Amazing Journey

  I have not posted in ages it seems. I have been on the road for the last three weeks having a yoga teacher training at Kripalu, a trip to Milwaukee for family Thanksgiving and then back to Kripalu to assist Let Your Yoga Dance teacher training. All of it full of happiness, joy and growth.

The first leg of the journey was part two of a yearlong training I am in called the Acharya Intensive. In this intensive I, along with eleven other beautiful soul teachers, are receiving training in the teachings of Swami Kripalu from two of his direct students and senior Kripalu faculty. It is an honor and great privilege to have been selected and take part in this journey of transformation.

Swami Kripalu said the first yoga practice is love and the highest spiritual practice is self observation without judgment. During this year of study we are diving into these practices. Using our community of support, sacred space, and the fundamental practices of pranayama, asana, meditation, prayer and puja we have joined to courageously participate in a practice of self discovery.

The real intention and purpose of yoga is to reclaim our true selves and find liberation. Part of this process requires us to dig into, to excavate, our wounded places and the parts we have resisted. These places (negative samskaras), have intense energy waiting to be unblocked and transformed. Everything in us, both the darkness and the light is part of this truth, that we are beings of love. Even hate, jealously, malice, shame, the shadow realms, are part of that truth. We are who we are, but illusion and ignorance block our vision. We are buried treasures just waiting to be uncovered. That is the purpose of yoga, to remember who we are.

Read this prayer that Swami Kripalu delivered to my teacher Vidya in her moment of need and know that it is a prayer for us all.

"My beloved child,
Break your heart no longer.

Each time you judge yourself,
  you break your own heart.

You stop feeding on the love which is the wellspring
  of your vitality.

The time has come, your time,
  to live, to celebrate, to see the goodness that you are.

"Evil" is the word "live" turned inside out.
  There is no evil, no wrong,
in you or any other.
There is only the thought of it and the thought
  has no substance.

What is so-----is that you are-----So DEAR
                                                     So DIVINE
                                                     So VERY VERY PURE

Let no one, no thing, no idea or ideal obstruct you.
If one comes, even in the name of truth, forgive it
for it's unknowing.

Do not fight the dark.

Let go, aware of the light,

And breathe, into the goodness that you are."

More to come on this journey in upcoming posts, until then Jai Bhagwan and Hakuna Matata.