Welcome Instructions from Erika...
WELCOME, everyone to Advancing Your Yoga/Evolving Your Consciousness!
(Read & proceed…)
—When the spiritual malady (dis-ease/lack of ease) is overcome, we straighten out mentally
[emotionally] and physically. —(AA literature, Mystical traditions, Quantum Physics theory of
Downward Causation, etc.)
My own spiritual Self care practices over the years have taken on many different shapes, sizes
and/or iterations. There are times I am very consistently practicing* daily. There are other timesI lose sight of that priority, on (or not on) purpose. I do eventually feel the result of the lack ofthis deeper Self care in my body, mind, heart and spirit. When I do, I sometimes jump back into
the consistency. Or, I pile on the practices in a day’s time over the span of, say, a month, or
two/three times during the week over that same span. I don’t beat myself up for inconsistency.
And I don’t gloat over my consistency. I am both of these things. And I’ve learned to allow
room for both.
That said, there is no “right way” to engage in this deepening of your practice.
Just start. Just like we all started somewhere when entering a yoga studio, for example.
For now, I suggest you go in the order I have created for you:
-Watch the welcome video.
-Then read or listen to the month’s theme via the reading.
-Listen to the “Dharma Talk” videos.
-Find a spot to do your “audio class (shortened physical practice and long savasana/
sonic meditation).
-And finally, when you are at your most open/relaxed and in an expanded state of
consciousness, answer the active-learning questions and do your extra writing (see
below).
-Rinse & repeat on a schedule of your own keeping.
This offering is like a living thing. Just like my own studio-class-teaching-style grew and
changed over the years, so too will this. I will eventually create opportunities for us to gather to
talk/ask questions about how each of you are utilizing this practice and how it is going for you.
For now, I want you all to have your own experience, uninfluenced by other people’s
experiences.
I encourage each of you to keep a journal where you collect your responses to the active learningquestions. After your answers, write a response (any length for now) to what your
experience with this themed practice is like.
Sample questions to answer:
1. In what concrete and specific ways am I seeing (or plan to see) myself incorporate this
theme (ex: presence) into my life?
2. How am I feeling as a result of engaging in this “home practice” and spending this
purposeful time with myself right now?
3. What synchronicities am I experiencing over the span of a day/week/month?
Remember, this is just our beginning, and we will be growing from here. Let us see what is
birthed in each of us during this early time of a new practice.
I will continue to stay in touch with updates and new opportunities for communicating and
meeting up (online as well as perhaps also in person for some of us) via the newsletter and
Youtube videos.
Looking forward to what arises, grows & sheds for each of us in this solo, yet communal
experiment in going inward.
I am sending each of you big hugs and lots of Love. Talk to you soon. Xo
Erika K
*meditating, praying (ie: engaging in higher thought or communication with the Void/Source
from which all creation emanates) doing a physical or moving meditation such as yoga and
engaging in some form of personal internal communication via writing or answering intelligent
active-learning questions (vs passive learning such as reading only).
Weekly Content Drops
Nightly Meditations
Deeper Dive - Questions
Suggested Podcasts
Nightly Meditations
Deeper Dive - Questions
Suggested Podcasts
Nightly Meditations
Deeper Dive - Questions
Answering Deep Dive Questions
Suggested Podcasts
Nightly Meditations
Deeper Dive - Questions
1. Reflection: Think of a recent moment when you felt an overwhelming sense of urgency. How did you respond? If you had applied the wisdom from this passage, how might your response have changed?
- What emotions were fueling your sense of urgency, and where do you feel them in your body?
- If urgency is often an illusion, what deeper truth might your urgency have been distracting you from?
- What small, practical step can you take the next time you feel urgency to cultivate stillness instead?
2. Self-Inquiry: The reading suggests that urgency is often an illusion. What personal experiences can you recall where urgency felt real but, in hindsight, was not as critical as it seemed?
- What beliefs or conditioning might be causing you to interpret certain situations as urgent when they are not?
- How does your perception of urgency shift when you pause, breathe, and observe instead of react?
- Can you recall a time when slowing down led to a better outcome than acting quickly? What does that teach you?
