Here’s another video from shakti’s Spiritual Dialogue addressing “Intuition.”

Here’s another video from shakti’s Spiritual Dialogue addressing the issue of “Moving beyond the senses.”

The 10 Commandments of Finding the Right Yoga Teacher Training

1 ) Find a Spiritual Teacher

Avoid taking training from teachers that emphasize their teaching on the physical aspects of yoga only. It is important to have a teacher who can give you a full understanding of the spiritual (as opposed to religious) aspect of yoga. The teacher should not be a scholar who knows his/her information from reading books and taking workshops. The teacher’s teaching must arise from direct experience. Such a teacher will be able to deal with all of the spiritual concerns that the student may have with no hesitation.

2 ) Make Sure to Experience Direct Transmission

Do not settle for teacher training run by novice teachers who show the teachings of their master from a DVD. Do not settle for the said “master” to only occasionally appear in the course. Every student in the course needs to have direct contact and experience with the spiritual teacher, as the transmission of the knowledge and wisdom often happens on the energy level.

3 ) Bigger is Not Better

Often you see teacher training with 60 to 200 students in a course.

In an intense 200h course, as a result of the intense practice, students often go through physical, mental, emotional and spiritual crisis and may face multiple challenges. As a result of being in a large impersonal course, the student and their needs get lost in the crowd.

4 ) Avoid Religions, Cults and Worship

Avoid trainings with even a hint of worshipping the spiritual teacher. Yoga practice is a process to transform the novice to become a free master and not to become a sheep, following without knowing.

5 ) Practical Teaching

Make sure there is plenty of actual hands-on teaching experience for you during the course so you don’t end up with theoretical knowledge but are unprepared to actually teach. Knowing the asanas (yoga postures) inside and out won’t make you know how to teach them. Yoga teacher training is not a yoga boot camp of doing the asanas all day. You need to learn communication, the psychology of the mind, body language, how to correct by using hands-on techniques, and how to give mental and energetic support to your students in the future.

6 ) Yoga is Not Gymnastics

Remember that 90% of your students out there are beginners! Most of the people in the West are dealing with physical limitations and health conditions. Avoid vigorous acrobatic styles of yoga. Choose a style of yoga that can walk beginners safely into the practice. Otherwise you will join the endless number of yoga instructors who make the students feel (after their first class) that they are not flexible enough to practice yoga.

7 ) Restrictive Yoga Facilities

Avoid styles that constrict you and your students to a specific teaching facility environment (hot rooms or facilities with too many yoga gadgets). The essence of yoga practice is to be able to conduct it in any place and any time. Your students should be able to take the teaching you convey and practice on their own anywhere without dependency on a facility.

8 ) New-Age Yoga

Be careful of flakiness and new-age nonsense.

Knowledge of energy and the chakras is powerful, but there is much more to the yoga practice than just the chakras.

9 ) Connection With the Teacher After Course is Done

Make sure that the teacher will be available to you to answer questions after the course has ended and to guide you in your first steps of your teaching if needed. You should be able to find spiritual support from your teacher outside the course as your practice must continue after your certification.

10 ) The Power of Transformation

Let your heart, not only your mind and wallet, be involved in the search for the right teacher and teaching. Avoid being influenced by trends and burgeons. The teacher is the vehicle for the teaching that may resonate in you forever.

True teachers will expand your capacity to receive wisdom that arises from beyond your programmed mind.

Namaste,
shakti mhi

Examining Self Perception

Inner Silence

To say hot yoga is Yoga, is like saying that electric shock therapy calms the mind. Yes, it calms the mind, but by leaving the owner of the mind as a cooked vegetable.

The only union one can find in the non-yoga “hot-calisthenics”, is the union between a false teaching and novice student who doesn’t know better.

The blind leading the blind!

* The translation of the Sanskrit word yoga is “union.” *

~ shakti

To comment on or discuss this post, we’ve created a forum topic for that purpose.

Dear shakti,

i am writing you seeking spiritual guidance.

recently, i have found out that i have substantial hearing loss in one ear which is permanent and also severe ringing in that same ear, which is also permanent.

i have coped well for weeks thinking that is was temporary but now that i know that it is permanent, i am having a tough time.

do you have any thoughts on how i can find acceptance with this?

namaste,
b

shakti’s response is below in red.
Dear B

Did you seek help within the field of holistic medicine?

Do not give up and do not let anyone take your hope of healing from you.

This is a serious condition that may be helped with the right action and the right length of time so you need to be patient. Our bodies can create miracles in terms of healing and reversing conditions but you need to believe in it first no matter what others say.

For example, in Ayurveda there is the knowledge that the condition of ringing ears can come from not having enough fat in the body, drying the nervous system with ringing in the ears as a result.

