Happy New…
For many this is the time of year when we look forward and look back, wish a “Happy New Year” upon others and ourselves, and reflect upon changes, what we’d like to change in ourselves, or “resolve to improve,” all dipping into the sense of renewal, of fresh start-ness, of a cycle beginning anew. Which [...]
Why Meditate? Part 1: Top 3 Reasons
New FREE Meditation practice Sundays, 8:20 am – 8:50am just before 9:00 am yoga class Yoga Tree Valencia San Francisco Meditation may seem like an elusive or esoteric practice, or some woo woo mumbo jumbo that other people do, but “not really for me.” So “Why meditate?” is a reasonable question. Here I offer a [...]
Yoga & Healing: An ongoing discussion
We held an event Sunday Dec 4th to reconnect, celebrate life and gather as a community of like minds seeking to learn about ourselves and this life through yoga. See below for comments and discussion, feel free to share your thoughts. If you went please comment here on your experience and insights, if not, feel [...]
The Bhagavad Gita, an introduction. Dec. 18 and Jan. 8
Introduction to the Bhagavad Gita: A two part course Sunday Dec 8th, Sunday January 8th The Yoga Loft, San Francisco Register Here or call 415.626.5638 Why study the Bhagavad Gita? We move through life with varying degrees of self-acceptance, happiness, sorrow and so on. In essence, discontent arises from finding our self, our current state, [...]
Why Meditate? Part 2 … thoughts on intention and effects.
New FREE Meditation practice Sundays, 8:20 am – 8:50am, Yoga Tree Valencia San Francisco Yoga is first and foremost a practice, a means, of purifying the heart/mind. The yoga sastra, or source texts, the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita, tell us this. Asana, or the posture practice is but a small part of the [...]
Yoga and Occupy Wall Street
Re: Day of Action targeting Banks October 15th, Occupy Wall Street [feel free to share freely, post it, past it on... please discuss, comment, critique.] Before I am capitalist or anti-capitalist I am human, before I am Tea Party or Democrat I am human, before I am the 53% or the 99% I am human. [...]
Healing & Rebuilding, round two
I am currently at Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in Pennsylvania, studying Vedanta, meditation, walking, rebuilding. I began study of Vedanta with Swami Dayananda Saraswati here in 1996, coming every year for over for over ten years, so it has had a big influence on me and the place is a familiar, comfortable refuge full of rich [...]
Stand like a Mountain ~ Tadasana
Tadasana has never been so empowering, so moving – and so elusive – in 27 years of yoga. Not quite a week out from a 5 day chemotherapy treatment, within a year of 4 rounds of 5 day treatments, and facing even more depleting and toxic treatments coming up – I feel wobbly, though not [...]
Karl’s Treatment Schedule, Benefit and Update
(updated 4/24,2011) Well the cancer came back and I was just in the hospital undergoing another round of treatments. I was in the hospital through Sunday 4/10; then home for two or three weeks, then I’m off to Indiana on May 1st for hi-dose chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant (my own stem cells they [...]
Kirtan audio: Jai Ma, Ananda Ananda, Om Satcitananda
FREE audio download and streaming of live Kirtan and solo Vedic chanting. Enjoy for meditation, or to practice chanting and singing. Songs include: Jai Ma-Mata Kalika, Ananda Ananda, Om Purnamadah Purnamidam, Tva Meva Mata and more, even a Winnie the Pooh poem! –> See Widget to the right to Listen Now, or Free Download. April [...]
The Return to Health, & podcast
October 12, 2010 My treatments ended in late August and i have been slowly regaining my strength. The prognosis is good, though I continue to monitor the situation, it looks like I am clear and we beat back the cancer. I will start teaching again Saturday October 23d, and the weekly class schedule is now [...]
Yoga as Coaching: Personality, temperament, samskaras and change
Are we innately inclined to certain temperaments? Am I “Just the way I am” or is there choice in change, discernment in action and impulse? Both Yoga and Science explore these questions and arrive at similar conclusions. The persistent nature and nurture interplay continues to evolve in our understanding. A recent article in Psychotherapy Networker [...]
Beyond Tribal: On Empathy, Wholeness, Yoga & Vedanta [books, J. Rifkin, video]
![Beyond Tribal: On Empathy, Wholeness, Yoga & Vedanta [books, J. Rifkin, video]](http://www.yoganexus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/jrifkin_anmated-150x150.png)
For some years now I have been pondering ‘identity’ as I study and seek to practice Yoga and Vedanta. Identity meaning sense of self – in community, in society, in relation to spirit and divinity, in relation to our apparent tribal nature.
