Norm's Formula For Success

I was a business major for about a semester or two in college. I eventually graduated with and English degree but I learned some very valuable things in my short stint in the business world, mostly from one of my favorite professors, Norm Nemrow.

Norm was that guy who always had a wait list for his classes because he was engaging, fun, challenging, and innovative. Besides understanding business principles as the result of years of successful business practices, Norm was the kind of guy that brought out the best in you simply because you were around him. I think Norm's success and the success he wished to foster in others was the result of a simple formula.

One day, Norm was looking around the auditorium at hundreds of young business-y-types and said, "If you are here simply to learn how to make yourself rich then I would like to show you the door. And that goes for being a doctor or lawyer or anything else. If you seek after something just because you think you'll be liked or seem more import because of it, then welcome to the beginning of misery. Instead, find a career based on something you love to do, even if it's not the most lucrative profession because success revolves around this simple formula: Interest breeds excellence and excellence breeds opportunities."

And besides mastering the use of gerunds and recognizing dangling modifiers (English Major), this formula is perhaps the most important thing I learned from college. I suppose this is really what we are trying to learn in yoga, to learn to listen in part to our hearts and have the courage to organize our lives based on our real priorities. If you've ever been through a very challenging experience, gone through an injury or illness, had someone close to you die, even competed in a challenging race or something, you've probably had that experience where all the bullshit is burned away and what really matters in life is left gleaming like a seam of gold in the mountain. Yoga can offer the same clarity, but through a presence that is practiced over time rather than a quick slap in the face (though if you've ever been to Bikram your opinion might differ). It can also give us the courage to help us direct our lives in the way that is meant for us.

May we all gain the clarity to see what really matters in our lives so that we might employ this same formula for success: interest=excellence=opportunities. And may we have the courage to follow our dreams. I hope to see you in yoga class. It's truly an opportunity born from the passions of my dreams.

Where Is Your Life Taking You?

What if where we wanted to end up (read: job, relationship, finances, yoga practice) weren't dependent upon how much effort we could muster to get there but rather on our ability to place ourselves into the flow and allow ourselves to be carried?

What is this alleged flow you speak of? Well, it's the animating force of everything. In yoga we call it Prana, accessible through breath but coursing through everything. It's what makes the seasons change, the wind blow, and everything in the universe move. It probably has a million names. So maybe the question is how to tap into the already existing current and literally go with the flow.

A good place to start is to ask where your life seems to be pulling you. Do you find yourself spending an inordinate amount of energy resisting something, maybe the inevitable? What if you were to go with the flow and spend your energy managing what seems completely natural rather than trying to carve a new pathway for the river?

That's not to say that there isn't any effort involved with going with the flow. It's just the effort we spend could be used to keep us in the central current rather than to swim the entire length of the river. It's going there anyway, right? Use the effective balance of steadiness and ease, effort here and yield there, to keep yourself into the current.

Maybe you've been fighting to keep your mind still in a restore yoga practice when all along you could be using that energy in a power vinyasa class. Maybe you've been working all this time at a job that doesn't feed your soul and you know perfectly well that your desires and interests and gifts would take you into a different direction. Go with the flow and allow the situations that arise to do so. Through practices like meditation and yoga, you'll know what to do with those situations when they come because you'll have practiced sourcing your deep inner-wisdom.

Come to yoga this week as we practice balancing steadiness and ease in our yoga practice as a way of inviting us to balance it in the practice of every-day living.

A Moveable Feast

"We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other." Excerpt from Earnest Hemingway's A Movable Feast

In Paris, we rented a very small and completely perfect half-room apartment on the third floor. To call it a one-room apartment would be to grossly exaggerate its scale. Our only window looked out onto a common space, a sort of chimney of light that allowed each apartment both the pleasure of natural night and the pleasure of being a voyeur into the lives of our neighbors. For breakfast we ate warm omelets with fresh melted goat cheese that Seneca cooked on the hot plate. Seneca said the cheese was too strong and tasted like a sheep's utter. I loved the strong cheese and we both swooned over a small salad of fresh arugula and the freshest tomatoes and strawberries so flavorful that it made me feel like I'd never before eaten something called a strawberry.

After breakfast we left the apartment and descended the old but sturdy stairs down the narrow, winding staircase and made another day of walking the streets of Paris. Walking down our street I again felt like a voyeur looking into the lives of the people around me, like those sitting outside in the small seats of the Café Italien on the corner that served fresh-squeezed orange juice and delicious smooth coffee by the owner who was as warm as her coffee one day and as cold as her orange juice the next. Sitting in his usual seat was the middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and neat moustache who seemed not to mind to run the errands on his scooter, nor mind being readily criticized by the other regulars of whom there seemed to be the same three or four, always with their commentary of the goings on in their petite corner of the world. We walked along the Rue Du Pont Aux Choux to Rue Vieille Du Temple, the small road which seemed to my navigational senses a main artery into the colorful quarter of the Marais and 3eme Arrondissement with its small, bright shops, historic buildings and boulangeries. This road led us directly to the Rue Des Rosiers, the small jewel of a street, like a vein of gold in the rough, that was home to the both the orthodox Jews and the gays, a street that served the finest falafel from boisterous Israelis, and where you can find the tidy shop of the most master crêpe-maker I believe I will ever know.

Later that day as we left the Musée d'Orsay, the canvas of our mind painted by the colors of Cézanne, Monet, Van Gough, and Renoir, we walked down the narrow streets searching for the artisan pâtisserie and some mineral water. Looking around, the thought entered me that people are just people wherever you go. Whether in Paris or anywhere else, people need to belong. We all need to be loved. We all need to find purpose and beauty in the world whether that is through art, music, architecture, numbers, teaching, children, nature, or all of it.

And looking around at this city showed me the miracles that people can perform when they believe in something. Everywhere I turned, I saw a spirit of strength and determination and capacity for beauty and meaning. I saw it in their architecture, their cathedrals and palaces and their houses and most poignantly by simply watching them live out another day in their regular lives. I saw it in the way they decorated their little shops and showed great care about their cafés and restaurants, the prim waiter with his pressed shirt and manicured mustache and his full-length apron, standing at elegant attention hoping to show off his mastery of service because that was his art, to impeccably serve un café and croissant and make correct change and whisk you away when you were finished with a polite "Merci. Bonjour!"

The next evening we sat in the small wooden pews of Nôtre Dame at the free organ concert. Here, I felt the beauty and strength of the human spirit, past and present, like a weight in my heart and lump in my throat as the deep pedal tones of that organ shook that holy palace at its foundation and opened my eyes perhaps for the first time to the height of the ceiling and light of the stained glass windows, a peach sunset at our backs making color dance upon the giant grey stones. I felt the strength of those rough hands that built that edifice of solid rock hundreds of years ago which stands in the form of a giant cross to remind us all what is directly in the center of vertical and horizontal, that magical place between what is spiritual and what is temporal, that place that is now. And whether on the yoga mat or at Nôtre Dame, presence allows us the same vision into the divine part that is within all of us.

Whether it's the tourist who snaps a photo of the Mona Lisa on their phone and rushes off to something else hoping somehow to take it now and maybe look at it some other time, or it's the local who never takes the time to get up into the mountains because there will be plenty of time later, it all speaks to the same thing: presence. It's about this moment which if lived fully might express itself into something that could last into centuries or if wasted by living too much in the future or past never really happens. Without presence, we will never have our movable feast, we will never taste the cheese, see the stained glass, or feel the beauty of anything.

I invite you to come to yoga this week and practice presence. I invite you to move about your daily life with presence and experience your own movable feast.

Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Float like a butterfly sting like a bee.” And so he did. This was Muhammad Ali’s mantra. Perhaps yoga and mindfulness isn’t often associated with Muhammad Ali but he was someone who was particularly adroit in his use of the principle of mantra. His iconic mantra has become synonymous with a champion. What is the power of mantra, why was it such a powerful resource for Muhammad Ali and how can we use mantra to achieve our dreams?

Although his mantra practically became his sonic nametag, it wasn’t just a pithy phrase he liked to throw around because it was catchy; it wasn’t his slogan or his attempt at branding himself. Maybe few understood that Ali’s mantra was his access point into his deep inner-source that believed he would be the boxing heavyweight champion of the world. Saying it over and over again was his craft, the practice of helping the logical part of his mind both believe and expect this belief to become reality. In addition using his mantra, Muhammad Ali visualized his iconic fight in his head thousands of times before ever stepping into the ring. So that by the time he stepped into the ring, all that was left to do was final step, the physical practice of what he already knew was true.

It reminds me of a story in the Hindu scripture, The Bhagavad Gita, where the God-turned-mortal Krishna is instructing the warrior prince Arjuna about his duty to fight in an epic battle. At Arjuna’s reluctance, Krishna pulls him aside and informs him that truth and time is not so linear and that the battle has already been fought and won. Knowing this, Krishna told Arujuna that the important thing is that he must go out there and fulfil his dharma, his destiny. Similar to what Ali told himself through visualization and mantra, Krishna told Arjuna to tap into the source of belief of what was already true.

