Hello!

I feel inundated these days with electronic communication. I don’t know what happened…I used to love to e-mail…but I’m finding I feel overwhelmed with all the e-mailing, texting and impersonal electronic communication that’s become a part of our life. I’ve tried to remember how long it is that I’ve been texting and I think it’s about two years too many. It’s reflective of our longing to connect and, yet, on some level it’s insufficient and draining. I want to commit to being better and not getting caught up in it…but sometimes it’s hard to go against the times. I guess I needed to let that out. Phhhewwww…sometimes a Yogini has just gotta vent.

OK, onto other things. So, obviously I’m feeling a little fired up. Perhaps it is the charge in the atmosphere from the expanded sunlight as we approach the Summer Solstice this Sunday. As Yogis, we are well aware now that the seasonal solstices and equinoxes are incredibly potent, powerful and spiritually significant times. I highly encourage you to honor some repetition of a derivative of the special number 108, which has been practiced by millennium during the seasonal changes by Yogis, rishis, sages, mathematicians and spiritually-minded people across the planet. This means anything such as 9, 18 or 27 minutes of meditation or Sun Salutations or mantras, such as OM, is an incredibly beneficial practice in igniting the positive shifts you wish to be made manifest within your consciousness and the collective consciousness.

This weekend I will be attending an awesome Yoga workshop in Austin, TX with world-renowned Yogi, David Swenson, who is an accomplished Yoga teacher and student of the late Pattabhi Jois. I have been aspiring to study with him for a couple of years now and I am grateful to finally have the chance. I’ve practiced to his 2nd and 3rd series Ashtanga Yoga DVD and it is amazing. It’s been such a powerful tool for growing in my practice. This workshop comes at the perfect time and it’s awesome it is taking place on the weekend of the Summer Solstice…he undoubtedly intended for it to be this way and for us to practice together to align with the Solstice. I can’t think of anyplace I’d rather be this weekend…it feels great to say that.

Also, I had the best experience this week. I went to the King Spa & Sauna, a Korean Spa, in Dallas and it was awesome. Apparently, these are starting to open up in other places across the country. The best way to learn about it is on the website. If you go, plan to spend at least 3 – 4 hours there relaxing in the hot tubs, steam rooms, sauna rooms and maybe even getting some kind of really reasonably-priced massage treatment. The therapists are awesome. I’ve had a lot of massage from great therapists and this was one of the best.

I’ll be sending out the True Yoga Newsletter soon. As we grow into the summer, it is all about taking the time to heal. This is the first summer I’ve connected to balancing my Yoga practice with more of a Lunar energy during the hot summer months. It’s interesting because last summer I was encouraging all of us to strengthen and ignite. But, this summer it’s making more and more sense to me to be more Yin during this time of predominantly Yang energy. There is already so much energy in the atmosphere, we don’t have to do much to feel energized because there is so much sunlight charging us. So, it’s better to take this time to soak in all of this positive energy, but not overdo it in your Yoga practice physically. Instead, be purposeful and powerful, but don’t overexert. Take time to breathe and really be in the poses. The Yoga postures are meant to energize us and plug us into Prana in the most powerful way possible so that we feel calm and energized in our body, mind and spirit. So, the new awareness that has come to me this summer is to be more restful and restorative, rather than athletic in my practice. Then, as we grow into Fall and Winter, that will be a time to ignite a little more powerfully in the practice to stoke and awaken the flow of Prana which has literally been harnessed and stored in the cells of the body during the summer months. If we take time to be restful, restorative and renewing in our practice now, we will feel ready to face whatever ways we are being challenged to grow as we evolve into the Winter Solstice.

One other thing, if you haven’t eaten at Bliss Raw Cafe in Dallas yet…you gotta go…it’s awesome raw food cuisine. I’ve eaten there a few times since it opened and I love it. I’ve been cleansing this week on all raw food, mostly fruit, to prepare for the Yoga workshop with David this weekend. I’m so inspired by those of you who’ve decided to cleanse for the first time. Our health is an ever-evolving process. Did you know there are scientists who believe we will evolve to living on purely Prana and sunlight alone? If you are cleansing right now (which, by the way, the week before the change in seasons is the best time to cleanse) I’m sure the thought of that makes you feel hungry. I gotta say, the more I practice and grow in this practice of Yoga, it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched. We just feel better when we eat well, and the truth is, we really don’t need that much food. Alright…I hope you have an awesome weekend and enjoy this time of positive change within you and all around you as we evolve into the Summer of our Soul. Om Shanti and Namaste!

