The Holiday Yoga class was not what I expected which is what made it so awesome. I realized from now on it will be called a Winter Solstice celebration. (That way I will have more creative freedom, besides just playing Holiday music) When I practiced Yoga, the day before the class, to the music I had selected, I realized it was going to be too difficult to find the breath to the traditional Christmas song. Last year when I taught the Holiday Yoga class I was not as connected to the breath in my Yoga practice as I am now. The Friday before this year's Holiday Yoga class, I realized I would need to find some alternative music for class. I found some really awesome and beautiful Celtic Christmas songs which worked beautifully, from an album called Inner Splendor. Much of it was instrumental and then I played the occasional song here or there with lyrics in it, like Joy to the World, Silent Night, Silver Bells, etc. Of course, my favorite song of the season is My Grown-Up Christmas List by Michael Buble. Definitely one to download...

So, what made this year's class especially different? The primal screaming. I didn't know it would happen, didn't expect it at all. I'm learning the best thing I can do is be authentic with the people who are in class with me. The days prior to the Holiday class, there was such a heaviness and tension in the air, not with just myself, but it seemed with everyone around me. On Saturday, although I was looking forward to class, the feeling in the air didn't feel any better. In the hours before class, I started having many awarenesses and revelations about this time of year. In preparing for the class I found out practically every culture in the world has some kind of Winter Solstice celebration. Obviously in the West, it is Christmas.

"Christmas or Christ's Mass is one of the most popular Christian celebrations as well as one of the most globally recognized midwinter celebrations. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of the Christian Deity God Incarnate or Messiah, Jesus Christ. The birth is observed on December 25, which was the Roman winter solstice upon establishment of the Julian Calendar. [12] Christian churches recognized folk elements of the festival in various cultures within the past several hundred years, allowing much of the folklore and traditions of local pagan festivals to be appropriated. So today, the old festivals such as Jul, Коледа and Karácsony, are still celebrated in many parts of Europe, but the Christian Nativity is now often representational as the meaning behind the holiday. This is why Yule and Christmas are considered interchangeable in Anglo–Christendom. Universal activities include feasting, Midnight Masses and singing Christmas carols about the Nativity. Good deeds and gift giving in the tradition of St. Nicholas by not admitting to being the actual gift giver is also observed by some countries. Many observe the holiday for twelve days leading up to the Epiphany." -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice

When I arrived at class on Saturday it felt heavy. Like people were there for a Christmas Yoga class but they didn't know why. Is doing Yoga to Christmas music really going to put me in the Spirit? Because I'm definitely not feeling the
Spirit right now. Those are some of the feelings and thoughts I sensed in the air. So, I began the class talking about this powerful time of transformation and change we are in known as the changing of the seasons. However, this change, in particular, is more significant than any other seasonal shift we make throughout the year. The Winter Solstice is the beginning of a new Solar Year. That is HUGE. Our man made calendar is really messed up and not in rhythm with the natural flow of things. And, in our culture, we are certainly not encouraged to honor the natural rhythms, but to adjust ourselves to man's calendar...screw that.

Let's take this into consideration. First of all, what a year it has been. It's almost unimaginable all we've been through and grown through, individually and collectively. If you just pause for a moment and reflect back, you will find it's almost incomprehensible. Let yourself just be with that for some time. Maybe take a break from reading this post, fix yourself a cup of tea, and just close your eyes and breathe into that awareness for several minutes...it's immense...from a new President, to everything else that has gone on along the way, with one of the greatest transformations that has happened in the history of the world, or at least our country...a black person as the leader of the free world. This is something that needed to happen...no matter what your political beliefs...we needed to believe that real change is possible if we commit our hearts and minds to it. We can be the change we wish to see in the world, as Gandhi said, and we can inspire others to join us in that vision, just as Gandhi did, and so many others have done, as well. We can each make a difference in our own way...and we are lucky to have a President who reminds us of that everyday. There may be things we disagree with, but the future is brighter because of the hope we have in our hearts now. Hope that tomorrow can be better, if we choose better today, each of us, in our own seemingly insignificant and yet powerfully profound ways.