Many psychologists and neuroscientists will affirm that despite our trust in it, our mind isn’t necessarily the best preceptor of reality; it’s readily subject to prejudice, interpretations, and misapprehension. In yoga philosophy the name for this misapprehension is Avidya, the opposite of clear seeing. Like modern brain science suggests, two people might see the same facts and both have wildly different beliefs about translating those facts. Thus our mind is subject to our own personal beliefs and prejudices. Our mind creates a reality from a dizzying array of options suggested by our perceptions, interpretations, and desires. This subjectivity tugs at the very fabric of what we define as true. Yoga suggests that since our beliefs are so powerful in contributing to our reality, we can use things like mantras and visualization to help us propel our understanding of reality, perhaps like Muhammad Ali and Arjuna, a reality that what we know in our hearts is already true.

Now, I’m just as skeptical as the next guy about the suggestion that if you believe something it will become truth. In my opinion, movies like The Secret maybe were better left kept secret. And yet there is something to the notion that we have a bigger part to play in creating our reality than we think. I believe that visualizations and mantra can help.

It is further true that beliefs can change in the blink of an eye. One minute you believe in the Tooth Fairy and the next you don’t. Beliefs change all the time. In Vedanta, a school of yogic philosophy, this part of our being that is assigned to negotiating beliefs is called the Vignana Mayakosha. Yeah, it’s a crazy name but I think this part of our being that holds our beliefs is perhaps more powerful than we sometimes give it credit. Understanding and sourcing this element of personal belief, through things like visualizations and mantra, can have life-changing effects. Surely sourcing his belief that he could be the heavyweight champion of the world helped Mohamad Ali fulfil his purpose.

Words are powerful. Religious texts like The Bible even says that “In the beginning was the Word  . . . and the Word was God.” In the Hindu scripture, The Yoga Sutras, the principle of Satya or truth is the second highest principle behind non-harming because of the power of words. For longer than recorded history, magic, mythic, and religious traditions have regarded certain words, whether vocalized or thought, as both sacred and powerful. One of my yoga teachers, Judeth Lasater, said, “What is worrying but praying for what you don’t want.” Thus is the power of thoughts and words.

So let’s put words to the test. I therefore invite you to choose those words that, like Muhammad Ali, like Arjuna, will manifest your sacred destiny. And I invite you to find a way of reciting them to manifest their power in your life. Maybe you know already your mantra, what words you need to evoke for you to live into your true destiny. Perhaps words like: Power, Clarity, Forgiveness, Strength, etc. Maybe you need to discover what your mantra is. I invite you to do a meditation in order to distil your clarity on which words are right for you. This meditation doesn’t have to be anything like months in the desert in deep contemplation. Rather, maybe 10 minutes concentrating on clearly answering a few questions for yourself. You’ll know it when it comes. Maybe it will take a few days of meditating for a few minutes each day.

Here’s the process. First, ask yourself what has been reoccurring in your life recently as a theme that you need to pay attention to. Another way to answer this question is to think about what ways the Universe is asking you to grow right now—what challenges are presenting themselves to you now, asking you to grow? Next, don’t allow your thinking mind to take over, here, but rather let the answer to this next question be instinct, the first thing that comes to mind: What does your heart know is your purpose for this world? Distill the answer to these questions down to a phrase or maybe even one word (don’t worry, you can change it if you need to, you don’t have to marry that word for life) but allow yourself to use that word or phrase as your powerful catalyst forward to what you already believe about yourself. Then, if you’re inclined, grab a mala (you can get these at Golden Braid or Dancing Cranes). They are beaded necklaces with 108 beads on them. The Mala’s will usually have a tassel on them representing the beginning and the end. Hold the mala on the first bead between your right thumb and middle finger, just beyond the tassel. In your mind or aloud, repeat your word or phrase then move to the next bead. Do this over and over again until you come to the end of the mala. If it’s short and you’d like a longer meditation, turn the mala around and repeat the mantra going the other way on the mala until you come back to the tassel. After your meditation watch to see how you see the world differently and how you live into the beliefs that you bring to your mind through mantra.

Become the champion of your world.

You're Not Doing It Right!

At a yoga retreat a few years ago, a woman was humorously explaining that her 70 year-old dad had just “discovered” yoga. Apparently, he had a type AAA personality, very analytical, a physicist or engineer or something, and had found a yoga DVD and had became suddenly obsessed with doing all the poses “correctly.” “Can you do ‘The Downward Facing Dog,’” he said to his daughter who had announced casually that she was about to go on a yoga retreat. “Sure,” she said. “Well, let’s see,” he challenged. Without a mat or stretchy clothes, she got down on hands and feet and busted out her best Downward Facing Dog pose. “You’re not doing it right,” he corrected. “Your heels have to be touching the ground.” “Who Says?” she retorted. “The DVD! Look right here,” he said, showing her “proof” of a photo on the DVD’s case demonstrating some flexi-dude in Downdog with his heels on the floor.

To some degree I think we are all a little like this guy. When we discover something, begin a new discipline or philosophy, we try hard to define it by narrowing it down and distilling it to its essence: what it is and isn’t. But the more we learn about that discipline, we realize that it’s often inaccurate to define something so narrowly. When I discovered yoga, I felt that unless a yoga class had certain essential poses, it couldn’t be called yoga. I’ve matured a bit now. Now, my working definition of yoga has had to expand large enough to hold everything that I feel is encompassed in the word “yoga.” Now, my definition of yoga doesn’t mention poses at all. Here’s my current working definition (subject to change):

Yoga noun yo·ga \ˈyō-gə\

The process of discovering who I am through the method of listening.

Yoga cannot be defined merely by doing poses. It’s so much deeper than that and yet we need to discover that depth for ourselves. The poses (however they are done) are merely the vehicles to access something deeper and yet in and of themselves, they are a wonderful way of keeping us purified, strong, and focused. The poses are beautiful and fun and make you feel great. Perhaps in our experience with yoga we will discover that though the poses are fantastic, the practice is much deeper than just doing poses.

In fact, our ability to evolve and grow beyond our narrow definitions, I believe, ensures our viability as both as life-long students and teachers of all disciplines. B.K.S. Iyengar, one of the preeminent yoga teachers to ever influence the west, wrote what many feel is the definitive text on yoga asana principles called Light On Yoga. Once, when he was teaching and advanced workshop, a student pointed out to him, “That’s not what you said in your book.” To which Iyengar replied with a wry smile on his face and a glint in his eye, “That fool? He knew nothing!”

The idea of being able to accomplish a certain proficiency or depth of a pose in order to qualify as “succeeding” in yoga is misguided. Often you see pictures of yoga in the media of people doing outrageous poses, things that require inhuman flexibility or strength. There is nothing wrong with doing advanced asana (poses); they can be challenging and fun. But I’d like to redefine “advanced” poses and make a distinction between technical poses and advanced poses. A technical pose may be physically challenging, may incorporate several principles of alignment or muscular strength, balance, and or flexibility. The definition of “advanced” isn’t whether or not you can do an unassisted handstand with your knees bent and your feet touching your head, but rather how you self-direct each pose to match what you need. You could easily do a pose that is technical but not advanced or advanced and not technical. Challenging or technical or deep isn’t the goal for doing poses. We don’t need to stop doing outrageous poses for fear of showing off or because we don’t want people to think we are doing yoga for the wrong reasons. Unfortunately, this is the also practicing for someone else. Simply we must not confound ability with enlightenment.

Every pose is a tool or medicine. The craftsman uses the right tool for the job. The finishing carpenter doesn’t brag that he can nail trim around a door using a sledge hammer. And who cares if you have to take 400 mg or 800 mg of Ibuprofen to manage your headache? It doesn’t matter as long as you get the job done without making yourself sick in the process. Poses as medicine is a great analogy because your “dose” of a yoga pose depends on who you are, what you are doing it for, your experience, your preferences—all of your needs. You don’t go to the doctor and expect to hear, “yeah, you’re messed up but the guy who came in here before you was REALLY messed up. You should take the same kind of medicine that we gave that guy.” Stupid, right? Why, then, would we perform our yoga poses the same pose as the next guy?

In other words, we don’t need to accomplish any poses to succeed at yoga. But we are competitive, with each other and with ourselves. And unfortunately, I often see or feel others practicing yoga in response to what they “should do” or what they could do last time they practiced or what they could do 10 years ago, or what their friend can do, etc. I suppose that’s what really gets us into trouble—when we confound our being with our doing. I heard once the phrase of a mistaken identity as a human doing rather than a human being. Yoga is about coming into the realization of our being. Nearly every time I have been injured in my yoga practice it’s because I’m not listening to my body or my being and I do a pose too deeply or at the wrong time or without sensitivity to what my body and being is saying. I’m injured because my dosage or my purpose is messed up.

