The Antidote

This is where the practice of yoga steps in. Yoga is the science and art of steadying the mind in this moment. We can do this on a yoga mat or in a seated mediation posture. I use both techniques yet find the seated meditation practice to be a more solid ground to understand and work with my mind.

The Hatha Yoga practice serves as the physical exercise systems that strengthens and purifies the body while cultivating a mind that is steady and familiar with breathing and the body. The Hatha Yoga practice is means to bring us into deeper states of stillness and to prepare us to sit in meditation.

In meditation practices, you are not shutting your mind down or attaining a state of non-thinking, rather, you are learning to make friends with and understand how your mind works. And this becomes the very ground upon which you can make wise decisions on the direction your life is taking.

When you sit and get still and settled. It becomes a place where you can begin to see which voices are driving your life and which direction you are headed. Our lives carry with them a lot of momentum. The practice helps slow down and cultivate a heightened state of awareness--intimacy with ourselves. It also helps us begin to develop a relationship with the presence inside of us that can see and feel thought and emotion from a third party perspective.

My friend and mentor, David Nichtern, calls meditation a burn. He says that when we sit we can burn up our karmas. We can begin to rewire our brain and we can cultivate qualities that can help change our relationship to life.

This process is challenging. The momentum our lives possess is like a river that is carrying us. In the beginning it can be like swimming up a stream. Daily practice and a relentless commitment are required.

Karma

Last night I was watching an interview with Drew Brees who is the

quarterback for the New Orleans Saints. He said, "I believe in karma:

what goes around comes around". He was referring to his team's hard

work attributing to their undefeated 13-0 record.

Karma has become a widely used word and now we even are hearing it on Sports Center.

Karma means energy. There are many ways to understand Karma and there

are numerous different takes on the word and its meaning. It is a word

that originated in eastern philosophy. Many people think of the past when they hear the word karma.

In order to understand karma, we need to begin with the present moment and then take a 360 degree view. I get quiet and still and I hone into this moment. How does it feel? How does my body feel? How does my mind feel? How is my life going? What

is going on at this very moment?

Whatever my observations are I find they are a result of my past thoughts and actions. The way I feel has to do with how I take care of my body on a day to day basis. My view of this moment or attitude has to do with the way I am thinking. Considering the average person has 60,000 thoughts and over 95% of them are reoccurring it is safe to say that our thinking is conditioning. We meet this moment with the lenses of the past. It is our parents, the churches we went to, the neighborhood we grew up in, our friends and all of our experiences that paints the texture of our present moment awareness.

Over the past two decades neuroscience has given this a name: neuroplasticity. This is the science of how the brain gets wired. We think a thought and the more we repeat this thought the stronger it becomes. This would explain why we tend to think the same way over and

over again. It would also explain why we can have a hard time changing and

why our country and world at large is in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction.

We sincerely want one thing yet we are stuck with a past prison that is rooted in repetitive patterns. We want to break free from our conditioning and be dynamic, fresh and positive everyday yet we find it impossible to change our behaviors. We tend to let go

of things we need to hold onto and hold onto the things that we need to let go

of. As we move along with life we become harder and harder and less flexible while the gap between our life and the life we want to live gets broader and broader.

Am I depressing you? I don't mean to yet there is a way out......will handle that next week in my next blog

Boston

I spent this past weekend up in Boston teaching at Metrowest Yoga. Boston is a mature yoga community and they are pretty serious about their yoga. The weekend started with a three hour intensive with a discussion on what it meant to be empowered and concluded Sunday with a discussion on what it meant to live an Empowered Life. The group was energized and their thoughts were sound and provoking.

Sunday, I read a quote by Carl Jung. The quote was, "the greatest influence on our own life and the life of children is the unlived life of our parents". Those that spoke up were parents and shared their ideas of raising children. Towards the end of the discussion, I presented a different view, "we are all children here....how has your life reflected this quote?" We had to get moving and begin a Hatha yoga practice so we never really got a chance to discuss. Maybe this blog will get some discussion going?

When I contemplate this quote I can immediately look at it two ways (although there are numerous ways of viewing it). The first, how am I perpetuating the unlived life of my parents? Second, what part of their unlived life has influenced me to be different and to go in a different direction? It reminds me of the Buddhist lessons on karma. Karma is energy. The teachings of karma are the teachings of cause and effect.

