I started this blog right before my lovely wife and I left for India in August and since then I’ve utterly neglected it.  I’ve been meaning to get back to it, and finally here I am now.

One of the great things about being in India is access to yoga.  I haven’t taken as much advantage of it as I perhaps should have, but I have had some great classes here and there and I do practice it every day now.  I like that yoga addresses physical and spiritual wellbeing.  For me, it’s been tremendously helpful in calming my mind, which tends to run endlessly and has a hard time sitting still.  

I’ve always felt that meditation is an important part of my spiritual practice, but it’s also been tremendously difficult for me to sit and have a real, focused meditation.  I went to a 10 day Vipassana retreat years ago, and after that I could sit for an hour at a time.  Since then, however, my ability to stay focused has declined drastically.

When I practice yoga in the evening, I do some physical/stretching exercises and end with some pranayam (breathing exercises) before I start my evening prayers and reflection.  The yoga poses and stretching, followed by the breathing exercises, helps my mind be much more calm and focused.  Hopefully I’ll get some more mindfulness meditation into the mix, little by little.

Well, there’s a little recap on what I’ve been working on lately.  My wife Sapana just mentioned to me that her shoulders hurt from our yoga class this morning, so it’s been a good day.

I thought I’d end with a quote from the Bahá’í Writings that I like to reflect on sometimes, one that encourages me to meditate:

 O SON OF THE SUPREME!
To the eternal I call thee, yet thou dost seek that which perisheth. What hath made thee turn away from Our desire and seek thine own?
~Bahá’u'lláh, The Arabic Hidden Words