Guides From Beyond

It’s almost the 2-year anniversary of my mom’s death. About 10 days after she passed, she came back to me in a dream.

She looked radiant, so happy and vibrant and only wanted to say one thing:

“I’m just so grateful!”
“I’m just so grateful!”
“I’m just so grateful!”

Then she burst into flames.

Totally serious.

It was her moment of transformation into the great beyond and this vision seared the message of her gratitude deeply into my heart and mind.

What do you think you’d say if you could come back from the dead and say one thing?

Gratitude is one of the most important things we can cultivate in our life.

Instead of waiting for things to happen in our lives to be grateful for, we must make a point of choosing to find things to be grateful for no matter our circumstances. Practicing gratitude in this way will soon help see that your life is non-stop blessings.

Maybe this is what my mom was saying.

Thanksgiving is this week in the US and regardless of where you are in the world, I invite you to practice gratitude with me this (Saturday Nov. 26th 9–11 am MT; 5–7 pm CET) at my special Gratitude Workshop where we will practice some all-levels poses, expansive breathwork, journaling, and of course Yoga Nidra.

Join live via Zoom and/or catch the replay.

You’ll float away from this practice feeling alive in your body, calm in your mind, and your heart brimming with the truth that your life is an incredible gift.

I hope you'll join me on Saturday.

In the meantime, here’s a poem to brighten your day and which hits home with the message of gratitude, despite whatever visits us in life.


The Guest House
By Rumi Translated by Coleman Barks

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
​
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
​
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
​
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
​
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

What Would Bruce Springsteen Do?

I just heard Bruce Springsteen say something that stopped me in my tracks. He said:

“… the price we pay as a society for our toxic individualism and patriarchy is our permanent estrangement from one another. If I can’t connect to you, I can’t connect to us. Whether it’s racism, class differences, or any of myriad other social plagues, its cost is always the same: a broken and dysfunctional system that prevents us from recognizing and caring for our neighbor with a flawed but full heart.”

Heart, brimming. Mind, blown.

No wonder they call him The Boss. 

So, allow me to put this into a little bit greater context.

The essence of any practice is interpersonal work. I relate to the wise words of one of my most influential teachers Judeth Hanson Lasater who said, “All my gurus share my last name.”

In other words, there’s positively no greater laboratory than intimate and personal relationships to do the arduous but joyful work of transforming into who we are destined to become. 

To that end, my wife and I love to read or listen to books that help us to stretch into the people and the couple that we are destined to be. Currently we are reading the book US by Terry Real. It’s about evolving past a you-and-me kind of mentality into a deeper relationship that builds an “US.” This has immense personal benefit as well as benefit for any couple. 

I have found Terry Real’s other stuff astoundingly insightful and directly applicable and even just a few chapters in, I would recommend US to anyone interested in uncovering then working through the unconscious programming we acquire as kids and perpetuate forward into our current relationships and to our own communities, partners, and kids, often with difficult or disastrous results for ourselves and our nearest and dearest. This book is designed to help us confront, then move past, our old ghosts, break the cycle of negative coping behaviors, and finally start acting like functional and emotionally healthy adults for feck sake!

One of the reasons this idea of US impressed me so much is because, kinda what The Boss was saying in not so many words, is that as we learn to see ourselves as an “US” in our most personal relationships, by extension we simultaneously discover how humanity is an “US.” 

Learning this lesson is how the world transforms from the you vs me mentality, through the you and me mentality, into the apotheosis of human relationship which is the US reality. “US” is Oneness. Doing so heals us from the natural but terminal human malady of the illusion of separateness. Doing so wakes us up to the truth of what I call our Both And Nature: I am you and me AND everything else. 

Cool. What does this have to do with The Boss?

Well, I love The Boss, the one and only Bruce Springsteen. So, what could be better than an incredible book like US than US with a forward written by the one and only Bruce Springsteen? That’s right. Perhaps the thing I love most about Bruce is his powerful and well-crafted lyrics. It’s no surprise, then, that his forward to this powerful book is also well-crafted and powerful. 

I was recently at the gym listening to this book and Bruce’s words popped into my AirPods and completely arrested me, leaving me standing there looking vacantly into my gym locker. As people were pumping iron all around me my mind was pumping the simple thought, “This is incredible! I gotta share this with everyone I know.”

And so I am taking the liberty of sharing this with you. Here is the forward in its entirety which I found on Oprah’s website: 

By my early thirties, I’d become aware enough to know, as things stood, I’d never have the things I wanted. A full life, a home, a wholeness of being, a companion, and a place in a community of neighbors and friends all seemed beyond my grasp. I didn’t have the judgment, the courage, or the skills to bring a real life to fruition. I was one of the most successful musicians on the planet, but work is work, life is life, and they are not the same. Even more frustrating, the things that made me good at my job—my easy tolerance, even hunger, for the isolation of creativity, my ability to comfortably and deeply reside within myself and put all my energy into my work for days, weeks, years at a time—doomed my personal life to failure. I lived a lonely but seemingly secure existence. Then at thirty-two I hit an emotional wall and realized I was lost in a deep dark forest, largely of my own making, without a map. So began forty years of trying to find my way through the shadowed trees, down to the river of a sustaining life.

With help I realized, in early middle age, that I was subject to a legacy that had been passed down from generations in my Italian-Irish family. A long and stubborn stream of mental illness and dysfunction manifested itself in my life as a deep, recurring depression and an emotional paralysis. I had a fear of exposing my inner life to anyone besides twenty thousand complete strangers at your nearest arena. The eye-to-eye democracy of real adult love struck fear and insecurity deep in my heart. Meanwhile I could feel my life clock ticking on the things I wanted to do and what I wanted to become.

So how do you transform that legacy? How do you break the chain of trauma and illness whose price is compounded with each successive generation? As Terry says, “Family pathology is like a fire in the woods taking down all in front of it until someone turns to face the flames.” Slowly I began to face those flames, mainly because I couldn’t stand the idea of failing my own children, my family, in the manner that I felt I’d been failed. And at the end of the day, the way we honor our parents and their efforts is by carrying on their blessings and doing our best to not pass forward their troubles, their faults, to our own children. Our children’s sins should be their own. It’s only through the hard work of transformation do those of ours who have come before cease to be the ghosts that haunt us and transform into the ancestors we need and love to walk beside us. Working even a small piece of this into my life took a long time, and I’m still a daily work in progress. My children will have plenty of work to do on their own, but we all have to learn and earn our own adulthood.

Looking more broadly, the price we pay as a society for our toxic individualism and patriarchy is our permanent estrangement from one another. If I can’t connect to you, I can’t connect to us. Whether it’s racism, class differences, or any of myriad other social plagues, its cost is always the same: a broken and dysfunctional system that prevents us from recognizing and caring for our neighbor with a flawed but full heart. Terry’s writing is loving and kind, clever and strong, and he’s written a beautiful and important book, particularly for the moment we are in. It helps lead the way to a more powerful and noble society based on the tenets of love, justice, and respect. He has laid out a process by which we can begin to understand our place in our own families and our society. I’ve worked hard, and I’ve been lucky. Over the years I’ve found some very good guides through that dark forest and down to that river of life. For my wife, Patti, and me, Terrence Real has been one of those guides, and this book is a map through those trees.

Be safe and journey forward, Bruce Springsteen

What a Boss!

If you do decide to buy this book, and I hope you do, might I suggest buying it from your local bookseller? There’s something special about books and actual bookstores and I believe that the people running them are like literary angels. Here’s my favorite local bookseller in Salt Lake City who would love your business and no, I’m not endorsed by them in any way. I just like to celebrate awesomeness. 

And just like I celebrate the awesomeness of The Boss, Terry Real, and great books like US and places that sell books, I also celebrate YOUR awesomeness. But you rising up to your potential isn’t just awesome, like let’s give each other a high five and say good job thinking our job is done so we go on our individual way thinking, “I’mna go make myself an ‘I’m Awesome’ tee shirt,” kind of awesome. It’s awesome cuz you becoming your best is what saves the world. It’s true. Regardless of whether or not we have met in person, I believe in you and the amazing potential you have inside to change the world. I know that as you continue to grow into the kind of awesome that you are meant to be, the world will be a better place for it. Changing the world starts with you inching your way toward your best self.