I always say that we aren’t practicing poses, but rather we are practicing principles in the form of poses. We practice principles of alignment, muscular engagement, breath and energy work, principles of mindfulness—all as tools to slowly reveal the perfect being both in the outer form of our bodies as well as that mysterious part that lies beneath. This fact lets us off the hook from having to “perform” the poses. It says that there is no “right” way to do a pose. A teacher once told me that there isn’t correct or incorrect, only skillfull and not skillful based on who you are and what you need. Who cares if you can “do” a pose? I’ve been on both sides of the equation. When I began yoga I could not touch my toes. Now I can and I’m here to tell you that life isn’t any better now that I can; the heavens didn’t open and angels did not sing. And yet if there is a pose that I love to do, there’s also no reason not to if it brings me joy and makes me feel great.

In yoga class, I teach principles not so students will take my word for it or feel that they have accomplish something, or to know how to do a pose correctly. Rather, I teach these things as a way of helping each student tune in with increased awareness and clarity, so that they might pay attention and hear the voice of their true teacher, the one that is quietly speaking within their own heart. I find my role is to constantly point the student’s attention back to themselves.

So the next time someone tells you by mere fact of how your pose looks “you’re not doing it right,” you can turn the phrase back on them. If you are worried about how the pose looks then you’re not doing it right.

Here are a bunch of little phrases I came up with that I like to throw around in class.

• There is a yoga bill of rights and there is one right on the yoga bill of rights and that’s the right to suck at yoga.
• The only way to do this incorrectly is to do it the way your neighbor does it.
• We are not practicing poses but rather principles in the form of poses.
• I’ve decided that any pose I can’t do is overrated.
• Let the metric of a pose be “Awesome.” If it feels awesome, do it. Otherwise, find another way.
• It is not by effort that we find what we are searching for in our yoga practice. Rather by the judicious balance between steadiness and ease we place ourselves into the flow, into the current of our own evolution of body, mind, and spirit and find that through it we arrive somewhere much more profound than simply a deep pose. We arrive at the profound realization of our True Nature.

Your Life Practice

Tantra Yoga is a philosophy of yoga. It comes from two Sanskrit words: Tan, meaning to stretch, and Tra which is the same root of words we use in English like Transcend. It means to expand, to become. Therefore, Tantra means, essentially, to stretch into our largest becoming. And since who knows if there’s another round after this lifetime or if this is the only go around, Tantra suggests to do as much of this personal transformation as soon as possible, to stretch into your own becoming now.

There are several categories and suggested disciplines and methods to practice this personal becoming, including our yoga practice and our meditation, yes, but also our home life and our work life are important parts of our path to our own becoming. Personally, this resonates with me: the idea that there is as much opportunity to practice becoming my fullest self in the boardroom as there is on my meditation cushion or yoga mat. Truly this suggests that our entire life is the practice and that we can’t subdivide our evolution as to what happens at the studio, different than what happens at work. Similarly, there can be just as much insight into your profound nature of being while doing what you’ve chosen as a profession as much as there is by doing any other practice. Truly our life is our practice.

This week I invite you to see your home life, your work, your civic involvement, all as a part of your sacred practice. Let the same person who arrives onto your yoga mat also arrive to your next meeting at work as well as to the dinner table at home, and to your sweetheart. Practice the tantric method of making your life the practice.

Save the dates of October 2-4 for the next retreat at Wolf Creek Outpost in Woodland, Utah. This time we get practice being in relationship to the beautiful spirit of horses and go on an amazing ride through the forest. Don’t miss this. Details to come.

Scott

A Prayer For Rain

Such wonderful summer rain recently! What a relief simply to have the landscape change momentarily. Just when the landscape seems to be so stifling, stale, and stagnant, the weather shifts and boom, there's a summer storm and everything changes. The sky, the canvas of the landscape tableau, changes and this change invariably changes everything in the foreground. The colors are more vivid, the air is fragrant, and my mind is reborn to freshness, to vitality, and newness.

A beautiful summer storm burst over my head almost two weeks ago. Yes, it's week two of being a papa. I'm sure I won't be writing about my new babe forever in my newsletter and blog (this is the 3rd week in a row, work with me!) but for this moment, it's the most real thing in my life, the lens through which I see everything. The colors are more vivid and the air is presher as a father of this perfect little being.

Thank you again to everyone who has been so wonderful to me and to Seneca by showering us with congratulations, meals, support, and love. Someone anonymously left me a clipping form a magazine at Centered City Yoga. The quote is by Frank Pittman, M.D., from his book Man Enough.

"These guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something aht perfects the man. The end product of childraising is not the child but the parent."

Boom! a thunderbolt crashing overhead, raining more awareness and perspective about my internal landscape. Beautiful. Thank you, Anonymous Well-Wisher. I'm very grateful for this timely inspiration.

Certainly, yoga is the microcosm of the practice of life. I see this opportunity to have a kid as an enormous lesson, and not just in diaper changing, sleeplessness, and translating the needs of another being through the language shrill infant cries. One lesson I’m receiving is how to profoundly deepen my relationship with another small group of human beings, Seneca and Elio (my new little guy). Something deep and beautiful staged a coup on my heart the moment they put that little creature in my arms. It gave me an appreciation for the profound nature of life and the fierce grace, the power of this woman, who carried him and brought him into this world. Damn! May I practice presence, awareness of my body, mind, and spirit, and celebrate the yoga which is the union of souls that is at once both my own family and simultaneously the family of all being. May this journey of fatherhood make me the man I’ve always been destined to be. And in the process of my unfolding may I bless the lives of my family, community, and the world. This is my practice and my prayer.

Summer Lullaby

Summertime,
An’ the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin'
An’ the cotton is high.

Oh yo’ daddy's rich
An’ yo’ mamma's good lookin'
So hush little baby
Don' yo’ cry.

One of these mornin’s
You're goin’ to rise up singin’
Then you'll spread yo’ wings
An’ you'll take the sky.

But till that mornin’
There's a-nothin’ can harm you
With daddy an’ mammy standin’ by.

~Music by George Gershwin lyrics by DuBose Heyward

Click here to hear my favorite version of this tune

The lyrics of Summertime seem poetically perfect as background music to my life. It’s a lullaby I’ve been singing to my new little boy born on June 24, a quiet and bluesy celebration of such an amazing life I get to live. Seneca is an amazing gift giver and I believe she will have a hard time topping this incredible gift: a baby boy on my birthday.

Watching Seneca work through the birthing process, give birth to our child, and care for him so tenderly once he was born, has expounded my love for her to an innumerable measure. I have such a deep respect for her grace and power. While going through the birthing process together, a contraction would come along and we’d breathe together and I’d press on her for counter-pressure against the contractions, it was hard not to feel as if all my yoga training hadn’t prepared me perfectly for this moment. Watching the birth and basking in the love for my woman was profound. And then when it came time for me to hold him for the first time, feeling him rest in my arms and looking down at this little creature I’d helped make, my heart almost burst with love. It’s a love that is primal and comes from the gut. It’s something I couldn’t have imagined. I had to go through this entire process to appreciate.

We decided to name him Elio Anand Moore. Elio comes from ancient French and Greek adapted to Italian as well and means the sun deity. Seneca and I experiences a profound and sacred ceremony called Shakti Pat with a guru named Anandi Ma. We emailed her a photo of Elio and asked if she might give him a spiritual name. She saw the picture and an enormous smile came across her face. She then closed her eyes, held her hand over the photo, and when she opened them back up she said, “Anand.” We thought that would be a beautiful middle name. It’s Sanskrit for untold joy or bliss. Sun and Bliss. That’s what this era is. That’s what Summertime is all about.

As this new adventure of kid and family starts out, it reinforces the importance of presence so that not a moment slips by. One week old, and the little nugget already looks so different. I want to be here to witness the entire thing. It reminds me to continually practice presence.

Here’s to my new family! A great big thank you to everyone who has been so wonderful and supportive. It really means the world to us.

My Brightest Day

Sunday the 21st is the summer Solstice, the time of year when the sun has reached its zenith along the horizon; the days are longest and brightest and the nights are shortest. Last year’s Summer’s Solstice was the brightest day of my life as I married the love of my life. What an incredible day! We were surrounded by family and friends and celebrated a sacred union of deep, abiding love. My dear, dear friend Nan, officiated our wedding and began the ceremony with this poem from Hafiz:

And truly in this union of marriage I have learned about what it means to be connected to another person, body, mind and spirit.

“Even

After

All this time

The Sun never says to the Earth,

“You owe me.”

Look

What happens

With a love like that,

It lights up the whole sky.”

— Hafiz

Yoga literally means union. I feel like the union we practice, personally, of body, mind, and spirit is the first step toward our grander expansion of identifying with that enormous union between two people, then a family, a community, and finally, the world. All to truly see that we are each integral parts of some larger organism. What a practice it has been in the fierce heat of such a beautiful marriage and relationship! One of my most profound teachers said, “All my gurus share my last name,” teaching me that perhaps the most profound teaching I will receive in this lifetime will be from the experience of having a family.

