Free-form Flow

The only intentions I have for this posting is to allow the flow of my consciousness to spill out onto the screen. So here goes...

As far as the doings go for the past month: I arrived in Nevada City, CA by way of craigslist from Oakland, CA. I was dropped off on the side of the road at midnight and set up a squat spot by a nice little river and loads of wild blackberries, about 25 mins walk from downtown Nevada City. I spent the first week around town making different connections, doing lots! of walking, and basically trying to acclimate and ground myself.

Then came the first week of yoga teacher training, which I found to be challenging, enjoyable, and informative. I also feel it really helped me strengthen my own daily practice (sadhana), which was one of my primary intentions for taking on the training. I made loads of good connections as well, and am currently living with a family in the area that I met through a nice lady named Mary Joe that is also taking the teacher training. It was nice squatting by the river for a little while, and now it is really nice having a garden to work in, a bathroom when I need it, a blender, a computer, etc. So very nice! I am blessed to have been graced with such a find situation.

After the firs week intensive of teacher training, I felt I had a bit of adventuring to do, so I put up the thumb & hitched up to Mt. Shasta. It took me a day to hitch there (was very humbling), and I spent the night in Chico, CA in a lovely garden that I was shown by a friend fellow I met at a health food store. When I arrived in Shasta I was able to touch base with Monique (the nice lady that gifted me the funds to down-pay for the teacher training), go see Masaru Emoto give a presentation on water, and sleep up on the mountain. It is really quite a place this Mt. Shasta! They have amazing untreated spring water, loads of fruit trees around for the picking, friendly people, fresh air, & so on. Oh so lovely!

I was also able to meet up with my good friend Emma in Shasta, and she whisked us away to the Redwood Forest, then the Mendocino coast for a 3 day yoga/raw food retreat, which was also very nice. I was able to swim in the pacific, meet more amazing people, and continue to enjoy me daily practice, which I will speak more of in a moment. I met 2 very nice girls in Mendo, Molly & Cari, who took me to Lake Tahoe, just north of Nevada City by about an hour and a half. So I stayed with Cari for 2 days in Tahoe, and she gave me a ride back to the Grass Valley/Nevada City area where I was able to reconvene with Mary Joe (my landlady/co-houser/whathaveyou). Hooray! What an adventure!

Ah, yes. So I wanted to discuss daily practice. In the kundalini yoga tradition (the one I am now studying my yoga teacher training), daily practice ("Sadhana" Sod-ah-nah) is not just a science, its a way of being. Its the foundation by which one creates one's reality. The main idea is that human experience can be limitless, but our subconscious mind becomes overloaded with junk and detracts from our daily experience of the world. It becomes so jammed with mental constructs, agreements, advertisements, and whatever other media or energy that we expose ourselves to, that it pours into our conscious experience & thus influences the way we act & operate on a daily basis... Unless of course we have some way of clearing or alleviating our subconscious mind... We have a "grid of experience" that is basically the monitor of our computer, the overarching lens through we our awareness is filtered, thus forming our conscious reality. The vastness and fullness of what we see & experience through this monitor is greatly affected by our subconscious programming.

Sadhana is like an assassin or an atomic bomb to the garbage built up in the subconscious mind. When one practices every day (not one-two, skip a few, but every day!), the subconscious mind is very quickly de-programmed, so many of our trite judgments, detrimental habits, destructive patterns, and toxic predispositions implode in on themselves. They are powerless against the power of sadhana.

So how does Sadhana work?

In many traditions the best time for Sadhana is between 4-7 am, or the 2 1/2 hour period before the sun rises. Albert Einstein used to wake up at 4 am because he found he was able to focus so supremely at this hour. Go figure? My experience is that daily practice is much more easy between 4-7, so this is when I try to do it. Even by 8 am I resist the practice so much more. Once the sun has risen it is just that much more tricky to focus inward, as the sun is instructing us all to exert our energy outward, to go and ride the wave of the day! So between 4-7 one simply practices the same thing for a certain amount of time every day for a certain amount of days. Here is the psychological breakdown of transformation according to the science of kundalini yoga (not according to me (though I have experienced the effects), I'm just taking this out of a book):

Meditation times every day
3 minutes of meditation affects the electromagnetic field, the circulation and stability of the blood

11 minutes of meditation begins to chance the nerves and the glandular system

22 minutes of meditation balances the three minds (negative, neutral, positive), and they begin to work together

31 minutes of meditation allows the glands, breath, and concentration to affect all the cells and rhythms of the body.

62 minutes changes the gray matter in the brain. The subconscious "shadow mind" and the outer projection are integrated.

2 1/2 hours changes the psyche in its co-relation with the surrounding magnetic field so that the subconscious mind is held firmly in the new pattern by the surrounding universal mind.

Effects of consecutive days of mediation

40 days changes a habit

90 days confirms the habit

In 120 the new habit is who you are

In 1,000 days you have mastered the new habit
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So I have been doing a morning sadhana (in my case, a yogic exercise involving the breath) since May 05th now, and I must say the effects have been profound. It has brought me so much more balance to my life, and I feel it takes very little effort to do it every day. Less & less effort every day! I simply think "Oh, if I break the streak the effects will be diminished, I'll have to start from day 1 again, and the high I'm on every day will be reduced. I better do my sadhana!"

And that's how it goes. I am at a point where I do a particular mediation every morning for 62 minutes. I started out with 3 minutes May 5th, and gradually worked myself up to 62 as it felt good. So now I'm committed to the 1000 stretch to see how far I can take the effects of this already profound practice. We shall see!

There are so many ways to activate a sadhana. If you like to paint, paint every day for a set time. Don't skip a day. Don't ever skip a day! This will break the chain of the strong psychological reconditioning you're delivering mercilessly to the politcal parties and renegade opinions parading around in the lawless depths of your subconscious mind... So paint every day and see the magic that emerges. If you like to run, run every day. If you like to read, read every day. If you like to sing, meditate, shoot skeet, play guitar, ad infinitum, do it every day, a lot. Early is nice. Clear you subconscious of all the garbage that prevents the full potential of healthy, productive, enjoyable experience from taking place! This is my message. Take it or leave it.

But either way--

Love.