And yes, as humans are all fatally flawed, but like The Boss says, you learning how to accept and navigate your brokenness is the first step to “recognizing and caring for our neighbor with a flawed but full heart.” 

And as soon as we transform into an “US,” we discover that just like Alice Walker said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Truly an “US” is what we’ve been waiting for. 

My favorite way of practicing the “US” reality is through the transformational practice of Yoga Nidra. Please consider joining my next Yoga Nidra immersion and teacher training happening August 15–28, 2022 where we learn to master the art of facilitating this practice of our Both And Nature, this “US” reality, which is necessary for this world to survive and then to thrive.

My prayer is that we all continue being “a boss” in all that we positively benefit the world and that as we do so, we all wake up to this “US” reality that saves ourselves, our families, our communities, and the world. 

Yoga Nidra Training: Holding The Paradox of Peace and Rage

View outside my window at my château retreat

I recently wrapped up two incredible weeks of retreats in the French countryside, practicing presence as we savor life with flavors, terroir, and connection of body, mind, and spirit. 

One of the themes of my retreats was learning to see with the heart more than with the eyes. It’s been truly fabulous to retreat from the every-day and get to the heart of what really matters in life. I hope that you will be able to join me for either of my next upcoming retreats this late summer/early fall to Tuscany where we will be taking a similar approach to savoring life. 

Yet still, sometimes it’s hard to think about enjoying ourselves when there is so much trouble and difficulty in the world right now. And as individuals what can we do about the world’s problems? As a single person, can we even make a difference? 

First, I believe that the biggest problem we are facing as individual and collective human beings is nothing new. Our biggest problem is the false notion that we are separate from one another. We feel that there is a war “out there” that we must fight in order to somehow find harmony so we fight other nations, other political parties, and other people’s beliefs when the struggle has and always will be within.

We will never achieve harmony in our outer world until we first achieve it in our inner world. 

Yes, we have big differences and problems with one another and it’s part of the point of being human: to learn to work through these issues and allow them to act as a catalyst for our growth into waking up to our ultimate oneness. 

One of the greatest things we must learn as we wake up as humans is to respond rather than react to our personal and global circumstances. Reaction is the product of our lesser self and only perpetuates the fight moving us personally and collectively in a downward cycle of separateness and destruction. 

Compassionate responsiveness, however, is the product of being connected to our True Self, the person who is evolving as the product of our upward cycle of awareness. Practicing compassionate responsiveness rather than perpetuating reactivity helps us to use our energy and resources to build the world we want rather than fight against the one we don’t. 

Of course there is work to do, of course we can’t just sit on our meditation cushions and hope the world’s problems go away. But without a solid relationship to our inner-self we have no foundation to step from where we are into where we want to be. 

Honestly, I’m completely enraged by so many injustices that are happening in the world and specifically in the US right now. The cultivation of compassion through mindfulness doesn’t blanket these feelings. In fact, with connection to my compassionate ground my hearts actually wake up fully to this world’s problems and the intolerable injustices that those in power perpetuate toward marginalized people, women as a whole, and of course our dear mother Earth. But with connection to my compassionate ground, I may cultivate the superpower to alchemize my righteous rage into loving action that actually heals, both individually and globally.

Yes, any true change we wish to see in the world must start within and I can think of no greater way of creating necessary personal and global change than by learning and practicing the gentle but transformational practice of Yoga Nidra. 

Yoga Nidra has immensely impacted my life by showing me very clearly my personal wholeness and the connectedness of all things. It’s given me a personal and global perspective over problems. And because I’m human I’m going to mess it up so Yoga Nidra has given me a way of practicing learning how this compassion thing works. It’s empowered me with immense clarity of action while also helping me maintain an abiding peace while working toward the future I wish to build. 

Yoga Nidra has shown me that my anger about injustice in this world is actually a wonderful gift because it wakes me up from being anesthetized on auto-pilot and shows me that somehow everything is love. It shows me that I am responsible to ground my actions in this love and do the work necessary to build the future I want. It’s shown me that I can work to help end injustice in this world while also having peace in my heart. 

In short, Yoga Nidra has shown me the paradox that I’m powerful enough to hold both peace and rage simultaneously. 

I’m not alone here and I feel immensely honored and gratified to have done my part to help tens of thousands of other people likewise feel empowered to realize their own innate wholeness and power by teaching Yoga Nidra to them. 

I want to invite you to make a difference, to make a global impact by learning to teach Yoga Nidra.

My Next Yoga Nidra Training

In about 4 weeks, August 15–28th, I’ll be hosting my next Yoga Nidra immersion and teacher training. I’m really thrilled about this training because I’m constantly improving my trainings and this time around I’ve developed a completely new hybrid format that offers a more comprehensive curriculum as well as incredible flexibility. You’ll learn the core principles on your own timeline and will also have tons and tons of personalized live Zoom time to practice teaching Yoga Nidra, explore your personal questions, and discover exactly how YOU will use Yoga Nidra to make a positive impact on the world. 

If you’ve already taken my Yoga Nidra course and want a refresher or to sharpen your skills, you can join for a special repeat-student price.

If you've ever wanted to learn how Yoga Nidra can help you and others make serious life transformation, now’s the time. 

This training is perfect if you’re a yoga or meditation teacher, coach or therapist, school teacher, parent, or anybody who is passionate about making a positive impact for others and making a difference in the world. 

When you complete this course you will:

• Feel confident to teach Yoga Nidra like an expert

• Understand Yoga Nidra so well that your delivery will be effortless 

• You’ll understand how to satisfy the unique needs of your students and clients

• Stand out as a teacher, therapist, or coach

• Make a deep, meaningful, and positive impact on the lives of your students or clients and the world

• Be prepared to start earning money as a Yoga Nidra facilitator either in person or online

Too many Yoga Nidra trainings only discuss what Yoga Nidra is and then send you off with a few rote scripts to teach with. The problem with that is that a teacher will be most powerful when they can teach from their own experience and their own words and not as a parrot of their teacher. 

Imitate then innovate

I believe that you must learn to imitate then learn to innovate so in my program, you’ll get over 100 pages of highly-effective Yoga Nidra scripts—like Yoga Nidra for Sleep, Yoga Nidra For Healing, and Yoga Nidra for Stress— so that you can start teaching great Yoga Nidra classes right away. But by the end of my program, you’ll feel so confident with the principles and roadmaps of how to build your own specialized Yoga Nidra scripts, that you will soon be able to innovate and make your OWN scripts to meet the specific and individual needs of your students and clients. This is so essential to be a transformational Yoga Nidra facilitator and I don’t know of any other program that prepares their students to make their own scripts like this. 

I’ve spent years developing my curriculum and as I’ve done some deep soul searching to explore how I’ve become an expert at teaching Yoga Nidra, I’ve discovered two complete game-changing principles that I can’t wait to share with you, that will help you to deliver excellency in your teaching and have you teaching like nobody else. 

Hybrid Learning Gives You More of Everything

Both the immersion and teacher training will be a combination of self-paced online learning as well as weekly live weekend sessions. 

Online Learning

You’ll learn the essential principles, lessons, theories, techniques, roadmaps, and practice Yoga Nidra via my robust pre-recorded online Yoga Nidra training. This allows you to digest this material on your own timeline and to review it as often as you like. I’m very proud and honored that my online Yoga Nidra teacher training is considered among the top 5 online Yoga Nidra trainings in the world. 

When you register you receive immediate and lifetime access to the online portion of the training which contains: 

• Engaging video lectures 

• Dozens of specialized Yoga Nidra audio recordings (some specifically designed to help you learn to teach Yoga Nidra) 

• Breathing and mindfulness exercises

• The Yoga Nidra Roadmap 

• The Yoga Nidra Dyad Roadmap 

• Class Building Worksheet 

• Helpful Tech Sheet 

• Pranayama exercises for yourself and to give to your students

• Mindfulness exercises for yourself and to give to your students

• Mindful poems 

• Essential props list

• Yoga Nidra Door hanger for privacy

• Over 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts

Live Sessions

These live sessions will be so valuable!

