FREE: 

Sunday February 25, 2012 at  5:45 – 7 PM

Registration Required  | Call 617.868.0055 to register

Please join Denise Kirpal Kaur on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in the the KYB studio for her new class series. This series started on 1/17/2012, but you may drop in to any class!

“Over the next two months, we will use specific Kundalini Yoga kriyas, pranayamas and meditations to detoxify our organs and glands from stagnant and debilitating residues.  On a physical, mental and emotional level our body holds onto past events and these will settle into our physical body and can manifest as disease.

> Read the full article 

www.kundaliniyogaboston.com

I am so excited to be a part of the Spirit Voyage family and to bring healthful and helpful information about Ayurveda, the Science of Life!

From the Ayurveda Corner in the Spirit Voyage Blog

Cinnamon is a delightfully aromatic and highly prized spice that dates back as far as 2000 BC! From Biblical stories of ceremonial annointings to lover’s beds being perfumed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon, this amazing spice has offered numerous ways to be appreciated. Today, we can find several varieties from Vietnam, China, Indonesia and Sri Lanka where Ceylon cinnamon is harvested. The most beneficial for eating is Ceylon, due to its nominal coumarin content.  With its long history of trade, use and benefits, the best part of this spice is that it just tastes so delicious.  Fragrantly spiced baked apples, hot morning cereals, muffins, and teas offer delicious ways of bringing this healing spice into our diet and enkindling our natural digestive fire!

Read the full article at Spirit Voyage Blog :)

This time of year we easily find ourselves rushing, frenetic and simply exhausted. 2011 has been a monumental year of changes that have over stressed our already fragile immune, nervous and emotional systems. How do we stop the madness and regain control when it may feel like everything around us and even within us is going out of control and at warp speed?

Just stop. Literally, stop. Stop for a moment and take a breath. Ayurveda, the ancient science of life, provides some profoundly simple yet timely techniques for us to use today that come from thousands of years ago. It is as if the ancients knew what we were headed into. We cannot make changes for the better and bring control into our existence if we are not aware enough to notice how we over do it. We must first develop awareness and then we are able to shift our choices to ones that provide us with more balance, control and well being.

Read the complete article at the Kundalini Yoga Boston Blog

is a divine fusion of the classical asanas sequenced for maximum benefit with breath awareness and the teaching of “sithera sukkha”, meaning “emphasis on ease in the effort. Each class begins with a thematic approach to direct your attention and encourage you to stay present to the changes in the body/mind connection. Music and an upbeat, encouraging atmosphere make the entire experience one of learning while going deep into the physical and mental bodies. Asana (posture) work prepares you for the exploration of the patterns, beliefs and ideas that block our natural radiance, thus, relaxation is an integral part of each class, whereby you naturally relax and refresh the mind to allow for alternate perspectives. This is not a power yoga but a yoga that brings you your natural connection to the divine power that is within you already.

is an inclusive and spiritual form, called the “Yoga of Awareness” and can release your most creative levels of consciousness bringing you increased energy, vitality, health and well-being. An ancient, sacred science, Kundalini Yoga is incomparable to other forms and works directly to stimulate and revitalize your immune, nervous, and glandular systems while helping to rid the body of toxins and negative emotions. It is a safe, effective and powerful technology taught in the tradition brought to the west by Yogi Bhajan. All levels are welcome in all classes, you work towards your potential, which grows with each moment. Exquisite music, movements ranging from gentle to vibrant, the strengthening of muscles and lengthening of the tissues, meditations that impact and promote svadyaya, self study, and most of all, the deeply healing and relaxing vibrations of the 28″ brass Gong, combine to help melt any lingering tensions in the mind and body, thus releasing a loving connection to heart and Soul.

1 pound unsalted organic butter

Yields about two cups / Preparation time: 30 min.

In a heavy medium saucepan, heat butter over medium heat until melted.  Reduce heat to simmer and continue to cook for about 25-30 minutes.  The butter will bubble and make gargling sounds.  Occasionally, skim off the foam at the top using a clean wooden spoon.  When done, it will be a clear golden liquid, become quiet and there will be grainy milk solids on the bottom of the pan.  Remove from heat before it burns and allow it to cool down slightly.  Pour ghee through a cheesecloth or metal strainer into a clean glass container.

Store at room temperature. Enjoy this delicious healing medicine!

Healing A Fractured Nervous System

Utterly incredible that it has been a little over nine months since we shared.  I had just moved to Cambridge, MA from Annapolis, MD, my home since 1982! Geez!  It seemed so fitting to move north in the worst of the Blizzard of “11, 84 inches of snow total last winter. Yet I did not feel immersed in my new home, as I continued to travel back and forth to Maryland to complete the yoga teacher training that Paulette and I were teaching in St. Michael’s and each month from February to June, I was back in town, visiting friends and still keeping one foot in both camps.

April added the travel to Miami, FL for the beginning of Ayurvedic College, so now I really was not HERE, because I was either in MD or FL, and only here for a week or two each month.  I had begun teaching my one and only Kundalini Yoga class at the beautiful Kundalini Yoga Boston Studio, and that was very grounding.  But, really I was mentally and emotionally in the pseudo visitor mode.  After June, with Summer Solstice in New Mexico, a visit to my sister in Arizona and my son visiting me here, well, the bulk of the travel stopped.  Everyone graduated the Teacher training, June was done and suddenly, it was like my life here was staring me right in the face.

Class of 2011 Graduates

Thank God for summer, the weather had turned warm and beautiful, and people were out and I could sink my feet into my new “hood”. For weeks I was happy just to walk the town, hang out with my new friends and study. I had a LOT of studying to do, catching up and rewriting months of notes to ground myself in the previous four months of school.

