Success, Joy and Abundance

Everyone has his own personal definition of success. Culturally, we tend to consider success when we receive accolade and praise from external accomplishments, like fame and fortune. For the most part, our measures of success are external. 

 

Some people measure their success based on an internal compass, attempting to meet their own personal best. However, often, even these seemingly internal measures are driven by attachments to external ideas of success. 

 

I met someone recently who asked me, puzzled: “If I don’t want to be better, how will I ever become better?” Success for her was out there, and she was tired running after it. She felt there must be another way, but was unclear what it could be. She had lived a life driven by what she felt others wanted for her rather than fueled by her own personal joy. 

 

Joy often seems elusive, something we will get to eventually, once we complete this task or that one, or once we have achieved this goal or that one. To me, living like this is being the proverbial donkey that chases the carrot held out on a stick in front of him. It is an impossible chase. In that situation, our impulse to move arises from what we think will make us happy ‘over there’ and from feelings of scarcity in this moment, rather than tapping into the reality of eternal abundance.

 

Abundance is a bit of a popular catchphrase that seems to, in itself, contain external measures of success. For many, it often relates to financial wealth, whereas for me, it expresses a life of possibility and energetic opulence that is available to all and is not conditional upon the external. When we live by abundance, we feel we have enough, no matter what the circumstances may be. The notion of ‘more’ is a possibility, an organic arising, rather than a reaching or a wanting. We don’t need more to be happy. We are open to more, should this be the expression of life and of our highest good. In a state of abundance, there is no push/pull struggle, but a dance with life, in this moment, as it is.

 

Joy has a lot to do with abundance. Perhaps it is why the phrase “follow your bliss and doors will open where before there were none” became so popular, thanks to the late professor Joseph Campbell. When we follow our joy, we feel an impulse to participate in life. We feel an impulse to share, because we feel connected to our inner wealth. 

 

We can find temporal motivation through fear, feeling “if we don’t” do a certain thing, “then we won’t” get a certain reward (such as approval). Yet joy is also a tremendous motivator. But unlike fear, joy taps into a wealth of energy that far outshines the capacity of fear. By following our joy, our impulse to act comes from a deeper, more rooted and expansive place, and brings to our lives a vital force unlike any other.

 

As I travel across the continent to get to my next destination on the US tour of my show YIN: Yoga In the Nightclub and my yoga workshop YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine, I am thinking a lot about joy, abundance, vitality and success. I realize that for myself, my sense of success comes from the courage to travel inward to places I could easily avoid. And in this case, traveling inward has led to me traveling outward.

 

To me, success is about the courage to say yes to life, to joy, to all of who I am, to all that this moment brings. I do this work because it is what my joy calls of me. It is an impulse that arises from the voice of my soul and connects me to an energy far greater than my limited sense of “me”. 

 

As I evolve, there are aspects of my shadow that I must see in order to grow. I could choose to hide from and mask them by becoming distracted with passing pleasures. Yet it is my joy to go deeper, to go beyond the fear that says, “I can’t”. There I find the acronym for fear to be true: they are “False Expectations Appearing Real”. So I remind myself, “Be here. Be now. I have all I need. All is well. All is unfolding as it should.” This redirection of consciousness brings me to inner places that connect me to something so much greater than my ego, and my perception of the world shifts.

 

I don’t know what this tour will bring, but no matter what happens, I feel at some level I already have success because I am on the road to newness, I welcome possibility and I am open to the fullness of myself and of life.

 

May you touch your deepest expression of your version of success and may you live by it. May you follow your joy and share that light with the world.

 

Until next time, be well.

Parvati

The Making of "YIN: Yoga in the Nightclub"

Hello Friends,

 

Typically, the week of a Parvati Magazine launch, I don’t write a blog entry. But I have been a bit delinquent with my entries to you. So despite the latest issue of Parvati Magazine being now live – go check it out!! – I wanted to share a bit of my heart and my creative process over the last couple of months with you here.

 

As you know, I have been immersed in the world of sound, creating my album “YIN: Yoga In the Nightclub”, which I hope you have had a chance to listen to, and perhaps enjoy as much as I do. If not, please take a listen to it at Yoga in the Nightclub.

 

As I wrote, engineered, produced, arranged and mixed the tracks (and the mix polish process with the talented sound engineer Carl Gardiner in the U.K.), I was literally brought to my knees again and again. There was something powerfully different about this particular album for me. 

