What is happiness? Happiness may differ from one person to another, but we are all in pursuit of almost the same things: love, peace, abundance, health, longevity, and other.

How do we express happiness?

This is almost universal. First you want to share the feeling, it seems that if you are the only one who enjoys your “victory” it is just sad, and so you need someone to share that joy. Sharing is what makes us feel even better, the sweeter is the victory.

So separation, individualism is not the way to happiness.

Another thing you may feel is to jump out of joy, to scream, is like every chakra has touched a full potential, like every cell of your body is energized. You fell so good that you can run for miles, there is no fatigue in your body, and you have to let it out. To send that vibe as far as possible.

So your mind will always understand happiness trough the expansion of your body, through the cells when they are energized, proper nutrition, oxygenation. A healthy body generates happiness. Your brain doesn’t make the difference, you can use movements in order to generate signals to your brain which are similar with the ones the brain is generating when a feeling of “happiness” takes part.

It is your soul who wants to expand, when he is experiencing positive vibes. He wants to explode, because it follows the same rules as the universe, his purpose is to expand, and it needs to have space in the body to manifest, to create a flow of energy without blockages.

All this blockages are either due to lack of inactivity, suppressed emotions, unfulfilled desires, etc. And they are sucking the energy of your body, or acting as blockages for the energy to pass freely.

Sadness manifest itself the opposite way, you want to destroy things, you want to get small, to hide, to be alone, “flexion”.

 

Hell was described by many wise minds as a lonely soul. A lonely soul is the hardest thing to bear, you can be in hell but if you have someone by your side, things are just easier. Sharing pain makes it goes away, even if just a little. And that is the expression-expansion of your heart chakra speaking, socializing, creating vibration.

Yoga’s main preoccupation is to open the body, to energize the cells, to reduce/destroy blockages, is preparing the body to experience a new level of energy. Is like enlarging the resistance of your body so it can support higher forms of happiness and energies, and maintain them.

 

Yoga is just creating space for the soul to manifest, to trust who you are, to fall in love of yourself, doubt less what you feel, use your intuition more, creates a fearless expression of yourself.

 

This is what everyone is actually searching for, to feel free and not judged, for what they are and what they feel, a fearless expression of who they are, so they don t feel the need of approval or justification in front of anybody.

 

You may say no, but then take a close look to the people surrounding you. Are  they not your friends, the people who makes you feel appreciated, loved by who you are, yes they may judge, but they do so, because your ego is to big sometimes, they correct the impure things in you, search for your betterment.

Society created an utopic image of what a person should be, something that cannot be reached, and is making you frustrate and follow that your whole life. Just because you want to have a feeling of belonging.

But this is your beauty, your perfection, your uniqueness, the “bad and good” together, the fact that you work towards your betterment, that you follow your heart and passion, that you are euphoric, enthusiamatic about your hobbies.

Paulo Coelho said something like “When you do what you love, and get lost into that action, you have a feeling of God in you, you create something out of love, out of God, you are being used by God in that moment.”

Love all the sides of you, accept and have more patience with the things you want to change about yourself. Develop kindness and patience towards all living things. Do not harm yourself, try not to harm others.

Open your mind, be more in touch with your soul, increases the empathy you have toward others. Become more compassionate. Raise your awareness level.

You will realize that the pursuit of your goals and happiness is by taking joy, in your actions, it may take sacrifice sometimes, but doing what you love will get you less attached to your goals.

Make small changes every day to your betterment. Even if is one more breath that you are aware of, or a small kind of kindness. A thought of gratitude, for who you are today, and take pride in all the courage and situation you have dealt with. Being here today is just another proof of how strong you are, and how stronger you can become.

The awareness and search of spirituality, is growing all around us. It is your decision if you want to do small steps towards your happiness, or steps behind, hiding in your comforts and fears.

“You can only die once, but fear, can make you experience “death” 1000 times.”

                                               How can you enjoy anything in a sick body?

During my yoga training, we had this beautiful approach to anatomy, from a yogic point of view. And it is very interesting to acknowledge what is happening to your body, understanding how the physical aspect of yoga is influencing your health.

Even if 99% is still magic.

One of the most important subjects during anatomy classes was to understand how your mind is connected to your body, and how thoughts influences your body.

So I took a special time trying to explain the functions of hypothalamus.

