I'm so looking forward to this evening. I will be attending a Krishna Das concert at the Granada in Dallas. I'm also excited because Krishna Das is allowing me to use some of his music on my DVD which will be released soon. I am a huge fan of his music and of him.

Also, this weekend I will be attending a 2 day Yoga Workshop with Master Yogi, John Friend. He has developed and teaches a style of Yoga called Anusara, or "flowing with the heart." The more I've learned about him, the more I've become passionate aobut his teachings and have wanted to study with him. So, I'll be driving down to Austin this Saturday and staying at The Crossings, another place I've wanted to go to for quite some time.

I look forward to sharing with you about my experiences.

Have a bliss filled day!Read more

Main Entry: dis·ap·point
Pronunciation: "di-s&-'point
Function: verb
transitive senses : to fail to meet the expectation or hope of

Yoga teaches us to practice non-attachemnet to life's outcomes. If we remain unattached, then we will be free from emotional struggle when things aren't working out "our way." This is a great concept and idea to put to practice, yet the reality is we are human and we become emotionally invested and involved in all kinds of situations. I have had a few situations over the past few years where I've trusted things to work out a certain way, and when they look like they aren't going the way I would like, or really aren't working out "my way", I become upset, disappointed, frustrated, down, and often angry. I've often held onto these emotions of disappointment for moments, days, weeks and even months, allowing them to affect every aspect of my life...

One of the most painful expereiences of disappointment I know is the times when I've trusted someone's word, and they do not follow through on their promise. This is heart-wrenching for me. It is my intention to be a person of my word, and though I sometimes fall aside, when I break my word, I've learned the only way to clean it up and to begin to build a new foundation of trust is to acknowledge my broken word creating a new commitment to keeping my word with myself and the person I may have broken it to... (Sometimes breaking our word doesn't always involve another person, but the commitments we make and break to ourself, as well.)

I have spent months of leadership training practicing this very principle of recognizing the power of my word, keeping my word and being in integrity with it. I've learned this is the only way life can work. And that this is the first building block of existence to being in integrity with ourselves and the Unverse/God within us and all around us.

"In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God" (John 1:1).

There are many ways to interpret this passage. It speaks many things to me, yet one thing it most definitely says is that all of life exists upon the word. Our word is the most living, breathing force of our existence and all of creation. When we are aligned with our word, we have the ability to create and manifest through that which we speak, when we are out of integrity with it, all of our life is broken down.

For a long time I had a commitment with myself to keep a journal. Time and time again I would make this commitment and time and time again I would break it. I am sharing with you today, one of the most powerful things I've done recently in my life is begin this blog. It is such an incredible force in my life to have the ability to write through and process my experiences. Just this morning I woke up feeling let down and disappointed by someone I know profesionally. So, I decided I would write an e-mail expressing my disappointment in the situation to this person. Writing in general is so healing. I never sent the e-mail and may or may not, but whether I do or don't, writing down my thoughts has helped me to let go of the anger, frustration and upset and open up again to the joy that's present right now in this moment.

As we awaken to the Spring and to new beginnings, are there commitments you've made to yourself or another that are broken in this moment? What would it be like if we "Spring Cleaned Up" any broken agreements with ourselves and others and got recommitted to keeping our word and being in integrity with it, so we can know the positive power of Good that exists within each and every one of us and what's possible when we align ourselves with this Force of Truthfulness in our life.

Namaste!Read more

This incredible speach by Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, was passed along to me by my Yoga teacher, Suze Curtis. She has been such an incredible force in my life over the past 5 years and I am so grateful to have crossed paths with her. This piece is a bit long, but well worth the time. Enjoy...

Do what you love

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories...

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.


I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.

Authors Details: This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University.

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I am a notorious planner. I like to think of myself as being someone who "goes with the flow" but in reality, when I feel like I don't have a plan or a clear vision of what the next step is, I get really scared. In this fear of the unknown, all of my limiting beliefs come to the surface and I feel inadequate and like I'm not and never going to be "good enough."

