Chanting brings me into the space of love within, which to me is my guru.
-Neem Karoli Baba

Mantra Artists Deva Premal and Miten Gather Community and Share Devotion

“In the space of no-mind, truth descends like light.” – Osho

A flock of seekers gathers in front of the Wilshire Ebell Theatre as the sun sets on Miracle Mile in Los Angeles. It’s a reunion of smiles. Silver-topped yogis arrived early to reconnect to people they hadn’t seen since before Covid. Old friends, teachers, and students, among them community icons including Shiva Rea and Donna De Lory, are here.

Younger devotees rolled in as the lights fell. The members of the ongoing worldwide sangha who had been chanting and connecting digitally came to share voices in real time with other humans.

Deva Premal and Miten (DPM) touched down in L.A. to bring the light and seal the North American leg of their 2025 tour before heading to north to Canada and then on to Europe. The perpetually transcontinental travelers returned in time to establish some peace, where the ashes from recent wildfires have settled into a cloud of fear and anger that has spilled into the streets.

Always welcomed, anticipated, and appreciated, DMP are part of a tribal order, a sort of Western mantra singer dynasty who opened the portal and carried the light to so many over the decades; Jai Uttal, Krishna Das, and Snatam Kaur are their contemporaries.

Deva Premal and Miten are here to transform song into meditation. “When voices are raised in harmony magic happens. The power of mantra is a door that leads us into a space of inner peace and meditation.”

“Any opportunity to be in person with mantra artists is a transformative, spiritual, rejuvenating experience,” LA Yoga Magazine Editorial Director Felicia Tomasko says; the flow of musicians touring and connecting with people in person was interrupted during the pandemic. “It feels like we’re still in the midst of a transition into a new future.” To set things off in a positive direction, they gifted 150 tickets to people who were negatively affected by the LA fires.

Deva Premal and Miten’s stated purpose is, “To create gatherings where fellow travelers can congregate and bathe in the scared and powerful energy contained within a mantra practice. Our vision is firmly based on the foundation and joy of meditation.”

This is the mantra artists’ first return to the US since 2019. They played Canada and Mexico in 2023, but not the U.S. Manager Hannah Green (Prabhu Music) says the audiences have been more welcoming than ever. “It really has been a phenomenal tour – reconnecting with friends. We stopped touring in March, 2020, due to travel restrictions and resumed European touring as soon as we could, which was in September 2022. During that window, (from March 2020 – September 2022), they continued to host in person groups in Costa Rica.”

Chant and Be Happy
-Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

L.A. YUGA

“Los Angeles continues to be a spiritual hub for the modern era and seekers who have been following Deva for decades will always come together in song and mantra vibrations that will reverberate long after the show,” Tomasko imparts.

In L.A., this part of Turtle Island some call Mexico, all devotional paths meet. Yogananda, Vivekananda, Prabhupada, Osho, Yogi Bhajan and Thích Nhat Hanh are all part of the sacred landscape. In this post-Covid, post-George Floyd city, humble by nature, still roiling, the gathering at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre feels like cosmic triage.

Disciplic succession is the path, Mantra is the teacher, DPM are stealthy sanyasis, creatures of the duty-free realms, micro-napping in business-class lounges at international airports, practicing pranayama in recycled air while seemingly effortlessly navigating this Kali Yuga.

Chanting is half the battle
-Paramahansa Yogananda

ABOUT MANTRA

Deva and Miten are also teachers and they have refined their skills over the years. It goes with the territory and is part of a larger energetic exchange.

From their website —
Thousands of years ago the Rishis of ancient India began receiving what can only be described as healings sounds during their meditations. So began a scientific investigation into sound and its effect on the mind and body. Sacred Sanskrit is the sound equivalent of the manifestation itself.

We use language to define our world. In almost every language, words describe our experience. What makes Sanskrit so unique, so universal, and so transformational, is that it is based on the energy of sound rather than its descriptive qualities.

A mantra that is central for Deva Premal and Miten is the Gayatri, a Sanskrit mantra that Deva’s father famously chanted to her in the womb.

GAYATRI MANTRA

Am Om bhur bhuvaha svaha Tat savitur varenyam Bhargo devasya dhimahi Dhiyo yonah prachodayat

Praise to the source of all things. It is due to you that we attain true happiness on the planes of Earth, astral, causal. It is due to your transcendent nature that you are worthy of being worshipped and adored. Ignite us with your all-pervading light.

With intentional catholicity, they offer the Mangala Charan Mantra Aad Guray Nameh calling upon the universal energy to surround us with a field of white protective light and transform the theatre into a church of all religions.

AAD GURAY NAMEH

(Dakshina) Aad guray nameh Jugaad guray nameh Sat guray nameh A Siri guru de——vay nameh.

I bow to the Primal Guru, I bow to the Guru woven through time I bow to the True Guru, the identity of the self. I bow to the Great Guru whose great glory will always be. Guru: that which brings us from darkness (GU) to light (RU). (Snatam Kaur Khalsa)

MANTRA AND SONG AS CEREMONY

The evening at the Wilshire Ebell is a ceremony, the mantras are offerings, the theatre a shrine and the audience a circle where everyone joins in the chants. Each Sanskrit mantra projected on a screen behind them onstage is an invitation to practice. Some new mantras, and many familiar to people here tonight.

The band is a tightly configured set up; Deva and Lady Phyl (Joby’s daughter) on keyboards and vocals, Miten on guitar and vocals and Joby on bass, strings, percussion, and vocals. The sound is a seamless, unbroken. The words are white light passing through a prism, contacting the Divine through mantra, returning us to our true nature; to love, light, and compassion.

Chanting brings me into the space of love within, which to me is my guru. -Neem Karoli Baba

It’s a practical magic that travels well, which is good as the four are currently touring across 11 countries with some 18 concerts. It’s also a big undertaking, but each destination stop along the path has a community to whom they are essential.

THE INEVITABLE BLOSSOMING OF THE HEART

Joby Baker has been collaborating with Deva and Miten for decades. He toured with them in 2019 and produced and plays and sings on Deva’s new release, The Inevitable Blossoming of the Heart. (The album released June 6, 2025)

DPM’s 2019 tour supported Miten’s release, Temple at Midnight. This time it’s Deva’s, The Inevitable Blossoming of the Heart, “a heart-opening journey of mantra, transformation, and divine connection that honors collaborations with soul friends across the globe.”

The second half of the evening brought Deva Premal front and center on stage. “She taught the entire audience a new language, but one we already knew, one of gratitude. ‘Afepakian’ means thank you in Maleku, the language of an indigenous community in Costa Rica, where they have been living and teaching for years,” Felicia Tomasko recounts, “She invited the audience to join in on sharing the vibratory qualities of gratitude. And she shared with exquisite grace, that the spirituality of mantra can be found in so many languages.”

This release, like her others, is part of an existing body of work which is an elemental part of the western mantra soundscape. Inevitable Blossoming of the Heart is a warm embrace. Sparse and spacious, organic and intimate, all parts humbly, sinuously conspiring to open the portal. Strings, percussion, bass, vocals delicately threaded to affect a heart opening.

“The 2025 audience welcomed them with open hearts and open voices in a melodic tribute to the power of the spirit.” Tomasko says. “Deva Premal, Miten, Joby, Lady Phil offered their gift to the world: Song. And their latest launch, The Inevitable Blossoming of the Heart, a welcome and timely addition to our collective playlist.”

“Darkness is not to be fought with – a lamp has to be lighted. In the presence of light, there is no darkness.”
-Osho

THE END

The Dwapara Yuga ended when Krishna returned to his eternal abode in Vaikuntha. Now 5,126 years into the Kali Yuga, with only 428, 287 years to go and Kalki, Vishnu’s final Avatar, is nowhere in sight, but Deva and Miten to bring the light and the essential heart of their guru and that’s more than a lot.

DPM have been holding the light, carrying it from here to there and then back again. Farther along on their path, deeper in the disciplic succession their chanting is more nuanced, more connected, more willing and available… or is it just us here in this American town?

Repeating the Om continually is the only true worship. It is not a word, it is God Himself
-Swami Vivekananda

Deva, Miten. Joby, Lady Phyl and the crew are in Europe by now leaving a trail of light in their wake. And though the city is under siege, Los Angeles knows how to come together, like they came together at the Wilshire Ebel. Deva Premal and Miten will be back.

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post The Inevitable Blossoming of the Heart: Deva Premal and Miten light up L.A. appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Inside, the Vastu (Vedic feng shui) is working overtime in 4,000 square feet of devotion, conspicuously optimized for bliss. There is nothing is here by mistake. Nothing superfluous and no detail overlooked.

Down a long hallway, two big yoga studios on each side have small Sufi ‘winged heart’ symbols stenciled in gold on the floor creating a grid that allows for the perfect spacing of rows for mats in a capacity class. Photographs of Mahavatar Babaji, Paramahansa Yogananda and Sufi Mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan adorn the walls.

Further down the long hall, a well-curated boutique offers goods to support the yogic journey.

The philosophically Curative Yoga is an East/West fusion created by founder Naader Shagagi, who is a student of the great Yoga Master Paramahansa Yogananda as well as Sufi Mystic Pir Inayat Khan. The studio brings a culmination of intensive study and experience offered through his Yoga of Mystics®.

The website says it best, “Combined, these philosophies inform a practice that is fulfilling on every level. In addition to being physically challenging and deeply healing, emotional health becomes balanced and clarity emerges from the deeper spiritual realm.” Naader Shagagi skillfully guides students in the discovery of The Self, the blissful home within us all.

Founder

Naader Shagagi came to Los Angeles in 1985. He was trained in Raja Yoga at the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles and in Hatha Yoga at The Yoga College of India, Beverly Hills. He’s been practicing Yoga and Meditation since 1983, leading to teaching these modalities to over 20,000 people and training over 1,000 teachers through his teacher training program. He founded Curative Yoga in 1996. Along with Carolina Cotman, Vice President of Curative, the studio is thriving in a decidedly competitive market.

Curative Yoga

Everybody is trying to cure something and, in this studio, you can cover a lot of ground: physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Naader blends Hatha Yoga, Raja (Ashtanga) Yoga, and ancient mysticism (Esoteric School of Sufi Mystics). They serve all levels and abilities in a nurturing environment.

The signature Curative Yoga™ series is an “invigorating and challenging system of Hatha Yoga choreographed and practiced by Naader himself to cure physical, mental and emotional bodies.”

This system of postures teach you how to accelerate involuntary functions. It can help optimize functioning of the systems in the body such as the heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, capillaries, lymphatic glands, veins, and the cerebral-spinal axis (brain and spine) without exhausting or overworking them.

Infrastructure

There are a lot of classes to choose from at the studio. CurativeXpress™ is an exhilarating 60 minute favorite. A broad range of other classes include Restorative, Prenatal Yoga, Curative Flow™, Gentle Yoga, Gentle Yoga, Children’s Yoga, Healing Yin, Yin n’ Yang Blend and others. Private classes, retreats, workshops, teacher training, retreats, spiritual counseling, and holistic therapies and supplements — all culminate in health, vitality, healing and realization of self.

In addition to their Pasadena community, Curative Yoga has a sister studio in Bigfork, Montana (curativeyogabigfork.com) and a retreat center also in Montana (samaafoundation.org).

There are no shortage of yoga studios throughout the Los Angeles area. Curative Yoga offers a community that combines a series of practices, a philosophy, and a direct focus on health.

Health is not everything, but everything is nothing without health – Arthur Schopenhaue

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Finding the Self at Curative Yoga in Pasadena appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Self-Realization Fellowship Mother Center in Mount Washington. Courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles.

An updated version of ancient Kriya Yoga teachings for the modern era

Brother Chidananda. Courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles

Paramahansa Yogananda. Courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles.

The Guru

Brahmachari Shekhar. Photo Courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles

The Lessons

PY 3803: Paramahansa Yogananda in his study at the SRF Encinitas Hermitage. Courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles.

Brother Govindananda. Courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles.

SRF Fellowship Lessons. Courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles

Kriya Yoga

Sister Draupadi Photo Courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles

Swami Sri Yukteswar and Paramahansa Yogananda. Courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles.

Courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles

The APP for the Modern Age

The Transmission of Divine Potential

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Yogananda’s Kriya Yoga Lessons Enter the 21st Century  appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Heart of Palm Vegan “Crab Cake” at Crustacean in Beverly Hills

The Heart of the Vegan Menu at Crustacean Beverly Hills

If you’ve already discovered all the best seafood restaurants in Beverly Hills you’ve definitely eaten at Crustacean. It is the cornerstone of Asian fusion at the intersection of North Bedford Drive and Little Santa Monica Blvd. Today, The An Dynasty has reinvented the future of Asian cuisine, again.

The reopening after Crustacean’s months-long renovation features the addition of their highly anticipated vegan dishes.

The menu you love is still intact. The one with their famous signature garlic noodles that helped position their flagship restaurant to its current status. Also intact is the interior water feature submerged under glass beneath the floor, as well as the grace with which they provide service.

The interior redesign overseen by owner and CEO Elizabeth An is a modern Asian marvel designed to transport you to Vietnam in the future and back to Beverly Hills. To understand the magic on the plate, we visit the past.

Ancient History

The 50-year history of the House of An and the family who developed Asian fusion cuisine as we know it is best understood as lineage cuisine with a karmic arc is so steep you’ll need hold onto your vegan “crab” cakes.

Their story involves more than one flight from Saigon. Elizabeth shares the story of how matriarch Chef Helen An, as a child, took refuge in a Buddhist monastery, where the vegan monks worked their magic, fashioning sacred dishes with vegetables and with love.

Then in 1975, the family fled Saigon, landing in San Francisco where necessity led to the creation of dishes created to appeal to diners who were unfamiliar with and even suspicious of traditional Vietnamese food. The arc is an expansive, creatively expressed culinary journey from that monastery to Beverly Hills.  And now, they’ve achieved the best of what veganism and Beverly Hills have to offer.

Executive Chef Tony Nguyen. Photo by Sam Slovick

Modern History

America is county of migrants, many noteworthy contributions come from refugees like Chef Helen An. Then add Executive Chef Tony Nguyen to the kitchen, for a selection of inspired vegan dishes, with sacred soulful origins. In keeping with this family tradition of refined service, Chef Tony dropped a love bomb in the Crustacean kitchen, and it is evident on every plate.

Chef Tony’s future-forward philosophy of inclusion is on his social media and in his heart, where we begin to understand the source of his culinary gifts. “Great Food sees no color,” Chef Tony posts. “One of the best things about being a chef is working with so many different people of race, sexual orientation, and religious views. We all have one thing in common; we gotta eat,” he hashtags #PEACE #Unity.

Crustacean’s Vegan Karate Salad

Vegan Elevated

Let’s talk about the food. First, everything is a work of art. Plated with care and featuring flavor combinations that inspire.

My favorite vegan dish is the Hearts of Palm “Crab Cake”, which uses finely diced hearts of palm and spicy aioli to achieve a replication so real it could crawl off the plate. Browned to a perfect crisp, the texture emulates the little shredded bits of “white” meat in the original crab cakes. These vegan crabs could fool the most discerning palate.

My other favorite is the Karate Salad: kohlrabi, black truffle, crispy Kennebec potato, and garlic blossom. Crunchy, flavorful, rich but not overwhelming. This is salad that comes to mind an Asian coleslaw. You won’t have to be reminded to order this every time you come back, and you will.

The Wild Mushroom Wontons, with ginger and lemongrass coulis, are why Crustacean Beverly Hills has maintained its place as cornerstone of Asian fusion cuisine. There are no words to describe it. Make a reservation to see for yourself.

Peruse the rest of the menu. Many vegan options are highlighted, such as the melt-in-your mouth Kung Pao Eggplant, perfectly spiced turmeric-infused Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts, and more. Gluten-free items are available. Order a variety of selections for your table to share.

Learn more about Crustacean at: crustaceanbh.com

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Asian Fusion meets Modern Vegan at Crustacean Beverly Hills appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Paramhansa Yogananda meditates with students in The Answer

The Answer Follows Student Swami Kriyananda with Teacher Paramhansa Yogananda.

The search for truth. The quest for answers. A journey of spirit. An exploration of the student-teacher relationship. These are some of the themes explored in the biopic feature film The Answer.

Based on the book The New Path, which is the autobiography of the film’s protagonist, the late Swami Kriyananda (born James Donald Walters). Swami Kriyananda was one of the original devotees of Paramhansa Yogananda, the Indian Master and author of the noteworthy Autobiography of a Yogi.

