Why I don't train Yoga teachers.

Swami Vishnu - he flew over war zones in this plane throwing flowers out the window. A true hero.

As a child my heroes were the khaki-clad men and women who gave their lives in WW2 (for a cause greater than themselves). I was completely in awe of anyone who put their own comfort and safety aside in order to ‘fight the good fight’. I believed there was no greater life to be lived.

Many years later I travelled to India for an intensive Yoga Teachers Training course. It was the most challenging thing I’d ever done – physically, emotionally, mentally, and above all, spiritually. I wrote about it here.

On that course, I found new heroes.

The ochre-clad men and women who gave their lives, day after day, for a cause greater than themselves.

The Swamis are the people we may thank for the access that we now enjoy to the ancient wisdom of Yoga. For thousands of years they have taken vows of brahmacharya – mastery of the senses, and renunciation of the fruits of the senses  – as they put their personal comfort and ego safety to one side in order to transform the world. There is no greater sacrifice.

Towards the end of my time in India I resolved that I would one day be a Swami. 5 years later I did indeed give away all my ‘stuff’: my old man got my ipod. My brother got my Raybans. A recent TTC graduate got my small yoga business including 20 yoga mats, my classes, students and mailing list… and with just a small bag of clothes I entered an Ashram and began training. Why am I not there today? The fist person I met in the Ashram that day was the beautiful Goddess who is now my wife. But that’s another story…

Altogether I taught Yoga full time for almost a decade.

I taught Yoga in exclusive hotels and gyms, hostels, schools, and festivals, to Hollywood celebrities and millionaires and old age pensioners. I once taught a guy who’d (to coin the wonderful Ram Dass expression) ‘been stroked’. The whole left side of his body was paralyzed. So in Sun Salutations he would grab his left leg with his right hand, and put it into position. It took a long time, but he did them, and he loved every minute of it. I’ve never met a more smiley and determined person in my life, and it was a great privilege teaching him. The classes he was in were some of the most memorable I’ve ever taught.

I must have taught many thousands of people during those 10 years.

I never had a single student get injured. Not one.

And my style of Asana teaching is dynamic and physical! So how is it that some people believe Yoga to be ‘dangerous’?! Many times over the years I’ve been asked this question:

“Why don’t you run your own Yoga Teacher Training Course?”

In our materialistic society it seems to be a real no-brainer! After all, that’s where the money is in Yoga! We all know that. So why not do it? I’ll tell you why:

I won’t pee in the well.

The well of pristine ancient wisdom kept by countless generations of Swamis.

Swami Sivananda - a Hero

Swami Vishnu-Devananda had a vision in meditation of the world in flames. It was that vision that led him to create the Sivananda Yoga Teachers Training Course (the oldest TTC in the West – around 15,000 graduates over 40 years). His main intention was not so much to create yoga teachers – rather, he intended to create world leaders with integrity. He wanted to create a generation of yogis who would be able to steer the world away from its current crisis with integrity, compassion, and service.

In India, before I realized I wanted to one day be a Swami, I knew without a doubt that I would try to honor Swami Vishnu’s intention – I would do my best to repay the debt I owed him.

So when I’m asked why I don’t run TTC’s what I say is this: there are places I can send my Yoga students to become Yoga teachers. Places run by people who are completely dedicated to doing just that. People who haven’t got kids, aren’t in relationships, and don’t go on vacation. They just train Yoga teachers. Day in, day out, all year round. Total heroes.

So how could I take it upon myself to train other people to be yoga teachers, when I know that I would be depriving them of the best training available? I would feel that I was cheating my students, and betraying the lineage that I am honored to be a tiny part of.

That lineage comes from a land whose entire culture is founded on spirituality.

Our entire culture is founded upon materialism.

Different worlds.

So I understand completely what has gone wrong – people who lack a profound understanding of the spiritual essence of Yoga are running TTC’s.

So the graduates of those TTC’s are even further removed from the lineage. The pond is polluted further and further.

No wonder there is endless controversy in the Yoga ‘blogosphere’. No wonder there are articles suggesting that Yoga may be dangerous. No wonder people really are injuring themselves!

I’ve seen many suggestions that the reason yoga has become dangerous is that not enough attention is paid to anatomy.

