PranaBeing blog: Now

The ancient Vedic texts containing the oldest sources of knowledge from India—and some of the oldest in human history—were preserved for thousands of years by chanting and memorization until they were finally written down.

Vedic texts are composed of rhythmic verses (in Sanskrit, shlokas), or sutras. Sutra means “thread.” Just as we can take hold of a thread and pull, each sutra acts as a handle for an entire line of thought, access into a rich tapestry of understanding. The potency of these teachings acts like a sort of compressed file; multiple dimensions of meaning can be unpacked from a single terse verse, a single word…even a single syllable.

In keeping with the holographic and fractal nature of the universe, the first verse of a text is considered to be an encapsulation of its entire teaching. Likewise, the first word of the first verse is deliberately chosen and revelatory. It offers a hint as to the entire teaching of that text.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is one of the main references I’ve learned to consult in regard to the practice of Yoga. The first word of the first sutra is atha: now.

Atha yoganusasanam - Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras 1:1

The entire teaching, and the entire practice of Yoga, unfolds from this moment’s experience. Now.

Now begins the discipline of Yoga. Now the practice of yoga begins. Yoga happens now.

All that has happened up to this point has led us to here and now. Now is the only place we can practice. Now is where we live and breathe. Reality is accessible only now.

When I realize I’ve gotten distracted or confused, whenever I’ve lost my way, this single word can bring me back, like a beacon signaling me where to focus.

Now is eternal, omnipresent.

When we bring attention into the present, suffering dissolves and resolves. Judgment transforms into appreciation. Anxiety shifts to awe. The mind quiets and the heart opens.

Whenever we find ourselves out of sorts even slightly, we can be sure that our attention is engaged more with thoughts of past or future, or with thoughts about what is happening, rather than being directly engaged with what is happening as it is, now.

Come back to now. And watch your world blossom.

PranaBeing blog: First Things First

I have been a student of daily routine and committed practice for almost 23 years (more than half my life!). Over the course of these years, I’ve experimented, explored, observed, and struggled.

I continue to learn about myself, about life, and about health.

I continue to challenge my beliefs about freedom, agency, control, and what it means to be a conscious creator.

Inputs are among of the most powerful ways we influence ourselves. What we choose to connect with—and when and how we take things in or take action—affects our body, mind, emotions, and perceptions. This in turn affects how we interact and show up in life.

Gurudev often explained to me how unconscious patterns are built into our lifestyle as habits that support and reinforce inhibitions and false self-concepts. When I first heard this from him, I didn’t want to believe it; but after years of exploring, I have realized the truth.

Whenever we are struggling, whether physically, mentally, emotionally, or relationally, we need to look to how we are living to find the levers that will allow us to create change.

I’ve found that the more important something is, the more essential it is to do that thing FIRST in my day. The more the day unfolds, the less likely it is for me to be able to guarantee anything getting done!

Waking up to who I AM and being fully alive is my #1 priority. Consequently, I choose to start my day by cultivating life energy and connecting with my Self through sadhana (practice). The specifics look different on different days, but the core of the practice is experiencing myself as a prana-Being.

Especially if you are struggling with stress or worry, I advise you not to tap in to what causes you stress as soon as you become conscious. Skip scrolling Facebook or the news first thing. Make your work wait until after breakfast. You can be of service in the world after you have fed yourself (unless you are a mom; this requires a whole different level of practice).

Instead, make a point to connect with yourself before you invite anyone or anything from the external world to take up space in your consciousness, or claim a stake on your precious life energy.

If you are wondering what kind of tools you can use to connect with yourself, try one of my guided practices on Insight Timer. Pick one that fits your available time and practice it as one of the first things you do in your day. Try it for a week and see how it influences your quality of life.

Sample morning routine:

1. Wake up

2. Go to the bathroom

3. Brush your teeth and wash your face

4. Drink 8-16oz warm water (squeeze of lemon or lime optional)

5. Connect with yourself through practice

6. Now you’re ready for the day! Let ‘er rip!

I’d love to hear about your journey.

Connect with yourSelf before you connect to anything else.

You are the key to your health, harmony, and happiness.

PranaBeing blog: Soul Fire

Consider that you are a genius,

that you were born with a precious spark of perception, motivation, expression unlike any other.

Through the natural course of life, this spark was overcast by deep shadows of collectively held beliefs, coated by opaque lacquer of unspoken assumptions, muffled and buried under insulating layers of what you should do and how you should be. The most well-intentioned and trusted people in your life piled it on in the name of protecting you and preparing you to deal with life. Because that is what we were taught to do.

Being the good human that you are, you soldiered on. You’ve done the best you could to fulfill your duty.

Somehow that spark has stayed alive, and for years it was a constant source of slight irritation for you, because it rarely seemed to help you do what you “had” to do or what you “should” do, but instead has always whispered alluringly for you to explore experiences and do things that seem utterly irrational, unproductive, inefficient, and otherwise against your obligations as a “responsible adult.” And you’ve kept it at bay by answering its requests to explore and play with, “Later….later,” all the while dedicating your vitality to the To-Do list.

Yet the deeper desire in you to live true and live fully expands beyond what is expected of you. The seed of consciousness which is the evolutionary imperative within you will not stop calling you toward yourself, toward your soul.

Gradually through the tempering of life’s projects—beginnings and endings, dreams and failures—you have begun to recognize that achievement of the standards you’ve learned and upheld doesn’t bring zest for life. This grind to show up the way you are supposed to actually drains your energy, and it doesn’t even bring a guarantee of security!

And the persistence of that tiny voice, that impulse to keep searching, has prompted you to ever-so-slightly turn towards the spark, to listen with tentative curiosity. Maybe you started running. Maybe you took a yoga class, started journaling, or spent a day planting trees.

Whatever you did to crack the door to this tiny spark, the moment it received even a breath of air, it sprung to life and started to dance inside you.

Your courage grows.

You start to meditate regularly. You begin to explore dietary changes. You take a day off from work to be with your kids—or with yourself. You decide not to buy the thing that you know has such a horrible environmental impact. You trade your $5/day latte for a superfood meal. And you see what happens.

You’ve begun to understand that the part of you that seemed so unruly, so difficult to discipline and impossible to channel - this part of you feeds directly from the vibrant fountain of Life itself. This is your connection to vigor, inspiration, and happiness. It is the genius of your essence, outside all learned notions and conditioned responses around how you should be.

And this spark within you, this atom of Nature, is you as a part of the whole of life. It carries the intelligence of the whole, and it carries the desire for healing of the whole, and it carries the strength to really live into your deepest questions, to courageously pursue your deepest wishes, and to face your deepest fears with compassion. It stands for the fulfillment of your divine (beyond human) potential.

It continuously serves your highest growth.

Now that you’ve glimpsed your Self, you are beginning to admit the truth: your REAL job is to tend this fire within you, to dis-cover this genius, to build a hearth within your body and your life where it can burn brightly and bring warmth to the world.

It’s not easy - because most of the world is asleep, trained to pay for electricity instead of connecting to the sustainable power source within. When the world sees a real fire burning, it panics and comes running, yelling, “Put it out!”

That’s why you need to build a moat of calm resilience around your soul-fire. To protect yourself and contain your vibrancy so that you can channel it for the benefit of all.

The world will not validate your efforts. You will have to use what you’ve learned to penetrate illusions, feel into your own heart, and find your way into the unknown, again and again.

Good thing you’re a genius.

You’ll figure it out.