Yogananda famously came to the United States in the 1920s and is among a few spiritual masters credited with bringing Eastern philosophy, specifically a practice called Kriya Yoga, to the West. His teachings and written work influenced many seekers, including the young James Donald Walters.

See The Answer Film Trailer

The film highlights Yogananda’s work and teachings through Walters’ eyes. A meticulously constructed period piece, it begins in Eastern Europe, in Walters’ family of birth in Romania. His parents remark on the young child’s calm demeanor and we see Walters as an insightful child and introspective youth who emerges as a spiritual seeker. While living in the US, Walters stumbles upon a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi and follows the call from New York to the West Coast to meet his master in the 1940s. Here Kriyananda spent his remaining years with his teacher in Los Angeles until Yogananda left his body in 1952.

The Answer is anomalistic in the sense that it’s a feature about a recently living spiritual master. Although the narrative feature follows a conventional biographic structure, there is not another film like this in the recent past. Among the things it achieves, The Answer offers insight into the meaning and importance of the relationship between master and disciple. Throughout the story, we understand how Kriyananda takes on the task of building the Ananda organization based on his life with Yogananda. The film includes a number of hymns written by Kriyananda and Yogananda and performed by Kriyananda.

Director Pavan Kaul casts iconic Indian actor Victor Banerjee as Yogananda and Leonidas Gulaptis as Kriyananda. Director of Photography Hiroo Keshwani tells the story in an evocative cinematic style that pays homage to the spiritual journey.

If you’ve been touched by Autobiography of a Yogi, see The Answer. If you are curious about the life and teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, see The Answer. And if you love inspiring spiritual film, see this one. The sincerity of the story shines through in The Answer. So bring friends. Discuss the teachings and the story. And reread Autobiography of a Yogi.

Buy Tickets to See The Answer

On February 27, join the Ananda community for a reception, film screening, and Q and A in Santa Monica at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.

Buy tickets: https://www.laemmle.com/films/45325

 

 

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post The film The Answer Shares a Student’s Life with Yogananda appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

ROOTS, ROCK, RAMA!

Love is the strongest medicine -Neem Karoli Baba

“I’m here to sing kirtan, to lead kirtan, to share kirtan, sing the names of God, play music,” says Jai Uttal. He’s talking as he loads his gear into the First Unitarian Church in Portland, Oregon, for sound check. His performance will be the culmination of a three-day workshop called “Love in the Time of Chaos.”

Vital at 67 years old, Jai Uttal is nimble. “There are no sings of stopping anytime soon,” he laughs, and then laughs again. “Traveling is really hard for me,” he sits behind his harmonium center stage on a makeshift meditation cushion, sorting through a tangle of cords with his guitar on his lap. A big statue of Hanuman on the floor in front of him oversees the proceedings.

Moaning for God

“Being in front of an audience is really hard for me,” he says earnestly. “Because every time I’m about to go on a trip I’m moaning. During the kirtan, I’m moaning. Moaning for God!” he laughs, then laughs again. “I’m being honest,” he says.

Music and spiritual practice became concomitant when Jai met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, in 1971. The Indian saint and teacher Neem Karoli Baba was a proponent of Bhakti Yoga through kirtan (call-and-response chanting of sacred mantras). This practice would become the center of Jai’s musical and spiritual life.

Jai Uttal and the Field of Grace

Jai Uttal navigates in a field of grace, leaving a river of smiles in his wake as a general course of action. He has cleaved his legacy in devotion over the last five decades. Over these years, he has been chanting in small rooms and on big stages at festivals around the world, raising our vibration one mantra at a time.

He has released an endless stream of music since his first offering, Footprints, in 1990. With an acquired magnetism, he’s cultivated a substantial global following.

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Kirtan Road Dog Jai Uttal on Devotion appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

-Paramahansa Yogananda

A gathering storm of smiling yogis collect in the lobby of the Bikram Yoga Fremont Street Studio in Portland, Oregon, a few minutes before the 11am class. The studio has the signature blue carpet, a rack of t-shirts, yoga costumes, and water bottles with the studio logo for sale. Nearby, on the wall, colorized posters of Paramahansa Yogananda and his younger brother Bishnu Gosh represent the lineage that inspired Bikram Choudhury. Bikram famously transported hot asana consciousness to the West in the 1970s.

At the front desk, Sean Lee, a teacher who swears by the 26 asanas (postures) and 2 pranayama (breathing exercises) known as Bikram’s beginning yoga series, keeps it simple: “This yoga place has that.” He says, “I can practice that here and I can teach that here.”

The Bikram Yoga Fremont Studio is communal. It promotes the kind of respectful intimacy that facilitates an environment where perfect strangers can sweat freely wearing next to nothing, just inches apart on yoga mats. It is a safe space for everybody and everybody is welcome.

Each student and teacher has a personal story of transformation through the practice. For example, Jeff lost 100 pounds over the last couple years. Yanming has healed a job-threatening shoulder injury. Rebecca is in her sixth month of her first pregnancy. Rodolfo, a native Spanish speaker who views yoga as a second language brought his family to the practice here. This studio and this practice are a central part of all of their lives.

People filter into the hot room to find a spot as studio owners Gretchen Olsen and Danelle Denstone tend to the last minute details for the class. Gretchen takes one last look at the mirrors to make sure they’re clean, while Danelle goes over the class roster at the front desk. They have a natural synergy that has become more refined with time.

Gretchen and Danelle have more than a lot in common. They’re both Michigan natives who have worked for the same airlines. The two are single mothers of young children and yoginis who became teachers and took on the challenge of becoming studio owners. All of their hard work has paid off. The studio is thriving.

Community and Hot Yoga at Bikram Yoga Fremont Street

The Spiritual Side of Yoga

“We wanted to bring a more spiritual side that isn’t always present in every studio,” Gretchen says. “We want to bring that back to people.” And they’ve done it by creating a community of people who have aligned to practice and support others. “There’s a lot of listening that goes on here,” Rebecca says. It’s not surprising. This studio is run by women. There’s not a lot of over-talking and interrupting at the Fremont Street Yoga Studio.

A Focus on Practice

As Bikram’s public drama plays out somewhere in Mexico, the focus here is on the ever-expanding practice and its lineage. Ahead of the curve, Bikram brought hot yoga to the US at a time when many Americans were focused on The Brady Bunch, disco and pet rocks. Bikram’s teacher, Bishnu Gosh, was the younger brother of spiritual master Paramahansa Yogananda. Bishnu Gosh was the creator of Gosh Yoga, whose 84 postures were later distilled into the 26 and 2.

The future of the 26 and 2 is certain at the Fremont Studio in Portland. The path they’ve cleaved is true. Their intention is pure. The plan is simple: to continue to grow the business and hold space for yoginis and yogis in their Portland studio.

People begin to filter in for the 4:30 class as Gretchen and Danelle reflect in the lobby. A small, framed picture of Ganesha behind the front desk is the only elephant in the room. “I don’t know what’s going on with Bikram in his personal life. He gave me this and I am forever grateful,” Danelle says. “I hope he sees this video and is proud of our work,” then adds “I just think about what Paramahansa Yogananda says, it is our duty to behave divinely ourselves, to be spiritual, to be pure, and to be unselfish.”

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Bikram Yoga Fremont Street Studio, PDX, Behind the Scenes appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

MC YOGI photo by Estevan Oriol

A Practice with MC YOGI

A sleepy English bulldog naps in a pool of afternoon sunlight on the cool polished concrete floor of Wren & Wild, a sort of holistic hub that houses a highly curated resale shop, a healthy beauty products store and a big yoga studio in Bend, Oregon. Booker is oblivious to the foot traffic a few feet from his nose in the big space with high ceilings and lots of big windows.

“One two. One two,” the soundman levels up the PA system as a few movable walls are pushed into position, transforming the place into one open space for tonight’s special class.

MC YOGI (aka Nicholas Giacomini) ambles in, understated style in jeans, black hoodie and baseball cap — he’s seems at home here.

MC YOGI teaching at Wren & Wild. Photo by Julia Duke

MC YOGI Shares Vedic Verses on his Book Tour

A wild-style, cryptographic cipher and hip-hop oracle who writes Vedic verses about Ganesha, Hanuman and Shiva, he’s in town on his Spiritual Graffiti book tour. Joined by his partner/wife, street artist Amanda Giacomini (aka 10,000 Buddhas), they’ve covered a lot of ground together over the years.

“We’ve both been practicing yoga for about 20 years, teaching for 16 years out of our studio,” he says as he settles on the couch under a big painting of Booker the far end of the space.

The source of their earthly power is a small yoga studio in Point Reyes, California, where it all began. “I feel like we were an anchor for it for a long time,” Amanda says about their studio Point Reyes Yoga. “And now it’s an anchor for us. We go out into the world and have all these ups and downs, we teach several thousand people in yoga classes, and then come home and we’re there with our core group.” MC YOGI concurs, “Yeah, I think Amanda and I have taught close to a million people because we’ve taught for 16 years or so.”

The début memoirist and Bhakti-circuit darling who has headlined some of the biggest sacred stages around has now penned an alchemic tale of transmutation. Spiritual Graffiti tells the story of transforming urban-American teen traumas and troublesome past life samskaras through the power of yoga.

Photo by Julia Duke

“It’s about how yoga opened the door to this incredible ride I’ve been on as MC YOGI, going to India and studying with masters, traveling around the world performing at festivals,” he says. He’s referencing two of his teachers: San Francisco’s radical yogi, Larry Schultz as his first point of contact as a teen in the early nineties, then, later, with Ashtanga Vinyasa pioneer, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in Mysore.

Good karma in a country where drug rehab has become the primary coming-of-age ritual, MC YOGI stumbled into some decidedly profound grace in the form of a yogic intervention by his father, who brought his troubled teenaged son to Larry’s class.

MC YOGI on Teachers and Transformation

MC YOGI writes like he talks, with the fluidity of a practiced poet. Spiritual Graffiti streams effortlessly off the page. It’s an effortless read. “Krishna Das read it in two days,” he offers. But MC YOGI has more than just his story to tell; he wrote the book to impart the wisdom he acquired along the way. “I wanted to tell story, which is kinda interesting, about how my life transformed through the practice of yoga and meditation, but even more importantly, to tell the story of my teachers, because many of my teachers aren’t living anymore.”

Spiritual Graffiti is an autobiography of a yogi as road trip. Its pages track an inward journey that originates in Northern California, then travels east to New York, onto India and back again. MC YOGI’s early life scans like a blueprint for disaster. He was kicked out of three schools and a group home; violence, drugs, guns, gangs and cops all conspiring to propel the child of divorce into an asana practice that incited a Kundalini awakening and blew the fat-cap off his Rust-Oleum, firmly fixing his drishti on involution.

“I think I was about 18 years old the first time I read Autobiography of a Yogi [ParamahansaYogananda]. For me it was like a graphic novel. Hearing all the stories of the yogis and the saints and the mystics and the sages, it was like reading about super heroes. It really inspired me, and really led me to traveling to India and studying with my teachers.”

Further awakened by Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, Ram Dass, Patanjali, and others, he found his soul mate, Amanda, in Larry’s yoga studio. They made their way to India together to develop a foundation in yoga under the guidance of realized masters.

Rooftops and Hip-Hop

Somewhere along the path, Nicholas Giacomini dreamed MC YOGI into being on a rooftop in India and connected the dots between the Rock Steady Crew and Babaji; between hip-hop and Kirtan; between the old and new; sacred and mainstream.

MC YOGI has cleaved a clear channel to receive the knowledge he imparts in the book and in his life. “I think when you open to receiving, when you really want it, when you’re thirsty for the truth, when you really have this insatiable desire to become awake, then all these teachers appear. When you have that desire to practice your life becomes like a magnet for teaching and for wisdom because you get it from all directions.”

Photo by Julia Duke

While he was in India the spiritual graffiti in the streets of Mysore lit up the cartoons in his head. “Because I grew up reading comic books, when I went to India and saw the Hindu deities like Hanuman and Ganesha… they were like super heroes in my mind. I really gravitated to those myths and those stories, and it helped me to understand the philosophy of Yoga.” It was around this time when he found some Hindi comic books that opened his mind to traditional myths and stories in a easily digestible graphic format.

MC YOGI on Comic Books as Teachers

“These myths been huge teachers to me,” he says, “There’s a lot of encoded wisdom in those stories that have been passed down from generation to generation to generation…It really depends on the commentary you listen to because everyone is deciphering the code in their own way. I like to read the stories, listen to the stories and see how they apply them to my everyday… these archetypes of being broken down so you can rise up. Going through tragedy, going through these traumatic experiences and coming out the other side sort of like a new person. I feel like all the great myths have that story of transformation, of going from darkness to light, over coming obstacles of pain, trauma, and suffering so you can come back and be of service.”

Music, Language, and Practice

The class now about to begin, MC YOGI switches to teacher mode, picks up the mic, queues up a track on his laptop at the front of the room and opens the yoga class at Wren and Wild with a full mat capacity. More than 150 yogis are poised to practice. He opens with a lighthearted joke, then does one of things he does really, really well: teach yoga. Invoking the unifying magic of music and the power of language he takes these yogis deep into a collective asana experience. He opens new doors for some, like a bearded guy named Rich with a brain injury who is new to yoga, while others lean deeper into their practice.

Photo by Julia Duke

Satsang, Spiritual Graffiti and 10,000 Buddhas

After the class, Amanda leads the satsang, or spiritual gathering. She imparts some moving stories from their travels and invites us into the 10,000 Buddha’s experience with a video presentation and reading. MC YOGI reads from Spiritual Graffiti and settles back on the couch for someone one-on-one book signing as a line snakes through the space.

“While I was finishing the book she reached her 10,000th Buddha,” he says about Amanda, who synergistically achieving her goal of painting 10,000 Buddhas.

Energized after the class, MC YOGI takes a beat and a few breaths before he greets each person one at a time. He meticulously and artfully renders his gratitude in sharpie inside their hardcover copy of Spiritual Graffiti.

“That’s why I love practicing yoga, I slow down and just breathe. After about 15 minutes of just conscious breathing, doing some postures and sitting in meditation,” he says, “I always feel completely refreshed. I always feel better. I think we need yoga more than ever,” he says. He adds that he doesn’t usually practice or teach to music, but he sometimes invokes it as a unifying element for these big classes.

MC YOGI on Creating Ritual through Yoga

“The theme of the class today was creating your own rhythm and routine, like your own personal ritual. Not what someone else is telling you to do, but something you’re creating for yourself that helps to provide structure for your life.”

He says most of the people he talks to come to yoga because of some kind of trauma. “Because of something they’re trying to work through. That was the case when I came to yoga. It’s always amazing to see people come to yoga and move through so much difficulty. The practice help to free it up and move the energy.”

MC YOGI doesn’t see yoga as a luxury.

“In this day and age with all the overstimulation and the saturation of all kinds of misinformation, you need something to be able to cut through that noise.”

After Bend, the Spiritual Graffiti book tour headed north to Canada for the Bloom Festival, where they taught a yoga class to 300 high school kids. “Usually, we do festivals and big stages. Doing this stuff is like getting back to where we came from. Back to the local mom and pop yoga studios.”

His parting words, like his book, are inspiring. “Keep going, keep practicing, keep developing, keeping evolving, keep listening, tuning in and connecting because the more you come to your practice, if you do it every day, it starts to open and unlock all these doors that you may never have known existed.”

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

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“I became a part of that magic. I have understood what that’s really about,” Bansuri flutist and Bhakti music circuit darling, Manose Singh, confides while sitting in the green room at Portland, Oregon’s iconic Revolution Hall. He’s been touring with Deva Premal and Miten for the better part of their perpetual, two decade, global tour.

“I was finished with music as a career when I came to Osho. I was damaged,” Miten reflects on his early years as a British rocker as he sits next to Manose on the couch, laughing as Deva Premal joins the party. A framed photograph of Osho sits on a small table behind her. Deva Premal is the ever-graceful mantra diva who essentially maxed out the genre; she sys she is still forever “humbled to think that I could have an impact on one person’s life.”

A sea of adoring followers always in their wake, Deva, Miten & Manose have opened a very intimate space in the Temple at Midnight. A deceptively scaled-back, acoustic set-up magically produces a fuller, deeper resonance than the bigger productions they’ve staged in the past. Deva, Miten & Manose are always elevating the vibration with a richness of sound commensurate to their ever-deepening collective devotion.