If I were you I would:

1. Read everything about my condition so I know more than my doctor.

2. Put urine drops in both of my ears on a daily basis.

3. Find the best Ayurvedic doctor or Chinese doctor for acupuncture and see which one makes sense to you and feel who you should see or maybe even get treated by both.

4. Do a daily visualization and affirmation about having powerful healthy ears.

In a time of crisis in your body you must take action led by your own judgement and intuition. By taking action you become your own master. A time of healing can become an empowering period where you learn about your inner power. Use this time as a turning point to expand your awareness about your body and mind.

Remember, doctors often know a lot about little. In the holistic approach you can have an ear condition because of a condition in another organ in your body or an emotional state etc. This is why you need to look not for a specialist but for holistic therapists that can see the whole body and yourself in it as one.

Do not waste your time, start now, and let me know how you are doing.

shakti

(this was originally posted in May)

I was watching the beautiful movie ‘India’ and within the motion pictures I heard a whisper that was meant only for my third ear; “go and shave your hair”. After the movie ended I departed from my friends saying that I had to leave to do something and headed over to see Luke, my hairdresser. The last time I shaved my head, my body was 23 years old and I was living in a small ashram outside of Toronto.

At that time I asked my teacher, Swami Aruntiti, to shave my hair and she refused. I had long hair all the way down to my waist and she wasn’t sure I was ready to let go of it and deal with the consequences of carrying a bald female head. But I was stubborn and after a day I was sitting on a chair in the open fields as Aruntiti cut my long youthful hair and placed it in my hands. I remember how heavy it was. As I looked at the hair laying in my hands I had a clear sense that I was not this body. That was the turning point for the split personality of a young spiritual person that realized she was not her body yet living in a world with such an identification with physicality.

So there I was 21 years later carrying my long hair, still attached to my head, to Luke, a wonderful and spiritual being. I knew that the person that would have the tools to cut my hair (I mean scissors and a shaver) should have at least a bit of spirituality in him as my teacher Aruntiti had already disappeared into full seclusion somewhere in Europe many years ago. Luke was clearly the one but he was in extreme demand to the point where you needed to make an appointment with him weeks before you wanted to see him and I didn’t have one, and it was already 5pm.
Something inside me said don’t worry, keep moving what ever has to be done will be done.

When I arrived to the salon Luke was surprised to see me and when I asked if he was available he mentioned that he had just had an unexpected cancellation. Coincidence? I don’t believe in those anymore. When I told him that I would like him to shave my head he recoiled in horror. As he tried to make sense of the nonsense words rolling out of my lips, I repeated myself again. In the next few minutes the small but elegant salon went through a small invisible earthquake. The word of the sacrilegious act I had requested was like a brush fire through a dry savannah.

I was asked to sleep on it, maybe even go home and come back in 6 months after giving the crazy idea some good thought. “But it is just hair”, I kept saying, “and I would like to let go of it now.”

It took some convincing on my part but after a while my long, thick hair began to fall to the floor as I heard Danny, Luke’s partner in crime, mumble “I don’t believe she is doing it. I don’t believe she is doing it” as if I were just about to commit an elegant suicide. I looked at the mirror thinking; “I lost my face”, but inside, I felt the same.

A few women gathered around me as if at a wake looking at me with bewilderment as though a new alien species had landed in the heart of the city.

The sense of freedom was tremendous; no more hiding behind the veil of my physical appearance. I am what I am, straight forward. It is what it is and it feels great, light and empty of meaning.

“Oh my god!” I heard my students, my teachers, my neighbors, my friends, my sister and people that I am not even sure I know, saying as they looked at me, with mesmerized eyes.

“Are you Ok?”
“Are you sick?”
“Are you doing Chemo?”,some asked with concern.

“You are so brave”, they announced as though I had just come back from a rough battle where I lost my look.

“I would never be able to do it…”
“I am not ready to do it yet…”
“I am still attached to my hair…”, some of them apologized as if they were expected to join my hairless new army.

For a while it was great to touch my naked skull. Now clearly I could feel the lovely box I was dwelling in, my precious temple, my naked frame.

If in my youth just changing my hair style gave me the feeling that I, myself had changed, now nothing felt different in my essence as it could not be touched.

“Why did you do it?”, was the question of the week.

This was my way to welcome the process of aging that has started to breeze into my body for quite awhile.

This is the freedom of “being” beyond the eyes that are looking at me.