Because the core content will all be done on your own, this allows us so much more time on our live Zoom sessions for:

• Deeper and more personalized Q&A

• More peer collaboration

• More practice teaching Yoga Nidra and Yoga Nidra dyads

• Exploring specifically how YOU can use Yoga Nidra with your students and clients

• Building classes in real time together to see how ideas become effective Yoga Nidra scripts

Every cohort of trainees is different and each person has specific needs for learning Yoga Nidra. You have unique perspectives, talents, and reasons for teaching Yoga Nidra. That’s why I’m devoting the majority of our Zoom time (4 hours on each Saturday and 4 hours on each Sunday) to answer your personalized questions, go deeper on the topics that are important to you, to practice teaching Yoga Nidra, and to receive live Yoga Nidra practices. These live sessions will  allow you the opportunity to practice teaching yoga Nidra to each other. This will be so powerful!

Facebook Group

In addition to the online connection with your Yoga Nidra cohort via Zoom, you’ll also be connected to your peers via our private Facebook Group. Here you can encourage each other, ask questions, make contacts, upload your recordings and share resources. 

Two Segments

I’ve split up the training into two Segments. The first segment is the Yoga Nidra immersion, designed for those interested in developing their personal relationship with the transformative power of Yoga Nidra. Ultimately, this is an inquiry into your very nature of being to discover how beautiful and wondrous your life can be, and how much this yoga of sleep can benefit your stress, sleep, and perspective on the world and its problems. The immersion also serves as the foundation for the teacher training segment of the training. 

The next segment is designed for those who are interested in teaching Yoga Nidra or for those who just really geek out on this fascinating subject. For this week, you’ll have the chance to practice teaching each other Yoga Nidra and begin to master the art of teaching, creating the container, and using the tools that facilitate lasting transformation. 

In addition to all the things you’ll receive in the online learning and Zoom sessions, you’ll also get: 

• An updated 160-page manual to help map your Yoga Nidra training journey

• A certificate of completion (upon completion)

• Access to my weekly live, online Yoga Nidra class from when you sign up through the duration of the training ($48 value)

• A 30-minute private consultation via Zoom ($100 value)

The Training Pays For Itself

Most yoga or Yoga Nidra trainings may prepare you to teach but almost none of them show you how to create good-paying teaching opportunities for yourself. By the end of this training, you’ll have the confidence to go out and generate your own well-paying live and online classes, workshops, courses, digital products, and even retreats. No more begging yoga studios to teach classes.

Additionally, I’m going to let you in on the some key information I share with those whom I mentor, the foundations of building what I call your Mechanism of Influence. This is all about how to organically attract the clients you want to teach, create a global audience, and get paid what you are worth to share your gift with the world. Your Mechanism of Influence empowers you to make a huge and positive impact on the world while also making a great living doing what you love. 

Refresher

For those who have already taken my training and would like a refresher course, you can participate fully in all parts of this course for a fraction of the cost. This gives you the most updated information (including updated manual), gives you the chance to ask personalized and refined questions perhaps informed by your recent teaching, and allows you to practice teaching classes and dyads with your peers. Refine or refresh your expertise as a Yoga Nidra teacher.

I can’t wait for this training to begin and I’d really love for you to join me. When you register, you’ll receive a welcome email with immediate access to the online learning portion so that you can start learning right away. You’ll also get all the information for our live sessions. 

We’ll have our live welcome meeting via Zoom on August 15th. By August 28th you can be a certified Yoga Nidra teacher with the power to make a large and positive impact on the world. 

Be the change and help others do the same. Make an impact and help build the kind of world we all want to live in by learning to facilitate Yoga Nidra. 

Please join me. 

Peace, Providence, and Plum Village

How are you?!

It’s been a while since I’ve sent out a newsletter. I’ve been enjoying practicing savoring life through presence in body, mind, and spirit as I’ve led 2 different retreats at a chateau in the Bordeaux region of France as well as a pre/post retreat in Paris. It’s been lovely!

Then, we were called to the States unexpectedly to attend the funeral of a dear family member—another great opportunity to practice savoring life but from a completely different perspective. So after the retreats we flew directly to the US. 

This learning to savor life reminds me of part of one of my favorite poems from Mary Oliver, Bone, where she says:

“…and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.”

May looking, touching, and loving be the way that we learn to understand the great mystery of life. 

I love teaching yoga and meditation retreats for so many reasons but especially because of the rich lessons I personally learn in the process. As the facilitator and leader of the retreats, I sometimes feel like I stand to learn the most. 

Today, I want to tell you a story about something truly incredible that happened on one of my retreats that has me celebrating the connection of it all. 

To set this up, rewind almost 20 years ago. I’m in Korea, teaching English, studying meditation, and doing a lot of self-discovery. It was 2003 and the US had just declared war on Iraq and despite the anti-American sentiment in Korea at the time, I decided to take a train up to Seoul to attend a peace rally. Peace advocate and Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh was going to be there to offer a peace march, a slow walking prayer for peace. I LOVE Thich Nhat Hanh, had read several of his books, and couldn’t believe that I was going to finally see him. 

There were more than 10,000 people at this peace rally and as one of the only white people there, I stood out making me a potential target for anti-American sentiment. But I figured that being a peace rally and all, I’d hopefully be ok.  

While I was waving my hand-made sign which read “American for Peace,” a kind Korean monk began talking to me, sharing his warm smile and words, acknowledging my decision to be there. 

Soon, the crowd hushed as Thich Nhat Hanh took the stage and instructed us on how to breathe in peace and breathe out peace as he and a select group of about a dozen monks would walk slowly along a cordoned-off path in the center of the crowd of 10,000 people.  

Thich Nhat Hanh began his peace march through the silent crowd. As Thich Nhat Hanh and his posse of monks approached where I was standing, I heard my new monk friend whisper in my ear, “Stay close to me.” “Sure,” I thought, “we are packed in here like sardines. Where am I going to go?” Then, as Thich Nhat Hanh and his wake of monks passed in front of where I was standing, my kind Korean monk friend lifted the rope separating the crowd from the small double-row of monks performing the peace walk. I felt a gentle hand on my back pushing me into the slow procession of monks and before I knew it, we took up the caboose position in the peace walk with 10,000 pairs of eyes watching us. 

We completed the peace walk with the monks and ended up on stage facing the entire crowd. Thich Nhat Hanh gave some final remarks and everyone erupted into celebratory applause. 

I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. Read the entire story here (blog)

Now, fast forward to January of 2022 and I am living in France. I was crushed to hear that at 95 years old, Thich Nhat Hanh had died. I knew he had Plum Village—his headquarters, meditation halls, and retreat center—was somewhere in the South of France but I was shocked to learn that it was only about 20 minutes from where I’d be hosting my retreats in June. I had to go and I desperately wanted to bring my retreat attendees with me. 

I scoured the Plum Village website to make arrangements but couldn’t quite discern whether or not we’d be welcome to visit Plum Village. I’d written an email to the administration of Plum Village which went unanswered. One page on the website said that we could show up and that lunch would be provided and on another part indicated the contrary. There were so many variables that I thought we should simply show up, trust fate, and be ready to roll with whatever presents itself. 

So one beautiful June morning at my Bordeaux retreat, the bus picked us up from the chateau and we headed to Plum Village. We had all packed some fruit, granola bars, and whatever other food we could in our bags to be prepared regardless of whether or not we were served lunch. 

As we unloaded from the bus we saw a busy but easy going community of monks, practitioners, and lay people on a meditation retreat. I’m not sure if any of them were also visiting for just the day. Some people were volunteers on their Happy Farm project, others were lounging in hammocks or meditating as they sat in the grass. 

We milled about for a bit as I tried to catch my bearings and figure out what to do and where to go. I introduced myself to a few monks, told them who we were, and I asked them if we were welcome and how we could participate. They kindly indicated we were welcome for the day, that we could join for a meditation and Dharma talk offered by some of the senior monks, but that we were on our own for lunch. Score!

