If you are unable to begin with us on the 20th, jump in whenever you can. Our practice is for 40 days as that is the length of time it takes to create change as well as to address habits.

Ganapati, and Gunpati, are names for Lord Ganesha. Ganesha is a Hindu deity in human form with the head of an elephant,  is the son of Lord Shiva and Divine Mother Parvati. Ganesha is said to be the Lord of success and the destroyer of evils and obstacles and is worshipped as the lord of wisdom, knowledge, education and prosperity.

There is much meaning in the images and art of Ganesha: his elephant head symbolizes wisdom and understanding. His elephant trunk speaks to the wide range of possibility as it can uproot a tree yet lift a tiny needle off the ground. The two tusks represent the different aspects of human personality. The left tusk is broken, this is said to be a symbol of the sacrifice of writing the Mahabharata. Ganesha has four arms and various objects in his hands. The four arms stand for omnipresence as well as omnipotence. The objects held by Ganesha hold great meaning as well: an axe, a lotus, a tray of snacks (Laddus) and a blessing mudra. The axe is symbolic of the need to cut off worldly attachment and conquer emotions. The lotus is potential; transcendent beauty from mud and water. The snack is symbolic of the prosperity and abundance that Ganesha bestows. The blessing mudra is a reminder that Ganesha always blesses those that invoke him. Ganesha is always depicted with a mouse at his feet, or as riding a mouse. The mouse is our ego as well as our ability to do what is thought of as impossible and beat all obstacles.

This meditation will clear your karma, allowing energy blocks to dissolve. In the Kundalini tradition we are taught that we have three areas in life to conquer: the past, the present and the future. The past is recorded in our samskaras, the present must be mastered with yoga and integrity and the future, which is our dharma. This meditation allows us to let go of attachments and the impact of past actions so we can create and live a fulfilled life.

There are a few different versions of this meditation, often it is referred to as “the meditation to make the impossible possible”. Think about what you would like to create in your life with this energy and this ability to work past previous obstacles.

The Ganapati Kriya Meditation

To do: Sit in Sukhasana (Easy Pose), with a light Jalandhar bandh or necklock. The eyes are 1/10th open and the focus is at the third eye point (brow point). The hands begin in Gyan Mudra, with the wrists on the knees, arms and elbows straight. You will be shifting mudras as you chant the mantra, with each fingertip being pressed sequentially to the thumb tip with each syllable of the mantra.

Chant the mantra on a single breath: SAA TAA NAA MAA

RAA MAA DAA SAA

SAA SAY SO HUNG

Beginning with thumb and index touching for SAA, then thumb and middle for TAA, thumb and ring for NAA, thumb and pinky for MAA, thumb and index for RAA, thumb and middle for MAA, thumb and ring for DAA, thumb and pinky for SAA, thumb and index for SAA, thumb and middle for SAY, thumb and ring for SO, thumb and pinky for HUNG.

Mudra for thumb & index (Gyan Mudra)

Mudra for thumb & middle (Shuni Mudra)

Mudra for thumb & ring (Surya Mudra)

Mudra for thumb & pinky (Buddhi Mudra)

Continue chanting in a Tibetan form monotone or the sing-song cadence of Kirtan Kriya for 11 minutes. You can build your practice beyond 11 minutes, all the way to 62 minutes if you wish.

To end: Inhale deeply and hold this breath for 20-30 seconds as you move your entire body (while still in Easy Pose). This is to circulate the prana for healing. Exhale. Repeat this two more times.

Become completely still and concentrate on the tip or lotus of the nose for 1 minute.

Inhale, exhale and relax.

If you would like to be included in 40 days of email encouragement and support, please leave your email below, or email me at sierra@sundancepower.com

Sierra Hollister is a green yogini living in the mountains outside of Asheville. She has been teaching Kundalini Yoga in Asheville for the past 16 years. You can catch her class, twice a week, at Asheville Yoga Center! Mondays at 10:15am and Thursdays at 7:00pm. For more from Sierra visit her personal blog Dragonfly & the Green Yogini.

Those of you who remember me from the early days of Twitter and Facebook know that reading is one of my passions. Yes, I’ll admit, I do have a bit of a tabloid magazine habit.  But I’ve given up my subscription to National Enquirer, and I haven’t read an issue of People in weeks now.  I have no idea what’s going on with J Lo or Brangelina.  Believe me if you will.  Or not. I have, instead, been engaged in some quality reading of late. My friend Steph Keach and I trade books back and forth, and one of her standout faves is this one, Shantaram.  I must admit, it’s a lengthy book at 900+ pages.  But hey – I was an English major.  If I can read Joyce’s Ulysses and not run from the room screaming, this will be a piece of cake.  And it was…

Shantaram is a semi-autobiographical tale of an escaped convict from Australia who flees to the streets of Mumbai in an effort to blend in with the crowds and avoid capture. Upon his arrival in Bombay, Lin has the good fortune to meet up with Prabakar, who becomes both his guide and his faithful friend.  It is the first of many fortuitous (and a few not so fortuitous) occurrences for Lin.

