Hari Om. Happy Sutra Saturday to you.

Join us today as we meet in our meditation posture. Finding balance in our body and focus in our mind. It is from this place that we can begin to breathe with awareness and allow the mind and body to settle and become calm, finding stillness. No particularly specific breathwork today, just following and listening to what is being expressed. Whatever it is, whenever it is, it is what we need to experience in this moment.

We give ourselves a brief moment to be in the silence. This is the gift we give to ourselves, no matter what is in our surroundings, the silence is within.

We then go into book II, Sutra number 2 and 3 of The Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali. Today we use the Satchidananda translations. After I flub up the sanskrit, we read the sutra and explore what it is to find obstacles in our lives.

Book II, Sutra 2:

Samādhi bhāvanārthaḥ kleśa tanūkaraṇārthaś ca.

Samādhi = contemplation;

bhāvana = conception, act of producing or effecting;

arthaḥ = to strive, to obtain, ask for;

kleśa = afflictions, troubles, obstacles; tanū = to diminish;

karaṇa = causing, making;

arthaḥ (arthaś) = to strive, to obtain, ask for; ca = and.

They help us minimize obstacles and attain samādhi.

Book II, Sutra 3:

Avidyāsmitā rāga dveṣābhiniveśāḥ kleśāḥ.

Avidyā = ignorance; asmitā = ego sense, egoism, I-ness;

rāga = attachment; dveṣa = hatred;

abhiniveśaḥ = clinging to bodily life; kleśāḥ = obstacles,

afflictions.

Ignorance, egoism, attachment, hatred and clinging to

bodily life are the five obstacles.

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home. THank you, as well, to Benjy Wertheimer for use of his track Dawning from Soul of The Esraj. Support Benjy here: https://benjywertheimer.bandcamp.com/

And check us out over at https://journeyhomemeditation.com

The site is not totally complete, but I think it is time to open it up for people to visit. Let me know any thoughts you have about it.

All In Love,

Michael

Hello all, and good Friday everyone.

Today we start with our meditation posture, finding balance within our bodies. In seeking this balance in our body, we are focusing the mind, therefore we are also in the right mindset. This is a good beginning. We use our breath to go in deeper, becoming more aware of the intricate decorations we’ve placed in our bodies in mind.

Moving through some breathwork together, starting with Nadi Shodhana pranayama, we alternate nostrils and bring balance and calm to the body. We then move into Ujjaya pranayama, deepening our internal gaze. It is the ocean breath that brings us into deeper stillness and calm. It is the moment between breaths, the space between thoughts, that we are able to experience the silence of just being. No place to go, no one to please, no need for judgments; just simply being. We spend 10 minutes in silent meditation here.

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home. I chose today to have no backing music and simply used the singing bowl, tuning fork, and chimes to guide us inward.

All in Love,

Michael

Hari Om, and Good Morning on this Thursday. Welcome to our morning practice.

Today we begin in meditation posture, using the breath and our awareness to move into a stillness within. Moving through the body, we release tension as we encounter it. We reassure ourselves of our safety right now with each in breath, saying to our self, I am okay.

And as we encounter any places of tension or sensations of stuckness, with each out breath we repeat, I am letting go. It is this mantra that follows the breath and the breath that brings us home. It is from this place that we can begin to journey inward.

Today we move breath and awareness through the body in and out of the hands. This practice of re-associating our awareness with different parts of our body helps to confound the rational and create new pathways into our understanding. It is imagination as expression of the self.

Within picture the trillium flower, a beautiful three petaled flower that comes and goes in such magnificent splendor, each year. It is each of these three petals that we relate to our lives. Our body, our mind, and our breath. We move through what it is to sense the body, and to notice the mind, and to experience the breath, all while understanding that these are an expression of a deeper self.

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home. You can now find the audio from this morning sets in podcast format on our Spotify, Audible, anchor.fm, and soon to be many more locations. Go ahead and check out our website while you are at it: http://journeyhomemeditation.com.

We will be moving into a new physical location for our morning sits, and will be announcing regular in person meditation sessions as well! Exciting things are ahead, and I’m happy to share them with you.

All in love,

Michael

Sometimes we just need a quick session to bring us into focus in our body, and collect the ravings of our mind, with the erratic sensibilities of our emotions, and let them all just find a place to rest. In this Meditation, we become the asana, the seat, where all of our "bodies", the mind body, the emotional body, and the sense body all get to find their connection through the breath. Thank you to Benjy Wertheimer for allowing the use of his wonderful track "Devotion" from his album Voice of the Esraj.

And thank you for joining me on this Journey Home. 

Hari Om,

Michael

Hari Om. Welcome to the morning practice for Monday, June 13.

Today we allow the breath to bring us into our meditation posture, and into our meditation. It is the breath that is the key to going inward, and through the breath that experience spirit, and all of life. The first thing we do at birth, and the final act at death. Today the breath brings us into our soft places, the places we have maybe built walls of protection around.