The tour feels like hybrid. It’s victory lap for Miten, because they’re traveling to support his new solo release, Temple at Midnight, while also offering the mantras their followers know and love. Miten’s new songs are woven throughout their set with equal time given to Deva, the mantras, as well as a special spot in the set featuring Manose that taps us into his Himalayan roots.

Tayata Om Bekandze Bekandze Maha Bekandze Radza Samudgate Soha

(May the many sentient beings who are sick, quickly be freed from sickness. And may all the sicknesses of beings never arise again.)

Miten’s Temple at Midnight release is the crescendo of a life with a decidedly steep karmic arc that everyone from Snatam Kaur to Stanislav Grof are fawning over. “To go into the heart, to feel embraced by the intimate music and lyrics, and to hear the soul’s longing, are gifts of this beautiful new album…” -Snatam Kaur

The US leg of tour under their belt, the love train heads for European leg of the tour.

Click here for more on Kirtan Road Dogs.

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

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If His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada tried to enter the US from India today, chances are the spiritual master would be detained. But in 1964, the septuagenarian Vaishnava Swami was welcomed to the West with open arms and proceeded to detonate a transcendental love bomb on Manhattan’s Lower East Side that transformed the phenomenal world forever. This is the story told in the Hare Krishna! film documentary.

Prabhupada infiltrated the counterculture with the science and art of Bhakti (devotion) and swept a generation into his wake. With a universe of devotees at his feet, he spearheaded the worldwide Krishna Consciousness movement, rebranding the Sankirtan movement, and taking the Maha Mantra back to into the street. Like his predecessor from another Swami order, Paramahansa Yogananda, Prabhupada is the subject of a new feature documentary release. Awake! The Life of Yogananda, which essentially created a new market for spiritual films, as well as Monk With a Camera (2016) have both paved the way for this film Hare Krishna!

If Hare Krishna! film director John Griesser’s goal was to reintroduce the world to the magic of Prabhupada, he hit his mark. Hare Krishna! is the second coming of Prabhupada.

Griesser draws the viewer into to the magic of the Hare Krishna movement through an artfully crafted, seamless, multimedia medley, drawing from a wealth of existing archival elements including photographs, film, and video interviews combined with recreations, reenactments, and graphics to achieve a cinematic flow that takes you out of the theatre and into the moment. Composer Michael Mollura’s score captures Prabhupada’s distinctive energetic signature in a resplendent soundscape that is rife with the elevated guru’s decidedly sophisticated majesty. Mollura’s music is part of what takes us beyond the lens and into the lotus heart of Swami Prabhupada.

Prabhupada’s vibration is found in every frame. In the film, we get sense of 1960s, American-hippy naiveté through Prabhupada’s 19th century, Colonial Indian sensibilities. We also understand the decidedly enlightened arc, immutable faith, and selfless contributions of an elevated spiritual being who arrived in Manhattan on a mission from his master with a few Sanskrit texts and not much else. In little more than a decade of his time remaining, he propelled Krishna Consciousness into the global mainstream and synthesized a vast library of sacred Sanskrit wisdom texts to their essence.

“If we chant this vibration of transcendental sound with devotion and with attention that is the highest type of meditation and devotion.” -A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

For more information on the film, visit Hare Krishna the Film

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Hare Krishna Film Review appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Jon offering sound healing at The Beloved Festival

“The gong is the first and last instrument for the human mind. It is the basic creative sound. To the mind, the sound of the gong is like a mother and father that gave it birth. The mind has no power to resist a gong that is well played.”  ~ Yogi Bhajan

The breadth of the Bridgetown sprawl has rendered the topography of Southwest Portland, Oregon unrecognizable since my last visit in 2007. That said, Jon Reinschreiber hasn’t really changed much since then. He looks pretty much the same: with long white Merlinesque hair and beard and sporting a tribal print T-shirt. Reinschreiber is a shamanic sound healer and fixture in the larger Portland healing community who sold his house on Craigslist and followed the medicine path around the world before returning back home to Portland.

Twelve countries and five continents later, with a wealth of collected instruments and esoteric knowledge of vibrational healing, Reinschreiber has meticulously fashioned a fusion of traditional healing styles from techniques imparted by indigenous healers to create his modality. In short, he showed up, got the downloads, and put them to practice.

Over the last decade he has toured extensively leading meditations and facilitating performances from Burning Man to The Beloved Festival as well as for a long list of yoga studios, churches, and even prisons.

“Everything just blended together to create the harmonics that I was looking forward to creating,” he says while sitting in his Shamanic Vibrations Temple in South East Portland. The Temple is spacious loft with red walls and trippy ambient lighting effects. Here he sets up large chrome gong racks in preparation for this evening’s meditation.

Among his extensive collection of sacred musical instruments are Himalayan and crystal singing bowls, Chinese wind and Chau gongs, Javanese temple gongs, bells, whistles, flutes, drums, rattles, shakers, and a few rare healing instruments including bird quill pan pipes, Peruvian Chimu water whistles, and Peruvian flutes.

“People need to be practicing radical self-care,” Reinschreiber says. He’s operating on this simple premise, “If sound and vibration can create, they can heal,” he says. “Each human body has it’s own natural harmonic resonance.” He cites disruptions in that resonance as the cause of disease and imbalance. “Gongs, singing bowls and other instruments can create a harmonic field that restore the body’s natural vibratory resonance to vibrant health,” he says.

Watch the video of Jon Reinschreiber and his Gong Medicine.

Gongs have the capacity to create deep complex harmonics that suspend linear time, allowing chaos and order to co-exist beyond the mind’s reactions. This induces a creative meditation where internal blockages, conflicts, and traumas can be resolved, dissolved, and healed.

Yogi Bhajan said about this process, “The mind has no power to resist a gong that is well played.” That is exactly what happens in Reinschreiber’s meditations.

“The gongs are great for shutting down the monkey mind,” he says. A few minutes after he strikes the first gong, everyone in attendance has gone deep. An hour later it takes a little time before they begin to integrate the work.

Later Reinschrieber reflects as he packs up his tools, “I get what the people are willing to receive.” With gratitude he says, “I get to work in the energy of people doing deep healing work.”

You can sit in Jon Reinschreiber’s gong meditation series in Portland where he also offers everything from private healings to a variety of workshops ranging from introduction to master circles. You can also connect with him on tour and download recordings on CD Baby or on his site Shamanic Vibrations.

And Silver Fox said to Coyote, ‘Let us sing the World’ and they danced and they sang until the earth was created.”
~ Miwok Creation Legend

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Gong Medicine appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Photos of Krishna Das at Bhakti Fest West 2012 shot by Kristina Clemens Kristinaclemens.com

Chanting is called a practice for one reason: It only works if we do it. Chanting has been my main practice for years, but it took me a long time to realize that it’s only by doing it regularly that we begin to experience ourselves changing. If we want to get wet we have to jump into the water. If we want to stay wet we have to learn to swim, or at least float! ––KD from Chants of a Lifetime

Krishna Das (KD) is drenched. He’s standing under a cloudburst of grace with his feet in a puddle of love. If you stand anywhere near him you’re going to get wet.

His karmic trajectory is well documented. He put out the call for transcendence in the Summer of Love and the response materialized as the living embodiment of the simian god, Hanuman, in the form of his guru, Neem Karoli Baba. KD crawled out of a bottomless pit of despair in New York all the way to the subcontinent and…well…you can read the rest in his book, Chants of a Lifetime.

Four decades later, the street-certified kirtan road dog who opened the door for generations of western seekers has transcended the role of portal keeper to the East. The lotus has blossomed; a career crescendo manifested in the release of  Heart As Wide As The World has certified his bhakti adhikara.

Krishna Das brings a lot of light. Presumably, he also casts a commensurate shadow, but all I can see is the reflected glare from his gleaming king-sized tour bus in the parking lot just outside the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. The show he is sharing with Deva Premal, Miten and Manose is, of course, sold out.

Krishna Das: Servant of God

“Krishna Das is my name. My guru gave me that name in India in 1972. It means servant of God,” he says. “It’s something to grow up into, I think. When you first start doing spiritual practice, it’s very much you’re trying to pull that splinter out, that nail you stepped on. You’re trying to get it out of your foot.

My practice, of course, you would say is chanting. Obviously that’s my main practice. But that’s really just a part of the practice. The context that all the chanting is done within is trying to be in the presence of that love all the time.

The practice and the path seem to be about your own pain and removing your own pain and suffering. But the more you do this stuff, the older you get, you begin to see that your own pain is no better or less or more than anyone else’s pain. You kind of lose the ability to cut off and keep people at a distance. Then your practice begins to get…how to deal with…” He pauses, “How do you keep your heart open with the huge, humungous amount of suffering in the world?”

Getting to the place inside us that knows that we are One requires practice. My main formal practice is chanting the names of God. The practice of the repetition of the Name invokes a place or space inside us, a presence that’s always here. It isn’t subject to vagaries of our thoughts and emotions – the ups and downs, the ins and outs. Chanting the Divine Names invokes the inner heart, which is the presence that lives in us.

This heart is not an emotional state; emotions come and go. It is also not referring to the physical pump that resides in the chest. The heart is an abode, our home, the place in each of us where we know who we actually are. This abode is deeper than thoughts and deeper than emotions. And that presence, of course, is our own presence; who we actually are underneath who and what we think we are, underneath the inner dialogue that’s always going on about everything. This “heart” is called chidakasha. It’s the sky of the mind, of consciousness, of true Being, not located at any one place. Embracing and encompassing everything, nothing is outside of it. It is home. ––KD from Chants of a Lifetime

“I first tasted that presence being with my guru in India. Living in India with him and meeting other great beings; great saints, great yogis. Every time I come into the presence of that love, I go, oh right…that’s what it’s about. And immediately it puts everything into perspective for me. You know we get lost in our own stuff all the time, but the minute I move into that love, into that presence… whatever you want to call it, it immediately makes everything okay. Even if it’s painful. Even if it’s difficult. It gives a context for what you’re going through. You’re not alone. You’re not a victim. You’re not a mistake.”

Sam Slovick: What’s your highest aspiration?

Krishna Das: To be in that love all the time. That’s what I want to do. I want to, no matter what’s happening in my life, no matter who’s there, who’s not there, where I am, where I’m going….I want to be in the presence of that love all the time. I want to be aware of that and I don’t ever want it to turn off. I don’t want anything to be able to turn that off. I want to have the strength of heart to stay open no matter what.

SS: What’s your biggest challenge?
[Following KD’s stream of consciousness can sometimes require a less linear thought process. It’s a follow-the-bouncing-ball scenario. Presumably, he knows where he’s going.]

KD: I think it’s inevitable, actually, for everybody, I think that’s where we’re going. Maybe not this life; maybe not this Yuga. Maybe the world’s going to go to shit before we get that. I think it goes in cycles. That’s what I’ve heard. Any bit of work that you do in this direction, any movement you make towards the love is never lost. Even if you don’t experience it the way you’d like to right away. Still it’s never lost. That’s what they say.

SS: What’s your saving grace?

KD: Saving grace for me was having met my guru in India, and also…what led me to India was having met Ram Dass when he came back from India to America. When I walked into the room with Ram Dass I immediately knew intuitively, without a word being spoken, that what I was looking for was actually real. It existed in the world and it could be found.

SS: Do you think your current career crescendo – the traction from your book and new CD is a sort of meaningful place on your karmic arc?

KD: To tell you the truth I don’t think about it very much. And because I don’t think about it very much, because I’m more inwardly directed, I think that’s what allows all that stuff to happen.

Back in the old days when I wanted all that stuff, I wasn’t getting it. And if I’d have gotten it – if I’d been in the band and I hadn’t left that band I was in and I’d have gotten certain things I would have been long dead. That stuff would have destroyed me. So now I’m more inwardly directed and I’m not dependant on external things to make me feel good about myself. They can come or go and I can enjoy them – or not. It’s okay.

SS: That’s a lovely place to be. It took a minute, huh? And a lot of work?

KD: The way that I see it, and this is totally pathological from most people’s point of view, this is my guru filling my karmas now that they won’t destroy me. He’s giving me all the things that I wanted now that I want love more than those things. It’s called grace. That’s the saving grace, that I didn’t get those things when I was young and now they’re coming when I can actually enjoy them.

SS: It’s kind of obvious that you’re having fun.

KD: It’s not like I don’t enjoy chanting to a thousand or twelve thousand people; I enjoy that. I enjoy watching and feeling that beautiful thing developing, but I’m not doing it to feel good about myself. I’m not doing it to be a star or become famous. I’m doing it because this is my practice; this is what brings me into the love. As far as I’m concerned this is as good as it gets. The really great thing about it is sitting there in front of all these people and feeling like its family.

Everybody’s there for the same reason and we’re all in this together and that’s the great feeling. It’s not the fact that I’m doing it.

That’s saving grace; saving me from pride, saving me from all that ego stuff that goes on. That’s grace. I can’t take credit for that. I’m being saved from burning in my own pride and self-importance by my own guru.

SS: How do you keep the road rust off? I’ve seen your tour schedule. It’s brutal. And let’s face it, you’re not a teenager, you feel me?

KD: Part of my practice is to learn how to take care of myself. Since I’m a person of extremes, and have always been a person of extremes, I’m trying to learn how to pace myself.

Chanting is not my job. Chanting is my practice. This is what I love doing. My job is taking care of my physical health so that I can continue to do this. I’m learning how to do that. Every once in a while I get pretty fried and I just fall over. Sometimes I just go to India and sleep for a month and recharge.

I got really tired last year: writing the book, doing the CD and touring. It really was hard, but now I’m just taking it easy singing and chanting, traveling and trying to take care of myself.

SS: Is it service that you’re doing? Is that your intention? Is that how you see it?

KD: I don’t see this as if I’m doing something for anyone else. This is not the Salvation Army here. I’m not on a mission. This is my practice. This is what I need to do for me.

SS: How does it work, your practice of mantra? What is the mechanism of your modality?

KD: I don’t know. I just sing. I don’t think about it. People seem to enjoy it so they come back. It’s that simple. Some people, who are drawn to it, they’re getting something from it. I’m drawn to it so I keep doing it.

SS: And?

KD: If you want to know the way I see it, I’ll tell you; it’s all my guru’s business. I have nothing to do with it. He could pick up a rusty pipe and play beautiful music as if it was the most expensive flute you could buy. He could do anything. I’m just the rusty pipe. He picks me up, he plays it, he puts me down. What does a pipe know about music? What does a flute know about music? It’s the musician who plays it. God, my guru, he’s the musician. I’m just the instrument. And the less I think about it, the easier it is.

Drawn by the power of his love, like a moth to the flame, the other devotees and I were purified by that fire. There was nowhere to get away from it. And we didn’t want to get away. We wanted to be in that love, but in order to be in that love, our stuff had to burn away. The process still continues in a different way. –– KD from Chants of a Lifetime

SS: Oddly, you haven’t said his name.

KD: Neem Karoli Baba, he’s my guru. People know him as the little old guy with the blanket. Ram Dass’ guru. Everybody knows him for that. Thing is, he’s no longer in the body. He died in 1973, so when I talk about him it’s almost as if he’s around physically because he’s that around for me. He’s that much a part of my life.

(The sound of a toilet flushing from the next room interrupts his flow. He looks over his shoulder, addressing an unseen observer.)

“All right, I’m getting a little corny,” he says, directing his remarks to the door. “You don’t have to flush the toilet in my face.”

SS: What else is on your mind? If I handed you my pen what would you write?

KD: If you asked me the one thing that I’d like to see: I’d like everybody to realize what’s really possible and what you really can find in life. What’s available. We’re programmed with so much bullshit and so much unhappiness.

We’re programmed with it from the cultures we grow up in to what our parents have gone through, what’s transmitted to us through them and our families and the worlds around us.

All that is just covering what’s really there. What’s covered is something really special that everybody has, and the sad thing is that people don’t realize that. They continually create more pain and more suffering for themselves because they don’t know what’s possible.

Everybody wants to be happy. Everybody. They may not call it that, but they’re looking for something. But because we don’t really believe it exists, our own actions just wind up covering it up even more. That’s hard to see. I’ve just been so lucky I’ve had so much grace. That just makes me see what’s possible, not that I’m special, just what is possible in the world.

SS: Presumably, there was a dark hour of the soul before you had the transcendence that has provided you this enlightened perspective, this openhearted detached indifference?

