10 Tips to Live a More Authentic Life

Many people ask themselves what it is to live a truly authentic life. One perspective invites us to abide wholeheartedly based on the 5 Yamas and 5 Niyamas outlined in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. 

We are each invited to explore different life areas and discover where we adhere to these universal principles or not.  Working with a mentor, guide or therapist can assist us to deepen soul alignment.  Dreams are realized based on congrumence or inner harmony. If we are out of alignment with these principles, then life issues arise.

Yamas

1. Ahimsa (non-harming or non-violence in thought, word and deed)

2. Satya (truthfulness)

3. Asteya (non-stealing)

4. Brahmacharya (celibacy or 'right use of energy')

5. Aparigraha (non-greed or non-hoarding)

Niyamas

1. Saucha (cleanliness)

2. Santocha (contentment)

3. Tapas (discipline, austerity or 'burning enthusiasm')

4. Svadhyaya (self-study)

5. Isvara Pranidhana (surrender to na higher being or contemplation of a higher power)

Sound healing to re-align well-being

Many people are growing aware that breathwork can be a useful tool as part of a healing journey. 

Yet, you may not be aware of how powerful sound healing therapy can be as it combines breathing practices with healing sounds, energetic vibrations and frequencies.

Chanting and mantras involve vocalisation of tones. This chanting or repeating mantras is another ancient form of sound healing that can be combined with playing crystal healing bowls or tibetan bowls. The rhythmic vibrations produced by chanting are believed to have a calming effect on the nervous system and can be incorporated into meditation practices.

Chanting and mantras are observed and felt to enrich wellbeing. They may promote relaxation, reduce stress, and enhance focus by engaging the mind with rhythmic vibrations. Some cultures and traditions suggest that specific sounds or mantras can harmonise energy and contribute to overall mental and emotional balance.  Many individuals find personal benefits from incorporating chanting and mantras into their wellness practises.

Beyond traditional instruments, music itself can be a powerful healing tool. Music therapy encompasses various approaches, including receptive and active forms. Receptive therapy involves listening to music, while active therapy involves creating or performing music. Both have been proven to promote healing and relaxation. The diversity of instruments available can complement different kinds of meditation (i.e. yoga nidra) and kriyas.

Overall, music therapy has shown positive effects on mental health, promoting relaxation, and facilitating emotional expression. Further, it has been shown to aid in physical rehabilitation, alleviate pain, and support individuals dealing with mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. The personalised and non-verbal nature of music therapy makes it accessible and effective for many people.

If you feel you would benefit from sound healing, there are many ways to explore options. You may be drawn to in-person group events or personal healing sessions.   Contact me about breathwork and soundhealing services. A new Youtube channel will soon be emerging to showcase some of my approaches to sound healing.

Activate the Light Body

Notice every living being has capacity to activate the light body. Our light body is the vehicle or stepping stone to residing consistently in our divine state of being. The activation process is a gift we give ourselves, an energetic shift from fear to love. Every breath is like a prayer. Every thought, word and deed, all we receive, consume, decode and transmit, emits a vibration. The physical human body is a multi-faceted antenna system. Depending on positioning, the shapes created from the bones to the cells can radically impact our state of health and well-being.

Turns out, placing the body in certain postures helps us “tune-in” to key frequencies. Ritual body postures generally come in two forms: those that are held for long periods, trance & yoga postures, and those that are formed by gentle, fluid movements from a previous position and held momentarily, such as those found in Tai Chi. The static positions are like rabbit ears on a television set. To get better reception of a specific channel, they are placed in a certain position and left stationary. Experience varies yet it often takes at least fifteen minutes of silencing the body and holding a position to enter an altered state. Watch what happens as we tune into energy. Purify thoughts, will and intentions. Align with nature.

The human body is a crystalline lattice that forms a dipole antenna that radiates from the gut area out toward the head and feet and/or out toward each hand. The head and feet carry opposite charges as do each hand. Piezo crystals, which convert electrical energy into mechanical energy (and vice versa), are found in the bones, intestines, ligaments, tendons, and cartilage.

The body is also full of liquid crystals and minerals that make up the lattice. This explains why placing the body in different positions changes how the crystalline lattice is oriented to the Earth plane, affecting which frequencies it transceives. Changing positions also affects the length of the antenna, which is an important parameter in frequency selection. We constantly choose the radio dial or frequencies we tune into based on our physical positions and how long we hold postures and also the tones we happen to be chanting.  Sound influences the nature of what is transmitted and received. 