3. Application: The passage states, “When feeling like I can’t sit still, I need more than ever to sit still.” How can you integrate this principle into your daily practice, especially in moments of stress?
- What specific triggers make you feel restless, and what are they truly asking you to pay attention to?
- How can you create a personal ritual or practice to remind yourself to pause when urgency arises?
- What fears arise when you consider sitting still in moments of discomfort, and what do those fears reveal?
4. Metaphor Exploration: The text describes the “doorway to our next step of growth” as being behind urgency. What does this metaphor mean to you? Can you identify a past experience where this proved true?
- What current personal struggle or challenge might have a hidden doorway to growth behind it?
- How can you shift your focus from reacting to urgency toward looking for the deeper lesson?
- If urgency is a form of resistance, what might you be resisting in your own evolution?
5. Emotional Awareness: The passage mentions the fear of being oneself as a potential “knife” to those we love. Have you ever felt this way? How can embracing your authentic self contribute to deeper relationships rather than harm them?
- Where does the belief that your true self might harm others come from?
- How can you practice being fully yourself in a way that is both compassionate and unapologetic?
- What would your relationships look like if you trusted that being your authentic self was the most loving choice?
6. Mindfulness Practice: The reading emphasizes slowing down and breathing deeply. What specific techniques do you currently use to cultivate stillness, and how can you refine them?
- When you observe your breath during moments of stress, what patterns do you notice?
- What daily practices can help you cultivate a deeper connection between breath and awareness?
- What would it look like to surrender completely to stillness without resistance?
7. Perspective Shift: “Each decision feels like the end, but you must believe each question is a beginning.” How does this statement shift your view on making decisions? How can you apply this perspective in your life today?
- What emotions arise when you approach a decision as an open-ended question rather than a final answer?
- How would your decision-making process change if you viewed uncertainty as an invitation rather than a threat?
- How can you reframe a current challenge in your life as the beginning of a new unfolding rather than a crisis?
8. Spiritual Connection: The passage encourages bowing one’s head to reconnect with the “ancient channel from sky to heart.” How do you personally experience or cultivate this connection?
- When was the last time you truly felt connected to something greater than yourself?
- How do you recognize when your heart is open versus when it is closed, and what practices help you realign?
- In what ways do you resist surrendering to this connection, and what might happen if you let go?
9. Loving Presence: The reading invites us to love ourselves the way we love our children, pets, or closest friends. What barriers prevent you from offering yourself that same unconditional love?
- What inner voices or beliefs tell you that you are not worthy of the love you so freely give others?
- What would it feel like to treat yourself with the same tenderness and patience you offer a beloved friend?
- How can you practice radical self-acceptance, even in the moments when you feel least deserving of it?
10. Integration: If you were to embody the essence of this reading for the next 24 hours, what specific actions or mindset shifts would you commit to? How might this change your interactions and inner experience?
- What resistance do you feel toward fully embodying this wisdom, and what does that resistance reveal?
- How would your energy and presence shift if you trusted in the unfolding of each moment rather than trying to control it?
- How can you hold yourself accountable for integrating these insights beyond a single day?
Suggested Podcasts
Nightly Meditations
Deeper Dive - Questions
Suggested Podcasts
Nightly Meditations
Deeper Dive - Questions
Answering Deep Dive Questions
Suggested Podcasts
Previous Months
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The Moment: Patience
Having Patience in times of Chaos
January 2025 Journey:
The Moment: Patience
Your journey includes three interconnected elements designed to help you embody the theme from multiple dimensions: intellectual understanding through the audio reading, personal reflection through journal questions, and somatic integration through our Sadhana practice.
☞ Monthly Reading
👉🏼 First Step: Listen...
Begin your journey by listening to this month's audio reading. This intoduction to our theme sets the foundation for all our work together this month.
As you listen, notice which ideas resonate most deeply. These resonances will guide you toward the journal questions most relevant to your personal growth.
Next...The Practice
This comprehensive 45-minute practice with an extended 20-minute Savasana is the heart of our monthly work together. The sequence is carefully designed to create physical and energetic spaces where you can experience the freedom of surrender. The extended rest period includes both guided meditation and periods of silence, allowing you to integrate the theme at a deep level. Many members report profound insights arising during this portion of the practice.
