Category: Uncategorized

Empowering Yogis: The Importance of Class Requests

What do You Want to Work on?

Before every class I ask the yogis in the room if they want to work on anything in particular. What I usually hear are a list of body parts. Low back, shoulders, neck, upper back, hips, hip flexors, and then less frequently, core, knees, feet, and wrists. Sometimes people request specific poses or techniques, like breathwork or forms of meditation. Occasionally someone will mention emotional issues like anxiety or grief.

Asking students if they have anything they’d like to work on can have many benefits. Most obviously, taking requests helps the teacher understand what poses, variations, and sequences should be used or avoided. It also helps the teacher know what to look for to help each student practice effectively and keep them safe.

Fielding requests can also help a teacher choose the best cues to use when describing the action of a pose or movement. If you have three or four students who have neck issues, for example, you might put more emphasis on describing the action of the shoulder blades and upper back in Warrior II than you would if you have a group with knee pain. If you have someone who is anxious, you can remind the group to lengthen their exhalations or cue them to feel the support provided by the ground beneath their feet.

Giving information that helps to offset undesirable patterns can also fuel a practitioner’s curiosity about the underlying mechanics of physical, emotional, and mental systems. Once a student feels how to engage the vastus medialis, for example, and sees how that relates to a reduction of knee pain, that student can then find ways to generate that engagement both throughout the rest of their practice and in other activities like walking or riding a bike.

Over time this can not only help students improve their ability to address issues in their bodies, breathing patterns, and the way they use their minds, but in the moment, it can help to turn attention back to the felt experience of the body, so that sensations continue to operate as objects of attention, which supports the meditative aspect of the practice.

And while all of these reasons feel like worthwhile reasons to take requests, perhaps the most important reason is that it gives the teacher an opportunity to connect with each student before class.

Making an honest fist of meeting students where they are at not only reminds me that I’m there primarily to help them if I can, it helps to create that cohesive feeling of satsang (a gathering of practitioners) which in the end, is the practice. Even if we think of our time on the mat as a way to relate to our own bodies and minds, it doesn’t take much reflection to see how this extends to our relationships with the people and world around us.

I wouldn’t argue that taking requests is something every teacher should to do. I’ve been to lots of great classes that feel exquisitely constructed with a kind of cohesive intention that might be difficult to create if the teacher is trying to fit in specific poses or practices requested by the students. Moreover, there are many ways to connect with students aside from taking requests.

But if you’re held back as I once was by a fear that you won’t be able to do the requests justice or that you might sound as if you’re arrogantly proclaiming your ability to heal through your yogic omnipotence (“You’re sad because your cat died? No worries. We’ll do headstand. Problem solved”), you might consider that, in my experience at least, students don’t tend to expect so much, and many of them just appreciate the consideration.

If you ever have any requests for class, feel free to reach out beforehand. The same goes for questions after class or any questions related to your practice, and if you’re looking for my class schedule, you can find it here.

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Three Techniques to Calm the Body and Mind

We all know how it feels. You make what you thought was an innocent remark and suddenly you’re in a heated argument over politics. Or maybe you’re on your way to lunch when you realize that you’ve double booked yourself for the following afternoon, and it isn’t obvious how you’re going to get out of either commitment without paying a heavy cost. Or maybe you’ve just discovered that the presentation you thought was tomorrow, the one you haven’t prepared for, is actually today. In five freaking minutes.

Sometimes it’s even more elusive than that. A baseless fear or some old hurt gets dredged up by forces that are totally unobservable, yet still you find yourself in the grips, hijacked by your amygdala, cortisol and adrenaline flooding your body. Your pupils dilate, your breath becomes shallow, and your jaw sets. And while that quivering solar plexus and those shaking limbs might be useful if you had to fight off a bear or climb a tree to escape one, most of the time, this is the last thing you need.

Not only are these physical sensations unpleasant, when our bodies’ flight-or-fight responses get activated in this way, we lose the ability to think clearly, make complex decisions, and access multiple perspectives, which can cause us to get stuck in a rigid, defensive mindset. Our memories also become corrupted, which not only leads to more confusion, it can, in a conflict, cause us to forget that we ever liked the other person, even if it’s someone we love, making it more likely that we will do and say things we later regret.

