but one purpose in this life: to serve the soul on its mission. Our minds play the dance of destiny, which decodes the soul’s marching orders back to god in the cipher of life events, each one a blessing, a resolution to old karmas blocking the soul’s path back home. Gratitude is the royal road along this path, and will keep the dance graceful.

So keep the faith! In yourself, that is. Take care of yourself, eat right, sleep right, and practice, practice, practice! Every posture, every pranayam, every meditation is there to increase our self-love. You can do it!

Mindful Yoga Workshop – March 25th

March classes :: Meditation!

Sat nam everyone,

Well, March has certainly come roaring in like a lion — a soggy, blustery
winter lion! The change in weather and cleansing showers have given us good
reason to stay inside, cozy up with a blanket and a cup of yogi tea, and
pipe some Snatam Kaur mantra in the background.

This month, we’re focusing a bit more attention on meditation. We’ve planned
longer meditations that give us an opportunity to be mindful of our
thoughts, actions and reactions.

Also, Baba is teaching a Mindfulness Meditation workshop on Wednesday, March
25. This is an excellent opportunity to learn more about the meditation
technique popularized by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and is a great complement to any
yoga practice, including Kundalini. Whether you’re new to meditation or have
an established practice, this workshop is for you. More details are
available on the studio Web site:
http://www.awarenesscenteryoga.org/events.html. *

Yoga and Lifestyle Series March Schedule

*Each class is held 7-8:30 p.m. Fridays at The Awareness
Centerin Pasadena. The cost is
$15, or one Dharma Tribe credit if you’ve purchased
a multi-class pass. For more information, call (626) 796-1567.

*March 6: Build Strategy for Life!*

Assess where your life is going with the neutral mind in this challenging
meditative class that will show you the way to long-term prosperity

*March 13: Pavan Guru*

Enrich your mind with a deep meditation on the breath guru, Pavan Guru! Turn
your breath into a teacher and guide your mind beyond this world into the
Infinite.

*
March 20: Access Your Deepest Virtue*

We’ll dive deep into the stillness of your own minds with Ajai Alai mantra
and open our hearts to the virtues to which our soul aspires.
*

March 27: Wahe Guru Mantra*

Journey into spring with Wahe Guru mantra! Plant the seeds of positive
intention in your mind for the new season — and beyond!

Love,

Nimrita & Baba

Use Your Heart, not Your Head

There is a way through every block. Whatever you’ve been feeling in the past couple of weeks, just remember this little sutra, and you’ll be alright.

When change comes, we tend to get a little crazy, even though we’re not doing anything differently from normal. What’s really happening is we’re doing the same things we used to do, but they’re getting us nowhere anymore. Doing the same thing over and over, and getting worse results – maybe that’s the Aquarian definition of crazy.

Drop your habits. Step outside of them, identify them, and drop them forever. It takes 40 days to begin to free yourself; 90 days to install a new habit; and 180 days to confirm the new habit. In about 1000 days, the cosmos will drop the Piscean habit of using knowledge to advance the human race. Knowledge will have no place in this world after 2012.

2009 is about dropping out of the game of appetite chasing, and those who continue to play it will look more and more like addicts chasing that first high again and again. Turn off the television and tell stories to your children. Cook your own food and invite someone to dinner. Start sharing with others so that the hard times won’t be so hard. Take direction from your heart instead of your head.

Don’t listen to words anymore; listen to your feelings when people talk to you. If anyone tries to convince you of anything, run! There’s nothing to believe for those who have experience.

Cultivate your experience. Stretch your body in the morning and meditate to clean the garbage before you go out into the world. When you get home at night, stretch again and meditate to clean the world out of your mind. Make your home holy. Leave your dirt at the door. Don’t make it a castle, make it a temple.

Listen to your own breath. Renew your experience daily and don’t let anything get in the way of it. Recognize the things that interfere with your practice as the things you need to let go.

We are not here to identify with objects and knowledge. We are not here to say “I”, “I”, “I”, all the time. We’re not here to convince anyone of anything. We’re here to merge with god, to remember our own vastness, our own holiness.

ONE MINUTE BREATH MEDITATION

Sit with a straight spine. Breathe easy through the nose in the following pattern:

INHALE HOLD EXHALE REPEAT

Inhale for 10 seconds, hold your breath gently for 10 seconds, and exhale for 10 seconds. Repeat.

There should be no tension in the body. As you relax into the meditation, increase the times to 12 seconds, 14 seconds, … all the way to 20 seconds (keep the inhalation, holding, and exhalation times the same as you increase).

One minute breath puts you at the center of the earth and gives you a sense of comfort, of being taken care of by Mother Nature. Experience this feeling and then share it with others by taking care of them.

There is no Hope

One fact of meditation is that feelings are the only facts. One fact about feelings is that they are not facts. This paradox reopens for us every time we sit down to practice.

Today a million people gathered to hope for something. On a Tuesday, in the middle of a work week, with travel prices soaring higher than the planes that brought them there, a million people gathered to hope together.

