Yoga Journal used to be called the Journal for Conscious Living. Yogi Bhajan told us this time we are in right now would make people really crazy and there would be alot of pain. Yoga is a way we can lift our own pain and help others life theirs, in other words to shift consciousness. This is what one of our April retreat attendees said “Donna,

I just wanted to let you know that your retreat DID leave a lasting impact on me in so many ways. I have continued to take time to practice yoga and I have used my breathing to remain calm under situations that would typically make me tense. My mind is clearer than ever! I am learning to remove unnecessary guilt from my conscious and to focus on the good in myself and in others.  I can spend hours working in my house without the typical background sound to drain out my thoughts. Less music and much less television.  The best thing that I took away from my week in Maine is to focus less on social standards that people have set and more on what I feel is right for me in MY life.  As Eckhart Tolle would say, “let your deeper longings be your compass on Earth”, and I actually feel like I can let go and do this now!
 
Thank you for being open minded and really listening to each of us.  I took so much from our conversations and I am truly grateful for having the opportunity to meet you and your husband.
Namaste!
Maxine”
So practicing meditation and yoga develops the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. Interestingly these people that commit these unthinkable crimes (some we have heard of very recently) have NO activity in that part of the brain, simply fascinating. None of us have the answers on this thing called life; yesterday as I

meditationg with mantra at Sewall House April 2009

meditationg with mantra at Sewall House April 2009

 stood on a subway platform in NYC I thought about the oddness of it all, how much we all WANT to live and yet, as my old room-mate who is a social worker said to me yesterday, how many people ARE unconscious. Though the yoga explosion has its good points and not so good ones ( fame, stars, clicks, competition, egos) over all it offers a real opportunity for MORE people to become conscious, aware of what they think, do and say and how it affects them and others. That is my two cents for this Wednesday if anyone is listening!!