The good thing is I'm beginning to realize this pattern of freaking out everytime the plan looks like it's turning out or is turning out differently than I "think" it should. Today as I was teaching Yoga, I was recalling what it was like for us when we were children. How the whole world and all of life was a Great Unknown. How every day we would ask questions about things, what they were, their meaning, etc. Our parents were the source of all of our guidance and we trusted all of their answers...

Along the way we began to acquire knowledge, some of it from our parents, some from our schooling, some from peers, personal experiences, etc. From this knowledge we began to piece together how life "should be." We began making plans for our life in accordance with our Master Plan or overall vision. And at some point, we lost the flow and began forcing our life to be the way we think it should. I still do this all the time, yet everytime I begin to engage in the forcing again, the Universe seems to have a beautiful and often challenging lesson for me to learn about non-attachment, letting go, surrendering to what is and trusting in the flow of my life. When the plan isn't working out "my way" I feel afraid. What am I going to do? I'll often get down, depressed sometimes angry before I come to the place of surrender, which in Yoga is called Isvara-Pranidhana or Surrender to God's Will.

When I come into surrender and let go of my fear, doubt and worry, the awakening is often one of learning to Trust, Be, Breathe and Live at Ease with the miraculous Flow of Life, living each moment to the fullest as it unfolds.

The Universe certainly does work in mysterious ways, it amazes me everytime. Today when I was in class teaching and feeling afraid of the unknown, one of the limiting thoughts I had was "I've been doing this for five years, I can't believe I've been teaching that long, the time has gone so fast and this is all I've done?"

Then, I get home from class and check my e-mail and I have an e-mail from a student who writes:
"I really enjoy your classes and what you have to say each time!! Can’t believe you have only been doing this for 5 years!!!"

And, the Universe never ceases to remind us to laugh at ourselves. Everytime we practice we begin in Child's Pose. We come into our practice from a state of surrendering our ego and opening up to guidance, remembering no matter how much we may think we know, every breath we breath is really the unknown. The fullness of life can only be felt fully in the Great Unknown, wide-eyed and discovering life, the world around us and ultimately, our own Self/Spirit with every breath we breathe.

May we let go of our fear as we breathe into the Great Unknown one breath at at time...
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My schedule is beginning to become quite busy with teaching Yoga throughout Dallas. This week, I began teaching classes at the Pizza Hut Headquarters off of the Tollway. I've always wanted to teach in a corporate environment, so this is a dream that has come true. Also, the True Yoga DVD will be out in about a month, so stay tuned and I'll keep you posted. With my new schedule, I will be getting into a rhythm of blogging on Tuesdays and Thursdays and sometimes Fridays. (Of course a Monday/Wednesday post may slip in there from time to time, too.) So, be sure to check in on those days for new posts about Yoga and everything else in between...

Today, I'd like to share something from Light on Yoga, by B.K.S. Iyengar, a must read for anyone who enjoys Yoga...

"As a fire blazes brightly when the covering of ash over it is scattered by the wind, the divine fire within the body shines in all its majesty when the ashes of desire are scattered by the practice of pranayama. (Control and Expansion of the Breath)

'The emptying of the mind of the whole of its illusion is the true rechaka (exhalation.) The realisation that "I am Atma (spirit)" is the true puraka (inhalation). And the steady sustenance of the mind on this conviction is the true kumbhaka (retention). This is true pranayama,' says Sankaracharya.

Every living creature unconsciously breathes the prayer 'So'ham' (Sah=He: Aham=I-He, the Immortal Spirit, am I) with each inward breath. So also with each outgoing breath each creature prays 'Hamsah' (I am He). This ajapa-mantra (unconscious repetitive prayer) goes on for ever within each living creature throughout life. The yogi fully realises the significance of this ajapa-mantra and is so released from all the fetters that bind his soul. He offers up the very breath of his being the the Lord as a sacrifice and receives the breath of life from the Lord as his blessing."

If you practice meditation, I encourage you to use this mantra with your meditations, inhaling "Soham" and exhaling "Hamsa".

Happy Breathing...

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I would like to share this with you to take us into the weekened. It's from the website of Pure Yoga: http://www.pure-yoga.com.