Most people reading this will probably know first hand how a well-structured yoga class can help you downregulate your nervous system and that a regular yoga practice can lower your baseline away from these aggravated states, making you less likely to get triggered in the first place, but it will still probably happen from time to time, and unfortunately, it’s not always possible to bust out triangle pose whenever you get into an argument or start perseverating over some past offense or upcoming obstacle.

That’s why I thought I’d share these three techniques to help you quickly and efficiently calm your nervous system whenever you feel anxious, stressed, angry, or wired and it’s getting in your way.

1. The Physiological Sigh

The Physiological Sigh is an awesome technique that you can do just about anywhere. The technique is super simple. Take a quick, deep inhalation through the nose, then immediately suck in just a little more breath like you’re topping off your tank. Next, exhale completely and slowly through the mouth. Repeat for 2-3 rounds.

Here’s what it looks like (turn your volume on):

Here’s how it works:

When we’re stressed or anxious, our breathing speeds up and becomes shallow, which perpetuates the cycle of excitation. The two quick inhalations help to reset the pattern of breath, while the slow exhalation removes excess carbon dioxide from the body. 

2. Extending the exhalations

Once we’ve been triggered and stress hormones have been released into our bodies, it takes fifteen or twenty minutes for them to clear out, and that assumes we don’t get locked into stress-inducing bodily patterns or patterns of thought that continue to release more stress hormones.

Not only is it a good thing to bear in mind that it will take a little time for you (or someone else) to calm down, it’s also helpful to have a technique that can be used to support that calming period and prevent you from unintentionally intensifying an excited state. One simple method that does both is the practice of extending your exhalations, and like the physiological sigh, this can be done almost anywhere.

How to do it:

Bring your attention to the breath moving in and out through your nose and count the length of your inhalations. Next, extend the length of your exhalation by a count of two. As an example, if your inhalation lasts for a count of 5, stretch your exhalation to last for a count of 7. By extending the exhalations in this way, you’ll inhibit the production of additional stress hormones and create what is known in yoga as a langhana effect.

Langhana, in this context, means to reduce or diminish back to its cause. According to Yogapedia, “In yoga asana practice, langhana postures are those that are more relaxing, slowing the heart rate, breathing and metabolism, relaxing the nervous system, and calming the mind.”

Again, this will take several minutes, so stay with it, returning to the breath count again and again each time your mind wanders. Focusing your attention on the count is important because it will help to prevent obsessive thinking or stress-inducing ruminations.

Please note that the exhalation doesn’t have to be extended exactly by two additional counts. You might prefer a rhythm with a slightly longer extension of the exhalation. Just make sure you don’t stretch the exhalation so far that it creates a strain.

3. The 61-Point Relaxation Technique

This is a technique I first encountered in a wonderful book called The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. In it, the author introduces the 61 points as a method to induce lucid dreaming, but it can also be used as a stand-alone technique to calm the mind or as an entry point into yoga nidra, a state of non-sleep deep rest.

How to do it:

The practice is accomplished lying down and can take anywhere from a minute or so to upwards of ten. I’ve created a follow-along video below that you can try for yourself.

I frequently use this practice when I’m having trouble settling down at night or if I wake up and can’t fall back to sleep. I will also use it during the day when I’m feeling too keyed up and have a few minutes to lie down on the floor, couch, bed, or wherever, really.

Once you get accustomed to the practice, you can work with it on your own without the recording. Here’s a chart to help you learn the points in their sequence. You can download a printable pdf here.

It should be said that none of these techniques are guaranteed or even likely to work in the face of extreme states of agitation, but they can become useful tools to help you manage various levels of undesirable arousal. I think it’s best to play around with them to see what works in different contexts and how they can be adapted to suit your needs.

That’s it! Let me know in the comments if you find any of these techniques useful or have any of your own to share.

If you’re looking for my current class schedule of in-person and virtual yoga classes or a link to some of my follow-along classes on YouTube, you can find both here, and if you’d like to get the blog by email to stay updated on future offerings, you can add your address below 👇 and click the button.

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Thanks for stopping by. I’m honored to be sharing the practice with you.
🕉🙏✊⚡️❤️

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Rewiring your Brain

Hey everyone. Really liked this conversation with psychologist Rick Hanson.

I’ve read some of Rick’s books, including Buddha’s Brain and Neurodharma, and I always admire the way he supplies practices you can use to alter your neuroanatomy in order to create lasting positive changes.