 The hypothalamus is a part of your brain that has a vital role in controlling the mainly bodily functions including the release of hormones in your body. So this pea size part of the brain is there to maintain homeostasis, keeping the body in a stable condition.

The hypothalamus responds to the exterior and interior environment, sending different signals like regulating temperature, hunger, feelings, telling the body when it should stop eating, sleeping, how to regulate blood pressure etc. He is like the headmaster, CEO of hormones, he has under other glands that take orders from him, one of the most important ones is the pituitary gland.

So on a gross level everything you are feeling in the body is due to this small part of the brain. So love, pain, excitement, sickness, joy, everything that is felt by the body is either an command from your automatic nervous system or your unconscious-conscious thoughts.

So you can either blame yourself, Karma, or this little fellow. But instead of wasting time on blaming it is better to find solutions and the source of the imbalances in our body.

You can numb your senses, using different inhibitors or slowly and gradually ignoring the pain, not paying attention to your body, and eventually creating all kind of disorders inside. Like a doctors can give a pre-op sedation, then cut all your body and you will feel nothing. The same way you  are slowly losing connection with your body.

You may see a desert, and your mind starts thinking “oh that looks so delicious”. Your are creating a chain of thoughts, that will create a demand to your hypothalamus which will eventually generate hormones to travel to your stomach telling “there is a space to be filled”, or “you are hungry”. Even if you already had a copious diner 2 h ago, enough for the whole day.

Why is it so hard to stop eating peanuts, chips, or other kind of foods?

There are foods that contains neuron-inhibitors that block your brain from stop eating. It is like your are always sending signals, commands for more, but nothing is sent back to tell you it was enough. As a late response you get your stomach tissue yelling he is going to explode if more is sent, which is the last resort.

There is a delay between your stomach and your brain. It takes some time for the signals to reach the brain and tell him, that it was enough. But we have a habit to fill our stomach with as much as we can as fast as we can, so we don t feel hunger anymore.

I loved when my teacher used to talk about diseases, and he said diseases are just another word for imbalance. So overweight is not a disease is an imbalance that takes part due to imbalance of your hormones. Is like somewhere on the way a connection was lost.

Instead of having a signal from your stomach telling that all the vitamins, fibers, proteins, where provided, you get a late signal that your belly is about to explode. Try eating slowly, chewing slowly, and give time to your stomach to reach the brain and tell that one plate was enough.

So overweight may be an imbalance due to your thyroid, sedentary life, way you are eating, or what you are eating.

The length of your whole circulatory system,veins nerves etc, is 2 times the distance around the earth. Sometimes the connection between one system of your body and another may be blocked, and the body loses control over some senses, and that is how you get imbalances that creates “diseases” in your body.

Yoga is there for you to reconnect with your body, you “clean” the electric circuit through all the body so you may get the right signals for the body to balance itself. It is like a reset to your body for all its functions. Using simple movements, you create a better connection between your mind and body.

So like “flexibility” is an outcome in yoga, the same  other imbalances will regulate.

Before you could have easily went to McDonald having a big happy meal with no problem. Now you are going to feel pain when you eat something that is not good for your body, and the pain will increase because you are more connected to your body.

So yoga is balancing yourself without any big efforts, you are just practicing and everything else will come. Yoga postures are the external work you do for your body to repair, or remember whatever was forgotten.

Using breathing and postures you’re strengthening the connections through your body, so all the organs, tissue, brain, muscles, nerves, cells can perform their job easily. You are cleaning your body of all the blockages due to the interior or exterior world, all the imbalances you have created due to your choice of life.    

The same amount of time you spend investing in your future,Relationship, financial security, retreat, or other projection, start investing time in your body. How can you enjoy any of them in a sick body? 

After a beautiful indoor cycling, the best thing you can do is to have a cold shower and going to a sauna to relax those quads, calf, hamstrings. Breathing slowly, diaphragmatic breathing, cross-legged.

And yes I know what you are thinking, you are practicing yoga, why would you do something else than yoga. Well just because you are a yogi doesn’t mean you cannot do anything else than yoga. We have the bad conception of what a yogi really is.

You see all the gurus, and all the images of how a yogi should be, flexible, and a skinny body, eating vegetables, or being vegan.