I have been stretched to keep an open heart in times when I've felt so hurt by others, and yet, I know that to keep an open heart is the only way. Or, as Deva Premal says, love is the only prayer. We must love, it is the only hope we have if we want to see the world around us transform into a better place, one breath at a time. We must love our neighbor as we love our self. We have witnessed what the other way causes, and continues to cause, for millennium. If we want the world around us to change, we must learn to love each other as we love our self, even our enemies, as Yogananda would say, it is the only hope we have, to let the resistance from our own heart melt away, even when it's uncomfortable, even when we are afraid of getting hurt. As Neal Donald Walsch would say, you've gotta sing like you aren't getting paid and love like you can't get hurt. Do we need to allow ourselves space, at times, to heal and evolve into a healthier place with those around us? Yes. But, in that space, we must keep our hearts open to the evolution, transformation and healing of love. Love heals, and love is our only hope. If each one of us could love the person we are most afraid to love, or feel most uncomfortable or have the most resistance to loving, in whatever way we are guided to, the world would be a better place. Everything in it's own time. Sometimes we must let go to find a better, truer way to love. As Deva Premal also says, love is space.

So, in preparing for the Holiday Yoga class, it occurred to me we have been moving through the great release, the great metamorphosis, the great death throughout the Fall Season. Some part of our self must die, so we can be reborn into a better relationship with everyone and everything around us. In Yoga, we might consider this better relationship is really born from the breath. As Rod Stryker would say, if we want anything in our life to change for the better, the first thing to change is our relationship with our own breath. This is why Rod Stryker always teaches a specific breathing process in his classes. This past Fall, he taught us the 1:2 breath. Inhale to a count of 4, exhale to a count of 8. After practicing this for several months, my breath has deepened with my inhale and exhale. But, 4 and 8 is a good place to begin for most of us. So, I have been practicing this breathing and noticing anytime my breath is irregular, ruffled, disturbed, etc. It turns out, it has been tremendously disturbed over the past year and a half. I would consider this is mostly because of my father's illness and passing away, some part of my subconscious knew, although I didn't want to admit it, but some part of me knew my dad was leaving. We never want to see it, but it is there before us if we are not afraid to look. I was too afraid to see the Truth. Which is understandable. I was also in a very stressful relationship. We were not able to connect in an authentic way with one another, in other words, we were not able to be in the breath/love (perhaps because of fears/tensions) with one another completely, and so I'm sure this had an affect on my breath, as well. I consider these disturbances/tensions in my breath were there long before these experiences occurred, perhaps since I was first born into the world, and through the practice of Yoga and the poses, these places of tension, or these holding patterns in the breath have been brought to the surface to be released and healed. Fears, hurts, tensions, anxieties, all of which have been suppressed for a long time, and have caused my heart to be constricted in some way, were brought to the surface through my practice and life experiences to be healed and released. To love another is to be in the breath with another. (The only way we can do that is to fully love and accept another person as they are, to not judge or analyze them because they are not what we think they need to be.) All of these hurts and the suffering I have gone through, have actually opened my heart to a deeper connection to my breath and the spirit, and the spirit, or, breath, of everyone I'm connected to...so in our suffering is actually our salvation or healing. Tonight in class I was saying that all of the people in our life are like Yoga poses. Some we like, some we don't. But, all are teachers and all are loving us into a better alignment with our self and everyone, if we simply surrender our will and open our hearts to loving in a better way...not the way we think it needs to look or be, but the way we are guided to love. We may not always get what we want...but we will get what we need. Which is love, all ways, as Shiva would say. All of love is an evolution, with our neighbor and everyone else we are connected to...may our hearts be open to loving, and may we exhale from our heart with every breath we breathe. May we be the best lovers we can be to our friends, our neighbors, our partners, our teachers and everyone in between. May our hearts be an outpouring of Divine Love and Light and may we realize the sacred opportunity it is to share this love and light with everyone we meet and know, even those we have felt hurt by in the past. May our hearts know healing, compassion and forgiveness with all of those we have known along the way.