Once you've read Patrick Creelman's post(it's the second one down on the page) about seeing the goodness in all things, I encourage you to check out the website of Rob Brezny at www.freewillastrology.com.

I hope your weekend is filled with Pronoia and showered with blessings!Read more

I was extremely saddened to learn that Dana Reeve had passed away. I found out as I was watching the Today Show yesterday morning. As Katie Couric struggled to report this sad news, she said, "It almost makes you question the fairness of life."

First superman, now his wife. It was almost impossible to believe that our icon for superman could be paralyzed, and it seems so gravely unfortunate and just as unimaginable that his wife could pass away from cancer. What happened to the superheros, the American Dream, where everything works out in the end?

Speaking to this, they also aired a segment yesterday on the Today Show about Dana and Christopher. Dana would often remind people that "life is not fair." Interesting that in her passing yesterday, we are reminded of this lesson. She said that she and Chris were so incredibly conscious of the gift of their life, of all the gifts they had received and it was because of the tragedy of his accident that they awakened to this awareness of the preciousness of life. They truly lived a life of contribution through all of their endeavors. They were such shining lights for what is possible for each of us, regardless of the "unfair" circumstances we may encounter. Christopher would often remind people the importance of life is in the Being, not the doing. No wonder why we have had such an incredible awareness of their Beings,both while they were here and in their passing...

I'm beginning to see that life being unfair is not a tragedy, but rather a celebration. I realize how much I've expected life to be fair, and how when it hasn't gone my way, I've allowed that to affect how I'm Being. The viewpoint that "life is not fair" is essentially the same idea as the practice of "non-attachment" which Yoga emphasizes. If we are unattached to life's outcomes, then we are free of expectation and, therefore, have the ability to be grateful for what is rather than disappointed over what's not. If we let go of demanding life to be a certain way for us and simply allow it to be what it is, then perhaps, we can begin to see the gifts which are present here and now, the ever-present wholeness whithin every moment of our life. This is not to say we won't ever find ourselves disappointed, or saddened over life's events. To truly feel the experiences of life is what it means to be a superhuman. Yet, the choice is ours how long we will choose to be upset, down, disappointed, depressed over "what's not" and the practice is remembering to become connected again to what is. That we have pure Life Force/Breath flowing through every cell of our body and no matter how tough it might be at times, this is a gift and a blessing.

Life is not fair! This is surprisingly good news and I am grateful to be reminded of this from the incredible, courageous and compassionate spirits of Christopher and Dana Reeve. Let's begin to Be grateful for what we have right now, whether we think it's fair or not, it's all we've got, and each moment is an opportunity to live and appreciate it to the fullest...

Awakening to the goodness of the moment and seeing the good in everything...

Namaste.
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"You must be willing to give up what you've been to become who you truly are."

I wish I could remember who said these words. If you happen to know, please post a comment here...I thought it was Tony Robbins, but I'm not sure.

I've recently been going through some tremendous growing pains. At times I've wanted to run and hide out in the past, to go back to what has been "comfortable" or to just settle for what's been up to this point. Yet at the same time, my spirit is compelling me to move forward, through the excrutiating discomfort, at times, of growing and awakening to become who I truly am. As I'm writing this, the words of Marianne Williamson are coming to me, so I will share them with you. It's been too long since I've read these words and I am grateful to remember them today, because they are just the words I need to hear. I hope they can remind you, too, to embrace your Light as you move through the fear of letting go of the darkness you've been accepting...


Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are
powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightening about shrinking so that
other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest
the glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we
let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission
to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others."
-Marianne Williamson, A Return to LoveRead more

"God, why do I storm heaven for answers that are already in my heart? Every grace I need has already been given to me. Oh, lead me to the Beyond within." -Macrina Wieherkehr

I won't be posting for the next couple of days as I'm going to Toronto tomorrow morning and won't be back until Friday night. I will be practicing Yoga with an incredible Yogi who is originally from Canada and now lives and teaches in Asia with Pure Yoga. I will be back posting regularly again next week.

May every step of our journey awaken our hearts and minds to the great Beyond within us!

"The wise man travels to discover himself." - James Russell Lowell

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