These are the places that we may have forgotten we have, as they have years of emotional scar tissue over them. The vulnerability, the trusting, the tender places that remind us that we can be adored, we can be love. So, just for today, we touch into this place, releasing our defenses around them, and letting go of our stories that keep us out. Today, we are going home, if just for a moment.

With each in breath, we are receiving. It is our ability to receive that we can understand our capacity to love. When we are filled up with pain, with distrust, with anger, with judgement, we are not in the moment that is in front of us. We are not in our dharma. It is in this place of memory that we are reliving our most painful, most guarded moments. But in the out breath, we learn the practice of release, and in this release we understand that letting go is not the death of who we are, but who we think we are. Let it go, and breathe.

When we forget who we think we are supposed to be, what we should be doing, we can be with our joy, with our deep self love, in this moment. Just for now.

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home. Find us live each morning on our facebook page,  and then listen later at any time to the podcast audio format of the morning sit on audible, spotify, and Anchor.fm/journeyhomemeditation

Find our links to other outlets, and our Patreon, where you can participate in supporting the daily operations of Journey Home Meditation, as we develop more programs to share the techniques of meditation that are helping us.  http://linktr.ee/journeyhomemeditation

All In Love,

Michael

Hari Om. Good Saturday to us all. 

We begin by finding our way into meditation through our posture, and then through the breath. We practice 4x4 breath today, or Box Breathing. This is a method of equally pacing our in-breath, retention of breath, out-breath, and abstention of breath to four counts each. This breathing can quickly bring calm and awareness to the body, and serves us quite well when we choose to go into a deeper awareness in a short time. 

Today is Sutra Saturday, and we are getting into Book II, Sutra I of the Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali:

तपःस्वाध्यायेश्वरप्रणिधानानि क्रियायोगः॥१॥

tapaḥ svādhyāy-eśvarapraṇidhānāni kriyā-yogaḥ

Sri Swami Satchidananda translates as: Accepting pain as help for purification, study of spiritual books, and surrender to the Supreme Being constitute Yoga in practice.

Swami Vivekananda translates as: Mortification, study, and surrendering fruits of work to God are called Kriyâ-yoga.

We discuss, a bit, the three components of the sutra, and how to relate them to our lives now. 

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home. You can find all of our links at http://linktr.ee/journeyhomemeditation. You will find our Patreon there as well, and we are very grateful for all of the different types of support you provide to keep this practice going, and spreading to more people. I truly believe that this practice is a wonderful path to health, and feel fortunate to be able to share this with you all.

All in Love,

Michael

Hari Om. Joining you this morning live from creek-side in Ashland, OR. Good Friday to us all.

Today’s sit is a bit different as we are in an urban environment with a small oasis of a natural creek running through. The juxtaposition is fantastic and the music that I chose for the sit today speaks to this perfectly.

Eyvind Kang leads us into the interplay of comfort and discomfort, with his piece Tanpura and Harpsichord from the album Ajaeng Ajaeng.

As we work through our breath into our body awareness, you may find discordant feelings as you move through. While you have total relaxation in one place, opening another place inside can lead to feelings that have been held tightly. Our ability to sit in busy spaces and find the stillness, loud spaces in find the silence, this is Meditation, this is yoga.

If you wait for the world to become quiet to find your peace, you will spend your life waiting. We must find within ourselves the place of acceptance and become the peace.

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home.

You can find all of our locations at http://linktr.ee/journeyhomemeditation

You can now listen to the audio as a podcast on Spotify, Amazon, Google podcast, and soon to be more formats.

Coming soon will be our website, which will be the landing pad for all of these offerings. You will also be able to more easily book personal sessions or small group sessions through this website. In the meantime, you can reach out to me, at [email protected] to book personal sessions for meditation support, grief companioning, gentle guidance, and more.

All in love,

Michael

Hari om, good morning, welcome to our morning practice. Today is Thursday, and I am happy to be here today.

Today we begin with finding our posture. It is in the positioning of our bodies, gearing ourselves towards intentional balance and awareness that we find meditation. Once we are in the right posture, we are in the right mindset.

We allow our breath to bring us into our practice today. Beginning with natural breath, and following the sensations inward, we move into Ujjiya Pranayam, or ocean breath. This calming and relaxing breathing technique generates the sound of receiving and of letting go with each in and out breath. This is a wonderful partner in bringing into acceptance of the temporal nature of our body, and of out time here. If our bodies are so temporary, why would insist our identities be so permanent? Let us let go.

The music today was provided by Benjy Wertheimer - Vishnu Das with his track Ahimsa from his album Voice of the Esraj. Find Benjy at http://benjywertheimer.bandcamp.com and purchase his offerings there. Support for this gift is how we generate abundance in our world. Let us offer support where we can.

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home. Please find all of our "homes" at http://linktr.ee/journeyhomemeditation where you will also find our Patreon. Support here helps keeps the functions functioning, and for that, I am grateful.

All In Love,

Michael