One Minute Of Meditation, One Minute Of Yoga

At 19 years old, I fulfilled my lifelong dream of becoming a yoga teacher. I graduated from the one-month intensive yoga teacher training program at the Sivananda Ashram in Neyyar Dam, Kerala, India excited, in a more elevated state than I'd ever known in my short 19 years of life. At the same time, my mind was much quieter. It was magical what four hours of yoga and one full hour of meditation a day had done. As I walked through the gates of the ashram and down the hill, my backpack strapped to my back, I made a commitment to myself. To maintain this amazing energy outside the walls of the ashram, I would practice yoga for an hour and meditate for 30 minutes. Every day. I kept my vow for two days--yes, days, not months--after I left the ashram. By day three my grand plan for my life had completely collapsed. After that, I rarely met my commitment. As a college student, my commitment to my practice shifted to a commitment to staying up until 2 a.m., drinking masala chai, and listening to Jimi Hendrix or Led Zeppelin--all because my friends and I wanted to be cool and hip. As the years went on, business school demanded all my focus, and later at McKinsey & Company, and then Google, business meetings, travel, and long hours ate up my days. The only time I could find the structure, the rhythm of life, that supported me was when I went back to one of the Sivananda Ashrams in Neyyar Dam, Grass Valley, or the Bahamas, or when I visited my spiritual teacher Rama Devi's spiritual...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news