In this conversation, there is a nice summation of his work to date and a survey of the scientific literature in the field. Dr. Hanson also does a deep dive on how savoring positive experiences in the moment can raise your happiness set point and increase your resilience.

Often times in yoga and Buddhism, there is a lot talk about seeing through illusion and letting go, but not as much on how to develop positive, pro-social traits that help us flourish in the world while still walking our spiritual path. Dr. Hanson, who is steeped in Buddhist practice, bridges this gap in a way that honors the tradition without diluting it.

This podcast is also available on your favorite podcatcher (if you want the audio only version), and Dr. Hanson has his own podcast as well (if you want to find more content from him at a zero dollar cost).

Thanks for your ongoing interest in the practice of yoga. The updated schedule of my classes is here.

❤️🕉✊🙏

A Teachable Moment

Like many of you, I bought the six-year old in my life a giant Squishmallow plush toy last Christmas. It was the one thing she really wanted, and for weeks I was trying to find one that wasn’t hundreds of dollars. Why would anyone pay so much for these things, I wondered, and how do they make them feel so gross? In the end, I found a deal at Costco, and everyone was happy.

Yesterday our dog chewed it up.

I was sick, flat on my back, when it happened, and the kids were admirably playing by themselves while I slept, but that meant the puppy was unattended.

Was he mad that I’d thrown out the tattered remains of his dog bed earlier that day? He’d spotted me carrying it through the house. He was on the other side of the gate when I stuffed it in the bin.

My oldest daughter is convinced he was mad.

But why didn’t he destroy something of mine? I asked.

I was thinking the same thing, she said.

My nap ended abruptly when the Squishmallow’s owner came into the room, shouting and sobbing inconsolably. She had found her friend murdered and disemboweled on the floor of her room, murdered by another friend. I felt terrible for her and angry at the dog. I hauled him upstairs and put his face in it. I called him a bad dog, hoping that even if it was poor dog ownership, my daughter might feel my desire to stick up for her feelings.

Is there any chance the dog might somehow be able to link my displeasure with an act he’d committed in the distant past of five minutes ago? And that he might thereby be dissuaded from further destroying our shit? In truth, I wasn’t that angry in this instance, but sometimes I am. Angry at my lack of control. Puppies. Children. Myself.

How strange it is that we assume we can control our experience when we can’t even control our thoughts? Thoughts just arise, spontaneously, seemingly out of the ether, and if we can’t even control our own thoughts, which are precursors to our actions, how can we hope to control ourselves, let alone others? Throw in some additional randomness unrelated to the actions of sentient beings, like the car that won’t start or the roof leaking during a storm, and it’s pretty clear how much is out of our hands.

I’m not arguing that we should yield to chaos, but once we’ve embarked on a plan of action to improve an aspect of our lives or the world we live in, wouldn’t it be better if we could avoid feeding the self-referential thought loops about how we should have done this or that better or how we need to do those things better in the future?

Meditation can help with this, and not just in the way that learning to concentrate allows us to be selective about which thoughts we attend to, or even in the sense that we can learn to witness our thoughts with detachment so they feel less authoritative, but in the sense that it can help us recognize that we don’t exist in the way we tend to think we exist, that there is no self, no inner “me,” who needs to be promoted, berated, or defended.

After I put the dog outside, I got the shop vac from the garage and asked the girls if they wanted to help. It took only a moment for them to realize it would be kind of fun to play in the fluff.

After all, the Squishmallow wasn’t new anymore, and the puppy has destroyed so many of our things.

Besides, kids are good at letting things like this go. Better than us usually. They haven’t yet formed a rigid sense of themselves so there is nothing really for them to promote, berate, or defend.

In other words, there nothing for them to transcend, and in truth, there is nothing for us to transcend either because that inner me does not exist and has never existed, it just usually takes some looking for us to recognize it.

If you’re interested in learning how to look, you might want to check out Waking Up, the meditation app created by Sam Harris. In it you can find an ever-growing array of practices and information that can help with everything from learning to meditate to flourishing in daily life to dropping back into nondual realization (I should say here that I have no affiliation with Waking Up except as a subscriber).

And of course, I teach towards all of this in my yoga classes. You can find the in person and virtual schedules here.

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May all sentient (and squishy) beings happy and free.

Bedtime in a Future that Never Arrives

What if this were the last thing you ever read in your life? Imagine for a moment that it might be. How would that change your experience?

