Posted by: Circle of Grace Member, Kino MacGregor

The experience of your first yoga class feels like embarking on a mysterious adventure into a whole new terrain. As your curiosity peers into the incense-filled hallways lined with Ganesh and Shiva the open-hearted calm beckons you to travel into your own sacred inner realm. The seductive power of yoga is an addictive calling to go deeper into yourself. Once you experience firsthand how magical yoga is, all resistance becomes futile.

Regardless of your intention, when you plant the first seeds of your lotus flower, the transformative power of this ancient spiritual science works on a deep level of your being. Many people start yoga for fitness reasons only to find that yoga changes their lives in ways far beyond the physical. Even if you are not a true believer and only wish to receive the physical health benefits of yoga, merely attending a yoga class regularly will have a lasting impact on your life. The beauty of the physical yoga postures is that you do not actually need to believe in them in order for the healing power of yoga to work. Hatha yoga approaches the transformation of the human spirit from the body first and then works its way subtly through to the mind and soul.  The body itself is an avenue to the spiritual that works from the inside out. As you water the seeds of padmasana, the full blooming lotus opens in your mind and soul.

Entering the new world of yoga is the first conscious step to live a more peaceful life. The initiatory phase of yoga is your chance to powerful create your life moment to moment and live your highest potential every day. As a neophyte, it is important to remember that it is natural to feel overwhelmed when you realize just how demanding spiritual discipline really is. Rather than a recreational activity that you can keep separate from your life, yoga asks you to transform your whole life to abide by yogic principles. If at first you find yourself drawn to the physical display of power in advanced asana, you quickly see that the heart of yoga reaches far deeper than the postures themselves. Indeed the asanas are only used to purify the body, practice meditative states of unified consciousness and prepare the physical form to be a home for divinity in the world of mind and matter. The more advanced asanas are not ends in and of themselves. Instead the real work of yoga happens on the inner body and is actually the seed of your own enlightenment beginning to flower.

Like an open invitation to the spiritual path, yoga never places commandments on practitioners from above. When you start practicing yoga, the body itself becomes more sensitive and then asks you to live a more pure lifestyle. While the moral and ethic codes of a yogic lifestyle ask practitioners to be an instrument of kindness, compassion and healing in the world, the choice to live a peaceful life is meant to be a sincere feeling that each practitioners feels for themselves before acting upon it. Practicing asana makes the body more sensitive so that you feel more clearly the impact that unhealthy behavior, negative thoughts and destructive emotions have on you. Yoga never tells you what you can and cannot do. It is a path of liberation not bondage. It is a path of direct knowingness rather than rules and edicts. The practice of yoga itself opens your body and mind to desire wholly a new way of being, living and interacting with yourself and others. It is the heightening of your own awareness that facilitates the transformation. You change not because your teacher tells you to but because yoga opens the door to a new way of being that you choose to walk through with joy, ease and grace. The journey into the lotus heart of yoga is a lifelong spiritual practice that bears flowers in this life and beyond.

Faced with the seemingly insurmountable goal of ultimate enlightenment many new students doubt their ability to ever progress along the arduous path of yoga. They look at their teachers or other accomplished practitioners and wonder how they will ever get from their relative feeling of confusion to the clarity, grace and precision they see in the masterful art form of yoga. Yet small seeds do not doubt whether they will become trees. They trust the natural process of evolution and growth that takes them from seeds to sprouting seedlings to flowering, fruitful trees. With proper nutrients, care and love, the flower of your inner lotus is sure to grow to maturity in the fertile soil of your own consciousness.  Every accomplished yogi today has benefitted from the guidance of their teachers and been nurtured by the yoga community. Every yoga teacher today has also nourished their own journey with their own dedication and devotion. If you are a new students of yoga remember that you hold the key to the power of yoga. It is in your own heart that the seed of spiritual investigation must take root, watered by the flow of your own consciousness. When you embark on your own operation lotus, know that this journey is a timeless one that never ends – it only deepens. Small treasures abound when you attempt challenging postures that seem impossible that with time, dedication and guidance, evolve into possibility.

Kino Macgregor is co-owner and teacher at the Miami Life Center in Miami Beach, Florida.  For intermediate practitioners, join Kino for a 2-Week Ashtanga Course June 27- July 9, 2010. Find out more information at http://www.miamilifecenter.com/index.php?page=ashtangacourse

View her full schedule here: http://www.kinoyoga.com/schedule.html

Posted By:  Jamie Hanna, Zobha Founder and CEO

Every year my husband, two children, our dog and I make our annual pilgrimage from Northern California to Maine for the holidays.  Having grown up on the coast of Maine, it not only holds my earliest memories, it is a place we have all come to cherish for the peace it brings us and good times with family and old friends.

The year 2009 was a more-than usually busy one for me with lots of energy expended on the demands of balancing motherhood and running a growing business.  Recently, my 9-year old daughter drew a rather peculiar picture for me that depicts me inside a rocket about to launch with a caption that reads “racing mom.”  Hmmm…even she could see that some down time would do me good.

Arriving in Maine is always a delicious process for me.  There’s the 3-hour drive from Boston that slowly moves us from city life to increasingly rural towns until we arrive at our little town, fast asleep that time of year.  When we arrive at our house, we all run around with excitement, admiring the painted canvases we left to dry when we closed up last August.  We talk about all of the wonderful projects we will complete during our visit—we are off to a great start!

Over the course of our holiday vacation, Maine embraces my soul like a warm blanket.   The memories of my childhood and the freedom of “just being” when I am there pulls my feet to the earth like a magnet–I can feel the physicality of it.  I have many rituals that ground me back to my true self in this most special of places.  One of my favorites is opening the little box I keep on my bedside table there.  The box holds five stones my sister gave me one year for my birthday.  Little did she know, or maybe she did know, how I would come to treasure these stones and value the words etched into them:  vision, beauty, peace, freedom and choice.  As I feel the weight of each stone turning in my hands, I am reminded that these things are always present, everywhere for each one of us.  We only need to stop the race long enough to realize it.

It is a new year and we are happily back in Northern California and back to our routines.  Only we are all moving with lighter hearts and stronger compasses than when we left.  We know that life is good and we are grounded back to our roots, back to our selves.

I wish you all a happy, grounded 2010 and a year that brings you vision, beauty, peace, freedom and choice. After one month behind us, are you feeling grounded in your new year?