Because karma has become a fashionable word these days you will often hear people say, "That is your karma". A more accurate understanding would be this is happening right now because of karma. Your karma is the sum total of everything you have thought and experienced up until this very moment of your life.

There is no better way to understand karma than to sit still, get quiet and notice where you are right here and right now in this very moment in your life. Our lives are truly the sum total of all past thoughts and deeds. For me the whole point of practicing Yoga is to get still and pay attention non-judgmentally to how we are framing this moment of our life.

Sit with it long enough, we can literally feel our whole life narrow down to this very moment. This is a very courageous thing do to. It can also become the very ground upon which we can awaken to a new direction or reconfirm the direction our life is headed.

If you do have children a worthy contemplation is how is your unlived life affecting your children--come on Boston yogis and yoginis what do you think? We never finished this discussion.

Intention

It is a regular practice of Empowered Yoga to establish an intention for your practice or for your day. The purpose of this practice is to pause and get in touch with where we are.

Sometimes people will refer to another person by saying, “they are so lost because they don’t know where they are going”. I would like to rephrase that by saying, “someone is lost when they don’t know where they are” Goal setting focuses on what you want the future to be whereas intention setting focuses on what you would like to cultivate within this moment. Both practices are important.

Many times when I pause to get in touch I realize that I am not in touch—many times leaning into the future. This realization gets me back in touch. It refocuses me on what I am doing. For me this practice has evolved off the mat. Sometimes I will ask myself before walking into a room or into a meeting, “what is my intention for this next moment of my life”? What would I like to cultivate?

This practice has afforded me the opportunity to get in touch with the direction my life is taking and how my present actions are leading to some future outcome. This practice has turned me into a more intentionally focused person.

I find the more I can pay attention to the present the more my future becomes what I wish for.

Who blew out the Flame?

This is a blog I wrote for a www.florianvilla.com

If you are using term “burnout” then you are indicating that at one time, the flame was lit. The question is, who blew out the flame? If you sit with the question, the answer is not too hard to find–you did. It is a painful realization yet it is true one. This brings us to the three characteristics of truth: it stings, it cleanses, and it sets you free.

Teachers have come to me over the years to tell me that they feel burned out. In almost every instance I was able to notice a common theme. That common theme was a lack of daily practice which can lead to a busy and untamed mind. Our days are so fast and so scheduled in the 21st century. If we don’t pause daily and practice, our minds get out of control.

The founder of the Shambhala and famous Tibetan Lama Chogyam Trungpa said where there is speed you will normally find struggle. Our practice helps us to slow down, relinquish the word struggle and wake up to this moment. When the mind is not trained, the present moment becomes nothing more then the past replayed and/or we see ourselves reaching for some kind of future fulfillment. The mind is uneasy and is in a state of dis-ease. We lose our sense of vibrancy and our ability to recognize the brilliance around us.

We start to look outside of ourselves, thinking that we need another teacher training, a new workshop, or maybe even a different life. We look in the wrong direction. The solution is not outside of us– it’s inside. This is what we as teachers are fundamentally teaching yet we to fall prey to not taking our own advice. We don’t need to travel to the Himalayas. What we need is to amp up our practice right where we are. Get into class 5 or 7 days in a row. Pick up an old book that previously inspired you and journal. Write down why you teach and get in touch with your intention. This can help you re-light your flame.

Keeping your flame lit is your job as a teacher. When life gets challenging, our teaching and practice can go deeper. If we don’t practice we feel burned out. I learned this early in my career. The answers are really that simple when dealing with burn out. Sit with this message and again remember the three characteristics of truth: it stings, it cleanses, and then it sets you free. Does this message sting?

Paralysis by Analysis

This morning I had coffee with a long time friend of mine that I have lost touch with. His name is Joe. We caught up for a while on the present, then relived the past, and finished up our time together talking about the future. At one point in the conversation, Joe commented that many people get Paralysis by Analysis. I loved this catchy expression and thought I would write about it.

Many times in life we find ourselves analyzing a situation. The ability to look at a situation and break it down is an important process in the brain, and it's one that is required when aiming to live skillfully. What happens though when we find ourselves over-analyzing the past, reliving mistakes, and going beyond what is healthy? We get stuck living in the past. We walk around rigid and tense. By continually reliving this past event we experience paralysis by analysis.

