It is my hope that all of you are managing to draw on yoga for support, healing and hope during this really difficult time. Our country is experiencing utter despair, division, coersion, the stripping of personal choices, censorship and fear and emotions are raging.

The state of tension and recalibration was somewhat released last week, when Mother Earth in Melbourne sent us a timely reminder that no matter how much we try to control outcomes, we are always living in uncertainty. Emotions are high and the path of Tantra has a lot to teach us about how to manage all of these experience with openness and awareness! Now is not the time to let go of your practice, eventough lethargy and heaviness may be reigning over you. 

My heart-teacher reminded me last week in one of our private sessions, that I am a yogini Tantrika and learning to manage my emotions that are currently in over drive is the path and the fruit of Tantrik practice!!! Just re-read that line again and take some time to contemplate it.

The reason that I am here today writing this newsletter is becasue, no matter how much destruction, censorship, and stripping of personal freedoms that the Tantrikas experienced in India upon the muslim invasion 1000 years ago, their teachings and practices have survived and are floursing in far away places like Melbourne!!!!

Here are two things I have been contemplating and grappling with from transmission teachings I have received from my heart teacher this year and I would be keen to hear how other people would approach them:
1. Transmute Anger (superiority- there are a few expressions of anger) into the higher virtue of essential humility
2. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika: Chapter One Verse 15 states:
“Overeating, exertion, talkativeness, adhering to rules, being in the company of common people and unsteadiness (wavering mind) are the six (causes) which destroy yoga”.

The transmission teaching I received regarding rules was this:

• Don’t adhere to rules. Better to have precepts (guidelines). 
• People don’t have a strong psychology. They shame and guilt themselves too much when they break the rules. 
• Sadhana is not dependent on social morals nor are its effects promoted by religious practices. 
• Adhering to rules makes one narrow-minded. Yoga is meant to expand the consciousness, not limit it. A yogin should have a free and open mind.

Hari Om Tat Sat