Would you like to know how to align with your fullest potential? Do you want to feel a sense of freedom in every cell of your body? Would you like to have the flexibility and control to access whatever skills you need in any moment?

Me too! Actually those are the gifts that I have tapped into through my journey with movement and spirituality.

Starting before the age of five my parents put me in gymnastics programs. I liked it more than anything else and used to practice it in my backyard and create swingset circuses for the neighbors. Since the dance-like moves in the floor routines were my favorite,  as a teen I completely switched to dance.

I was in my first dance company in high school and got to choreograph for a couple of our school musicals. I majored in dance in college (alongside of Mechanical Engineering) and started teaching kids dance classes. Later I taught adult fitness dance classes and even had my own dance company briefly.

Everywhere I traveled, I...

Last week in the blog post, “Is The Bhagavad Gita Timeless?”, I made five claims to dispel myths about the Bhagavad Gita, and stated I would explain them this week. Maybe you were patiently or anxiously waiting for that explanation. And here we have it!

Each claim depends on how you define the terms and relate to the statements. I believe the intention behind the Bhagavad Gita is to lay a supportive foundation that can be applied to any path and any life. Yet sometimes it felt to me as if it was getting too detailed with too much definition on how life “should” be. As I kept reading I would hit a statement that presented the underlying message I was feeling thus wiping away what was previously stated and taking things up a notch in understanding. These five statements are what I find helpful to focus on for today’s awakened consciousness.

First claim: There is no right and wrong.

 
Well, actually, there may be, but not in the way you think. What I...

For the past week the Bhagavad Gita in the New Age study group participants have been asking ourselves, “If I had a fully expanded awareness, how would it change this moment right now?”

Last week we were discussing the Tree of Life and how it is intended to help us understand the relationship between our physical world and what is beyond it.

 
I just finished reading the book Dying to Be Me by Anita Moorjani. She was in a coma and nearly declared dead when she had what some would call a near death experience. In that state she felt a more expanded awareness. She felt connected and one with all beings and all objects. Negative emotions and conflicts did not exist and only unconditional love was felt. Definitions and judgements of how life should be disappeared. Ideologies can create too narrow a path to stay open to the realm of the infinite.

With Anita’s and the Bhagavad Gita’s lessons in mind, we started the exploration for our own selves. I have...

Through meditating consistently and deeply over time, many friends and I have found more peace within ourselves and our interactions with others. Yet emotional stirrings come up, and probably will until we become fully enlightened. When I meditate with full surrender in that moment of intensity, I often forget what was bothering me by the end of the meditation. However, sometimes the feelings do not go away or they come up again. In those repeated situations I wonder if God wants us to play out the karma through our emotional and human life. Either way, this past weekend in a program called The Gift of Conflict my eyes were opened up to a clear understanding of other tools and knowledge to utilize to overcome our agitations.

The first premise to start with is that your outer world reflects your inner world. You have probably heard the phrase "like attracts like." Maybe you heard the idea that we manifest or magnetize to ourselves whatever we think in our head or vibrate in our...

After going to a musical the other night, I was reminded of the transformational opening I felt from going to a dance concert a few months ago. A dance company by one of my past dance teachers was performing in San Francisco. I had respected this instructor so much that I did not feel it was necessary to do any research on what I was getting into when I bought a ticket for this show.

Living the quiet meditative village life in the hills of the Sierra Nevadas in California, just a trip to San Francisco felt like a blur of energy swarming around me. As I walked into the lobby of the dance theater I was asked, "Do you want to dance?" My answer was enthusiastically, "Of course!" They were teaching people a version of an electric slide in funk style.

The announcer came out at the beginning of the performance and proclaimed that all audience members were required to shout during the presentation. The first dancer entered the stage with huge platform shoes, bright colored clothes, and a...

This journey displayed the universality of all paths to God but also my love for the path laid out by my Guru Paramhansa Yogananda and his disciple Swami Kriyananda. I was being sent to Los Angeles to help at the Conscious Life Expo Feb 11-13, 2011. It also felt like a good time after being gone for two years to return to Santa Barbara to thank the spiritual teachers I had studied with during the four years I lived there.

Right away upon arriving in Los Angeles, or what some people call Lala Land, I went straight to the Conscious Life Expo. With the Ananda LA staff, I entered through the beautiful hotel lobby being greeted by the sound of a wonderful violinist and an Egyptian queen and king on stilts. The beauty of this welcome was a little hidden behind the many people chit chatting, the extra chairs strewn around, and the flyers completely covering the pretty marble counter tops.

We made our way past even more flyers and people to our booth with a huge photo of Paramhansa...

Last June I initiated a project to film short video clips of Swami Kriyananda while he was at Ananda Village, promoting a few of his books from Crystal Clarity Publishers.

This project kept getting postponed, possibly so I could learn a few lessons along the way. The original shooting date was postponed due to the uncertainty of Swami’s health. We left the new date open-ended to see how Swami would feel each day.

Every morning I awoke and wondered if this was going to be the day. Nothing happened. Then Swami moved to Los Angeles in August 2010, and it was agreed they could do the filming of the video clips in LA without me being present. In my mind I let go of doing the project.

While attending a book marketing convention in Fall of 2010, I found out that short video clips are a cutting edge medium to market books. This convention lit a fire under me. Since no one in LA had as yet filmed the video clips, I contacted Swami and got a concrete date set for the video shoot.

I...

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the book Eat, Pray, Love, did not have to leave Italy to find “eat,”” pray,” and “love.” As we all know, Italy is known for its spectacular sumptuous food. I especially love the variety of healthy food at the Ananda Assisi retreat center. Living at a spiritual retreat center makes it very easy to fulfill the “pray.” Being in a new relationship, I can more easily feel my heart filled with love. Italy is probably one of the most romanticized countries to dream of visiting. However, I did not write this blog to talk about Italy. Instead, I would like to share a couple more profound realizations related to “eat, pray, love.”

“Eat, pray, love” does not need to be mutually exclusive. When Ananda Assisi opened, they were trying to figure out how to create a diet that suited the Italian appetite and followed Paramhansa Yogananda’s dietary suggestions. Upon asking Swami...