So, I guess what I could say is we were all feeling a significant transformation and release happening, and Saturday, for many of us, was the height of that emotional intensity we've been feeling. It was the time when all of us came together to be joyous, and yet, what we were really feeling was disgruntled and angry. Pissed off at what? You name it, just feeling the tensions of the world, and needing a way to release it. I had forgotten, most recently, that my first Yoga teacher would encourage us to let it out, scream, moan, groan, shout, whatever needed to happen to feel to heal. During the first part of the class we flowed along to peaceful Christmas music, but as the emotional intensity built up in the room and I could feel the tension in people's hearts and minds, I suggested we start screaming. I didn't even know it was called primal screaming. I just said, think about it, what baby do you know that was born into the world happy? Aside from supposedly one or two saints, most babies come into the world screaming their heads off. They are pissed. I said, we are all being birthed into a new Solar Year, a time of greater Light and Consciousness. It's like we are being born from the darkness to the Light, yet again. Coming out of the womb and into the Light hurt like hell. It wasn't fun, and was somewhat painful, for most of us, obviously. Kicking and screaming we came into the world. What a picture. But, we had to let it out to be able to breathe. So, we breathed that first breath when we were born and then WAAAAAAAAAAAA, for a while, and then, we were able to find our breath and breathe peacefully.

We are each going through this rebirth in our own way. I would like to say we have made it through the most intense part. And, I really believe for those of us who screamed on Saturday, it helped a lot. I said to the class, whatever you are angry at, let it out. If it's a person, if it's the President, if it's another country, if it's war...whatever it is...let it out. Scream so God can hear you. But, instead of sending anger to that place, send Light. Scream so that God can't help but hear you. So many saints have talked about how when they first started on the spiritual path, they would talk all peacefully to God. Even Yogananda talks about this. Then, somewhere along the way they would start being authentic with God. Yelling at him, arguing with him. God wants us to be real with him. Most of us take our anger or emotions out on other people, when what we should be doing is yelling our frustrations to God. He wants us to relate to Him like we would any other human being...BE REAL...BE HUMAN...FEEL. Let Him know you feel. Scream your head off...yell at him in the car...whatever you need to do to let it out. But, let it out in a constructive way. Yell that He send His Light/Love to the places that need it. Most Yoga classes have become way to passive. What we need more than ever is to feel our emotions...the energy in motion that's moving through us. These experiences we are moving through, feeling and healing from. Lots of Yoga classes don't encourage you to let it out. That's why I'm so grateful for my first teacher who taught me to be real. She was and is such an inspiration. I'm looking forward to going back to practicing with her some for a while. It's been a while and whenever I go there it's like returning hOMe. Suze Curtis is awesome and amazing...a true warrior Goddess.

So, we all yelled and screamed. After class, my friend told me she would go to a Yoga class in L.A. a lot where the first ten minutes of class was all ecstatic dance and primal screaming. So, I didn't know we were primal screaming, but that's what we were doing. And, I'm realizing it's necessary and important. Think about it, the first thing we ever did when we came into the world, to breathe through this great transformation we had gone through was SCREAM. Whether you know it or not, and I'm guessing you know it, you are going through one now. If you haven't screamed yet...SCREAM...let it out. Don't hold it in...be uninhibited with your own Self. Do it...now.

You will see yelling and screaming at God, (not another person) or to feel what you need to feel is healing. I know sometimes we do take our anger out on others, but ideally this would happen less and less. The most powerful thing we can do when someone is yelling at us is to not take it personally. It is always their stuff. If we have to be exposed to anger, the best thing to do is to just be an open channel of love, compassion and forgiveness, so that anger can flow right back to them and they can deal with whatever it is they need to deal with in themselves. If we make them wrong for feeling what they need to feel, we make ourselves wrong. Hold the space for others to feel around you, and yet, be wise, in how you choose to connect to others. If the dynamic of a certain relationship is not healthy, then just like a Yoga pose, we must surrender our will of what we think the relationship should look like, to what the Highest alignment of that relationship is meant to be. It's a breath by breath journey. One day at a time. There is no exact answer...there is only letting go and surrendering to the will one breath at at time...and being in that question...how does it need to be so it is best for every ONE and facilitates the greatest healing possible for all.

Here's a long excerpt from one of my favorite books, It's Here Now Are You? by Bhagavan Das.

