Recently I was on an airplane watching a show in which two adult women were discussing a falling out they’d had. One of the women, upon being confronted with a description of her behavior, replied by saying “Well, that’s just HOW I AM and I can’t change that.” Once I finished judging her for her ridiculous closed-mindedness, I came to realize that I’ve used this excuse hundreds of times myself. So I began writing this down: There’s a choice here that we can explore. None of us are any ONE way. We choose who we are, moment to moment, day to day and year after year.

A close-to-home example: in the heat of a recent error in judgment on my part, I indulged in typically self-punishing, exhausting thinking. However, for the first time in my adult life, I actually stopped to breathe — and sensed the dramatically escalating inner pain literally squeezing my heart. I felt the tension emanating through my torso and down into my hands. For the first time, in that moment, I ASKED, in the silence of my own heart, for an opening. And I received that opening; from there I entered into a state of inquiry.

What IS this feeling? Can’t I just be sorry and move onward without this wild need to punish myself with sabotaging thoughts or actions?

I leaned over the metaphorical edge of the well of self-judgment, and instead of plunging into the usual damaging free-fall, I held myself still. I remembered a line from a great track, “Live through this, and you won’t look back.” I got really quiet inside, and the moment passed through, releasing my heart on its way out.
In the asking, I realized that trajectory from damaging thought to damaging behavior is simply NOT a path for me anymore. At my heart, I’m NOT a person who needs to be punishing herself with self-blame and self-destruction for making mistakes. It’s simply been a choice I’ve made in the past.

My point is, when I ceased to engage with my “usual” tendencies, and truly paid attention to what those habitual thoughts were doing to me, they ceased holding me hostage. In that moment of choice, I realized that those expressions of self-loathing were actually inefficient attempts at deflecting attention away from my actions! Using this well-honed but very destructive escape hatch of “hating myself” to avoid taking responsibility, I’d actually found a way to make those around me feel bad for me. In lieu of a clear-eyed apology, I’d make it even more about me.
So to set an efficacious example for my son, instead of now stating “that’s how I AM,” I have chosen to change gears. In that moment, instead of transforming my mistakes into an inappropriate, attention getting self-hatred session…I just apologized.

Please pardon that digression; that’s a whole lot of information to arrive at a constructive choice, which I can hopefully convey in the following contemplations.

My questions:

• What are the words I use to tell others about myself?
• How do those descriptions of myself shift when I am talking to someone I’d like to impress?
• Especially in a heated moment, when I know I’ve erred, do I try to escape an apology?

With these questions, I’ve chosen to starkly observe the ways in which I have sabotaged my own free will. I have chosen to identify the way I have, until now, chosen to negatively alter my own state of being. I stand still, and choose not to be too hard on myself. I have taken to remembering that I needn’t be a slave to what has, until now, always been true.
I want (and need) to be making choices about who and how I am.
Now.
Today.

“When the smallest fragment of Truth enters a man, he can do nothing but obey.”

In the recent weeks I’ve taken a leap – talking about our role, exploring the role that each of us plays, without exception, as portals for energy [either healing or destructive energy] and how we can refine this role of ours through our practices. We are all carrying within us the same capacity to determine the texture of our experiences. Especially if this idea makes you uncomfortable or sounds esoteric, stay with me for a few more sentences.

My dear friend Danny Kalatsky has been writing and offering me random morsels as he goes, and this concept is one of them.

“Remain open and available to a higher purpose that will enhance our ability to be effective, aware beings”

We are all very capable of refining our seeing and listening in a concrete way- so that instead of moving through our day in a state of reactivity, dread, fear, disappointment or worry, we can remain open and available to a higher purpose that will enhance our ability to be effective, aware beings. By this openness I don’t mean we need to extol the virtues of our openness and availability, nor force the role of ultimate peacemaker with our words. It’s about presence. More on that in a few moments.

“We are portals, each of us, for any and all energies that have been created , and we get to choose how and what we receive and communicate”

The availability is key. As soon as we close ourselves off to a person or a circumstance due to some outmoded opinion or misperception we’ve never actually validated, we become a prime source of negativity for ourselves and anyone close to us. We harden ourselves against the world, rigidly rooting ourselves in a limiting position which stops the flow of healing and and creates the conditions for disease within and around ourselves. We are portals, each of us, for any and all energies that have been created, and we get to choose how and what we receive and communicate. How can our practice help us to make that choice in a healing direction?