As it happens, the condition of the soil around an antenna also determines how well it transceives. Rich soil amplifies the antenna’s ability to radiate and increases the range of frequencies the antenna can receive. Perhaps this is why so many practitioners prefer to do their Tai Chi exercises in a park setting, bare foot on the grass. Broadcast engineers have long known that using multiple antennas in specific arrays also enhances the ability to transceiver. Participating in group Tai Chi or meditation or yoga circles has this same effect.

Cell membranes are liquid crystal structures. A single cell in the body is a very small, short antenna. As it is so short, the frequency it transceives is very high and loaded with energy. Individually, each cell is either acting as a broadcast antenna and transmitting its status or acting as a receiving antenna to get what it needs. Together, similar cells transmit their own unique signal. For example, liver cells differ slightly from spleen cells. Individually, each liver cell transceives its own signal. Yet, collectively, all liver cells transceive as if one large antenna operating on the same frequency.

Those familliar with the basic principle used in acupuncture will relate. In ancient Chinese medicine, the liver is not considered to be just one specific organ located in just one place inside the body, as Western anatomy would picture it. In ancient Chinese medical philosophy, “liver” is considered to be a specific energy, or vibration, radiating within and through the entire body system.  We see this in the energy that follows path of the liver meridian through the body.

Ultimately, awareness expands and information enters conscious awareness with perfect timing.  As it dawns that we have a light body and can activate dormant systems, the process often is already underway.  Yet, as we grow more conscious and intentional, this intensifies the light we hold, accelerates the energies, builds momentum and multiplies dimensions active in the experience.

5 Benefits of Astral, Lucid & Dream Yoga Course

People are asking about prospective benefits of participating in my new and upcoming astral, lucid and dream yoga course.  Here are 5:

1. Deepen understanding of Soul Progression

The process of this course is about moving further along different levels of spiral consciousness. Its about training yourself to recall dreams with more clarity, to wake up consistently during dreams, to train the mind to stay awake in dreamless sleep, and to take insight from the night to transpose it into your own daytime experience. Putting theory into practice is a key aspect of this journey.

2. See Influence of Yogic & Buddhist Tantric Traditions

According to these spiritual schools, a person is made up of multidimensional bodies.  There exist several variations but we will address 5 fields of intelligence: in Sanskrit, they are called Annamaya Kosha (food sheath), Pranamaya Kosha (sheath of prana or life), Manomaya Kosha (mind sheath), Vijnanamaya Kosha (knowledge or wisdom sheath), and Anandamaya Kosha (bliss sheath). The 5 koshas (layers) act as a roadmap for our journey of self-discovery.  By understanding and working through each, we can move into states of changing awareness toward self-realization.

 3. Develop through Breathwork

As part of each module, we will explore specific breathing techniques (and meditations) that are designed to help clear bodies and prepare the dreamer for different levels of enagement and expansion. 

4.  Explore planes of consciousness

We will explore different views on/of the astral plane, mental and causal planes, Buddhic/Intuitive/Soul plane as well as the spiritual (Atmic) planes.  The nature of individual spiritual and dream development determines which planes are explored and how.  Techniques and experiences are shared as part of the course.

5.  Activate dormant abilities

Recognition of different aspects of multidimensional nature has potential to activate dormant abilities and allow participants to function at a more optimum levels.  Tools and insights are offered. Practice, discipline are up to each individual.  This comes from being motivated to take on lessons of progressively higher levels.  Know everything is preparing us for the unforeseen.

Contact us for further details about the Astral, Lucid & Dream Yoga Course.  We also offer Dream Consultations for single and multiple dreams as individual sessions or as part of psychotherapy services.

6 Benefits of Lucid Dreaming & Dream Yoga

To be exploring your dreams is to be working with your mind. Lucid dreaming happens when you realize that you’re dreaming as it’s happening. You may reall films like Dream yoga occurs when you use this lucidity for your own practice. Dream Yoga, rooted in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, allows us to “hack into the previously unconscious” and use our dreams to transform our waking lives. Wonder if this is worth exploring further?  Consider 6 benefits of lucid dreaming and dream yoga;

1. Extend our meditation practice into our sleeping hours

Buddhist teachings on emptiness and the alleviation of suffering, offer clues. We suffer because we take things to be real.  We suffer in direct proportion to how solid or unchanging we take the contents of our mind to be.  Dream yoga teachings gets to the heart of the matter. This can be confrontational yet, it shows us how we create our own suffering based on our beliefs in solid and heavy, and what is real. The removal of suffering is a direct effect of seeing the world as dreamlike. We use our study of night-time dreams to understand the mechanics of our suffering and happiness in the so-called daytime dream.

2.  Help manage nightmares

If we’re freaking out in the middle of a nightmare and we can wake up to the fact that we’re dreaming, then we can relieve suffering. We realize it isn’t real. That is being lucid. If we wake up to the fact that the contents of our mind are not as solid as we make them to be, then we see them as illusory. This is a process of awakening.