This Solstice, my wife Seneca and I  have planned to welcome in more brightness into our lives, but spelled SON rather than SUN. Yes, Seneca is expecting and our little guy is due on July 1 which means he could come at any time. I’m trying to keep it cool, trying the see the big picture, but really inside, I’m really freaking out. I’ve started to keep my phone on me 24/7, checking it regularly to make sure I don’t accidentally miss the moment when Seneca starts to usher in our wonderful little ray of light into this world. I had planned a yoga retreat to Spain with Kim Dastrup to commence on the Solstice but then found out that Seneca was pregnant and decided to stay home wait for another year to do Spain.

You know, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever have kids in my life. Then I met the right partner and having kids all made sense. I’ve never done this (dad-ness) before and I feel very comfortable saying that this new endeavor both thrills me and simultaneously scares the hell out of me. Previously, whenever I’d watch a birth video or hear people talk about their experience, it always felt a little awkward to me, as if they were offering a little too gratuitously such personal information.  And in my mind I’m thinking, “That’s nice . . . and kind of gross.” Now, as we have been attending birthing classes, I’ll watch a birth video or and at that magical moment when baby and mama meet for the first time (on the outside), I’m surprised to feel my throat clench tight and my heart swell and my eyes start to get dewy and in my mind I’m thinking, “That’s F*@#-ing beautiful!”

I know you can’t ever be fully ready for being a parent and yet I don’t want my little guy to come into this world without any preparations.  Hell, Senececa has carried this kid for almost 9 months. Lately, I’ve been busying myself knowing that the least I can do is make sure that the crib is assembled, the house is decluttered, and that there is something in the fridge to eat. While assembling a crib, a project that should have been really straight forward, I found myself cursing under my breath at the difficult installation design and thought that maybe this is the hazing process for new dads. My next thought was that I hope he doesn’t pick up my fluent sailor vernacular.

The truth is that I really, really want to be a good dad. I want to love on him and teach him all the good things of this beautiful world, like what really good chocolate is, the magic of John Coltrane, and the value of a good pen. I can’t wait to throw the ball and hike and trail run with him. I wonder if he will be interested in music, or trucks, or maybe dance or art. A friend asked sort of jokingly, “What gender is he going to be . . . at least to start with?” I thought, “Right! I gotta accept this person exactly how they come.” I want to teach him by example how to love and respect the world. I want to teach him to not be afraid of asking for what you want in this world and simultaneously improvise with what this crazy blue marble throws at us. I want to allow him to teach me what he loves in the world and see that he’s not just a product of me and Sen but that we are also a product of him. I want to love what he loves and I want to show him what a loving marriage looks like and how to respect women and people.

Talk about a deep yoga practice. Those of you who have had kids can attest to the struggles, joys, and wisdom of having children. Truly the yoga of being connected—body, mind, and spirit—could not be more prevalent as when you are in direct relationship to a family. This baby literally came from our cells. He is us and we are him, individual members of a larger organism, a family. Just like the way we all belong to the Family of Being, right? Damn! It all feels so important and real!

So here we go! Seneca has been an amazing baby-mama, so healthy and good to our little guy inside of her by eating well, doing gentle exercise, as well as regular meditation. I love her incredibly.  Seneca is ready to have this kid as soon as possible. I feel both scared and thrilled at the prospect of having a kid. It feels like the biggest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Seneca, I bow to your strength and courage and calm peace about this whole thing.

Because Kim is gone to Spain, I’m teaching a bunch of her classes until she comes back about when the baby is due. Check out the schedule at Centered City Yoga to see all of the extra classes I’m teaching.

We’ll let you know when our little guy comes! And I hope your Solstice is half as bright as mine.

My CCY Schedule while Kim is away

Mon 6 am Rise and Shine

Mon 8:40 am Power 1

Mon 10 am Restore

Mon. 5:45 Power 1

Tues 10:15 am Restore (note this class will be suspended from July-August)

Tues 6 pm Power 1-2

Thurs 10:15 am (note this class will be suspended from July-August)

Thurs 6 pm Power 1-2

Friday 6 am Rise and Shine

Friday 5:45 pm Power 1

Saturday 10:30 am Restore

Sunday 8:40 am Deep Power

Sunday 10:15 am Restore

Here’s a perfect poem that speaks perfectly to belonging to the family of being

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Have a wonderful week . I hope you'll come to my class sometime this week.

Bone

I'm thinking of that big part of our yoga practice, our souls. What is that, anyway? It’s not something that is solid, something I can feel through my skin like bones. But it’s there. Somewhere.

 This week, as I was practicing yoga, I felt it again for the millionth time. That big, big, part which is right there, which is everything but which is the part that I can't really put a name to. It's not Scott. It's bigger.

 And I guess this is what people have been trying to point to since there have been people. We all have such a grand language for it. Such a crisis over it. We go to war over it. We put each other in hell for it. Something that isn't a question. Something that's right there. I can reach out and touch it. And sometimes, I feel that you can too-- yours, yes but mine, too. As I'm teaching and I can see you getting into your groove, I see you breathing, I see the focus. Then I see it when things click, lights go on behind your eyes and I see you think to yourself, "There it is!"

 And if you're like me, you get it and before you know it, it slips between your fingers and suddenly you're looking all over for it again, under the couch, behind the dresser, because you thought you knew what it was and what it looked like but now you're not so sure any more.

 Then it seems to find you because it was there all the time, or you were there and you and it are all the same thing.

 Pretty soon, I guess we get so comfortable with it--it's like Peter Pan stitching his shadow onto the sole of his shoe--it doesn't go away anymore. Maybe Patantaji, the ancient guru/yoga scholar who wrote the yoga sutras about finding that big part of yourself called Samadhi, maybe his first given name was Peter Pan until he was reborn with the truth that his sole is always there, right at his feet, and it was then that he was bestowed the honorable name, Patanjali. He learned and teaches that it is by singular concentration that we simply open our eyes to it. We learn to see again.

 This is what our practice is about. This is why it's a practice, yes, because it is slippery. And because it feels really, really, good everytime we make that discovery, and even the journey leading up to it.

One of my guru teachers is poet Mary Oliver. She's a teacher whom I've never met but who has tought me so much by her simple and astounding words, written after she has paid acute attention to this amazing heaven, the world around us. She wrote (in much fewer words than I, mind you) something about this practice of searching for the soul. Enjoy.

Bone

1.

Understand, I am always trying to figure out

what the soul is,
and where hidden,
and what shape--

and so, last week,
when I found on the beach
the ear bone
of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought
maybe I was close
to discovering something--
for the ear bone

2.

is the portion that lasts longest
in any of us, man or whale; shaped
like a squat spoon
with a pink scoop where

once, in the lively swimmer's head,
it joined its two sisters
in the house of hearing,
it was only

two inches long--
and I thought: the soul
might be like this--
so hard, so necessary--

3.

yet almost nothing.
Beside me
the gray sea
was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over
its time-ridiculing roar;
I looked but I couldn't see anything
through its dark-knit glare;

yet don't we all know, the golden sand
is there at the bottom,
though our eyes have never seen it,
nor can our hands ever catch it

4.

lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts--
certainties--
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.

I’ll be out of town Monday through Wednesday. I’ll see you later next week.

Chanting A Love Supreme

Gayatri Mantra:  

Om, Bhur bhuvah svah

tat savitur vareniyam

bhargo devasya dhimahi

dhiyo yo nah prachodayat 

Translation:

Everything on the Earth and in the sky and in between is arising from one effulgent source. If my thoughts, words, and deeds reflected a complete understanding of this, I would be the peace I am seeking in this moment.

Photo by Joshua Terry woundedmosquito.com

There is a mantra that I've been working to understand for several years. It's The Gayatri Mantra, one of the oldest mantras in existence. It's more than 12 thousand years old and comes from the Rigveda, an ancient Sanskrit text containing hymns and mantras that are mythological and poetic accounts of the origin of the world. I struggle to understand it because it suggests that when I'm feeling freaked out by something, I already have peace or am the peace that I feel I lack. Likewise, this mantra suggests that somehow through one Source, we are everything else. And to any mind that is caught up in limited a conception of Self, this is ridiculous.

One experience I had that helped me to understand this mantra a little better happened about three or four years ago while I was on an early-morning run in Hawaii. Because my body was used to a different time zone, I was up and running while most of everybody else was sleeping. On that beautiful morning, I ran along a paved trail that contours the ocean and stretches for miles. All the elements including myself were harmonized to make a perfect storm of physical, mental, and spiritual bliss. My mind was clear, the weather, temperature, altitude and humidity were all perfect. As I ran, my mind opened up to incredible clarity.