The peace that comes from letting go and surrendering is incredible. Again and again it keeps coming back to letting go of our own will to have a plan about where we're going and a goal. It seems that we spontaneously align the Plan of God for us. I think that's the whole "follow your bliss" thing. It's really Thy will be done, not mine, Jesus said it all. Love the Lord with all your heart and soul, and your neighbor as yourself. That's it. There is no one out there but us. And if we can just put God first, Om first-offer the food up, offer the day up, become conscious the first moment you wake up, think of God-then there is peace.

Surrender to yourself as being God. Go through the great Christian blasphemy-I am God. What we've lost is ourselves. During the process of doing what needs to be done in the moment, each thing becomes a stepping stone to the next thing. But there needs to be courage because it's a creative process. You can sit there with your paints looking at the white piece of paper forever to get a good idea. Or you can just let your hand sweep into the paint and start to feel what's going to come forth.

Initiation is necessary. It's necessary to have a Guru in the form of a human being whom you can see and feel. There is a certain sense of feeling that's important to be aware of and trust.

The birth experience is profoundly spiritual, coming from the womb of the mother and connecting with her. As we are on that nipple looking up into the luminosity of our mother's eyes, that is God. We are part of the circle of devotion. It sets the feeling tone for the spiritual journey of our lives.

Only through spiritual practice can we experience eternity so that we are devouring the world and devouring time rather than the other way around.

Compassion means being able to speak to all people, wherever their consciousness is, with no judgments about them; simply be there with them. That's compassion. No judgment. Just being there. That's being a real spiritual friend to the world.

Do you want to surrender to the divine plan, or are you going to try to force your own plan? There's a real problem when you have a plan. When you have a plan, Divine Mother breaks into your room and steals your money. I planned on becoming rich and famous, so Ram Dass introduced me to Jimi Hendrix's manager, Michael Jeffries. He loved my voice, loved my art. He was going to make me a star, yet two weeks after we had made our plan Michael died in an airplane crash. Mother was the pilot. She's always at the controls. If I'd become a star, I'd probably be dead from drugs by now and never would have come back to the Mother. If you keep falling into her arms, you'll become tired of all your exteranl desires. She alone can fulfill your desires.

It's really time we took Jesus off the cross and got into the true meaning of the resurrection. The resurrection is our own consciousness within our hearts, here and now. The divine dwells within us, it is us. It is closer to us than our eyeball, which we can't even see because we are seeing out of it.

Tantra brings it together, which is the bindu. The female is within the male, and the male energy is in the female, and we project them outward and constantly become in a state of craziness. Everyone is mad and crazy, pretending they're not. Like Ramakrishna said, "You're mad for the world, you're mad over lust and money and power and stuff. Or are you mad for God?" Pick your madness.

It always comes back to just letting go with love. Just put love into it, whatever it is, and if you can't put love into it, don't do it. If you do it without love it doesn't have any power. It gets down to that. You've got to get the earth magic going. You've got to get the earth magic going. You've got to get the elemental earth mother backing your play. Then you get the power of the spot where you are. You acknowledge the spot. You sit in your house and say, "Thank you Mother for this spot. Thank you for this house. Thank you for my bed. Thank you for my chair. Thank you for my life. Thank you for you." This is the way. It's simple, it's the way of the child. If you become a little child, you shall enter the kingdom of heaven. That's really what it is. It's finding that childlike, spontaneous connection to the feeling tone, without putting a label on it. Just let it be, like raw sensations, experience the freshness of feeling. Just celebrate the body instead of all the trips we have about bodies.

We are love. Start really letting go, being in your bodies, and seeing the divine in the body. Tantra is worshiping the body as the divine. Not just your body, all bodies. Everyone's it. That feeling that every time we see someone, we really are looking at the Divine Mother; and she will play within their eyes for you.

Get into the breath. The breath is the seat that we sit on. It is something we can get hold of.

