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Excerpt from Beginner’s Instructional Power Yoga with Beryl Bender Birch

Want to try doing yoga at home but not sure how it would be without a live teacher in the room?  Then check out this transcribed excerpt from "Beginner's Instructional Power Yoga" with Beryl Bender Birch.  Birch takes us through each pose with such precision and clear instruction, it makes doing yoga on at home, on your own or with friends, at your own conveninece, a breeze. 

Position 1: Inhaling, bring the arms straight up over the head with the palms together. Look up. Don’t arch the back. Inhale again.
 
Position 2: Exhaling, bring the palms to the floor and bend the knees.
 
Position 3: Inhaling, lift the head try to put the hands flat on the floor.
 
Position 4: Exhaling, walk your legs back. Make the body like a plank and slowly lower your chest to the floor as in a push-up. Keep breathing here. Elbows are tucked in at the sides. Hold yourself off the floor if possible. Okay, now relax for a minute.
 
Position 4, 5, and 6 we will do frequently throughout the practice, so let’s get them right.
 
Position 5: This posture is called Urdhva Mukha Svanasana or upward facing dog. Flatten the tops of your feet on the floor. Now, inhale and lift the body up on the hands and knees. Now straighten the legs and lift the knees. Don’t let the buttocks sag and don’t compress the lower back. The lower back should not bother you here; if it does, keep your knees down. Now turn the toes under and on an exhale push up and back into an upside down V.
 
This is Position 6. Adho Mukha Svanasana or down facing dog. Take five breaths in this position. Two - inhale and exhale. Three - inhale and exhale. Four - feet and hands should be about ten to twelve inches away from one another and parallel. Five - inhale and exhale. All right.
 
Position 7: Inhaling, look up. Walk your feet back up to your hands. 
 
Position 8: Exhale. Tuck your nose into your knees. Bend the knees as much as you need to make the tuck, but don’t squat.
 
Position 9: Inhaling, come all the way back up to standing arms up over the head, palms together, and exhale back to Samasthitih or attention position.
 
Okay again: 1 – Inhaling, arms up, buttocks tight, thighs lifting, and palms together. 2 – Exhaling, palms to the floor, tuck your nose into your knees. 3 - Inhaling, look up, lift the back. 4 - Exhaling, legs back, drop into your push-up, use your arms and lower to the floor.

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Excerpt from "You Already Have a Job" with Marianne Williamson

In this transcribed excerpt from a talk recorded live on Labor Day 2011, Marianne Williamson uses the holiday as a springboard to talk about what it means to labor, and how important it is to express ourselves through whatever work we do, whether paid or not.

Today is Labor Day, obviously. The history of Labor Day is interesting in that nobody seems to know exactly how it all started, that the various states were acknowledging with a holiday the role of labor. One interesting anecdote that apparently had to do with its beginning had to do with president Grover Cleveland. There had been a protest among union workers and a few of the workers had been killed. So Grover Cleveland -- especially because he was in a bid for reelection at that time -- advocated the creation of a national holiday in honor of workers as a way to get the public’s opinion back on his side given that U.S. marshals had killed these workers. It didn’t work. He didn’t get reelected, but of course after a misuse of power like that, obviously nothing as… creating a national holiday obviously should not get one forgiven on that kind of a level.

Excerpt 2 from "Carlebach Teachings of Joy and Oneness & Other Stories" with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach

The late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach offers profound wisdom in how to love wholly in this beautiful transcribed excerpt from "Carlebach Teachings of Joy and Oneness & Other Stories."  His words are touching and deep, with instruction for us all.

We are living in a world which needs healing.  The whole world needs healing.  The whole world needs fixing.  The saddest most heartbreaking thing in the world when parents look at children and they think, “You know – hey! What’s going on? Why didn’t you have A+ every subject? Why aren’t you the best in piano playing? Why aren’t you the best in everything?”  So this is why a child is born in your house?  Because never has a child thought before it was born, he had two people who love me enough to fix me.