As we waited for the meeting to start, we were all standing around and taking in this incredible fact that WE WERE AT PLUM VILLAGE. While we were standing there, a big warm-hearted black man who was attending the meditation retreat at Plum Village saw one of the attendees of my retreat, a black woman, and he jumped up in the air and shouted, “Yes! Now there’s two of us!” He walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her with a big, long, hug. We all met and introduced ourselves before the two of them celebrated their blackness together and immediately dove into deep and warm conversation about the need for meditation in their communities. 

His name is Ofosu and I eventually learned that he is a Ghanian-American hip-hop and electronic musician in the Washington DC area and calls himself Born I. He teaches meditation, is a practicing buddhist, and devotes much of his music to waking up. Incredible.

Eventually, we entered a large meditation hall. There were chairs set up as well as meditation cushions on the floor and in several sections of the hall there were chords and headphones so that the talks could be translated into several different languages. 

The warm tones of a large bell greeted several of the head monks who entered and took their seats on the stage. We meditated. After, they hosted a moving Q&A session. One man asked the monks through tears how we can meditate when there is war going on. Then Ofosu approached the stage and asked a heart-felt question about how to reconcile racism through meditation. I was blown away by how compassionately the monks answered the questions. 

After the Q&A, the monks indicated that today was the celebration of the 40th anniversary of Plum Village. My heart leapt. I just happened to bring my group to Plum Village on this momentous day! The monks talked lovingly of their leader Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh’s familiar name), and illustrated the origins and evolutions that Plum Village has experienced over the years. They showed a video montage of Thich Nhat Hanh’s life as well as the ongoing life of Plum Village and even though none of the pictures were of the peace march I’d attended in Seoul in 2003, the photos took me back there as if it were yesterday. 

Eventually, we shuffled out of the hall and I was moved to find my new friend, Ofosu. I gave him a big hug and thanked him for his question about reconciling race issues with meditation and mindfulness and told him how his question invited me to be more mindful about race. We had a warm moment and a brief chat.  

Then the few hundred people in attendance at Plum Village that day, went outside to participate in our own peace march. We started at a large tower with an enormous bell which they rang several times as they evoked a prayer. Then we walked in silence in a thin line through the forest breathing and thinking peace. I felt as if I were reliving my impromptu peace march with Thich Nhat Hanh almost 20 years prior.

“It’s this.”

Thich Nhat Hanh was a master calligrapher and the organizers had hung many of his sayings up in the trees so that passersby could read them along the way. They were written in French, English, and Vietnamese. It took perhaps 30 minutes of slow walking to reach the end of the path through the forest, each step more inspiring and peaceful than the last. 

On the other side of the path, we were all greeted by beautiful classical music. We sat in the sun of this beautiful June day and soaked it all in. A few of the monks began playing Bach— a monk playing the cello, violin, piano, and flute, though the flutist was the only one not wearing the brown habit of a monk, so maybe they outsourced the flute. Several female monks performed a dance. 

I don’t know how I missed this, maybe it happened later in the day, but Ofosu performed a number with the monks as well. If you use Facebook, you can see it here. 

Born I and Phap Huu performing “Little Star”

Our group connected and together we marveled at our incredible fortune to be at Plum Village at all, let alone on this 40th anniversary celebration. We sat down on the grass and began to eat our lunch, the fruit and various things we’d brought with us.

Then they served cake, chocolate cake!

On display was a gallery containing many of Thich Nhat Hanh’s original calligraphy. I stood and marveled at Thich Nhat Hanh’s perfect, harmonious circles, his simple but wise phrases, all of it a legacy.

Eventually, we made our way back up the hill to meet our bus driver who picked us up and took us back to the chateau and our regularly scheduled retreat. 

What an incredible day!

I hosted another retreat at the chateau the following week and we also went back to Plum Village for another magical day, though this one with decidedly less surprise and celebration. 

On this second trip to Plum Village I bumped into the Ofosu again and he said that it was the last day of the retreat for him at Plum Village, he’d be going home soon. I asked him if he had any major take-aways from his experience at Plum Village and he said that what he learned most was how even though he will always be fighting racial inequality as long as it exists he can still be happy in this moment. He can fight for justice and have personal peace. 

I love this insight!

May past, present, and future all wrap itself into this moment, even if we don’t have everything figured out. May we tirelessly strive for justice and equality while also keeping the peace within ourselves and outside of ourselves. And may we be open to those unforgettable moments that present themselves along our way. 

Expecting The Unexpected

I often plan retreats years in advance. Yet, despite all the many months and sometimes years of planning, one thing I’ve learned over the years is to expect the unexpected, that some things are impossible to plan.

In 2018 I led a retreat in the breathtaking Amalfi Coast in Italy. We stayed in a 16th-century convent turned into a retreat center, a stone’s throw from the Mediterranean, and loved eating outside under the trellises thick with summer flowers, practicing yoga in the open air yoga shala, and eating the sumptuous, home-cooked meals by our Italian chefs. It was a complete paradise. 

One day, all I had planned for the day was leading a morning meditation and a mid-morning and afternoon yoga practice and other than that we’d simply be hanging around the convent relaxing, reading or journaling, and maybe walking down to the sea. 

Our host approached me after our early morning meditation and asked off-handedly if I might be interested in taking the group to hike near some ocean cliffs during the late morning and early afternoon as well as perhaps going to Naples in the evening to hear some outdoor music and eat some pizza, an informal event organized by his “cousin.” I say “cousin” because it seems that our Italian host is “cousins” with half of Naples. Anyway, it would cost everyone €15. 

At first, I was a little hesitant to add anything to our schedule that day for two reasons. First, I’ve learned that too many excursions at a retreat can blur the container and can sometimes distract from the overall spirit of the retreat. Plenty of scheduled down time is necessary for the message and experience of the retreat to really sink in. Secondly, we’d already paid for a very nice meal to be prepared by our chefs that night and I didn’t want everyone to pay an additional €15 for an experience they hadn’t planned on. Also, I freely admit that what I had envisioned when our host had described “outdoor music and pizza” was our group sitting on the curb in a dirty piazza in Naples listening to some loud Italian garage band and eating whatever local cheap pizza shop happened to be nearby— which admittedly, being in Naples, would probably still be amazing. 

Maybe I was feeling capricious or maybe the allure of real Napolese pizza caught my fancy, but on a whim I decided what the hell, we’d do both the hike and the dinner. 

That morning we did our usual morning movement and meditation practice, greeting the sun as it crept over the mount Vesuvius casting the convent in its shadow. Later, in our morning asana practice, we were invigorated and opened as we stretched, moved, and breathed. 

After yoga, we all loaded into a van and drove a short distance to do our hike. The natural landscape was breathtaking as we skirted the rocky cliffs that edged the cerulean blue waters of the bay of Naples. Wild flowers grew from rock crevices and tantalized our eyes with their panoply of colors. The kiss and scent of the fresh sea breeze caressed our faces. 

We hiked a steep downhill mile and arrived at a natural rock platform and marveled as the entire ocean seemed to heave and swell as if watching the ocean’s watery and profound breaths. A feeling of pure giddiness and abandon took over the entire group and soon we were screaming and laughing as we bobbed in the lapis waters trying our best to avoid the errant jellyfish. 

Waterlogged and tired and nursing only a few minor jellyfish stings, we emerged from the ocean to make the mile-long slog back up the hill to the van. I was carrying Elio (not quite 3 at the time) in my arms and he fell asleep as I sweated up the hill. Some kind and enterprising locals saw us trekking up the hill and as we summited the plateau, we saw that they had erected a crude table with small glasses for us to enjoy some limoncello and beers. After the invigorating swim and exhausting hike, the sweet lemon liqueur tasted like pure soma, the elixir of the gods. 

Eventually, we made it back to the convent, showered, and enjoyed a hearty lunch before resting deeply with a lengthy Yoga Nidra practice, the yoga retreat version of a siesta. After Yoga Nidra, several people reported feeling more light and open than they could remember and a few even translated that feeling into being among the most spiritual feelings of their lives. 

