The other blog, Life Change For You, is a blog about life change and how to go about it. It has taken a lot of effort and I hope to start being back here and talking about yoga a spirituality more very soon.

I beg you to check back now and again. I really want this blog to be of use to you. If you have comments or suggestions, I encourage you to send them to me. This has to be about you or it isn’t of any use!

Namaste!

P.S. I put out a new meditation CD that is downloadable. It is a guided meditation to help change and deepen your life. Check it out!

I think yoga and success are linked very well.

Why would I say such a thing? I mean isn’t yoga about purity and all that and success is, well, success means stomping on others and winner and loser.

I don’t think so.

Yoga is about learning about yourself, your body, mind and spirit. It is about learning to be a better you. Success is seen as something dirty, but it doesn’t have to be.

Success simply means that you work on something until you consider it successful. I worked on doing a headstand for a month or better, but I finally got to where I could do one. Success!! I felt great about myself and I felt successful.

Success doesn’t have to be evil.

I don’t think success needs to be a bad thing. It doesn’t need to stomp on others. Do you think of yourself as successful? If you do, are you an evil person? Do you not care who gets hurt as long as you get what you want?

I doubt it. If that is true, you need to work on your Yamas and Niyamas!

Yoga and success are great together. Use your training in yoga to give you the perseverance and strength to do the things you want to do!

Namaste!

It seems that so many times we have some sort of inability to deal with whatever it is that life is trying to hand us. We feel out of control. When we practice yoga and/or meditation we begin to see that we may not be in control, but we are certainly in control to our reactions.

Life is full of uncertainty. We have no control over many things in life. What we do have control over is our reaction to those things. We can let them dominate our thoughts and control how we deal with life or we can use them as motivation for whatever it is we want.

What do you do when life gives you a hard time?

Namaste!

As you go through your asanas you may find yourself wishing you were somewhere else. Each posture seems to hurt or you just can’t seem to do it right, or do it at all. Why not change your mind set?

Look at each posture as a chance for adventure, even a wild adventure. First of all, even if you are just an average practitioner, you are stronger, more flexible that most people you know.

When you do that next posture, put a little adventure into it. See if you can stretch a little further or hold that balance a little longer. Don’t let the posture beat you.

As a teacher, I sometime get the student who puts so little effort into their practice that I wonder why they come. After a year, or even two, I see no progress in how strong or flexible they are. They haven’t put enough into it to get anything out of it. Is that you?

Why not go for it? Put all you can into your next practice and see if that little sense of adventure doesn’t put a spark of life into it that you didn’t have before.

Namaste!

New You

We are fast approaching a new year. Would you like to have a healthier you? Here’s the secret to achieving that goal.

Decide that this is going to be your reality.

I know, you’ve tried that before and it didn’t work. We all have the experience where we decide to do something and then when it comes to it, we act as if we had never made that decision.

It isn’t easy, I know. Here is the key that works for me.

Talk to your inner self and tell that self that things are going to be different. Tell it that you want to live life differently and so new ways of dealing with life will have to be learned. No longer will you relieve stress by eating a half gallon of ice cream, you will go for a walk instead.

Your inner self won’t like this change. It is used to dealing with life with all your old defense mechanisms and excuses. It doesn’t want to learn new ways.

When old ways of dealing with things crop up, remind your inner self that this is no longer the way things are done.

Now that you have that part under control, you can begin to decide what types of health issues you want to deal with. Do you want to lose weight? How much? Do you want to become stronger, more flexible? How will you do that?

Learning to take control in this way is a much better way to have the life, the body you want. Without the control, you are at the mercy of your inner self and what life throws at you each day.

Namaste!

It felt great to do my yoga practice this morning and it even felt good to go out and shovel some snow! Just to use my body for something other than to sit around or stuff food into was a delight.

The holidays can bring a lot of stress just in the upsetting of our routine and schedule. We may think we are spontaneous, but most of us are creatures of habit, at least to some degree.

If you are one to love spontaneity, then use it to do something vigorous and invigorating. If you love routine, then find the self discipline to stick to your daily dozen, or whatever it is you do.