Yoga and Vedanta teach the nature of Wholeness, brahma vidya, knowledge of Brahman, and the practice of karma yoga…
Recent studies in neuroscience, psychology and behavior point to empathy and compassion being strong biological drivers[...]
Pepsi’s Nutrition blog inspires protest departures at Science Blog
Several scientist are removing their blogs from Seed Media’s Science Blog in response to a sponsored ‘nutrition’ blog by Pepsico wrote Columbia Journalism Review today. As publishing morphs with the times, as traditional credible print sources fall or adapt, as authorship and intellectual property shift with open sharing and free publishing, as we are glutted [...]
The Healing Wonders and Joys of Tulsi, Indian ‘basil’ [guest, book, buy tea]
![The Healing Wonders and Joys of Tulsi, Indian 'basil' [guest, book, buy tea]](http://www.yoganexus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/tulsiclose-150x150.jpg)
GUEST Wellness Provider: Mahendra aka Briksha Ayurveda, Yoga Instructor and Coach www.Rays-mandala.org An invitation to learn proper breathing: Sunday, July 11th, Friday, 16th and Saturday, 24th, 6.00pm-.9.00pm Indian Live Food Prep class-1 of Series I – Cafe Gratitude Saturday, July 10 2010, 3:00pm – 6:00pm I am happy to have a piece from a colleague [...]
Beyond Belief: Yoga & Vedanta are for Understanding
It really struck me one year at Swami Dayananda Saraswati’s place when he said “Vedanta is not a matter of blind faith or unverifiable belief, but a matter of understanding.” It hit me then why his teachings sat so well with me. The primary message is listen, inquire, question, discuss and if you disagree speak [...]
Healing Schedule, plans for teaching again…
[updated July 9th, 2010] As many of you know, I was diagnosed with a curable cancer in mid May and am in chemotherapy treatments to heal. So through late July I will be focusing on healing. As of Friday July 9th I have one more round to do, and am now in the two week [...]
Top 5 Tips to Jumpstart your Home Practice
We all want to, but it just doesn’t seem to get off the ground, or out of the bed. An essential pillar in yoga is congruence in heart and mind, thought and action. There is what Swami Dayananda Saraswati calls the ‘knower-doer split.’ I know I want a home yoga practice, I know it is [...]
All is Given Pt. 2: Cultivating attitude of graceful acceptance – karma yoga is bhakti
Here I offer the principles and verses from the Bhagavad Gita that inform the principles in All is Given Pt1 and delve into the essence of Karma Yoga, which includes Bhakti, or devotion. There is no separate Bhakti yoga in essence. Again, I draw largely from Swami Dayananda Saraswati’s teachings. In essence Karma Yoga has [...]
Article on Meditation from Shambala. What do you want to do with your mind?
I found a good article on meditation by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche at Shambala Times. It goes well with the “All is Given” blog post I wrote recently. “Meditation is not a recess or a timeout. It’s a deepening and strengthening of the mind, which affects our whole life.” It’s a brief but rich and eloquent [...]
All is Given Pt. 1: musings, Sutras & Gita, and free meditation mp3.
[NOTE: it's a long one, you may want to print from blog for better reading. You have to read all the way through to download the meditation in mp3 format ] Is my body mine? Does it belong to me, in terms of rights of ownership? Am I defined by my physicality (gender, species, health, [...]
Practice: Just because… appetite
” ‘For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner,’ wrote Pablo Casals in his memoir, Joys and Sorrows. ‘I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel [...]
Keep squeezing the belt! Resources for Pelvic Floor practice, or Mula Bandha (books, tips)
As you know, unused muscle loses tone and strength. The mind is powerful, however thinking about doing pelvic floor exercises, and nodding ‘I know, I know’ will not a strong pelvic core make. Consistent, daily practice, “with no gaps” as Friday the Tibetan girl says in “How Yoga Works” will make for a rewarding practice. [...]
Emerson, Vedanta & Serendipity (Karl’s musings, book, conference)
So I’m reading a book on Emerson by Richard G. Geldard I saw reviewed in an old issue of Parabola (a magazine on world mythology and spirituality I’ve been into since high school). I have always been a fan of Emerson since high school or earlier, and Thoreau, Whitman… I realize now much of Emerson [...]
