How to let go or release buried emotions and suppressed feelings?

A talk about healing and personal development. What causes our emotional problems, and how can we solve them?
Answer - trauma is what causes almost all our problems, and healing trauma solves them. And healing trauma can be fast, easy, and fun!

Hope you didn't get too seasick watching it! I'll try to keep future videos a little more 'stable :)

Live life like...

Many thanks to the wonderful artist JellyVampire for this beautiful, inspiring, and uplifting artwork:

Get off the page, out of your box.

Be creative and bold and dance the dance of your life with wild abandon...

Like you've got nothing to lose.

Paint the canvas of your life liberally, generously,

With a flourish or whilst poring over every detail, but do it:

Like you've got nothing to lose.

Sing the song of your life with all the emotional color you can muster,

Every shade and nuance at your disposal.

Spare nothing and no-one, like

You've got nothing to lose.

Because really,

You have nothing to lose.

Introducing a true spiritual master: Tony Samara

Some people talk of the world ending in 2012 – personally I think that’s nonsense. The world won’t end; but our world just might, unless we evolve human consciousness from the fear mentality that currently pervades, to a new paradigm of love.

I have always had this feeling, this vision (and it has not faded) since I was a child. Indeed, as I have grown older, it has been re-affirmed.

Swami Vishnu Devananda founded the Sivananda Yoga teacher-training course because he had a vision during meditation of the world burning; human beings running around in chaos and fear and desperation. He created that yoga teacher-training course not so much to train yoga teachers as to train world leaders. He recognized that moral, ethical, and spiritual leadership throughout society would prompt change at a ‘grassroots’ level: the change that is necessary to avoid the kind of disaster we may be facing now.

When I learnt of this – as I took the teacher-training myself – I was deeply moved. I silently vowed to do all I could to become the kind of leader that Swami Vishnu envisioned. I did this not only out of love for him (although I never met him - he died in 1993, the year I discovered yoga - I have always felt a tremendous loyalty and love towards him). I did it also because I resonated with his vision, and because I love this Earth, this home that we all share; upon which we float together through space, and towards our shared destiny.

So my work for many years now has been about making a difference. My work as a therapist, healer, and teacher; running yoga retreats and healing holidays; and indeed everything I write; all comes from a heartfelt urge to create a more positive human society.

Today, I begin to do something more.

Today I tell you about a spiritual teacher called Tony Samara...

MEDITATION part 2

I was very lucky - when I learnt to meditate for the first time, I had a very good teacher.

Teaching, to me, is all about transmitting - in other words beyond what you say and what you do as a teacher, there is a sharing of the essence of what you teach. As a yoga instructor, when I run a class, I am of course giving verbal instructions, and correcting poses, but at the same time I am allowing the essence of yoga to flow through me. This is what I mean by transmission.

Well, my first meditation teacher did that very well.

WHO ARE YOU?!

My Father was very fond of saying:

"there are two types of people in this world..."

Well, guess what?
There are two types of people in this world :)
People who think about the question "who am I?", and people who avoid that thought at all costs. It's the difference between thinking deeply, and trying not to. As Bertrand Russell said in one of my favorite quotes:

"Most people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do so!"

EGO 2 - don't fight it!

Ok, so in the first article on ego (EGO 1) I said that the ego is not real. I said that ego is really an illusion. I also said that "much of the spiritual 'work' that many people do and have done for many years, is almost a waste of time."

I have to qualify my statement that the ego is not real. So first, I need to speak about reality:


Reality is subjective. But it's also absolute!
What do I mean?
I mean that there is a subjective reality, and an absolute reality.
Two people experience one event and remember differently what happened - memory is subjective. But it doesn't mean that two different things happened does it? It means that in reality, experience is subjective.
The reason for this subjectivity is that we don't experience reality as it is - we filter it. We have a filter between the world and our brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). It literally filters the information that comes to us from the outside world.


If you have never heard of a car called a Saab before, then you don't see Saabs. As soon as you hear of it - as soon as it enters your awareness, you begin to see them!
How is this possible? One minute (in your experience) the car doesn't exist - the next minute they're everywhere!!...