i'm off to the big apple for a while, rocking the nyc yoga journal conference & visiting the world's cutest (& most precociously stubborn) nephew. i'm demon-strating the nifty three minute egg yoga prop in the market place at the conference. it's a clever little block that looks like, um... an egg! check it out.
i'm sssooo happy to visit the himalayan institute while i'm out east. this is the
3rd year in a row that i've visited there. during my first visit, i had what may have been a shaktipat experience from swami rama, the spiritual founder of HI and all around freaky cool yogi who could stop his heart beat. i tossed & turned every night during that 14 day stay, mostly because my mind wasn't used to the stillness and tranquility that permeates the pocono mountain ashram. nina in the pharmacy suggested that, for better sleep, i should hold the middle finger of my right hand with the palm of my left hand to calm the spleen. cool trick, right? try it now.do you feel more calm?
that night i still couldn't sleep. so there i was, laying in bed, holding my finger and trying to calm my spleen at 3AM. i raised my hands over head to relax and all of a sudden i felt a huge wave of energy push it's way from my lowest belly (2nd chakra again!) through my torso, across my chest and through the top of my head. following this intense wave of energy was an indian man's very deep voice, saying, "vah!". my eyes snapped open & i said out loud, "what the F*CK was that?!" i didn't know then that the sound of the 2nd chakra is "vahng". maybe swamiji bowled a big ol' shaktipat ball up the alley of my spine, starting at my 2nd chakra and ending with a strike at the top of my skull. instead of yelling, "go left! now go right! spin. spin!", he cried, "vahng!" (which might actually be sanskrit for "fore". every word in sanksrit meas, like, 5 things). anyway, i do love HI & hope to visit it every year for as long as i can.
"It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified." Gilbert K. Chesterton