With Prabakar as his guide, Lin enters Bombay’s shadowy world of gangsters, prostitutes, sadhus, Bollywood directors, and expats. He suffers some existential angst due to his life on the lam (he must be on guard at all times lest his true identity be uncovered), but finds love and acceptance amongst both the slum dwellers and the mafiosi alike. He goes on to run a medical clinic for his fellow slum dwellers, visits Prabakar’s childhood village (where he receives the name Shantaram, which means man of God’s peace), goes to prison, is tortured there, becomes a gangster, makes a few enemies, makes a few friends, and goes to war in Afghanistan. Whew!  He’s a busy guy!

This novel is all-encompassing. It would have benefitted from a little editing, I think. And the plot and characterizations were a bit predictable.  But the big takeaway for me is Lin’s (and the author’s) abiding love for Bombay and its inhabitants. If you want to learn more about India (especially the underworldly side) or have a hankering to visit Bombay, this book will slake your thirst. And the other good news is this:  this book is part one of a proposed trilogy!  So, if the first book is any indication, that means 1800 more pages of larger than life adventure of a larger than life guy who’s on the lam from prison in India.  Jai Ho!

Angela McWilliams began practicing yoga in 2006, studying Iyengar yoga with Cindy Dollar. She is a graduate of Asheville Yoga Center’s 200 hour teacher training, and is pursuing her 500 hour certification. While still primarily a student of Iyengar yoga, she does enjoy exploring other styles of yoga and takes advantage of the many opportunities to study with world-class yoga teachers who offer trainings here in Asheville. In 2007 Angela created Inner Space Yoga to meet the need for quality, domestically manufactured yoga props. All designs were developed and refined with the input of Angela’s teachers and fellow yogins, with the goal of creating yoga props that are durable, well-made, supportive and, above all, beautiful. Many of the materials, such as the cotton batting, are sourced locally, and the products are sewn by either Angela herself, or local sewers. Visit InnerSpaceYoga.net to learn more. 

What: Community Meditation led by Sierra Hollister

When: Sunday, March 18, 7:00pm

Where: Asheville Yoga Center

Cost: FREE

Asheville Yoga Center would like to invite you to join us in awakening the heart and the mind together in a community meditation. Sitting together in meditation has a history that reaches back more than 2,500 years in both Yogic and Buddhist traditions. A community that meditates together is a community that is sharing a sadhana, a daily practice. A community that practices sadhana together develops harmony, strength and a shared aura. Our efforts to lift ourselves in spirit, heart and mind are magnified when we work together as a group.

An introduction to the specific meditation that we will be practicing will be introduced on March 18, a meditation that works with the energy of Ganesha, a deity who is loved and shared by all yoga traditions. With Ganesha as our bond, our many varied paths can flow together in beauty and spirit. The meditation will begin on Tuesday, March 20th ~ the spring equinox, a tender and beautiful time of new beginnings, hope as green shoot. We will support each other through a 40 day practice of our meditation, concluding our practice on April 28th. Each of us will be responsible for our own daily practice, choosing the time and location that works best for our individual schedules, knowing that our community is practicing as well. If you are unable to be present at the introduction of the meditation, no worries- instructions for practicing the meditation will be posted here on March 18th.

If for some reason you are unable to begin on the Spring Equinox, please join in when you can.

Sierra Hollister is a green yogini living in the mountains outside of Asheville. She has been teaching Kundalini Yoga in Asheville for the past 16 years. You can catch her class, twice a week, at Asheville Yoga Center! Mondays at 10:15am and Thursdays at 7:00pm. For more from Sierra visit her personal blog Dragonfly & the Green Yogini.

Learn more about our 200, 500 and 1000 hour Yoga Teacher Trainings and Therapeutic Yoga Certifications at youryoga.com.

Come to one of Rosie’s weekly yoga classes at the Asheville Yoga Center. Visit youryoga.com for the schedule.

Truly, we can realize that as far as being present, we are in possession of all that we need for peace, for being love.

Meditation is one of the ways in which we can bring ourselves fully into the moment, as the moment is, rather than thinking about some future moment.

There are many ways in which to meditate but one of the simplest is surrendering to the moment. Allow yourself to fully occupy this moment, not a future moment, not a past moment. Breathe deeply. Allow the mind to empty. Continue.

