Baghavan Das in Salt Springs, FL

Amazing Shakti with Baghavan Das in Salt Springs, FL! He is coming to Atlanta March 19 and 20.

Chakra Namaskar Saturdays at Bliss!

For the next 7 Saturdays in the studio, we honor the energy centers in the body, the chakras, with physical postures, breath work, sound vibration and meditation.

8 am Warrior Flow with Shri
Sat, Feb. 27 The Root: Foundations (Rocking it Elephant Style!)
Sat, March 6 The Watery Abode of Ma Kali: Purification
Sat, March 13 The Breath of Ram: Authentic Personal Power
Sat, March 20 Lord Krishna's Flute: The Melting Tenderness
Sat, March 27 Vak: The Golden Tongue- Manifesting with Sound
Sat, April 3 Shiva and Shakti's Passionate Embrace: Awakening the Blue Pearl
Sat, April 10 The Thousand Petaled Lotus: Back to the Source

Happy Valentines Day!

If someone is capable of loving his partner without restrictions, unconditionally, then he is manifesting the love of God. If the love of God becomes manifest, he will love his neighbor. If he loves his neighbor, he will love himself. If he loves himself, then everything returns to its proper place. History changes.
Paulo Coelho

Happy Valentines Day!
This Valentines Day will you consider the possibility of full responsibility for your own happiness? Your partner, or anyone else for that matter, is not responsible for your happiness nor your unhappiness. Get out of the blame game......you are the only one who can make you happy.

Shiva at Cern

Happy Shiva Ratri! Friday, Feb. 12, 2010 is the festival dedicated to Shiva, the archetypal deity who teaches us about destruction, rebirth, time and change.

I often speak of Cern, in Geneva, Switzerland. It the world's largest particle physics lab and at the forefront of advanced physics. This is where a little thing called the World Wide Web was created. Cern has a Dancing Shiva statue in its front yard to honor the wisdom of the ancients and as a reminder that clarity of vision looks both ways- to the past and to the future.

"For modern physicists, Shiva's dance is the dance of subatomic matter."
Fritjof Capra, physicist

Shiva's sound vibration, His cosmic phone number, is
Om Namah Shivaya
"I embrace change."

PS: Cern has a 17 mile long, underground particle accelerator. They are in the midst of experiments which collide particles at ultra high speeds. One of the things they are looking for is the "Genesis or God Particle" in hopes of proving the Big Bang Theory!

Delivered to the Perfect Place at the Perfect Time

Chaco Canyon is an archaeological site in the southwest US that was discovered in the late 1800s by ranchers. It is a magical site of ruins of structures created by ancient Pueblo people. In 1977 Anna Sofaer, an archeologist, made a great discovery at Chaco and has been studying the area ever since. She uncovered a petroglyph, a carving in the stone, behind 3 huge slabs of sandstone, very close to noon, a week before Solstice. At that time, a slice of sunlight, a sun dagger as it is called, bisects the petroglyph. If she had found the petroglyph 3 minutes earlier or 3 minutes later, she never would have witnessed the sun dagger. After more study, Chaco Canyon has now been found to be a sacred site that marks and celebrates both the cycles of the Sun and the Moon with the precise positions of its buildings and with petroglyphs. In fact, the ancient people at Chaco knew about and marked the longest cycle of the Moon, its 18 year cycle. Some of the buildings at Chaco were 4 stories tall and there is no evidence that anyone used any of the hundreds of rooms at the site to live in. Scholars speculate that the entire compound was used strictly for rituals and celebrations. There is a huge complex of nearly straight, 30 feet wide roads, even though the people at Chaco did not use the wheel. After 250 years of meticulous, sacred building, the people of Chaco left the canyon. Their departure was not spur of the moment. They carefully sealed all the entrances to their sacred rooms and burned the kivas, the circular temples built underground. Why Chaco Canyon was deserted remains a mystery. The Hopi Indians in the area tell a story about the people of Chaco. They were said to be an advanced race of people, with great mastery over the elements. The legend says that the Chacoans changed things in their environment that should not have been changed and were forced to leave to let the land heal itself.

Anna Sofaer's experience at Chaco is a lesson about the practicality of a quiet mind. When the mind is quiet, Divine guidance is heard, and we are delivered to the perfect place at the perfect time. The Yogic texts also tell us of the outcome of sustained concentration on anything. When we are able to focus on anything we choose with a quiet mind, we learn all the secrets of our chosen object. A quiet mind is the mind of a brilliant scientist, a genius and of a gifted artist.

Yoga is a Cure for Blindness

Yoga, and meditation in particular, is a cure for blindness, one of my teachers likes to say. In meditation, we consciously empty the mind space of old stories and make way for a new magical space of innocence, of infinite possibility. A space that is both Empty and Full at the same time. In that new space is clarity of vision.

