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JUNE 17, 2009:  I consider myself a LOVE ANTHROPOLOGIST.  I have been studying love all my life.  While I was in Tuscany last week through mere observation I gained even further insight into LOVE.  I was surrounded by it!  The way people casually touch each other in conversation, the way folks eat and make love to their food, the way folks talk about their romance with wine and even how folks are in relationship to the earth herself.  You feel that there is less self-criticism I never got that vibe from any woman “I shouldn’t eat that, this will make my but look big” Essentially I observed no declaration of self-abuse or withholding.

Instead it was all open armed embracing. You can sense folks love themselves.  So right now bring your right hand to your belly and your left hand to your higher heart.  We all have within us two hearts, the beating heart and the intuitive heart.  So feel right now the energy of these two hearts with your hands.  Through that connection and self embrace feel the flow of love first for yourself and all the beautiful things you love about yourself, then expand that love for others until everyone is hugged in. 

Swami Satchidananda says, “Real love is possible only when you see everything as yourself.”

This is supported in the yoga sutras Chapter 1 verse 23, “Boundless love and devotion unite us with consciousness.”  Yoga unifies, it brings us into embrace with all the world.  Love begets more love.  Or as Neem Karoli Baba says, “love everyone, serve everyone.”  This has been my mission.  But in Tuscany I could see that it was everyone’s mission!  Even some scientists are now labeling the heart as an organ of perception EQUAL to the brain.  Spiritual leaders have always known this and shared it.  You see the universe intended for us to have a joyous loving experience on earth.  This is the state from which we are created – It is our natural state of being.  There is nothing natural about living a life filled with stress and anxiety, having feelings of aloneness or despair. 

Two key learnings I gained from Tuscany were that sharing this awareness of universal love, just like our breath is universal, doesn’t mean that life is without some ups and downs or the unexpected.  A spiritually mature consciousness addresses these waves with compassion.  Nischala Joy Devi writes, “The word compassion is such a beautiful word, soft and gentle.  It is comprised of two parts: “com” meaning with and “passion” meaning any intense emotion either pleasurable or painful.  Compassion is a form of infinite love, in that nothing can affect it or limit it.” 

So as we ride the waves or windstorms of life if we face it from the heart of compassion we will see others as ourselves or as the Dalai Lama suggests, “Through compassion you find that all human beings are just like you” When I had my heart broken once I remember my friend David saying to me, just know that there are people all over the world same as you having this exact experience of heart break.  They too are in what he calls “the pain chamber”.  Just being reminded that I was not alone in my human experience made my time in the pain chamber less hard to bear.    

Join me in living with more compassion to face the windstorms:

“To love means never to be afraid of the windstorms of life;

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would

Never see the beauty of the carvings.”  Elisabeth Kubler Ross

Please above all else wake up to the love that surrounds you everywhere!  Listen with your heart to Rumi’s suggested self-observation: 

What happens when your soul

Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?

What happens indeed?  I love myself, I love you all, I serve with my whole heart.  Silvia

JULY 19TH, 2008:  “Satya” is the Sanskrit word for “Truth.” The word “Graha” means “holding to.” Satya Graha, commonly translated as “Truth Force,” is the name that Mahatma Gandhi gave to his movement of social change through nonviolence.  In class today we focused on the muscular action of Hugging In (or holding on to) so that we might feel more grounded in the Truth of our own experience. 

We are surrounded today more than ever with the gratification of dishonesty. We see folks on TV rewarded with money and prizes for being the most adept at lying.  This will change us as a society if we let it.  So we dedicate our yoga practice to TRUTH, Satya.  This means truth in our bodies - recognizing what they most need today, observing the truth of our breath (what does it reveal about how you are really feeling, not how you are pretending to feel), and ultimately the truth of our hearts and minds.  

The yoga is always transportable so the we apply this self-awareness to all the choices we make: in how we eat, what we buy, who we spend time with.  This is how we LIVE our truth.  And it is not always that easy to "hold onto" as the truth of of our own intentions.  So join me, take off the masks you might wear, see yourself as the amazing, gifted person you are and let the yoga of holding on to your Truth help you be MORE YOURSELF!  As Neem Karoli Baba says "Love everyone and tell the truth." Jai! Silvia