The New Problem That Has No Name
In 1963 Betty Friedan changed the trajectory of the lives of millions of women with her ground breaking book The Feminine Mystique. She identified a discomfort that women felt that was never talked about – the dissatisfaction that they felt in the roles that they were living as housewives in the 1950’s. The sense that there was more to life and more to who they were than housewives. She called this “the problem that had no name.”
Humanity is at the brink of tremendous change. This change is happening on all levels – individual, social, national and global. Old structures are falling away and new ones are coming forth as solutions to outdated ways of being. Inside each of us we are on the brink of tremendous change.
There is a fundamental discomfort at the very center of our being. This fundamental discomfort is the “new problem that has no name.” And it is the key to the next level of our evolutionary development. Read more
Evolutionary Yoga
Meditation as practiced in the West frequently suffers from a profound disembodiment. Often we meditate from the neck up, as floating heads, completely cut off from the life of our bodies and our physical existence in the world. — Reginald A Ray, Ph.D.
Historically yoga itself was a preparation for meditation and for the ultimate state of Samadhi — a profound state of disembodiment and bliss completely removed from the world of complexity and physicality. Evolutionary yoga is the movement of yoga practice from a dualistic practice which encourages the use of the body to transcend the body to a more modern application of yoga to connect more intimately with the body to penetrate into and connect with all of what it means to be embodied. Read more
What Does it Mean to Awaken?
Oprah asks listeners before the Echhart Tolle New Earth seminar:
Are you ready to Awaken?
What does it mean to awaken from a Tantric perspective? To awaken is to begin to move consciously on your own evolutionary journey that includes your whole being: body, mind, emotions, heart, soul and spirit. The journey from a Tantric perspective is grounded in the mythology of Siva and Shakti. It is the story of the divine masculine principal uniting with the divine feminine principle to create wholeness and balance. Shakti is all that we witness, the whole wild dance of our body, thoughts, emotions and all that we see in the outer world. Siva is the witness, that part of ourselves that observes ourselves.
What I’ve Received from Teaching
I’ve received from teaching yoga an opportunity to be more fully myself and to reveal who I am and who I am becoming on a daily basis. Teaching Anusara yoga, I begin each class with a short talk to set the theme for the class. Many days I don’t feel like teaching. I don’t feel like getting up in front of a group of people and talking about something inspiring, mainly because I often don’t feel inspired. Often once I get up in front of the class with a theme I’ve been contemplating, the words just flow and an authentic message comes forth. Students reflect back that some of the the things I’ve said that I thought we not so important have greatly touched their lives.
I’ve begun to trust more and more that there is a greater force moving through me and when I can step into that greater flow and co-participate with it, I can be of greater service to my students. Recently I received an e-mail from one my students and attached was this short video The Appreciation Movie.
Watching the movie brought tears to my eyes and also a deep feeling of gratitude for the gift of teaching yoga. What a privilege to be able to hold space for the transformation and awakening of the world by holding sacred space for the transformation and awakening of the students in my class.
Why Teach Yoga?
I came to yoga as a way to escape my own pain and suffering and find more happiness and peace in my life. I teach yoga to share this great gift with others so they, too, can find a gateway to greater happiness and wholeness (body, mind, heart, and spirit).
As a teacher, the skills of teaching the pose with correct alignment are important but I’m beginning to recognize that perhaps more important is the field in which I hold the students. How I see the students is perhaps the most important element in their true unfoldment. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Thoreau’s words ring true. Read more
Self-Reliance: A Shift for the Evolutionary Unfoldment of Humanity
“We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds . . A nation of men (and women) will for the first time exist, because each believes himself (herself) inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men (and women)”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our country was founded on an ethic of being self-reliant. Initially it manifested as a strong current of striving for freedom and independence from the British. Later, in the 1800’s this ethic of self-reliance evolved and was expressed by great philosophers like Emerson, Thoreau and many others who came to be known as Transcendentalists – those who believed that there was a primal energy that transcends and informs everything including the trees, rocks, humans, animals, the earth, etc. Transcendentalism was a subtle rebellion against the growing materialism and intellectualism of the time and a push toward a more simple and utopian, ideal view of living in accordance with Nature and in accordance with one’s deepest intuition. That same impulse for a better way of life lived more “from the inside out” is finding new expression in our times and may well be the very seed of the transformation that is necessary if we are to survive as individuals and as a global society.
Now, Andrew Cohen (the founder of the magazine EnlightenNext) and others are proposing, that there is a continuation of this thrust for self-reliance, simplicity and meaning in life which they are calling Evolutionary Enlightenment. In alignment with the philosophy of the transcendentalists, Cohen believes that there is an inner impulse (Divine Soul or intuition of which Emerson speaks) that fuels our own personal evolution. Throughout history we see that a few people step forward from the crowd and grow beyond the cultural norm in their ability to envision and live a life of integrity, meaning, purpose, that serves the greater good. These people serve as examples of what is possible for humanity as we begin to follow this inner Evolutionary Impulse.