 

At first, I thought, perhaps it was the short window of time I had to create it. But that did not feel right. Then my audio engineer friend Carl suggested that perhaps it was the typical ‘second album angst’ that seems to plague most bands and artists. But that also did not seem to really describe what I was experiencing.

 

Then I realized that literally a year ago from the time I was producing the album, I was flat out in bed, in agony, with a severe spinal injury. At that time, I was undergoing a deep spiritual transformation, one that required profound surrender and trust like I had never had before. From that injury, as I have shared with you, my whole world changed. 

 

From the onset, I knew I was creating a series of songs as a nod to the yoga community that shared my love for yoga and the Divine. But doing so at that particular time seemed to channel into this musical work much of the spiritual energy and the fruits of my inner transformation that I experienced during my injury. 

 

In addition, I had never recorded myself chanting in Sanskrit. Sanskrit is a vibrational language geared to invoke states of consciousness through sound. So repeating phrases over and over through the recording process was, in the unseen realm, stirring up my inner consciousness pot, rearranging cells, and moving me deeply.

 

In addition to being face to face with the power of the inner experience I had through my injury and the power of Sanskrit, the entire album was fueled by the depth of my love for my guru, Amma, and the devotion I have to Her and the spiritual path. Cooked to the core through this recording process, I repeatedly met my ego that kept surfacing saying “I can’t”. It kept wondering how something as large as these expressions could come through this tiny body, this finite time and space, ultimately, this “little old me”. 

 

The answer eventually embedded itself into my being deeper than ever before: “get out of the way – you are not the doer.” I relied heavily on the knowing that reality is plastic and that nothing in this world is fixed, despite the ego wanting to think it being so. So I focused on being an instrument, as best I could, and on just taking orders from the unseen.

 

Through the creation of the album, I worked very diligently with my music production soil-less garden. No, I was not tending to plants. A soil-less garden is indeed a garden without soil or any ground and works with Nature’s Devas and the unseen realms on a creative project. It is a very powerful process that I recommend to anyone. You can read about it at the Perelandra website that says:

 

“A soil-less garden is how you apply the principles of co-creative science to every aspect of your life: business, education, the arts, the home, research, your job, personal and professional projects and goals... all those gardens in life that are not rooted in soil. It's how you work with nature to achieve any goal you wish with extraordinary efficiency and balance.”

 

So for hours a day, I was in my soil-less garden coning (a particular energetic configuration of Nature Devas and Cosmic Intelligence) to expand my consciousness so that I could access and download (for lack of a better term) sonic information that would best express what I was called to share. At worst, I felt like I was taking dictation. At best, I was dancing with the Divine through sound. It was an exhilarating creating process. 

 

As you know, the album, with its songs to the Divine Mother, was aptly launched on Mother’s Day weekend. Thanks again to those who attended. I was so glad to see you all! Since the launch, I have tweaked the music, adjusted sets, made costume fixes, redesigned lighting… generally polished the show. I am on tour through the US right through to the first week of August. I will be sleeping out of a van for the next few months, but updating this blog with photos and captions from the journey. I look forward to sharing it all with you. 

 

Just like when I went to the North Pole, I felt I was going with you all. So too, I feel we are all connected, so what I do, I do with you, and wherever you are, I am there too, as you are with me. Space and time are plastic, stretchable expressions of our heart’s focus and divine alignment. As I sing in my song “Shanti”, “we are one earth family”. Yes, we are!

 

If you have not yet picked up your copy of the album, you can get it exclusively at the Positive Possibilities store, in biodegradable packaging or in mp3 format. Your support is immensely appreciated! A percentage goes to Embracing the World.

 

Much peace, gratitude and joy to you!

Jai Ma!

Parvati

 

 

 

Sneak Preview: Yoga in the Nightclub New Tracks

Dear friends,

I am still immersed in the world of sound as I get ready for this Friday's album launch. I thought I would share with you a few of the tracks that will be on the new "YIN: Yoga in the Nightclub" album.

Yoga In The Nightclub New Tracks by ParvatiDevi

Hope to see you this Friday evening at the Yoga Sanctuary!