As we go about our days, we tend to assume that we will continue to do the things we do again and again, but we don’t have to reflect for long to realize that at some point we will do each thing for the last time, and we never know when that will be.

This may sound like a gloomy thought, and if you were to dwell on it, it certainly could start to feel that way, but what if you could harness this knowledge to shift your perspective from one of reluctance or dread to one of eager engagement?

I’ll explain by way of example.

In my house, bedtime is often chaotic. Lots of shouting, crying, and wild behavior, and there are times when every step in the process can start to feel like an obstacle. Getting kids into pajamas, brushing teeth, reading book after book after book… Sometimes it goes smoothly (if not wonderfully), but often enough, it feels like a battle.

Yet if I can just take a moment in the midst of it and remind myself that THIS could be the last time I will ever brush my youngest daughter’s teeth, or help someone into a onesie, or read a beloved picture book, it can change my whole perspective on the situation, reminding me to see it as an opportunity to connect with someone I love and savour a fleeting aspect of one of the most important relationships in my life.

This reframing technique, which the philosopher William B. Irvine calls The Last Time Meditation, is taken from the Roman Stoics who developed tools like this to help them attenuate negative emotions, and I’ve found that it can be applied in a variety of situations to quickly shift my view.

Sometimes when I don’t feel up to teaching, for example, I briefly imagine what it would be like if this were the last yoga class I’d ever get to teach. Or when I don’t want to cook dinner, I imagine that this is the last meal I’ll ever get to prepare for my family. Even while writing this post, I asked myself what it would be like if this were the last thing I’d ever get to write.

Again, the point is not to dwell on the idea that all things eventually come to an end but to use–in the span of a few seconds–the fact of impermanence to help us rediscover a felt sense of what is precious about our chosen circumstances.

This is usually not necessary when things or relationships are new, of course, but as we all know, that luster wears off with disconcerting speed. This process, known as “hedonic adaptation,” and the way new desires rise up to take the place of desires fulfilled, was seen as a major obstacle to the tranquility sought by the Stoics.

In a traditional yogic framework, Patanjali, too, advocated pushing back against this human tendency. In his Yoga Sutras, the sage lists santosha, or feeling content with what one already has, as one of the five niyamas, or observances, that form the stable foundation for yoga practice.

“Without contentment,” writes Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, “we will never be able to slow the ever-spinning wheel of karma samskara chakra, the inexorable process by which mental impressions motivate us to engage in actions that, in turn, further strengthen the mental impressions.” (Tigunait, The Practice of the Yoga Sutra, p.172).

Put another way, each time we enact the cycle of desiring, acquiring, and then desiring something new, we reinforce the tendency to stay locked in a process where the baseline is constant seeking born of dissatisfaction with our current situation. What we want is always out there in some future that never arrives.

Unfortunately, most of the traditional yogic discourse I’ve encountered doesn’t suggest practical ways to directly access contentment. It’s often treated as if explaining its importance should be enough to allow us to drop this human hankering after something more than what we have. Granted, more contentment will likely arise with prolonged practice of yoga, but by contrast, The Last Time Meditation gives us a chance to quickly reframe things whenever we get caught in the cycles of desire or aversion that carry us away from what we really value.

The Last Time Meditation is certainly more of a top down, metacognitive (using thinking to affect thinking) approach than the bottom up (working with the breath and the body) or thought-transcending approaches familiar to many yogis, and because of that, it might sound like weak sauce, but if you mistrust it on that level, consider this:

In the year 65, Roman Emperor Nero was advised by his counselors that his tutor, the Stoic philosopher Seneca, had conspired against him and ordered Seneca to commit suicide.

Here’s how that went down:

“When the friends who were present at his execution wept over his fate, Seneca chastised them. What, he asked, had become of their Stoicism? he then embraced his wife. The arteries in his arms were slit, but because of age and infirmity, he bled slowly, so the arteries of his legs and knees were also severed. Still he did not die. He asked a friend to bring poison, which he drank but without fatal consequences. he was then carried into a bath, the steam of which suffocated him.”

William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, p. 47

The way I see it, if Seneca could use his Stoicism to not only endure such a fate but upbraid his friends for failing to keep a stiff upper lip in the process, it seems like giving The Last Time Meditation a try might be worth the small amount of effort it takes. It probably won’t work in all circumstances, and it may not work for you at all, but if it does, it might just help you get everyone tucked into bed tonight in one piece.

