I am in a dream on a rooftop at a
cocktail party so many people and yet I
don’t know anyone all of a sudden a
figure floating in mid-air catches my
attention it’s a dragon
I move away and I’m scared only to find
the dragon even closer to me I surrender
I feel the dragon’s head under my sacrum
the dragon’s spine under my spine and
the head supported by the tail I start
singing as I sing the dragon lifts me up
over the party over the city above the
clouds I feel so at peace when I
finished singing the dragon brings me
I awake what has been happening in my
life when I had this dream was that what
I had been building over 20 years of my
academic career was crumbling into
pieces I was not able to secure a job
and was facing imminent unemployment and
the end of my stay in the United States
I felt that I really had failed as a
yoga teacher and a spiritual mentor I
had taught my students about the
inevitability of change how to honor
change and welcome change and yet here I
was crumbling to pieces and losing my
identity only because I was facing a
career challenge how was I to inspire my
students and guide them when my own life
seemed to be lacking meaning and purpose
then this dream came to tell me that it
was time to leave the rooftop and trust
myself take a leap of faith it was quite
a process the weight of building a new
chapter of my life outside of that job
and that identity as a professor however
revealed itself as a blessing in
disguise
failure felt like a fire burning all of
the structures in my life that no longer
served me and out of the ashes of
failure three gems emerged three pearls
of wisdom that I want to share with you
today we all have them we all know but
sometimes we forget they are breathe
belong belief out of this place of
scarcity where I was when I felt that I
had failed I realized that I was not
breathing we all know that there is a
relationship between breathing patterns
and emotional patterns but how easily we
forget the first time that I made a
connection between breathing and being
was when I was living in India studying
yoga at a traditional ashram with a lot
of many students the matron of the house
and our teacher whom we called ammaji
asked us this question who are you we
all came up with wonderful answers and
this in this of the
this of travel here and there it was a
beautiful display of egos it’s amazing
and I Maggio’s is like great she just
sat there and smiled and so she then
asked us again smiling who are you and I
didn’t know what to say I had told her
everything I had done but she was not
interested in doing she was interested
in being and so she smiled and she said
the answer is in the breath this sounds
so on an inhale and hum on an exhale in
sanskrit language mean this i am and so
she told us every time we breathe we
hear this prayer we hear this mantra i
am this this i am and we breathe 26,000
times per day so this mantra is always
with us with the secret of being this i
am and what is this it’s this body this
breath it’s this room for example it’s
this planet the milky way black holes
and black energy something bigger
something more comprehensive and wiser
than perhaps this separate self that i
think i am this I am so ammaji cave us
this teaching and this gift and I
remembered when I was feeling I had
failed myself my family my students I
remembered this teaching and it wasn’t
an in-breath that I got up from the
floor also I remember this other
teaching when we breathe we truly belong
here with the body we breathe we belong
with this body and when we breathe we
inspire we become inspired and when we
breathe out we share this inspiration
with each other so when we breathe
together we belong together and when we
don’t breathe we become isolated and I
was isolated when I was feeling failed
was isolated so
belonging is a very powerful feel right
and it’s a natural remedy for loneliness
do you know that loneliness is becoming
an epidemic around the world right so a
study from the medical school at Harvard
revealed that 25 up to 60% of the adult
population in the United States suffers
from loneliness it’s about 70% in Canada
and the numbers are not that different
in Europe either and psychology journals
also agree that a prolonged feeling of
loneliness increases the level of stress
hormones in the body leading to poor
sleep a compromised immune system and it
represents a risk factor for your health
equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes per
day
shortening one’s lifespan by eight years
just because you’re lonely now why am i
bringing this up it’s because of me as I
was lonely
when I was feeling like I had failed but
also because I thought about my students
because loneliness does not just affect
the adult population like this journals
talk about the effect the youth – they
affect the students right here on campus
so I decided to connect with my students
on this theme of belonging in a
brokedown the verb be longing longing to
be and it dawned on me that actually an
important part of belonging is this
longing to me to be seen to be heard to
be validated to be part of a group so I
asked the students these questions where
do you belong do you feel like you
belong do you feel like you don’t belong
and the answers were collected in a
theatrical piece that we performed on
campus here called belonging longing to
be in which the students were a diverse
group answered in their own way because
it was a diverse group so the answers
were diverse and we had solos small
ensembles and large ensemble pieces the
piece in general hoped to shed some
light on the complexities of
multicultural dialogue and how we feel
isolated when we don’t understand
and each other the piece ended with this
tableau at the center of the room in
which the students were in this shape
called the boat of the ancestors that
sub we called it and we’re moving
together on a breath and then one by one
each of them fell on an exhale and was
held by the others I don’t know if
you’ve ever done this exercise before in
theater class or improv it’s really
scary to fall and to trust that the
ensemble society really will be there