Namaste
shakti

The following is a spiritual question from a student followed by shakti’s reply in red.
student’s question:

Hi, i am a student of an international college of esthetics in burnaby and as i am going into my course i have been introduced to the chakras and energy healing in a workshop that took place in my college which was so impressing for me as a first experience but later on as a muslim i started getting interested in understanding the back meaning of yoga, reiki, aura and etc to veify if i m not practicing something against islam and i got so confused when i found that each chakra had its god or goddest behind it which is totally throwing me off as i like to upgrade my skills to healing skill services for the seek of my potential clients but i totally refuse to get into any practice that promotes a belief that is against islam in which i m not convainced and i would never be able to do so however i like the aspect of the peace of mind healing strategies and that is why i m looking into getting a sincere honest answer as i m also considering taking more healing workshops if it happens that there is no echue related to my question

thank you so much for taking the time to reply to my question

shakti’s response:
Dear MOUNA

Yoga is a universal art and science that enables you to see reality as it is without drawing you to or indicating any specific reality. It gives us tools to live a healthy holistic life so that is easier to find internal peace. When the body is clean, healthy and in ease it reduces the fluctuations of the mind and the emotions and moves us into stillness.

Because the wisdom of yoga is a universal one, it can not be tied to any religion or belief. As yoga came from India it developed along side the Hindu culture and religion. It is true that some people unite the science of yoga with Hinduism, but this is a choice that one makes. I myself have practiced yoga since I was 14 years old without any religious connotation.

The chakras are energy centers that will vibrate in your body no matter what belief you have. The same is with your hands; if you learn to generate healing energy from your hands you will be able to do it no matter who is your God. It is the individual’s choice to dedicate this healing energy to a specific God or set of beliefs, but the energy and the intent to heal exist on their own.

So from now own, either, find a yoga teacher that teaches the science of yoga with no religious affiliation or, when you hear religious comments interlacing with the wisdom of yoga be selective of what you take in and what you leave behind.

Lastly, the meaning of the word yoga in Sanskrit is union. If yoga wisdom belongs to one religion and leaves other beliefs outside of its practice it is not a union anymore it is a separation.

Sincerely
shakti

The following is shakti’s response to the previously posted question on feeling misplaced. Both the student’s question and shakti’s answer are below, with shakti’s words in red.

Spiritual Question: Dear Shakti, I was raised in a religious home, and although I am not religious any longer (and neither are my parents, they left their church after many decades), I occasionally find myself in mourning for a place of spiritual worship. I am mostly okay with the knowledge that ‘place’ is not so important. But I am constantly reminded that I a human being on the physical plane and ultimately, I do not want to feel so isolated from other humans.

Ten years ago I felt compelled to try yoga. I didn’t practice yoga for a further 5 years. Yes, I tried to avoid what I wanted to happen for 5 years!

I began when my life partner began. I bought both of us passes to a studio. Now, his practice flourishes; mine has dried up. We have a yoga room at home, he very gently asks me to practice every day. Instead, I read and write and take baths. He is not pushy, but is confused why I avoid it. As am I!

I feel very much like a conflicted person. I am scared. I feel shy in a studio because I can’t help but weep during asanas. All of my teachers have been very compassionate and kind, but I still feel very vulnerable and scared.

Intellectually and emotionally, I know that my own spiritual practice keeps evolving at the pace it is meant to evolve at. I try to be compassionate with myself. I can’t understand why I have made countless ‘moves’ to help others on their spiritual path, and still feel like I’m not deserving of the same help.

Perhaps I sound arrogant and pompous, but I feel misplaced. I actually feel very misplaced on the physical plane, and no matter how I go about trying to reconcile myself with it, I only really feel at home when I am asleep and lost in a world of dreams.

Any words you have that may help me overcome my fear of letting go and taking my partner’s hand would be appreciated. It’s hard being human.

Much Love

shakti’s response is below in red.

Dear Chris,

you wrote: Perhaps I sound arrogant and pompous, but I feel misplaced. I actually feel very misplaced on the physical plane, and no matter how I go about trying to reconcile myself with it, I only really feel at home when I am asleep and lost in a world of dreams.

shakti wrote: Feeling misplaced, confused, lost and overwhelmed by existence is very common to people who are sensitive, with elevated awareness.
Unlike most of the living creatures on planet earth we are entities that are aware of our death not only when we face it but actually all the time consciously or subconsciously. The knowledge that we are perishable eliminates the absolute from everything.

• What is the point of eating if we are going to die?
• What is the point to grow and evolve if we are so temporary?
• Why invest in love if everything has an end to it? Etc, Etc,

This is where we start living with confusion, fear, doubt, indifference, and desperation. Why do people keep themselves constantly busy mostly with things that are nonsense? So they don’t have any space to deal with their fears of being disposable.

The most extreme example of taking the mind away from the fact that we are temporary by keeping constantly busy; is the obsessive compulsive disorder whereby people keep themselves constantly occupied with arranging objects in space to avoid facing their feelings of being overwhelmed of existence.

The difference between you and most people is that you are aware of your desperation and unease. At least there is awareness involved in your situation. Most people are completely numb.