🙌 ❤️ 🕉

If you’re looking for more useful methods improve your day-to-day experience, come practice with me. Here is my live class schedule (both in person and virtual) and here is my YouTube channel (for pre-recorded content). You can also sign up to get these posts by email so you won’t miss any of the other low-hanging fruit I like to dangle about. 👇

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Thanks for stopping by, and thanks, too, to William B. Irvine for his excellent intro to Stoicism, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (Oxford University Press, 2009). Also, if you’re looking for a fresh commentary to the Sadhana Pada, portion on practice, of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, Check out The Practice of the Yoga Sutra, by Pandit Rajmani Tigunait (Himalayan Institute, 2017).

The Doorway of Doubt

I had COVID last week.

It was my second time through, so I knew the drill.

I put on a mask, subbed out all my classes for the next five days, and isolated in the bedroom away from my wife and kids.

On day six, I felt great. I tested and was disappointed to see that the test was ever-so-faintly positive. I texted the studio where I was scheduled to teach the following day and told them the scenario.

Unfortunately no one could sub the class, so we decided that I would test again in the morning: if it came back negative, I’d teach; if not, we’d cancel class. I told them I’d let them know by 6:30.

The next morning I tested first thing. After 15 minutes, the test looked negative. I typed up a text to the studio to tell them I was good to go, but for some reason, I didn’t hit send.

Instead, I held the COVID test up to a different light, then another. I checked it under my phone’s flashlight. I guess I wanted some assurance that everything would be ok.

Within a couple minutes, I thought I saw a faint second line, but I could only see it under certain lights at specific angles. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were playing tricks.

I looked at the clock. It was 6:25. I had to make a call.

On the one hand, I told myself just to cancel the class and be on the safe side, but on the other, I didn’t totally trust my sometimes hyperactive conscience, and I didn’t want to be ruled by irrational fear. I wanted to show up for the students and the studio. I wanted to teach.

In The Yoga Sutras, Patanjali lists nine antaraya, or disturbances, to practice (YS 1:30). One of them is samsaya, or doubt. Of this disturbance, Richard Freeman writes:

“Doubt is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself; it simply means that you see two sides to an argument, or that you see two different ways to do a practice. If you cannot decide between the two sides or two perspectives, you are left in a state of confusion and doubt and you may think that since you do not know what to do, you will do nothing at all.”

Richard Freeman, The Mirror of Yoga, p. 160

I was stuck.

So instead of making a decision, I tested again.

Fifteen minutes later, the second test looked negative, but the positive line on the first test was still sort of there–if I held it up to the right light at just the right angle, that is.

It was 6:40 now, and I was literally sweating.

I realized this paralysis was neurotic–the stakes were probably not even that high–but if anything, seeing that it was neurotic only made me feel more anxious. What I really wanted was a second opinion (or rather, for someone to tell me what to do), but my wife was still sleeping. I wasn’t about to wake her up.

Five minutes later. I went upstairs and and woke up my wife. Ever-patient, she rolled out of bed, rubbed her bleary eyes, and said, “Yes, I see what you see.”

“What should I do?” I asked. “I need to let them know.”

“What do you feel comfortable with?” she asked.

I didn’t know.

I went back downstairs and saw a text from the studio. “Any word yet?”

I texted back that I thought it best to cancel class, and that, finally, was the end of that.

Except it wasn’t exactly, because the whole rigamarole had left a residue.

As Freeman further writes, “Generally we cannot accept doubt within ourselves because doubt means to us a betrayal of blind faith and our ego’s involvement in our practice, rather than a manifestation of our innate intelligence.” (Freeman, p. 161)

That was it! How had I gotten so tripped up by this? I felt like I’d failed.

I took my dog for a walk, and as we meandered through the woods, I remembered something I’d once heard from Ram Dass.

“I was trained as a psychologist. I was in analysis for many years. I taught Freudian theory. I was a therapist. I took drugs for six years intensively. I have a guru. I have meditated since 1970 regularly. I have taught yoga. I have studied Sufism and many kinds of Buddhism. In all that time I have not gotten rid of one neurosis. Not one! The only thing that’s changed is: where previously they were these huge monsters of “No! Don’t take me over again! Aaagh!” That kind of stuff, sitting in the bathtub, cowering. Now they’re like these little shmoos, you know? “Oh, sexual perversity! There you are! I haven’t seen you in days! C’mon in and have some tea!”