The Practice - Yoga Class & Extended Savasana
👉🏼 And Now: Write...
In the section below you will find the reading transcript along with Active Learning Questions. After listening to the reading at least once, choose at least 3 Questions to answer that resonate with you. Keep the answers in a journal specifically for this work. You will revisit these later in the as the weekly content becomes available.
Reading Transcript
Active Learning Questions
Dharma Talk
Deep Dive Questions
These follow-up questions invite further exploration and encourage a deeper connection to self-awareness and the growth of one’s consciousness. Choose 1 to 3 Active Learning Questions you answered from Theme 1 (Patience) and answer the following follow-up questions below. Ex: 1. Returning to Something Timeless lists 3 follow up questions to question #1 from Theme 2 (Unlearning Back to God, aka. Authentic Self).
Deep Dive Questions
(For Your Reference)
April
Never Knowing Where We Fly
Surrendering to the Wisdom of the Unknown
We can reclaim our peace (& even joy) if we can but take a lesson from nature--birds in particular: redirect your moment by moment focus from a. your destination, b. all what-if's & c. expectation of a particular outcome. We, like birds, are meant to sing & to fly. This may seem simple. & it is. But not easy. I dare you to try.
April Journey:
Never Knowing Where We Fly
Your journey includes three interconnected elements designed to help you embody the theme from multiple dimensions: intellectual understanding through the audio reading, personal reflection through journal questions, and somatic integration through our Sadhana practice.
☞ Monthly Reading
👉🏼 First Step: Listen...
Begin your journey by listening to this month's audio reading. This intoduction to our theme sets the foundation for all our work together this month.
As you listen, notice which ideas resonate most deeply. These resonances will guide you toward the journal questions most relevant to your personal growth.
Next...The Practice
This comprehensive 45-minute practice with an extended 20-minute Savasana is the heart of our monthly work together. The sequence is carefully designed to create physical and energetic spaces where you can experience the freedom of surrender. The extended rest period includes both guided meditation and periods of silence, allowing you to integrate the theme at a deep level. Many members report profound insights arising during this portion of the practice.
Never Knowing Where We Fly
👉🏼 And Now: Write...
In the section below you will find the reading transcript along with Active Learning Questions. After listening to the reading at least once, choose at least 3 Questions to answer that resonate with you. Keep the answers in a journal specifically for this work. You will revisit these later in the as the weekly content becomes available.
Reading Transcript
Never Knowing Where We Fly
Birds learn how to fly, never knowing where flight will take them.
There is a deep and humbling lesson in the way of birds. Their wings grow and stretch and span patches of air. First tentatively and then with confidence, they lift, they pump, they glide, they land. It seems, for birds, it is the act of flying that is the goal. True, they migrate and seek out food, but when flying, there is the sense that being aloft is their true destination.
Unlike birds, we confuse our time on Earth, again and again, with obsessions of where we are going—often to the point that we frustrate and stall our human ability to fly. We frequently tame and hush our need to love, to learn, to know the truth of spirit, until we can be assured that our efforts will take us somewhere. All these conditions and hesitations and yes-buts and what ifs turn the human journey upside down, never letting the heart, wing that it is, truly unfold.
Yet, without consideration or reservation, it is simply the presence of light that stirs birds to sing and lift. They do not understand concepts such as holding back or only investing if the return seems certain. In this we are the only creatures that seek out guarantees, and in so doing, we snuff the spark that is discovery.
Just how often do we cripple ourselves by not letting love with all its risks teach us how to fly? How many times do our hearts stall because we won’t let the wingspanof our passion open us fully into our gifts? How frequently do we search for a song of guidance that can only come from inside us?
I know that over the years, through fear and expectation, my mind has gathered and hoarded places I needed to go, things I needed to have, selves I needed to be. But here I am, without most of them—the goals and wants all used up in learning how to love.