When Aunt Mable comes over and uses up your time, instead of stewing about it, find a way to be present to her and then do something physical when she leaves.

Exercise, using your body in some way is a great way to leave stress behind. Don’t let the holidays take it away from you!

Namaste!

The store had Christmas music on and it seemed louder than normal. I wondered if they were trying to put everyone in the mood. It wasn’t working; except for one person.

Coming down the aisle toward me was a woman who had to be in her eighties. I have no way or really knowing, but she was dressed as if she still lived in the forties. Her hat, straight out of a Marlene Dietrich movie, was tilted at a jaunty angle.

The music playing was a lively tune. I really can’t remember as this woman took all thoughts of things other than her out of my head. I think it might have been “Here Comes Santa Clause”.

Anyway, this woman comes down the aisle and she is dancing as she pushes her cart. Now don’t think she was crazy or something, she was dancing out of pure joy. She looked at me and smiled and any grumpiness I had in me left. She was the picture of Christmas cheer. I think she was an angel sent to cheer all us shoppers up!

Look for your angel in this holiday season. I’m sure you have one, but you have to look and you have to recognize them when they show up.

Namaste!

Solstice

Today is officially solstice. Last night was solstice eve. My wife and I have been celebrating solstice eve for the last three or four years. It is a very special and holy time for us.

For us, it is almost like a New Years celebration. I really don’t understand why New Years is when it is. I suppose I could look it up, but I don’t really care that much. Anyway, for us it is like New Years. We light a fire in the fireplace, if we are home, and we sit in silence for a little while. Then we each write on a piece of paper the things we want to give up in ourselves and the things we want to take up. This is sort of like New Years resolutions.

When we are done, we fold the paper and seal it with candle wax. When the paper is sealed, we throw it into the fire. We each sit with our “resolutions” for a time in silence. Some years we share what we wrote and others, like this one, we don’t.

The Celts used to say that winter solstice was one of the “thin times”. What this meant was that it was a time when the veil between this life and the next is thin and those on each side can see into the other dimension. I don’t know about that, but it is a very holy time for us.

I don’t think it needs to be on winter solstice, it can be any time at all, but I encourage you to take a time like this. It seems much more that simply saying “next year will be better.” Develop your own little ceremony and look to the next year.

Namaste!

P.S. Tell me about your ceremonies or rituals. Let me know what you do to deepen your walk!

One of the ways that we can bring peace on earth is to begin to think globally and think about caring for this earth that we claim we want peace to come to. If we destroy the planet and make it uninhabitable, then there will certainly be peace. It will be the peace and quiet of no one home.

One of my yoga students has put a box where we practice to collect things like printer cartridges, fluorescent bulbs, batteries and the like for recycling. This is a wonderful thing! No, she isn’t going to save the planet by this, but if we all did a little like she has, we can collectively get the job done.

One of the ways that I have done a little is to change the mat I use from the regular mat made of petroleum and chemicals to one made of natural rubber. I love this mat! The thing I will say most about this mat is that if you ever have problems slipping on your mat and wish it were just a bit “stickier”, buy a rubber mat and you will never have that problem again. It took me some time to get used to just how “sticky” this mat is. I have absolutely no slip!

I bought my mat from Jade Yoga. It was a little more expensive than a regular mat, maybe twenty dollars more, but I feel like ridding the earth of the chemical pollution was well worth the money. Having a mat that I think is the best one I have owned since I started yoga, is a plus.

Check out Jade Yoga
the next time you are looking for a mat for yourself or as a gift for the yogi/yogini on your shopping list. You will help the planet and get a great product all at the same time!

Namaste!

I don’t care if you believe in Reiki or not. It really doesn’t matter much. What happens when you are given a Reiki treatment is that you sit or lay very still and, if nothing else, you have some forced time to think.

Having someone care enough about you to stand there for the half hour to hour to give you Reiki also lets you know that you are cared for. If you weren’t, they wouldn’t do it. If they are willing to stand there that long they must care.

Next time you are feeling a little blue, or maybe downright depressed, as someone who had been trained to give you some Reiki. Then sit or lay with your thoughts and let the energy flow into you. What have you got to lose?

Namaste