Joe then asked me, "How do you let go? Sometimes my mind is just so crazy". I told him that telling most people to let go is like throwing a child in the pool and telling them to swim-- the child has never been taught to swim nor has the child practiced swimming. Cultivating a mind that can let go is a skilled practice and something that for many of us can only be cultivated through practice.

In my Hatha yoga practice and my running practice I use the principles taught in the Shamatha meditation practice. Shamatha means calm abiding. The practice is simple in explanation yet challenging in application. The idea is to cultivate a present state of mind by anchoring your attention on the steadiness of your eyes, respiration, and body. When thought arises and pulls you away from mental steadiness you simply notice that you have lost your attention. You return back to the eyes, respiration and body.

As you continually return to your present state of mind you begin unwinding the focus on analyzing and the habit you have ingrained within your brain. This is challenging work yet it does work, particularly when practiced on a daily basis. The process of letting go of thought and coming back to the present moment cultivates a mind that can let go. I personally find with this practice that it has before easier and easier to let go. In my next blog I will write about what we are experiencing as we let go.

Running Barefoot

So you read the New York Times best seller Born to Run and the barefoot philosophy makes sense. You go buy the Vibram Five Finger Shoes and kick off the $100 cushioned shoes. You go out for a run and start having visions of running in the Copper Canyons with the Tarahumara runners. You feel joyful and light and are quick to say this is paradigm shifting! Then all of a sudden POP the dream bubble explodes and you feel pain! You come to a screeching halt and in an instinct you become a non-believer. Days later your feet start feeling better and you tell you self--no way am I doing that again. The Vibram get tossed to the back of your closet and your throw back on the coffins, I mean cushioned shoes and go back to your old habits.

Unfortunately this is going to be the reality for most people who give this barefoot running thing a shot. The reason why is very simple. Your foot has been supported for years and anything supported becomes weak. Your feet have had a vacation for a VERY long time. They have been atrophying (weakening) ever since you put shoes on at a young age and started running. Since that day the cushioned shoes allowed you to change the evolutionary way your body was designed to run and the rest of the 206 bones and 640 muscles of the body have followed suit. If you are going to bring your dogs out of retirement and kick the coffins off your feet you need a plan. I began running 6 weeks ago in the Vibram and I would like to share with you some insights from my experience.

Step One--Get the shoes and start wearing them all the time--do some walks in them and start getting in touch with using the balls (fronts) of the feet.

Step Two- If you live in the greater Wilmington area contact Tracy Peal and get a lesson on the Pose Running technique. If you don't live in the Wilmington area go to the Pose Technique website and find a certified coach in your area. http://www.posetech.com/services/TracyStevenPeal.html.

Step Three--Begin running preferably on grass. Start off SLOWLY and work the Pose Technique. If you feel any pain stop and walk and then begin again SLOWLY working the technique. Anytime pain arises stop and walk. The pain is an indicator something is wrong. I have stopped and walked often and each time I begin running again and work the technique the pain goes away.

Summary:

The first week I began Vibram running I ran one mile and then worked up to two miles by the end of the first week. I stayed at two miles at a 9-10 minute pace for the first five weeks. The fifth week I worked up to a three miler. By the end of this week I ran 5 miles and felt great! I have to stop during most runs and walk due to pain in the plantar fascia (bottom of the foot) yet once I walked fifty feet it disperses. I am a supinator in my ankles which means I tend to run on the our edges of my feet. Over the years this has tightened the the medial arch (inside) of my feet. The barefoot running is unlocking the inner arches of my feet and as they unlock the plantar fascia is being stretched and is unlocking. The pain when I am running is an indicator that I have done enough unlocking and need a break. The walking allows some rest and then once I start running again my plantar fascia is willing to endure some more letting go.

As the Inner arches unlock I can feel my shins, thighs and hips begin unlocking--it is truly an amazing process. I have to really pay attention when running which has quieted down the voice I hear when I run. The voice sounds like this, "this sucks, this sucks, this sucks" I am enjoying running more and more and realizing that I was truly born to run. I would love to hear some feedback from others going through this process.

September 22nd 6-8pm

Chris Mac Dougall author of Born to Run and Pose Coach Tracy Peal will be doing a book signing and clinic at www.Trailcreekoutfitters.com