“Let’s be practical”

So let’s be practical. Consider one glaring source of confusion currently at play in your world right now.

• First, silently to yourself, say thank you – for that person, that situation. As ridiculous as this may seem, this is catalyzing you to grow and transform.
• Second, take 3 minutes to sit quietly and review how you’ve been behaving with regard to this circumstance. Have you been reactive? Have you said or done things you wish you hadn’t? Don’t spend this time judging yourself; judgments only drain us. Just see it, even write down a few of your own reactions that are not sitting well with you; by noting these behaviors on paper, in my experience, we can see that it’s likely just a kid of 5, 10, 15 years old, with a given set of unchangeable circumstances, still driving your choices some 20, 30, 40 years later, unchecked.
• Third, do nothing. Sometimes the best way is to change nothing and simply watch and see. It’s likely that we will have to watch ourselves act that way with that person in that situation hundreds of times – and watch what happens within our bodies and hearts and minds – before we are absolutely done with it. Hugo Cory has told me many times that we must observe ourselves over and over until we cannot bear to bring that sensation upon ourselves one more time. This observation will eventually lead us directly into healing. [Personally, watching myself do or say the same thing over and over, like Jude Law getting recorded by Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman in I Heart Huckabees, is at once horrifying, hilarious, humiliating, and the only way to shift.]
• Lastly, practice living in your heart. It helps to think of it this way: consider someone in your life who really knows how to listen, how to be present, who offers their attention to you in a way that makes you feel at home wherever you are, and even more importantly, at home in your OWN heart. This is the behavior of someone who is residing in their heart – which takes practice. What does this mean exactly, to reside in your heart? It’s a comfort level at the core of your being, wherein you can stay close to yourself without inserting any buffers [phone calls, emails, addictive substances, food, slumber]. With practice, one moment at a time, each of us is capable of being such a presence within ourselves that we magnetize others who are present for themselves, and we generate cooperation and harmony in the people around us. We become more able to stay open and available for the highest sorts of energies to make our healthy bodies their home.

What would you like to channel, to communicate? Regardless of your history, the choice is yours.

“No more complaining”

About 10 years ago I sat down with my teacher Hugo Cory and he changed everything with one request: no more complaining. In that moment I remember wincing, nervously smirking and then insecurely, impetuously countering, “I don’t complain, I’m a yoga teacher.”

Ten years later, after observing thousands of my complaints [as my thoughts, my words, the merest movements of my eyes], I’ve seen how complaining completely drains my energy. My practice is remembering to make a choice before the thoughts, gestures, or words issue forth. We’ve only one moment -literally one breath- in which we can choose another way.

The self-control we discover in this practice of no complaining is certainly helpful in other realms of our lives. Far more healing than self-control, however, is the inevitable evolution of those complaints once we’ve painstakingly put our attention on each one, day in, day out, for a few months. When we’ve seen enough, the complaints evolve slowly but surely into gratitude.

“Unravel a quality of gratitude whenever it’s needed”

I’m not suggesting adding anything to do; this is an editing process. We are already “done.” I’m not suggesting that we add gratitude. I’m suggesting that we make the choice to unravel a quality of gratitude whenever it’s needed, from deep within the reserves we already possess.

Experiment: next time you’re about to launch into a complaint, playfully shift over to the exact opposite possibility and try to find gratitude for the situation that almost became a gripe.

Just like we practice various fitness regimens to become more flexible and adaptable [lately I've been adding SoulCycle to my yoga], we can actually practice becoming more flexible with our states of mind. When we experiment with other states -especially those in direct opposition to our habitual states- we discover that we possess range. A range of capacities, states, and much higher possibilities we’ve not yet mined.

Useful example: do you know anyone whose mood has a tendency to impact yours? Someone who might be close to you at work, or in your family, whose potential mood you consider, sometimes with dread, prior to seeing them? If we allow it, others’ moods alter our moods. My willingness to let someone else’s state affect mine is my own laziness. When I notice that, I try to remember my state prior to that person’s “contribution.”