Ram Dass, “Promises and Pitfalls of the Spiritual Path” (talk), 1988

And this was true in my case, too. While there was something laughable about my antics earlier that morning, I was able to see that even in this case, I’d been much less victimized by my mind than I might have in the years before I had my practice–not only in the intensity and duration of the neurotic paralysis but in the amount of self loathing and recrimination that came up in the aftermath of being unable to immediately manifest my “innate intelligence” and make a decision.

Moreover, I was able to remember that even though I’d been thoroughly caught in my mind, a lot of the time when states of doubt or anger or boredom or craving or dissatisfaction appear, my practice spontaneously arises, giving me the opportunity to drop the thinking component and nonreactively observe the uncomfortable feelings as patterns of sensation in the body until they play out.

In other words, negative thoughts and emotions are frequently now doorways to meditation.

“It’s far out,” Ram Dass says in the same talk. “When you begin to realize suffering is grace, you are so… you can’t believe it. You think you’re cheating!”

The tools I’ve developed through practice have obviously not insulated me (or my wife) from all of my silly antics, but they’ve made enough of a difference that I intend to keep going, and I feel called more than ever to share them with anyone who is interested in giving it a try.

Here is my live teaching schedule (in-person and virtual), a link to my YouTube channel (for prerecorded practices), and if you want to get the blog posts by email, sign up here👇

Never spam, and there are unsubscribe links in every post!

If you want a great read on the practice of yoga, check out The Mirror of Yoga (quoted above), by Richard Freeman (Shambala Publications, 2010), and if you want to read (or listen to) the entirety of Ram Dass’s talk, you can find it here.

Thanks for stopping by. Without a doubt, I appreciate it. ✊⚡️🙏❤️🕉

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In with the New…

Happy Holidays! Just wanted to let everyone know that I’m offering a new virtual class through Ahimsa Yoga Studio on Fridays from 10-11 am central.

The class is called Gentle with Pranayama and Yoga Nidra, and it will employ gentle movement and breathwork to open the physical and energetic bodies, followed by an extended yoga nidra.

Yoga nidra is a guided meditation, usually performed lying down, which brings the yogi into a state of non sleep deep rest. It is a practical way to reduce anxiety, release unnecessary stress, and experience the subtler aspects of yoga. Here’s a post with some more info and resources.

Also, next Wednesday, 12/28/22, will be my last day teaching Vinyasa Flow at 8 am. All other classes will remain unchanged, and you can always see my current schedule on the Classes page.

I hope you are having a great holiday season and that 2023 is full of growth and awakening. Om Shanti.

🙏🕉💪🙌

Awakening Your Heart’s Desire: Cultivating a Sankalpa

When I was in 8th grade, my dad handed me a pair of these.

Amazon.com : SKLZ Court Vision Basketball Dribbling Goggles : Basketball Training Aids : Clothing

Well not these, exactly. Mine were way weirder looking. Mine were more like a plastic platform that sat on the bridge of my nose and strapped around the back of my head–sort of a cross between a piece of hospital equipment and a push up bra for an enormous Barbie doll.

What are they? Oh. They’re ball-handling blinders. They train you to keep your head up when you’re dribbling so you can drop sweet dimes.

I wish I could show you the pair I had. I couldn’t even find photos of them on the internet, which makes me wonder if they actually existed. 🤔

They worked though. No doubt. Everytime I’d put the ball between my legs or behind my back, I would try to peek down, but when I had the goggles on, I couldn’t see the ball. I couldn’t see anything, and it helped me break the habit.

Most of us use all sorts of devices to help create boundaries for our behaviors–alarm clocks to limit our sleep, apps that lock us off the internet, fitness classes that charge us even if we don’t show.

We also have apparatuses to boost certain types of behavior–watches that send us digital stickers 🙌 when hit our steps, delicious cookies as a reward for getting through a rough draft, visiting this website to find some inspiration to unroll your mat.

You might say these technologies are as old as the carrot and the stick.

A lot of these methods work, but one limitation of even the best of them is that they usually only work in one specific arena and don’t do much to help us develop the ability to direct our energies in a general.

This means that even if we can rein in a particular behavior here or engender a new positive habit there, we don’t get much help with unexpected distractions.

