Lately my meditation practice has shifted and I have been practicing Tonglen meditation. Tonglen (Tibetan for "giving and receiving") is a meditation practice where you inhale into your heart center suffering, or a heavy emotion, and exhale out peace and healing. As the great Buddhist nun Pema Chodron states, Tonglen is "a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness…

In the last year just for fun and because I am a nerd, I spent months comparing my 5th edition of the Anusara Yoga Teacher Training Manual to the latest 12th edition of the

"To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the awakened point of view, that's life. Death is wanting to hold on to what you have and to have every experience confirm you and congratulate you and make you feel completely together."

"Needless to say, after that we noticed very clearly what we did when we felt attacked, betrayed, or confused, when we found situations unbearable or unacceptable. We began to really notice what we did. Did we close down, or did we open up? Did we feel resentful and bitter, or did we soften? Did we become wiser or more stupid? As a result of our pain did we know more about what it is to be human,…

Every comment since I wrote about my resignation of my Anusara license, has been incredibly supportive. I cannot tell you, dear readers, how much that means to me. Thank you.

The day before I wrote my letter of resignation of my Anusara license, my boyfriend asked me a question, "Are you an Anusara yoga teacher? Or are you a yoga teacher?" I paused, took a breath and said, "I am a yoga teacher." And later during more contemplation I realized that I am a yoga student, a student of yoga, of life, of the day-to-day embodied experience. I can't wait to see what…

Growing up in a tropical island we would get hurricanes every year. Whenever one would hit, my family would stand against the balcony windows and watch the storm ravage all that was once normal into debris. With a swift fist mother nature dissolved solid into liquid. Once the storm was over we would then venture out and attempt to clear the mess. But as the storm was happening all we could do was wait,…

Yesterday was a crazy. I felt as if I was watching something horrible happening on TV and I couldn't turn away. I decided to join Facebook on Saturday, because I heard that there were some really interesting conversations happening with the Anusara Certified and Inspired teachers all over the world. And thus I entered the matrix of Facebook, spending countless hours reading about how teachers were…

"We can never touch just one thing; we always touch two at the same instant, an object and ourselves, and it is in the simultaneous interplay between these two contiguities that the internal sense of self- different from both the collection of body parts and the collections of external objects- is encountered... my tactile…