If you can get that atmosphere of devotion going, then the spiritual path is fun and exciting. You won't even have to try, it will no longer be work but a part of your everyday life- a part of every moment. Everything is just what it is. It can be as light or as heavy as we want to make it moment to moment. We get to choose each moment and how we want to live in it. How do you want it? It's the biggest deal of all, and yet it's not a big deal. It's just life and death. The joy in the enlightened beings I've been around is just incredible. It seems like this is what we all want-to be happy. You're going to be a lot happier if you don't have a plan. Because then, magical things can happen. You're open to people coming up to you because you know that everyone is God, so God's going to come up to you, give you a message, bring light to you, and inspire you. This is what the dakinis are. It's the external world awakening us. They circle around us when we become the upright stone, when we become still ouf of devotion. We show our love by stillness, by being heartfelt, by just getting into a divine mood. The divine mood is everything. Without the divine mood, none of this can happen. I think that's what's missing in the New Age. There's not a lot of divine mood going on. There's only a lot of hustle going on, more buying and selling.

Life is a journey to death, a journey home. Let go of the fear-Kali wants the blood of our heart. She is the pump of our heart, she is the breath, the power of the breath, the moment of the life energy. She's devouring the blood as it flows through us. Everything is that. So get generous, that's what it amounts to-real generosity of your life. It isn't your life, it's Her life. We are living Her. She's deeply compassionate and she is wisdom. We live in duality, yet her wisdom is nondual. So start from where you are, start with desire. If you're a man and you have a lot of lust, and lust is your problem, she's a beautiful young girl. Make God a beautiful naked girl, and go fot it. Guess what? God will come to you as a beautiful young naked girl and take you right through lust into the love. That's been my experience.

First you learn to concentrate. The easiest thing to concentrate on is music, sound. You get one-pointed. Then spontanteously, through your love, that will lead you into meditaiton. It's a gift, a state of grace. Meditation comes. I don't sit to meditate, I sit to love. I'm hopping in bed with the Divine Mother. Let's play Ma! Let's have fun! How are you? What's going on? You've got to get really simple with it.

Take it out of the heavy trip and make it into a light trip. Let the light be God for you. When I offer the flower to Ma, I put the flower down and step back; I look at the light coming off the edge of the flower, a scene so beautiful it explodes my mind in ecstasy. It's just the flower, but it's a flower given with love. So she accepts it and then the boon she gives it the light on the edge of the petals. I will come in that flower for you because you love me. Love is enough. Presence is enough. Presence is all that we have and all tha twe are. So let's just experience the presence and let ourselves have it. That's all it is. All these spiritual practices, sadhanas, disciplines, ashrams, and chanting is for purification so we can drop into that childlike state of wonder and surrender to existence.

How much do you want? How much freedom, how much liberation do you want? How much God do you want? Most people want about 2 percent. Maybe 1 percent. It's always going to be the few who really want to go all the way. But we're all going all the way anyway, whether we want to or not, because we're all really Here.

How to get here? How to show up for life? That's what it's all about. You have to be present to win. In one mind moment, it's gone. To be able to catch the wind, to be able to have the birds land in your hair, you have to be very still. When the birds chirp on top of your head, it's a great, blissful experience. It's being one with nature. We are the trees and we are the earth and we are the fire and the water and the air. We are all of this.

To see ourselves in others-all others-and to be ourselves in others until there are no others is what it's all about. There is only love, only One." -It's Here Now Are You? by Bhagavan Das

Here's one more thing I want to share with you. A poem by Hafiz called Rewards For Clear Thinking.

Rewards For Clear Thinking

Think about this for a second:

God (being God), having Infinite Knowledge,
Not only knew your every thought and action
Your life would ever experience

(Even before you were born)

But He also, being the Divine Creator,
Has etched every moment of your existence
With His own hand

With the precision and care
No artist ever could.

Think about this for a moment:

I have never heard a bird or the sun
Ever say to God,
I am sorry.

There seems to be a great reward
For clear thinking:
All existence is a pawn in the Friend's hands.

Look, one gets wings and gifts to the world
Music each morning:
One turns into such an extraordinary light
He actually becomes a sustainer of a whole planet.

One makes a thousand moons go mad with love
And blush all night.

When one can surrender the illusion, the crutch, of
Free will,

Though still live-for the benefit of others-
The highest of moral
Codes.

Quite a post, but it's been quite a year. Merry Christmas. May the Christ-consciousness be resurrected in our hearts and minds with every breath we breath. Jai guru!

Also, you've got to check out this video...spectacular. ;)
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