KD: I’d be dead. My mother was an alcoholic; I had substance abuse problems myself. I was strung out on coke for two years. Freebase. And I’m only alive because of my Indian family, these people I lived with in India. My Indian father came to America and took one look at me and he went, “Promise me now, you’ll quit cocaine. Promise me now.” He didn’t give me any f****** option. He loved me so much I knew I had to. I knew it was killing me and so I said okay.

From that day I never did it again. Totally clean. Stopped. Never wanted it again due to his spiritual power and my agreeing to go with the program at that point, he gave me the strength to avoid that.

I was going down the tubes, and it wasn’t the first time. I had all those inclinations to destroy myself. If things hadn’t gone the way they’d gone, I’d be long gone. Long dead. No question about it. Because I hated myself so goddamn much. Because I was so angry – so angry at my life and myself and so frustrated not being able to get what I wanted out of life. I was torturing myself and I would have continued that until there was nothing left to torture.

SS: That’s a lovely story. Really. By the way, on a related subject, do you ever find yourself practicing for the moment of your death? I know I do.

KD: You know I don’t think about death too much because, [the] way I understand it, we don’t know what life is. How are we going to find out what death is? We don’t know who we are. We don’t know where we are right now so my job is to get here right now as close to 100 percent as I can and when death happens, when that moment arrives, if I’m really present now, I’ll be really present with that too.

It’s not something you can prepare for in your head. You have to be there. It has to be real.

You have to know what’s going on now, because there is only now. There isn’t later. Every moment – it’s as if time moves through us, we don’t move through time. We’re here and time moves through us.

When that moment comes when the next breath is not gonna come in, how you greet that moment, it’s not going to be very different from how you greet these moments. So if you don’t take the knots out of your heart now, if you don’t remove fear, shame, guilt, anger, selfishness, what do you think you’re going to do when you’re actually leaving the body and you have no control? When you don’t have a body you don’t have the kind of control you have now.

You can come back from a thought and okay, now what? But when you don’t have a body it’s like a dream. You’re in a dream. Can you control you dreams? No. You’re not going to control your death. You’re not going to control your life after the body without knowing how to be here now. The same stuff that’s pushing you is going to keep pushing. You’re just going to lose your anchor.

SS: Any last word? Something else on your mind?

KD: I don’t have much on my mind. I just want to keep chanting; keep singing. Like I say, that’s what keeps me straight. Boom.

I really don’t think. [He pauses to reflect, then says] I’d like UCONN to go undefeated in women’s basketball and win the NCAA championships. Other than that I don’t have many desires, I mean, that I think about that much.

The Sanskrit chants that we sing – recognized for millennia as the Names of God – come from a deep place within each of us, so they have the power to draw us back within. If we go deep enough, we will arrive at the same place, our deepest being.
–– KD from Chants of a Lifetime

For More Information

For more information on Krishna Das’ tour schedule, recordings and books, visit: krishnadas.com.

Photos of Krishna Das at Bhakti Fest West 2012 shot by Kristina Clemens Kristinaclemens.com

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Heart Reign: The Ascension Of Krishna Das appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Over the course of a week, Asad took me from the periphery of a practice to deep into the flow. The progress I made in his class in the span of a few months was something I had been trying to achieve for years. It was incredibly challenging initially, but the strength, inner focus, and equanimity I carried off the mat and into my life was a profound and enduring shift. It was part his personality, part his experience that imbued me with the conviction I needed to give myself the opening to begin a consistent practice – not to mention the 10 pounds I dropped and the strength I gained in three weeks.

Influenced by Ashtanga, Iyengar, and Sivananda Yoga, and drawing from an athletic background, Asad incorporates asanas that help strengthen the body and create and expand flexibility. Asad began his practice with Sivananda in New York while recovering from a knee injury and ACL reconstruction. Yet Yoga was more than rehabilitation. “I was always on a spiritual search. Once it hit home and resonated for me, I said, “I want this in my life for the rest of my life.”

Asad speaks about athletics and Yoga, “With the physical practice of Yoga, any activity you do – especially sports – will make you more flexible and stronger, and will respect your injury because of the awareness from the practice in your body.” Having experienced it personally, part of his current focus is working with top surgeons to pioneer specialty Yoga practices for people healing from reconstructive knee surgery.

While athleticism and injury led him to the studio where his practice began as a primarily physical endeavor, he cites how he is deeply affected by Paramahansa Yogananda and says, “It’s important to have a sitting practice even more than an asana practice.”
Off the mat, Asad is a volunteer at Self-Realization Fellowship’s Lake Shrine, where he regularly meditates. “I try to sit in the morning and evening at some point,” Asad said. “As a teacher, I need to have that clear channel. At home, I have set up a little altar with my meditation pillow, pictures of the Self-Realization masters, my books, and some candles.”

The tranquil and open space tucked away on Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades contributed to his decision to form a new company–Elite Yoga and Wellness, of which he is the CEO. Asad’s awakening regarding managing practitioners came over time and culminated in a moment at Lake Shrine when he realized that he was committed to manifesting a vision of the Elite Wellness collective, a joint venture with partners Autumn Luscinski and Cynthia Ford who have been on board since his epiphany.

“We are intent on managing the Wild West of the wellness world,” Asad said. According to Asad, people who tap into to the Elite Wellness matrix can access “the very best that the wellness world has to offer. It’s more than just booking a private home or office Yoga sessions. We offer the tools to a life of well-being.” The team is also focused on giving back, through enlightened philanthropy, including initiatives with the L.A. Unified School District. A father of two children (whose custody he shares with his ex-wife) and avid outdoor enthusiast, Billy teaches afterschool Yoga for kids as a volunteer. He recently put together a retreat for 25 first graders, incorporating Yoga and nature in the trip.

The combination of Yoga and the outdoors is personal for him. In order to recalibrate and recharge, he goes mountain biking and hiking. He likes to, as he says, “cleanse in the woods. That’s my technique, I go into nature—mountain biking or surfing – to refuel and cleanse and get a better idea of what I need to teach. When my tank is full – when I’m clean and clear – I have a much better idea of what I need to preach and teach. I use a lot of outdoor elements. I’m very animal like that. I connect and recharge and I come back and speak as much truth as I can through my classes.” He brings this back to his time teaching, “I really try after close to 20 years of teaching to give each class a mind of its own.”

Asad identifies the benefits of his teaching as a stronger and more flexible physical body, more clarity and one-pointedness in the mind, healing previous injuries and preventing future injuries, being physically and mentally prepared for the most challenging situations, and increased senses of self-worth and confidence.

Along with teaching ongoing classes, Asad has been featured in a series of Yoga videos, including Sports Yoga with Billy Asad, with additional videos in the series for tennis, skiing and snowboarding. He has been featured several magazines about wellness and sports Yoga including in Healthy Living and Men’s Health. Yet Elite Yoga and Wellness is more than just about his teaching, it’s a wellness hub of modalities and healers, a network of connections to Yoga teachers and wellness providers, including Pilates instructors, massage therapists, Ayurvedic healers, acupuncturists and life coaches.

“I see a need for all these wellness providers and healers,” Asad said. “There’s a shift in consciousness. This is the shift at the end of the Mayan calendar in the Kali Yuga with the uprise in consciousness. That’s the shift that I’m riding.” It’s a shift the world needs right now, and one that Asad promotes wholeheartedly. “The benefits of Yoga are fully realized when a strict and consistent practice is integrated into one’s life.” Asad doesn’t just teach it, he practices Yoga. He adds, “It also makes me an all around more awake, conscious person, better dad, friend, and lover.”

Billy Asad teaches at YogaWorks Westside locations and privately. He can also be found at: eliteyogawellness.com.

Sam Slovick is regular contributor to LA Yoga and columnist for the LA Weekly: samslovick.com.

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Billy Asad: Pushing the Edge appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

The Kyoto Hotel in downtown Los Angeles is a portal today. Braced against the streets of chaos, the Little Toyko-5 star is pressed tightly against the homeless vortex of Skid Row. In a few hours, Reluctant Healer, David Elliott will incite another kind vortex here. A whirling mass of self inflicted healing in a pranayamic workshop. Neatly dressed in a sweater and jeans, he’s breathing easy in the pristine sanctuary of the rooftop garden. Elliott listens with the detached indifference of a spiritual clinician. He speaks with the calm reserve of a Southerner.

A practiced wordsmith, he has just released his second book, Healing. His first work, The Reluctant Healer, was decidedly well received and remains a valuable resource for anyone considering the path of healer.
“I teach people how to heal themselves by getting in touch with their energy, and teaching them how energy can melt through any block or illness, and ultimately the energy I’m talking about is love…self-love.”
Pranayama is a healing modality. From the Sanskrit; prana or breath is the life-force; yama, means to suspend or restrain. The breathwork is an aspect of what David Elliott does in totality. It’s one element in a larger toolbox that makes up his practice.
“It’s a tool to help people to get out of their heads… to help people to open up. Open their heart up and stop thinking or being focused outside themselves. So with the breathing meditation we’re teaching people to focus inside. To still themselves and ultimately to open up and let the universe come through as love…as self-love,” he says.
Tracing our collective trajectory to this place in time when we are vastly more complicated than our predecessors, Elliott articulates the challenges his work confronts and the people it serves.
“We are complex by the nature of technology and information. We’re totally occupied. The modality of breathwork brings you to a still place where you get into the moment. Ultimately I’m creating an experience for people to feel their spirit. To feel their spirit coming into their body as a vibration. When people feel that they heal. They unblock. They let go of the past…of the stuff that they’re holding onto to that’s keeping them stuck and out of the moment.
________________________________________
________________________________________
Sam Slovick: What happens in your workshops?
David Elliott: We’re creating a vortex. We’re creating a big amount of energy that’s moving in the room. And as people tap into that it takes them into experiences where they feel very deeply their emotions. We’re getting people to disengage with all the shit that they’re coming in with. And in that moment we’re…expanding that moment, expanding their awareness. Literally what we’re doing is we’re stimulating the hypothalamus; related to the crown chakra. When that happens the endorphins that are released start to trigger [a cascade effect in] the other ductless glands [which are associated with] the chakras and that’s what creates the big influx of energy.
David’s evolution as a healer has imbued him with the ability to reduce the essence of his work to a seemingly simple assertion: “We all have the power to heal any affliction right inside ourselves. The biggest problem that people bring to me is that they’re not connected to themselves. Through that disconnection, there is this focus outside oneself to find all the answers.
SS: What’s your highest aspiration?
DE: My highest aspiration is to help as many people as I can to find their way to their truth and to find their way to healing, to their purpose and then through that to help a culture and a society become a little more peaceful and have a little more fun and be a little less stressed out.
SS: What’s your biggest challenge?
DE: To slow down and to connect to each moment in its fullest way, in its greatest potential to express and be connected to love; to be having fun in everything I’m doing. And, of course, dealing with people with chips on their shoulders.
SS: What’s your saving grace?
DE: That I’m having a lot of fun doing what I’m doing and I try not to take most things too seriously. Through that I’m finding that it’s helping me to become a better teacher, healer, father, artist and writer. So my saving grace is the moment-to-moment application to what I’m preaching.
David Elliott is breathing easy. Sitting still on the roof, the skyline looming in the background he considers everything and leaves me with this: “I would really like for people to know that they can heal themselves. If they take the information from this book, Healing, they don’t even have to buy it, they can go to my website and download it for free…if they apply the information they will heal. I believe that the work I do absolutely connects people to their genetic imprint, to what they already know and that’s why this work tends to happen so fast for people.”

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post David Elliott: The Reluctant Healer appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Change was needed. I had recently retired a multi-decade tobacco addiction and gained twenty pounds in two months when my metabolism came to a screeching halt without the nicotine. A friend of mine had dropped twenty-five pounds in twenty-six days on the Jennings’ RealMecleanse. Cautiously committed, I met with the naturopath who created the cleanse to get the skinny on how to loose some weight fast.

“Naturopathic medicine is something that some people still don’t know about,” Dr Kelly Jennings tells me during our consultation in an upscale production office in Santa Monica. Miles away from her practice in Portland, Oregon, this naturopathic doctor is calm and disarmingly vibrant with a focused compassion… the poster girl for wellness.

As a naturopathic doctor and licensed acupuncturist (abbreviated ND, MSOM, LAc), Jennings looks at health though a broad lens, assessing and evaluating my health and well-being with a comprehensive intake and review of my past medical history. She does this with practiced precision…and a contagious smile. “Naturopathic medicine? It is four to six years of medical school, with all of the subjects typically taught in a conventional medical school such as anatomy and physiology, neuroscience, immunology, and biochemistry, then add on to that training in homeopathy, botanical medicine, hydrotherapy and, for many students, including me, Chinese medicine,” she says.

Just under the social skin the doctor is all business as she cuts to the chase breaking down the protocol for her RealMEcleanse; a metabolic enhancement and weight loss cleanse that utilizes hCG (human chorionic gonadotrophin). It’s all good fun until she drops the following bomb, “500 calories a day maximum,” she says. Though initially alarming, I found that I was never hungry during the 26 day period on the protocol and dropped 20 pounds with minimal exercise. The hCG acts as an appetite suppressant.

Dr. Jennings has been working with a variety of cleanses with exceptional results over the last decade in her practice at Urban Wellness Group in Portland. This group of holistic physicians focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease with a focus on natural health. She assures me that this particular cleanse was the right cleanse for me. It was safe, given my history, and would stimulate my metabolism so I’d lose weight while doing it.

I’d done the research on other hCG diets and thought they seemed a little extreme. The many important distinctions between Jenning’s cleanse and others gave me the confidence that this was responsible and right for me: Others involve injectable hCG which I wasn’t interested in taking. The RealMEcleanse uses homeopathic hCG drops taken orally plus it’s a vegetarian/vegan friendly, medically supervised process that addresses any potential side effects and maximizes weight loss.

hCG is human chorionic gonadotrophin, a glycoprotein hormone produced in pregnant women by the placenta. It acts on the hypothalamus, signaling the body to release stored fat into the bloodstream where it’s used by the cells for nourishment. Coupled with decreased food intake, taking hCG forces the body to use the mobilized fat that is now circulating in the bloodstream to fuel the daily metabolic rate. The best part is that it preferentially stimulates the release of abnormal fat stores in the body and does not affect structural fat and muscle tissue. All this means that people on this regimen predominantly lose fat in the stomach, hips, thighs, buttocks, and upper arms.

I’d read that hCG was extracted from the urine of pregnant women, which, although a little disturbing, wasn’t an issue for me. I was focused on weight loss and wellness and the magic of hCG. I opted for the homeopathic oral preparation.

During our initial consultation, Dr Jennings completed a full medical intake including a review of my past medical history. Her thorough evaluation made me confident that I wasn’t doing anything reckless. At the end of the program, her final consultation focuses on helping people develop a sustainable long-term eating program. Mine was individualized for my particular constitution and incorporates foods that I like to eat. She also offers additional detox support to help boost metabolism and support fat cleansing during and after the process. And, though I didn’t require it personally, the availability of 24 hour/7 days a week medical supervision would have been helpful for any questions or concerns that emerged during the cleanse.

When I was cleared for take-off, I entered the wellness matrix through the RealMEcleanse portal on a Monday morning. I was good to go, although still concerned about the 500 calorie a day restriction, I committed to a twenty-four-day cleanse motivated by the promise of losing weight. Although I entered this plan with the primary motivation to lose weight, the experience led me to consider the broader implication of wellness in general as a lifestyle. I recommitted to my Yoga practice and was now seeing a future with new healthy possibilities.

I had somehow been seduced into wellness. At least the idea of wellness. Wellness as a framework for personal motivation. That and the promise of losing a pound a day, which is exactly what happened over the next month.

The RealMEcleanse protocol is: six small meals at two hour intervals daily combined with hCG drops before all but the last meal of the day. Two of the daily meals are 100 grams of protein and 40 to 60 calories each of vegetables. Other meals are fruit or bread sticks.

As part of the agreement Dr. Jennings was available for bi-monthly phone consultations. She also made herself fully available by email in the case that anything came up during the course of the cleanse. The benefits of her expertise and experience were essential for making a dietary lifestyle change as opposed to a crash diet. I already knew from experience that those types of diets would only lead me back to where I began in a month or two.

