With holiday travels around the corner and many people sick right now, how are we going to keep our bodies healthy, purified, and vibrant? Here’s another idea to add to the blog post Secrets of the Happy Traveler – Part 1.

2. Energization Exercises

Once I am all checked in for my flight, I find my gate, go to the bathroom, and fill my water bottle. Then I look for a gate without a plane taking off for a while. I love it if I can find a quiet private spot by a window. Now you do not have to find privacy but then you have to be ok with people looking at you funny. Most of the time I think they just wish they had the courage to join in because what you will do is so invigorating.

Here’s three Invigorating Energization Exercises:
These were developed by the great yoga guru Paramhansa Yogananda to help people feel more energy in their body, focus their mind, and get ready for meditation. Always tense from a low to medium to high tension, relax high, medium, low, and then...

How many times do you show up at your destination when traveling needing to recover from the journey? Wouldn’t it be nice if you arrived ready to delight in your vacation, perform your best on business travel, or be present for your family and friends at your destination?

Growing up living in Maryland and having my father living in Toronto, Canada, I have been a regular traveler since age 3. I also love to travel and somehow find myself always going somewhere whether for business, pleasure, or a training program. I have been to all 50 states in the U.S. and visited 23 countries. I would have continued around the world but Mexico, Italy, and India stole my heart. In college, I even got to design an airport as one of my engineering projects.

As you can imagine, I have been collecting a lot of travel tips that help me arrive at my destination refreshed and ready. Before holiday travel begins, I thought I would share four key ideas to consider for enjoying traveling by air a lot...

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...

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...

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...

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...