“Co-creating with consciousness”

I am fairly certain this is what our teacher Dr. Douglas Brooks means when he talks about participating in the processes of Consciousness, describing Consciousness as a “moving target that evolves and invites our evolution with it.” The shifts in my consciousness are so swift that oftentimes I cannot see clearly; I lose focus, can’t sleep, am an impatient mama, you get the picture. And when I manage to see the impending gripe and shift into gratitude instead, I’m co-creating with consciousness, and I’m more slow, soft, caring, conscious. This choice to co-create is the process, and according to Dr. Brooks, it won’t confer a moment of transcendence when some preordained conclusion is reached. No indeed; it’s up to us to appreciate and dance with the multiple pulsating states possible in every interaction of every day. We are able to cultivate various levels of transcendence all the time

“Gratitude- the most effective healing state”

Gratitude seems the most effective, healing state I’ve found in 10 years of studious seeking. If we cultivate a state of gratitude, even for one moment in a situation wherein we usually find ourselves complaining, the healing reaches into our hearts, right through us, and into everyone nearby. Step back from the intensity a few times and check it out.

There’s science behind this which suggests that complaining and cultivating negative states can be deleterious for our well-being, and states such as gratitude actually boost our immunity.

Gratitude helps us to pass to the next level of living with skillfulness. “To grow and move on is the best way we can say thanks – to honor the past and ride into innovation, onto the next level of our Life’s Art.” John Friend via Shakti Sunfire

A few words to characterize most human brains: busy, loud, stubborn, and scared. For many of us, our overactive brains keep us from opening to our deepest, most loving, most comfortable selves. When we are not open to these aspects of ourselves, we either hide by hibernating (literally or figuratively), or we stay busy with hilariously misaligned priorities. So busy that we’re not sleeping as we should.

In myself, when my priorities are askew [I'm procrastinating, fast-forwarding, not paying attention to the present abundance], I’m actually just scared, and i don’t sleep. The fear that keeps many of us awake: that we aren’t seen, heard, felt – and therefore alive. As disorienting as this fear may be, it is quite human, but it gets us doing the darndest things, into the wee hours of the morning, and not sleeping.

Tangentially, if you’re not currently sleeping well and you’re tripping over yourself about it as we all do sometimes, play your guitar [or whatever instrument you've always wanted to pick up]. At least it becomes time more sweetly spent.

If and when you want to try a practice that may help you reclaim some nourishing rest, read on.
After careful observation, I’m here to report that the only break from this fear — whatever form it’s taking in your life — is breathing consciously. Breathing delivers me into the present moment. And breathing is key to getting your healing rest.

When my mind has such a hold that I cannot breathe, Reiki returns me to my breathing.
The brief practice below incorporates Reiki, which helps us breathe, combined with conscious breathing, which helps us sleep.
Consistency equals efficacy here; you’ll feel the cumulative effects.

1. For everyday situations (walking, waiting, sitting — right now), place your left hand over your heart, center of your chest, fingers spread, palm flat. With your hand there, breathe into and around your brain. Use your breathing to make space between your actual brain and your skull (be creative with the visual and you will feel it in your softening eyes); then you may even breathe some more space between the two hemispheres of your brain. Keep your brain porous, spacious, and notice how that quality of openness is actually a reflection of your spacious heart below. Hold the space and notice your thought-pace slow down. Use this in meetings, in conversations, with children. Or several breaths right now.

2. Ideally done lying down or reclining, try this placement right now if you can. Place one or both hands on the top crown of your head, one in front of the other, elbows out to the sides, and breathe deeply into your heart. Broaden your heart; widen the space in the center of your chest laterally. As you breathe, maintain your expansive heart and notice the reflection of that opening higher up, in your mind, as well. Put some attention on the resonance in and around your hands.

Take a few breaths here.

2A. When you’re using this placement specifically before sleep: lying on your back, place your hands on the top crown of your head and let your elbows rest out to the sides on your pillow. Let your eyes relax [closed or open, as you wish] and review the scenes of your day with no judgment: where have you been, how did you speak, what did you offer? Be objective and keep your heart expansive as you breathe here. This is information-gathering, not judgment time.