My yoga teacher would say, “It is not meditation that stops the mind. It is the surrender of the mind to the soul, and the soul to Truth. It is when you prefer the word of Truth to the word of your own intellect.”

Sometimes there are days when it appears impossible to find the time to get on a yoga mat or impossible to sit down to meditate. So be it. Some days are like that. Regardless, there is always time to occupy the moment, always a chance to be present.

Simply surrender yourself to yourself, to the deep peace, the deep love that you already are. Breathe. Allow your heart to lead, to expand. Experience Samadhi. If only for a moment.

Sierra Hollister is a green yogini living in the mountains outside of Asheville. She has been teaching Kundalini Yoga in Asheville for the past 16 years. You can catch her class, twice a week, at Asheville Yoga Center! Mondays at 10:15am and Thursdays at 7:00pm. For more from Sierra visit her personal blog Dragonfly & the Green Yogini.

When the components of yoga are practiced, impurities dwindle; then, the light of understanding can shine forth, illuminating the way to discriminative awareness.

Then the veil lifts from the mind’s luminosity.

And the mind’s potential for concentration is realized.

Then the senses reside utterly in the service of realization.

(Yoga Sutras, Chip Hartranft’s translation)

Pratyahara, the withdrawal of the senses from the external world, is one of the components of yoga. Some people think of it only as one of a series of steps in meditation, but pratyahara can be a practice in and of itself. Withdrawing the senses from their attachment to the external world is no small undertaking. It is not simply turning off music, closing your eyes, and settling into a quiet space for meditation. Pratyahara is the intentional act of introversion through which we extract the energy of the senses from their attachment to external objects in order to harness and channel that energy back into ourselves – a process also called interiorization or reabsorption of the senses. The objective is not to forever sever ourselves from the external world or from sensory experience, but rather, to harness the energy of our senses so that we are not unconsciously drawn into distractions, but instead consciously choose and fully engage whatever we experience.

Our senses are our direct link to the external world and they give us information we need to survive, adapt, and evolve. They function autonomously and stem from a dimension of body wisdom that is beyond our comprehension, much less under our absolute control. Consider the fact that humankind (hominid) has been in existence for millions of years, surviving, adapting, and evolving in a chaotic, and many times, predatory environment. The significance of heightened sensory perception as a survival mechanism cannot be underestimated. Anything which has endured that long cannot be taken casually.

Now consider our situation today. Even though we have evolved to the point where we no longer need our senses for basic survival, the primordial energy that drives our senses is still there, autonomously seeking outlets in the external world. However, instead of giving us the information we need to adapt and evolve, our senses – and our attention – are dispersed into a world of diversions and muted by lack of focus. What we have for our senses to flow into are televisions, IPods, cell phones, computers, computer games, magazines, talk radio, scrolling billboards, and a myriad other blinking-flashing distractions. We see without looking; hear without listening; read without learning; and we even eat without remembering the meal, much less actually tasting it. We are no longer present in our bodies or with our minds and we suffer the consequences of that splintering. There is nothing inherently wrong with sensory experience, but if we are witlessly at its mercy or mindlessly engaging it, we are ultimately missing the full flavor of life.

When, through a willed act of introversion, we stop and contain the outward flow of sensation, that energy starts to intensify and expand inwardly. The senses then begin to work to relay information about our inner world. (You can try this if you catch yourself in the moment before you eat something you aren’t hungry for or turn on the television because you are bored.) The longer we immerse our awareness in this inwardly-focused sensory experience, the more that energy will burn its way through layers of self-delusion (tapas). This process ultimately reveals the energetic essence of our true nature, which is not only pure witnessing consciousness, but also the creative, all-pervading force of all manifestation – a revelation which literally transforms everything we experience.

Interiorization then turns on itself and begins to expand outward where it becomes fully-embodied consciousness, every cell permeated with this new awareness. That fully embodied awareness extends beyond the boundaries of our physical bodies and into the world around us, where sensation itself is experienced as an extension of our true nature and not something counter to it. The fully-awakened yogi looking outward, then experiences the world from a completely transformed perspective – a perspective in which the eternal lifeforce radiates in all of the forms of time.

Jesamine is a massage therapist and yoga instructor in Asheville. She writes as and for a contemporary, Western practitioner. The goal of her work as a writer and yoga teacher is to find ways for us to authentically open ourselves to yoga’s teachings and to allow those teachings to organically penetrate and heal our fractured Western psyches.  You can read more at http://www.ashevillemassageandyoga.com/blog/

It went down like this- the other night my husband was online and what drew me over to look at his screen with him was the music. What kept me looking was the yoga. I’m talking about the recent Equinox video with Briohny Smyth – you can view it here.

