With a view toward sharing the information contained within Essential Spirituality by Roger Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., I have been reading the book, and enjoying the idea of what Walsh calls “perennial philosophy.” Every world religion known shares overlaps with every other major religion. These are ideas worth examining. Exercising to build our spiritual muscle with ideas that have worked for millennia makes sense to me.

In his intro to the book, the Dalai Lama affirms Walsh’s reasoning behind sharing these ideas for the purpose of having the world’s population recognize that we are spiritual beings with bodies rather than physical bodies lugging around some vague notion of an etheric or spirit body with which we seldom have any real or meaningful contact. His Holiness believes that Walsh’s book can help steer this out of control ocean liner called humanity from certain wreckage upon the dangerous shoals of greed toward compassion, which is his long-held goal and he’s tended to it with laudable Sisifusian dedication.

While there are no hard and fast rules around who has time for cultivation of spirit, there are discrepancies. People whose first or only priority is survival, whether that is because we are refugees in dire straits in a country that is foreign and perhaps inhospitable, or because we are in a familiar but chaotic circumstance, living on the edge of a wealthy world that assiduously turns a blind eye to our real needs: housing, food, and clothing, are less likely to spend time cultivating awareness that we are all children of light totally deserving of joy, peace, ease as the next person, and capable of handling 

appropriate challenges that engage our unique gifts.

I look forward to employing some of the exercises Dr. Walsh has distilled from a wide variety of spiritual pathways. Because I’m a slow reader, that may be a ways down the path. I wonder how the practices may overlap or be different from what I’m already practicing. My yoga and meditation practices have borne fruit for several years and for that I’m grateful to my most prominent professor of yoga whose teachings have stuck to my heart’s ribs and mind’s ribs to nourish me deeply. Now known as Sri Nirmalananda Saraswati, Rama Berch became my teacher during a Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy mid-term exam which I was assisting in San Francisco in 1994. Rama came with a group of her student’s from Master Yoga Academy in La Jolla, California. She was there to support her students' understanding how to support bodies while caring for their own alignment, boundaries, and intentions for yoga therapy or any therapeutic relationship.

It was evident to me that Mama Rama, as I came to refer to her fondly in a song I wrote during my subsequent teacher training with her, that she had some crucial (for me) deep wisdom about the nature of healing the body. In fact, she had reclaimed her body after two horrific car crashes using yoga - in all its myriad manifestations, from breathing techniques to physical practices to deep and satisfying meditation. 

Her accent on yoga is still my first language. I teach her style of yoga exclusively, and have done since 1995. Before that, I taught what I had learned from an Iyengar trained teacher, Barbara Lang, Richard Hittleman’s television classes in the 1970s, and Ulla Anelie who lived in my neighborhood and taught classes at a Finish sauna and salon space when I was a new mom and suffering from severe back pain. 

Sharing spiritual exercises in classes set to begin this coming October from a book I’m only just now reading seems risky on the surface. But the deeper I get into Walsh’s ideas the more familiar they are. Any practice that helps us slow things down, take stock of what’s happening in this moment and encourages us to take a deep breath will probably support us to be more present, act ethically, less reactively, and interact compassionately with folks rather than fearfully. 

My co-teacher and I will reconvene this week after reading the book and deciding which exercises to share and in what order. 

There's only one thing I want you folks to do...

Talk me out of it!

Nah... just wish us luck!