In order to live a life that’s congruent with our aspirations, we need to develop an internal, holistic approach to stay motivated and reorient us when we start to stray off course. There are probably a number of ways to go about this, but one effective tool we can adopt from the yoga tradition is a sankalpa.

According to Yogapedia, the word sankalpa “comes from the Sanskrit roots san, meaning ‘a connection with the highest truth,” and kalpa, meaning ‘vow.'”1A sankalpa then is a vow to stay connected to the highest truth.

Since sankalpas work from the inside out, we’ll start with the deepest part first.

Sometimes called your bhavana sankalpa, this part of your sankalpa is sometimes translated as your heart’s desire and can be thought of as an affirmation of your true nature.

Because you always are your true nature (even when you forget or can’t feel it) you formulate your bhavana sankalpa as a positive statement in the present tense, eg. “I am pure awareness,” “I am healthy, whole, and free,” or “I am at one with all beings everywhere.”

To find a statement you can connect with, you can begin by probing some of your existing desires. For example, you may have a goal to get promoted at your job, but to discover your bhavana sankalpa, you might question what achieving that goal will satisfy at a deeper level.

Is it acceptance? Empowerment? Security? Feeling valued?  Maybe it is all of these things, so when you formulate your bhavana sankalpa, you might use language that includes aspects of your true nature that express that ultimate longing, eg. “I am a creative force, inextricably woven into the fabric universe, at one will all beings everywhere.” 

What you come up with doesn’t have to be poetic or lofty, and you should try not to put too much pressure on yourself to lock down something perfect because it will refine itself over time. The important thing is that the words you choose allow you to tap into the felt experience of this inner truth. This is one reason why you might want to let your bhavana sankalpa take shape during savasana, yoga nidra, or other times when you’re in a meditative state and have more access to the wider dimensions of your being.

The second part of a sankalpa can be thought of as an intention. Your intention is something you use in the shorter term to bring you into harmony or manifest specific actions.

If you work with your sankalpa before your yoga practice, for example, you might consider what you need from that particular practice and set an intention to use the practice to bring yourself into balance. You could set an intention to use the practice to find some grounding, explore some type of pain or discomfort, stoke your inner fire, or work with a particular emotion.

You might likewise use your intention to help you fire off that email you’ve been avoiding or call a friend you haven’t talked to in awhile. You could also set an intention to attend to a particular creative project, professional strategy, or some aspect of your personal or home life.

As with your heart’s desire, it’s important to formulate your intentions in positive, declarative statements of fact, eg. “I meditate every afternoon,” “I paint when the appointed time arises,” “I am patient with my kids and provide a sturdy container for their emotions,” or “I listen to what my coworkers have to say and adjust my thinking and actions according to what feels true.”

By structuring your intentions as affirmations and then following through with them, they become welded to an embodied state, which empowers them. This does not happen, however, if you start your intention with words like “I will…” or “I hope to…” or “I want…” Statements like these have the unfortunate effect of reminding us that we are not currently who we want to be and don’t generate that internal momentum.

You may find it helpful to employ your sankalpa as part of a writing process. I write mine down at the end of my journaling practice each morning. For me, it’s a free flowing practice of writing out affirmations of my heart’s desire and intentions for the day. Some statements appear everyday while others come and go. I find that writing it down in this way brings more focused attention to the process, which helps to generate enthusiasm, a positive mindset, and great determination.

Working with a sankalpa is like planting a seed deep in your being. If you nurture it with the practice of gratitude and a feeling of devotion on a regular basis, it will grow and spontaneously blossom throughout your day.

You will even find that when afflictive states appear and start to pull you away from actions that support your values, your sankalpa will arise as an embodied state that will propel you back to your chosen course.

This is radically different from hearing your chastising superego telling you things like, “don’t do that,” or “you should really be doing this instead,” which usually doesn’t alter our behavior and only heaps shame upon us.

The conscious use of external tools that curtail certain behaviors and support others will always have a place, but to bring our thoughts, words, and deeds into harmony with our deepest calling, we cannot exclusively rely on devices, rewards, and blinders to alter our tendencies in a piecemeal fashion.

Instead we need to practice summoning again and again the felt experience of our higher nature so that we learn to flow, more and more, along the vector of our awakening.

Thanks for stopping by. If you want to join me for a practice, I teach virtual vinyasa yoga on Thursdays at 8 am central through Ahimsa Yoga Studio. You can sign up here. I also have a growing library of free, on demand classes on YouTube.

