The Human Experience – 40 Days Practice

I am a spiritual being having a human experience In times like these, when the human experience is getting real and downright scary, having a spiritual practice feels essential to me. I have recently committed to a 40-days practice of a certain meditation. These are a challenge at any time, but while taking care of my baby it feels next to impossible!  Still, I’m approximately half way through and going strong. 40 days can seem like a long time  in any case. Whatever it is you choose to do for forty days-- be it a meditation, a Kriya, doing a sketch everyday, taking a cold shower, waking up at 5 am,---it will take you on a ride! There will be times when you look forward to it. Some days are blissful. Other …

Choosing MySelf – A Journey to Know My Needs

I never knew what it meant to choose mySelf. Since childhood, I was so used to pleasing everybody, that I would never think consciously about my own desires and needs. “Consciously” - is an important word.   Of course I had desires and needs -just like everybody else - only I had become an expert in repressing them and putting them off. I remember how proud I was as a child to be able “to stand on my own.” I loved it when people praised me for how “mature” I was for my age, and how proficient I was at almost everything I started. I almost looked forward to talk to everybody about all the wonderful things I had achieved by myself. I wanted to be an easy child for my parents. …

Going Inward-Scanning our Bodies for Sensations

What are body sensations?  Are they useful? I am not taking about our five senses, which connect us to the outside world. I am talking about those body sensations that happen within us.  Being hungry is one of them. We all know what to do about that. But what kind of sensations do we feel when, let’s say, we sense that we are in danger? Or, when we face the unknown? Or when we are in the presence of someone we really like? More to the point, what do we sense from our body when we stop reading or working, and scan the body? Or when a beloved person says something that appears to hurt us? The fact is, that most of us simply don't stop and don’t scan our body for …

Focus Inward to Live an Intentional Life

For many Yogis, the best time to focus inward is in the early morning, when we engage in Sadhana, a daily spiritual practice. Sadhana has changed my life beyond my wildest dreams. I did not really “dream,” nor did I “make plans” or consciously ask myself: “what my life should look like?” Professionally, I have always been strongly guided by my values, but personally I lacked vision as to how, where and with whom I wanted to live. In the past, life was something that just kind of happened to me. Fast forward many years, I now live intentionally. To do that I need to focus inward on a regular basis during Sadhana. What are some things we can do in order to focus inward? Ask yourself how you feel about …

Why to Still Focus Inward in January

January has rolled around and if you are living on the northern hemisphere like me, you might become a little impatient for the light and energy  to return. I am usually in good spirits from late October, where winter in Switzerland begins, to the end of January, and then my motivation starts to crumble, for I know it will be a good two more months until the first signs of spring become noticeable. So winter is looooong. And for the longest time I have struggled with making the big moves in January. It was a fresh year, I had formed some resolutions, I was inspired: why was it so hard to get into gear? The year has not started yet Well, it is simple: The year does not really "start" before the …

2020: Re-Committing to Yourself

The New Year has come and gone and with it the time to reflect and making some plans for the future. Personally, I take it slow. The reason is my infant daughter of 6 months. As a new mummy, there is not much wriggling room for additional disciplines, reading 100 books or extended gym time. For the most part, I am grateful when I get to do my Sadhana (spiritual morning practice) a few times a week now. At least I’m going to take a cold shower, even if it is midday and not followed by a yoga practice. After a sleepless night - I’m breastfeeding and doing elimination communication with my baby - a cold shower will make you feel better. Also, in all other cases, a cold shower …

Who Are You and Who Am I?

I love to travel, partly because I discover new facets of myself when I encounter different environments and communities. In Ecuador I feel part of a loving family, in Chile I laugh more, in China I experience an ancient familiarity and reverence, in India my heart spills open with devotion. Travel has helped me realize how much we create one another by how we treat each other. To a certain degree, we become the projection that others have of us, and others become who we make them. The question becomes, who are you and who am I without these projections? Because I do a lot of teaching, people project "teacher" onto me. If I am a teacher, then those who learn from me are students. Are we not all teachers and …

How Am I Blocking Joy?

We block ourselves from experiencing joy when we suppress other emotions, such as anger, fear and sadness. In this short conversation which took place during a Beyond Addiction program, Dr. Gabor Maté invites us to create space to experience our emotions as they are. Allow for whatever is there, accept it, and be curious about it in a compassionate way. Gabor: Welcome to the real world. The world is not out there to support your joy. It’s actually there to sell you stuff so that you can feel you have joy temporarily. A: Distract us. Gabor: Yes, exactly. You know and it’s not there to support the growing part of you. It’s there to exploit the hurt, helpless part of you. So it is natural that it is hard out there. But it …

How Are You Going to Show Up?

  I am not going to live to see the day that the system is going to change fundamentally. I am not. The reason that I am not going to live to see that day is because a certain social system will beget a certain kind of ideology, and that ideology will beget a certain kind of medical system, a certain kind of mental health system, a certain kind of social work system, a certain kind of prison system, and all of that. The system itself generates a certain way of looking at human life that is short of reality. If we lived in a social system that valued human life, would we be destroying the environment? Would we be doing so many things that we do? I'm not trying to be negative. I just want …

Healing Trauma

Trauma affects each of us in some way. Either we’ve experienced it firsthand, or have been impacted by the traumatic history of others. Trauma is not just about the things that happened to us that should not have happened. These might include physical, sexual or emotional abuse; witnessing violence in the home; substance abuse or mental illness in family members; parental separation or divorce; a family member being imprisoned; a natural disaster or serious accident. Trauma also includes what didn’t happen to us that should have happened. We may have been neglected physically or emotionally because our parents were unavailable, preoccupied, or chronically stressed. We may have missed out on childhood experiences because we were expected to shoulder too much responsibility at a young age. Childhood trauma is the root of much mental …