A few days into my first 500 calorie per day cleanse I began to understand the journey was not just about changing my relationship to body fat. The challenge and the opportunity presented involved a psycho-emotional purge as well as an expanded awareness of my emotional eating habits. My hands automatically reached for things I couldn’t eat… so I didn’t. The subsequent emotional upheaval that followed clearly mapped out what I’d been doing with food: Food I didn’t like and wasn’t hungry for but still ingesting. The pattern was glaring. As the fat drained from my cells, the process became more than physical.

I could see the pounds melting away. I felt at home in my body again. And what had been stored in my tissue was being expressed in another way. It was coming through my senses as emotion. I was now processing what I had inhaled in a cloud of smoke and then stored in my fat cells from the subsequent weight gain when I quit smoking at a rapid pace.

Though it’s usually advised not to exercise during the process, Dr. Jennings encouraged me to continue my burgeoning Yoga practice. I showed up every other day at the new YogaWorks mega-plex in Tarzana. The convenience of the studio right next to Whole Foods was a big help in the first week as I became oriented to the protocol. I shopped for the following day’s food before my Iyengar level 1 & 2 class.

During the RealMEcleanse I lost twenty pounds. There were a few days I didn’t lose any and a couple I gained a pound. I could probably have lost a few more but I repeated some meals, which is not advised.

What happened over the course of the process was something much more valuable and lasting than temporary weight loss. I taught myself how to eat for optimum efficiency in a way that benefits my overall health. My body, now cleansed, has a new understating of high performance digestion.

The things I’m interested in eating now are good for me. The idea of putting sugar, wheat, and dairy into my system is not something I’m compelled to do. It’s not a conscious decision but rather an internalized function that doesn’t require thought. I’m no longer reaching for things that I really don’t want to eat but only served as an emotional suppressant. For me, the RealMEcleanse is a super conscious, lasting systemic dietary education.

For more information about Dr. Kelly Jennings and the RealMe Cleanse, visit: urbanwellnesspdx.com/jennings. She can also be reached at her clinic (503) 445 – 9771 for individualized consultations.

Sam Slovick is a regular contributor to LA YOGA Ayurveda and Health Magazine (among other publications) and the author of the current LA Weekly series, PAVEMENT: found atblogs.laweekly.com/informer/pavement. His website is: samslovick.com.

By Sam Slovick

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Seduced Into Wellness appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Initiated into Bhakti Yoga at the age twelve, Vijay is the driving force behind the Kirtaniyas – a transcontinental kirtan collective comprised of four enlightened, gifted twenty-somethings; they are undeniably part of the epicenter of LA’s neo-bhatki set.

Kirtan, from the Sanskrit, is an ancient call-and-response traditional, devotional mantra chanting practice that originated in the Indian subcontinent. In its most recent incarnation as realized by the Kirtaniyas, it is a decidedly more Western groove accessible form of the traditional Vedic practice.

The members are all skilled performers, including classically trained violinist Sarasvati and husband Vijay, who have been traveling Europe and India sharing this passion for kirtan. Now united stateside with native Angelino Rasika and Hawaii-born Nitai (a DJ/musician/producer) the Kirtaniyas are divinely guided by the primordial force of mantra, joined in cosmic synergy, liberated in sound and vibration.

“Kirtan is nectar for your ears,” Nitai says. “You open your ears and your heart and let it in. It’s simple. It works with repetition, any time of the day any time of the night…anywhere.” Like his message, Nitai is simple. Marked for life, the devotee’s neck and shoulders are tattooed with Sanskrit letters (Devanagari script/the language of the demigods) spelling out the names of god and depth of his commitment. “We just sing it,” he says, “and after that the continuous chanting, it starts to enter your heart. We’re hoping for that, not only for ourselves, but also for the people around us…to get a little taste of what we’re getting. We’ve both been chanting all our lives. Even in the wombs of our mothers, because they were chanting.”

Auspiciously funky, currently resonating from ground zero at the Radha Govinda Mandir on Rose Avenue in Venice (aka the Rose Temple) the decidedly ecstatic, shamelessly sensual, discernibly devotional Kirtaniyas have graced the stage with the likes of Srila Bhaktivedanta Narayana Goswami Maharaja (their guru), Shyamdas, Wah!, MC Yogi, Dave Stringer, Jai Uttal, Saul David Raye and Arjun Baba, to name a few notables.

Just around the corner, on September 9 through 12, the Kirtaniyas will formally emerge as part of the next generation of kirtan superstars as they join Krishna Das, Jai Uttal, and Deva Premal and Miten on the bill at Bhakti Fest.

“It’s a Kirtan immersion,” Vijay says. “Bhakti Fest is one of the most amazing conscious gatherings I’ve ever been to or know about on the planet. It’s a four-day, nonstop kirtan. It’s like being in another world for a weekend.” He describes the upcoming music festival celebrating devotion through chanting, Yoga, meditation and community on 450 acres in Joshua Tree Retreat Center.

“You’ve got to do it to feel the effect,” Vijay offers. “To sing with an open heart is to experience what the systematically designed words mean and feel upon being chanted. It’s like a genie in a bottle. You can get whatever you want from them. You can sing from so many attitudes or moods. In physics, if you focus your mind in repetition on a particular goal you will eventually attract that into your life. Mantra is a very amazing tool for that. You can think money, money, money, money. You’ll attract that.” He admits: “That’s a pretty crude example.”

Vijay and the Kirtaniyas are on the crest of the latest wave of Krishna Consciousness. “He has tattoos,” Vijay refers to Nitai. “I sing Kirtan in shorts and drink kombucha [tea] and we hang out with hot Yogis and Yoginis. I mean [A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami] Prabhupada came and did his thing with the hippies in the ‘60s. That’s what’s going on with the Kirtanyiers. I’m asking how can we be most effective in sharing this amazing process?” Vijay says as Nitai nods his head and adds, “How can I ever describe the taste of sugar to someone who has never tasted sugar? You need to experience for yourself. It’s nectar for your ears.” Nitai repeats his simple truth: “You open your ears and your heart and let it in.”

Learn more about the Kirtaniyas at: kirtaniyas.com

Sam Slovick is writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. He is a regular contributor to LA Yoga Ayurveda and Health magazine and the LA Weekly. samslovick.com

By Sam Slovick

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post The Kirtaniyas; A Neo-Bhakti Revolution appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Orlando left home in the high Peruvian Amazon to peruse a formal education in Terapoto after the death of his grandfather and teacher, Don Aquilino Chujandama, one of the most respected masters in the field of Vegetalismo of this region.

A curandero, or traditional indigenous healer, Orlando cures physical and spiritual illnesses by means of Vegetalismo; the Amazonian tradition of spiritual herbalism practiced in South America. Vegetalismo is the elegant and refined sacred science that uses master plants with sentient spirits. He carries the knowledge of a powerful family linage using the flora and fauna from the jungle; his practice includes psychoactive Ayahuasca and Tobacco.

As part of his training in Vegetalismo, he has engaged in long periods of isolation in the jungle under the guidance of master plant spirits and his grandfather. Though no longer in the flesh, the tutelage of his grandfather continues in dreamtime.

I sat down with Orlando in the jungle outside his maloka (ceremony space) to ask him some questions. This interview was translated in real time from Spanish by Vegetalista, Metsa Niwue.

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SS: What’s your name? What do you do?

OC: My name is Orlando Chujandama and I work with Amazonic plants. What I do actually is I use medicinal plants to heal people. I have patients that come and see me and I take care of them. I do this job because it comes from my grandfather. It’s a linage that comes from my people.

SS: What is that linage?

OC: I am an indigenous person coming from the Quechua people. The knowledge I have came from my grandfather. I use leaves and roots and barks and different types of medicine that grow in the jungle and apply them for the pathology of the patients.

SS: What is this place?

OC: This place is called Llucayanacu, that’s the name of a small river that comes on the mountain and goes around the little town. This particular place is my own land and it’s called the New Rising Sun and it’s where people come to get healing.

SS: How do you do what you do?

OC: What I do is to extract the plant. I go in the jungle. I do a small ceremony. I blow Tobacco on the plant and ask permission to extract what I need to take from nature, and then I apply their medicinal properties, or spiritual properties for the patient and I put them in a dieta mode.

SS: What is a dieta?

OC: The dieta is a time of isolation where people go into a small hut and they stay there for weeks to take their medicine and have the full benefit of the medicinal properties and the spiritual properties of the vegetals. They are under certain food restrictions and being isolated helps them to connect with nature and the spirits of the jungle. So they have to deal with the whole environment of mosquitoes and ants and all what comes with it.

SS: What are you doing when you sing icaros (medicine songs) to your patients? How does that work?

OC: Through the songs that we call the icaros, it helps us to connect with nature. So we call the spirit of the plant, the spirit of Earth, of Mother Nature…of all the elements of what need to be called for the patient. And if they come, they help the person with the medicine and to receive the energy of it.

SS: One of the plants you work with is Ayahuasca. How do you use it?

OC: People talk a lot about Ayahuasca, one of the master plants. One of the guides. It has been used as a lot to get information. To connect and to have knowledge from other plants that can be used and applied for different purposes.

SS: So it’s diagnostic?

OC: Yeah. It’s diagnostic. It’s also used for treatment. But the problem is that in the modern western world people consider Ayahuasca as a drug. They consider it substance abuse and it’s not. For us, Amazonian man, Ayahuasca is a sacred medicine, a spiritual medicine.

SS: What is your highest aspiration?

OC: My intention is to help people. To help them in their medicinal problems and what they’re looking for and to reach a level of knowledge where I can be on the highest connection with the spirit world. And this is what I’m reaching through my hope.

SS: What is your biggest challenge?

OC: Is this moment, the most difficult for me is to organize the project that I’m taking on with my own resources: Legalize the farm, promote it; build everything.

SS: What’s your saving grace?

OC: My knowledge of plants. My knowledge of the forest and my previous preparation as a healer. All the work that I’ve been doing all these years with plant medicine. The first one started when I was eleven years old with a great teacher that I had that was my grandfather, Don Aquilino Chujandama.

SS: What do you want people to know about what you’re doing?

OC: I want people to know about the work with plants that we have in the Amazon. It’s an alternative medicine that can help many different kinds of diseases. I would like this knowledge to be known and diffused.

Orlando’s New Rising Sun is the preservation of a lineage through perseverance. He is a highly skilled and accomplished practitioner invested with a powerful familial inheritance from his grandfather. It’s a powerful legacy to bear on the banks of the Huallaga River. If you feel the call of the jungle, he and the plants will be waiting for you. Send him an email (in Spanish) to let him know you’re coming: yacu80@hotmail.com. Website: thenewrisingsun.wordpress.com.

Sam Slovick is writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. He is a regular contributor to LA Yoga Ayurveda and Health magazine and the LA Weekly. samslovick.com

New Rising Son was shot in Peru by Sam Slovick on Flip Cam in March, 2010 for The Cure Stream; a viral docu-series in conjunction with LA Yoga Magazine and The Cure List.

“Other Worlds” footage used by permission of Jan Kounen: otherworlds.jankounen.com

Additional ceremony footage by Ryan Wylie: www.innermissionproductions.com

By Sam Slovick

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post New Rising Son: A Perseverance Of Lineage appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

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A practiced wordsmith, he has just released his second book, Healing. His first work, The Reluctant Healer, was decidedly well received and remains a valuable resource for anyone considering the path of healer.

“I teach people how to heal themselves by getting in touch with their energy, and teaching them how energy can melt through any block or illness, and ultimately the energy I’m talking about is love…self-love.”

Pranayama is a healing modality. From the Sanskrit; prana or breath is the life-force; yama, means to suspend or restrain. The breathwork is an aspect of what David Elliott does in totality. It’s one element in a larger toolbox that makes up his practice.

“It’s a tool to help people to get out of their heads… to help people to open up. Open their heart up and stop thinking or being focused outside themselves. So with the breathing meditation we’re teaching people to focus inside. To still themselves and ultimately to open up and let the universe come through as love…as self-love,” he says.

Tracing our collective trajectory to this place in time when we are vastly more complicated than our predecessors, Elliott articulates the challenges his work confronts and the people it serves.

“We are complex by the nature of technology and information. We’re totally occupied. The modality of breathwork brings you to a still place where you get into the moment. Ultimately I’m creating an experience for people to feel their spirit. To feel their spirit coming into their body as a vibration. When people feel that they heal. They unblock. They let go of the past…of the stuff that they’re holding onto to that’s keeping them stuck and out of the moment.

The modality of breathwork brings you to a still place where you get into the moment. Ultimately I’m creating an experience for people to feel their spirit.

Sam Slovick: What happens in your workshops?

David Elliott: We’re creating a vortex. We’re creating a big amount of energy that’s moving in the room. And as people tap into that it takes them into experiences where they feel very deeply their emotions. We’re getting people to disengage with all the shit that they’re coming in with. And in that moment we’re…expanding that moment, expanding their awareness. Literally what we’re doing is we’re stimulating the hypothalamus; related to the crown chakra. When that happens the endorphins that are released start to trigger [a cascade effect in] the other ductless glands [which are associated with] the chakras and that’s what creates the big influx of energy.

David’s evolution as a healer has imbued him with the ability to reduce the essence of his work to a seemingly simple assertion: “We all have the power to heal any affliction right inside ourselves. The biggest problem that people bring to me is that they’re not connected to themselves. Through that disconnection, there is this focus outside oneself to find all the answers.

SS: What’s your highest aspiration?

DE: My highest aspiration is to help as many people as I can to find their way to their truth and to find their way to healing, to their purpose and then through that to help a culture and a society become a little more peaceful and have a little more fun and be a little less stressed out.

SS: What’s your biggest challenge?

DE: To slow down and to connect to each moment in its fullest way, in its greatest potential to express and be connected to love; to be having fun in everything I’m doing. And, of course, dealing with people with chips on their shoulders.

SS: What’s your saving grace?

DE: That I’m having a lot of fun doing what I’m doing and I try not to take most things too seriously. Through that I’m finding that it’s helping me to become a better teacher, healer, father, artist and writer. So my saving grace is the moment-to-moment application to what I’m preaching.

www.thecurelist.com

THE CURE STREAM, an online video series focusing
on global healers, is a new regular feature
on layogamagazine.com.

David Elliott is breathing easy. Sitting still on the roof, the skyline looming in the background he considers everything and leaves me with this: “I would really like for people to know that they can heal themselves. If they take the information from this book, Healing, they don’t even have to buy it, they can go to my website and download it for free…if they apply the information they will heal. I believe that the work I do absolutely connects people to their genetic imprint, to what they already know and that’s why this work tends to happen so fast for people.”

To learn more about David Elliott’s work, or to download a free copy of Healing, visit: thereluctanthealer.com.

Participate in ongoing breathwork workshops with Elliott’s students based on his work or find out more about training programs at The Hub in Los Angeles: thehub-la.com.

Sam Slovick is writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. He is a regular contributor to LA Yoga Ayurveda and Health magazine and the LA Weekly. samslovick.com

By Sam Slovick

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post David Elliott: Reasons For Breathing appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

It’s early afternoon; the sun sparkles on waves crashing on the beach below the bluffs. Deva Premal and Miten are in repose in Malibu sitting in the expanse of a large tastefully appointed living room bathed in a reflected glow.

They’re light-hearted. They’re laughing a lot. Not a counterfeit smile or moment of manufactured bliss in the space between the words. In soundless relief, no remnant of stress lingers from the relentless grind of their perpetual trans-continental touring schedule… because it’s effortless for them. They move in a sannyasic bliss fueled by devotion. The mystery of how the globe-trotting mantra singers maintain their collective bliss on tour is about to reveal itself without words.

Deva and Miten lean into our conversation over a glass of coconut water. I ask the two of them questions and they answer as one.

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How did you get so lucky?

“That’s what I keep asking myself,” Deva says. “We were galley slaves in our last lives,” Miten adds.

How do you do what you do? That is…how does the mechanism of your modality, your practice of healing by mantra work?

“Deva’s a translucent channel for the mantras to move through,” Miten says, “She was born to her father chanting the Gayatri [mantra]. People don’t understand the difference between a language that is energetic and a language that is created by the mind.”

“The meaning is secondary. The word table is not the table,” Deva cuts to the heart of the matter. “With Sanskrit, the word ananda is the sound vibration of bliss. In sound the energy of bliss. We have to say bliss; we have to make it smaller by putting it into an English word. Just the sound; ananda, If we were sensitive enough we’d just feel the entire scope of that energy that’s contained in this sound.”

Miten sits motionless in a comfortable silence as she continues.