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1. https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/5751/sankalpa

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Sleep Like a Yogi

A little stress is necessary. Stress is the body’s way of preparing us to tackle challenges. But stress is only healthy if it lasts a relatively short amount of time, say from the time it takes to prepare a presentation until the presentation is over, or from the moments leading up to a difficult conversation with with a loved one until the two of you are hugging it out in your favorite dress-up clothes.

If stress goes on too long, we call it chronic. Our bodies and minds get stuck in a state of arousal, which is unsurprisingly exhausting and can have a number of deleterious effects on our health and well being.

For many of us, this was a problem before the pandemic. Trying to live up to the bizarre cultural injunction to remain continuously productive and in active management of our lives from the moment we open our eyes until we go to sleep can do that to a person, and things have clearly become trickier.

Even if you can’t feel it directly, you might notice it as an increase in irritability or anxiety. Maybe you can’t fall asleep, or when you wake up in the middle of the night, you find yourself on the couch, dispatching a tub of ice cream as you binge watch adult cartoons.

I’ve been through all of this stuff, and while I’m not trying to claim I’ve got everything figured out, one of the most helpful tools on all these fronts has been the development of a daily practice of yoga nidra.

Yoga nidra (yogic sleep) and its Westernized twin, iRest meditation, are relaxation practices where you sit or lie down for anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour and allow yourself to be guided through a series of very simple awareness exercises.

The practice works by drawing your attention away from the repetitive, obsessive, and useless thinking that keeps you wound up to the felt experience of your body, breath, and awareness, which generates a profound state of ease, well being, and can become a gateway to self inquiry and meditative insight. Although the word sleep is in the name, the idea is not to actually lose consciousness but to learn how to remain attentive as you enter a state between wakefulness and sleep where your mind starts to open up.

Yoga nidra doesn’t require any special skills and can be done whenever it fits into your schedule. I do my practice when I put my two-year old down for a nap, which helps me reset and recharge for the afternoon of parenting, cooking, and anything else I need to handle before bedtime, but I’ve also used yoga nidra at night to help me fall asleep (or go back to sleep if I wake up) or at other times when I feel overwhelmed.

One of the coolest things about this practice is that if done regularly over an extended period of time, you’ll learn how access this defocused state of presence without needing a recording, so that you can spontaneously work with your attention to defuse escalating arousal states and find pockets of rest when you need them.

So without further adieu, here are a few practices I like:

The first is a 20-minute practice led by the founder of iRest, Richard Miller. He studied yoga nidra in a traditional context and then developed iRest to serve a Western audience. I like the iRest practices, and they might be particularly good for those of you who feel that the yogic trappings are too woo woo or conflict with your worldview or religious beliefs.

This next practice from Amrit Yoga is just under 40 minutes and is more traditional. I don’t know Amrit Yoga, but this practice is freaking lovely.

I’ve even recorded a couple myself.

If none of these are to your liking, keep looking. Sometimes it takes awhile to find the right length, format, teacher, etc. Fortunately there are lots of options available on platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud at a zero-dollar cost, so you can easily shop around.

If you want to learn more about yoga nidra, there are two Audible books I can recommend.

The first is iRest Meditation: Restorative Practices for Health, Resiliency, and Well-Being, by Richard Miller, which breaks down the elements of yoga nidra and offers short practices to help you focus on the parts that might be most beneficial to you.

The second audiobook is iRest: Integrative Restoration Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation, by Molly Birkholm. This book has a number of longer practices and dives deep into the philosophical roots of yoga nidra as well as some of the science behind it. Like Richard Miller’s book, it also breaks down the practice into its fundamental parts, but it goes further in exploring some of the therapeutic uses, including working with insomnia, stress, chronic pain, PTSD, etc. I use the practices in this audiobook frequently and like the way they are organized.

I’d like to add the disclaimer here that I have no current or former affiliation with any of these people or organizations except as a consumer. My intention is that these practices might be of service to you, and if they aren’t, I hope you found some insight, encouragement, or enjoyment from your time here today. I appreciate you spending it with me. 🙏 🕉

Photo Credit, Eileen Molony

I teach a live virtual vinyasa flow class on Thursdays at 8 am central. You can sign up here 👉 Ahimsa Yoga Studios. I also have a growing library of recorded practices on my YouTube channel.

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