In this clarity, I began processing some of the jazz improve theory that my sax teacher had been teaching me, specifically regarding works by John Coltrane. My feet tapped along the trail and my lungs bellowed the humid ocean-air while my mind thought about scales, intervals, harmonics, chords, and all of the underlying structure of jazz. My sax teacher tells me that if I want to find those notes coming out of my horn, I have to not only feel them in my soul, but I also gotta know what is possible to feel and that takes a little head work. With all this mental clarity some fairly complex music theory simply started to make sense to me. Deeper musical ideas began to percolate to my mental surface causing new lights to go on. I was figuring it out and it was happening without any teacher or even the reference of my sax or even music paper. I realized that somehow, a lot of this understanding was already in there.

Amazed at these musical revelations, an immense thought dawned upon me: even if it's waaaay down there, there is a John Coltrane in me somewhere. The perfect run connected me to Source, even just a little bit, and that led me to somehow understand Coltrane a little better. If I truly understood the connection of all things, if I were truly tapped into Source like the Gayatri Mantra suggests, I'd be able to access that same power, soul, and knowledge that John Coltrane did. Me! John Coltrane!

Coltrane was connected to Source. He demonstrates this plainly in his most spiritual work, some say the most spiritual of all of jazz, his album called A Love Supreme. In it he makes circles both in the arc of the sound in music as well as in its form; this chord and this phrase makes a logical, mathematical, and aurally pleasing transition to the next, and the next until the formula causes it to arrive back to where it started. Just as you might hear Brahman priests chanting the Gayatri Mantra from the Rigveda, in this recording you hear these priests of jazz chant, "A Love Supreme" repeatedly in the background evoking Source. You see, in certain disciplines initiates get a new name. In yoga your name might become Yogananda, or Ram Das, for jazz it might be Trane or Bird. I believe that in the métier of transcendent jazz (read: heaven), God was given the nickname, A Love Supreme. Fitting. I think God uses it as a Facebook handle, or something. In part, Coltrane's message was that everything is inscribed within A Love Supreme. A Love Supreme is The Effulgent Source mentioned in the Gayatri Mantra and to fully comprehend this Source means to understand everything, including peace, including jazz, including yourself. This is enlightenment and whether your path there incorporated practicing either poses or jazz theory or anything else, you still end up at the same place.

Alice Coltrane, J.C.'s wife at the time, said that one day Trane locked himself in the attic and didn't come down for three days. He spent the entire time meditating (understand that Coltrane meditated with his horn in his mouth) and when he came down, I imagine that it was like Moses coming down from the mountain after talking to God, he looked at his wife and said, "I've got it!" A few days later he was in the studio with a few hand-picked musicians to record A Love Supreme, one of the greatest pieces of music ever conceived. We are still chanting the Gayatri Mantra 12 thousand years later. I hope people are chanting A Love Supreme, or at lease spinning the record, 12 thousand years from now.

Understanding, even theoretically, that knowing Source means to know everything, doesn't discount the hours, weeks, years, and lifetimes of work and practice necessary to get there, but still the idea is provocative that our work isn't to build or gain anything new, rather to dismantle that which prevents us from seeing what's already there. What we practice in yoga is paying attention and we use breath, poses, and mediation to open our eyes and to take off the bandages to reveal what's underneath.

Another reference to understanding this universal Source comes from the story about the day Zen came to be. It is said that long ago an assembly gathered to hear the Buddha's Dharma talk. Instead of a discourse, The Buddha simply held up a flower saying nothing. He stayed like that for a long time much to the confusion of most everyone. Only the sage Mahakashyapa understood, and noted it with a wry smile. With his flower, the Buddha was saying that which could not be spoken by words. He was showing the assembly that Being or Reality had no boundaries and was found in everything, including a flower, and to even try to define Being or Reality by words would create a boundary for something that had none. Anything defined would have been a contradiction yet at the same time he was revealing that which was everywhere, if your understanding would allow you to see. "If my thoughts words and deeds reflected a complete understanding of this unity," . . . I would realize that I'm no different than this flower, or my music, or you, and I would understand that peace is already within me. And yet to understand this, like myriad myths throughout history also suggest, it might take me traveling the entire world to realize that what I was searching for was at home all along, locked within the vault of my heart.

Join me this week as we practice understanding the Gayatri Mantra better and practice unraveling anything that would prevent us from seeing our own Effulgent Source, our True Nature, our Love Supreme. And since it is said that Visvamitra was the one who gave us the Gayatri Mantra, we'll work on exploring Reality through Visvamitrasana. Speaking of "getting Real," once I start working on my inflexible hamstrings, something necessary for that pose, things get real, really fast.

I suggest making the time to listen to A Love Supreme this week. It's an incredible and historic piece of music.

Also, speaking of the saxophone, if you're in interested in coming to see me and my band, The Soulistics, perform, we have an exciting summer line up. Click here to check out our next performance!

Here are a few poems that also speak to connection and revelation to Self and Source.

Excerpt from Prelude

Two miles I had to walk along the fields

Before I reach'd my home. Magnificent          330

The Morning was, a memorable pomp,

More glorious than I ever had beheld;

The Sea was laughing at a distance; all

The solid Mountains were as bright as clouds,

Grain-tinctured, drench'd in empyrean light;    335

And, in the meadows and the lower grounds,

Was all the sweetness of a common dawn,

Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds,

And Labourers going forth into the fields.

--Ah! need I say, dear Friend, that to the brim             340

My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows

Were then made for me; bond unknown to me

Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,

A dedicated Spirit. On I walk'd

In blessedness which even yet remains.                    345

~ William Wordsworth

Initiation, II

 At the crossroads, hens scratched circles
into the white dust. There was a shop
where I bought coffee and eggs, coarse-grained
chocolate almost too sweet to eat.
When I walked up the road, the string sack
heavy on my arm, I thought
that my legs could take me anywhere,
into any country, any life.
The air, dazzling as sand, grew dense
with light: bougainvillea spilled
over the salmon walls, the road
veered into the ravine. The world
could be those colors, the mangoes,
the melons, the avocado evenings
releasing their circles of moon.
I climbed the pink stairs, entered
the house as calm and ephemeral
as my own certainty:
this is my house, my key,
my hand with its new lines.
I am as old as I will ever be.

~Nina Bogin

Life's Too Short To Be A "Hater"

We use a word today, a great word, a word that didn’t exist back in the day, especially in the way we use it now. That word? Hater. Yeah, a hater is someone who is often contrary not only to you and what you’re about but more often than not, chronically grumpy about the world. For a hater, there is an unlimited supply of things to complain about, gripe about, or criticize. They see the world through hater-colored glasses. You know anybody like this? Worse, do you ever find yourself resembling a hater? Reminds me of those two dudes in The Muppet Show who sit up in peanut gallery and spit out insults and complaints like it were an art form?

Well, having a hating attitude can be terminal. It can be an insidious habit that will canker your heart.  And if you’re not a hater, than chances are that you know one, right? We all know someone who we like, maybe even love, but who can be so chronically cantankerous that we find ourselves limiting our exposure to them.

The Yoga Sutras talk about haters. Maybe not directly but if you read between the lines you can see it in there. Specifically, the sutras talk about the opposite quality of a hater. The term is Samtosha and refers to the spiritual practice of contentment and seeing the world as abundant and perfect in its imperfections. Samtosha means to decide to be content with what you have and see the world through gratitude-colored glasses, to choose to be cool with what life has thrown you. Sure, we will always hope and strive for a bright future, but along the way we can decide that we are happy with this, now. It’s about presence. Samtosha is a spiritual practice and belongs in yoga philosophy because it will fundamentally change the way you see the world in a way that helps you feel a part of the incredibly beautiful and complex family of all human beings instead of fighting against it.

We can practice Samtosha on the mat. For one, we can practice being content with where we are at in our practice, always riding that comfortably intense edge, rather than pushing beyond our limits. Then, as we honor our bodies, it will be our bodies that invite us to move further in a pose. And secondly, I love the idea that this incredible life journey called yoga can be done on nothing more than a 2’X6’ rubber mat, and that’s all the space we need! Yes, the world is our practice space, but our yoga mat represents all the space we need as we join with like-minded people in a yoga class to apply the condensed practice of learning principles like poses and Samtosha in order to bring those qualities into our practice of daily living.

I’d like to offer two practices that will change your life. I know it sounds like I’m over selling this, but I’m not. Hang with me.

Practice 1.

Before chronically judging people, practice seeing something good about everyone you see. Let it be the first thing you notice. Over the weekend, I was at City Creek Mall and did this practice as I watched throngs of people for an amazing result in my own heart. “That guy has a cool hat. That woman looks like she really loves her kids. Blue is a great color for her. That guy drives an energy efficient car—thanks for doing your part to help keep our environment clean,” etc. I felt as a part of  an incredible family. You can do this practice at stop lights, while walking down the street, and especially while in a crowd. Practice doing it with your own family members. Watch to see how your entire demeanor changes and also how others change toward you.