“The ancient seers, they help us give the meaning that they perceived when they used these sounds,” Deva tenders. “They kind of made these dialectic formulas where they put these Sanskrit words to go to very specific areas of your life; for a physical healing or to go into healing relationships. We have almost medicinal formulas of a collection of sounds that are also a collection of words. And there are the names of Gods and Deities that all go together. When we sing Ganesha, the sound of Ganesha is the sound of removing of obstacles or the sound of unity, but it also helps us to see the form that was created to reflect that energy of removing of obstacles, of unity or of harmony. It’s working on a cellular level. It’s much deeper than the mind. It’s not a language that you need to understand the meaning of before you use it. It’s a deep universal sound code that connects us all.”

“The mantras are mainly Sanskrit,” Miten interjects, “Sometimes Sufi, sometimes Hopi, sometimes Uruba, sometimes Tibetan, sometimes Nepali. It depends…what speaks to us. People bring them. Lately Deva has taken to chanting them in the traditional way…how ironic is that?

Her latest project is with Tibetan monks who have a small monastery in Byron Bay [New South Wales, Australia]. They have recorded together – the monks chanting, and Deva…amazing male/female energy connection.”

“How do you use the mantras personally in your life?” Deva jumps in with a question to Miten.

“It’s not theoretical,” Miten responds. “Two nights ago I woke up and wasn’t feeling good. Just chanting the Ganesh mantra…it just lifted any feeling of fear or depression in that moment. I internally chanted the mantra 54 times then the “Om Shanti” mantra 54 times and I was back. I was home. That’s how I use it in my life. Even though it’s not a classical way of chanting when we play, we must have chanted them all 108 times. They’ve absolutely changed my life. The mantras are an expression of my life with Osho and how it’s unfolded into so much grace.”

“The most courageous thing people can do is to stand still,” Miten says.

Deva and Miten embody the result of the practice they preach. They languish in extended effortless introspective silences. They consider and internally reflect…then, they lapse into a lighthearted laughter that bounces back and forth between them. Laughter feeds itself on laughter until we all abandon ourselves to the moment and laugh some more, and then more again.

Deva and Miten affect a biochemical soul-balancing act grounded in a life of devotional service that carries them through the rigors of the road.

“We’re really good at just letting it go,” Miten confesses. “Really letting it go,” Deva complies. When the rigors of the road present… say, at a ticket counter at an international airport around 4 A.M. on two hours sleep, it barely registers as a bump in the road.

“There’s sometimes when we blow but it doesn’t resonate for long. It almost seems like it’s part of the thing,” Miten says.

Where do the songs and mantras you’re working with come from? Where do you find them?

“The mantras,” Miten offers, “they come…the songs appear…sometimes you grab them. Sometimes they slip from your grasp…the best ones disappear before you catch them. As for the mantras, Deva knows lots and lots. The question is, how do you put them to music without diminishing their power?”

Are you sacred singers? Is that what you call yourselves?

“Sacred sounds a bit pretentious doesn’t it? Miten asks, “And yet, hmmm… isn’t all music sacred?”

What is your highest aspiration?

“To be free,” Miten says.

“Enlightenment,” Deva says, “To experience oneness inside of me and with everything around me all the time and hopefully inspire others to realize the same…a bright awareness of Devine in every form.”

“To serve,” Miten offers, “On a technical level, the more beautiful the music is, the more we aspire to more and more beautiful expression through music…which is, in a way is part of our responsibility. Music is the medium you know?”

What’s your saving grace?

“Osho,” Miten says without reservation. “Osho,” Deva says. “I still feel like…because he was this person…I just want to expand it for those who still see the person when they hear the word. It’s the feeling of Osho, which is celebration, being in the moment, being in the flow, surrendering to what is, and being as aware as you can of all of that.”

What’s your biggest challenge?

“Music,” Deva says.

“Music is God,” Miten adds, “Music is a very obvious doorway into God. So music is a fierce teacher. It shows you your limitations and it shows you everything about yourself. When you play music with somebody you’re naked with them. You can’t hide. Music is a guru of sorts. It’s a guru, and a guru can lead you into the light. That’s music’s gift.” “That’s very well said, Deva concurs, “And exactly what I meant.”

What’s your favorite thing about your life?

“Being together actually, for me,” Miten confesses, “Because being together, its 24 /7. That includes everything from going to Whole Foods to playing a sacred concert. It’s no different. Just being together.”

“I just love everything about this life,” Deva reflects. “It’s twenty years now,” Miten says. “Nineteen,” Deva corrects him, then starts to laugh until Miten joins in. Laughter feeds laughter again and we all laugh for a long time.

“Nineteen,” Miten gathers himself, “I always had the idea that after a few years, things settle down between you as a couple. I was wrong; it just keeps getting deeper and friendlier and the more friendliness the better.” He says and a very long silence hovers then dissipates when I ask them to sing something.

“Take me from illusion to truth, from darkness to light, from death to immortality,” Deva translates Om asatomo satgamaya, a mantra she recorded on her first CD, The Essence; a collection of mantras that includes the Gayatri, her signature and the mantra that her father sang to her in the womb.

The air in the room stills as Miten picks up a road worn six-string Taylor guitar and invokes a transcendental vibration like a snake charmer luring a sleeping cobra from a basket.

Deva closes her eyes and disappears into the world between words, then intonates a refined and elegant mediumship in sustained vibrato as Miten delicately weaves his voice into the prayer. It is a precision ballet. A synergistic resonance that illuminates the source of the gift of their melodious passage.

Om asatomo satgamaya
Tamasoma jyotir gamaya
Mrityorma amritamgamaya

Sam Slovick is a writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. He is a regular contributor to LA Yoga Ayurveda and Health magazine and the LA Weekly. samslovick.com

The Cure Stream is regular feature of LA Yoga Magazine produced by The Cure List thecurelist.com

Deva Premal and Miten will be sharing sacred song with Krishna Das in LA on Saturday, March 27 at the Wilshire Ebell Theater: devapremal.com

By Sam Slovick

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Soul Balancing: The Path Of The Sacred Road Dog appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

I’ll open your thoughts. By doing so I’ll fill you with joy. By doing so I’ll straighten your thoughts. By doing so I’ll straighten your body. now I’ll heal you to the depths of your heart. By doing so I’ll fill you with immense joy. By doing so I’ll return life to your body and to your thoughts. I’ll heal your being, your body, with the powerful essence of the tree and the universe. so you are joyous, remember my words. so you remember them, I will chant them. Though I’m small, I made your thoughts shine. The universe is in harmony.The word is and ever will be.

–– Shamanic Chants of Kestenbetsa (Echo of the Universe) From Jan Kounen’s Documentary About Ayahuasca, Other Worlds.

Welcome To The Jungle

A unanimous 2006 US Supreme Court ruling freed a US branch of the Brazilian church O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) to use ayahuasca as part of its religious rituals. This sacred blend of two Amazonian plants: chacruna leaves cooked with the ayahuasca vine activates the psychoactive dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in the vine producing a hallucinogen banned as a Schedule 1 substance in the USA. An Oregon judge in 2009 issued a permanent injunction barring the federal government from penalizing or prohibiting the Santo Daime branch Church of the Holy Light of the Queen in Ashland, Oregon, from sacramental use of ayahuasca.

This legislative movement occurs as ayahuasca, known as the vine of the dead, weaves its way into major American cities, experiencing increased popularity among communities who are using the master plant medicine in various contexts including celebratory journeys with musical guides, self-navigated consciousness-expanding forays and ceremonies employing the services of highly skilled healing practitioners on tour from the Amazon. With ayahuasca and other entheogens readily available online all you need is a cosmo vision and a credit card.

On any given Friday in Los Angeles a plethora of makeshift malokas (ceremonial rooms) house the mystically-inclined drinking the sacred brew. Studio execs, tinsel town yogis, medical practitioners and hipsters are connecting with sacred plant medicine. Most will probably never see the jungles of the Amazon where the vine is rooted.

Canto para limpieza del cuerpo physico (Shipibo Icaro translation)

I am going to call the visions. The bad visions. The bad songs (of sorcerers). The evil blows. The curses. The bad energies. Reject them, throw them away. Cleaning, cleaning. Blowing, blowing. From the depth of my body. The depth of my blood vessels. The depth of my blood. Finishing, finishing. Cleaning, cleaning. Blowing, blowing. I will clean. Completely your head. Completely your mind and your five senses. Completely your eyes. Your words. Your crown chakra. Cleaning, cleaning. With all the force of my medicine. Entering in your body, cleaning, cleaning. Blowing, blowing. All the bad air.

Local kids take a break from dancing Capoeira in Iquitos.

Welcome to the Jungle. It is a sonic sculpture rendered by unseen insects, birds and animals who announce the day as the morning sun breaks through the clouds.

Ulysses, a twenty-three-year-old indigenous man sits on the side of a rutty sand road, deep in the jungle outside Iquitos, Peru. He considers a butterfly lingering on his fingertip.

Another mile down the road, loosely configured convictions begin to erode like rocks under the influence of weathering and abrasion as the jungle thoroughfare gives way to a path that few will endeavor to walk.

It is a narrow white sand trail that winds its way to other worlds, where master Vegatalista, Guillermo Arévalo (aka Kestenbetsa -Shipibo for Echo of the Universe), has manifested a center called Espiritu De Anaconda. It’s a sprawling forty-plus acre sanctuary of master plant healing where people come to be treated by him and his students and study the sacred science of spiritual herbalism as interpreted in the Vegatalismo tradition. This is the Club Med of Amazonian shamanism.

Large thatched roof structures dominate the expansive, meticulously maintained grounds that include a large dining facility, community room, bungalows, dormitories and deeper into the jungle, tombos – small huts without walls.

The jungle wants to heal you, to wrap you in the warm folds of its massive green matter and cultivate your transformation. But if you dare enter the terrain without a trusted guide, it may consume you alive and use your perishing flesh to fuel its next generation of growth.

Daniel Sipes has been here before. He knows the terrain, the underlying science and the necessity of a skilled guide. A Chinese herbalist from the US West Coast, he sits quietly on the front porch of a large house at the center of the compound drawing deeply on a mapacho (black jungle tobacco cigarette). He is decidedly articulate on the subject of shamanism. “Vegatalismo is the science of spiritual herbalism practiced in the Amazonian shamanic tradition. It’s a complex highly evolved, elegant system of spiritual herbalism that allows the biochemistry and the energy behind the plants to get in and untie the knots inside the complexity of any modern illness.”

“In Vegatalismo, ayahuasca is used to gain insight into the deeper pathologies in your system,” Sipes says. “It’s a tool to diagnose the physical, psycho-spiritual and psycho-emotional disorders that we carry…and even the lineage histories…misaims as they call them…When the Vegatalista diagnoses, he or she gives you a master plant to work with to help work to help clear it all out; you do a dieta. A dieta is a series of disciplines during which you restrain from anything in the extraneous world that may undermine the effects of those plant masters helping with healing: sexual activity and certain dietary activities that interfere with the infusion of the sentience of that plant spirit into your system.”

Master Plant botanical garden at Espiritu de Anaconda.

The protocol goes like this. The shaman, or Vegatalista, diagnoses and gives you a specific master plant, or plants, to address your affliction. The plant(s) prescribed as part of a dieta are usually consumed when in isolation in the jungle. You drink the plant medicine during the day and sit in ayahuasca ceremonies at night where the shaman sings icaros (medicine songs) to you as part of your treatment.

Ceremonies open and close a dieta. When you open a dieta you are energetically connecting to the shaman and the plant. When the dieta is over the spirit of your plant has been eternally woven into the fabric of your energy. It is your teacher, friend and ally. Part of the process is to learn the language of the plant to understand how the plant is communicating with you. It’s not the kind of treatment you would want to undergo with anyone whose skills and abilities are anything short of masterful.

There is also the option of a social diet, a modification of the traditional discipline to accommodate a person who is maintaining their lifestyle with limited isolation. It’s a contemporary variation on the modality that has enabled people to engage with plants who would be otherwise unable to spend time in the jungle.

Sipes draws parallels between Amazonian shamanism and other interconnected indigenous systems, such as Chinese herbology or Ayurveda. “Many herbalists working within complex systems that understand differential patterning are masters of differential diagnosis. For example, many patterns can manifest to create this sensation in your head that you call a headache. Instead of giving you a headache herb, healers using this type of approach take advantage of the synergistic effects of blended herbs. If you have ten people with the same illness, you may write ten different formulas because you’re taking into account all the different variables the person brings into that illness or manifestation.

Analogous to this, instead of saying, “here’s the icaro that brings light into your body,” the Shipibo use an entire intricate vocabulary and grammar in their songs. Each song is different every time because you’re addressing something entirely different every time. When you sit in front of a Shipibo healer the icaros are specific and current to that moment. The language of the icaro changes so the singer can get deeper and deeper and weave the appropriate pattern.”

“The Vegatalistas, especially in the Shipibo tradition, have done extensive dietas, infusing that plant energy into the knowledge base within themselves,” Sipes says. “Subsequently, they can recognize the patterning in peoples’ bodies indicative of different disorders. They access the arsenal of sentient plant spirits accumulated in their power source, utilizing these plant allies and the icaros to reconfigure these imbalanced patterns recalibrating the person and restoring balance.” In the ceremony, ayahuasca is the catalyst. Purging is common: through the bowels, the urinary tract, by vomiting, through emotions and other ways.

Sitting in ceremony in the Amazon with an indigenous healer ingesting master plants also indigenous to the place is a very different experience from working with the plants outside of the jungle where there is no social context for the experience.

Ricardo Amaringo, aka Ronin Sanin, a Shipibo Vegatalista, speaks from the heart while sitting on a log near his house at the far reaches of the compound. Miguel, a Chilean shamanic practitioner and student of Vegatalismo with a lose grasp on English, translates. “I’m working here to help the people,” Ricardo says. “Vegatalismo is the medicine to open the knowledge for the peace. Open the mind. Open the love.”

Cooking the chacruna leaves and ayahuasca vine

The reasoning behind the isolation and restriction of a dieta is simple: remove any elements that would circumvent your communication with the plant. “You need to stay in your place in isolation to make the connection with the plant because the plant teaches you…. and opens your vision and with that knowledge… you see the sickness that the person has,” he says.

The icaros are the tool that he uses to treat people in, and sometimes out, of ceremony. Each plant has an individual energy; each plant has its own song.

“The master plants are singing because the ayahuasca is present. Different plants have different kinds of energy and a different kind of song. We’re learning the icaros from the plants. When you’re singing, you call the energy and you put the energy inside of the person… with that energy you heal.”

On arriving at Espertu de Anaconda everyone sits on a big log in front of the medicine hut and is handed a bowl of azuscena by Ricardo. It’s a purgative that causes almost immediate vomiting. An initial cleansing. It’s the first part of the healing.

There are of course many, many plants in his arsenal, including ajosacha, boahuasca, pinon colorado, matico, copaiba oil, sangre de grado, oje, coca, toa, chia, chiric sanango. “Ajo sacha is a master plant, cleaning your body,” he says, “Cleaning the toxins and your arteries…more easy the blood to flowing. Oje is working in the mind, healing psychological trauma.” But ayahuasca is always prominent in the conversation. “The ayahuasca is now a popular plant. A lot of people want to have the beautiful visions. But ayahuasca is only one plant. There are a lot of plants to heal you.”

Ricardo is enthusiastic about potential students finding the path to Peru. “Some people are only coming to take the experience. That’s good that people are coming to take the experience. I I If it’s possible, it’s good to want to be a shaman to help the people, but it is a long way, a lot of discipline… a lot of dietas. Only one plant makes a strong dieta in isolation in the jungle.”

Ricardo disappears down the path with his young wife as Miguel heads for the nearby botanical garden. He pauses in front a tangle of Banisteriopsis caapi (ayahuasca) vine.

R icardo carves a pipe for Daniel Sipes

Vine of the Dead
“Ayahuasca come to killing you,” Miguel says. “Killing your ego. We build our personality. And we happy with that personality, but it’s an illusion. So when we see the illusion, it kills that construction. Ayahausca coming to you to die you.”

Miguel understands Vegatalismo as a healing art that connects him to nature; plants, animals and their spirits that has opened his vision about disease and healing.

