Check out my New Blog!

Guess what? 

I've started a second blog called Alberta Kirtan Community to share news about Kirtan events close to home!

If you are interested in attending these events or have one of your own to promote, please visit the blog and tell others about it! 

http://alberta-kirtan.blogspot.com/

The more listings and visitors we can bring together, the more we can help our Bhakti Yoga/Kirtan community to grow and grow and GROW!

Over the years I've met many famous kirtan wallahs like Bhagavan Das, Jai Uttal and Daniel Paul, Snatam Kaur, Narayan Jyoti, and Geshe Michael Roach who would happily come to perform if only we had an established community to support them. 

My dream is to be part of such a receptive community - but not depend exclusively on visitors from far away for our events! 

I believe our hearts and practices are ripe to create a Sangha around the joyful and devotional practices of Bhakti Yoga including Kirtan, Yoga Sutra Chanting, Bhagavad Gita Chanting, festival celebrations and more!

Let's support the Kirtan musicians we do have close to home and create a network for sharing information about upcoming events. 

And then the best part - let's get together and SING OUR HEARTS OUT!!!

Ooooommmm.....

New Session of Yoga and Meditation Starts Today!

It's time to start a new Yoga and Meditation Session at Yoga Within! 

Please join me for a moving meditation journey through the Chakras featuring a special asana series from Geshe Michael Roach known as The Yoga of Lady Niguma and a sampling of seated meditations including:

• Gentle Gazing Meditation, Tratak
• Meditation and the Voice, Chanting the Bija Mantras
• Meditation on the Breath
• Meditation and Visualization
• Mudras for Meditation
• and more!

See you there!  Namaste!

Chant for Enlightenment

Om
Asatoma sat gamaya
Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
Mryityor ma amritam gamaya

Om
From the unreal (untruth) to the real (truth)
from darkness (tamas) to light (sattva)
from suffering to the nectar of immortality.

 - Brihadaranyaka Upanishad


This is the verse I often close my yoga classes with.  I chant it the way I learned from my Sivananda teachers, but here are a few of others for you to listen to.

First, a beautiful and meditative Ravi Shankar version from "Chants of India".

Now, some of you may recognize the next one from the final credits of "The Matrix".

WARNING - this video contains scenes from the movie which are violent and gross!

Please feel free to scroll to something more sattvic while you listen.

And finally, the sweet and lovely Deva Premal. 

(Did I ever tell you that I met Deva?  In 2009, at the Omega Ecstatic Chant weekend.  I thanked her for Dakshina which I and many of my students at the time were listening to over and over and over again!  She hugged me for a long time and Om'ed in my ear... ahhh... I pass that big hug and her beautiful smile on to you now!)

Let us reach enlightenment together!  Jai!

The Teacher Student Chant

Om
Sahanavavatu sahanau bhunaktu
Sahaviryam karavavahai
Tejasvinavadhitamastu
Ma vidvishavahayai
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

Let the Studies that we undertake be effulgent;
Let there be no Animosity amongst us;
OM. Peace, Peace, Peace.

(Recited before the commencement of education)  From the Yajurveda Taittiriya Upanishad 2.2.2

Many of you are familiar with this short chant from the Upanishads from the opening of the classes I teach. 

I learned it during my Sivananda Yoga Teacher Training in 1997 and loved it so much that I have chanted it out loud or in my heart before every Yoga class I've taken or taught since.

It reminds me that we are all, always, and in all ways both teacher and student in every situation. 

It reminds me to honor both roles and the divine Leela or play we partake in when we assume either role.

And it reminds me that on those rare and precious occasions when we have the karma to participate in formal sacred teachings, we must make a conscious decision to embody Namaste - to suspend criticism and judgement and choose to see the divinity in eachother rather than the differences.

Although the tune below is not the one I typically use, it is definitely one of my very favorites. 

It comes from the cd "Chants of India" on George Harrison's Angel Records Label and features the great Ravi Shankar on sitar. 

It is so beautiful I had to share it here. 

Thank you for chanting it with me.  May we enjoy learning Yoga together for as long as it takes...

Japa Yoga - Mantras for Peace

I am absolutely thrilled to be starting the second session of Meditation and Yoga Philosophy, Level One at Yoga for Today tonight! 

Those of you who attended the fall session will recall that Taruna (Tina) kindly brought us a handout on Japa Yoga from her priest to go with our new malas and mala bags from the Temple. 

Rather than make a hundred paper photocopies, I figured it was "greener" to share the handout here.

Heartfelt thanks again to our friend Taruna-ji, and to the Temple Priest for sharing! 

And thank you to all of you for attending!  It was a wonderful and once-in-a-lifetime kind of session that I feel truly blessed to have been a part of.  

I look forward to seeing you (and some new faces) again tonight, let the Japa continue!

... AND on to Yoga Sutra 1.5!  Hooray!

To all of the Yogis and Yoginis, past, present and future - JAI!  VICTORY!

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