Jai Ma,

Parvati

Yoga as Energy Medicine

I pull myself away from the intense focus of creating my new album and preparing for my upcoming show (May 11, 8pm at the Yoga Sanctuary, 2 College Street, Toronto, for those who do not know) to teach a “YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine” workshop today. The workshop celebrates the official launch of my new YEM instructional DVD and CD. I am very pleased with the products and look forward to the opportunity to serve this afternoon.

I feel that my life is blessed. Not that it is without challenges. It is simply that I feel deeply grateful for the gift of being here, on this planet, at this time. As I pursue my love of music and share the grace that sound can fill our being, I also am able to support people’s evolutionary journey home to “the One” through the practice of yoga, in particular, through the style of Hatha Yoga that I teach called YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine.

I cannot imagine what my life would be like as a musician without yoga, because they are intricately linked. Not because my current show is called “Yoga In the Nightclub”, but because spirit can be served through sound and sound can invoke spirit. They are vitally interlinked and sacredly bonded. I have explored this notion in previous blog entries: A World of Sound, Nada Yoga.

Teaching yoga feels like it punctuates my life with a regular meditation bell-like reminder. My commitment to teach people to center, be present and plug to the vast energy of the cosmos ensures that I too walk the talk through all I do. It brings me out of the internal creative process and it brings me in from the expansive performance energy that shows can generate. It ensures I too am centered, and spirit focused. The balance I find from my meditation practice and in teaching YEM is my sanity line and infuses all I do.

So as I take a pause from my upcoming album and show production and officially launch my new YEM yoga instruction DVD and CD, it feels like a great time to share here a bit more of what YEM is about. 

And should you feel inspired, there is still time to join me for the launch through a two hour workshop I am teaching this afternoon at Trinity St Paul United Church, 427 Bloor Street, Toronto, in the chapel from 2:30-4:30pm. All details and tickets are at www.positivepossibilities.com and more info is at www.parvatihealth.com.

I hope to see you there!

YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine

Yoga asana practice, the practice of Yoga’s physical postures, was developed thousands of years ago to assist the purification of the subtle energy channels that flow through our body/being to experience lasting bliss. Yoga teaches us to get out of our own way so that we may know what yogis tell us is Real: that the universe, which pulsates at the eternal rhythm of unconditional love, is in a highly intelligent state of union of which we are each an integral part.

YEM is dedicated to the rooted and expansive state of living I AM consciousness, of being fully alive and in service to the creative flow. It teaches both a quiet and introverted yet deeply powerful and expansive approach to yoga asana, where breath initiates and inspires movement from the inside out. When practicing, allow your focus to be both inward on the flow of energy and the sensations in your body/being and on the universal expanse to which you are connected. This rooted and expansive focus cultivates a balanced state of awareness, which assists the soul’s evolutionary journey back to the One. You can experience greater health and well-being as well as feeling more gratitude and joy for being alive and serving the world.

YEM invites you to go deeper, whatever Yoga tradition inspires you. You can take the wisdom of YEM and integrate it into whatever asana style, physical discipline or meditation practice you have been learning. 

For more on YEM, go to www.parvatihealth.com or come out and see me this afternoon at 2:30pm at the Chapel, Trinity-St Paul's Church 427 Bloor Street, for the official launch of my first YEM yoga instructional DVD and CD.

You can also read through past entries on Yoga as Energy Medicine in this blog, including a five-part series on how the practice unfolded for me.

Enjoy the gift of this day!

Parvati

Hello From My Studio

Hello friends,
I am just in the home stretch of my new album. I will share some sound samples soon. More to come!

In the meantime, the latest issue of Parvati Magazine has gone live. This month's theme is "Blooming" and celebrates one of the most inspired seasons of the year. Please go and enjoy the articles by an abundant group of talented writers devoted to helping you blossom into the magnificence you are.

Also, please join me next Sunday afternoon, April 29, at 2:30pm at the Chapel at Trinity-St. Paul's United Church, 427 Bloor Street West (near Spadina subway), for the official launch of my YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine CD and DVD. I will give a YEM workshop at that time, suitable for all levels. Space may be limited, but you can book your spot in advance at the Positive Possibilities Store and also take advantage of special package deals for the YEM DVD and CD.

Until next week, be well.