Practice 2

I’ve begun using a life-changing mantra: “I don’t need to have an opinion about that.” You can ask my wife, sometimes I’ll start to go off about the smallest things, like the wording on a billboard or the fact that Mini’s aren’t mini anymore, but rather medium-i. I sometimes get negative too. Haven’t you noticed how I write about all the stuff that I’m learning in my own practice? Then, I might stop myself and say, “I don’t need to have an opinion about that. Why can’t there be a Medium-I?” “That billboard can be exactly the way it is (illegible) and I simply just don’t need to have an opinion about it.” I bet Seneca enjoys me more when I’m not so opinionated about everything. Heaven forbid that I become that chronically cantankerous person in her life, right? Try out this mantra. Maybe offer it to the grump in your life.

Practice Samtosha with me this week both on and off the mat. And while I’d love to see you in class, if I don’t, “I don’t need to have an opinion about that.”

Please consider joining me for my Pilates and Yoga workshop this weekend at Snowbird. The spots are filling up and there is limited space. I’m really excited for this workshop.

Joseph Pilates And BKS Iyengar Walk Into A Bar . . .

Some say that there are “Pilates people” and there are “yoga people,” as if they were warring factions of fitness tribes. First, that’s dumb, and second, if there were “Pilates people” and “yoga people,” I would consider myself both. Sure, I make a career of teaching yoga and practice yoga more regularly but I consider my Pilates practice absolutely integral to the process of understanding myself and therefore part of my yoga practice.  

What I love about Pilates is the way that it invites me to understand myself through conscious and deliberate movements. I love the precision and the deliberate quality of the practice. I have learned so much about myself through the practice of Pilates. It has informed not only my yoga practice but my teaching more than any other physical practice. I believe that yoga is something much bigger than what you do on your mat. My definition of yoga expands to include anything that helps you understand who you are and invites you to pay attention. Therefore, for me Pilates has been perhaps the greatest extension of my yoga practice.

For several years, I’ve had the pleasure of trading a private Pilates session for a private yoga session with a very gifted teacher and friend, Maya Christopherson. Through our practice together, she has taught me volumes about how my body works, where my hidden weak spots are, and where I’m unconscious in my movements. I move my spine more completely and gracefully because of our work together. I understand the relationship between my tight psoas the movement of my legs. I am more sensitive to not only how to move my body because of our work together, but also more sensitive to how I feel in my body because of her expert instruction.

“Well, there’s no mindful element to Pilates,” you might say. I would say that on the contrary, Pilates is a deliberate, intelligent, and sophisticated way of expanding my somatic awareness and therefore improves my overall mindfulness. In fact, just like yoga, Pilates develops my being physically, energetically, and spiritually/consciously. On the physical level, Pilates makes me strong; I find more power in my running, more capable in my yoga practice, and stronger in the daily dance of living life a dynamic life. On the energetic level, my energy or prana flows more fluidly after a Pilates practice because my muscles, joints, and tissues, have experienced a full-range of intelligently-crafted manipulation causing muscles to release tension from unconscious, habitual movement. My energy flows fluidly because I’ve eliminated stagnation from my system. Simply put, by practicing Pilates I get off my duff and move my body. But not just by flopping my limbs around mindlessly to burn calories. Rather, I’m moving in a way that feels like it was custom-designed for what my body needs. I love how in my Pilates practice, I’ll be invited to do a few quality reps of an exercise rather than 100 sloppy ones. On the causal or spiritual/conscious level, I have to be very tuned in and focused while I do Pilates, I can’t ever just phone it in. This focus on my movement expands my awareness, like a meditation in motion. In part that is what Maya’s job is: to watch me and inquire into things like whether or not I could be more smooth in my movement, more conscious of how my right side moves compared to my left, or how this part of my spine moves compared to this other part of my spine, etc. And in some way you could choose anything, golf, tennis, gymnastics, driving, cooking, being a mom or dad, or whatever you do, as the vehicle toward your own self-realization but I believe that Pilates and yoga are two methods that are particularly useful to create a daily practice to maintain the body, to conduct the flow of energy, and to make me ever more conscious. It may sound oblique to say that I’m becoming a better person, on my way to complete understanding of self and universe, though practicing Pilates but that is exactly what I’m saying. And at the end of the day, body/mind/spirit stuff aside, I just feel great after a Pilates practice.

So, Maya and I thought it would be so fun to have a day with you devoted completely to the practice of exploring both Pilates and yoga. You’ll feel amazing as we lead you several intelligent practices. You will learn volumes about how your body works, different than anybody else’s. It will be a day to remember as we learn about the history and philosophy of both practices and how those apply to every-day living. And as always the goal of these practices, besides feeling amazing in the moment, is to ultimately practice walking through the world with more power, clarity, and energy, as a force for good.

We will be hosting our Pilates and Yoga workshop at The Snowbird Cliff Lodge, on Sunday May 31 from 10 am to 4 pm. If you want to stick around after you get a discount to luxuriate in the spa. Bring a lunch or plan on eating at one of the many restaurants there at Snowbird. Grab your bestie and make it a date! If you sign up with a friend, you both get $10 off.

$145 Single registration

$270 Double registration

See you there!

Scott

The First Step

Photo by Chris Noble

For over a year I volunteered to teach a yoga class once a week to a group of men at a place called The First Step House. This was an institution established for men who had just come out of jail and who needed a positive first step into managing a new life outside of prison. At the First Step House, these guys, many of whom were court-ordered to be there, would receive group therapy and courses about things like anger management, personal finances, and how to get a job.

I remember showing up on my first morning, sometime in the late spring or early summer. I left my wallet locked in my car not knowing how cautious I should be about people who had just left the Big House. I walked into the large red-bricked building, an old renovated church, past a fat calico cat who looked at me like he owned the place. Inside, it smelled like bleach, bacon grease, and coffee. There was a scruffy man wearing a camo jacket and heavy boots standing at a kitchen window placing an order to a uniformed cook for some eggs and pancakes. I mingled around until I found Sabrina, the director; she was debriefing the staff for the day's events in her office. "Oh Scott!" she said enthusiastically. "Everyone, I'd like you to meet our new yoga instructor. He's going to be teaching every Wednesday morning." I was greeted with several polite hellos.

After the meeting, the director showed me around the class rooms, therapy rooms, the grounds, and the kitchen and even invited me to order food there whenever I wanted. Finally she led me to a group of about 20 men in a large meeting room, all shuffling and slouching, consumed in the art of killing time before some institutionalized activity. "Gentlemen!" Sabrina said in a loud and cheery voice that both commanded attention and simultaneously demanded and conveyed respect. "This is Scott, our new yoga instructor." There was a long moment of uneasy quiet as this group of men shifted their eyes skeptically between Sabrina and me, processing the bomb that had just been dropped on them: they were now going to be required to practice yoga. A few less-than-subtle curses skittered around the room to which Sabrina paid no attention and instead marched out of the room leading me and the curmudgeonly group in tow. She led us to a large shed-like structure behind the main building. Inside, there was industrial carpet on the floor, a few small windows, some fluorescent lights, and several chairs arranged a circle. We all began stacking chairs, some still complaining loudly at the fact that they had to do "@#$%ing YO-GA!" Everyone was instructed to grab a mat and sit on the floor which they did, noticeably uncomfortable with tight hips, curved backs, and stiff knees, vestiges of long years of bodily neglect and abuse.

I looked around and saw that many of these men with their military tattoos, dog-tags, and post-Vietnam-era chic apparel were veterans. A pang of bitter realization washed through me. It was a feeling that in some ways this country had forgotten and neglected these people and that blindness resulted in one way or other processing these people into our prisons. Yes, these men had made their own decisions but I wondered how many of these choices had been made as the result of a broken soul, horrific memories, and an impossible sacrifice for a country that all but shunned them when they came back from the living nightmare of Vietnam. I saw men almost void of consciousness, desperately trying to just make it for one more day.

Not all of them were veterans. Some of these men were drug dealers, woman beaters, thieves, cheats, deserters, liars, and addicts. I stood there and looked around the room at these cut-throat, busted sons of America. This was their next step. This was their second chance, or their third or fourth. It didn't matter. They were there and so was I. And what we all shared in common was that we were going to do yoga together in some shed with industrial carpet and stacked chairs, under garish fluorescent lighting and try to see what could come of it.

I stood at the front of the class and introduced myself. I explained who I was, why I think yoga is cool, and that I also like jazz and running and reading. I told them that I didn't like yoga that much at first and that it took me a while to understand it enough to really love it. I shared how much I love the way it makes my body feel and how valuable it is to me to keep my body healthy in order to be a good vehicle of my mind and heart. I shared how well I've come to know my inner-self through this practice. My definition of yoga was very simple: understanding Self through listening; a union of body, mind, and heart. My introduction over, I asked if anybody had any injuries that I could be aware of and spent the next 10 minutes listening to almost every person in the room explain something like an injured back, a shattered elbow, or broken foot. Yoga suggests that everything is connected and in my mind I wondered if these broken bodies were perhaps scars of deeper wounds.