Religions effectively fill this empty space where confusion, doubts and fears about existence dwell, with their own substance and loaded content to bring ease to peoples’ hearts so they will keep functioning and fulfilling their role in the community. Otherwise we could end up with a massive communal suicide brought on by the realization that there is no point.

The reason why you are compelled to practice yoga and yet resist it; is because you know the practice can open a hidden gate to an unknown existence that you are not sure you will be able to handle.

The unknown is not less scary then the known which makes you feel trapped.

The reason why people cry in yoga classes is because the asanas break the bondage between the small self and the higher self and if you are not yet familiar with your higher self all you are left is with the fragile small self that will very soon become ashes. The crying is the grief of the coming death of the small self.

So up to here is the diagnosis, now for the panacea.

All of what was described above; the feelings, the emotions, the fears, the questions and the doubts, even though they feel very real, actually have nothing to do with existence as it is. They have to do with the way we perceive reality. That means that if you open your eyes and see what is in front of you, without letting your mind interpret it, you will discover very different moments then what you have experienced up to now.

For example:

you wrote: He very gently asks me to practice every day. Instead, I read and write and take baths. He is not pushy, but is confused why I avoid it. As am I!
shakti wrote:
You perceive reading, writing and taking baths as outside of the spiritual practice and doing the asanas, the REAL practice. If you sit in the bath and you are completely aware of the sensation of the water on your skin, the way your body floats in the water, the sound of the water as you move in the bath, the sound of your breath as you lay in stillness. If you watch mindfully the drops coming out from the tap creating circles in the water, if you are aware of all of it you are not doing any less a spiritual practice then your partner in the yoga room.

I suggest you to drop living life and instead live and experience moments. Life as an infinite fabric of space and time is an illusion, all we have is infinite moments. If you become completely immersed these infinite moments, you won’t have space for doubts and fears.

you wrote: I only really feel at home when I am asleep and lost in a world of dreams.

shakti wrote: The reason is that you never experienced ‘waking up’. Tomorrow morning when you get up instead of going into your head and trying to grasp existence through your mind, lie in bed and enjoy breathing. Do you know how amazing is to be able to breathe without fighting for your breath? Then get up slowly and enjoy your shower or bath. Mindfully sit and have you breakfast; you may find it is the first time that you are actually having breakfast.
Go and buy some flowers for you house, mindfully place them in a vase and take a few moments to sit and enjoy them. Talk to your partner and be fully present. Listen to his words, watch his body when he expresses himself to you. This is not easy as the mind often takes over, stopping us from experiencing life and instead sucks us in the process of trying to make sense of everything.

As for your conflict about the practice of the asanas I suggest you practice ONLY one asana a day. Choose the one you like and stay in it as long as it feels good. Watch the energy, watch the sensation, immerse yourself into only one posture knowing there is nowhere to go after this posture. This is your moment, so be it.

Only one asana a day. Relate to it as a date with your body breath and mind. Take it seriously, like you are doing a whole class.

And then after you are done with your ultimate one asana if you feel to do one or 2 more go for it, and if not, it is perfect as it is as one asana done mindfuly is like doing all the asanas!

love shakti

The following is a question from a student on finding a spiritual home and feeling misplaced. shakti’s reply is here.

you wrote:

Dear Shakti, I was raised in a religious home, and although I am not religious any longer (and neither are my parents, they left their church after many decades), I occasionally find myself in mourning for a place of spiritual worship. I am mostly okay with the knowledge that ‘place’ is not so important. But I am constantly reminded that I a human being on the physical plane and ultimately, I do not want to feel so isolated from other humans.

Ten years ago I felt compelled to try yoga. I didn’t practice yoga for a further 5 years. Yes, I tried to avoid what I wanted to happen for 5 years!

I began when my life partner began. I bought both of us passes to a studio.Now, his practice flourishes; mine has dried up. We have a yoga room at home, he very gently asks me to practice every day. Instead, I read and write and take baths. He is not pushy, but is confused why I avoid it. As am I!

I feel very much like a conflicted person. I am scared. I feel shy in a studio because I can’t help but weep during asanas. All of my teachers have been very compassionate and kind, but I still feel very vulnerable and scared.

Intellectually and emotionally, I know that my own spiritual practice keeps evolving at the pace it is meant to evolve at. I try to be compassionate with myself. I can’t understand why I have made countless ‘moves’ to help others on their spiritual path, and still feel like I’m not deserving of the same help.

Perhaps I sound arrogant and pompous, but I feel misplaced. I actually feel very misplaced on the physical plane, and no matter how I go about trying to reconcile myself with it, I only really feel at home when I am asleep and lost in a world of dreams.

Any words you have that may help me overcome my fear of letting go and taking my partner’s hand would be appreciated. It’s hard being human.

Much Love

shakti’s reply is here.