Searching For Satcitananda

Satcitananda is a combination of  three Sanskrit words, Sat meaning truth, Cit meaning consciousness and Ananda meaning bliss. Lately, I've questioned the presence of truth, consciousness and bliss in my life. Actually, I know that they exist, but often, I fail to recognize them.

Growing up in a religion based on fear has made a lasting impression. After suffering for a long time, I decided to investigate certain behaviours in my life and I saw that fear was a thick layer of emotion. We spend so much time existing on the surface that we fail to realize the garden of love and beauty underneath.  

Truth, consciousness and bliss (Satcitananda) is the path to freedom. You can instantly unleash the hold, but here's the rub... one moment becomes the next and another and the path to liberation becomes work that must be calculated at every moment of every day. Your progress report comes when you recognize that you spend shorter periods of time suffering. And eventually suffering becomes a thing of the past.

I know only a few people that live in this state of consciousness. They walk in Satcitananda and silently encourage us to accept that we all walk in truth, consciousness and bliss as well.

This is what yoga is about...

"let the practice be, I am not trying to get anywhere, I am trying to make it OK to be where I am at because I love myself and value my process!!"

-Bryan Kest

My gratitude for the day is to the friend that invited me to experience Bryan Kest's Santa Monica class. Wow! I am in awe of how amazing that class was. It lends itself to the reality that yoga is more about the mind and less about the body. How fortunate am I to have had the exposure.

Peace to you, today.

Life Saver

It is true what they say about the benefits of yoga: it does more for the spirit than any other workout. And I'm a runner as well as an avid spinner; yet an inflexible yogi. I praise this mind-body-spirit workout for the mental breakthroughs I receive as a result of it. 

I've been practicing yoga in some form for 10 years. It started when I lived in Providence and began taking Hot- Yoga. I then moved to NY and discovered (and became addicted to) Bikram Yoga (the original Hot Yoga). When I moved to London I became enamoured with Ashtanga yoga- which is a high- intensity, almost cardio yoga. Admittedly, Ashtanga proved to be the most difficult for me because I move through my practise slower than this yoga demands. But I kept at it- twice per week.

I'd like to get to the point where I can take yoga 6 days a week. In fact, I would like yoga to be my primary workout, above both spinning and running. But I'm not interested in teaching it. I get such a wonderful benefit just by being a practitioner, I wouldn't want to lose that.

I've also promised to keep a commitment I made last year.

It is my goal to spend every day of my birthday month (July) practicing yoga. I challenged myself to do so last year and did yoga for 31 days and am not going to break that cycle...no way, no how!

The peace I get from yoga cannot be compared. I know when I haven't been practicing: I start doubting myself and oddly, thoughts drift to the dark-side more frequently. Yoga allows me to balance this and gently guide that sporadic ego.

So July 1st it is. Who's with me?

p.s my favorite yoga teacher to date is Adam at the Hollywood Y. That guy is transformative. If you are taking his class, better arrive early or you'll find yourself damn- near sharing a yoga mat with a stranger because- his class fills up pretty quickly.