I think something happened to me as I stood there and listened to them describe their injuries. My fears and prejudices melted away and I didn't see ex-cons anymore, I saw hurt people. Aren't we all just bodies with hearts and minds doing our best to know ourselves and this world? Aren't we all just trying to mend and move forward? My nervousness subsided a bit and suddenly I found myself caught up with an excitement to be there, to offer something that we all could share, a way to connect, a way to heal, a way to simply feel good in our bodies and maybe find some inner peace. I shared a few jokes and anecdotes. This lightened the mood and greased the resistance a little. Then we started the practice with a simple focus on our breath and some easy breathing techniques which caused a sputtering of coughs and gasps. We moved our bodies in cat-cow position on hands and knees and mobilized the spine. Together, we moved the body through some slow and gentle sun salutations. We mobilized shoulders, wrists, hips, neck, knees, and ankles. When we did supine pigeon pose to loosen up tight hips, you'd have thought it was a dungeon of hell with all the groans and curses through clenched teeth. But they were doing it. And whether they realized it or not, the intensity of stretching such tight muscles entered them into a very deep practice of mindfulness. I believe that there is scarcely anything in the world that hones one's attention like pigeon pose, any of its incarnations, applied to tight hips. Pigeon: the fast-track to enlightenment! We finished our session with a rest as I led them through a guided meditation. After, I taught them the meaning of Namaste, an honoring salutation that acknowledges the common goodness in all of us. I bowed to them, offered a Namaste, and even received a few timid Namastes in return.

That started my year-plus stint at The First Step House. There were several different groups of men at the First Step House. I would meet with the same group each Wednesday for four weeks then change groups. Invariably the first session of each new group started with the same curses and objections but just as predicable came the subsequent sessions marked more and more acceptance, even happy anticipation about the practice. Yoga was helping their bodies to feel better, helping their minds to be more focused, and their hearts to be more calm. We grew to trust each other. I cherished their demonstrative respect for me, a respect that came easily once they got to know me. I stopped leaving my wallet locked in the car. I would come in to the center on Wednesday mornings and on my way back to the yoga shed, several of the men who had been in my previous groups would enthusiastically greet me with a hello and handshake or high-five. They followed my instructions and asked some great questions. Some admitted it, some didn't, but almost everyone grew to really love the practice. I'll never forget the sight and sound of these gruff dudes, sitting the best they could cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed in a squint and hands to heart, chanting the most gravely OOOOmmmm ever heard on this side of steel bars and razor wire.

Thanks to the First Step House, I learned a lot about yoga and teaching yoga. I learned that yoga can touch anybody. I learned that more than being a fantastic teacher, yoga itself is the teacher. I learned that the power of yoga lies in its current application to the situation and time at hand. I learned to offer this practice to people in a way that meets them where they are. My classes at The First Step House were the only classes I've taught where I instituted a 10-minute smoke break in the middle of class; perfectly appropriate. I learned that no matter how broken you might be this practice puts you on a pathway toward wholeness. Thank you, First Step House for all that you taught me. Though I wasn't paid money, The First Step House gave me deep riches of yogic knowledge, insight to teaching, and deep personal connection.

About 8 years after my stint at The First Step House, my friend Sarah asked me if I would offer a brief ceremony of heart-connection and mindfulness in remembrance of a friend who had recently passed. And so at an outdoor party, I gathered a group of people and lead them through some gentle movement then a heart-felt meditation in remembrance of their friend. After the ceremony, a man approached me very excitedly and said, "Scott! It's Dusty from The First Step House!" We gave each other a big hug and caught up for a brief moment. Dusty told me how great he was doing and emphasized how the yoga we did together had become so important to him. I told him that likewise, the yoga we had done together had meant so much to me. What a thrill to see someone from The First Step House.

Regardless of our circumstances, there is always somewhere we want and need to go. That journey requires the first step, one of courage, determination, and open-heartedness. Let's take this step together!

See you in class.

Home, Jeeves

Sometimes when life gets tricky, I want to type in a random address and turn on my GPS navigator just to hear a comforting voice tell me where to go. Maybe in a perfect world, one might choose from the list of GPS guiding voices to be that of a sage (mine would be Gandalf's voice) who would while en route, maybe at a stop light or on a long stretch of road, offer a piece of true direction. Maybe that in some way you're supposed to be lost because that's what starts you asking the questions, what keeps your eyes alert, your ears open, your senses alive. That you're going in the right direction just by living and struggling and searching. Sure, it's good to turn at this stop sign, and travel another couple of years down this road, but most importantly, it's important to keep going.

And hopefully that voice always tells you to listen to your heart.

So type Centered City Yoga's address into your GPS (926 East 900 South Salt Lake Cityand let it guide you to yoga class this week to practice listening to that inner voice, that wise part of you that knows where to go or if not where to go, maybe how to enjoy the ride.

See you in class.

A Life Burning Well

Have you ever found yourself saying things that you didn't know you knew? What's that about? I think it's about understanding yourself deeply. There is something in the articulation of an experience or thought or feeling that taps us into our deeper knowledge. Writing, dance, photography, and blogging could all be part of the creative process that helps articulate an experience. I love poetry and I think that's what the essence of poetry is: understanding one's self and life's grand mysteries through bite-sized bits of awareness. Like the legendary Leonard Cohen says, "If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash." The creative expression itself isn't the experience; it's a product of the experience. More than the craft and beauty of their writing, we love poets for the people they are to write such words. We love who they have become by writing their poetry.

I suppose I've been trying to learn about who I am my whole life. The same way writing or dance could tap this deeper wisdom, for me yoga and the separate practice of teaching yoga has been a creative avenue of personal growth and understanding. Yoga and teaching yoga has showed me hidden gifts. It's challenged me to confront my largest weaknesses. It's showed me how much I love people and love to be involved in their own personal growth. What a privilege! And in the process of practicing and teaching yoga, I've learned a bunch about myriad topics like philosophy, spirituality, anatomy, meditation, etc. After learning about all this fascinating, intricate, and sometimes esoteric stuff, I invariably come to the same fat and resounding question/statement: SO WHAT? What does any of this have to do with my daily life, or other people's lives? What does any of this stuff have to do with going to work, living my live, having relationships, and fulfilling my dreams?

My search into "SO WHAT?" has led me to the wonderful and challenging and enlightening practice of writing this thing every week. This weekly blurb has been my wisest teacher. It's here, in this creative expression of my own inquiry, where I find myself saying the things that I didn't know I knew. I'm just happy that people want read my rantings. I don't write about what I want others to learn so much as I write about what I'm learning in this moment. Then when I teach it all week in yoga classes, I have so much more I want to say by the end of the week because I've learned so much more by the process of teaching it, a different creative expression. I should offer a post script to this thing at the end of the week to fill you in on what else I've learned along the process of articulating it.

I can't be having all the fun here. I'd love to invite you into this beautiful process of unfolding, knowledge, and experience, of finding your own deeper wisdom, by making your own personal expression of anything you do in life. I'd love to hear about or invite you to find yourself saying the things you didn't know you knew.

Here's my invitation:

1. Do something. Anything.
2. Document it in some way: journal, poem, Facebook Post, blog, photo, draw, dance, whatever.
3. Do it again
4. Document again, maybe this time explain it or teach it to someone.
5. Watch to see yourself say things you didn't know you knew. Watch for the insights that come naturally.
6. Then tell me all about it, because I'll be curious.

The end.

See you in class. 

What Does Your Gut Say?

There is a part of you that just knows. Call it intuition. Call it your gut feeling. Call it your inner-guru. Call it what you want but I'd wager that sometime or other we've all had an experience that feels like we've tapped into some deeper wisdom within ourselves. Sometimes information or something a friend says hits you between the eyes. Other times as you might be considering which option to choose, you'll land on one and your whole body completely relaxes. For some, this inner wisdom is the feeling you get when you are connected to a divine source. And when we have these experiences, it feels like this wisdom is coming from somewhere different than our conscious mind of rational thoughts. It's not an analysis. It's deeper.

In yoga we call this the Wisdom Body or in Sanskrit the Vijnanamaya Kosha (pronounced vig-nyana-my-ah). The source of this inner wisdom is the place between dreaming and waking consciousness. Many cultures and spiritual traditions have different names and explanations for this place of inner wisdom. For example, in Native American spirituality it's said that this wisdom realm is very mystical, a source of visions, and ruled by the spiritual powers of the fox.