That’s a side issue. It’s also something that householder Yoga teachers who run TTC’s will say to justify what they do (“I teach good anatomy so that my student teachers are safe”). But in reality, to teach Yoga properly only a basic understanding of anatomy is required. You don’t need a degree in anatomy to teach yoga, because

Yoga is not gymnastics.

Yogasana is intended primarily to prepare the body to be comfortable sitting for meditation. If it’s taught as such, with emphasis on breath and inner awareness rather than physical ‘shape’ and external competition then it’s totally, 100% ‘safe’. Actually, it’s more than safe, it’s healing.

It is also, of course, a wonderful physical exercise – but that is a secondary benefit.

Yoga is a spiritual practice.

There are true heroes on this planet.

Find them.

Because the world  needs one more.

If you feel it, share it. Please leave a comment. Spread the love!

Low Self-esteem (and what to do about it)

“I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your 

own being”

 ~ Hafiz

You may suspect that you have low self-esteem,

but you probably have no idea what to do about it!

Most articles about self-esteem talk about thinking positively, making affirmations, smiling a lot, etc. These things are just band-aids – they will only serve to suppress the truth about how you feel about yourself for a short time. I am not interested in band-aids. I am interested in prevention and cure…

In this post I’m going to tell you what self-esteem is really all about; how it is negatively affected; why I think it’s hugely important that we do do something about it – and what to do.

What is self-esteem?

(other than a term that is much used and little understood)

My definition of self-esteem is 5 words:

~ ‘how deeply you love yourself’ ~

So, how deeply do you love yourself?!

(Don’t worry, I’ll help you answer that question quite accurately in just a moment)…

Newspaper interview re: RPT

I was interviewed recently about Reference Point Therapy for a national newspaper. The journalist asked some excellent questions, so I decided to write up the transcript of the interview for a blog post.
Here it is:

-       RPT is the fastest and most efficient method in the world for healing trauma. On what is it based?

It is based on two things – the science of epigenetics (which has proven that ancestral trauma directly affects our own life), and the ancient wisdom of many spiritual traditions, which assert that the essence of the human being is pure consciousness.

-       What kind of traumas can be healed in this way? Is this specific traumas – like car accidents or death – or can there also be subconscious traumas that block the individuals development.

Well, so far it seems that any kind of trauma may be healed with this method. The only kind of trauma that we have no experience trying to heal yet is the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of soldiers returning from combat (we simply didn’t have the opportunity to work on this yet). But car accidents, grief, serious abuse trauma (sexual, physical, emotional, etc), childhood abandonment and neglect… I have not come across any kind of trauma yet that was not healed with this method. And yes, subconscious traumas do block our development, and it is the very purpose of RPT to unblock our development!

-       Do you perhaps know the answer to the question “ why some people are more prone to accidents / bad things happening to them”. Is this perhaps to do with subconscious blockages, energy which attracts these things?

As a matter of fact, I do! The human being is made up of energy (consciousness). When we experience our highest potential (pure consciousness), we vibrate energetically in ‘tune’ with the world around us. But when our experience is blocked by the effects of unresolved trauma, we vibrate at a much lower level – and there is no ‘flow’. Being ‘in the zone’ is a well known expression – some people live in the zone. Others experience is fleetingly, but we all understand that it is possible. Ultimately, the extent to which we are able to live in the zone is the extent to which we have resolved our trauma. So yes, it is very much to do with subconscious blockages that attract ‘negative’ experiences. Although life is messy, and there will always be experiences that we would choose not to have – but a person who has a high level of consciousness will cope much better than someone who has many unresolved issues.

-       How does the session look? How long is it on average? How is it different from other therapies, which are recommendable for eliminating traumatic events, (for example classical psychotherapy).

The session is entirely talk-based. On average it is 90 minutes, but this depends on the therapist. It is most notably different from other types of trauma therapy in that the actual trauma (what happened) is not ‘relived’. The therapist only needs to know that something happened (trauma). The nature of the trauma is irrelevant – because actually, we cannot heal the trauma itself (we cannot make it go away – because it happened, and we can’t change that!). What we can change is how it makes us feel now (the consequences of the trauma). Another notable difference is that unlike many other methods that take a long time to heal trauma (for example classical psychotherapy), RPT is very fast. Trauma can often be healed permanently in just one session – this is because we get right to the cause of the problem. And the cause of the problem, in case you are wondering, is survival instincts.