So, try as I do to imagine and construct where I am headed, try as I will to plan and know what this life of feeling means, it is the pulse of what I feel itself that lifts me into spirit. In truth, wings don’t grow any differently to fit south or east or west, and our lives no matter how we train ourselves, are more fundamental than any direction of worldly ambition. We, like the birds, are meant to fly and sing—that’s all—and all our plans and schemes are twigs of nest that, once outgrown, we leave.
_________
-Meditate on some desire you have hesitated to give life to. It might be your want to dance or play the piano. Or an impulse to travel somewhere that is calling you. Or the urge to get to know someone, even yourself.
-Breathe, letting the feeling rise unencumbered.
-Breathe and focus on your hesitation. It might stem from a fear of failure or rejection or a fear of the unknown.
-Breathe through your hesitation, knowing that, just as wings can only fly if they flap, your ability to live deep things—to be in relationship to other life—will grow only if you try.
Active Learning Questions
- The Nature of True Flight – Nepo suggests that birds fly not to reach a destination but because flight itself is their purpose. If you set aside all external goals, achievements, and expectations, what remains as your true purpose?
- The Illusion of Control – What aspects of your life do you still try to control, even though they may be beyond your grasp? What might happen if you surrendered, as birds do, to the natural currents of life?
- Fear as a Barrier to Expansion – Nepo speaks of fear stalling our ability to unfold. Can you identify a deeply ingrained fear that has shaped your choices? What would your life look like if that fear dissolved?
- The Spark of Discovery – Nepo says that seeking guarantees “snuffs the spark that is discovery.” In what ways have you postponed or resisted your own transformation because you wanted certainty first?
- Listening Beyond the Mind – Nepo writes that “it is the pulse of what I feel itself that lifts me into spirit.” How often do you trust direct experience over thought? Can you recall a time when intuition or feeling guided you more powerfully than logic?
- The Nature of Desire and Identity – Nepo acknowledges that many of the things he once sought—places, achievements, identities—were ultimately “used up in learning how to love.” Reflect on something you once deeply desired but now see as unnecessary. What shifted?
- The Risk of True Love – Love, in Nepo’s view, is not just emotion but an opening, a risk, a force that lifts us. How deeply are you willing to love—not just romantically, but in a way that expands your consciousness and dissolves ego?
- The Voice Within – Nepo asks how often we search for external guidance instead of listening to the song within us. What inner wisdom have you been avoiding or suppressing? What might change if you fully trusted your own voice?
- The Impermanence of Structures – Nests are necessary but temporary. What structures—whether mental, emotional, or spiritual—once gave you security but now feel too small? What would it take for you to leave them behind?
- The Paradox of Seeking – If “trying to know what this life of feeling means” is itself an act of separation from simply being, how can you balance the seeker’s path with surrendering to the present moment?
Dharma Talk
Deep Dive Questions
These follow-up questions invite further exploration and encourage a deeper connection to self-awareness and the growth of one’s consciousness. Choose 1 to 3 Active Learning Questions you answered from Theme 1 (Patience) and answer the following follow-up questions below. Ex: 1. Returning to Something Timeless lists 3 follow up questions to question #1 from Theme 2 (Unlearning Back to God, aka. Authentic Self).
1. The Nature of True Flight
- If you no longer needed external validation, how would your sense of purpose shift?
- Can you describe a moment when you felt most free, beyond any goal or expectation? What made that moment possible?
- If your existence is an expression rather than a pursuit, what is life trying to express through you right now?
2. The Illusion of Control
- What is the deepest fear you associate with surrender? Is it truly yours, or was it conditioned into you?
- When in your life has letting go led to something greater than you could have planned?
- If you surrendered fully to life’s flow for one day, how might your actions, thoughts, or emotions change?
3. Fear as a Barrier to Expansion
- What is the earliest memory you have of fear limiting you? How has it echoed throughout your life?
- If you were to act from trust instead of fear for one decision today, what would that decision be?
- What would complete inner freedom feel like in your body right now? Can you sit with that sensation?
4. The Spark of Discovery
- What part of your life have you kept small or stagnant because you feared the unknown?
- Can you recall a time when embracing uncertainty led to profound transformation?
- If your life were an unfolding mystery rather than a path to be controlled, what might change in how you live today?