Willis Harmon, the founder of Noetic Sciences, proposes that we are now entering a revolutionary time – a time of another great paradigm shift that can be as profound as the Copernicus Revolution — which placed the Sun and not the Earth at the center of our solar system. What is it that is now at the center of our cultural and individual solar system? What does our life revolve around? Is it money, power, or security? Is it deep meaning, purpose, health, and love? Is it something else? This new Revolution of which Willis Harmon and others speak of is a great shift fueled by that which we choose to place at the center of our own (inner) Universe. What is the deepest impulse guiding us? Read more
Yoga and Connecting to Wholeness
“When knower and known are one and the same, the Self shines brightly.” –Bijnabhairava Tantra
Yoga is an ancient Sanskrit word which has many translations including the idea of “connection.” Historically yoga has been a set of practices to connect the body, mind and spirit and more specifically to connect the limited sense of self (body, mind, emotions) with the more unlimited sense of Self (Divine Self, Spirit, Soul).
Initially when I started my yoga practice I took up the Ashtanga Vinyasa style of Hatha Yoga. In this system of strenuous postures liked by attention to the breath I was able to connect with a deep inner realm of peace, stillness, joy, love that seemed to transcend the immediate experiences of my life that were causing me pain. I took up my practice with a passion and ultimately became a teacher and opened a studio.
Several years into my practice I was exposed to another style of yoga call Anusara. The name anusara has many translations including “flowing with Grace,” or “opening your heart.” In the context of this practice I began to connect more deeply with my felt moment to moment experience in the yoga postures. I was no longer using my practice as a way to “not feel” or “transcend” my emotions but rather I was learning to be deeply present to the sensations as they were arising in me.
Anusara Yoga was based on the Tantric view of yoga philosophy that takes the premise that everything is a manifestation of one Supreme Consciousness – everything at its very essence is sacred. Ashtanga Yoga based on a more Classical view of yoga philosophy divides the world into prakriti and purusha. From the Clasical view, he practice of yoga is to transcend prakriti (the manifested world of body, mind, emotions, and matter) to dwell in the world of purusha (the unmanifested world of spirit).
So incorporating the world view of Tantra – everything is at its very essence sacred — my practice began to shift to include more of myself in the practice, I started to feel more feelings and honor them (for they, too were sacred). I stopped the intense discipline of treating part of myself as wrong and less than (including my emotions) and began the long journey of honoring all parts of myself as they arose – the powerful parts of self and the vulnerable parts of self. A new invitation arose in my consciousness to awaken to the sacredness of all parts of myself and to encourage more of myself to come forward. Read more
A New Picture of the Cosmos and the Evolution of Humanity
As once winged energy of delight carried you over childhood’s dark abysses, now beyond your own life build the great arch of unimagined bridges. . .
Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between two contradictions. . . For the god wants to know himself (herself) in you.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
I am longing for a vision — for a new picture of who we are as humans and why we are here. I am tired of the worn out antiquated vision of humans as parasites on planet earth mindlessly moving toward their own demise. I am looking for a higher vision, one that resonates with an inner longing I have to help move the world forward toward a better future.
I have begun my search by looking at where we have been. In my quest to see the big picture I’ve been exploring the story of the Universe. I was amazed to learn that in the 1920’s, less than 100 years ago, humanity’s conception of the Universe was limited to the milky way itself. We held such a small view of the frontier of space. Now we recognize that there are billions of galaxies separated by vast open regions of space.
A similar paradigm shift seems to be occurring today in the story we tell ourselves of who we are as humans. Historically we have looked at our own evolution on a biological level — examining our evolution of outer form only. The evolution that we are experienceing today as a species is that of an evolution in consciousness. The evolution that is occurring in humans now is evolution on an inner level, one that can not be documented by shifting bone structure, or the addition of another physical part of the brain. The evolution in our human consciousness is fueled by the fundamental vision of who we hold ourselves to be.
Are we material beings who have evolved a consciousness or are we conscousness itself that has manifested into form? Read more
A Yoga Vision of Hope for the World
“What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us.” – Henry David Thoreau
I had dinner with a dear friend of mine last night and the discussion turned, as it often does, to the state of the world. He mentioned all the various systems that were in flux in the world including but not limited to: the economic systems, the financial systems, housing markets, retail operations, employment systems, political systems, and the systems we use to manage the environmental crisis. After listening to him I felt an initial pain of hopelessness in the pit of my stomach. I wondered, how can we as humans possibly fix all the problems that confront us? Without ignorance to shield me from the immensity of the challenges that lie ahead, how could I move forward with hope into the future?
As a yoga teacher, I searched the yoga philosophies for some guiding light, some glimmer of hope; and it wasn’t hard to find. Right there at the very core of yoga philosophy was the notion that we as humans are really more than we know ourselves to be. We are both human and divine. The divine lives inside of us concealed and hidden. It is through the practice of yoga that one can reclaim and recognize the fuller experience of what it truly means to be human.
Ah, that’s it! We are so much more than we know ourselves to be. Read more