-       People often are not aware how traumas from the past define us. And they can’t even put them into words. In what way does the therapist pull out trauma from a client which he isn’t even aware of.

First of all, part of the training of an RPT therapist is in the development of intuition. So in the rare case that a client really has no idea what causes their problem, I am always able to tell them! However, I find that almost every client knows just as much as they need to know in order to heal themselves (with my help). If something is forgotten, it is because it is no longer needed. And RPT gives us the precise tools to be able to access exactly what we need to access in order to heal our problems and raise our consciousness.

-       Can you perhaps give an example of the positive effects of the therapy (of course without names) or maybe in general. How does the person who came to the session with deep trauma feel when it’s no longer there. How perhaps does his thinking change, and his behavior?

One client had a 20-year history of clinical depression, and had attempted suicide. When she came to me she had tried countless different types of medical and alternative healing / therapy, including pharmaceutical drugs. Nothing helped. After one session she was healed (the cause had been childhood abuse trauma), and when I saw her again 18 months later (recently) she remains free of depression. I also found out that she had been diagnosed (18 months ago) with a serious thyroid problem that required surgery. After our session, her thyroid was also healed, and remains so to this day, as evidenced by regular medical check-ups. This is just one example of many such ‘miraculous’ cases. It seems miraculous on the surface, but actually, when you understand that trauma is responsible for most of our problems, it is no miracle at all!

How does the person feel after healing – lighter, less burdened. The feeling is usually subtle (no fireworks or hysteria!), but there is a definite transformation. They will notice that the change is apparent in every area of their life: relationships, self-esteem, clarity of thought, emotional reactions… because what has changed is the person themself. They are more themself now. So everything changes, in a subtle, but powerful and positive way – and most importantly, the change is permanent.

-       Some people, on certain points of their lives, can no longer go on. They are controlled by fears, for which they don’t have a reasonable explanation. Can these blockages have as their source, unconscious trauma.

Almost all subconscious blockages are caused by the effects of unresolved trauma.

-       The therapy is based on the science of consciousness. Does it work in spite of the fact that the client does not believe in it.

It is not necessary to believe anything for RPT to work! Any therapy that requires belief on the part of the client in order to be successful relies on the placebo effect. RPT recognizes the placebo effect, and is far more successful than placebo based therapies. One of the reasons for this is that with RPT we also recognize that a person can only heal a problem when they take responsibility for it – in fact, taking responsibility is the first step (and the hardest). So taking responsibility is what is necessary, and actually, it is the opposite of belief!

-       Can we help ourselves with this therapy also with physical problems.

Yes, because the physical body is also an expression (albeit, a material expression) of consciousness. Problems that manifest in the body are almost always first experienced on the mental and emotional level, but we suppress them. The body then has no choice but to show symptoms on the physical level. All aspects of us are made up of consciousness, and when we heal the subconscious blockage, all aspects of us are healed – mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual.

-       In what way can we use the method in our profession and maybe also in general in more positive way of living or acting?

This is a very good question. Really, you are asking whether this technique is only for people with ‘problems’, and the answer is emphatically ‘no’! Despite enjoying wonderful physical, emotional, and mental health, I continue to practice this method on myself. Why? Because as we raise our consciousness by becoming more aware, and by releasing our fears, we enjoy greater levels of joy, inner peace, and abundance. For me, RPT is much more than a therapy. It is a unique method of personal development and spiritual growth.

Funny '2 Cows' thing.

This popped up in my Facebook 'newsfeed'. It's from the page of one K.C.Locke, who got it from a Matt McNeil. Neither of whom are my 'Facebook friends'. So I have no idea how or why it came to my attention...

I have no idea how Facebook works, and I'm very happy for that. Social Media is insidious and dangerous, and yes, I know, it's also great in many ways too, but I'm happy I'm not a Social Media expert. Or maybe it would be better if I was. I. don't. know.

Anyway, this is hilarious, and I hope it makes you laugh out loud (LOL) as I did.

