Clearing Negative Beliefs

Just reading Shakti Gawain’s Reflections in the Light, and found this “Clearing” exercise to be very helpful for myriad issues: establishing a home yoga ractice, reigniting your spiritual path, cutting out sugar, getting a new job that aligns better with your values, etc.

This is quoted directly from Shakti’s book.

Here is a basic clearing process that you can use to clear out negative beliefs in order to attain a goal. First, state your goal in the form of an affirmation. Second, write “The reasons I can’t have what I want are:” and then start listing every thought that comes into your head. Third, decide which of the negative statements have the most power over you, and make a mark by those. Write an affirmation to counteract each one. Meditate on these affirmations every day along with your original goal.

I am now clearing my negative beliefs.

Click here for more info on Shakti’s inspirational and original work. We’re working on incorporating some of her processes into our next round of yoga and integrative medicine workshops. Sign up here for our newsletter for more info.

A+ Vacation: How to Recharge the Batteries

My husband and I just returned from Vancouver where we had four blessed days, sans kids. David was there to give his “New World of Green” speech – and if you don’t know the man, here’s his claim to fame: he’s done more than any individual to reverse climate change over the past 15 years through his visionary leadership and founding the world’s fastest-growing nonprofit, the USGBC, and the World GBC.

Here’s what we found in Vancouver: the best battery recharge ever. We arrived Friday to extraordinary weather, and a gorgeous hotel room overlooking the water and Stanley Park.

We dined Friday at Radha and ate scrumptious, lovingly prepared raw and cooked vegan food. Radha is a revolutionary spot that has manifested my long-held vision of combining yoga with extraordinary food and community. Add some integrative physicians and you have my vision.

I’ve noticed recently that vegan and raw food both deepen my meditation experience profoundly – I don’t fidget, I don’t get distracted, I stay on task.

Saturday, after researching every yoga teacher within a 10-mile radius, I settled on Christine Price Clark at YYoga in Yaletown. She is an Anusara teacher, and the class was for intermediate-advanced folk.

I walked into a densely filled, sweaty room tense with the anticipation of students devoted to their teacher. In walks guru Christine, singing “Business Time” by Flight of the Conchords. When I did my teacher training in 2002, we were taught to set carefully a healing container at the beginning of class, a vessel to hold the energy and emotion of our students during class. Christine claimed her container as loving, playful, irreverent and totally original.

Class was intense. She set an intention of us all getting connected to our Grand Vision. She told a story of her family member’s lukewarm enthusiasm for her own Grand Vision to step away from an unsatisfying job and into the flow of yoga teaching.

Class was outstanding. Intense, meaningful, the right mix of artful language and creative sequencing. I walked home to the hotel, inspired and connected to my Grand Vision – you know, the one about being a High Priestess of Energy and Libido, helping women connect to their inner priestess and deep well of vibrant energy and vitality. I found David finishing up the refinements to his speech, and we walked together in the sunshine to the Vancouver Art Gallery to learn about Emily Carr and be transported by her vivid charcoals of the British Columbia forests.

I won't give you all the details, but suffice it to say I went to every class Christine taught, bought some gold lame hot pants, and we arrived home yesterday flush with energy, love and vitality. The formula for this vacation worked.