For the past two weeks, hundreds of children have been killed while the world watched from the comfort of home, in utter hopelessness.

Chuang-Tzu said in the Inner Chapters that a person is most easily understood by the movement of their bodies in relation to things and events. Some things get you up and moving, and some things make no impact. What gets the yogi up in the morning to practice? What keeps the yogi still in meditation? If we approach our practice like we approach our world, then it has to be fear and hope that drive us.

Yogi Bhajan said that worrying is praying for something that you don’t want. If we start practicing out of any sense of lack in our lives, then the character of our practice will hinge on hope and fear. We will feel guilty when we don’t practice; we’ll feel proud when we do; and in between we’ll feel bored, depressed, or superior. Our relationship to our motivation to practice will cycle through a million dualities, and we will yo-yo through our asana and through our meditation and through our kriya, practicing just enough here to counter our guilt, and just enough there to sate our pride.

But hope and fear get us only to the door. To enter, we must leave them both behind. We love to hear this about fear. But without hope, all that’s left seems depressing. We forget that hope and fear are both based on lack, on an absence of something that makes us desire.

After our practice ceases to revolve around the balance between fear and hope, it begins to chisel away our desires. We stop laughing at jokes from last night’s T.V. show. We become alienated from water cooler conversations at work. Friends think we’re emotionless or detached. It takes a long time to re-establish perspective, and to realize that we have found joy in its true place: not inside an object – a pair of shoes, a movie, a president – but inside ourselves. Joy comes to us as a constant gift from the universe, like flowers that bloom once the weeds are torn away. And it is a daily practice – beyond hope for change, beyond fear of death – that clears the weeds of desire away so that joy may bloom in its own, unstoppable creativity for which we are its beloved spectator.

Cold Depression

Cold depression is a phenomenon of the Piscean-Aquarian cusp period (1991-2012), where we have all the information we want at the click of a button but lack the intuitive capacity to take it all in. What results is a feeling of being “less than,” of being left behind in a big, unfriendly world. Cold depression is a combination of 1) self-hate; and 2) having too much to do.

Yogi Bhajan gave the following kriya for cold depression, using the mantra Wahe Guru Wahe Guru Wahe Guru Wahe Jio. Mantra is a science of the realignment of neurochemistry using pronunciation patterns that trigger pressure points in the upper palate of the mouth.

Kriya for Cold Depression:

Sit in comfortable position (in a chair, on the floor cross-legged, whatever). Interlace fingers, palms together, index fingers pointing straight up and touching. Hands in front of heart, elbows relaxed at sides.

Stare at the tip of your nose (this may hurt a bit, but it’s ok – just the optic nerve stretching!).

Chant “Wa-hay Guru, Wa-hay Guru, Wa-hay Guru, Wa-hay Jee-Oh”. Be sure to pronounce “Guru” like GOO-DOO, with the “r” sound like a “d” so that the tongue strikes the upper palate.

Continue for 11 minutes. Inhale deeply, hold, and exhale powerfully through the mouth. Repeat inhale, hold and exhale two more times.

Relax.

Going into the Heart

So it’s December, and it’s… sort of cold… at least, for those who indulge in a cold shower in the early morning, the water is getting really good!

But we didn’t let the cold get to us last night – we hit the mat Jiva Mukti style, with some phat Michael Franti tunes, and kicked up some kundalini cardio. And it was good to sweat, let me tell you.

We dove deep into the heart center because there’s a chaotic, holiday season, winter solstice energy coming, and we need to go inside so that we don’t go crazy. People are going crazy now by trying their best to be normal. They’re killing each other for consumerism and clogging their bodies with sugar and butter and desperately doing everything that people are supposed to do for the holidays. But it’s not working.

It’s not working because being normal is the wrong way to stay steady in changing times. Instead of being normal, yogis just be themselves. We stay steady when everything around us is transforming. And, unlike the common call for “transformation” you hear around the corner of every yoga studio these days, kundalini yogis don’t transform anything about themselves. We’d rather just dump our garbage.

When the garbage is taken out, the house is clean. Your house, your body, mind, spirit, is perfect; but sometimes it gets messy. It gets clogged with television and political promises and opinionated bla bla bla. The subconscious is so full we can’t sleep at night. So we do what normal people do, take pills, so that we can defeat some made up disease called insomnia. But all we’re doing is keeping the garbage inside, and medicating ourselves into being bigger and bigger garbage cans.

The times we are going through call us to dump our bad habits, bad thoughts, bad speech, bad actions. Even Fox News is getting hip to it:

Time is now, now is the time. Whatever you give this holiday, remember to give your self to yourself. Remember that you are god, and feel free to drop all the guilt and depression that make an object out of god. Do your sadhana, clean yourself. Meditate on SA TA NA MA mantra, connecting at the fingertips, for 11 minutes, and just see what happens. Don’t transform anything – just discover how beautiful you already are!

And remember, the water is nice and cold this time of year