5. Listening Beyond the Mind
- What does the “pulse of feeling” mean to you beyond thought? Have you ever experienced it directly?
- If you had no words, no concepts, only the sensations in your body to guide you, where would they lead you?
- Can you sit in silence for five minutes and listen inwardly without analyzing or naming anything? What arises?
6. The Nature of Desire and Identity
- What is one thing you are still chasing that, deep down, you suspect won’t fulfill you?
- If all of your external desires fell away, who would you be without them?
- How has your identity shifted over the years, and what parts of you are still clinging to old versions of yourself?
7. The Risk of True Love
- How often do you love with conditions attached, even if unconsciously?
- If love is an opening rather than a possession, what would it feel like to truly let someone or something be free?
- What scares you most about fully surrendering to love?
8. The Voice Within
- When was the last time you ignored an inner knowing, and what was the result?
- If you had to describe the voice of your deepest truth, how would it sound or feel?
- What practices help you differentiate between conditioned thought and genuine intuition?
9. The Impermanence of Structures
- What “nest” (belief, habit, or relationship) do you feel you’ve outgrown but are afraid to leave?
- What has kept you clinging to a structure that no longer serves you?
- If you could let go of one outdated belief today, what would it be, and what might open up in its place?
10. The Paradox of Seeking
- What part of you is still trying to “figure out” life rather than simply experiencing it?
- Can you notice the subtle difference between striving for understanding and directly feeling the present moment?
- If seeking were to drop away entirely, who or what would remain?
Deep Dive Questions
(For Your Reference)
1. The Nature of True Flight
- If you no longer needed external validation, how would your sense of purpose shift?
- Can you describe a moment when you felt most free, beyond any goal or expectation? What made that moment possible?
- If your existence is an expression rather than a pursuit, what is life trying to express through you right now?
2. The Illusion of Control
- What is the deepest fear you associate with surrender? Is it truly yours, or was it conditioned into you?
- When in your life has letting go led to something greater than you could have planned?
- If you surrendered fully to life’s flow for one day, how might your actions, thoughts, or emotions change?
3. Fear as a Barrier to Expansion
- What is the earliest memory you have of fear limiting you? How has it echoed throughout your life?
- If you were to act from trust instead of fear for one decision today, what would that decision be?
- What would complete inner freedom feel like in your body right now? Can you sit with that sensation?
4. The Spark of Discovery
- What part of your life have you kept small or stagnant because you feared the unknown?
- Can you recall a time when embracing uncertainty led to profound transformation?
- If your life were an unfolding mystery rather than a path to be controlled, what might change in how you live today?
5. Listening Beyond the Mind
- What does the “pulse of feeling” mean to you beyond thought? Have you ever experienced it directly?
- If you had no words, no concepts, only the sensations in your body to guide you, where would they lead you?
- Can you sit in silence for five minutes and listen inwardly without analyzing or naming anything? What arises?
6. The Nature of Desire and Identity
- What is one thing you are still chasing that, deep down, you suspect won’t fulfill you?
- If all of your external desires fell away, who would you be without them?
- How has your identity shifted over the years, and what parts of you are still clinging to old versions of yourself?
7. The Risk of True Love
- How often do you love with conditions attached, even if unconsciously?
- If love is an opening rather than a possession, what would it feel like to truly let someone or something be free?
- What scares you most about fully surrendering to love?
8. The Voice Within
- When was the last time you ignored an inner knowing, and what was the result?
- If you had to describe the voice of your deepest truth, how would it sound or feel?
- What practices help you differentiate between conditioned thought and genuine intuition?
9. The Impermanence of Structures
- What “nest” (belief, habit, or relationship) do you feel you’ve outgrown but are afraid to leave?
- What has kept you clinging to a structure that no longer serves you?
- If you could let go of one outdated belief today, what would it be, and what might open up in its place?
10. The Paradox of Seeking
- What part of you is still trying to “figure out” life rather than simply experiencing it?
- Can you notice the subtle difference between striving for understanding and directly feeling the present moment?
- If seeking were to drop away entirely, who or what would remain?
