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june podcast: marilu henner on changing your normal
Actress and author Marilu Henner talks about her passion for health and wellness and offers advice and tips on how to “change your normal” and create the best possible life for yourself. According to Marilu, the keys to living a full and happy life are good people, good health, and good organization.
Join Marilu Henner July 2–5 at Kripalu for  The Role of Your Life: Acting Healthy.
Kripalu Perspectives podcast features engaging 12-minute interviews with leading teachers, writers, and thinkers in the fields of yoga, health, and personal growth. You can listen now, download an mp3, or subscribe via RSS feed or iTunes. Enjoy!
June 2010 episode: Marilu Henner on changing your normal.
the summer of tantra
summer celebrating in community!
Come to Kripalu this summer and explore the transformational qualities of rhythm—in drums, song, and dance—with others who share your passions! Join us for two amazing celebrations of movement and music.
Make it a summer to remember: Bhakti Shakti: Chant, Dance, and Yoga Celebration, July 2–5, with Wah!, Sara Ivanhoe, Toni Bergins, and Karnamrita Dasi
and
Ashtanga Mela: The Power of Community, August 22–27, with David Swenson, David Williams, and Danny Paradise
what are your dreams telling you?
Your dreams contain messages that can help you attain greater physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Find out how to access the language of your dreams to ease suffering and connect you to your wisest self in this special program with David Gordon and Dani Vedros, cofounders of the Dreamwork Institute.
Move beyond dream interpretation to deeper knowing in Mindful Dreaming: Dreamwork as Spiritual Practice, July 5–9, 2010.
Read an article by David Gordon Mindful Dreaming: The Healing Power of Dreams.
unleash your inner goddess
Now is the perfect time to let go of old habits and hang-ups and reclaim and rejoice in your feminine essence. Sierra Bender’s Goddess to the Core® weekend will empower you through yoga, meditation, hiking, weight exercises, and the Bender Band® workout. Come experience these powerful ways to ignite your spirit, embody a new attitude, and reawaken your sensual nature.
Sierra Bender at Kripalu Goddess to the Core®: An Inspired Workout to Maximize Your Fitness, Beauty, and Power, July 9–11, 2010
calling all yoga teachers!
Maybe you’re an active yoga teacher, maybe you’re in a teacher training now, or maybe you’ve taken a break from teaching and are thinking about returning to it. Wherever you are, Kripalu’s 2010 Yoga Teachers Conference has something for you, including 16 workshops with amazing teachers on a wide range of topics, a keynote by OM Yoga founder Cyndi Lee, and community music and dance events, including Bollywood dancing and an evening of heart-lifting kirtan.
Check out the details 2010 Yoga Teachers Conference: Teaching as a Practice, June 24–27, 2010.
5 elements, 3 doshas, 1 comprehensive ayurveda course
If you’re interested in finding out more about Ayurveda, for personal or professional reasons, look no further. Kripalu’s Foundations of Ayurveda provides a solid introduction to the core concepts and fundamental principles of this amazing human-health science that dates back thousands of years and yet offers practical, effective approaches for balance and wellness in our times. You’ll learn the Ayurvedic body maps, the basic principles of pulse diagnosis, cooking and nutrition, and much more.
Take your interest to the next level in Foundations of Ayurveda, beginning September 12, 2010 (application required).
give your hands a (yoga) break
In our newest yoga break, Allison Gemmel Laframboise gives some much needed attention to our often overworked and neglected hands and forearms with a relaxation exercise to get your hands ready for whatever you need them for this summer—picking berries, blogging about that vacation, or braiding grass on lazy summer afternoons!
Try Yoga Hands, Kripalu’s newest yoga break.
healthy living recipes
Have you ever wished you could come home after work and feast at a bounteous salad bar like the ones the Kripalu Kitchen serves every day? Well, you can, with just a little bit of prep. Executive Chef Deb Howard gives you step-by-step directions for creating a summer salad extravaganza, complete with three dressing choices, and Nutritionist Kathie Swift identifies two toxin-fighting ingredients.