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbor.
COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.
FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.
NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.
BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk
away.
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.
SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.
VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of
credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity
swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back,
with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a
Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one
more.
You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you
with nine cows.
No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.
A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads because you want
three cows.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and
produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.
A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5,000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.
A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.
AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.
AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the **** out of you and invade your
country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a democracy.
A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.
A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive.

Profound healing: transformation of physical and emotional problems in 1 session. But what about 18 months later?

Last night I gave a presentation near Ljubljana.

Nataša came.

I barely recognized her, but as soon as she said her name I knew which Nataša it was.

 I’d met her 18 months ago, just the once. She came to me for a single healing session. The email she sent me afterwards has been on my website as a testimonial ever since.

She’d been suffering from depression and (to put it mildly) ‘dark thoughts’ for most of her life.

Despite seeking help from multiple doctors, psychiatrists, therapists, and healers, nothing and no one had been able to help her.

When she came to me she had also been having serious problems with her thyroid and was due surgery to have it removed. That was actually the catalyst that led her to me.

The result of that single session: 

total transformation...

Strong feelings of Anger, Suspicion, and Anxiety - cleared in one session.

Great client (thank you Becky!), great results, great testimonial. Unfortunately my technical skills are not so great so it's a poor quality video, but I think you can see enough to know what worked and what didn't!

To summarize: I did one session a little over a month ago with Becky, and a week later we did a short follow up session (included in price of the first session: part of the deal when you book a session with me).

So all in all a little over 2 hours of work together.

3 separate big problems: feelings of anger (measured a month ago as 9/10), anxiety (8/10) and suspicion / distrust (10/10) cleared in one session. If that isn't a good result I don't know what is!

Why healing, personal development and spirituality are really the same thing.

Kiwan and Jai. Masters of Simplicity.

Sometimes, life seems so damn complicated, doesn’t it?! I have an intimate relationship with my wife to maintain and nourish; my child to educate, support, and nurture; my work to soak up my passion and creativity… and all the while the whole world seems to be trying to sell me something!

But lately, more and more, I’m feeling like everything is actually incredibly simple. Because the root of all these various and complex problems is the same – me!

When I get myself in order, everything else falls into place. Life becomes, once again, very joyful.

I used to think that I had to do lots of different things in order to get myself into that joyful space: Yoga; meditation; eat just right; get a balance between work and play; personal development work so that my relationships would work (as long as my partner also did personal development work!)… God, when I look back at what I was doing I cringe...

Mark Ruffalo Occupies Wall Street with passion, compassion, intelligence, charisma

I was an actor once. A terrible actor. I made audiences cringe. I myself cringed inwardly on stage. I had no confidence. I was in a play at the National Theatre once (just the once) and my parents got in the elevator with Neil Kinnock (head of the opposition party at the time). That's my claim to acting fame. That's how bad I was. Thank God I don't have to act anymore; I found my real purpose in life.

Then there's Mark Ruffalo. He's a great actor. I could watch him all day. There's an openness and an integrity about him that is very attractive. I've seen a few of his movies and I always felt like he's the kind of guy I'd like to get to know. A good guy.

Then there's Occupy (Wall Street). I love that movement. I put the brackets around the Wall Street part because I don't feel it's really about Wall Street any more. It's about... no, wait.

Occupy has become a global movement and it's only going to get bigger. It's going to get bigger and bigger because more and more people are awakening to the simple truth of who they really are. More and more people are becoming conscious of their own innate power. We are not sheep. We are not here to be herded around like cattle, victims of a system that is based on greed and fear, so that 1% can prosper and be free while 99% live without dignity...

We are human beings: perfect, beautiful, powerful expressions of pure consciouness. We are free already, and as more and more people awaken to that simple truth by letting go of survival based fears, the system in which we live is changing. Occupy is a sign of that change - and I for one am overjoyed to see it happening.

So what's Occupy about? I'll let Mark Ruffalo explain it much better than I can:

And an equally intelligent, even more eloquent 'call to arms':

Somebody can be. And it’s my pleasure.

I just did a presentation in Zagreb. I presented Reference Point Therapy (my healing work), and I did a very public demonstration of it.

The 3^rd level course of RPT is called Mastering the Miraculous.