Parvati

A World of Sound, The Voice of the Divine

Hello Friends,

As you may know, I am in the thick of the creative process finalizing my new album. This album is a nod of gratitude to the yoga community for the support I have received over the years, and of recognition of my deep spiritual roots there. The album uses my independent hit single "Yoga In the Nightclub" as a point of departure. The album includes traditional Sanskrit chants, original pop songs, anthemic dance tracks and expansive, spacious soundscapes that allow listeners to rest in the lap of the Divine.

The creative theme for the album is "Songs to the Divine Mother", an expression of gratitude to my guru Amma. The release party is fittingly on Mother's Day weekend, at 8pm on Friday May 11 at the Yoga Sanctuary at 2 College Street (at Yonge). All ages are welcome, and kids under 6 are free. Advance tickets are available at my online store Positive Possibilities. There will be an early bird special, so make sure you order yours early. Full details will be on my websites soon. I hope to see you all there!

I feel like I am in a creative cave as I create sounds to produce songs in my music studio. For me, it is a fully engrossing process. A friend from Montreal is in from Toronto and asked me to come to his event this weekend. I would have loved to go, but said that if I were around people, I would open my mouth and symphonic sounds would emerge rather than words. I am in the world of sound!

(In case you are looking for something inspiring to do on a rainy Toronto Sunday, his event is the launch of RISE Kombucha at the Green Living Show April 13-15, booth #1830, at Direct Energy Centre, Exhibition Place, 100 Princess Blvd.)

The creative process is all consuming. My partner's cell phone went off yesterday, and I found myself mesmerized by the sparkling sounds. I paused for a moment. Uh oh. I am in really deep! So I went for a walk in the local ravine to refresh my ears from the intensely focused sonic work. The outside world was also just a world of sound to me.

As I do my daily meditation practice through this intensely creative process, I hear the sound of my breath and the sound of my heart. I can sense the sounds of my cells receiving the oxygen from the breath and the blood flow. I sense the sounds within life, pulsing with vibrancy.

To me, the creative process is like a party with the Divine, witnessing a force unfold and move through that is so much greater than the ego. It is a mystical process, because at its core it is a mystery wrapped in awe and received in humility.

Today, I suggest that you may wish to open your ears and being to the worlds of sound both within and without. We think of sound as frequencies we hear with our physical ears. But there are also unstruck sounds, frequencies that are subtle yet still can be sensed.

For example, we hear the thoughts that pass through our head, that inner chatter. But there is no object that is vibrating to create that sound frequency. Yet we can hear this chatter.

The voice of the Divine is like this to me, everywhere, in all things, pulsing, flowing, alive. When we learn to listen, life is resonant with an orchestral vibrancy that is nothing short of awesome. The power of this sound draws us to stillness and lets us dissolve into the depths of profound silence. Open your ears, open your heart, open your body, open your mind and listen to the wondrous sounds of Life itself.

Until next week,

Jai Ma,
Parvati

Reborn to Freedom: Happy Easter and Happy Passover

Happy Easter, Gut Yom toff and Chag Sameach!

 

As a child, I loved going to church even more on Easter than at Christmas. Yes, I loved singing Handel’s Messiah, with the Hallelujah chorus. I loved the mystique of a church sprinkled with lights “in the bleak mid-winter”. I loved the Christmas message, how the birth of eternal love comes through the innocence of the child that exists within us all. But at Easter, the church, in my child’s eyes, always seemed to be bursting with flowers. And you know how much I love flowers!

 

Flowers are a symbol of new life. They remind us of possibility and effortless being. They remind us of the sweetness of life when we are aligned with our true beauty. And flowers return each spring, bringing with them the same message of hope and inspiration, just as Easter brings us the message of rebirth, reunion and rejoicing.

 

I have always felt a very close connection to a particular Biblical passage that expresses the joy of flowers beautifully:

 

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them… See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.”

(Matthew 6: 26-29 - New International Version)

 

This year, Good Friday was also the first night of Passover (Pesach), when the first Seder, the traditional Jewish meal celebrates the freedom from slavery under the rule of the Egyptians. The Christian feast of Maundy Thursday finds its roots in the Jewish feast of Passover, the night on which the Last Supper is said to have occurred. Seder is what Christians know as the last supper, because it is the meal Jesus was celebrating with his disciples as he broke bread and consecrated wine, which become symbols of his body and blood to be shed the following day.

