Posts Tagged ‘mind’

Take a Peace Vow Today

Now more than ever, it’s important for yogis to work for peace. But before we can take peace out into the world, we need to first bring it into our lives.

That’s the idea behind My Peace Vow, a site that encourages all beings to work towards ahimsa (nonharming). “We must take back the control to
take back inner harmony,” says Mother Maya Tiwari, the
spiritual leader and founder of the Wise Earth School of Ayurveda. “To transform violence into
awareness by cultivating ahimsa within. To heal poverty, to stop crimes,
to protect nature and humanity.”

p1-b.jpgIntegrating ancient wisdom with modern technology, Mother Maya has set
up a virtual way to work for inner peace. “Ahimsa must first be cultivated in the mind,” she says.

Mediations on Fasting

fasting225.jpgHunger. Reincarnation. Yoga. Cooking. Prayer. Restraint. Family. Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice, a new book of insights and meditations by yoga instructor and Oberlin College creative writing professor, Kazim Ali, touches on these parts of the human experience. Writing about the Islam occasion of Ramadan, Ali articulates the process of fasting from dusk to dawn:

“Twenty-nine or thirty days to explore the line
between the interior of the body and the surrounding world, to think
about what is brought to us and what we owe,” he writes.
He also compares the process to yoga. “[Yoga] is a practice, not unlike fasting, that allows us to practice linking
the inside-the private experiences of the body and the mind-with the
outside, the pulsing, breathing, actual world.”

Even if you’ve never fasted in your life, Ali addresses the other way we deny our appetites–something most human beings can relate to.

We want to know: Have you ever denied your appetite? What was the result?

Read the whole story on:http://blogs.yogajournal.com/yogabuzz/

Integration for Humans

computer_mat.jpgIn today’s world of breakneck technology, I’ve noticed that everyone is talking about
“integration:” How do you get your Facebook Page and Twitter

Go to Yoga Philosophy School

P2-Yoga-Man-with-Text219.jpgDid you ever wish you had a more solid foundation of knowledge about yoga philosophy? After all, yoga isn’t only about a healthy body–it’s really meant to be a vehicle to liberate the mind, elevate consciousness, and reach greater states of expansive awareness.

Even if you’ve gone to a teacher’s training, you probably have only scratched the surface of the vast body of yoga philosophy.

That’s why I love the idea of the certificate in yoga philosophy offered by the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, which starts again in February. The course focuses on everything I wished I knew more about, including the Eight Limbs of Yoga, a historical overview of modern yoga’s move from East to West, classic tantra philosophy, and the Bhagavad Gita. The faculty is a yoga dream team, including Sally Kempton, Carlos Pomeda, Gary Kraftsow, Scott Blossom, Laura Cornell, Kate Holcombe, and more.

Of course, not everyone interested in yoga philosophy can get to San Francisco, but there are other options for study under the tutelage of some great, learned teachers. Christopher Key Chapple, a professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, created the

Are You Ravenous?

How many of us have struggled with weight and eating? In Ravenous: A Food Lover’s Journey from Obsession to Freedom, YJ staffer Dayna Macy offers us the searingly honest story of her battles with compulsive eating. To discover the root of her overeating, she takes a journey to food artisans, farms, slaughterhouses, and her family home to discover that overeating isn’t