The aim of this nightly review is to learn your habitual tendencies with your heart wide open– what they look like, sound like, their consequences — so they don’t continue to infect your every interaction. You’ll see which attitudes drain you and which nurture you. Whether you’re horrified, pleased, psyched, mortified upon seeing your behaviors; see those judgments, and remember that no judgment can take you over once you’ve seen it clearly as you’re breathing generously. Notice you’re sad: there is sadness, say hello- sadness is present, but it’s not YOU. Notice you’re thrilled! Greetings, thrilled, that’s what that feels like; return to your breathing and simply do whatever needs to be done next.

Your attention on your breathing sits right in the middle of any two strong polarities; if you’re breathing, you can see more clearly what’s required of you. My teacher recommends 5 minutes for the review; it helps me to have my hands on my head as I watch, and to breathe until my heart feels softer and more open even in the face of what I’m seeing.

Both of these hand placements are incorporated into a full Reiki self-treatment. 
Reiki: A Comprehensive Guide offers an enlightening history of this profoundly healing practice as well as details of the full self-treatment. To learn about Reiki, meet Pamela Miles, who’s committed herself to Reiki’s widespread scientific recognition and medical use in hospitals and critical-care environments [and, very thankfully, in my home]. 

This practice must be for yourself only – an intimate, quiet practice of self-care. 
We must fearlessly breathe through each frightfully sabotaging thought, one at a time, in order to know what real acceptance looks like. It takes longer on some nights, but now we have a practice, a vessel, a direction for a rambunctious brain.

Is such a concrete practice of self-nourishing, Self-acceptance the most efficient salve for sleeplessness? Or is it your 2 a.m. solitary guitar strumming? Let me know what’s true for you.

Fun assignment: write the following phrase on 5 small sticky notes and place them at eye level in your kitchen, your fridge, your mirrors, your door.

Take care of yourself.

For years teachers and inspiring colleagues have referenced the heart as the key to inner peace, abundance, and health. Over the next few installations I’ll explain how your heart holds your highest potentiality for consistency, as well as every current answer to any ancient question regarding what is possible in your present life and evolution.

Two of my biggest curiosities that led to the Heart: Why does another person’s inner state have an effect on my own? And what should I do when I’m in the company of strong negativity and it seems to have an influence on my own state?

Different cells in our bodies, as well our very fields of energy, even without proximity to one another, synchronize with one another. Each of us are cells in the global heart. This is why we feel “affected” by the moods of others. When we hold resentment and hostility, our heart rhythm shifts the actual shape of the heart muscle; a very different shape from the one created when we feel happiness and joy. You can factually pick up the emotions of another person, even at a distance [non-locally], with your own heart.

We all crave happiness, to see the good and to be nourished by our interactions. Our hearts are all working towards finding the optimal good-feeling shape all the time. Without the clarifying element of our attention, this shared biological resonance becomes a muddy experience of identification with other people’s toxic emotions and projected thoughts. Which has high costs. It takes more energy to adopt and sustain judgments than it does to accept and appreciate.

The most efficient thing you can do is to put your attention on your own heart and create more coherence, symmetry and patience in your own rhythm, by simply breathing. What works for me: I bow my head and turn my actual eyes to my heart in moments of reactivity, and a previously inaccessible patience washes over me. This one movement, chin to chest, invariably helps me find pause and choose my course of action [I have a 3-year old- trust me, this works]. Twenty years of research reveals that to put your attention in your heart for a few breaths generates a coherent heart pattern, experienced within yourself as a healthy calm that inspires others nearby — cellularly — to slow down.

Deepak Chopra is one of the clearest modern thinkers on this concept. In one of his talks, he explained in simple terms the reasons to put attention on your heart, offering the first four Heart Sutras as ways to cultivate particular qualities of heart in order to transform anything potentially draining or poisonous (people, environments, situations, your own feelings) into nourishment — although I’ve found that one single breath with the faintest hint of self-acceptance will usually do the trick.

PEACE, 1st Heart Sutra
Establish yourself in a state of nonviolence, in your attitude and your physicality [even a judgmental word or dismissive gesture is a form of violence]. Nonviolence is a path to deep creativity; in nonviolence we free ourselves to find alternative solutions.

HARMONY, 2nd Heart Sutra
Our biological circadian rhythms mirror exactly that of the universe at any time; when you harmonize with that rhythm through your breathing, you experience harmony and diminish stress levels in your body.