I was mesmerized and as soon as we came to the end, I pushed replay. What I saw was a beautiful, strong, graceful yogini. The setting of the video implies an early morning sadhana, while the partner slumbers on. What yogi hasn’t been there? I found myself appreciating the clear dedication that Briohny brings to her practice. To flow with that kind of grace takes years on the mat. I found myself wondering about her training, her preferred tradition and the sheer amount of time it must have taken to make such a challenging flow look so effortless.

I did have one other fleeting thought as I drifted away from the computer and over to the sink to do the dinner dishes, but, I’ll save that for later.

Imagine my subsequent surprise to find the world of chattering yogi’s all upset over this beautiful video. Charges of objectification, sexism, commercialism, sensationalism and using sex to sell are just a few of the ones that I’ve encountered so far. Ugh. Really?

It’s not that I am unaware of sexism, objectification or the commercialization of yoga. On the contrary, I’m super aware. The very morning of the day that I watched the video of Briohny, I spoke with my son about what sounded like blatant misogyny in a rap song that he was listening to. I get it. The treatment of women in some quarters of popular culture is downright frightening. To not address this wherever and whenever possible would be seriously remiss. But Briohny’s video is a celebration of yoga, strength, and where dedication can take a determined spirit. Period.

As for all the outrage and editorializing- I humbly suggest that there are more worthy issues and outlets. The planet is on the brink of collapse and the inhabitants are not far behind. Concern over the objectification of women could be channeled into work on human trafficking- it is believed that human trafficking (forced work in labor and sex trades) is the fastest growing criminal industry, both internationally and nationally. The estimate for the United States alone is hundreds of thousands of people, primarily women and children, being trafficked. To learn more about this issue or get involved, go to www.polarisproject.org

There is so much to celebrate, so much to be thankful for and so many positive ways to channel our energy in ways that have the potential to uplift us all. Kudos to Briohny for her hard work and inspirational results. And kudos to this guy for his sense of humor (hilarious parody video – click here to watch).

Oh yeah- that other fleeting thought? I realized that in more than twenty years of practice, not once had I ever practiced in just my undies. I fixed that the very next morning.

Sierra Hollister is a green yogini living in the mountains outside of Asheville. She has been teaching Kundalini Yoga in Asheville for the past 16 years. You can catch her class, twice a week, atAsheville Yoga Center! Mondays at 10:15am and Thursdays at 7:00pm. For more from Sierra visit her personal blog Dragonfly & the Green Yogini.

This new space is just a few doors down from our old location at 239 S. Liberty St. We have kept the 239 S. Liberty St. location and turned it into a donation based yoga studio with all new classes.

Click here to learn more about our new building.

Winter Solstice has always seemed like a time to draw in closer to the hearth, closer to the family as well as closer to our most inner self. The year has been spent, for better or worse, we have sowed and reaped. Now feels like a time of caring for our deepest selves, our soul selves. It is nice to put some portion of the day towards tending and nourishing the well from which we drink. Regardless of the weather, I always like to spend some time outside on this day. Nature is the ultimate cathedral in which to worship. Incidentally, the custom of bringing evergreens into the home comes from long ago when the people wished to signify to the nature spirits that they were welcome, that safe shelter from the cold and dark outside could be found in a home so decorated. I also like to look for my shadow on the solstice as the longest shadow you can cast is at noon on the winter solstice.

When I meditate on the energy of winter solstice, I feel all the seeds snug in their earthen beds, deep below a shimmering blanket of fresh snow. Solstice at winter also feels like the pause at the bottom of the exhale, the ultimate exhale, really. Winter solstice is that moment before we begin to inhale, before the light begins to grow again. It has been my understanding that some of the most profound healing in yoga happens in the pause between the breaths.

A nice practice for this solstice energy might be to sit in Easy Pose, hands in Gyan Mudra, eyes closed. Follow the breath, pausing at the bottom of each exhale, listening before drawing the inhale. Perhaps 3 minutes, 5 minutes or 11 minutes of this. Follow with sweet witnessing meditation, no judgment or attachment, just a witness of what flows up.

My wish for you is that you will make a bit of time to tend your soul today and that your healing will be profound, your happiness complete. Happy Solstice.

Sierra Hollister is a green yogini living in the mountains outside of Asheville. She has been teaching Kundalini Yoga in Asheville for the past 16 years. You can catch her class, twice a week, atAsheville Yoga Center! Mondays at 10:15am and Thursdays at 7:00pm. For more from Sierra visit her personal blog Dragonfly & the Green Yogini.