Summer Solstice 2011

Then, by the end of July a very weird thing began to grow inside of me.  I found myself vacillating between relaxed peaceful joy and deep longing and sadness, a sort of melancholy began to drape itself over me like a dark cloak, and all the while I was struggling to understand myself.  It began to feel extremely unsettling, I began to have huge sweeping times of self doubt that I had made a huge mistake to move, and yet underneath all of that, was a  voice reminding me that this was exactly what I needed.

Daily I meditated, practiced yoga and began to write in my journal, practically feverishly to try to make sense out of this.  Each month I travelled to Florida for school, and even there would experience waves of doubt/sadness and uncertainty.  I felt completely unsettled, ungrounded and day by day it was increasing and a sense of inner peace was draining out of me and being replaced with a very uncomfortable feeling.  I “knew” in my heart that I was exactly where I “needed” to be. But then, what was this?

I opened my eyes more to what messages were coming to me. I had begun several months ago to work with a Transformational Breather, and we had been working or rather I had been “breathing” with her for many months now. Perhaps this was a lot of old buried guck finally surfacing?

Teaching at Kundalini Yoga Boston

A powerful book by Adyashanti came to me, “The End of Your World”.

Yes, the end of my world as I had known it was present now. Every great spiritual writer I had ever read consistently said, if you want to grow, to really know yourSelf, you have to get uncomfortable. We don’t grow in our cozy cocoon, although that seems counterintuitive, doesn’t a butterfly develop there? But, yes, I had stepped WAY the hell out of my comfort zone for sure.

I remembered that part of moving meant letting go of all that I had known or rather all that I had felt was my security and stability. Leaving Annapolis, my home for nearly 30 years, where I had moved of my own choice right after college, where I had established my career, married, raised two amazing kids, divorced and re-established a new career and spiritual focus, clearly was beginning to impact me.  What caught me by surprise, was that this was happening in August and I had moved in February. Ahhh, then it began to dawn on me, even though I had moved in February, I had not really MOVED yet in my heart.  I had not let that cord, that attachment go yet.

Then it really began to hit me.  Who was I now?  Had it not occurred to me in Annapolis many times over, that even though I may have created a new life after our divorce, had I still not attached myself to that new life, to that new way of being, to that new identity as a yoga teacher?  Now, here I was in a new town, where besides my daughter and two other people, no one knew me.  I was in many ways anonymous.

Preparing to teach a class at The Charles River Conservancy

I felt like a jellyfish, floating along with my roots or tentacles just swimming around not anchored in anything.

Life became a ride up and down, painful and happy, but this time, as compared to other times in my life, underneath it all, there was something different, that small voice was strong and was present.  It told me to stay steady, to keep opening and allowing, just get bigger in your heart.

Face your fear, it is the opposite of LOVE, remember that, it said. Be in LOVE.

New friends, new Whole Foods! Corky from Vermont visiting

I talked with my mentor, my spiritual teachers, a shaman, and my dearest friends. Each was lovingly compassionate and supportive which helped me to know that I had within me the resources to fully experience that moment.  There were many times that tears overwhelmed me, missing my son in Annapolis, missing my friends and our phenomenal yoga community. I realized that all those years of teaching, it was really ME who was fed so deeply from the well of their love.  Teaching each class and joining together afterwards for tea, was my sadhana as much as theirs, in fact, it was for all of us.  I missed the “things” that I “thought” made me feel secure, my home and the routines of town, running into friends in Whole Foods, at Starbucks, and meeting for lunches and dinners.

By the middle of August, my entire body erupted in a sort of energetic release and for 5 days all I could do was to literally SIT in it. It was powerful, painful and halting. It demanded my full and complete attention. The messages that came in were palpable.

I could not ignore, distract or indulge in anything except exactly what was happening.  So, I made a LOT of room for IT to grow and grow. and when I let go and felt IT, and realized in my heart what IT was, I could release. IT said to me:

This is YOUR life, you are ROOTED in your HEART, it matters not where you live, you are always HOME inside of yourself.

Who you ARE is just that, you are that, only that and all of THAT which is, always was, always will be.

All is perfect, exactly as it is.

Just BE, that is all , just BE.

Stay deeply RELAXED, Serve, feel joy, make every moment count.

and my favorite, stop trying to figure it out, stop trying to control, make sense or organize it, let go, surrender, trust and go with it.

All of September, I strengthened my meditations, and began to open my self more and more to what was right in front of me, and my friendships here began to really expand. My heart and Soul began to soar.

Occupy Boston! Christel from the Cape (we met in India!!)

I realized that I am HERE NOW, and not THERE anymore. Being here, means I am not there.  It felt like letting something so huge go, but in that moment of letting it go, I was free to be where I needed to be and the knowingness that even with letting it go, did not mean I don’t love what is THERE, it just means that I am HERE.  and here became in side of me, yet again.

I also saw how much I identified with my mind, my ego and that part of me that likes to organize  and hold on.  Letting go of that has strengthened a part of me that I did not know existed.

Stepping off of one support and floating in space in between before I could reach the other step, is what it has been like.

By October, when I returned to Annapolis, and was overwhelmed with the gifts of love and friendship and many unexpected sacred moments, I was at peace, with exactly where I am. I am grateful for my life and learning.

My encouragement to you, is if or when you experience great or small change, as much as we know it will involve a bit of “suffering”,  that is small in comparison to the gift of expansion and grace we get when we Let Go, and Let God.

Hope you can read this note, from my favorite cafe: Life Alive! on the napkin holder!!

I hope to hear from you, and know, you are in my heart, wherever you are:)

in light and love

Denise Kirpal