“When you’re healing you have more clarity. People have a connection with their own sickness. Sometimes they don’t want to let it go. It’s part of your life. You don’t know what to do once you don’t have sickness. So you coming here, first to understand what happened to you… after that the healing is coming. But you need to open your mind to see yourself… the truth. It’s like you blind all your life, so you live for the people who put money in your hand. When you no more blind… no more money in your hand. You need to change your life. Here you’re coming to that.”

Miguel started his ayahuasca path twelve years ago, when he was in his forties. He initially thought it was the next substance in his psychoactive journey.

Considerably younger, James is a twenty-one-year-old Austrian who has been in the jungle for months. Laughing, smiling, chain-smoking and constantly plugged into his iPod, the jungle is James’ playground. Fresh-faced, vibrant and saturated with master plants, it’s hard to imagine him as anything other than healthy.

“I came here because I had a skin problem called neurodermatitis. I had it my whole life.” James’s mother in Austria was the conduit to meet Guillermo. “In three-and-a-half months, Guillermo fixed me up completely. I I was really weak when I I arrived, detoxifying from my excessive lifestyle of drugs. For two years before I came here, I had no skin problems. Two days after I I arrived, my skin broke out completely; even some sort of liquid would come out. Crust would build and it would go black. This stage stayed for three months,” he recalled.

During the course of his physical healing, the plants provided James an insight to his condition’s origin, ascertaining it came from something he calls a spirit of trauma when he was a baby. “The skin problem for me was a sort of protection from other people,” he said.

Guillermo gave his a diagnosis and a dieta as soon as James showed up. “They gave me all kinds of plant medicine, flower baths… and the cleaning… the singing in the ceremonies. In the beginning I didn’t drink ayahuasca. I just drank other plants… one week ajo sacha. One-and-a-half months oahuasca, one month pinon colorado and matico. Then I I had to drink copaiba oil and sangre de grado… what I would not recommend to anybody to drink,” he laughs.

Metsa arrived from Europe several decades unknowingly seeking a cure for addiction.After years of study involving extended periods of isolation and many dietas, he is a Vegatalismo master. Trans-continental and multi-lingual, he speaks to a W Western sensibility with a decidedly expansive multicultural awareness.

“The Western mind is curious about spiritually and there is a desire and need for those connections. Modern society has been cutting us off from that. People are looking for techniques, products… whatever. Ayahuasca is an amazing tool to get access to too that journey, to that connection. Today it’s offered in many different contexts; you have the Brazilian Church that offers a space to experience a certain way of using ayahuasca. You have people using ayahuasca in a more musical context… putting people in a certain space guided by music… and you have traditional Vegetalistas who are trained from Peruvian shaman, or Amazonian shamans and following very strict disciplines and diets and offer more healing approach with traditional songs”

Today people in the US mostly focus on the use of ayahuasca as a tool to journey to other worlds of consciousness. The American attraction to shamanism parallels our expanding attitudes about alternative healing modalities.

“From my perspective… which is very personal, other techniques are a more modern integration of different streams and spiritual practices mixed,” Metsa offers. “You need to find integrity in the person leading the ceremony. Are they going to be able to lead you in that journey with safety and take care of your emotions and physical body? Ayahuasca is a strong substance and it demands physiological preparation and certain diet restrictions to integrate the plant and have the most beneficial impact. It could be dangerous if it’s not done properly. It’s important to have respect for the substances and get information and get informed about who is leading the ceremony. Where are they coming from? What is the substance about? What are you looking for? I It is not a recreational drug that you can do and trip out. There is a history and stories around shamanism in Peru… around sorcerers witchcraft and brujo… but I prefer not to talk about it.”

On my way back to the world I left behind in Los Angeles I ran into Miguel on the loose sand road that leads to Iquitos. He told me about a vision he had in an ayahuasca ceremony.

His words resonated as I drift off to sleep on my flight to Lima, the vine winding its way through my consciousness on the vibration of his voice, reminding me of what I I already know: There many roads leading to the same end: the beginning of the journey…the one that starts when we finally understand that it’s us who are responsibility for our own healing. Vegatalismo is a decidedly profound cosmic healing path. Like all paths that lead to all journeys, there are things to surrender for things to gain.

“One day I have a vision,” Miguel says, “I’m singing for the people in the ceremony; it’s a complicated moment, so I call the spirit of the condor; condor manta, from South America. When I called the spirit, in my left side started to grow a massive mountain. And the mountain is an incredible God. On the other side grow a little mountain. It’s the evil inside. It’s all darkness and the evil is laughing. And at that moment I make the question, ‘Hey God, if you so big and powerful why you don’t take away the darkness forever? You have the power for that.’ And the God say, ‘Because I can’t see the darkness.’ I say, ‘What is this, man? I see it… look I can see it. The darkness is here.’ “

“He say, ‘When I created you I created beautiful people in the light. I don’t create the darkness. I create only light, only love. You create the darkness. I I don’t see that. I It don’t exist for me. So it’s your problem. You give life and power for the darkness. Now the darkness is strong guy on top of your head. It’s your job to disappear the darkness. You create the world, pain, torture, sickness, it’s your problem.’ In that moment I see we have a strong mind, we create everything… everything bad too. After that, everything disappeared; I I’m standing alone in the cosmos with another knowledge. We created everything. We created God too. The more purity state of the spirit… there’s no God, no darkness, no nothing… only you in the love.”

The Rain is pouring down, like all the souls you send here. Coming to this Earth to find healing. The earth takes in the rain, like your heart takes my voice. Let us free each other with our prayers… with our voice. And I’m coming home…

-from Ong Namo, by Snatam Kaur, from the album Live in Concert (Spirit Voyage)

See the video Welcome to the Jungle at layogamagazine.com; a foray into ayahuasca through the lens of Peruvian shamanism by filmmakers Sam Slovick and Ryan Wylie.innermissionproducts.com

Sam Slovick is a journalist and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles. He is a regular contributor to LA YOGA Magazine, the LA Weekly and others: samslovick.com.espiritudeanaconda.org

By Sam Slovick

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Welcome To The Jungle appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Kip Roseman

A Shamanic Exploration of the Healing Power of Stones

THE SUN BROKE THE CLOUDS AROUND 10:30 A.M. on August 24, 1987, as a late model white VW convertible bug lumbered across the landscape near Salinas, California. Kip Roseman’s journey back to Los Angeles the day after his eighteen birthday celebration weekend with the Grateful Dead, Santana and David Lindley at Angel’s Camp culminated in a near-fatal crash that accelerated the trajectory of a young life into a into a shamanic healing vortex.

Although his two sisters emerged uninjured from the twisted wreck, Roseman wasn’t so lucky…at least it didn’t seem so at the time. Even before the crash, he was physically, emotionally and psychically vulnerable, susceptible to unseen invaders, the result of a recalcitrant insomnia perpetuated by a relentless energetic assault that was almost impossible to treat medically – because it wasn’t a medical condition. It was a spiritual condition.

“My journey started at the inception of my first memories. They were lucid dreams, shapeshifting during family meals, spirits coming through the walls trying to speak to me, transdimensional experiences. I was in the crib…babbling…trying to in some way communicate to these beings,” he remembers.

Searching for a way to survive, he asked a friend for assistance who gave him a stone: a black tourmaline known for its ability to ground out dark or negative energies. Within a day, the disturbing activity Roseman experienced was reduced by ninety-five percent. Without the external distractions circumventing his process, he began to heal himself and his traumatized nervous system. Shortly after, his journey led him to a Navaho Shaman.

“He worked with me, essentially saying he could ‘put a lock on this door, but you need to find a teacher to study with. You have gifts that come with many challenges. You need to sort it out. That’s your work. If you don’t get a hold of it you’ll be plagued by these forces for your entire life. This is your spiritual crisis…your initiation if you will,’” he remembers.

That moment of clarity inspired Roseman to seriously assume the pursuit of finding teachers and practices to engage in his own personal healing journey. His relationship to the stones was the first pebble in an avalanche that would become an integral part of his healing methodology. His study of Chinese Medicine while he was developing his experiential understanding, and ultimately his expertise in the shamanic application of stone healing culminated in a uniquely effective marriage of modalities.

As he describes it, “I’m an acupuncturist. I work with stones in my practice…to help facilitate a healing response in the treatments.” His words understate the effects of his medicine.

Since he spent the first fifteen years of his life in Asia, his fascination with the culture and affinity for healing made his decision to pursue acupuncture and Chinese Medicine a natural passage. Shamanism was the component that brought it all together.

“Shamanism is about engaging in a relationship with beings; it can be the energetic aspect of a stone and the resonances it brings in, it can be the spirits of animals, and it can be about activating relationships with plants and the sentience within the plants,” he says.

He speaks of the power of using stones along with needles: “When you’re in a healing response in an acupuncture setting, when your nervous system is relaxed, then energy is flowing harmoniously through the body and the hemispheres of the brain are being harmonized, now you’re in a perfect receptive state to actually engage in the resonances of the mineral kingdom. Because our bodies are made up of mineral substances, if you use specific mineral compositions that are available in nature, it can help you to actually bring about a harmonious engagement of whatever imbalance you have into alignment with whatever the mineral kingdom has in store for you.”

He incorporates shamanism “to engage in the resonances of the specific stones, to use for journeying or healing purposes, to bring in specific energies to help reorganize or calibrate a healing response in a person; and to ground out or transmute energy.”

The process of engaging with the stones is similar to the process he uses to engage in plant medicine. “Chinese herbal medicine focuses on understanding the ways in which the systems in the body have fallen into a pattern of compensatory mechanisms, thereby going into levels of balance and imbalance. In an herbal formula, you think about the synergy of herbs that are an antidote to whatever that imbalance is; you’ll have a chief herb perhaps, adjunctive herbs, envoys, helper herbs or medicine-horse herbs.”

The shamanic stone-needle combination comes in particularly handy when it comes to the combination of energetic and physical issues. “A traumatic psycho-emotional experience, such as the death of a loved one or a challenging time emotionally, may create energetic changes in the body that over time can, depending on the severity, create chemical changes in the body. So you might actually have a pathway into disease being built from just having stress or having an emotional trauma. I’ve seen in my practice a woman who developed cirrhosis of the liver who never used alcohol or drugs. Instead it was because of so much stress over time that her liver was actually starting to fail. When you start seeing an energetic path being built into a stress response that’s actually buckling an organ on a biochemical level, you understand this person has an organ disease. But is that disease from a biochemical invasion or toxicity, a viral invasion or is it just from an energetic constringent or pathway?”

He chooses which stones to use through a process similar to choosing which of the 400 herbs in his pharmacy he has a deep resonance with. The stones give him information. “I have specific stones that are workhorses if you will, that can get a lot done. An example is Tibetan quartz. The Tibetan black quartz is one of those stones that are very beneficial for people at this time because it’s grounding and can clear negative energies. At the same time it opens your system to be receptive to higher vibrational patterns either from your inner meditation practice or from other stones. People today who are stressed and overworked and trying to bring in higher vibrational frequencies into their system, especially if they’re engaging in meditative processes, will benefit from a stone that will help ground that process deeper into the system.”

Another group of stones that are helpful for the stages we as humans are going through right now are the tourmalines. As Roseman says, “Green tourmaline opens up the physical and energetic heart space and allows our emotional tensions and our emotional being to be processed through the heart. Most of the metaphysical community for many years was focused on or searching in the higher realms. My understanding is that the evolutionary pathways right now in the world are accelerating so fast that we no longer need to journey out to the heavens, the heavens are coming to us a hundred miles an hour. It’s really important for us to be grounded and receptive in that process. It can be overwhelming to transmute and transform those energies and keep your heart space open to the best of your ability and be authentic while coming from a place of lovingkindness despite all the difficulties and challenges that were going through right now. Green tourmaline is an excellent stone to facilitate that.”

It can be overwhelming to transmute and transform energies and keep your heart space open to the best of your ability and be authentic while coming from a place of lovingkindness despite all the difficulties and challenges that were going through right now.

“Shamanically, it’s more important about how you engage in the resonance of an item. Even if it’s a feather or a plant that you ingest as medicine the way some indigenous cultures do, or a stone you’re working with…it’s a matter of coming to terms with your own energy system experientially and then reaching out and learning the language of stones, plants or of those beings. I started engaging with the stones, feeling each stone one at a time. Some things I was very sensitive to, and some I didn’t resonate with at all. It was a matter of learning from the stones.”

Kip Roseman has been studying and practicing Chinese Medicine for 15 years. He works from his Clinic in Bend, Oregon where he reaches out to people who are doing deeper work, whether it’s through meditation or people who are engaged in a shamanic practice. The Roseman Clinic: rosemanclinic.com.

Sam Slovick is a journalist/documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles. He is a regular contributor to LA Yoga, LA Weekly and other publications. Blog: samslovick.com; Site:thecurelist.com<

By Sam Slovick

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Stone Yoga appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

ILCHI LEE DOESN’T SEEM a likely entertainer. The mastermind behind a movement called Brain Education is serious business and rarely makes public presentations. So when he takes the stage at a hotel in Koreatown the brain philosopher-educator plays to a capacity crowd.

Ilchi Lee is operating from the premise that, “Humanity, by focusing on the brain as the final determinant of human consciousness and behavior, will unite people worldwide in creating a peaceful, sustainable way of life within this century.”

Ilchi Lee

Like everything else Lee has created, it’s a decidedly high-minded, discernibly ambitious vision.

Brain Education, a system Lee developed for mastering the mind, and subsequently life, is the next frontier for the man who mounted a transcontinental movement called Dahn Yoga: a Korean Yoga system that places emphasis on physical, emotional and spiritual well-being through exercises as a blend of Yoga, tai chi, bodywork and martial arts. Dahn Yoga now boasts over 1,000 centers around the world.

It would be a gross understatement to say Ilchi Lee likes a challenge. Now in his sixties, engaged in what might seem like a massive undertaking for a normal human, Brain Education looks like just another seemingly insurmountable mountain that the Dahn master has climbed.

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Brain Education (BE) for enhanced learning is a program to promote physical, emotional and social well-being, and encourage higher achievement. It involves a series of meticulously researched and developed exercises specifically designed to improve physical balance, emotional regulation, test-taking skills, patience and concentration across multiple subjects. In short, to educate the brain.

Ilchi’s system is outlined and delineated into five trademarked steps in his new book, Brain Wave Vibration: Getting Back into the Rhythm of a Happy, Healthy Life:

1. Brain Sensitizing™ awakens the brain/body senses, stimulates blood circulation and enhances awareness of the brain and its functions.
2. Brain Versatilizing™ focuses on the flexibility needed to free us from fixed habits and patterns and opens the brain to new information.
3. Brain Refreshing™ releases negative emotional memories and habits as well as encourages the development of emotional intelligence.
4. Brain Integrating™ unites different functional areas of the brain to release latent capabilities and improves communication between the left and right hemispheres.
5. Brain Mastering™ achieves greater mastery of the brain and control of executive function, enhances decision-making abilities.

The system utilizes about 360 activities involving movement, breath and energy to achieve mastery over the brain. To understand BE you need to do it.

And to understand where Lee is coming from, you need to understand where he’s been. A roster of his accomplishments, including the thirtyone books he’s written, doesn’t really tell the story. A good point of departure is the first peak ascended by the child of the Korean War who struggled with attention deficit disorder. In retrospect, this action foreshadowed a life of innovative, adventurous service.

Lee climbed his first mountain as a kid in Korea. He gathered all the trash from a local stream that people had turned into a garbage dump and endeavored to cart it up to higher ground. On top of the garbage heap, he planted a pumpkin garden. When the crop came to harvest, he gave the pumpkins to the villagers.

A few years down the road, he climbed another mountain. Instead of planting pumpkin seeds, he was digging for a vision. At this time a college grad (after failing to be admitted twice) with a wife, kids and a job, he scaled the peaks of Mt. Moak. Seeking deeper meaning, Lee went on a vision quest: twenty-one days and nights with no food or sleep. He emerged enlightened and imbued with the vision for Dahn Yoga, but again, this is Ilchi Lee and that was just the beginning.

His brain training programs is a conduit for nothing less ambitious than his ultimate goal of world peace. Currently, he focuses on research and educational innovation, and collaboration with global leaders to effect peace.

After his LA presentation, I sat down with Ilchi Lee and his translator.

SS: How did you get from where you were to where you are now?

IL: When I was in school I couldn’t adjust to being a student; I had problems focusing. I had ADD. I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t be peaceful and through the process of that experience, I wanted to be happy and I wanted to be peaceful. And then I came to know that the answer to that is in my brain. And I became enlightened to the fact that I need to use my brain well.