Feeling restored and rested after Yoga Nidra, we got dressed up for our night out of pizza and music. We mounted the vans and as they began to move, I expected our drivers to steer us toward the busy and crowded streets of Naples but instead they began winding their way through the hilly terraced vineyards in the mountains encircling Naples. 

Eventually we stepped out of the van, not onto some dirty piazza, but onto the manicured grounds of an old, stately, and beautifully restored villa and vineyard, basking in the setting sun as it dipped into the bay of Naples. We met a handful of other guests to this soirée and strolled on the lawn toward the back of the villa where we saw a few small rows of chairs facing the pool. After grabbing a glass of wine, we took a seat and waited for the music to begin, which it did shortly.

Yes, just like I had envisioned, there were guitars at this concert but they were not “3-chords-and-the–truth” kind of guitars turned up to 11. Instead of ripped jeans and safety pins, onto the stage of this “informal” concert came two men wearing tuxedos and carrying classical guitars and a mandolin. They sat down and our intimate crowd clapped a joyous welcome then hushed, clearly in surprise and awe at the treat that was presenting itself for us. After a few seconds of silence, they began to play and continued for almost two hours, filling the early evening air with the mellifluous and warm song of classical guitar and mandolin. 

After a dozen or so numbers, the guitar and mandolin players were joined by another man in a tuxedo who sang select opera numbers in an impressive operatic baritone. What struck me was the look of pure joy and pleasure on the singer’s face, as if he would rather be doing nothing else in the world at that moment than singing his heart out into the night for our small assembly. His joy was infectious and as I looked around our group, I was pleased to see everyone grinning with unabashed delight. 

After the musicians took their bows and left the stage the next act was about to happen. Onto the scene appeared a small, happy, and old woman with a face deeply creased by decades of smiling. She almost looked old enough to be an original inhabitant of the villa. But instead of music, her gift was offering us a symphony for our senses. 

Soon she began a pizza processional. Every few minutes she would march from the kitchen and its original wood-fired oven outside to our hungry table, presenting us with freshly-baked pizzas, still steaming on her long wooden pizza paddle. She presented each pizza with bashful smiles as we boisterously clapped and cheered this opulent pizza performance. The freshly-baked pizzas were absolutely decadent, an opera of perfectly chewy crust, deep and rich sauce made from fresh tomatoes and oregano, a generous covering of fresh, local, mozzarella, and of course garnished with a few fresh basil leaves in the Napolise way. Buonissimo!

As we segued from Puccini and listening to pizza and laughing, little Elio took my hand and stole me away. Together we ran into the burgeoning darkness, around the grounds of the villa, through the olive trees and grape vines, chasing the blinking fireflies that lit up the night like fairies. 

That night, we all drank, ate, and laughed in the shadow of this impossibly perfect and completely unplanned day we shared together. And as I soaked it all it in, I raised my eyes above the twinkling fireflies to the winking of the stars above, and mused at the power of a simple “yes” and how sometimes you have to expect the unexpected. 

When I teach others about leading retreats, we often explore ways to add value to the experience. Sometimes that’s learning when to have a rigid structure and when to go with the flow. One of the things I had the foresight to plan for my Amalfi retreat, something that I felt added immense value to the attendees of this retreat, was to invite my friend and professional photographer Reed Rowe along so that he could snap incredible photos while we were practicing being present to the experiences we were having without feeling we had to capture them by pulling out our phones the entire time. See some of the incredible pics Reed took for us that day. 

Please join me this Sunday, May 29th for an online workshop where I’ll teach you all about the magic of leading your own retreats. 

Also, if you feel like expecting the unexpected, please do something impetuous and grab your bestie to join me for my Bordeaux yoga retreat, June 5–11, where we will practice savoring life! I have only two spots left and I’d love to have you join me. 

I also have a few spots left for my Tuscany retreats, September 3–10 and October 8–15. 

Thank you!

Waking Up to Truth and Absurdity

photo cred: https://www.ville-imperiale.com/napoleon/nice/la-place-garibaldi/

Over the weekend, Elio and I went to the park and played a rousing game of Zombie Hide And Seek. This is a game that Elio invented where the zombie (me) chases the cute little boy (Elio) and if the zombie catches the cute little boy, then the zombie must carry said cute little boy off to his zombie cave and put him down to wait to be eaten, but not immediately because the zombie needs to take a little nap after all that work of catching a little boy. So, before taking his lunch, and to savor what will surely be a fine meal cuz it’s not every day that you get to eat the delicacy of a cute little boy, the zombie falls asleep whereupon the cute little boy inevitably escapes from the zombie’s cave (again) and the zombie must therefore find the little boy anew if he wishes to have his lunch. 

After 90 minutes of this zombie not eating his lunch business, both zombie and cute little boy had become quite famished and decided to abandon this morbid game of deprivation and actually seek some more reliable calories. 

We ventured to one of our favorite outdoor cafes located at Place Garibaldi—a square honoring the birthplace of the Italian revolutionary, general, and patriot, Giuseppe Garibaldi. In case you need a history refresher, this is the guy who is credited as Italy’s greatest national hero, a guy who united Italy to what we know of as Italy today, and a true master of strategic advantage. 

Elio and I decided to go to this particular café in Place Garibaldi partly because it was close to the park but also because they serve very good sourdough pizzas and, dare I say, the best burger in town. It’s the kind of burger that you can’t put down, both because it’s so delicious that you can’t stop eating it, but more urgently because it’s so messy that it becomes “strategically advantageous” to just keep it nestled in your hands until you have enjoyed every last morsel. 

After eating this burger, one is left in desperate need to wash their hands (and perhaps entire face … and maybe shirt). No, a simple dinner napkin won’t do. In fact, 5 dinner napkins won’t do. And if after one has finished Nice’s finest burger and is in dire need to freshen up but the café bathroom is occupied, one may be forced to venture instead to the nearby fountain that circles the formidable statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi leaning on his sword in triumph, so that as one washes the grease from their face, he may look down upon you, reveling in a worthy burger victory, won by strategic advantage no less, and nod his silent approval, probably while thinking, “Yes, this my legacy to celebrate such a victory.”

Though Elio and I shared some pizza and fries, we noticed a guy at the table next to us who was tackling the infamous burger. We are always working on good restaurant manners with Elio so when Elio saw the guy next to us wrestling with his burger, he commented on the grease dripping down his chin and mentioned how he lacked resto manners. Having personally eaten this burger, I offered a little compassion as I mentioned how difficult it was to keep this meal polite. 

As we were leaving the cafe and walking under the approving but stoney gaze of Giuseppe “Strategic Advantage” Garibaldi, Elio announced that he’d like to see something really incredible that day. At the risk of being a little didactic, I told him that if he had the eyes to see it, he would surely witness something extraordinary, that we are continually surrounded by the miraculous, the sublime, and the unbelievable, it’s just that often we don’t take the time to notice. 

Later that night as I was putting him to bed—the lights off, our list of gratitudes recited— there was a moment of quiet where I could sense that Elio’s brain was whirring. Soon his little voice broke the pregnant silence.

“Papa, I didn’t see anything amazing today.”  

“If you have the eyes to see them, there are incredible things happening all the time. With the right kind of vision, everything is amazing.”

“Whaddya mean, Papa?”

So, perfectly poised for a bedtime story, I retold an abbreviated version of the Shiva Shakti story I love to tell …

In the beginning, even before the Universe began, there was only Shiva and only Shakti. Shiva was all consciousness and spirit and Shakti was all movement and matter. She was the dancer and he was the watcher. 

All Shiva wanted was to continually watch his beloved Shakti with his lidless 3rd eye positioned in the middle of his forehead. All Shakti wanted to do was to dance for her beloved, continually moving and enticing his awareness. 

Well, their love grew and grew until they felt that they were on the verge of transforming in some incredible way but didn’t know exactly how until one day, Shakti decided to dance around behind Shiva and place her hands over his eternally open 3rd eye. 

