Sourcing Your Heart's Gift

Module 3

Breathing Life Into Your Gift

The Heart Sutra (Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya excerpt)

gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā

The whole mantra, literally translated, comes out a bit like this: "Oh awakening that has gone, gone, gone to the further shore, gone completely to the further shore. Amen."

More loosely translated, it means this: "You Brahmin priests with your fancy fire sacrifices aren't the only ones who get people to heaven. We can do it without killing animals and wasting trees. So there."

Richard Hayes, Religious Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec

The course this week

Welcome to week 3!

This week, we are literally breathing life into our heart to source and share our gift for the world. This week is all about energy: how to recognize, access, and move it, and how to go with the flow of energy that is all around us to take us where we want to go to share our heart's gift with the world. Once we feel the energy flowing we will do some powerful visualizations in our Yoga Nidra practice to help our minds see what's possible for our future.

I encourage you to do all of the course materials, however, if you don't have a lot of time, it's most important to simply do the Yoga Nidra practice. Complete the rest of the materials when you can. 

Do the following this week:

• Continue with the Daily Optimization Practice.

• Do the Heart's Breath Pranayama Practice (breathing exercise), daily or as often as possible.

• Do the brief yoga video, ideally directly before Yoga Nidra. 

• Do this week's Yoga Nidra.

• Listen to this week's teaching.

• Do the journal exercise.

• Do the call to action.

• Join us Sunday for the live session, 11 am Eastern (link at top of Main page).

• Supportive materials are there to add relevant, supplementary information. 

Daily Optimization Practice

This sadhana, or specialized daily practice, will prime you to greet your day as your highest, most evolved self. By doing it daily, you make small, incremental steps which will have an enormous outcome for the development of your heart. 

Do this practice every day. It's designed to take about 15 minutes to accomplish. 

The Daily Optimization Practice consists of waking up and doing the following first thing:

1. Basic constitution (get a drink, bathroom, coffee if you need it).

2. Three rounds of breathing (Kapalabhati) and gratitude practice,

3. Have a peak experience.

4. Daily Meditation (below and on the main page).

5. Repeat the positive statement of truth from the Daily Meditation or (create your own). 

This will be the same meditation for all six weeks

Weekly Yoga Nidra Practice

Heart's Breath Pranayama Practice (breathing exercise)

Teaching for this week's theme

Breathing Life Into Your Gift

The teachings for each week's theme is quite helpful to understand the purpose and usage Yoga Nidra regarding that theme. However, it's important to remember that this course is not meant to be an intellectual exercise. In many ways we are trying to take our heads out of the picture and learn to feel into our gifts using our hearts. To do this deep work, we are using a deeper wisdom than intellect, the divine wisdom of our heart. Whether before or after you do the Yoga Nidra practice, at some time during the week read through or listen to the instruction about the theme for the week. 

Yoga Video

Weekly Journaling Exercise

This week, choose your favorite book as a child and pick a line from that book as your prompt for the journaling exercise. Write set a timer and write for 11 minutes without editing. Follow the instructions below for more information. 

About the journaling process . . .

It's modeled after Nan Seymour's inimitable writing practice called River Writing. The invitation is to find a notebook of paper, nothing special, and a free-flowing pen. Set a timer for 11 minutes, and write non-stop with a prompt as inspiration. Write whatever comes to mind. It could be an idea about the prompt, a word or symbol about the prompt that spoke you to. It doesn't matter. Simply keep your pen moving. You're not writing to be published. You're not writing to be famous. You're writing to hear the wisdom of your heart. 

There are no edits. Don't worry about spelling. Just write. If you get stuck, here are two good suggestions to help keep your pen moving. The first is to write, "What I really want to say is . . . " and see if that kickstarts your pen again. Another idea is simply writing, "I don't know what to write, I don't know what to write . . ." and after a few times, usually you'll begin again writing with a flow. 

This writing is just for you. You do not need to share it. However, if you do choose to share your writing with someone, give them the instructions that they are neither to critique nor encourage your writing. Only a simple, "Thank you" is required. Nothing more or less.  

Remember, the prompt is just there as a little push to get the pen flowing. 

Call to Action: Put Muscle to Mind

Based on your visualization of how you saw putting your heart’s gift for the world out into the world, begin to put some action to vision, some physical to the spiritual, some muscle to mind. What is one small or large thing you can do or start today to act on your vision of sharing your heart's gift.

Depending on what your gift is, here's some ideas:

• Begin to outline your book

• Research/Call an agent

• Practice the piano

• Experiment with a new recipe

Live Session

Find the link at the top of the main page to connect to the live Yoga Nidra, Q&A and discussion session for the following Sunday at 11 am Eastern. Each Sunday morning, click on the link at the top of this module that links you to Zoom, our virtual meeting platform, to join our live Yoga Nidra session. You're going to want to use a device like a laptop, desktop, iPad or smart phone that has a camera and a built-in microphone. Also, set up your Yoga Nidra space in advance. Try to plan to have space and time where you will be uninterrupted for 75 minutes. I'll record these sessions and post them to each module so you can review it later if you missed it or want to watch it again. 

Click the image below to download the live session.

Supportive Materials

If you'd like to drill down on some of the ideas from this course you may do so with supplementary  articles, podcasts, videos, etc.

Tim Ferriss Podcast

This is one of my favorite podcasts and as I was preparing for this course, I listened to both of these podcasts and found them very relevant to Sourcing Your Heart's Gift

Interview with Soman Chainani about getting out of a rut by reading your favorite childhood book. 

Lessons and Warnings from Successful Risk Takers

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

I love this book. I listened to it on Audible and it was read by Elizabeth Gilbert herself. It's short and sweet and perfect for this course.