Leap Year of Love!

Happy Imbolc Day, the Northern Hemisphere cross quarter threshold between winter and spring, the Celtic holy day embodied by Brighid, protector of the flame of hearth and home. She is a triple Goddess, the matron saint of domestic life, motherhood and birth, poets, healers and magicians. It is a time to remember these aspects of yourself and ignite the seeds of intention you planted in the flame of your Heart’s hearth in the dark of the passing winter. Here come the spring flowers and summer fruit!

All beginnings are seeded by the end from which it came, and at this threshold I gaze back over the best winter holy day season I can remember. This year is unfolding rapidly and I feel fortunate I was able to end my 2011 Anusara tour in South America with Grace and then join John Friend in Denver for the culmination of the Dancing with Divine tour, and a Divine Dance it was!
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Dancing With the Divine – Anusara 2011 Purna Huti Blessings

John Friend w/ Doc Savage Purna HutiThe fullness of John Friend’s Anusara Yoga 2011 Dancing with the Divine tour ended with a perfectly revelatory explosion of Grace in Denver last weekend, setting the tone of love and harmony for a perfect new beginning of the 2012 Ignite the Center tour.

At the culmination of any creative cycle all the energy that has been created prior mounts to point and is cumulative in the Purna Huti, or the fullness of the Celebration. More than just the 2011 tour, the fullness of all the past 14 years of Anusara, and all those 1000’s of years of teachings, all the great beings who have walked before us, have seeded this Path of awakening are present in this critical point of power for the future.

After two days of excellent practice and play, pranayama and deep contemplation, John educated us about 2012. He spoke of the deep order of the way everything is related to everything else, mathematically through sacred geometry, astrophysically and spiritually, teachings that resonate as a deep ancient remembering of why we have all found each other.

He asked Anodea Judith, illustrious master genius and best selling author on the chakras, to comment on the coming times. She said “we are all unified in a similar vision, it is one of the most critical times, an initiation to humanity, into the beginning of the Godhood.” Continue reading

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Solstice – Sun Standing Still

I feel humbled sitting under the vast moonless heavens, in the silent pulsation of potential on the deep dark of this longest night. Heart dreams and intentions cook, and I wait for the morning light to permeate the crisp Sonoran desert. The power of the Goddess and how She moves through us all marvels me and I am dazzled by the bright steady Light with whom She dances.

Gazing back on this most wildly Shri-filled year, this is the time to see where we’ve grown, where we can refine, count blessings and extract the blessing energy from the heat of the year’s challenges. I feel so blessed and grateful to have been able to do what I love and love what I do! Every month was full of adventure, wonderment and love. So many highlights, so many new deep heart connections, strengthened old ones, inner thresholds crossed and inner challenges, sick loved ones, death and close calls, new babies, beautiful beginnings and even a few bittersweet and welcome endings, all of which are counted blessings.

From the twilight of this Master threshold year 2011 peering into the unknown darkness of the 2012, our counted blessings illuminate the inner scape of 2012 as infinite points of light on a moonless night. Our blessings light our way as we venture into the unrevealed cycle of Grace. Next year promises to be full of more blessings both joyful and challenging; friends we haven’t met and a deeper remembrance and recognition of our essential Nature and what truly is meaningful. As our awakening planet leaps into higher awareness and healing, I’m honored and grateful to share Anusara’s Tantric teachings on our playground of Shiva-Shakti, this Earth Island third rock from the sun. More opportunities for us to come together as world visionaries; envisioning, co-creating, and taking personal action aligned to something greater than ourselves, to serve the Flow in these uneasy critical times. May we all feel the blessedness of being alive, awake and free to choose how to offer to and cultivate this garden we’ve be given. Continue reading

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Party like its 1999 … Pray like it’s 11.11.11

11/11/11 Wish Big :: BJ Galvan Anusara YogaRemember partying like ‘it’s 1999’? We sit on another threshold in the fabric of time and space. Pray, it’s 11.11.11.

Energetically every aspect of our world is intensely stirring right now. I don’t know anyone with or without a spiritual practice who isn’t experiencing some sort of transformation, or some deep life transition, chosen or not. During times of challenge, deep intrinsic questioning of truth, life, love and what is meaningful is triggered. What is your vision for your life and your world? What do you want? Continue reading

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Light in the Forest of Life…

Don’t you just love those moments of deep recognition where you realize everything is exactly in perfect order, just the way things are supposed to Be? Ever since I was a little girl I have had a deep fascination with ‘the G word’, Spirit, that which will remain un-nameable, Supreme Consciousness, the Universe, the very Power that is the Essence of everyone and everything.

At the beginning of my sadhana (path of Truth) or yoga journey, the moments of deep awareness came close together and there were many of them. It was a time of profound remembering of an ancient omniscience already present within, everyday rich with awakening. As the experience of time marches on, the moments of ultimate recognition become fewer and farther in between. That recognition that is beyond the knowledge that I am completely immersed in the Ocean of Consciousness at all times, but the actual direct experience (anubhav) of ‘“I Am” the Wave, Current, Ocean, those moments of Light and deep Awareness are often elusively concealed behind the left arm of Nataraja (Cosmic Dancer of Bliss), hidden in shadows of the forest dance of life’s day-to-day duties. This is the dance of concealment and revelation, forgetfulness and remembrance. Continue reading

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Why and to what are we aligning anyway?