Boom! Never had the balance between consciousness and energy been so one-sided and suddenly, everything exploded in a massive ball of unfettered energy. Shakti was reeling through space but eventually found terra firma on earth but was devastated when she couldn’t see her beloved Shiva. As she roamed the earth, she thought she heard his voice in the babbling of the brook and in the rustling of the trees, but each time she looked and called out to him, she saw nothing and this made her increasingly very, very sad. 

One day, she was walking and everything on the earth was so alive and beautiful: the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, the bugs were creeping (read: 6-year-old audience) and everything seemed so perfectly perfect. Then, she heard it again, the sound of Shiva’s voice but this time, Shakti decided that she would do something different. This time, instead of calling and looking outward for Shiva, she sat down, closed her eyes, and went inside. 

Soon, she heard the sound of her beloved again and the more she listened, the louder it became. Eventually, she could hear the unmistakable and steady voice of her beloved Shiva, “Shakti! Babe! Shakti!”

Elio: “Did he REALLY say that?!”

Me: “Shh! It’s MY story, I can tell it how I want to.”

Shiva continued, “Babe, I’m right here. I’ve never left. Nothing in the Universe can exist without me the same way nothing can exist without you.” Then after a long pause, Shiva said, “Look what we made with our love.” At this, Shakti opened her eyes again and she no longer saw ordinary birds and bugs and sunshine but rather saw herself and shiva dancing in the miraculous form of every object in the Universe. Suddenly, every object in the entire Universe was amazing. 

“What?! You mean the birds are God?” Elio said with incredulity 

“Yep.”

“Bugs are God?!”

“Yep, and guess what else is God.”

“What.”

“The guy at the restaurant eating the sloppy cheeseburger with grease dripping off his face is God.”

With this image in our brains, the darkness exploded with unrestrained laughter and for several minutes we were both seized with the spasm of hilarity, tears streaking our faces, our hands clutching our stomachs as if to control this bucking bull of truth meets absurdity. 

It took several minutes before we could calm down enough for Elio to fall asleep. And as I lay next to Elio listening to his soft breathing deepen into sleep, I silently prayed that he’d wake up the next day, rub the sleep from his eyes, and see a little better the miraculousness of each dawning day.

May we all learn to see the Divine in everything we encounter, first within ourselves and then in short order everyone else. And may we learn to love and laugh as our own story of waking up unfolds, invariably steeped in both truth and absurdity. 

Remembering Who You Are

A book I truly love, one that has been very influential in my life is Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth. Have you read it? 

One of the things I learned from that book, something that has changed my cosmic understanding, is the idea that as human beings, whether consciously or unconsciously, we are constantly trying to figure out what it means to just be human. We explore many ways of answering that question and almost anything we encounter in this human life can be something for us to hold onto as a way of identifying ourselves. We tend to identify as our name, our bodies, our perceived personal success or failure, and even define ourselves by our problems but all of these things fall flat because they don’t explain what our true self is. Who we really are cannot be described by anything that changes. 

In A New Earth, Tolle defines the ego as the misapprehension or mislearning of what we think we are, all the things that change in our life. Tolle mirrors the yogic idea that what we really are is Awareness. 

The part that really got me in his book was how often we tend to identify with layers of our ego he calls our painbody. What he means is that though we may not outwardly love being in pain—feeling jealousy, bitterness, or suffering—but it does exist as something we can feel, we therefore tend to call it “real” and mislabel this object of pain as “us” and kind of walk around life defining ourselves as that thing. Can you relate to that? Everybody can to some degree or other. 

Again, our true self is Awareness itself and cannot possibly be defined as an emotion, either good or bad. Identifying as anything other than this Awareness is going to be problematic because it exists unfailingly in a state of change. No sooner do you want to hang your hat on something and call it you, than that thing changes and leaves you feeling empty. 

The crazy thing is that these pain bodies seem to have a life of their own. It’s like they know they aren’t real and are trying to keep themselves “alive” by begging us to keep a hold of them. We know it doesn’t serve us to be angry or sad or depressed all the time but we kinda don’t know who we’d be without that part of us. So somehow we keep it alive simply because it serves us in someway to define us. “It’s not great being sad but at least I understand it.” 

That in a nutshell seems to be one of the most profound human problems. 

That may sound depressing but it’s actually really hopeful and I’ll tell you why. Surely, Tolle explains what to do about this dilemma in his book, however, I’ve found the best, easiest, and most effective solution to overcoming this issue of the ego—or false identity—with Yoga Nidra. 

Instead of pain bodies, Yoga Nidra calls these different bodies, Maya Kosha, or illusion bodies. They are illusions because they seem real but aren’t. What’s real is Awareness. However, what I love about Yoga Nidra is that it doesn’t suggest you try to forget about the pain bodies but instead invites you lean into them to understand them as the beautiful illusions that they are through systematized relaxation and layered awareness. Yoga Nidra shows you how to practice deep awareness of your body, of your emotions, of your thoughts—all to show you that by all the things that you can be aware of, you reveal Awareness itself. Awareness is what these all have in common. 

And here’s the exciting thing…

As you practice experiencing yourself as Awareness, you remind yourself of your innate wholeness, purity, and being. You don’t need to define yourself by your ego—what you do, how much money you have or don’t have, or even (and especially) what kind of pain you may have experienced in your life. Instead, when you understand your true nature, that of Awareness itself, you realize that this entire human experience all points to the beauty of what it means to be and that every object in the world is another invitation for you to practice waking up to your true self. 

Practicing and understanding yourself as Awareness really is the ultimate healer. 

Knowing how to facilitate others to experience themselves as whole through Yoga Nidra is an art form in and of itself. I’ve dedicated almost 15 years of my life studying, practicing, and teaching how to do this and I have personally experienced and facilitated myriad modes of healing and wholeness through this incredible, relaxing, and accessible practice. 

I feel it a calling in my life to help you learn how to help those people in your life whom you have the privilege to influence how to remember who they truly are by helping them practice awareness through Yoga Nidra. 

I guess if I were a really good teacher I could simply tell you, “Hey, you’re perfect as you are. Let’s go get a beer,” but I don’t think it’s that easy. We need a practice to help that truth land, to be taught this truth in a way that we will understand and recognize. This is why your particular voice and your particular experience with the people and population you know is so essential. Only you know the kind of specific issues they work with and can speak their language. It’s on you to help these people remember their own wholeness. 

On Saturday, April 23rd I want to teach you how to facilitate specialized Yoga Nidra classes for those people in your life who need to understand who they are in a way that only you can understand. 

I’ll be leading a workshop where we are going to spend 3 hours together on Zoom building your specialized Yoga Nidra classes to meet the individual needs of your clients, students, and family members. You’ll be given the tools and roadmaps to deliver the classes you need in your own voice. 

If you are interested in making this kind of an impact for others, I hope you’ll join me. 

If you’re not interested in facilitating this for others, perhaps you’d be interested in deepening your relationship to Self in my Yoga Nidra course called Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep. 

Also, if you’re looking for your next great read, I might suggest A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Pick it up at your local bookstore. 

Have a great weekend!

The No Hustle Summit

Yesterday, I posted about how some graduates of my Yoga Nidra teacher training program are changing the world for the better with their unique application of Yoga Nidra. I also shared how I’ll be offering a workshop to help you explore the ways YOU can also create specialized Yoga Nidra classes for your clients, students, and family. 

One of the students I’ve had the great pleasure of working with in my Yoga Nidra training is Andrea Cristancho, a holistic business coach and mompreneur. Her mission is to change the “hustle” narrative in business. 

She asked me if she could interview me for her No Hustle Summit audio series where she conducts audio interviews with people who are striving to work smarter rather than harder with their online business. 

We had the BEST interview! We talked about what I’ve discovered about making a positive impact in the world while also making a living doing what I love. I also shared some of my favorite tips that I teach those I mentor to build their businesses about how to leverage their passion and authenticity in their work to stand out from the crowd as well as truly achieve excellence in their endeavors. 

I think the most important thing I shared with Andrea, something I truly and deeply believe, was that your greatest gift to the world is the ways in which you love the world. 

