by Prajna Piper

Appreciation in a spiritual sense is often talked about as a practice of cultivating happiness and joy in the good qualities of something, or of someone, or of taking joy in the happiness of others, of cherishing the wholesome. It’s a lovely quality on its own, and it’s part of a path that leads to a collectedness of mind.

In daily life, appreciation of the very small things, of a pleasant interaction, a beautiful sky or a breath of fresh air can bring a sense of satisfaction, of connection. A long time ago one of my teachers told me that when something lovely registered with me, to stop and rest with it for a moment and say to myself ‘this is enough.’ It’s a stop and smell the roses approach, but something in saying those words, this is enough, lets me take it in deeply. Instead of brushing it off before it’s even passed, and then letting the mind return to busyness or problem solving, I can pause to acknowledge and rest in an appreciation of the lovely. In the moment, this is enough.

It didn’t occur to me for a long time that this was something to cultivate in meditation as well, but in the last few years of my meditation practice, I’ve been purposely giving more attention to the pleasant moments as they arise, to appreciating them and resting in them. It turns out that there are a lot of them, right in there along with the aching body and the wandering mind. They’re often subtle, and that’s one of the reasons we need to train in appreciation. Because we’re survival oriented, the unpleasant will be louder, more attention grabbing than the pleasant. The itch or ache will feel more important than the pleasantness of the breath rising and falling. Just as we don’t have to believe every thought, we don’t have to trust every feeling. Because the unpleasant may feel more important than the pleasant doesn’t necessarily make it so. Long ago, I heard someone say that in meditation practice, first we learn to sit with the unpleasant and then we learn to sit with the pleasant.

Appreciation, in the dictionary, has a second meaning, which is “a full appreciation of a situation.” Interestingly enough, I think it’s this second meaning that allows us to be equanimous with both the pleasant and the unpleasant. This second type of appreciation supports the arising of compassion. For example, we don’t have to stretch our understanding far to appreciate the difficulty of sustaining attention in meditation. The Buddha called it swimming against the stream. We set out to do something that’s not usual and when we find ourselves not succeeding in the moment, we can appreciate the difficulty, regard ourselves with some compassion and start over. When we find ourselves thrown off in the difficult moments of daily life, it’s much the same. A full appreciation of a situation asks us to open our hearts and minds in understanding, a compassionate understanding that this is how it is now.

A full appreciation of the situation may not always be within our grasp, but we can appreciate that everything arises out of causes and conditions, myriad and complex, bringing both the lovely and the difficult into our lives. When appreciation of the lovely is cultivated, we have some ballast in facing life’s less than lovely situations. It’s a foundation for equanimity.

Recently I heard Christina Feldman, who was quoting the Buddha on appreciation (and I am paraphrasing here, since I was unable to find the quote itself.) “The quality of appreciation brings about joy, joy brings calm, calm brings happiness and in happiness the mind gathers in Samadhi.”

It’s quite a string of association. Appreciation brings joy. I think we can all get that. When we open to something in appreciation, there is a quiet joy that does, indeed, seem to lead to calm, to the peacefulness of a joyful heart. And the kind of happiness that flows out of calm is something else, something bigger than joy, it’s the kind of happiness that we meet in quiet moments of intimacy, in the natural world or in our sitting practice.

Last Sunday, we had the yearly teacher appreciation dinner at IYI. It was the first teachers’ dinner in two years and being together was a blessing for us all. It was a joy to see the people who came in person and a joy to see those who dropped in on zoom. The winter holidays are upon us, with all the annual joys and possible difficulties. This life, with its ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows, continues to unfold in mystery. If we can cultivate appreciation of the lovely it will help balance the difficult and bring us the kind of calm happiness where the mind gathers in Samadhi.

Prajna lives and practices at San Francisco IYI

by Tangela London-Henderson

“The Original Magic Mat is the innovative, game-changing product your die cutting has been missing. Swap out one of your plastic cutting pads for this sturdy self-healing pad and you’ll be amazed by the cleanest cuts you’ve ever achieved. Try the affordable, long-lasting Magic Mat today.”

As someone who enjoys crafting, the Magic Mat advertisement suddenly took on an entirely new meaning after experiencing yoga teacher training. I’ve seen this ad before, but I’ve never thought about anything more than crafting. The words began to resonate on a cellular level as I read and re-read this advertisement. The words like, innovative, game-changing, sturdy, self-healing, amazed, and cleanest cuts you’ve ever achieved all seemed to speak to how my mat  has become a key component to my transformation and self awareness……The Magic Mat.