June Healthy Living Recipes
Umeboshi Scallion Dressing
Ranch Dressing
Creamy Parsley Feta Dressing
desktop wallpaper
Enjoy the beauty of the Berkshires every day with Kripalu’s desktop wallpaper. Available with and without a calendar.
Easy to download.
we love to hear from you
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welcome
Summer is almost here! June is a magical time of connections, as many of us celebrate anniversaries and attend graduations and weddings. Marking these significant transitions with people we love is a reminder that we are all constantly growing and transforming—and the possibilities for what’s next are limitless. Everything begins with a vision, whether it’s the vegetables and flowers just now taking root in our gardens, or a promise to yourself to visit the Berkshires this year. In this issue of Kripalu Online, we invite you to dream, to celebrate, and to learn something new about yourself and what you love.
time for tantra?
by Grace Welker
“What do you think tantra is?” I begin asking friends and family in the days before the April 2010 Yoga Journal Conference in Boston, where I’ll be taking three days of workshops on tantra. Most shrug and say, “I have no idea.” A few ask, “Isn’t it sexual practices?” A few others, mostly yogis, say, “Well, I don’t really know, but I’m sure it’s more than just sexual practices.” I pack up my yoga mat and laptop and set off to find out—and to write an article about what I learn. How hard could that be?
Answering the question “What is tantra?,” it turns out, is similar to answering the question “What is love?” I quickly discover that tantra is not a single, coherent system, that the distinctions between tantra and yoga can be blurry, and that its practices can be contradictory and are often shrouded in mystery.
On Friday morning, about 100 of us gather in a large room at the Sheraton Hotel for a daylong tantra intensive. I strike up a conversation with Wendy, a quiet engineer from Boston, and Linda, an enthusiastic Anusara Yoga teacher from Colorado, who shares with us that the scholar Douglas Brooks described tantra as “how you engage with the world.”
Throughout the day and over the course of the weekend, I have the opportunity to study with the best-known teachers of tantra in the West: Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, Rod Stryker, and Alan Finger. I come to understand that tantra is one of the root sources for understanding what it means to be a human being. At the risk of drastically oversimplifying a tradition that predates yoga by several thousands of years, these are the primary tenets of tantra:
- The worldly and the spiritual are not separate. In tantra, worldly enjoyments are not to be shunned. A fundamental teaching repeated several times throughout the weekend is: “What is here is everywhere. What is not here is nowhere.” As Alan Finger put it, “Every cell in your brain reflects a star in the cosmos.”
- There is great value in worldly power. In tantra, mastery is the ability to move from matter (all the things of the physical world, which are by nature impermanent, including our bodies) to consciousness (which is by nature unchanging), and then bring that back to impact and effect change in the material world.
- The underlying reality of existence is feminine (shakti); this divine feminine force resides in our bodies at the base of the spine and is known as kundalini—tantric practices are designed to awaken this infinitely intelligent, creative, evolutionary energy.
- We are all born with certain limitations. Through tantra, we engage in a process of transformation that, as I heard Gary Kraftsow once put it, “metabolizes dysfunction in body, mind, and speech.”
- The body is the living shrine, and each chakra (energy center) a sacred temple. In other words, to access the Divine, investigate inside.
If some or all of this sounds a lot like yoga, it did to me as well. Panditji, as he is often called, told us in a keynote talk on Saturday that the differences between the two really emerged only in the past 50 years, primarily because of an increased focus on asana as yoga hit the West and required yogis to teach more systematically in response to the needs of Western students with Western minds.
To complicate matters, however, there are numerous tantric paths, and some paths completely contradict others. The bottom line? The particulars of an individual path are less important than the tantra at the core of it (just as the unique aspects of any one couple’s relationship are less important than the love that binds them together).
So, what does all of this have to do with yoga practice?
Tantra offers many practices and technologies. Some are simple; many are complex and highly ritualized (In a Saturday session with Alan, for example, we repeated a particular breath 27 times, then made a particular mudra, working with the bandhas, and a visualization; and then again nine times; you get the idea). Most require a qualified and skillful teacher. All ultimately focus on the awakening and subsequent harnessing of kundalini shakti energy. On Friday, Rod tells us that his first teacher described tantra as “the science of skillful energy management.”
