​I can understand the jadedness some people express about the word “love.” Valentine’s Day candies inscribed with messages like “be mine” as if to love someone is to possess them like property. Pink and red fluffy hearts with doilies decorate love with a feeling of daintiness and fragility.  
 
But what about the kind of love that drives a single mother in Bangladesh to work in a sweatshop 14-16 hours everyday to try to feed her toddler who has to live with her grandparents and hardly see her mom?  Or, the love that chooses to liberate a suffering pet of 15 years from their painfully aging ailing body despite the sadness of losing their best companion? 
 
Author Sharon Salzberg likens love to water in its soft and strong qualities—so flexible it takes on the shape of whatever vessel it flows into, “yet over time, water will carve its own pathway even through rock.” And it’s a testament to our interconnection, “an incarnation of the water in the juicy fruit you ate yesterday may have fallen as rain halfway around the world last year, nourished a flower offered to a beloved in India…” and so on.  
 
As we’re surrounded by holiday decorations of “love,” I’m compelled to look into the ways it deeply connects, inspires, enlivens and heals us as a pure expression of our inner nature.  
 
Compassion is a highly regarded practice by mindfulness authors, like Pema Chodron, who teaches that it expands our capacity to love without condition and necessitates our ability to fully feel our difficult emotions.  In metta meditation, one practices sending sincere loving kindness to themselves and others in a series of stages.  

This is a valuable tool for feeling and rippling love from within, and I’m inviting you to join in.  Sat, 2/13 @5:30-6:30pm PT on Zoom, I’m facilitating a mind-body-spirit practice of Gentle Yin Yoga, breath work and Metta Meditation, by donation of whatever energy exchange you can afford.   

To access the live event, 'Metta Date' Night, RSVP at Root2RiseYoga.org/Community-Events 
 
May we feel the love that is at the core of our being and all beings, as Mother Nature exemplifies.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”― Viktor E. Frankl

This sums up one of my reasons for meditating daily. In case you don't know me that personally, I tend to be very passionate. While this passion joyfully fuels my work and play, it has also lent itself to impulsive reactivity. In a fit of rage, I once punched glass repeatedly with my bare fist until it shattered because I felt betrayed and disregarded by a partner I loved and trusted. That "rock-bottom" moment of being hijacked by my anger was over a decade ago, and I have the scar to remind me that I'm committed to self-healing, which includes letting go of my shame about it in order to transform "my karma (or, effects of my actions) into my dharma (or, spiritual path or duty)," as author Kathleen Hanagan says.

I felt nervous to post this, but it's a part of my shadow that spurred self-study and tools for self-healing. I eventually started a daily sitting meditation practice in 2013 and it continues to serve as a tool for learning to observe my thoughts and emotions without getting caught up in them that I lose myself. Meditation is my teacher of equanimity, the ability to feel wholeheartedly (not sweeping uncomfortable things under the rug) but allowing the space for discernment to choose my response.

I share this story because in our common humanity, I understand we all feel difficult emotions, especially when life challenges arise. And during physical distancing and quarantining, we might forget that we have support and are not alone. Thankfully, we're in an era of technology that lets you read this or live-stream together from different time zones. So, I'm taking the opportunity to share what I can and what's been of great service to my healing and continues to be: my meditation practice (the 7th limb of yoga).
You can find a link to a free YouTube playlist of various lengths and kinds of guided meditations, from beginning to sit for it to dealing with anger and negative self-talk here:

https://youtube.com/playlist...
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If you'd like to share the practice live, here are some Zoom events you're welcome to join:
1. Fridays 4:30pm Yoga postures, breathwork and 10 minutes meditation (weekly)
2. Sat, 2/13 at 5:30pm Metta Date Night: Yin Yoga, breathwork and a guided meditation for sending loving kindness to yourself and others
3. Thur, 2/18 at 6pm Integrative Yoga Night focusing on Nurturing Resilience
4. Sat, 2/27 at 1pm Peace through Forgiveness: Qi Gong + Integrative Yoga, co-facilitated by Sigal Mehuyas

Details + Sign Up at Root2RiseYoga.org/Community-Events
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You're welcome to invite a friend. Come to practice with a community that supports each other.

This was an intense moment, even though it was performance-based.  I had to conjure up real thoughts that elicited true raw fear, the role I was dancing.  And while dancing, shaking, running and screaming can be helpful outlets to channel stress impulses, can we stay a moment and lean into what's there--what's really alive in us--before trying to rid ourselves of it?  Because, as with every earth experience, I believe, there's value in this pause and introspection toward our awakening from the sleep of our conditioning, i.e., the should's/shouldn'ts of how to be human.  

Being vulnerable is something I've long been trained to avoid, having found myself already categorized as the weaker underdog in so many contexts growing up as a petite female immigrant with a heavy "un-American" accent in LA.  And so, in building my internal defenses to feel stronger than I was perceived, my inner sergeant developed such competitive harsh mantras, like, "You need to show you're worthy.  Do more!  Always be productive and on the go!  Don't let them beat you.  You need to prove yourself!"  I've learned that repeated thoughts become beliefs, even if they're not truth but merely tainted perception, sometimes born out of insecurities.  

But as yoga has taught, while movement is important, stillness and deep listening are gold, too.  Self-inquiry that questions my long-held beliefs has been essential to help unveil illusions I've developed as barbed wire around my heart; The barbed wire helped me feel tough but didn't give room to expand beyond the limiting familiar.  It takes courage to sit with the discomfort of emotional pain, but in doing so with love, we can deconstruct the hurtful thoughts that imprison us.  Moreover, we can realistically approach the yogic practice of pradipaksha bhavanam, or transforming negative thoughts into their opposite, without spiritual bypassing and ignoring that there's any internal disturbance altogether.  

If you're feeling called to explore this courageous inner work, it will be the focus of our Zoom workshop, Transform Obstacles into Opportunity (Tools for Clarity), Thursday, 12/17 @6-7pm PST. Learn more or request a recording of the workshop here.

What stories do you tell yourself about other's behaviors or day-to-day events?  How much of our mind's interpretations align with the truth of what we're observing?  How much of our thoughts, especially habitual ones, cause us suffering, with emotions like anger, resentment, jealousy, self-hatred, guilt, shame, etc, that we keep hidden in the dark side of our moon?  These questions were explored ages ago by wise sages, and their insights are still relevant in our common humanity.  Under the yogic belief that all is one consciousness, forgetting this as our true nature was identified as the main cause of human suffering.  In forgetting that we are not our bodies or even our minds, we succumb to other thought patterns that cause suffering: defining ourselves by our social or familial conditioning and fears, clinging to what's impermanent, resisting life's uncertainties and challenges and fearing death.  

So how do we regain clarity amid the mind's tendencies?  Cultivating self-awareness is an ongoing practice in yoga and mindfulness, and it's key to empowering our conscious choice to free ourselves from such suffering (as well as the suffering we may project onto others).  This light of clarity nurtures the courage and pure love within us to be who we truly are, without demonizing parts of ourselves or each other. Just as the moon is always full, despite our changing perceptions that it's less than, we are more than the thoughts that label or narrow us.   

This workshop session on Thursday, 12/17, is meant to plant (or water, depending on where you are in your journey) seeds of self-awareness, empower conscious choice and explore practical yoga and mindfulness techniques that help us to lead peaceful fulfilling lives, seeing beyond circumstance and allowing solutions to arise-- when we're in a state of grounded clarity and genuine self-love.  Let's work together to build unity consciousness, starting within.