I read a lovely blog on alignment earlier, which inspired me to contemplate it… again,… and share my thoughts, scary, but here they are.

Alignment matters, from my perspective, an Anusara perspective. When I’m in alignment, I feel happy, connected to my Self and the world, I feel free; when I’m out of alignment, I feel contracted, alone and stuck, not free.

As a yoga student in class, I want to know ‘why’ the teacher wants me to align in a certain way, and I want to know ‘to what’ or ‘to whom’ am I aligning? Kim artha, for what purpose, why? The ‘goal, reason, purpose’ of our practice is to awaken to and recognize Supreme Consciousness in ourselves, each other and all beings and things, sentient and non-sentient. Continue reading

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The Little Drop of God….

As the sunset on the shortest day of the soul, (Winter Solstice, Yule) I pulled up to pick up my little granddrop Sebastian for a sleep over. I call him (and all my grandkids) Grand Drops because of an incident that happened when he was three…. he is now 6 and a half.

For those who don’t know the story, I had been at an Anusara yoga event with John Friend. When I got home I was sooo full of Shakti (Life Force) and so happy to see Bashi we were seated cross-legged on the floor, Bash in my lap while his mom was nursing Preston (Granddrop #2) on the couch next to me. As I cuddled Bash in my arms, his back to my heart, I could feel waves of Love transmissions passing between our hearts. All of a sudden, he jumps up, looks at me, looks at his mom, and says, “Mommy, where is God?” Off guard and puzzled, she answered something, I don’t even remember what she said. Bash cocked his head and looked at me, and I said, “Sebastian, YOU are a little drop of God!” A big smile ripped across his gorgeous elfin face, and he said, “Oh!” and bounded off to his room.

So, I pick up Bash on the solstice sunset, just after he tested for another belt stripe in karate. When we got in the car, he said, “Bibi, can we go to yoga?” I was a little puzzled. We play yoga on the floor at home, I fly them and play, but he hasn’t been to a kids yoga class since he was four. I told him maybe tomorrow, but there isn’t any kids yoga anymore and he’d have to come with me. Continue reading

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Standing Steady without my Credit Cards and iPhone

A few months ago my dear student, friend and hostess in Chile gave me one of those backpack purse adornments, a string of dazzling purple and gold hearts, Shri-ed (high beauty) up with golden sequins and bobbles in the Anusara colors. I immediately put it on my travel purse and have enjoyed the deeper meaning of the talisman ever since.

The closing day of Anusara Immersion One in Geneva came fast. It had built up to it’s peak, day five of five straight 7+ hour days, moving our bodies, cooling our minds and cooking our hearts together. A talented international group, Italy, France, Costa Rica, Greece, Spain, Switzerland, Israel, the UK and me, the American, were in the house. Three of them were somehow involved with the United Nations and everyone had their unique gifts to offer. Everyone spoke English, and of course the language of Love. The week ended in great awakening, love and friendships that will last a lifetime. Amazing Grace of the community, the kula, the family we choose to walk with on this path of awakening and love. Continue reading

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Yes on the Mogul Moon…

This weekend, Sunday to be exact, marks the traditional Indian celebration of Guru Purnima. It is the brightest, fullest moon of year, in the month of Ashadha of the Hindu calendar. Thousands of years ago, this moon was chosen by disciples to celebrate and honor their Guru, the ‘one who brings the light to the darkness’. Students would offer blessings, gifts and prayers to their teacher in deep gratitude for their spiritual knowledge and guidance the teacher had bestowed on them. Guru Purnima is still celebrated by millions of people to this day in honor of their teachers.

Sunday is the perfect day to celebrate my teacher John Friend, as well as all my teachers who have illumined the horizon of my ignorance, even the ones I didn’t like! I don’t believe in coincidences and find it auspicious that an article written on John will be featured in this Sunday’s New York Times. The article went live online on Thursday, and I got a hold of it on Twitter. Between emails and household details, I read it with delight and happily retweeted, “Yes, We are the yoga of YES!’ Continue reading

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You Can’t Cover the Sun with a Finger…

I love how things challenge me to my very core, inspire me to the real question of what exactly do I really believe, what is my perspective and from where and how will I act. Today was a dreary rainy day, most of which was spent in the Minneapolis airport over a three hour plane delay. Not exactly what I planned for my rocking solstice celebration, but it was the catalyst for one of those inner questions to bare her luscious fangs. Instead of doing ‘work’ or futzing on Facebook, I read and contemplated several blogs of note on Solstice and the Gulf oil spill tragedy.

Tragedy is an understatement. I lived on the gulf and remember the tragic regularity of red tide and oil covered beaches every summer in South Texas as far back as twenty years ago. What is happening now is beyond tragedy. It is a social travesty, long beyond FUBAR. It is the climax of years of lust, rape and exploitation of the feminine principle of Nature’s abundant beauty for our own greedy habits. We are living an ecological night terror, our dreaded wild imaginations, premonitions and fears playing out as reality. Any whistle blower’s protests, and green activism have long ago been smothered by political and corporate rhetoric B.S. muscling. Continue reading

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