for you will believe in you right so
this is the third gem belief believing
the verb comes from an indo-european
root later transformed into
proto-germanic as Galilean and
originally this word means to love to
desire right so to believe is to be
loved and I had to admit when I was
thinking of myself as a failure that I
was not believing in myself and that
this narrative of failure precisely came
from lack of love for my process so I
was like why am I thinking of myself as
a failure all together like I know this
right I don’t understand so I dove into
scientific research again and I found
out that for people who have experienced
trauma the excitement of success feels
like the anxiety experienced during
trauma and that therefore for people who
have experienced trauma is even harder
to imagine success now as a storyteller
I was so blessed because they knew that
you have a power to change your
narratives and I was thinking wow am i
framing am i using my narratives of and
failed I’m not good enough you know all
these narratives am I using them to
actually help me not to feel the anxiety
of success so I decided to turn to my
students again as a source for learning
and this time I designed and taught a
course in collaboration between this
institution in a local jail and abroad
students from DePaul in this program
they are called outside students to
learn with inmates called inside
students in this program or jail is a
loneliness and a feeling of social
failure but people inside the jail in
the same way as people outside the jail
want to belong they want to believe in
themselves and believe in each other
were not different in that way right so
I thought let me bring some storytelling
techniques to think of ourselves as the
author of our own lives right and so I
asked the students to imagine themselves
as both the characters and the authors
of their own life stories as epic
journeys when you claim that you are the
author of your own life you develop
inner authority which is really a
precious precious gift so let’s imagine
that this is a regular room in this
particular type of class we would all be
sitting in a circle and first of all we
would connect with the breath breathing
slowly creates a lot of anxiety in a lot
of people but after you dwell with the
breath for a little bit the anxiety
subsides and a sense of calm is created
this is proven out of this place of calm
we can think of ourselves as the authors
and as the characters I didn’t have any
rules for who the characters were the
characters could be the students in the
course in the jail at DePaul but also
they could be astronauts which they were
or explorers doctors detectives fairies
and there’s no limitation on the time
span it could be an ancient past or the
present on an imaginary future the only
rules I had were to one that the
students thinking of the SEM themselves
as characters would think of themselves
in the third person pronoun he/she they
or any other pronoun that they would
want to choose but in the third person
why because to take a personal narrative
that is emotionally challenging and to
turn it into an objective outcome is
very healing because you can witness
yourself you can witness your trauma you
can witness your talents without making
it subjective and then the other rule is
that the characters were living in a
life that had a task and the ultimate
task is liberation and success whatever
that meant for them so we all succeed
and we all got liberated and you know in
such a context he may seem like a small
deal right to have these narratives but
in fact to imagine that you can succeed
is the first step towards its
manifestation now the hardest part is to
believe in it right and in order to
believe in it you have to feel it so
storytelling is a great tool to feel
because you’re embodying that character
so these are these three gems breathed
belong and believe and I use them every
day and I condensed them into an
exercise that I use every day and that I
want to share with you today so you can
do as much or as little as you like I
practice it daily sometimes more than
once a day it helped it helped so you
can do as much or as little and what
we’re gonna do is that I’m gonna sit
here and play the ball you’re gonna
breathe together and then I’m going to
invite you to allow a positive
affirmation to come to the surface not
so much from your head but more from
your heart
and again you
do it or not if you don’t participate
you’re still participating anyway so
just breathe and connect to the breath
and that’s plenty right
so I also will invite you to repeat this
affirmation inside of you for a little
bit or to repeat it out loud if you like
to share it and manifest it out loud
so take a moment to connect with your
breath it can relax your shoulders
and relax your jaw and your lips
take a deep breath in and feel the
inspiration filling you and then in an
out breath share of yourself with others
and do this a few times and see if you
can hear your own breath creating the
see how long you can follow your breath
coming into your lungs all the way deep
deep into the core of your being and how
long you can follow it as it comes out
relax your brow relax your brain flex
if thoughts come up or a feeling of
agitation come up
sit with it and start to differentiate
your subjective experience with an
objective observation of yourself
and imagine yourself as a character in
your beautiful life’s journey
you’re a hero in a hero
you’re strong and on a path to empower
and see and hear if an affirmation comes
it could have a verb to be a noun or an
adjective for example she is strong he
see what comes up for you and then if
she is supported she’s supported she’s
now feel the sensation of this
affirmation in your body feel it how
take another deep breath notice the
sounds of the room and the sensation in
your own body and then if your eyes are
closed you can open them now and look
around just look around the room
turn around actually do make an effort
to look look around and notice that
we’re on this path together and if we
all succeed we all succeed thank you [Applause]