3. Better understand nightmares

To know nightmares on a mental level differs from the feeling and visceral level. Nightmares echo fragmented or disowned aspects of ourselves.  We’ve refused part of our experience. During a nightmare, these rejected aspects of our being are calling back for attention and reintegration. That’s why they’re chasing us. When we run away from them, we continue to keep them alive. That’s why people have recurring nightmares. The nightmare arises, and instead of relating to it, seeing it as it is, we run.  Instead of running, we can stop, turn around, and look directly at the monster. When we do, several things can happen. The monster may disappear, or it will stop and dissolve into us. By facing the monster, or by facing our demons, we can reintegrate these fragmented aspects of ourselves and absorb the nightmare.  This has big impact in our waking lives.

4. Uncover deeper Truth

There are relative truths to many of our dreams. Freud once said “an uninterpreted dream is like an unopened letter.” The unconscious mind is frequently sending us teachings and messages in dreams and nightmares.  Lucid dreaming can transform sleep into a window to the deeper realities. Yet, we often experience dreams as unreal. We can do things in dreams we do not in waking reality, like fly. 

One of the reasons we don’t seem to have the same capabilities in waking reality as in dreams is because we take waking reality to be real. When you truly wake up, the waking world is just as real (or just as unreal) as the dream world. You start to see that the waking state is basically no different from the dream state. It’s the mind expressing itself in two different mediums.  We make this so-called waking reality more real than our dreaming reality. When the world is seen as illusory, the ego freaks out. It has nothing to stand on. Therefore it sees waking reality as real and the dream world as unreal.  The basic charter of these practices is to see the one taste of all these different dimensions of the mind so we’re no longer privileging one state over another. We have a very powerful prejudice toward waking consciousness. This is the source of lots of problems.

5. Explore the relevance of spiritual bypassing 

Spiritual bypassing here refers to nihilism.  This frequently arises as the near enemy when one asserts that reality is just a dream. Saying reality is just a dream is very dismissive. On one level, that level of dismissiveness is what we’re after. We’re trying to dismiss the imputed validity of reified waking reality. In that regard, dismissal is appropriate. An erroneous interpretation of this is a thought that sounds like, “If it’s all just a dream, who cares what I do?” With that mentality, you do not choose to be a conscious creator. There’s no compassion or social activism. There’s just apathy. You must realize it’s a subtle trap, and ego can default into that. When we’re working with these practices, there are all these subtle traps that ego will find. The proof you may be seeking is found through your own diligence and what is revealed through your direct experience.

6.  Prepare us to experience a lucid death

According to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, dream yoga came about largely as a preparation for death. Padmasambhava [the 8th century Indian teacher who brought Buddhism to Tibet] once allegedly said that if we can maintain lucidity in our dream state seven times—in other words, if we can maintain lucidity with some constancy in the dream state—we can have a lucid death experience.

What the traditions put forth is that when we die, our lucidity or "bardo" awareness  (the in-between state after death and before rebirth] will be directly proportional to our lucidity in the dream state. This, in turn, is directly proportional to our lucidity in the meditative state.  Dream yoga is important because it empowers not only our dream practice, but also our meditation practice. The biggest reason we’re not lucid in our dreams is that we’re not lucid to contents of our mind during the day. That is incredibly important. So many studies have shown that meditators have more lucid dreams. If you practice meditation during the day and develop lucidity or awareness of the contents of your mind, that naturally expresses itself as increased lucidity in the dream state. The tradition then goes one step further to say that type of lucidity also transfers to a lucid bardo experience.

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It is important to recognize that huge resistance can come up for people when attempting lucid dreaming and dream yoga practices. Why?

The ego has a bias toward its version of awake reality. People fear some of these nocturnal practices as they’re afraid of the dark. Ego is simply keeping up its defences. Darkness is a code word for ignorance. Nighttime is an archetype of that ignorance for many people who prefer to stay in the dark.  Every time we go to sleep or get lost in monkey mind, ego is recharging its samsaric batteries. Not everybody wants to engage in dream yoga, because it will show us just how far we’re willing to go to wake up. Ego exists in the darkness of ignorance.  When we try to penetrate it with nocturnal dream practices, part of us that just doesn’t want to go there. 

In conclusion, lucid dreaming and dream yoga practices are not designed for everybody. They’re a little more advanced and require discipline. They are subtle and deep. People may wonder, why bother? While these practices are not all that easy, they are potentially more transformative, aswe are dealing more directly with the very roots of our ignorance. When we engage in these practices, it concerns the very tectonic plates of our existence.

 Our Astral, Lucid and Dream Yoga Course begins November 3rd.  Contact us for further information.