Come dance with me.
Come walk the tightrope with me
And fall with me.
Dive into me.
Clear the dust,
See the light.
Whirlpools fly away,
Resistance gone,
The path clears,
Energy flies up to the eye.
Through you I see me 
And we become God.
Energy rise,
Bubble at the point.

Hearts open,
Barriers gone.
Drop in deeper and deeper.
My soul feels you,
My soul loves you.

With eclipses, blood moons, and mercury retrograde, many people are feeling a lot of shifts right now. My hope is that we all can enjoy the process and send love to the unpleasant moments. I have been playing with how to reduce the feeling of pain and learning to be okay with pain.

 
I just read an article explaining how when we experience pain, the neurons in our body send a message through the central nervous system that something wrong has been perceived. Therefore one could draw the conclusion pain generates from an ingrained belief that something bad is happening to ourselves. What if we could shift that belief and then decrease the sensation we call pain? 

If we look back through history the moral standards of society continually change. We just made gay marriages legal in U.S. We now have equal rights for men and women and people of all skin colors in America when once we thought they should be treated differently. How commonplace is...

Three magical words that can help reduce conflicts with others and within yourself:
"I don't understand."

One of the challenges that can both bog us down and create separation between people is a need for understanding and proving our understanding. A youtube video from Matt Kahn turned me onto the idea of letting go of the need to understand everything. I have experimented with the idea for the last couple weeks, and here are three results I noticed:
1. When I tried to understand I felt more deeply embedded into the karma of the situation. Letting go of trying to assess created a great sense of relaxation and freedom inside. I still wanted to make sure I learned the lessons I needed to, so I asked God to grant me the wisdom and make the changes happen within me that needed to as a result of the situation.
2. It also helped me move on from a space of processing to a space of creation. Matt Kahn said he does not even have any memory of the past except what comes by intuition of the...

As I face the challenges coming up lately, it is very easy to go directly into a negative reaction. Yet around the corner keeps coming a greater desire to love. As I let it in, I feel soothed and calmed. It helps me understand where others are coming from without getting emotionally involved. I can choose my stance in the situation with greater strength and even-mindedness.  And it reminds me of when I first discovered how helpful it is for me to love and feel my love received.

I had just spent over two months in an isolated and tense situation where I felt very disconnected, even from those right around me. I was sitting in the living room in a foreign country of a family my friend worked with. The conversation revolved around complaints about politics I knew nothing about. I had no interest in engaging. I also had a growing headache.

I did not have a headache for a long time but used to get them frequently. Headaches were always a sign something was really off in myself. When...

Up until the final days of my mother’s life, she continually expressed her wish for the family to be more connected. In December of 2012, during a weekend seclusion, I was meditating once more on my white bed before going to sleep. All of a sudden I felt love pouring out of me for my mother in a way I had never felt before, and felt she was going to die very soon. She had cancer for seven years but I was not told her present condition had a time limit.

The next morning I called my mother and booked a flight to see her in Atlanta. I approached the visit as if it could be my last time seeing her without mentioning that. I did not want to state anything to encourage her passing away any sooner if it was not meant to be. However I did talk with her about the process of dying and shared stories I have heard from people who were pronounced dead yet came back to life. I told her how those people got to visit their loved ones. She said she would like to create some sort of signal so...

Isn’t God more than a person? Doesn't God dwell within us? Isn't everything God? These are some of the questions I have been hearing from friends that I thought to address. There is much more that could be shared or elaborated on, but that is what future blogs are for. :)

On my second night at Ananda in 2004 my Yoga Teacher Training class was asked to define “God.” I furiously wrote a page about how I hate the idea of a man sitting in a chair in the heavens judging us and how religion has caused many wars. On the back of the page I wrote about how I prefer to believe in things like peace and love. We were then asked to share what we wrote. I sat quietly because I did not want to share anything negative. I listened, though, to how everyone in the group described the term “God” as concepts like peace and love. My eyes were completely opened to another way of looking at God. With a new understanding of the word God I thought there should be a new...

Do you want to express where you are or where you are going? Do you want to embody a coat from the outside in or be your naked self?

While watching a dance performance a few months ago, my friend sitting next to me asked me if they were good dancers. After having watched many professional ballet companies from around the world perform my response was, "Well, not as refined as they could be." After taking a breath, I found the following words come out of my mouth, "But then they would not be as natural in their movements." 

After noticing many of the young girls from my ballet studio transform from what they called an "ugly duckling" to a beautiful swan, I have since changed my mind on that response. Once we line up with what we are trying to become, it will become natural.

The ballet dancer who is confident in her/his step, balanced on her toes, and naturally graceful in her movement is a relief to watch. At one ballet performance I noticed myself relax in my seat when the...

A couple recent conversations within LoveWorks, a relationship training program, helped me get clear on my relationship with the term “commitment” and its connection with “freedom.” This exploration revealed some enriching ways to view commitment and freedom that I thought would be fun to share.

 
On a phone call we were discussing the idea of surrender. I asked for someone to explain to me what it is like to continue to surrender over a long period of time. I added I have only been in commitments for shorter periods of time. In response to my question, Sonika, one of the leaders of LoveWorks, suggested I reframe the question to something more uplifting like “What have I been committed to over a long period of time? What have I continually surrendered to?”

 
Right away I knew I had an answer to that question, God; seeking truth and tuning into God’s will. Many times I have gone into something feeling calm and right about it. Then...

This past weekend’s Energy Dance with Sonika Tinker and Christian Pedersen started with the video above. Right away it reminded me of the days I used to dance with a partner. I was never that trained, nor that courageous, nor quite that risque, but I am sure some of our experiences are the same.

 
You may ask, how can they do that? Well, you can’t think about it. Of course you have to focus on what you are doing but there is no space to question trust and if it is possible.

I remember I used to run and jump on my partner while we were creating pieces without either of us knowing what would happen. I never used to think about it. I would just do it and let happen what happens. In reality, I knew he was not 100% trustworthy because he was still human and had injuries. Yet I trusted the divine that somehow it would all work out. We only ever fell once and did not get injured.

 
In that process of trust and openness, I was always amazed at what physical feats I would...

The words "Go On Alone" seem to be one of the themes coming up for me recently. I was just reminded one of Swami Kriyananda’s last requests for Crystal Clarity Publishers before he passed away was to put the book A Place Called Ananda back in print with the title Go On Alone: A Struggle Between Personal Integrity and Group Conformity. That concept can have many layers. The layer I have been focusing on is how to play your part as an individual to better support the collective whole.

In choir practice the other night our leader had us close our eyes while we sang. We were all amazed to hear how much better we sounded when we had to tune in more deeply on our own instead of just following the choir conductor. While sounding like one unified sound, you could also hear each part more poignantly.

I remember when I used to perform dance pieces without music and without the ability to see all the dancers at once. We only had our breath and attunement to the group rhythm that we had...