cocktail party so many people and yet I
don’t know anyone all of a sudden a
figure floating in mid-air catches my
attention it’s a dragon
I move away and I’m scared only to find
the dragon even closer to me I surrender
I feel the dragon’s head under my sacrum
the dragon’s spine under my spine and
the head supported by the tail I start
singing as I sing the dragon lifts me up
over the party over the city above the
clouds I feel so at peace when I
finished singing the dragon brings me
I awake what has been happening in my
life when I had this dream was that what
I had been building over 20 years of my
academic career was crumbling into
pieces I was not able to secure a job
and was facing imminent unemployment and
the end of my stay in the United States
I felt that I really had failed as a
yoga teacher and a spiritual mentor I
had taught my students about the
inevitability of change how to honor
change and welcome change and yet here I
was crumbling to pieces and losing my
identity only because I was facing a
career challenge how was I to inspire my
students and guide them when my own life
seemed to be lacking meaning and purpose
then this dream came to tell me that it
was time to leave the rooftop and trust
myself take a leap of faith it was quite
a process the weight of building a new
chapter of my life outside of that job
and that identity as a professor however
revealed itself as a blessing in
disguise
failure felt like a fire burning all of
the structures in my life that no longer
served me and out of the ashes of
failure three gems emerged three pearls
of wisdom that I want to share with you
today we all have them we all know but
sometimes we forget they are breathe
belong belief out of this place of
scarcity where I was when I felt that I
had failed I realized that I was not
breathing we all know that there is a
relationship between breathing patterns
and emotional patterns but how easily we
forget the first time that I made a
connection between breathing and being
was when I was living in India studying
yoga at a traditional ashram with a lot
of many students the matron of the house
and our teacher whom we called ammaji
asked us this question who are you we
all came up with wonderful answers and
this in this of the
this of travel here and there it was a
beautiful display of egos it’s amazing
and I Maggio’s is like great she just
sat there and smiled and so she then
asked us again smiling who are you and I
didn’t know what to say I had told her
everything I had done but she was not
interested in doing she was interested
in being and so she smiled and she said
the answer is in the breath this sounds
so on an inhale and hum on an exhale in
sanskrit language mean this i am and so
she told us every time we breathe we
hear this prayer we hear this mantra i
am this this i am and we breathe 26,000
times per day so this mantra is always
with us with the secret of being this i
am and what is this it’s this body this
breath it’s this room for example it’s
this planet the milky way black holes
and black energy something bigger
something more comprehensive and wiser
than perhaps this separate self that i
think i am this I am so ammaji cave us
this teaching and this gift and I
remembered when I was feeling I had
failed myself my family my students I
remembered this teaching and it wasn’t
an in-breath that I got up from the
floor also I remember this other
teaching when we breathe we truly belong
here with the body we breathe we belong
with this body and when we breathe we
inspire we become inspired and when we
breathe out we share this inspiration
with each other so when we breathe
together we belong together and when we
don’t breathe we become isolated and I
was isolated when I was feeling failed
was isolated so
belonging is a very powerful feel right
and it’s a natural remedy for loneliness
do you know that loneliness is becoming
an epidemic around the world right so a
study from the medical school at Harvard
revealed that 25 up to 60% of the adult
population in the United States suffers
from loneliness it’s about 70% in Canada
and the numbers are not that different
in Europe either and psychology journals
also agree that a prolonged feeling of
loneliness increases the level of stress
hormones in the body leading to poor
sleep a compromised immune system and it
represents a risk factor for your health
equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes per
day
shortening one’s lifespan by eight years
just because you’re lonely now why am i
bringing this up it’s because of me as I
was lonely
when I was feeling like I had failed but
also because I thought about my students
because loneliness does not just affect
the adult population like this journals
talk about the effect the youth – they
affect the students right here on campus
so I decided to connect with my students
on this theme of belonging in a
brokedown the verb be longing longing to
be and it dawned on me that actually an
important part of belonging is this
longing to me to be seen to be heard to
be validated to be part of a group so I
asked the students these questions where
do you belong do you feel like you
belong do you feel like you don’t belong
and the answers were collected in a
theatrical piece that we performed on
campus here called belonging longing to
be in which the students were a diverse
group answered in their own way because
it was a diverse group so the answers
were diverse and we had solos small
ensembles and large ensemble pieces the
piece in general hoped to shed some
light on the complexities of
multicultural dialogue and how we feel
isolated when we don’t understand
and each other the piece ended with this
tableau at the center of the room in
which the students were in this shape
called the boat of the ancestors that
sub we called it and we’re moving
together on a breath and then one by one
each of them fell on an exhale and was
held by the others I don’t know if
you’ve ever done this exercise before in
theater class or improv it’s really
scary to fall and to trust that the
ensemble society really will be there
for you will believe in you right so
