But it can also be overwhelming. For me? I reached a point a few years back of Technique Overload. Meditation Study Fatigue, you know? I was reading so many books on meditation and listening to so many audios that when it came time to try it on my own, I’d freeze mid-breath and my mind would get busy wondering if I’d forgotten some potentially critical step. “Hmm, better open my eyes and go back to see if I’m doing this right.” Better take some more notes and memorize them.

Dopey way to get out of my head and into stillness.

Don’t get me wrong. As a teacher and as a meditator, I like having an arsenal of tricks up my sleeve to help to tie an over-busy ‘puppy mind’ to something other than ego’s frantic and creative strategies to keep me from the experience of stillness. On days when I can’t seem to settle in with ease into quiet, I can cherry-pick from a basket of options to turn off the mind noise: breath counting, visualizations, candle-gazing, or softly fixing my eyes on a stone.

But giving up the idea that there’s one right way to do this in every circumstance, and learning to trust into simplifying meditation, was, for me, liberating.

My gentle suggestion is this: Don’t let your exasperation at not immediately experiencing the tranquility of meditative stillness hijack your thoughts so much that you get distracted from authorizing your own peace, over and over. Give yourself permission to be at peace and to slide into it using whatever means works.

Once you’ve expressed your desire to glide into quiet, simply listen and experience. That’s all. If thoughts creep in, use them as a cue to go back to your breath, the candle, or whatever it is that allows you to return to the intention of stilling the fluctuations of the mind, softly expressing your desire to listen to what the quiet has to reveal to you. When in doubt, your breath can always get you back on the rails. Notice your breath.

Then l-i-s-t-e-n.

You might even imagine that you’re using one of those old-fashioned walkie-talkies. At first, you press your thumb on the ‘talk’ button to say, “I’m ready to hear what you’ve got to say.” Then — and this is the important part — take your thumb off of the talk button and listen.

Listen.

Keep listening.

And keep your thumb off the talk button.

I’m not immune to rolling my own eyes at all this. My ego gets a delectable little thrill when I badmouth some of the sillier trends dreamed up by Madison Avenue marketing geniuses. It makes Ego feel all smug and self-righteous. But here’s a thought: maybe, just maybe it’s okay to lighten up just a little bit. Bear with me here.

In “A Course in Miracles” we read:

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Yoga has endured as a metaphysical art/science for thousands of years. It’s survived more serious assaults than “Really Buff Ass Through Asana!” DVDs (soon in Blu-Ray?) or weekend workshops combining yoga with wine tasting. Having carried on through and beyond the Medieval Crusades, the Inquisition, and the proliferation of those dreadful corporate motivational posters in offices across America, a few “Yoga-Butt” videos isn’t going to hurt it.

But seriously. yoga is an exquisite system for experiencing the Big Truth of interconnection and its essence remains unchanged — that’s what makes big truths, well, so truth-y. But the means by which truth is revealed inevitably shifts. To remain relevant, the means of conveying interconnection — the already-existing fact of unity consciousness — must accommodate the mindsets and perceptions of the would-be recipients of that experience of truth. Yoga is a living event. It adjusts, respires, moves, and navigates its way through the speed bumps of human history.

Some renowned American yoga teachers that have been on the scene awhile now regret their earlier emphasis on the physical practice. As their own practice has shifted and deepened, their interest in and commitment to conveying its spiritual, meditative components has grown. But as a lovely and very visionary friend of mine observed recently, maybe a whole generation of today’s for-real yogis would never have dipped their toes into yoga if it hadn’t been for their initial attraction to its physical benefits. Mighty good point.

(for the full article, please visit my website at http://yogasetfree.com/america.html)

Employing yoga’s broadest definition — any act aimed at self-surrender to merge with truth — it is able simultaneously to embrace, to entirely bypass, or to strengthen religion.

Is yoga religion? Yoga practitioners and teachers show up on different sides of multiple fences in deliberations on this question, just as religious groups widely differ in their views on whether religion and yoga practice are equivalent sides of the same spiritual coin. Depending on the definer’s bias and whether a given definition focuses on just one limb of classical yoga’s eight-point system, yoga is described with equally confident conviction as: a Hindu theistic philosophy; a pantheistic value set involving an elaborate moral code; a system of exercises for attaining bodily or mental control and well being; an organized science for establishing a link between the individual and universal consciousness; and a spiritual discipline to unite body, mind, and spirit.

A handful of religious groups periodically stir up headline-grabbing opposition to yoga, forbidding or strongly discouraging their members from studying or practicing it. In extreme cases, resistance manifests as dire warnings and threats of reprimand or censure for congregation members who take up yoga. While the specific reasons given for the opposition to yoga vary, at the more strident end of the reaction spectrum most are variations on the theme of gullible individuals lured to yoga with the promise of physical benefits who are subsequently duped — transformed into unwitting agents of disguised, even ‘demonic,’ proselytizers covertly intent on toppling established religions or other belief structures.

Most yoga studios in the US operate unimpeded and some offer explicit assurances that yoga does not seek to interfere with a student’s existing faith. Some religious communities, moreover, enthusiastically embrace yoga and encourage members to partake of its physical and stress relieving benefits. Reassurances by the yoga community play an important role here, particularly if there is an effort to voluntarily codify a pledge to steer clear of disrespecting a student’s existing spiritual practice or religion. Embedded in the California Yoga Teachers Code of Conduct, for example, is a pledge to “show sensitive regard for the moral, social, and religious standards of students and groups,” that specifically assures students that teachers will “avoid imposing [their] belief on others, although [the teachers] may express them when appropriate in the yoga class.”

Several strands of traditional faiths openly embrace yoga by merging the meditative qualities of a physical practice with their existing faith, but with contradictory estimations as to whether yoga is a fresh expression of their most deeply held beliefs or a benign, secular mechanism for relieving physical discomfort. The author of an article in Christianity Today tells readers, “To dispel the stereotype at hand, let me witness that yoga has never had any negative influence on me, and it doesn’t trigger any harmful religious impulses. Just the opposite is true. The three hours a week I spend doing yoga not only make me more flexible, tone my muscles, and relax me. They also draw me closer to Christ. They are my bodily-kinetic prayer.”

DeAnna Smothers, the co-founder of “Yahweh Yoga,” describes her experience in slightly different terms: “With each inhale, know the Holy Spirit did create the breath of life. Breathe in all he has to offer. Yoga is not a religion. Yoga is a system of wellness.” The Yahweh Yoga Studio in Chandler, Arizona advertises its classes as a means to achieve a “peaceful, balanced lifestyle that combines physiology, mental and emotional poise with a spiritual core.”

(for the full article, please visit my website at http://yogasetfree.com/spirit.html)