The No Hustle Summit is a free audio series with just a few well-chosen interviews you can listen to podcast style. Because there were only a few people chosen to offer this summit, I was super thrilled to be asked. In addition to our interview together, you can hear other people from around the world telling their stories of success, wisdom, and tips. 

Andrea is doing some wonderful things in the world and I’m really proud to be a part of what she’s offering. 

The No Hustle Summit it’s a high-vibe offering and I highly encourage you to take a look. Let me know what you think!

Also, if you haven’t registered yet for the Teaching Specialized Yoga Nidra workshop, please do. It’s going to be a really special event. 

Have an amazing day!

Teach Yoga Nidra: Specialized

I love getting emails from people who are curious about my live or online Yoga Nidra teacher training program, Facilitating Transformation with the Yoga of Sleep. Usually, they ask one of two questions:

1. How is my program different from other Yoga Nidra training programs?

2. How do someone create a Yoga Nidra class for a very specific need?

Most Yoga Nidra teacher trainings leave you with only a small set of limited Yoga Nidra scripts to teach. These can be kinda nice but fall way short of fulfilling the specific needs of clients or students. My program also provides you scripts (over 100 pages of them, in fact) but they are designed to be used as guides as you are finding your own voice, templates that prepare you to design and effectively teach your own specialized Yoga Nidra classes, unique for the needs of their clients. My program is designed to first give you a personal relationship with the practice then teach you the principles and roadmaps to effectively build and teach your own classes. Even more, my program is different because it teaches you to speak from the power of your own voice, the way they would say it, and not as a version of me.

It's common for a Yoga Nidra teacher training, it’s common to learn to teach a basic Yoga Nidra class that leaves you feeling rested. But how does one tap the power of Yoga Nidra to make specific transformational change?

For example, how does one teach a Yoga Nidra class for insomnia? How is it different from a Yoga Nidra class for stress? What about designing a class to help with self-esteem, depression, or setting and accomplishing goals? What about Yoga Nidra for managing pain, clarifying your purpose, sourcing your own inner wisdom, or building your confidence? How is Yoga Nidra for kids different from Yoga Nidra for adults?

What are the specialized Yoga Nidra classes you want and need to teach to your students and clients?

And here’s the real kicker: Because of your unique perspective on, understanding of, and experience with the needs of the people in your sphere—be that of a school, community, or certain population— you are the most qualified and effective person to serve their needs. Your people desperately NEED you to learn how to effectively meet these unique needs with essential, accessible, and transformational practices like Yoga Nidra. And, unfortunately, you can’t do that with someone else’s script. You gotta learn to do that yourself. But, luckily, I’m here to help.

I’m really excited about a workshop I’m hosting on Saturday April 23rd via Zoom that will teach you exactly how to design your own specialized Yoga Nidra classes and to deliver them in the power of your own voice. It’s called Teaching Specialized Yoga Nidra. I would love you to join me. It’s an investment into yourself and an investment in your community.

When: Saturday, April 23rd 9 am to 12 pm MDT or 5:00–8:00 pm CET via Zoom. Counts as Yoga Alliance continuing education credit. Click here for details and/or read on to hear more of the back story.

My Journey of Teaching Yoga Nidra

So, I completed my first Yoga Nidra teacher training in 2008. As I started teaching Yoga Nidra, I quickly became frustrated as a teacher because I knew from personal experience just how powerful Yoga Nidra could be, but it soon became clear that I wasn’t nearly as prepared to teach Yoga Nidra as I needed to be.

First, I couldn’t make the impact I wanted to because the scripts I was given in my training were far too general—they didn’t meet my clients’ specific needs, and I was never taught how to deliver customized Yoga Nidra.

What any experienced teacher can tell you is that good teaching doesn’t come in one-size-fits-all.

Second, my Yoga Nidra training didn’t teach me how to leverage my own voice, so my teaching didn’t feel authentic and my students could tell. I knew I could make a bigger impact if I could teach from my own voice, experience, specialization, and interest, but I hadn’t a clue how to do this.

Third, though I’d had beautiful and transformational experiences with Yoga Nidra, many of my yoga students found Yoga Nidra to be, well… too boring. They may have enjoyed it the first time, but hearing the same tired script over and over again was putting people to sleep...in the wrong way.

But, my early struggles facilitating Yoga Nidra turned out to be an enormous gift, because it taught me that this ancient practice was in no way designed to be a rote experience. My struggles in teaching drove me to dive deeper in my studies and to practice more Yoga Nidra. And doing so, I learned volumes about the essential principles of this fascinating practice.

Soon, I began incorporating these principles into my Yoga Nidra classes, now with the ability to innovate, adapt, and deliver profound Yoga Nidra experiences that were customized to my clients’ needs. My teaching became fresh, authentic, engaging, and transformational. And faster than you can say “savasana on steroids,” my Yoga Nidra classes, workshops, and courses were packed. Even my clients who were previously bored by my Yoga Nidra classes came back to stay.

Since then, I have facilitated thousands of hours of Yoga Nidra for my clients, and this beautiful practice continues to reveal deeper and deeper transformation, both for my clients as well as myself, more than I ever realized was possible in those early days of teaching. I even discovered how teaching Yoga Nidra itself is a pathway to greater learning and spiritual awakening.

My approach to Yoga Nidra caught the eye of other yoga teachers and it wasn’t long before I developed a novel teacher training program, Facilitating Transformation with the Yoga of Sleep where I teach that once you have a deeper understanding of what the principles and techniques of Yoga Nidra are pointing to, you can deliver them in any context for any client, using the unparalleled power of your own voice.

Learning to Meet The Needs of Your Students

Your ability to customize Yoga Nidra practices for your clients is central to the design of my Yoga Nidra training.

In addition to teaching the fundamentals of this powerful yet gentle practice, I’m passionate about helping teachers learn how to use Yoga Nidra to meet the specific needs of their clients. I love the diversity of the people who take my Yoga Nidra training, all with different applications of the practice.

Check out all the ways people are using Yoga Nidra with their students, clients, and kids …

• One graduate of my program uses Yoga Nidra in her family law practice to help her clients be calm and centered as they are going through often very emotional legal proceedings.

• One of the teachers I mentor brilliantly uses Yoga Nidra to help her with her specialized work with the neurodiverse population, people who work with ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s, etc.

• Another graduate is using this practice with her high school students to help them manage the incredible stress of placement tests, the challenges of COVID, and of course the hurricane of hormones running through their teenage bodies.
  A recent graduate of my Yoga Nidra program who is a licensed therapist here in France is using Yoga Nidra to help her clients work through trauma.

• A different licensed therapist, this one lives in the States and specializes as a sex therapist, uses Yoga Nidra to help her clients work through shame, body dysmorphia, and to rewire harmful programing around sexuality.

• One graduate uses Yoga Nidra to help those who have lost loved ones work through grief.

• Another teacher uses Yoga Nidra to help world-class artists regularly enter into a state of creative flow.

The applications are limitless! and I’m so proud to be helping people learn to help others with the accessible and powerful practice of Yoga Nidra.

Whether you're a yoga or meditation teacher, a coach, teacher, or therapist, or any role in supporting others, Yoga Nidra can be a very powerful yet accessible tool to help you make transformational change for others.

My level 1 training (50 hrs.) focuses on developing your personal relationship with Yoga Nidra then teaches you how to apply your personal knowledge of the practice to serve the needs of both yourself and your students.

I’m currently busy building the curriculum for my level 2 training which will incorporate even more specialized information and practices centered around helping you become a master facilitator at Yoga Nidra, meeting the specific and varied needs of your clients.

My Teaching Specialized Yoga Nidra Classes workshop on April 23rd draws from the curriculum of my level 2 training and I’m excited to share it with you before it’s even available in my level 2 training.

You are most welcome to this workshop whether or not you’ve already taken my Yoga Nidra training. The Teaching Specialized Yoga Nidra workshop will serve as a great preview course if you are curious about my level 1 Yoga Nidra teacher training, Facilitating Transformation with the Yoga of Sleep. This workshop will also serve those who have already taken my training and would like more practice with this essential skill.

And, for anyone who takes this workshop and also decides to take my full teacher training program or who registers for my level 2 training, I’ll deduct the price of this course from either training.