Early April 2022, slowly coming out of the pandemic, with frustrations of the new normal setting in, I thought to myself, “Now is the time to do something “soul-y” for me.” I began to scour the internet looking for a yoga teacher training that resonated.

I filled out several applications, applied for multiple scholarships, had two interviews, and attended one open house. Funny thing, I was completely apprehensive about attending the Integral Yoga Institute Open House which was over 2,000 miles away from me. Little to my knowledge, this open house would be the beginning of an open heart, an open mind, and boundless connections. After meeting the instructors virtually, I immediately felt their authenticity and sense of commitment. I was glad I could attend virtually.

I can honestly say I had limited expectations going into this new chapter of life. I thought, “Well, I’ve done yoga before, like a ga-zillion times, so I know what to expect.” I had been introduced to yoga in 2015, when my son was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. During that time, yoga was an opportunity to decompress from the stresses experienced as a full time caregiver of an ill child.

I decided I wanted to teach yoga in 2018,  after he had completed treatment.  I had no idea this training would push me far beyond my expectations and comfort zone(s). Just a little background about me – I’ve always been one to start new and exciting things but as soon as adversity becomes a real thing, I would flee without as much as a question of WHY? So, back to this push now known as yoga teacher training, it began like any other “classroom class”. You read the material, show up at the scheduled times, and discuss the previous and current readings. It wasn’t in the classroom where the action was happening, it was on my trusted turquoise mat, the one I bought four years prior, when the thought of yoga teacher training first became a thought. Life as I knew it, was transitioning into the life I longed for: dealing with emotions properly, removing the modifications of the mind, and seeing myself and others in the most positive light. I was starting to understand that yoga is not about self-improvement or changing others.  Yoga is about knowledge of self, self acceptance and accepting how people were able to show up in the world. With a beginner’s understanding of Jnana Yoga, I experienced a situation during yoga teacher training that left me trying to figure out how to truly and authentically accept people and their different ideologies. I couldn’t wrap my mind around others not viewing the training as I did: a journey of self knowledge and self awareness.

I realized through the teachings that it  isn’t about the people or others, it’s about my journey, my self awareness, and knowledge of self. It is not about forcing someone to accept, deal with, enjoy, or be a part of what I deemed knowledgeable, acceptable, or right. It is simply about navigating my path of knowledge….My own practice.

I not only learned how to breathe through situations and begin to heal but I learned so much about myself: how to trust me, to lean into my power within, and to be comfortable in transition. BIPOC training has provided me room to be my authentic self and has supported me when I wanted to quit, jump off the cliff, and give up. “Jumping off the cliff” became an inside joke whenever I decided not to stop, think, and breathe through a situation.

My reaction would often be the result of actions that took place in the past. There were multiple times I still reacted without awareness, but when I  truly embraced the teachings, things began to change. I was learning through the teachings of Bhakti Yoga that yoga is a constant devotion. On those days when I reverted to things of old, I slowly began to practice leaning on my faith and my relationship to the Creator to hold myself accountable for the right and wrong things I said or did and use that connection to transform my personal limitations. I was starting to understand that my everyday actions and words should be as a service to the Creator and not me. Yoga teacher training has given me so much more than asanas and breathwork. This training has given me daily living practices. These daily practices allow me an opportunity to remove “myself” from my daily activities or actions, and take away the “me first” aspect. I’m learning to simply do because I’m able, and not because I want the props, Karma Yoga in action.

I was able to practice and meditate on these exercises on what I now call my “magic mat.”  My mat was where I found innovation while meditating. The information and material covered in class became a game-changer while in silence on my mat. My mat has been a sturdy constant in my transformation. My mat has allowed self-healing to begin to take place. I truly have been amazed by the yoga teacher training, trusting the process, and staying the course. I used to joke with people and say, “You’ll never understand me because I’m cut from a different cloth.” Being able to experience my True Nature has allowed me to realize it’s not a joke, and my vitality is cut from a cloth with the cleanest cut you’ve ever achieved. I’m so thankful and grateful for the BIPOC Yoga Teacher Training, the awesome and well-versed instructors of the training, my new community of cohorts, and the way the universe showed me some LOVE and favor. I have learned that being pushed and bending but not breaking is actually one of my strongest assets. I’ve also learned that I can accomplish whatever I set my mind to, by being able to combat each negative thought with a positive one……..Pratipaksha Bhavana in action daily!