 

The somber tone of Good Friday, which precedes the celebration at Easter Sunday morning, reminds me every year of the expression “It’s darkest before the dawn”. We are one with the eternal, rising light of pure consciousness. Even when we forget this truth and feel like our life is caught in a dark tomb, or we feel that we are crumbling from the weight of crosses we feel we must bear, we can remember that a new dawn always comes.

 

Though we may feel dark and heavy, we will rise again - not because we are called to make heroic, willful efforts, but because we are one with eternal light, the light that always is. Our effort comes in surrender and trust – in the power of letting go. When we let go, darkness passes and the light returns. The darkness of the cross and the tomb remind us of the death of our ego. The ego must dissolve in order for us to return to the eternal light. We must die to the dark so we may be born to the light.

 

Nature shows us this each year with the arrival of spring. Beneath the ice were seeds waiting to burst into life. We could not see them, but they were there. Only when the harsh winter softens, can we see new life come joyfully into the bloom.

 

EXERCISES

For those of Jewish faith:

 

If you are Jewish, you may have just had Seder. My partner is Jewish. Each year we gather at his parent’s home, read the Haggadah (the Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder), retell the Passover story and eat the Seder meal.

 

I spoke with him this year about the meaning of the word “liberation”, a powerful word in the Hindu world. Liberation in Sanskrit is “moksha”, which refers to the final state of liberation we experience once we are enlightened. This is the freedom from our dualistic worldview and a permanent merging with the One, the all-pervading force of pure consciousness.

 

In the Jewish tradition, liberation at Passover refers to the freedom of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. I shared with my partner that I found it interesting that in the Passover story there are ten plagues that came upon the Egyptians. Why ten? Why not fifteen or six? It is a notable number to me as there are, in Hinduism and Buddhism, ten primary subtle body energy centers, that is, seven main “chakras” (energy wheels) within the body and three subtler ones above the crown of the head.

 

So I suggested that this year, we say the Shema, which I love and which is so very potent, then we look within ourselves, and contemplate what ten plagues we currently carry in our body/being, that, that is, what impossibilities tendencies we have that we would like to release. In this exercise, we learn to name the ways in which we resist our own liberation and can learn to witness, and eventually release them, with God’s Grace, so we may prepare our body, mind and spirit for the holiest day of the Jewish year, the day of atonement, Yom Kippur.

 

I suggested that we each take a pen and paper and go within to make note of ten impossibilities in our lives, by using our body as a point of reference. (Here goes the yogini in me!) As a starting point, we can ask ourselves the following questions:

 

• Where am I holding tension in my body?
• What are we holding on to?
• Where do I struggle in my life?
• What attachment of mine does this struggle reflect?
• Where do I push or pull at life and/or at myself and/or at people in my life?
• In which way am I greedy, too hard or severe, like the Egyptians were in the Passover story?
• In which way do I keep myself in bondage, a slave to my ego?
• In which way am I full of wanting and out of flow?

 

We all have the capacity for slavery and freedom. This exercise may help to soften the grip of holding on in our lives so we may experience greater freedom within. Note your answers to the question down on a piece of paper or in a journal to save it for the fall at Yom Kippur.

 

For those of Christian faith:

 

If you are Christian, ask yourself the following questions and make notes for your own personal growth. Revisit them at Christmas and see how your life has changed.

 

• In which way do I hide in darkness in my life?
• In which way am I not willing to die into the eternal light that is my true nature?
• What am I holding on to?
• What am I afraid of?
• In which way do I feel attached to seeing myself as the “doer” rather than being in service to God’s Will?
• What crosses do I feel I carry in my life?
• Am I willing to let God carry these instead?
• How do I stay hidden in the dark caves of my psyche and avoid my life’s rebirth?

 

For those of other faiths:

 

Though this weekend is focused more on Passover and Easter, I always feel we can be inspired by the grace that occurs during any spiritual festival or ritual. If you are of another religious tradition or if you are agnostic, then take this time to look within at the ways you resist your magnificence, the ways you keep yourself a slave to your wants, the ways in which you keep yourself in the darkness of ignorance, a captive of your ego, rather than be in humble service to the gift of life. This life is a gift. There is no better time than in the flowering of spring and by embracing its energy of renewal, rebirth, reunion and rejoicing to really embody the grace of who you are and meet the fullness of your life’s potential.

 

Until next week, be well.

 

Parvati