Follow along with Roger Gabriel, Chopra's Chief Meditation Officer, in this new article series on the Vedic Yugas.
This year the arrival of summer coincides with the perfect time to expand your life. A difficult year has created problems that have gained publicity like increased anxiety and depression. But at a deeper level, even noticing no symptoms, almost everyone has experienced contracted awareness. When awareness contracts, you are less optimistic, see fewer opportunities, and fear that normal life has grown risky.
In many Indigenous traditions, and specifically the Q’ero lineage that I am honored to work with, medicine people describe spiritual energy in the form of feminine and masculine. We view feminine and masculine, not merely at the human level of gender, but beyond it, as spiritual energies that we all must encompass to be in harmony and balance with self and all of creation.
As the saying goes, “teach what you most need to learn.”
During the month of June, what a lot of us have come to know as Pride month, there’s an energy, almost a buzz in the air. It’s an energy of freedom, lightness, uninhibited joy. I think about pride and I remember moments of celebration surrounded by love and embraced in community.
In yoga, we learn this sacred practice is a practice toward the liberation of mind, body, and spirit. We learn that true liberation arises from the unification and embodiment of our true nature, the Self that exists beyond space and time, eternally connected to Divine Source Consciousness. And yet, as powerful as the practice of yoga may be, many of us can still feel restricted, unsafe, and many other things that do not quantify a sense of freedom.
Every month, Roger Gabriel, Chopra’s Chief Meditation Officer, will be answering questions from our followers. If you have a general question for him around meditation and spiritual practices, please send an email to askroger@chopra.com, and your question may be one he answers next month.
Our world can be a divisive and polarizing place. Recent times have been a testament to this as we have collectively witnessed what feels like an ever-growing rift in our society. Disparities in race, gender, sexual identity, economic status, and ideology are like open wounds that have been unable to heal.
I recognized at a young age that when I expressed myself in ways that were seen as ‘different’ it wasn’t received well. As a trans kid in this world, you learn pretty early on what folks around you believe to be right and what they believe to be wrong. Because difference in the Western world is often used as a substitute for wrong, I knew that to survive I’d have to hide parts of myself away. This experience, unfortunately, is not exclusive to me. There have been moments in all of our lives where we’ve sacrificed pieces of who we are for fear of being seen as different or ‘other.’
Oprah fave and much-loved author Dr. Shefali Tsabary is making a case for revolutionizing the concept of "femininity."
In a world that is constantly telling us who we should be, to hurry up and wait for the manifestation of that narrative, it is no wonder it took a pandemic to slow us down and provide us an invitation to become. It was, and has been, a harsh and yet necessary pause; a diversion in this road of life to bring to our attention what has been wholly out of balance and what is looking to be birthed, nurtured, and manifested in its place.
As we embark upon our personal journey inward we’re often met with the concept of connecting to our inner voice. We all have a unique way of connecting with and expressing our voice and no matter how we get there, we feel it once we arrive. This voice is a calling that transcends what words are capable of, it speaks in the language of our heart.