Like all things in yoga, through practice we can develop an ability to better hear or recognize this inner wisdom. Personally, I've also found a profound practice in learning to trust and act upon this inner wisdom when I do hear it. Yoga, meditation, and yoga nidra, are all ways to practice accessing our Wisdom Body. In the yoga system of subtle body, you can access this inner-wisdom by meditating or performing breathing exercises while focusing on the Ajna Chakra, sometimes called your Third Eye (looks inward), the energetic and symbolic spot in the center of your forehead. Another way to access the Wisdom Body is through the symbols and feelings of your dreams. Keeping a dream journal is a fun way to practice hearing your inner wisdom. Often you tap this Wisdom Body when you clear your head and do something simple like folding the laundry, going on a walk in the park, or walking your dog.

Below is a simple practice, to experiment tuning in to this inner wisdom. Just have fun with this and don't be too serious about it. Read through this first and then give yourself 10-15 minutes or so to try it. If you prefer to own a 27 minute recorded version of this that you can listen to over and over please click here. I'm charging $6.96.

Practice:

Lie down and close your eyes. Practice first focusing as you methodically bring your attention to all the different parts of your body: start from the top and go part-by-part to the bottom. Spend about at least 5 minutes doing this, you've got to let your body relax and tune in. When you're relaxed, picture yourself sitting with someone very wise and loving. This person could be imaginary, living, passed on, young, old, whatever; it's your inner reference so you can choose whoever you want. Sometimes, I choose Gandalf from Lord of the Rings as my wise person(can we keep that just between us?). Picture in detail where the two of you would be, what you would be doing, and most importantly the feelings between the two of you. Imagine that this wise person knows you inside and out, they know your personality, your likes and dislikes, your past and even your future and they love every part of you. They are your biggest cheerleader. Now, imagine that this person is excited to tell you something profound about you. They turn to you and with a smile say, "You know . . ." Now, let your mind fill in the blank with the first thing that comes to mind, what they would say about you. Don't try to think about it, let it be instinct, that's the point. Pause and take it in. Notice the way your body feels after this bit of advice or wisdom from your inner-friend. Notice any emotions, sensations, symbols, images, or anything that spontaneously arises for you, if any. Remember, this person is just the symbol of your deep inner-wisdom. They are a part of YOU. Repeat it to yourself. This is part of your subconscious speaking to your conscious mind through the symbol of your friend. And if what this person says doesn't resonate with you, don't take it personally, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Or perhaps notice where the resistance is to what they said, sometimes there is a message in that, too. Or, just tell your wise inner-friend, "Thanks for the advice" (you're choosing a different wise friend next time, but you don't have to tell them that). Continue on with this meditation until you feel ready to get up. You might want to connect briefly with your body to get grounded before you leave your meditation. Sometimes this mediation can be profound and sometimes nothing happens but it is a great way to practice hearing this inner-wisdom. At very least, it will be relaxing.

I invite you to cultivate this listening for this wise inner-teacher by practicing yoga with me this week. Try this guided meditation, it's fun. If you're interested in joining me for Yoga Nidra this week, I'll be throwing in some Nidra at the end of all my classes. I will be leading a guided meditation that invites you to listen to your wise inner-teacher. If you really want to blow your mind with some great ancient literature, check out the Vijnanamaya Bhairav, an ancient text all about the subject. I'm sure you can Google it or pick it up at Oasis or Dancing Cranes, maybe order it from The Kings English Bookstore.

Sympathetic Vibration

Today I want to talk about music, specifically how music makes people resonate together. The essence of the practice of yoga is to yoke body/mind/spirit individually on our way to understanding the way we belong to the entire universe. And whether we think of it as yoga or not, music is an incredible way of doing this. I’ve had some profound connections with other people as we play music together. While we are playing together it feels like I can truly read their mind. You can easily feel this connection with old cats who have been playing together for decades.

Everything in the Universe resonates. Everything is frequency from colors to sounds to ideas. When something is vibeing similarly to the way you are tuned, you tend to naturally vibe in tandem. When someone says something that resonates, when you see a movie that moves you, or when you finish your friend’s sentences, you are experiencing sympathetic vibration.  In the world of sound and physics it’s called sympathetic vibration. I wrote about this more in depth in my blog post Freaky Twin Connection.  Essentially a practical explanation of sympathetic vibration goes like this . . . When I play an E on my sax, then take my sax out of my mouth, the E on the guitar in the same room has begun to vibrate because it’s tuned to the same frequency. It hears the same vibration and sings the same note like a ghost playing in the room. Freaky cool!

Yoga is a disciplined way of tuning ourselves to experiencing those sympathetic vibrations. We do this by cleansing and strengthening the body, by stilling the mind, and by learning how to fiercely listen and feel with all of our faculties. Imagine your life is a path that is constantly revealing itself to you. And as you learn to listen, all you have to do in life is move toward whatever is singing your song.

This week I invite you to practice listening to that which truly moves you and bravely move in that direction.

My dear friend, John Louviere, the guy who wrote as a guest for my blog, 10% More Relaxed, is an incredible singer/songwriter. THIS SATURDAY from 1-2:30 pm at Centered City Yoga we are going to create some sympathetic vibrations by combining fantastic music and a gentle flow yoga class. Come and feel the magic of the MUSIC + YOGA vibe and share it with an amazing group of people.

Cost is $20 in advance and $25 at the door.

See you there!

Mindfulness Retreat April 25 or 26

With Scott Moore and Vicki Overfelt

10am- 4 pm
Snowbird Cliff Lodge
$95

I invite you to join us for the upcoming Mindfulness Retreat I'm co-hosting with Vicki Overfelt. Vicki is incredible! I am so impressed with her ability to translate the work of mindfulness to both experts and beginners alike in a way that is approachable, engaging, and open-hearted. I have been privileged to work with her and attend her mindfulness courses for several years and I am thrilled to be teaching with her. I really want to share this opportunity with you.

If you could use a little more mindfulness in your life, if you want to learn to meditate, if you could use a retreat away from the rigamarole to find clarity, solace, or need to "change rooms in your mind for a day," like the Sufi poet Hafiz says, you will love this experience. We will discuss mindfulness and practice several forms including gentle, all-levels yoga practice.

Then, at the end of the day, your tuition also gets you into the world-renown Cliff Spa to luxuriate on the roof top pool or jacuzzi, or sit in the Eucalyptus Steam Room! Bring your own towel and sandals. Also, there will be a lunch break in the middle so plan on bringing a lunch or eating at one of Snowbird's many restaurants.

This is already filling up so grab your bestie and register today.

See you there!

Mindful
by Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Change Rooms In Your Mind For A Day

When shit goes down, and you don’t know where to go and what to do with whatever is troubling you, try simply changing your environment for a little while. This is what came to me on my run. One of my dear teachers, Jaisri, would tell me to just go walk outside, to connect with nature which is regulated by the principle of harmony. I guess that’s what Wallace Stevens meant when he said, “Sometimes the truth depends upon a walk around the lake.”

I guess that’s what I’m thinking about: Truth. Or at least truth as translated into what I believe at that moment. Because I think, and I’m sure you’d maybe agree with me here, that sometimes what we believe is true and what is True with a capitol T isn’t always the same thing. That’s because beliefs are constantly changing. For example, I used to believe that if I ate watermelon seeds, I’d grow a watermelon in my belly. Sure, I was 4 years old but that belief changed. I don’t worry about watermelon belly anymore but I still worry. Some things that I believe are true are True and others aren’t. The important thing, I think, is to understand there is a difference.

Yoga philosophy teaches us that our beliefs are a part of us but are changeable and therefore not the best representation of our True Self. Beliefs are just beliefs. Once we place our awareness above our perceived beliefs, and this includes worries, then we raise our consciousness to see something broader. We then escape the trap of thinking that things have to be all black and white, this way or that, right or wrong. We can see past our own rigid ideology (a schema of beliefs) and in so doing invite others to do the same. I believe this rise above ideology, to a paradoxical place where both sets of beliefs can be right, or to a place that is ultimately more important if either is right, is what harmony really means.

As I write, at this very moment, I’m looking next to me at the Zen painting hanging on my wall that I bought in Korea, where a monk with his giant calligraphy brush painted the symbol for harmony. I think I really understand this painting for the first time.  

To raise our consciousness like this, to exit our old beliefs, the engines that make us worry, means we need to take a vacation from our own mind, from the way we’ve been previously thinking. Not that we have to change very radically. Just see a different something different. Like Hafiz says, we’ve gotta change rooms in our minds for a day. When you don’t know where to go, change your environment. Go on a walk. Get into nature. Jump into a yoga class and get out of those worry landscapes, those fear landscapes, and connect, even in a small way, with that part of you that is Harmony, that is the rue part of yourself.

One of my dear family members, a German scholar, loves to quote a Prussian general speaking to another general as he looks over a devastated battle field, “the situation is hopeless but not serious.” Thanks, Alan.

All the Hemispheres by Hafiz

Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season

Onto the meadow and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.

Make a new watermark on your excitement

And love.

Like a blooming night flower,

Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness

And giving

Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence

Lie beside an equator

In your heart.

Greet Yourself

In your thousand other forms

As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven

Are sitting around a fire

Chatting

While stitching themselves together

Into the Great Circle inside of

You.