I recently discovered that my yoga practice was making me feel bad rather than good. The voices in my head had made doing yoga a requirement for self approval and worthiness. What do we do if we really want to establish a daily practice but we find that we aren’t able to make it to the mat each day for any length of time?
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When yoga stops being fun it stops being yoga.
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The World is Dancing
Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.
Posted in Good News, Yoga Chat
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Random patterns and yoga
The event of 11:11:11 on 11/11/11 is a very cool random pattern that is made even more significant by digital clocks. There is nothing else more magical or alchemical on this day than there is for any other miraculous day. If there were, it would be clearly perceivable to everyone with our five senses. Every day under the sun is new and amazing. Every day offers equal opportunity to change and improve your life. Designating a specific day to be more special than another day is a marketing ploy to sell events and workshops that claim to offer you something you don’t supposedly already have. Yoga is not about trying to acquire something you lack. It is a technique for realizing you have within all that you need.
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Song of the Month
Mantra music is a new genre of music that uses the sounds of the ancient Gurmukhi language in a repeated lyrical fashion to create a meditative state in the mind. There are hundreds of mantras and hundreds of new songs to discover in this new genre. Here is one by Amrit Kirtan 
01 Aad Guray Nameh (click on title to play song)
The mantra Aad Guray Nameh is often chanted at the beginning of Kundalini yoga classes as its sound frequency vibrates protective energy fields into the aura and calls on the wisdom within an individual for the highest teachings and guidance. Use this mantra when you feel worried or tense and it will reestablish a grounded calm mind. Reciting this mantra puts one in a state of bowing to the teacher and high grace from within the self.
Aad Guray Nameh
Jugaad Guray Nameh
Sat Guray Nameh
Siri Guru Dayvay Nameh
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Yoga and Evolution
If you are reading this you are a human and you evolved from a shrew-like creature into your current hominid experience roughly 65 million years ago. You have evolved three times, not including all the plant and fish work you did in the oceans before reaching mammal status. Your brain evolved from the reptilian, through the midbrain, to the cosmic extravaganza known as the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex is the tool of all tools. There is no limit to what this spectacular piece of bioware can think up and experience. The past three major brain developments occurred unconsciously, since (by logical deduction) we were missing the piece that allows for logical deduction. But now that we have it, will the next evolutionary shift happen in full awareness of itself as we change? Is it possible to consciously experience evolution?
Song of the Month
Mantra music is a new genre of music that uses the sounds of the Gurmukhi language in repeated lyrical fashion. There are hundreds of mantras and hundreds of new songs to discover in this style of music. Here is one by Snatam Kaur using the mantra Rakhe Rakhan Har.
Hoo Aap -Rakhe Rakhan Har
(click on title to hear song)
Album: Amrit Vela
Rakhay rakhanhaar aap ubaariun
Gur kee pairee paa-eh kaaj savaariun
Hoaa aap dayaal manho na visaariun
Saadh janaa kai sung bhavjal taariun
Saakat nindak dusht khin maa-eh bidaariun
Tis saahib kee tayk naanak manai maa-eh
Jis simrat sukh ho-eh saglay dookh jaa-eh
Chanting this mantra helps against fluctuations of the mind. This mantra is included in the Aquarian Sadhana and is done as a part of the daily practice in the morning meditations for Kundalini Yoga practitioners.
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Facebook Yoga
Before ink, words were chiseled into stone. Can you imagine? Those people really meant what they were saying. Before pens, words were scratched out with the tips of feathers. Before typewriters, novels were written by hand. And before computers there was no copy and paste or spell check. Writing used to be a physical exercise involving the whole body. Today we can say whatever we want with a ridiculous absence of physical effort. We can publish diatribes (such as this one) in less than a second and have it available to the entire world. It is hard not to pause and marvel at this astounding human accomplishment considering the stone tablets we came from. But this wonderful technology also leads to a staggering volume of nonsense. Enter Facebook.
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