Among the practices of tantra yoga, mantras play an important role. These sacred sounds were traditionally given to students by their teachers (if, like me, you don’t have a guru handy, So hum is a good choice, as is Om). Tantric yoga also includes visualizations, mudras (hand gestures), and breath practices (pranayama), many of which, I notice, tend toward the forceful or intense, such as kapalabhati and bhastrika (If you don’t know what these are, don’t worry—Rod assured us that tantra is all about the mystery).
The physical postures, or asanas, are often practiced in combination with pranayama and bandhas (internal energy locks) and their focus is on the spine, the central channel of energy. All of the teachers point out that the ancients made no reference to standing postures—although tantric yoga in the West can and does include them. In a Saturday session with Rod, we chant Om and move the sound up and down our spines as we come into Triangle Pose, as we hold the pose, and again when we’re sitting in meditation after Savasana. Whether it is this practice or the cumulative effect of two days immersed in tantra, tears start spontaneously streaming down my face, unaccompanied by sadness or despair. The feeling borders on ecstasy. After the class, I ask Rod about the tears. He smiles and says, “That’s the kundalini.”
So, is it time for tantra?
In his Saturday keynote talk, Panditji expressed excitement about the way yoga has evolved in the West. Telling the tale of yoga’s growth here since the 1960s, he noted that profound and diverse methods of asana have developed. “The U.S. is blessed with seeking, and finding, freedom in everything, including yoga.” He then asked where yoga will be in 10 or 15 years. Clearly, yoga therapy and the use of yogic approaches in addressing physical and psychological health and wellness will be important. But what else?
He shared his belief that integrating the knowledge and practices of kundalini can address our most pressing issue. “Through kundalini practices,” he explained, “Western yogis can discover why we are alive in the first place.”
Since the conference, the most obvious change for me is that I’ve been weaving more mantra (an internal So on the inhale and Hum on the exhale) into my practice as well as agni sara (a little more mystery for some of you). The more subtle but really important difference is that I no longer feel guilty about not being more devoted to seeking enlightenment. Ever since I came to yoga, I’ve been more drawn to deepening engagement with the worldly, coming down off the mountain, than to transcending desire and getting off the wheel of life. Tantra is a philosophy that seems to validate my natural way.
Oh, and about the sex.
Some tantric paths do indeed include sexual practices. The pop star Sting had a lot to do with introducing the West to the notion of tantric sexuality, when he boasted of the ability to achieve multiple orgasms. In a later interview, he clarified what he meant by tantra: “It’s about ritualizing a period of the day with your partner; it can be looking at each other, touching each other, running a bath, a massage, deeper levels of connection. Sex is only the surface. Tantra is much too complex for me to discuss. But it’s about reconnecting with the world of the spirit through everyday things.”
And, I would add, about reconnecting with everyday things through the world of spirit. 
Grace Welker is a writer and yogini living in New York’s Hudson Valley who currently serves as Editorial Director at Kripalu.
Check out tantra programs at Kripalu this summer—details at top left.
spreading the word…
Beyond Belief
Self-talk has the power to hold you back and the power to change your life. This New Age documentary strives to give you the tools you need to change the unconscious beliefs that are getting in the way of getting what you want. Featuring many of today’s top authors, scientists, psychologists, healers, and spiritual leaders, Beyond Belief continues where The Secret left off, exploring how you can transform your experience and your life.
Find out more www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com.
Music for a Cause: Seva CD, Vol. 2
What could be better than more great music from some of Kripalu’s best-loved presenters and performers? How about the fact that a portion of the proceeds from the purchase of each CD goes to Teaching for Diversity, a grant program that brings yoga to underserved populations. Produced by the Kripalu Yoga Teachers Association (KYTA), the Seva CDs are ideal for your yoga classes, personal practice, or anytime listening.
Listen to tracks from Seva CD, Vol. 2, featuring Deva Premal, Jai Uttal, Gabrielle Roth, and more.
quote of the month
There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.
—Aldous Huxley, English author and humanist
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