I want you to know the deepest, deepest, deepest depths, and I don’t mean you meet someone with something wrong with them, that we have to stay in order to fix them.  You have to love people a lot.  Even to have the urge to fix them, right?  But then once you know something

Excerpt 1 from "Four Essentials of a Dream Relationship" with Harville Hendrix

Harville Hendrix -- one of the foremost relationship experts of our time -- guides listeners through the four most important elements to the kind of relationship we all want in "Four Essentials of a Dream Relationship".  In this transcribed excerpt from his workshop, Hendrix talks about how having a healthy relationship is not only beneficial to ourselves, but to the world.

Having a healthy relationship is the best health benefit that anybody can have for themselves, for their children if they have them, and for the culture they live in. And because of that, in my old age I have decided I’m going to spend the next 40 years of my life… I’m 75 I figure I’ll go to 120, which is the life span if human beings are healthy, I see no reason to die.  It seems like a terrible inconvenience, especially since I have things I want to do, which is to transform all couples on the planet so that we can end war and violence in all its forms. And that the best thing you can do for that is to have a great relationship with your partner because that’s what a global couples movement would be about --- is a healthy relationship is the best thing you can do for yourself.

Excerpt from "Jesus, the Master Artist" with Michael Bernard Beckwith

This electrifying excerpt from a service at Agape International Spritual Center recorded Easter 2008 brings us right into the room as Michael Bernard Beckwith invites attendees to participate in a celebration of spirit.

Take a look around for a second and look at the shape of spiritual beauty that is revealing and manifesting and reflecting the image and likeness of God in myriad ways this morning. As you look around, just take in this awesome site. As you hear the inaudible…  hear that inaudible vibration move through our choir, feel the motion of the universe move through the movement of Agape, and feel the divine pulsating through your own heartbeat. I welcome you to the Agape International Spiritual Center, a non-local idea of the mind of God. “Have consciousness, we travel.” I welcome you here on this wonderful day of celebrating the regenerating rejuvenating resurrecting spirit that is within us all as we seek to discover and release that cosmic good that is our life. In which no circumstance or situation can permanently keep it down, deny it or hinder it.

Excerpt from Marianne Williamson's "Relationships Workshop"

In this inspired transcribed excerpt from Marianne Williamson's "Relationships Workshop," Williamson tells workshop attendees -- and us -- how we simply have to get out of our own way.  

Enjoy:

You know, I often use the story of Michelangelo being asked how he created a sculpture. And he said that in his mind, he had been given a huge piece of rough marble, but in his mind, God had already created the sculpture. God had already created the Pieta, Moses, David. Michelangelo saw his job as getting rid of all the excess marble.
 
Now see, the way the world sees relationships is “What can I add on to make myself more attractive?” But everything in the thinking of the world particularly in the area of relationships is upside down.

Excerpt 2 from "Transformation of a Man" - Ram Dass

 

Ram Dass Author of Be Here Now rare recordings

Ram Dass gets to the heart of the matter in this transcribed excerpt from "Transformation of a Man" -- recorded live in 1968.  He offers different points of view on how attachment occurs -- right from the time of birth. But whatever the point of view, it still takes us away from "being here now."  This program is Part of our ongoing partnership with the Love Serve Remember Foundation. Read on...

 

And I say, “Because I’m not yet free enough to be able to be with the leaves without getting caught in the beauty.” Now this business of being caught is the critical matter that is the first step that people undertake in the road to becoming liberated. It is the technique which Gurdjieff has so exquisitely enunciated in his model of self remembering. And Gurdjieff says it in one way and Rodney Collin, the disciple of Ouspensky, says it in a slightly different way. Gurdjieff says your problem is that you identify… you learn to identify as a child with your body, then you identify with your mother’s concept of who you are so you develop social roles, and you identify with the concepts of the universe all around you so you become a thinking, rational being in a rational system. And then pretty soon when you’re angry, you say, “I am angry” and you identify with the anger and you are anger. And you identify with being in love and you identify with desires, and you identify with your lust, and you identify with everything. You identify with other people’s opinions of you. What Dave Riesman calls “the other-directed man”.