Blogs

BY LISA BERMAN Lisa Berman I'm fortunate to have been practicing yoga for almost 13 years. My journey has included exploring many forms of yoga, taking teacher training and expanding my knowledge through attending a wide array of yoga workshops. Along the way, my yoga mats have been like supportive and loyal friends to me. Delving into a dedicated yoga practice on them, I have grown in strength, confidence and commitment from the steady mastery of asana to feeling a personal transformation in my spiritual soul as I chant, meditate, practice pranayama and kriyas. I have laughed, cried and...

BY ALLISON KAPLAN Good Morning, My sweet, tough and tumble father-in-law Phil, (Uncle Goofy), passed away recently. And while I am deeply saddened by his loss and will miss him terribly, every crazy and quirky quality,  I will celebrate his beautiful life. Phil celebrated life, everyone's life, every day. After all, he told the hospice nurse that he wanted to live to be 190. According to Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sutras, celebration is the highest form of prayer. As we celebrate this new season on this beautiful Earth, I invite you to join in and celebrate you, to seek out and...

Authentication (from Greek: αὐθεντικός authentikos, "real, genuine," from αὐθέντης authentes, "author") is the act of confirming the truth of an attribute of a single piece of data (datum) or entity. The other day I was chatting with a friend when she mentioned her next door neighbor knew my former husband via friends. My friend is also a yoga student of mine and knowing that affiliation her neighbor then said about me:  "She's reinvented herself!" I thought for some time about that statement finding it curious.  I can see how most...

I had just arrived in Madison, Wisconsin to teach at Bhaktifest.  It was a steamy, stormy, hot summer day in July as I unpacked my bags in my hotel room.  I pushed aside my big duffle bag packed with camping gear for the next leg of my trip to New Mexico and Summer Solstice and began to unpack for the festival. I just had come off a busy, short period at home between trips.  It was a summer of traveling!  As I was landing in Florida the month before to visit my parents I got a text that a yoga space had come back around for me to look at as a second larger location in Michigan.  I BELIEVE if...

SatJiwan Kaur Khalsa, Karma Yoga San Diego   While on the phone with, SatJiwan Kaur Khalsa, co-owner of Karma Yoga San Diego, she tells her story and expresses that every experience she's had on her yoga journey has prepared her for and allowed this amazing opportunity to align in this divine way.  She is also clear that Kundalini yoga has and continues to enrich and enlighten her life and her Dharma. SatJiwan is a San Diego native and a classically trained ballerina and actress who moved to Los Angeles in her early 20's.  She was living what she thought was her destiny, a close friend...

by Jen Norber I took a Karma Yoga class with Marianne and I went into class hoping to get some good stretching in and just feel a bit more relaxed afterwards.  She mentioned something very briefly but it had a profound effect on me.She mentioned in class for us to offer up a prayer to not planning. She reminded us that not only can we not plan everything because things will always be thrown at us, but there can be great joy in being spontaneous.  She also said, to be very present in the moment and not worry about planning. When class was over, I went home, packed up the car and my family, and...

by Nancy McCaochan   Happy New Year to everyone who's celebrating. Although I was raised Catholic, this is my favorite of the Jewish Holidays as it reflects many aspects of the autumn that are personally significant to me. The school year begins in the fall, next year's buds are on the trees, and the colder weather causes me to reflect on where my life is going and what I'd like to change. A few days ago, I became aware that in the Jewish calendar, we're beginning the year 5775. I found the symmetry interesting so did a little research about the vibrations inherent in the numbers 5 and 7....

By contentment, supreme joy is obtained. Yoga Sutra II: 42       Contentment in our bustling, overly busy, conversational milieu is difficult to sustain. Sometimes it's even hard to experience. Yet contentment is one of several states of being that yoga can bring into our lives—if at first only for a few moments. At the end of an asana practice, during sustained pranayama or meditation, losing ourselves in the gong or yoga nidra—we are extricated from the grip of the ego and we feel a sense of AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! It's relaxation—but more. As muscles...

It was a beautiful day at Kensington Metropark!  Thank you so much Thad and Jackie for being the Gurus of this event! And thank you so much to all of you that came, shared and participated.  There is so much power in numbers.  We did good work today for Metro Detroit's Youth and beyond! Here is the meditation and the music if you want to continue the Meditation For Prosperity for the next 40 days!  Try it! Why not?  What do you have to lose except small, limited thinking! Prosperity meditation    Tantric Har Music  Track #8 Sat Nam, Katherine

The year was 1992. At 46, I'd just finished an MA in English and secured my first real job as an adult. Hired to teach freshman composition at a small technical college in southern Ohio, I was excited about the impact I might make in the lives of my students. Shortly after I began teaching, I visited an aunt and uncle whom I hadn't seen for several years. Instead of congratulating me on my successful employment, my aunt looked me squarely in the eye and said: "Those that can't, teach." This was the prevailing "wisdom" of the day in reference to artists of all kinds. But it wasn't the kind of...