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in an amazing movement experience this past weekend called Spiritweaves: Rites of Belonging given by Michael and Anneli Molin-Skelton, who live in Los Angeles. It was ecstatic dancing and I attended the Friday evening and Sunday sessions. As many of you know, I studied Yoga Trance Dance with Shiva Rea, who is one of the leading teachers of free-flow movement. Prior to my first Yoga Trance Dance with Shiva in early 2007, I had only danced in my more recent years when I would go out with friends to a club, and usually while consuming a few drinks. For the most part, though, I rarely danced since college, and really, I hardly danced since I stopped taking classical ballet at the age of 15, after studying and practicing it for 10 years. This is one of the things Shiva asks at the Trance Dance training is when did your dance first go underground? We were all born as dancers, or what I might call live wires, animated and in motion all the time, except for when we were sleeping.

Having received her Masters from UCLA in World Dance, Shiva, who has also been studying Yoga for more than 20 years, found that these two paths of movement are interconnected and as we become increasingly embodied they, inevitably, merge. Here is an incredible explanation written by Shiva:

Yoga Trance Dance is a meeting of two great rivers, yoga and dance, which come from and are united at the source. That infinite creative source is the One, uniting us all. Yoga and dance are two of the oldest paths back home. Like lovers, they can get separated. Even though we are all born as natural dancers (just watch a toddler instinctually respond to rhythm), dance can easily get swept under the seeming demands of 21st-century living. It is actually the fragmenting effects of modern lifestyles that inspired the union of Yoga Trance Dance. Due to all that sitting, standing, driving, cell phoning, computer or cyber time, we have this strange combination of being more physically bound while mentally scattered — a body/mind split. Some of these effects can be felt as stiffness, rigidity, limited range of motion (even when exercising – as on the treadmill or weightlifting), or disembodiment (the “living from the neck up” phenomenon). The antidote: Our body needs to move and our internal state needs to be rejuvenated through meditation and ecstatic embodiment.

The contemporary explorations of this state of rhythmic-induced meditation are reclaiming “trance” as an accessible experience of embodied communion where the observer dissolves into the power of now, the flow, the dance. Yoga Trance Dance aims to provide you with a “sadhana” (practice or means of realization) so that you can explore for yourself the potency of free-flow yoga and dance as well as music that can continue to water your life. Our intention is to bring greater fluidity, breath, range of motion, stamina for life, and embodied joy into our being and lives. In the words of the dancing mystic, Hafiz, “Now sweet one, be wise, Cast all your votes for dancing.”

What I attended this past weekend was ecstatic dance, which is slightly less instructed and guided than what I’ve experienced with Shiva. Michael and Anneli are true mystics, gifted healers and guides. It’s difficult to put into the words just how powerful this experience was and continues to be for me. It was profoundly healing on so many levels. It reawakened in me how essential it is to dance and that when we open ourselves up to the inspired and intuitive Flow pulsating and moving through us, the breath itself is intoxicating and healing, we need no other potion to feel blissful. And, in fact, no other potion works, only the breath, or Spirit alone can guide us into Bliss. As I was writing before, my first Trance Dance with Shiva was in 2007. Last year, I studied Trance Dance with her in Venice, California, which was an incredible experience. But, since April of 2008, I have trance danced only one time and it was when I lead a trance dance myself here in Dallas. Attending the ecstatic dance last weekend had me realize and remember how important it is for me to dance on a regular basis. I can not imagine life, now, without experiecing this kind of movement. And, of course, just like Yoga, it is especially powerful when we open ourselves up to experiencing it with a community of people. After our dance on Sunday, I had the opportunity to share the recent hardship I’ve been through with the passing of my father with the group. It feels as though I was able to release so much of the heartache and struggle by just opening myself up to them and allowing myself to share the pain I was experiencing. This was one of the most powerful experiences of my life to feel the outpouring of love, support and blessings from so many people I had never met before, but in many ways, feel more connected to because of this intimate experience we shared by opening ourselves up to dancing and just being seen. That’s also one of the things Shiva says is our greatest fear is the fear of being seen. I mean, really seen. You know, even all the stuff that we think we need to hide, like our sadness, pain, darkness, heartache, struggle, etc. One of the most incredible things was to be with a community of people where I didn’t feel like I needed to hide, much like how I feel when I am instructing in Yoga class, and even moreso now, because of this incredible experience. I actually realized there is beauty in the pain and there is nothing I need to try to cover up any more.

Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.
– Jelaluddin Rumi (13th century)

After I shared about my father, this loving woman sitting next me actually said…dance your grief. And, so I will. Ecstatic dance, just like Yoga, will be a part of my life now. And, I’m happy to share that every Thursday night at Move Studio there is ecstatic dance. So, I hope to see you there, from time-to-time, and to share in the dance, your dance and my dance, with you. Oh, and happy June…the Summer Solstice is almost here and the expanding Light of Consciousness is shining its Grace upon each of us through our pain, which is liberating us into the purity of Bliss, the unbounded Consciousness, within each of us.

Namaste!