Yoga blesses you with a more intimate understanding of your body and how it works in conjunction with your mind to create this experience called life. However, life is much more than your individual experience. Through practice, you can remind yourself of your...
Connecting with the Divine
Bhagavan Das is an American yogi who lived for six years in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka in the 1960s and became a trailblazer in the early kirtan movement in America. He introduced Richard Alpert (who later became Ram Dass) to his Guru, Neem Karoli Baba and the rest...
Grateful Living
Grateful Living is the new online home for what was formerly gratefulness.org. The new link is: grateful.org. The upleveled website will serve as your new sanctuary and support for living life more gratefully. We are eager to welcome you into this sacred online space....
Weeds are a Gardener’s Best Friend
One fine spring morning I stood on the deck as the sun crested the trees. Tucked into the raised beds, cabbages, and leaf lettuce glittered with dew. As if on cue a Mourning Dove landed on the topmost barn gable. I half expected a butterfly to land on my shoulder and...
Learning How or Whether to Share About My Yoga Practice
My discovery of Yoga and meditation when I was 18 and a college freshman began to change me from an angry and troubled teenager who hated Phys Ed. to a balanced adult comfortable in my body. It took years, of course, for the practices to take hold. But I stayed with...
The Yoga of No Escape
There were times during this winter when I went deep into the woods to escape my problems. Sometimes I would escape, or think I did, but usually what I found is that the only real conflict is inside myself. When December arrived the days squeezed short until even the...
Compassionate Communication
If we pay attention to the world news, I think we can agree that our world is in dire need of more mindfulness, justice, and compassion. On an individual level, a deeply- entrenched sense of separation—and the resulting insecurity—has given rise to so much mistrust...
Selfish Selflessness
In this recent Integral Yoga Podcast, Zac Parker talks about finding a life that reflects one's values, the "selfish selflessness" of serving others, and learning to balance discipline and lightheartedness. Zac is in conversation with Avi Gordon, director of the...
The Meat & Dairy Farmers Going Vegan
Recently, BBC News reported that after one UK dairy farmer lost most of his dairy herd to bovine tuberculosis that he decided he would no longer send animals to the slaughterhouse. "It made me wonder if we can justify the industrial slaughter of sentient beings," says...
Voting as an Antidote to Despair
Sharon Salzberg, the popular meditation teacher and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, recently wrote an article for Tricycle magazine on voting, meditation, and how to counteract despair through changing the system. During these challenging times, Tricycle...
The Impulse to Love and Serve
As we celebrate Black History Month in the U.S., and reflect on the actual meaning of Valentine’s Day, let us be inspired to answer the call to serve those in need. Saint Valentine’s life is just one enduring example of selfless service. Roses and chocolates aside,...
The Sound of Yoga
High summer rang loud on garlic harvest day. I stuck my pitchfork into the soil as sun spilled down the hill and into the veggie garden. Goldfinches twittered as they climbed the swaying sunflowers. Warm and sweet air rose from the earth. Leaving the pitchfork speared...
Life as Art
What do you want to create? If your goal is to be useful to humanity, then it’s a creative goal. In fact, simply by thinking, we’re always creating something. But, our creation, our goal, should be useful to people. With that type of goal, you can do anything you...
Living Yoga in a Busy World: My Dog is my Spirit Guide
In this new column for Integral Yoga Magazine, "Gita in the Garden, Living Yoga in a Busy World," Yoga teacher Gita Brown shares her reflections on, well, living your Yoga. In each installment, she will share what her Yoga study and practice has revealed to her about...
Compassion Toward All: Moving Toward a Plant Based Diet
For most of human history it’s been “normal” to eat non-human animals. This is now changing. We are awakening to the massive suffering of the billions of animals killed each day for food, the horrors of the animal-food industry, and the impact it has on climate change...
Steve Jobs & the Science of Mind
In this podcast, Integral Yoga Master teacher, Nalanie Chellaram and her son Shaman (senior director of advisory services for a leading hotel & commercial real estate firm) are interviewed by the Business Innovation Leadership Forum on balancing life, spirituality...