Since I took that course in November 2009 I’ve been able to master miracles.

And tonight was a beautiful example of that.

First of all – who has ever heard of a ‘healer’ claiming to have the “fastest, most efficient healing technique in the world”.

Secondly, who ever had the balls to prove that claim with a public demonstration?

Well actually, there are a bunch of us RPT teachers doing just that – I’m not the only one...

So tonight, I asked for a show of hands in the audience: who wants to heal something, right now?..

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.

Pure beauty (A poem by Ben Ralston)

Beauty is not something you buy in the aisles of drug stores,

Or (cosmetic) surgeries,

Or anywhere,

In fact.

Beauty is a feeling, deep within;

An overflowing, slow-flowing surge

that lifts and burns and Devours

With subtlety.

Pure beauty is the essence of life itself:

Show me a living being, and I’ll show you Beautiful.

Because when you feel that surge within

All of without is moved by it.

Beauty is the light that guides your eyes,

The waves that open your ears,

The nerves that soften your skin.

Beauty

Is

That which feels.

We all want beauty.

But it’s in our desire to own it

That we lose sight

Of the only place it can really be found...

3 steps to profound healing (broken heart, bones, spirit)

I bleed. 

My heart bleeds out into the lonely night, and only the yearning for daylight; only the memory of a better day gives me hope...

Do you know what I mean? I know you do.

At least on some level, you do.

I’m a healer. I work as a therapist, I counsel people, and I heal their wounds (mostly emotional, but also physical). I didn’t ever desire to do this. I wanted to do many things, but never this…

When it came on me though, I knew it was my calling.

Healing is the simplest, most natural thing in the world. There are just 3 simple steps that you have to take to heal almost anything.

Of course, not everything can be healed. But even most things that are thought incurable can be.

And these are the 3 steps:

Why I left Bangkok… part 3: "Tread softly, and with joy."

After my unwitting incursion into the world of child prostitution - part 1 - and my adventures with amphetamine crazed truck drivers and Thai gangsters  - part 2 - I was feeling pretty lost.

I’d been traveling alone for about a month and I was lonely.

One day I was driving through town on my motorbike and I started to feel ill again. The fever wasn’t quite gone yet. I pulled over to the side of the road and found myself sitting at a table outside a small bar. I ordered a drink and before it arrived I realized I was outside some kind of brothel.

There were about 5 or 6 girls in the bar, lounging around and leaning over a couple of Dutch sailors.

The sailors were about 50 years old, heavily tattooed. I really wish I could remember my conversation with them because it was both hilarious and very interesting.


The expression on their faces (and the faces of all the men I saw in that bar) stay with me though. They were like young men ‘on the pull’ – that strange kind of desperate intensity in their eyes (sexual desire) and a kind of assumed (false) arrogance. They were trying to look confident and self-assured. In short: they wanted to be found attractive. I recall finding this very amusing: they were in a brothel. They knew they only had to pay for what they wanted, and yet they still went through the suffering of the ‘chase’.

The girls were an interesting bunch...

3 impossible true stories (and 1 way to feel more like God).

Thinks he's an otter...

There have been times when I’ve felt so bad I’ve wanted the Earth to swallow me up. Times when, if I’d had one wish, I would not have wished for more money or time or power; I’d have wished to disappear in a puff of smoke.

And there was a time when I very, very nearly killed myself.

We’re all human, which is to say, we all have the capacity to experience tremendous pain. I’m talking about emotional pain here, but the same goes for physical…

I think it was Primo Levi who said something like:

“A human is an animal that can adapt to any circumstances”.

I once watched a documentary called “The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off”. It was about a boy with a rare disease – his skin fell off his body every few days. His skin kept falling off all the time. His parents had to bandage him up, and he lived with that pain day in, day out, his whole life. In the end, he died of skin cancer.

I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much, or been so moved, as I did and was by that movie. That boy’s courage and dignity will remain with me, always. You can watch it here. You will be moved and shaken and inspired.

I wrote recently about feeling like an Ant. And about feeling like God.

To me, the difference between the two is just all about where we place our attention (and where we place our attention is the greatest sign of our intelligence)...

So I want to share with you a great way to shift your attention from the mundane, painful, ant-like aspects of life, towards God: