Ben Ralston

Why I don’t train Yoga teachers.

Swami Vishnu – he flew over war zones in this plane throwing flowers out the window. A true hero.
As a child my heroes were the khaki-clad men and women who gave their lives in WW2 (for a cause greater than themselves). I was completely in awe of anyone who put their own comfort and safety aside in order to ‘fight the good fight’. I believed there was no greater life to be lived.
Many years later I travelled to India for an intensive Yoga Teachers Training course. It was the most challenging thing I’d ever done – physically, emotionally, mentally, and above all, spiritually. I wrote about it here.

On that course, I found new heroes.

The ochre-clad men and women who gave their lives, day after day, for a cause greater than themselves.
The Swamis are the people we may thank for the access that we now enjoy to the ancient wisdom of Yoga. For thousands of years they have taken vows of brahmacharya – mastery of the senses, and renunciation of the fruits of the senses  – as they put their personal comfort and ego safety to one side in order to transform the world. There is no greater sacrifice.
Towards the end of my time in India I resolved that I would one day be a Swami. 5 years later I did indeed give away all my ‘stuff’: my old man got my ipod. My brother got my Raybans. A recent TTC graduate got my small yoga business including 20 yoga mats, my classes, students and mailing list… and with just a small bag of clothes I entered an Ashram and began training. Why am I not there today? The fist person I met in the Ashram that day was the beautiful Goddess who is now my wife. But that’s another story…
Altogether I taught Yoga full time for almost a decade.
I taught Yoga in exclusive hotels and gyms, hostels, schools, and festivals, to Hollywood celebrities and millionaires and old age pensioners. I once taught a guy who’d (to coin the wonderful Ram Dass expression) ‘been stroked’. The whole left side of his body was paralyzed. So in Sun Salutations he would grab his left leg with his right hand, and put it into position. It took a long time, but he did them, and he loved every minute of it. I’ve never met a more smiley and determined person in my life, and it was a great privilege teaching him. The classes he was in were some of the most memorable I’ve ever taught.
I must have taught many thousands of people during those 10 years.

I never had a single student get injured. Not one.

And my style of Asana teaching is dynamic and physical! So how is it that some people believe Yoga to be ‘dangerous’?! Many times over the years I’ve been asked this question:
“Why don’t you run your own Yoga Teacher Training Course?”
In our materialistic society it seems to be a real no-brainer! After all, that’s where the money is in Yoga! We all know that. So why not do it? I’ll tell you why:

I won’t pee in the well.

The well of pristine ancient wisdom kept by countless generations of Swamis.

Swami Sivananda – a Hero
Swami Vishnu-Devananda had a vision in meditation of the world in flames. It was that vision that led him to create the Sivananda Yoga Teachers Training Course (the oldest TTC in the West – around 15,000 graduates over 40 years). His main intention was not so much to create yoga teachers – rather, he intended to create world leaders with integrity. He wanted to create a generation of yogis who would be able to steer the world away from its current crisis with integrity, compassion, and service.
In India, before I realized I wanted to one day be a Swami, I knew without a doubt that I would try to honor Swami Vishnu’s intention – I would do my best to repay the debt I owed him.
So when I’m asked why I don’t run TTC’s what I say is this: there are places I can send my Yoga students to become Yoga teachers. Places run by people who are completely dedicated to doing just that. People who haven’t got kids, aren’t in relationships, and don’t go on vacation. They just train Yoga teachers. Day in, day out, all year round. Total heroes.
So how could I take it upon myself to train other people to be yoga teachers, when I know that I would be depriving them of the best training available? I would feel that I was cheating my students, and betraying the lineage that I am honored to be a tiny part of.
That lineage comes from a land whose entire culture is founded on spirituality.
Our entire culture is founded upon materialism.

Different worlds.

So I understand completely what has gone wrong – people who lack a profound understanding of the spiritual essence of Yoga are running TTC’s.
So the graduates of those TTC’s are even further removed from the lineage. The pond is polluted further and further.
No wonder there is endless controversy in the Yoga ‘blogosphere’. No wonder there are articles suggesting that Yoga may be dangerous. No wonder people really are injuring themselves!
I’ve seen many suggestions that the reason yoga has become dangerous is that not enough attention is paid to anatomy.
That’s a side issue. It’s also something that householder Yoga teachers who run TTC’s will say to justify what they do (“I teach good anatomy so that my student teachers are safe”). But in reality, to teach Yoga properly only a basic understanding of anatomy is required. You don’t need a degree in anatomy to teach yoga, because

Yoga is not gymnastics.

Yogasana is intended primarily to prepare the body to be comfortable sitting for meditation. If it’s taught as such, with emphasis on breath and inner awareness rather than physical ‘shape’ and external competition then it’s totally, 100% ‘safe’. Actually, it’s more than safe, it’s healing.
It is also, of course, a wonderful physical exercise – but that is a secondary benefit.

Yoga is a spiritual practice.

There are true heroes on this planet.
Find them.
Because the world  needs one more.
If you feel it, share it. Please leave a comment. Spread the love!

3 steps to profound healing (broken heart, bones, spirit)

I bleed. 
My heart bleeds out into the lonely night, and only the yearning for daylight; only the memory of a better day gives me hope…
Do you know what I mean? I know you do.
At least on some level, you do.

I’m a healer. I work as a therapist, I counsel people, and I heal their wounds (mostly emotional, but also physical). I didn’t ever desire to do this. I wanted to do many things, but never this…

When it came on me though, I knew it was my calling.
Healing is the simplest, most natural thing in the world. There are just 3 simple steps that you have to take to heal almost anything.
Of course, not everything can be healed. But even most things that are thought incurable can be.
And these are the 3 steps:
1.   Take responsibility for it.
Whatever the problem, it’s your problem. Own it. It’s yours. Not anyone else’s.
Even though you may have thought in the past that it was someone else’s fault.
Even if you wanted it to be someone else’s problem.
It isn’t. It wasn’t. It’s yours, and yours alone.
Own it.
Face it.
 Imagine that this problem is (literally) in your hands. Hold it up before your eyes and look into it deeply. This belongs to you alone. You alone can let it go.
But first, you must own it.
When you have taken responsibility you no longer blame others; and you no longer look for outside of yourself for the answers.

You know that you are responsible for your own change.
Quite often people call me and ask if I can help their partner / parent / friend. I have learnt to say ‘no’ in those situations. If that person had taken responsibility, they would be calling me themselves. If they haven’t taken responsibility, I can’t help them. Neither can you.
2.   Find the cause of the problem.
This is not so hard as it may seem, but it’s not as easy as step 3. It’s not as hard as step 1 though. Most people don’t make it past step 1. You should know that. If someone comes to me having taken step 1 (having taken responsibility for their problem) then I can almost always help them. And when they do come, I have the utmost respect – because I know what it takes to come to that point. It takes humility, and dignity, and courage. It takes being real. Most people don’t have that courage, and that’s why the world is in the state it is in…but more of that in a moment.
To find the cause of the problem, there is a very simple formula. Trace the problem (to use the analogy of a tree) to its roots. The topmost branches of the problem are in the head. The outermost symptoms are in the head (thoughts, beliefs, idea). The trunk of the problem is in the heart (emotions). The roots are in the gut(deeper feelings of trauma)… and the cause is in a reaction to those deep feelings of trauma. The reaction is a survival instinct.
Ask the question “how does this problem make me feel?” And then keep on asking that question until you come to the deepest feeling. Then ask yourself: “When I feel that deepest feeling, what do I want to do?”
The answer will be a survival instinct – almost all of our problems are rooted in our survival instincts.
There are exceptions to this rule – secondary gain is the most common one.
But if you clear the secondary gain (the process is almost identical to the one outlined above) then very often the problem falls away immediately.
Step 3: Heal the cause.
This is so easy as to be almost ridiculous.
Yes, that’s right. Healing is easy.
Taking responsibility is hard. Finding the cause is a little tricky, but when you know how, it’s pretty easy too. But healing the root cause of almost all our problems (gut-based survival instincts) is a doddle.
The cause of the problem is a subconscious blockage. To be specific, the blockage is a subconscious association between safety / survival and an instinct (fight, flight, and freeze – and their many variations: for example, fight may translate into feelings of wanting to run, hide, escape, etc.)
So if the nature of the problem is that it is subconscious, we heal it by simply making it conscious.
You see, our essence is pure consciousness. Light.
The blockage is like a shadow.
In the same way that you can remove a shadow by simply throwing light on it, you heal the subconscious blockage by bringing the light of your awareness to it.
This is mindfulness, and the power of it cannot be overstated.
When I heal a client’s blockage, I bring us both into a state of presence (here and now), and we acknowledge the blockage.
Our combined awareness (the light) bearing down on the blockage (shadow) makes it simply disappear.
The blockage is like an uninvited guest. When he is discovered, he leaves promptly. He is in fact waiting to be discovered, and wants to leave. He has a guilty conscience. He doesn’t belong there.
What belongs there is pure consciousness. When the blockage is removed, pure consciousness flows through the space again naturally, spontaneously and joyfully.
***


This is the most important thing in the world! There is no issue more urgent. Nothing is more worthy of your attention, time, and energy.
The world is in the state it’s in because so many of us are motivated unconsciously by survival instincts. In one word: fear.
We behave the way we do as a species (war, abuse, greed, hypocrisy, corruption) not because we are innately bad. On the contrary, we are innately good – our essence is goodness, or God-ness (“made in the image of God”).
However, our innate goodness has been tainted by the very thing that makes us so intelligent. Our higher thinking. Somewhere along the line human beings forgot how to quickly and easily release trauma (wild animals do it naturally). We instead learnt to hold on to our trauma. And those instincts that helped us to survivethe trauma stayed locked in place – permanently switched on.

So that our lives become ruled by subconscious tendencies towards fighting (conquer, destroy, kill, argue, conflict, win, etc); flight (hide, run away, escape, remain passive, etc); and freezing (numbness, paralysis, stiffness, lock-down, tightening up, etc).
This is why you may be a highly evolved, spiritual person, but have health, emotional, or psychological problems. Because there is something in your subconscious that trips you up and interferes with your essential nature from expressing itself naturally.
It all comes down to survival instincts.
When enough of us heal these blockages, I am sure there will be peace on earth, because peacefulness is the natural inclination of life. War is an aberration, like murder.
Death, killing, sickness – these are not aberrations – they are natural and necessary aspects of life. But war, murder, corruption and abuse are the consequence of un-released and un-healed traumas.
It’s so, so simple. We have the tools to forge a new society, a new earth, a new humanity.

Healing ourselves is the ultimate environmental activism.


It is a political act.


It is an expression of Ahimsa (non-violence) and Satya (truthfulness) and compassion.

Let us heal ourselves and each other.
Let us heal the global heart that is bleeding and crying out for us to stop abusing ourselves.
“He who saves one man saves mankind”
Save yourself. Save mankind.

Simplicity. Because the revolution will not be televised.

When my wife and I first moved into our hilltop home / retreat center amongst the farmland and forests of Eastern Slovenia, we left our T.V. behind.

Hills, forest, farmland; no tsunami!
We’d decided to simplify…
Our courtship was in an ashram, and the austerity of our lives there brought us face to face and heart to heart and soul to soul in ways that I had dreamt of, yet had not dared dream of.
Our courtship was unlike any other I had experienced – and I’d experienced many; mostly fast and furious, and without real substance. But meeting Petra was like tasting a fruit that I’d never heard of before; it was a totally new, fresh experience, that burst into my senses and spread through my body, mind, and spirit.
We spent 6 months getting to know each other the old fashioned way. Surrounded as we were by Swamis who had taken vows of renunciation (my intention on coming there was to become a Swami myself!) we couldn’t express our feelings for each other in a physical way; we couldn’t even hold hands there!
So we talked when we could, but mostly just ‘tuned in’ to each other’s energy, bathing in the electric awareness of loving presence that seemed to surround us whenever we happened to be in the same room.


It was a magical time; also frustrating as hell! Having grown up in a culture of microwaves, one-night stands, and instant coffee, it was the supreme lesson in patience that I unwittingly needed.
Our first ‘date’ was to the cinema, to see ‘The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe’, chaperoned at the last moment by a Swami who shuffled down the aisle, stepping over people’s legs in the semi-dark, in his orange robes with an orange knapsack, and pulling out a thermos flask to ask, grinning from ear to ear:
“Chai?”
The soundtrack to our courtship was all Kirtan and Indian flute and tabla. And our shared favorite was “I am the eternal seeker of peace, love, and simplicity”. Those three words are on our wedding rings now, even if mine is somewhere in the Atlantic off the coast of the Algarve (long story, another time).
So when we moved in to our new house, we shed our television in the name of simplicity. And so I come to the point of this little story:
Soon after moving in, we met our postman for the first time. Please bear in mind that we live several hundred kilometers from the sea…
The postman sped up the steep hill and turned sharply into our driveway, sending gravel spinning in all directions. He huffed and puffed his way out of the van towards us, immediately sensing that he was stepping into a different world: Petra and I had just spent 2 hours meditating and practicing asanas and pranayama, and were feeling deeply mellow. He was on guard; this was unknown territory… he clocked our car; in those days a mobile advertisement for our yoga business.


He became visibly suspicious.
Handing us our post, he asked us about the car. We explained that we taught yoga, and he immediately asked us, rather indignantly – as if the very idea were some kind of travesty –  if we were vegetarian. When we replied that we were, he looked worried. He questioned us about protein, and didn’t look at all convinced.
Then he glanced at our house.
“You don’t have a t.v. antenna”
“No, we don’t need one, because we don’t have a t.v.”
Incredulous: “You don’t have a TV?!”
Smiling: “No!”
Wide eyed, “But what will you do” glancing furtively over his shoulder “if there’s a Tsunami”!
Now, I have no idea how he thought that a t.v. would help us if a Tsunami magically appeared on our hilltop above the clouds.
No idea. But I realized something very profound that day: Television makes people afraid, whilst reassuring them that they’re safe as long as they watch it.
Insidious.
If love is light, and fear is the shadow in which we all too often get lost, then television can be a serious obstacle between us and the light.
I’m not saying that you should trash the television: but watching it less never hurts, and awareness is all. Petra and I actually have a box in our home now, and the temptation is always there to over-indulge. We use it mostly to watch dvd’s.


Bonus video, Gil Scott Heron’s ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’:

‘Auschwitz Dancing’ video: love or fear… a choice we make, every moment.

Do you believe in the possibility of peace on Earth?

I do…

***
This article was inspired by a video sent to me by a friend. That video is at the end of this piece, and if you haven’t already seen it, great! I ask you to read first, and watch later. Then, come back and leave a comment expressing what you felt about the video.

If you have seen the video, great! If you liked it, you’ll get what I have to say. If you didn’t – I ask you to read first, then watch the video again, and see if you still feel the same way…



***
I don’t only believe that it’s possible: I believe that it’s our purpose here, as human beings, to create peace. With our capacity for compassion, understanding, and intelligence we certainly have the potential to be the guardians of this beautiful Garden, our Mother, the Earth.
I think that that conviction is probably what caused my reaction to this video of Adolek Kohn, an 89-year-old Auschwitz survivor, dancing with his daughter and grandchildren at the concentration camps where almost all of his family were ‘exterminated’ 65 years ago. The first time I watched it I thought it was hilarious and uplifting. The second time, my wife and I both cried like babies.
Many people have, I think rather predictably, attacked the video. I don’t judge those people: on the contrary, I fully understand their reactions: we are conditioned to see things as being black and white; good and bad; yes and no, in this society. Why? Because our society is head-based. I’ve written about that in this article on ego, so I won’t go into it again here.
I don’t judge those people, because I know very well how hard it is to escape that conditioning, which tells us we must react in a certain way, to certain things. Like, for example: reacting with shock and horror and respect to the Holocaust, and Auschwitz, and death.
But you know what? That conditioning is what enables Holocausts to happen in the first place! It’s too easy to react to this video in the old, conditioned way… to say:
“Oh, Holocaust. We should be very respectful and quiet and somber…because, you know, that was BAD”
What good does that do? What good does a negative reaction EVER do?
Some people might say that being respectful, and somber, and quiet isn’t a bad or negative thing really. I would answer that we’ve been doing that for a long time, and still there are holocausts happening in the world.
I’ve never visited any of the concentration camps, but I’ve heard it said that there is no birdsong there. As if the weight and darkness of what happened silences any beautiful expression. It’s a somber, quiet, respect-filled place, and the energy of the holocaust remains.
Watching that video was a breath of fresh air. People laughing, dancing, singing, having fun, and enjoying life. I couldn’t help thinking: “Hitler must be turning in his grave”!
If he is turning in his grave, I bet the people who died in those camps are dancing for joy in theirs!
To transform the energy of hate, we have to let go of the energy that created it. Collectively.
As Einstein said: “you cannot solve a problem, by using the same consciousness that created it”.
In other words, being heavy, and dark, and somber isn’t going to change anything. It isn’t going to make the world a better place.
I believe that dancing, and celebration, and laughter will.
In any case, to the people who attack this video, I say this:
Adolek Kohn was there 65 years ago. He is still here.
If that dear old man, who went through what he did, wants to dance and laugh with his grandchildren in that place, I salute him. What courage it must have taken, to come full circle and return there without hate.
I consider it one of the greatest honors of my life to have seen him doing that, and I thank his family, from the bottom of my heart, for making this video:

EGO 2 – don’t fight it!

Ok, so in the first article on ego (EGO 1) I said that the ego is not real. I said that ego is really an illusion. I also said that “much of the spiritual ‘work’ that many people do and have done for many years, is almost a waste of time.”

I have to qualify my statement that the ego is not real. So first, I need to speak about reality:


Reality is subjective. But it’s also absolute!
What do I mean?
I mean that there is a subjective reality, and an absolute reality.
Two people experience one event and remember differently what happened – memory is subjective. But it doesn’t mean that two different things happened does it? It means that in reality, experience is subjective.
The reason for this subjectivity is that we don’t experience reality as it is – we filter it. We have a filter between the world and our brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). It literally filters the information that comes to us from the outside world.


If you have never heard of a car called a Saab before, then you don’t see Saabs. As soon as you hear of it – as soon as it enters your awareness, you begin to see them!
How is this possible? One minute (in your experience) the car doesn’t exist – the next minute they’re everywhere!!…




It’s because there are literally billions of pieces of information EVERY SECOND coming to our attention. We simply cannot process all of them. So we filter out the ones that don’t serve us. This is the job of the RAS – basically it simplifies things for us.


So it begs the question: can we ever experience reality non-subjectively? Can we ever know the world AS IT IS, rather than as we THINK it is.


I said that the ego is not real.
Well, it IS real – it is real in a subjective, relative way, that depends on our previous experience. It shapes and conditions our present experience of life, so it has a real influence. But that influence prevents us from knowing the world as it REALLY is.


The RAS and ego are highly interconnected. They both simplify our experience of the world – something that has been necessary for our evolution, probably even our survival as a species. However, if we want to know reality – I mean, if we want to know the absolute truth; the absolute reality that underlies all of existence, we have to go beyond subjective, relative truth. We have to have a strong desire to let go of all that we think we know, all that we think we are, all that we think we see, and surrender to the vast emptiness of naive innocence and humble ignorance.
Is there anything more terrifying? I don’t think so…
Is there anything more worthwile?…


ENLIGHTENMENT. Over the ages there have always been people who have told us that there is another possibility in life: that there is something called enlightenment or self-realisation; that it the true experience of absolute reality.
When Buddha was asked the difference between himself and an ordinary person, he stated:
“I am awake”.


The difference is in where we put our attention. You can choose to put your attention on what you already know, think, and believe, thereby reinforcing and strengthening those thoughts and beliefs (and strengthening the illusion that is the ego). Or you can practice being completely open. Letting go of all that you think you know, and surrendering.
After all, whatever it is that we think we know, we are probably wrong!


As long as we struggle to destroy, crush, defeat, or ‘kill’ our egos we miss the point. It’s like fighting with your own shadow. The ego is there. It has an impact on us. But the more attention we give it, the more power it has.
I have known people who have suppressed many aspects of themselves in order to combat the ego. For example, renouncing sensory pleasure like sex, chocolate, and other kinds of ‘goodies’. In my opinion, they cause themselves a lot of unnecessary suffering. If you want to be happy, joyful, and at peace, why fight?! That’s what I meant when I said that a lot of people waste a lot of time fighting with the ego in the name of ‘spiritual practice’. Why fight with yourself?


Buddha said:
“There is no way to happiness. Happiness IS the way”.
Be happy. Don’t fight with yourself. Especially with your shadow – the ego. If you feel something, whether it’s anger, joy, or conviction, use that feeling to get to know yourself more deeply. Knowing yourself more deeply is the only way.
Buddha’s last words to his students were:
“Be a light unto thyself”.


That’s where it’s at.