The distance between railway tracks is always, exactly 143.5 centimeters. Why this crazy measurement? Turns out, this goes back to ancient history. The first railways were built with the same tools for building horse drawn carriages and the carriages needed to be the width of the old roads that the carriages travelled on. The Romans built the first roads and decided to make their roads that width to accommodate war chariots and the chariots were pulled by 2 horses. The horses used at the time, when side by side, measured 143.5 centimeters or 4 feet 8 1/2 inches. We built railways that way because it had always been done that way. This even affected the size of fuel tanks on the space shuttle. Engineers thought the fuel tanks should be wider, but they needed to be transported by railway!

Most of the ideas that we have about life are not really our own. We believe what we believe, more often than not, because of what others have told us to believe, or what others already believe or because that is the way it has always been done. For the adept to be able to receive new wisdom, the cup needs to have some wiggle room. We need to empty out old ideas and habitual responses that no longer serve us in order to make way for a new reality. "We need to forget who we were in order to become who we are."

If we were to change the width of railroad tracks now, the task would be enormous because of the magnitude of the structure that has been built around this measurement. In life as well, the effort to change a belief is as large as the infrastructure that we have constructed around it.

"As we empty our minds of old stories, a new space opens up, a mysterious feeling of joy slips in, our intuitions grow sharper, we become braver, take more risks, do things which might be right or wrong, we can't be sure, but we do them anyway."

Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

Yoga Teacher Training

5 Day Preliminary or Supplemental Vinyasa Flow Yoga Teacher Training with Shri:
Monday thru Friday, March 15-19, 9 am to 3 pm each day
Tuition: $600

• Daily Asana Practice
• Daily Chanting Practice
• Daily Pranayama Practice
• Daily Meditation Practice
• Yoga Philosophy- 8 Limbs of Yoga
• Principles of Energetic Alignment
• 4 Techniques of Krishnamacharya Lineage
• Principles of Sequencing
• Introduction to Tantra
• 5 Tantric Kriya Meditations
• Enlightenment 101
• Yoga Nidra- Yogic Sleep

Pay Attention

The most practical advice I can give someone practicing Yoga asanas, or in life for that matter, is to pay attention. Listen carefully to your body as it speaks to you in the language of sensation, follow the thread of your breath with fascination, observe the nature of mind and be a welcoming presence that embraces all emotions. Stay present- radically aware. There is an animating quality to your attention and focus. Embedded in attention is love. We begin to love what we focus on. It is no surprise that Yogis have documented increased body acceptance.

When we pay attention on the mat- we naturally begin to pay attention in life. The Universe speaks to us in the language of signs and symbols. It speaks to us about mundane, practical issues and it speaks to us of more lofty notions. If we pay attention, we begin to access Divine guidance and inspiration and we are delivered to the perfect place at the perfect time. If we pay attention, we begin to be guided by synchronicities, one of the organizing principles of the Universe, and we might begin to get Divine nudges in more subtle ways. Perhaps the light slightly changes in a way that makes you look at something just a bit differently, maybe you feel subtle currents of energy in your body when you read something or hear something that is an important message for you at a pivotal moment- life is an adventure when we live in this way. Open to possibility- guided toward a dream bigger than we might ever dream for ourselves. She speaks....all the time....it is your job to learn how to pay attention and listen.

Rainbow Bridge Meditation

This week in the studio we are practicing the Rainbow Bridge Meditation, or Antahkarana Meditation. The Antahkarana is the highest aspect of the mind and the Rainbow Bridge Meditation builds a bridge from lower mind to higher mind, from one human to another and from the individual soul to the cosmic soul.

In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a place called Shamballa, which is most certainly the root of the legends of Shangri-la and El Dorado. Shamballa is a community of enlightened beings who are creating a Utopian society in order to teach humans how to recreate this model on Earth. There are 7 kings of Shamballa, probably a symbol for the 7 energy centers, or chakras, in humans. The kings of Shamballa are the guardians of esoteric knowledge, preserving it for a time when much of the world will be destroyed, the story goes. Each Dalai Lama is entrusted with the secret location of Shamballa and there is a ritual that each DL performs that is to create a connection between humans and Shamballa, the Kalachakra Empowerment. Kalachakra is an archetypal deity, the Time Machine Buddha, and Kalachakra Empowerment also serves to alter the participant's relationship with time. In the past, DLs have performed this ritual about every 10 years, but this 14th Dalai Lama performs it several times every year. Some say His Holiness feels that more humans are now able to build the bridge.

The Rainbow Bridge meditation also creates the link between humans and the 7 kings of Shamballa. Practitioners learn how to bring Heaven down to Earth.