Namaste Friends!

This has been a crazy week!  My five year son Boden  had a serious asthma attack and we spent several nights at Children’s Hospital trying to get his breathing under control.  As a yogi mom, I was watching his strained breath from a different perspective than perhaps the handful of amazing doctors, nurses, and respiratory therapists did with their trained eyes and stethoscopes.  Instead of seeing a low pulse/oxygen ratio, I saw his life force energy being squeezed and refused.  We yogis know the value of prana (life force energy); not just as a necessary piece for existence, but as a force field that lends itself to emotional joy and reaching our potential as spirit beings.  I wanted my son’s breathing to return to its natural cadence so that he could regain his source for joy and happiness.  I prayed that he would breathe freely and deeply.  Thankfully, he returned home within a few days.  He is spirited and happy and grateful to be well again.  But no sooner did we get home and my older son Max started to experience breathing issues.   He is not prone to asthma so we were a bit taken back by his sudden onset of asthma-like symptoms.  Back to the doctor we went.  Diagnosis: restricted airways, tightness of breath…asthma.  Once I got them both back home and inhaling and exhaling with some semblance of normalcy, I took off to the cadaver lab to meet up with our yoga teacher trainees.  I told you it was a crazy week.  We take our teacher training candidates to the cad lab to have a first hand look at the human body. 

 As I was looking at the diaphragm of the “Lee”,  the sweet soul who dedicated his body to science, it hit me once again how much power is behind our breathwork (pranayama).  It lights us up!  Our Soul is fueled by the breath!   I know.  I sound like Captain Obvious.  Of course our breath gives us life.  But I am really looking beyond the obvious fact.  It gives us our fire.  In Sanskrit, the word for our inner radiance or the the brightness that we exude is tejas.  You’ve been around those people who have that magnetism; that glow; that huge light on inside them that is screaming “I Am Happy”.  That is tejase.  We can regulate how much tejas we want to engage by simply breathing with awareness and gratitude.  If we want to simply exist, we will mindlessly breath quick, shallow breathes which we take for granted.  If we want to infuse our soul with verve and zest, we will breathe each breath like we are swallowing a magic elixir that will reveal our full potential.  When we breath with awareness, we are practicing being present.  We are living in the Now.   We are fully in our bodies and in our lives.  Our inner radiance begins to shine outwardly and we become more enlivened; more cognizant of our grace and our effervescence.  And without even realizing it, we offer our light to the world, who in turn is inspired to tap into their own radiant light.  And, it is all simply done by breathing with awareness and gratitude.

Shine your light!  Breathe deeply.

Lots happening this month and next at Karma to help us get that inner radiance glowing .  We are breathing with awareness and gratitude of course!  But we are also offering several workshops.  Be sure to check out the special events page for more details. 

• Saturday we have the Ayurveda Workshop that will help us better understand our physical constituion and self care strategies for wellness. 
• We have a 6week stress reduction workshop with hypnotherapist Lorraine Lombard
•  Denise Cook is guiding us through a one week cleanse starting  November 7th that helps to flush the system of toxins and impurities so that we can go into the holiday season renewed and refreshed.  
•  There is a Tibetian Singing Bowl concert with Alicia Lochary to help soothe the mind, body, and spirit on a whole other level. 
• And Jeremy Wolf is taking our breathing to its depths in his Yoga Nidra workshop on the 13th of November.  

Be sure to sign up for one of these great workshops.  And in the meantime, breathe baby breathe.

Much love,

Katrina