this is the third gem belief believing
the verb comes from an indo-european
root later transformed into
proto-germanic as Galilean and
originally this word means to love to
desire right so to believe is to be
loved and I had to admit when I was
thinking of myself as a failure that I
was not believing in myself and that
this narrative of failure precisely came
from lack of love for my process so I
was like why am I thinking of myself as
a failure all together like I know this
right I don’t understand so I dove into
scientific research again and I found
out that for people who have experienced
trauma the excitement of success feels
like the anxiety experienced during
trauma and that therefore for people who
have experienced trauma is even harder
to imagine success now as a storyteller
I was so blessed because they knew that
you have a power to change your
narratives and I was thinking wow am i
framing am i using my narratives of and
failed I’m not good enough you know all
these narratives am I using them to
actually help me not to feel the anxiety
of success so I decided to turn to my
students again as a source for learning
and this time I designed and taught a
course in collaboration between this
institution in a local jail and abroad
students from DePaul in this program
they are called outside students to
learn with inmates called inside
students in this program or jail is a
loneliness and a feeling of social
failure but people inside the jail in
the same way as people outside the jail
want to belong they want to believe in
themselves and believe in each other
were not different in that way right so
I thought let me bring some storytelling
techniques to think of ourselves as the
author of our own lives right and so I
asked the students to imagine themselves
as both the characters and the authors
of their own life stories as epic
journeys when you claim that you are the
author of your own life you develop
inner authority which is really a
precious precious gift so let’s imagine
that this is a regular room in this
particular type of class we would all be
sitting in a circle and first of all we
would connect with the breath breathing
slowly creates a lot of anxiety in a lot
of people but after you dwell with the
breath for a little bit the anxiety
subsides and a sense of calm is created
this is proven out of this place of calm
we can think of ourselves as the authors
and as the characters I didn’t have any
rules for who the characters were the
characters could be the students in the
course in the jail at DePaul but also
they could be astronauts which they were
or explorers doctors detectives fairies
and there’s no limitation on the time
span it could be an ancient past or the
present on an imaginary future the only
rules I had were to one that the
students thinking of the SEM themselves
as characters would think of themselves
in the third person pronoun he/she they
or any other pronoun that they would
want to choose but in the third person
why because to take a personal narrative
that is emotionally challenging and to
turn it into an objective outcome is
very healing because you can witness
yourself you can witness your trauma you
can witness your talents without making
it subjective and then the other rule is
that the characters were living in a
life that had a task and the ultimate
task is liberation and success whatever
that meant for them so we all succeed
and we all got liberated and you know in
such a context he may seem like a small
deal right to have these narratives but
in fact to imagine that you can succeed
is the first step towards its
manifestation now the hardest part is to
believe in it right and in order to
believe in it you have to feel it so
storytelling is a great tool to feel
because you’re embodying that character
so these are these three gems breathed
belong and believe and I use them every
day and I condensed them into an
exercise that I use every day and that I
want to share with you today so you can
do as much or as little as you like I
practice it daily sometimes more than
once a day it helped it helped so you
can do as much or as little and what
we’re gonna do is that I’m gonna sit
here and play the ball you’re gonna
breathe together and then I’m going to
invite you to allow a positive
affirmation to come to the surface not
so much from your head but more from
your heart
and again you
do it or not if you don’t participate
you’re still participating anyway so
just breathe and connect to the breath
and that’s plenty right
so I also will invite you to repeat this
affirmation inside of you for a little
bit or to repeat it out loud if you like
to share it and manifest it out loud
so take a moment to connect with your
breath it can relax your shoulders
and relax your jaw and your lips
take a deep breath in and feel the
inspiration filling you and then in an
out breath share of yourself with others
and do this a few times and see if you
can hear your own breath creating the
see how long you can follow your breath
coming into your lungs all the way deep
deep into the core of your being and how
long you can follow it as it comes out
relax your brow relax your brain flex
if thoughts come up or a feeling of
agitation come up
sit with it and start to differentiate
your subjective experience with an
objective observation of yourself
and imagine yourself as a character in
your beautiful life’s journey
you’re a hero in a hero
you’re strong and on a path to empower
and see and hear if an affirmation comes
it could have a verb to be a noun or an
adjective for example she is strong he
see what comes up for you and then if
she is supported she’s supported she’s
now feel the sensation of this
affirmation in your body feel it how
take another deep breath notice the
sounds of the room and the sensation in
your own body and then if your eyes are
closed you can open them now and look
around just look around the room
turn around actually do make an effort
to look look around and notice that
we’re on this path together and if we
all succeed we all succeed thank you [Applause]
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