SS: I was fascinated to know that some years back you climbed a mountain in Korea. Sort of like a Native American Vision Quest. I
understand you had the intention to understand the meaning of your life.

IL: The ultimate question was, “Who am I?” I had to know that to know what I stood for. SS: So…who are you? IL: Currently I’m in the process of sharing or delivering what I became enlightened to at that time. I felt that if the enlightenment is not that helpful to health, happiness and peace, then it is not enlightenment. My enlightenment has to do with the health, happiness and peace and the peace of humanity.

SS: That’s the purpose of enlightenment? Health, happiness and peace and the peace of humanity?

IL: Through enlightenment, you come to know that we as humanity need peace because even I as an individual need peace. What I came to realize through my enlightenment was that the whole world needs to be healthy, happy and peaceful.

SS: Americans have a reputation for being undisciplined, mentally and physically. Do you see them as a viable fertile ground for Brain Education in terms of a demographic that would benefit more than others?

IL: That is my hope. People don’t really know very much when it comes to the brain. They think they know a lot about God… but I think they think they don’t know about the brain. But nowadays there’s more interest in the brain…That’s where my interests lie. That’s why I call this “human techknowledegy.”

To read Sam Slovick’s interview with Ilchi Lee in its entirety and to experience the prayer Ilchi Lee offered to the United Nations Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, visit: layogamagazine.com.

For more information about Ilchi Lee, visit: Ilchi.com. For more information about Dahn Yoga worldwide, visit: dahnyoga.com.

Sam Slovick is a journalist/documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles. He is a regular contributor to LA Yoga, LA Weekly and other publications. Blog: samslovick.com; Site:thecurelist.com

By Sam Slovick

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Teacher Profile: Ilchi Lee appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Photo: Charles Peterson, charlespeterson.net

Quan is seemingly unaffected by the relentless barrage of sexual assaults regularly performed on the senses of Los Angeles’
population by corporate advertisers. American Apparel soft-core billboards are not resonating on the same frequency with the young Buddhist monk; short in stature, long in devotion, he lives in the same city as I do – but a universe away. He says it’s effortless. It’s the simplest thing to transcend the sexual impulse. His breath channels the energy right up his spine through the crystal palace and out into the ethers.

I am not Quan…yet. For me Los Angeles is filled with the possibility of sexual intrigue at every juncture; each aisle at Whole Foods a potential love connection. Yet I am called to seek a higher vibration, a transcendental sexual experience. I want sex to be sacred.

My neophytic vision of sacred sex is mercurial; Sex as a heart-opening consciousness expanding erotic spiritual healing. A union with the divine, to be devoutly expressed with meticulously vetted partners. It’s an ambitious goal for a product of the pre-AIDS, 1980s New York free-for-all where I developed my sexual ideal which consisted of serving one well-practiced mantra: more.

When someone told me it says in the Vedas that we are agreeing to marry in another life everyone we have sex with in this one, I was shocked into celibacy…for a month at least. Sex is the most compelling force in human life. Living in a place like LA, it’s not always easy to micromanage a high ideal.

“Where we are in this Kali Yuga…we’re so low down the food chain of being able to perform austerities…if we can just have sex in marriage, it’s considered saintly in this day and age,” Vedic scholar Nrsimhananda tells me, but I’m not looking to get married anytime soon.

Good thing a new sexual revolution is upon us. A spiritual one. The talk show illuminated age-of- enlightenment; the 80s let the cat out of the bag about the blow-back from reckless abandon of the ban-the-bra 70s. And though I don’t think anyone is looking to reenact
the 1969 Summer of Love, or that the Bible Belt is going to strap on a tantric awakening anytime soon, there is a new sobering openness in the air. The current climate of hope and change is manifesting as a neo-sexual renaissance. These days even televangelists are stimulating the airwaves, inciting divinely-infused sex.

“If you’re first of all, rightly related to God vertically, then you’re going to be horizontally connected in the bedroom in a deeper way because of that vertical connection.” Rev. Ed Young recently told me. He issued a call for a week of “congregational copulation” to the married couples at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas (an evangelical church with 20,000 members). The TV preacher’s words are apparently resonating with the converted; he has appeared on national talk shows and was featured in the New York Times. There’s been a shift, but not in the sense that the flock is straying too far from the Good Book.

“Marriage is the only relationship that the Bible says is analogous or symbolic of God’s relationship to his people. His relationship is sacrificial. It is loving. So in marriage I should have that commitment and love,” Young says.

Others have developed that idea more thoroughly; “We get to make our own sandcastles in God’s material playground, and sex is the ultimate re-enactment of the process of Creation,” Nrsimhananda offers an Eastern perspective on that theme through a Western lens. “We can pretend we are the controller in this world, but sex is a dim reflection of the spiritual reality of unconditional love. Anyone who loves their children can tell you the difference. If I want to realize that I am not this body, then I can’t indulge in the relentless pursuit of unlimited sense gratification and attain detachment. The laws of nature don’t work that way,” he says and I understand where he’s going.

We want to be God and we’re using sex to do it. It’s an infantile pursuit in light of reality of the transcendental. Still, knowing that I can’t indulge in the mindless pursuit of sex and get any otherworld traction gets lost in the fray as the imperious urge presents.

The intention of Tantra is to integrate your sexual energy in the service of enlightenment.

The Reverend gives practical advice for sacred sex, “I would invite couples to pray together,” and although I get his point, I’m still in the dark about how to shed the light on the sex I will surely be having. The sinful single gay variety. And although I’m grateful for the Reverend’s advice, I’m clearly going to need to find a higher authority to advise me.

Deborah Taj Anapol, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and leading-edge healer, writer and teacher who founded the Sacred Space Institute, a national organization dedicated to reintegrating sexuality into spirituality and health care and expanding the boundaries of the family. She’s an expert in sexual healing and sacred sex.

“Sacred sex is a lot more about undoing the learning or conditioning that says you need to repress your sexual energy and that says sex is shameful. To release the religious or parental conditioning that tells us that sex is sinful, evil or unimportant. Sexual energy is our life-force. It is sacred.”

She has lots of ways to help people do that: breathing techniques, bodywork, psychodrama and stuff like that. She’s been ruminating on sacred sex for decades and has a different perspective that gives me pause.

Dr. Anapol says: “A lot of people who think they’re practicing Tantra these days are feeding their sex addictions. If you’re going to let the sexual energy have you rather than be in pursuit of physical pleasure you need to bring a lot of awareness to sexual exchange. It’s a double-edged sword. Most people, even if they don’t hold the attention to get there, often do have a mystical experience thorough sex. Once they do, if they’re in addictive mode, they can get addicted to the mystical experience as well as sexual. Then you’re in pursuit of this experience and then you’ve lost the original motive to escape this wheel of life, this karmic expedition that gets you nowhere, unless you believe in reincarnation. It gets you back into another life to try it again. The intention of Tantra is to integrate your sexual energy in the service of enlightenment.”

I do believe in reincarnation and I most certainly don’t want to be back here again in the same way. Integration sounds great. That’s what I’m after, but shouldn’t I be praying or chanting or meditating at least? I mean it feels like all this pleasure-seeking that will lead me straight back to nowhere.

Nrsimhananda gets specific in a 60s flashback; “In 1966, Prabhupada was in New York with maybe ten followers total. He came out with a list one day of the four regulated principles: No meat eating, intoxication, gambling, illicit sex, chant sixteen rounds a day (lowered from sixty-four). The followers said, we can do everything except sex. Of all four items, illicit sex is the most difficult. He said, “Here’s what you do, do the best you can. The main thing is don’t eat the cow. Don’t take drugs. Don’t speculate the meaning of Absolute Truth. Learn it from sadhu (saintly people), people who see the truth. If you can get the first three handled, the fourth will come into line. If you can take care of these other things…Krishna will gradually give you the detachment.”

A gradual detachment sounds doable. I don’t eat the cow, take drugs or speculate on the meaning of God, so I feel a little better about seeking a sacred sexual experience outside of a committed relationship. After all, what am I? A saint? The Reverend gave me a tip along these lines in the form of an automotive analogy to help me on my journey.

We get to make our own sandcastles in God’s material playground, and sex is the ultimate reenactment of the process of Creation.

“Sex is like a Ferrari. If someone gave me a brand-new Ferrari I wouldn’t take it off-roading. It would trash the car. I would only drive it where it’s supposed to be driven…Sex is a God-given gift. What’s happened to sex, like this Ferrari, is we’ve taken it off-road. Many people have taken this God-given gift and used it in a God-forbidden way. It’s going to be great for a while but I don’t think its going to have ultimate spiritual result until we do it the way God intended it. One woman, one man in a marriage,” he said.

I’m not sure where to ride that but I might be looking for a more fuel-efficient metaphor. Deborah Taj Anapol told me to breathe deeply while having sex; that seems useful. Someone else told me that Prabhupada left some unofficial off-the-record advice about sex hovering around on the planet; He said, if you’re gay, find one boy and stay with him. Now there’s some advice I can use.
My goal is to ground myself in a way that will allow me to embrace an elevated sexual ideal while diving deeper into detachment.

“The aspiring yogi is always seeking to be detached from senses,” Nrsimhananda says, “Like the turtle withdraws itself into his shell, a yogi goes to a cave – even thousands of years ago – to withdraw from presumably a simple world. There the yogi could meditate without distraction. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna says by the contact of the senses with the object of pleasure attachment develops, and from attachment comes frustration. From frustration comes anger, from anger one falls deep into the material pool.”

In a place like Los Angeles, it’s easy to set myself adrift in the endless sea of beautiful bodies and drown. But I don’t want to find myself rolling around in the mud at the deep end of material pool without a rope. I’ve already been very muddy. It looks like the only road to emancipation is open-hearted restraint.

Metsa Niwue aka François Demange (pictured) is an Amazonian medicine practitioner in Peru working in the traditions of the Shipibo and Quechua Lamista. He emphasizes the importance of sexual restriction in working with the medicine. “The main concept of the restriction of sex in vegetalismo; traditional Amazonian medicine is around the idea that master plants have spirits and the teaching and knowledge around the medicine comes from the spirits. Building a specific relationship with the plant and the spirit, you need to be totally cleared of all type of interaction with another person, so not to interfere with this communication, the sexual energy needs to be guarded. It can’t be shared. The old shamans have told me that the spirit world don’t like the smell of the sex…so it creates shock into the spirit world. If a human being on [diet] restriction is having sexual intercourse the spirits will go away. Most of the energy that comes from the teaching sits in the sexual energy of the practitioner. If he is having ejaculation, he is going to give away part of the strength he is receiving.

The sexual restrictions are very important. Especially in the beginning when you start to train under vegetalismo you are building that relationship with the plant spirit. Then, after ten, fifteen, twenty-five years you know how to deal with those energies…you can sometimes practice tantra or having certain kinds of sexual intercourse because you know how to organize those energies.”

Control, as espoused by the shaman, is part of the practice in many traditions. “All yogis will be preaching a methodology of controlling the senses,” Nrsimhananda says. “In Raja Yoga there is a technique for this. In Jnâna Yoga, there is a thorough analysis of the nature of the material energy…in Hatha Yoga, physical mythology…Siddha Yoga and Kundalini are all heavy disciplines that require controlling the senses and restricting the sex life. And then oddly enough, [there is] Bhakti, the Yoga of love. Bhakti, of course, is not about ascending or even going anywhere. It is all about unconditional love for God and all His/Her parts and parcels. Liberation is not the goal; it is a byproduct of love,” according to Nrsimhananda. “Whether I am in heaven or hell, I only want to be in your loving, devotional service lifetime after lifetime’ – that is the heartsong of a bhakta, a devoted soul. The other ascending processes: by this or that austerity I will lift myself up through the chakras to enlightenment, they are like granules of sand compared to the pearl of devotional service. Bhakti is a descending process; by my acts and devotion, God may, if He/She so chooses give me the kripa, the mercy of spiritual enlightenment… He’ll grant and bestow. It’s a receiving…it’s a very different from the others.”

Which of course makes me want God as my only lover…but I’m not Quan…yet.

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Sacred Sex appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa at Golden Bridge Yoga

“We didn’t pick the place, the place picked us. God picked us,” Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa describes the process while sitting with me in the building she and her husband claimed, gutted and remodeled in goddess chic minimalism: high arched wood beam ceilings, wood floors and lots of deities; with a restaurant, gift shop and Ayurvedic spa on the premises.

What makes Golden Bridge sacred for Gurmukh besides the ground-up renovation which included employing a Feng Shui master to get the flow just right?

“The ground that it’s built on. I really and truly think we’re on a vortex here. Even though we brought in so much chanting, so much kindness, so much service, it had a sense of eminence before we even walked in. It’s a combination that brings in the sacredness. It helps if the vibrational frequency is sacred before… you don’t have to work so hard. So I have to say that God or the higher sacred beings really brought us to a sacred place because it was our destiny.”

Another permutation of sacred space is planted in the middle of rush hour traffic a few blocks from Golden Bridge. Something decidedly strange happens when artist, writer and yogi Dani Katz spreads her mat near Sunset and Vine, claims a slab of concrete as sacred and begins her Ashtanga routine. As she practices, no one pays attention. No looks. No comments. No leering. Nada.

My mat is my sacred space. I’m conscious of the intention that I put into and onto my mat, six days a week for the past nine years.

“Intention defines sacred space,” she said; “Unsacred space is unconscious space. My mat is my sacred space. I’m conscious of the intention that I put into and onto my mat, six days a week for the past nine years.” Dani’s ritual is simple: “Peace, love, awakening, support.” She claims the space when she spreads her mat; as soon as she invests it with intention it is sacred. It works.

The support she mentions is energetic, environmental and physical. “This place can hold me and I hold it. There are these plants that give me oxygen…I’m holding sacred space by my practice. We have been relatively unbothered here. No one’s watching.”

Joel Shapiro

In contrast, everybody was watching Jake Saxon, a yogi from Carbondale, Colorado, when he participated in the finals of the International Yoga Championships sponsored by Bikram at a hotel near LAX. The 17-year-old telemark free-skiing champion has some specific ideas about what defines space as sacred.

“The most sacred space in the world is nature because nature is the perfect kind of harmony between all things. It’s not disrupted by mankind’s ego and desire to have things to his will. In nature things work together. My body is part of nature. I always have it with me, so wherever I go I’m in sacred space.” I asked Jake if he ever does his practice outside. “Not in the winter,” he replied. Of course not; he lives in Colorado. It’s freezing there.

If it did freeze in L.A., the all solar-powered Electric Lodge of Abbot Kinney in Venice would be warm and cozy in a very green way. I recognized the Electric Lodge as sacred the moment I walked through the door a year ago to attend a breath workshop. It’s pristine. Clear. Open. Supportive. Creative visionary Joel Shapiro, a former practicing physician, as well as an actor, performance artist, professional dancer and ardent environmentalist took the plunge and reinvented the space with a simple vision: “A place of creating work in any artistic media where artists melding/molding discovering each one’s distinctive voice.”

Electric Lodge hosts workshops, events, has a theatre company and a resident dance company (formed and led by Butoh dance master Oguri and counterpart Roxanne Steinberg). The space is supported, ecologically-speaking, with a program called Ecostage; it includes the Green Screen Environmental Film Festival, the Green Piece (a live performance focused on environmental issues) and the eco-certification program Arts:Earth Partnership. Shapiro holds the planet and all life as sacred and the Electric Lodge is a microcosm of his larger vision: “The sacredness comes from how myself and all the others open and work through honesty. I was solely interested in the truth in the moment.”

The truth of anything is, of course subjective. Like space, the substance of what I choose to invest it with defines it… and me. What I put in and what I take out. What I choose to give and receive. Since I don’t currently have a building to invest in, I’m taking cues from Jake Saxon and Dani Katz. From Jake: my most sacred space is my body. I hear they’re a precious commodity. And from Dani, I remember to invest my surrounding space with the sacredness I embody.

The most sacred space in the world is nature…. My body is part of nature. I always have it with me, so wherever I go I’m in sacred space.

Sam Slovick is a regular contributor to LA YOGA. He’s also published in Vibe, Details, Interview, Giant, Good, Nylon, Neon, The Face, Angeleno, The Advocate, Curve, LA Weekly and others. Preview his new documentary series On Skid Row at, http://www.myspace.com/samslovick

By Sam Slovick

Sam Slovick

Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.

samslovick.com

The post Sacred Space appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.