LAUGHTER, 3rd Heart Sutra
Laughter provides a needed shift in perspective; when you can find the humor, even inwardly, you keep your vantage point flexible and will actually discern the quality of energy you’re offering.

LOVE, 4th Heart Sutra
More than an emotion or an experience, Love is a state. When in love, as you know, everything becomes more bright and beautiful; when you locate that state in your heart, even momentarily, you are connecting to the abundance of the universe.

The most interesting and important remembrance in your day-to-day: The most challenging encounters provide the most direct access to your heart. They are showing you the exact route to your remembrance of your heart’s capacity to receive and transform poison (carbon dioxide) into nourishment (oxygen) for your entire body.

In the moments when you’re most likely to engage, erupt, or even eject due to someone else’s toxicity [or your own], bring your chin to your chest and take one breath to bring peace, another to harmonize your heart to the larger field, another to laugh to yourself, and one more to locate the love in this moment, because something of it has reminded you of your heart. This is how you will arrive, quickly, at a vantage point from which you can see the moment prior to your engagement with the negativity, and shift it.

No matter what the situation; tired child, misunderstanding at home or at work, this quick 4-breath practice helps me shift from a reactive mode [in which I'm about the feed the web of negativity] to a reflective mode in which I’m offering my attention with no expectation, attuned to my own heart and therefore the generous heart of the universe. When we can make this shift, someone else’s tension no longer influences our mood, and we’re able to tap into the quiescence and stillness that is eternally present.

May you remember to give what you can and receive what’s available. This is what is known as living in the intelligence of the heart.

Follow Elena Brower on Twitter: www.twitter.com/VIRAYOGA

In this post, I propose cultivating a state of radical forgiveness to experience true intimacy. The following is really a tried and true recipe for my own nourishment; I hope it’s useful.

1. Practice full, unbridled acceptance, particularly in the company of people toward whom you feel an aversion. The practice of seeing and respecting that person in that moment heals both of you; over time you will be able to perceive this as an opening and/or a sensation of gratitude in your own heart. By the way, the most unsavory or unreasonable people call for the most acceptance. Nurture this acceptance especially with children of any age in your life; when you honor a child by listening and receiving them fully, you confer dignity on yourself and the child; healing your own past and contributing to the future. This is big.

2. Watch your internal dialogue in the midst of practicing this acceptance. Removing your reaction to others is the principal means of removing the contractions that prevent the robust flow of energy in the system. To be involved in the day-to-day world and yet fully receptive to what is good and true, all negative inner dialogue must simply cease. Such inner talk steals our health and harms our hearts. Blame of any sort drains our power and ages us internally and externally. To transform negativity, we must watch the results of this negativity objectively until we simply cannot entertain such a process any longer.

3. Align yourself with the past, accept it, turn your eyes resolutely to the present and begin again. This is especially potent with family and the patterns we all unconsciously inherit. Such radical forgiveness is based on complete acceptance of the past, with no accounts kept of our errors or anyone else’s. Holding mistakes in our mind’s eye and dwelling on them actually strengthens their potential recurrence by perpetuating the resonance of their effects. Clinging to the past betrays the vast creative intelligence of the present. Each breath you take in these moments can be a reinforcement of your presence in this moment: inhale and lengthen from your waist all the way up under your arms; maintain that length and space as you exhale and soften your skin. Do this a few times now, and anytime you’re under duress, to introduce your body to a more spacious, intimate connection with yourself.

4. Familiarize yourself with this aim, the concept of intimacy: true intimacy is a symptom of courageous self-trust in the present moment. Such supportive intimacy with the nurturing force of our own reality is the most important relationship we can uphold. Particularly in the solitary moments, tend to the relationship you have with yourself by taking care of your heart and your body, by listening to what is resonant for you, even as you offer your attention to others. This intimacy becomes your most valuable offering in the world. The more comfortable you become in this intimacy with yourself, the more readily you will find meaningful, healing intimacy with another. In my experience, the more I care for myself, the more likely everyone close to me is to care, both for me and for themselves.

5. Love. True love is the recognition that we all share the same condition, in shades and degrees; to remember this is to heal your heart and the hearts of those closest to you.

May we all be comforted by the universality of this truth, and offer our acceptance, forgiveness, and intimate healing within the world of our own hearts, and to the heart of the universe.