Forever Grateful.

by Sandra Amrita McLanahan, M.D

I first came across the teachings of Swami Satchidananda (Sri Gurudev) in a transcript from a talk he gave in which he said, “We have a natural state of ease and when we lose it we get disease.” I was in medical school at the time, and nobody was really addressing the fundamental root of disease. Over many years, that’s what his teachings and his guidance have been for me as a medical doctor.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, when drug use was fairly rampant in my generation, he also talked about how when you take drugs they gets you on a jet plane up to the higher sphere, but without a parachute. He explained how Yoga can enable you to access higher state of consciousness and awareness, but it does so step-by-step and with good support. These teachings really intrigued me so I read To Know Your Self, a foundational book of Swami Satchidananda’s Yoga teachings.

I also began taking Yoga classes at the San Francisco Integral Yoga Institute. When we came to Yoga Nidra (deep relaxation) and went over the parts of the body and came to relax all of them, I had an amazing experience of letting go of a lot of the stress that I was carrying from being a medical student. And I said to myself, This is a kind of medicine. And, I’ve been studying it ever since.

With the Integral Yoga teachings, I began to realize that “God” is a state of being. If God is omnipresent, it can’t be one person, but it’s a state of Beingness that is omnipresent. We can tune into w-God on our internal radio dial.

I was fortunate to be able to travel to India with Gurudev many times over the years. On my first trip, he talked about how he had been trained as a naturopath and a homeopath, and he believed in natural ways of healing. So, he taught me all these natural ways to assist the body to heal itself and to look at the root causes. Dr. Dean Ornish, then a medical student, read an article that I had written about this in an issue of Integral Yoga Magazine. And he invited me to come and speak at his medical school. After my talk, he said: “Let’s do research together.”

He designed the initial research study, during which I would teach the Yoga practices to all the patients in the study. Since this was in the 1970s, he felt the patients would feel more comfortable with a medical doctor teaching them. Dr. Ornish was the first to show that heart disease could be reversible and, later, also diabetes and prostate cancer.

I also began to do research with Michael Lerner, the cofounder of Commonweal and the Commonweal Cancer Help program in California and another student of Sri Gurudev. We began using Yoga with lupus and cancer patients. After several years, with Dr. Lerner’s guidance, Smith Center for Healing and the Arts was established in Washington, DC, which also incorporated Yoga therapy for cancer patients. Shanti Norris, a former assistant to Sri Gurudev, was tasked as the director.

That’s why I also love reading his book, The Golden Present. It contains life lessons for every day. One reading is about death and it is titled: “Changing Forms.” It says, “Birth and death are changing forms. The plant changes into a flower and the flower changes into a garland. And if you leave the garland alone for some time, it will change into dust. It is the same for the body. The body is composed as elements and the elements are constantly changing. One day, when the body decomposes, the body is dead. But you, the owner of the body, are always the same. This realization of immortality is possible only when you free yourself from your identification with the body. What’s more, it is when you experience the realization of your own immortality that you can be permanently happy. Strive for the eternal, not for the temporary. This realization of the eternal will make you able to be always happy, no matter what the circumstances. The happiness that seems to be coming from your possessions is false, or in other words, reflected happiness.” For a medical doctor trained to look at people as “bodies,” this realization of the eternal was life-changing for me and guides all I do as both a yogi and a doctor.

Someone once asked Sri Gurudev how to get rid of past bad karma. And he said: “There’s the fast way and the super-fast way. The fast way is that from this moment forward never do anything to hurt anyone in thought, word, or deed.” So that takes some awareness, that takes some focus. It’s work. And then he said: “There’s a super-fast way. The super-fast way is realize you never did anything—it was the Divine moving you the whole time.” It made sense to me that this bigger force is moving through us. The force is with us always. We are not really going anywhere anyway; we are eternal. And, we are one Beingness appearing as many.

And that’s what the Integral Yoga Yantra represents. It represents the Oneness, which is the essential Source of all. And then It manifests in all these different forms and names. So, if you keep that in mind, mind then we don’t get caught up in the various differences. Remember that the Essence, the Source, is within everyone.

Sandra Amrita McLanahan, M.D., is a nationally recognized authority on preventive medicine, nutrition, stress reduction, and primary family health care. She founded Integral Health Services, America’s first integrative medicine clinic in 1976. She continued her trailblazing work as Director of Stress Management Training at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute for twenty years, where she worked with Dr. Dean Ornish to document the benefits of dietary change and stress management to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease and cancer. Dr. McLanahan is the author of the book Surgery and its Alternatives: How to Make the Right Choices for Your Health, co-author of Take a Deep Breath: A Simple Exercise Guide to Increasing Your Oxygen Intake and was the medical consultant for the books, Dr. Yoga.