Perhaps the best and most empowering thing about this workshop is that you get to bring your ideas for a Yoga Nidra class to the workshop so that we can build them together. This will be so cool!

You’ll leave this workshop with:

• Confidence in knowing how to build your specialized Yoga Nidra class

• Understanding of the Yoga Nidra Roadmap to guide your journey

• Surety of how to build a class using the Class Building Template

• Guidance from over 100 pages of scripts to use as templates as you build your own Yoga Nidra classes

• Personalized attention for your projects from myself as well as your with breakout sessions with your peers

• Organization in the form of a manual outlining the discussion points, maps, and resources

• Ideas of new and exciting Yoga Nidra classes the world needs to hear from you
  

The workshop will be live, on Zoom, and recorded and sent as a replay to give you maximum flexibility in how you take this workshop.

When: Saturday, April 23rd 9 am to 12 pm MDT or 5:00–8:00 pm CET via Zoom.

I hope you'll join me.

Missed Busses and Unexpected Opportunities

The button on my latest newsletter is accidentally linked to this page. Click above to listen to the post and click here to read it.

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How are you? I hope your week is starting well.  How is the spring showing up where you are? Are the blossoms popping on the trees where you live?

Here in Nice, France it’s been a little rainy and cool but very fresh and the new blossoms are making this already beautiful landscape even more breathtaking. I love this time of year because of the fresh air, newness, and rebirth that spring offers. 

This weekend we found ourselves on an unexpected adventure. We had intentions to take a bus journey to visit La Turbie, a quaint village perched in the rocky and verdant cliffs overlooking the Ligurian sea. About an hour's bus ride away, Sen had read about La Turbie’s medieval village as well as some ancient Roman ruins and we thought it’d be cool to see. Plus, hidden away up there in those cliffs is supposed to be a boulangerie that serves the best baguette in the region. We had to go.

Before heading out on our bus journey, we decided to get an espresso at the quaint little café and boulangerie we used to live above a few years ago, the one that would wake us up every morning with the heavenly scent of freshly-baked croissants. Though we hadn’t been to this café for a few years, the owner still recognized us and we were able to catch up a little as I ordered our coffee. 

One thing that I found so heart warming and incredibly human while we were sitting and enjoying our croissants and espresso, was how people (complete strangers, mind you) would come into the cafe, a small place of maybe 6 or seven tables, and upon entering, they’d address the entire café with a polite, “Bonjour, messieurs-dames.” They’d also offer a happy, “Au revoir!” as they were leaving, and on both occasions, everyone would stop their conversations at their table to respond.

I love this culture which often celebrates conscious connectivity as the default instead of indifferent individualism. I experience this phenomenon of addressing the room of people you’re entering or exiting in the doctor's office, on the bus, and even while standing in various states of undress in the locker room at the gym. 

After our coffees, we walked to the bus stop to make our way to La Turbie but when our first bus blew by us without stopping (obviously didn’t get the memo on conscious connection) and our alternate bus didn’t stop where we had intended, we found ourselves exiting the bus in Monaco and decided by default that we’d spend the afternoon enjoying lunch and going to a rather fantastic little Zoo instead. Our original plans of blue-ribbon baguettes and Roman Ruins were dashed revealing a fantastic alternative of aperitifs and armadillos. 

What a great lesson for life, right? I firmly believe in the practice of having an intention and direction in life and all our endeavors but not holding so firmly to them that you’re not present to the unforeseen opportunities that may arise along the way. I like to call that the cosmic chess game.

This story of missing our bus and ending up in Monaco illustrates one of the greatest principles of my work: as life’s unintentional circumstances occur, how do we maintain the kind of presence to see the hidden opportunities embedded in the situation? The part about people practicing conscious connection illustrates one of the greatest principles of Seneca’s work, namely how the quality of people’s lives is determined by the quality of their connections with others. 

We were discussing both of these principles just the other day a fantastic Italian café very close to our son’s school (I know, the entire country is cobbled together with magical little cafés). How is it that the Italians make the best coffee?!  Anyway, it’s common that I’ll drop off my son at school and then go there to enjoy a real cappuccino while writing in my journal and practicing my Italian in preparation for my Tucany yoga retreat later this year. 

Well, the other day, Seneca and I were enjoying coffee together at our Italian café and savoring the warmth of a heart-felt conversation about our own personal growth and our relationship and how much both of those intersect with our work. 

Our conversation reminded me how much I feel like my work of teaching meditation and yoga is really just me processing and learning what it means to be a happy and functional human being. In other words, I’m basically preaching what I’m practicing. Back in the day, sometimes upon entering my therapist’s office she would say, “I know what we are going to talk about today because you wrote about it in your newsletter.” Ha! 

The conversation I had with Seneca in the Italian café that day was a real gift to be in many ways including helping me to clarify exactly what my intentions are for my work. My intention in my career is to offer yoga and meditation to help you live your extraordinary life. That means taking you from feeling unwell, tired, or achey in your body, to being able to go on that hike with abundant energy, practically leaping up the trail, feeling as alive as the wilderness around you. It means transforming from that old mental feeling of being exhausted, stressed, and limited to your most natural mind state of feeling full of calm and alert, full of optimism, possibilities, and creativity. It means going from feeling a lack of spiritual connection, from feeling that your existence is meaningless or ambiguous, to feeling a beautiful and tangible connection to all beings with a sense of awe and wonder. 

In a phrase, really what I hope to do in my work is to help you savor your beautiful life. 

Thank you for your part in supporting me in my work. It’s a true honor to be on this journey with you!

And I’m not the only one in the house who tries to help people discover the innate perfection within. Our conversation at the Italian café also turned to Seneca’s work. So what does Seneca do? Well, she’s the founder of a coaching and consulting firm that provides transformational group facilitation and 1:1 coaching to high-growth-potential women in the areas of leadership, impact, authentic confidence, creativity, and emotional thriving. 

Incredible, right?

Seneca believes our relationships are one of the greatest vehicles for personal development and upward change on the planet. During our conversation, she mentioned how much she appreciates how much her work highlights the fact that our relationships are our superpowers and how much our quality of life hinges upon our relationships. Essentially, Seneca is a relationship ninja.

She’s all about helping women create deeper connections for greater success and joy in your life and to operate at a higher level for all aspects of your life. These deeper connections fulfill a greater sense of belonging, support, and take you from a feeling of reacting to and merely surviving life, to truly thriving in life. 

Like metaphorical strangers popping into the café and immediately connecting with others, she helps people employ similar principles in every aspect of their lives to practice a life that flourishes at all levels.

Again, it’s about preaching what you practice. Seneca’s work has deepened our own relationship in so many ways. When we have conflict—cuz every relationship has conflict, though some may choose to respond or react to that conflict differently—we have learned to move through it and genuinely grow closer as a result rather than simply making peace or worse, drifting apart. 

I know I’m a tad biased here but Seneca is pretty damn amazing. I really believe in who she is and what she is sharing with the world. I can’t tell you how many of her clients have stopped me when they see me so they can rave to ME about the work she’s done with them. 

Because there is such a clear overlap in our desire to help people find a greater connection to the world by creating a greater connection to themselves, I want to let you in on what Seneca offers because she’s doing something really exciting in addition to her regular 1:1 coaching and consulting. This week, she’s launching a beta version of a 4-week course that will take place in May called The Extraordinary Connection Blueprint for Women, a course for cultivating greater success and joy in life through creating deeper and more meaningful relationships. 

This course is all about creating extraordinary connections with others, so you can feel, be, and do what you came here for.

I’m immensely lucky to have Seneca as my soulmate, partner-in-crime, and wife. I’m so proud of what she’s created and I hope you’ll take a look at it. 

At the end of the day, life is full of missed buses and unforeseen opportunities. It’s about learning to connect with others and savor the warmth of heart-felt connection as we evolve into our best selves. 

Don’t miss this bus! Regardless of how you feel things have gone as planned for your life, perhaps this course is a revealed opportunity for you to explore the joy, contentment, and wellbeing inherent to your being. 

Have a wonderful week and Namaste!