Well it is like we are always following these stereotypes created by everyone, how you should be, not to do etc. How is this any different from the stereotype the society is creating, what it means to be the MAN or the Woman, both business successful very rich, because if not you are not “successful”, expensive cars, diamonds so you can show yourself in big events, that you are so much better than everyone else etc. The thing is that if you fell dominant, you will not prove it, if you know you are better there is no point proving to someone that, because it is just stupid. You don’t have to prove nothing to no one, you just have to believe it yourself.

But the idea is that, success is different to everyone of us, has different meaning, some in their frustration want power, some want “everything”, to compensate the fact they feel they are nothing inside, so you need everything to fill an infinite empty space, and so on.

It is about loving yourself, and realizing you are more than all those people, just because you chose your own path, that makes you special, not choosing a path that has already been walked.

So for me when two yogi are the same, one of them didn’t understand what this existence is all about.

Yoga is about being yourself, unique. I am not trying to be neither Jesus or Mohamed, Patanjali or Buddha, I don t wish for supernatural powers to fly and to heal everybody, I just want a better version of myself.

Yoga is not about being super flexible, doing handstands for hours, bending your body like a contortionist.

For me being like that, and bragging about it, or the need to show your students how advanced you are is like Showing a “special”(handicap) person in a wheelchair how fast you can run. You just don’t do that.

And I m just pointing out the difference between practicing “on and off”, and be devoted to your practice.

Yoga is about raising yourself, and then help others to raise themselves.

Is the place where there is no judgement, where you came and face your fears, the fear of new, the fear of being yourself, the fear of committing to something, the fear of silence, the fear of knowing who you are.

Yoga is about being conscious, awake, and when you take a decision like eating meat, you will know how that will affect you.

When you have one glass of wine more, you know what that will bring in you. When you eat chips and drink coke, you know the pain you are inflicting to your stomach. But is a choice, you are making and being responsible for it, to yourself, not to others.

You have the freedom to do whatever you want!

Now you can still make those choices and nothing is wrong or wright, you just have to realize the price you are paying.

It is ok to do mistakes, that is how 99% of people learn, just some small percentage learn from the mistakes of others.

Mistakes is what makes us human, and let us change this word “mistake” is like something is bad. It is ok to have experiences that are not all, positive.

 

“Good judgement comes with experience, experience comes with bad judgement.”

It is like the best lessons in life, we take by suffering. We need this kind of drama in our life , to see the beauty of this world, there is no good without the bad. So having a beautiful life is not about, dodging the bad all the time, is to realize, that when something bad comes into your life is ok, is like rain, it will pass, and the sun will shine again, and the fact that you are in that situation to learn something, and the lesson will be amazing.

There is no beauty in our idea of a God without the idea of Devil, so we should be thankful to the devil, he s doing a great PR job. Even if God and Devil, are one and the same, but we ll come to that understanding later, when the mind starts seeing the bigger picture.

Yoga is about building a strong unique identity, being yourself, fearless expression of yourself. Rising to the full potential of your mind, body and spirit.

Create your own stereotype, and make of yourself the example you want to follow in life.

My teacher used to say: “Once you put a word on something, label a thing, you limit that which you are trying to describe.”

The truth is, we cannot put a real value or explaining something for what it really is.

My teacher was asked about his journey, when did he start knowing his purpose, or dharma for this life, when did he realize he was different?

He says he was like this since he can remember. He had millions of questions, like:

“what is water!?”Yes, I know is H2O, I know about its proprieties or how it can be used, but what it really is?!

And the truth is nobody knows. We don t know what something truly is. We know how something can be used, but we have not a true definition on nothing. Because everything is so complex and infinite that our understanding cannot explain.

Nothing can be explain fully, it has to be experienced, and even when it is experienced it is subjective.

I am me. I am a human being, I am loving, I am strength, I am intelligence, I am revengeful, I am weak sometimes, I am scared, I am different, I am unique, I am so many things

So who is this me? Because he changes every time.

I really loved when Jesus was presenting himself. “I am that I am…I am before Abraham was, I am”

So when he said we are all Gods, and the fact that God is in every one of us, can we exclude the he really is even in every sentence we use? when we say “I am me”:

“I am” is the God inside of us the energy that keeps everything together and the next word is what we think define us.

So you are a God, the universe who experience himself in this particular human experience, in the character you built your whole life, the decision you made, the action you did.

Jesus also said “If you want to be like me, i can help you …”

So to be like him you just have to separate this sentence “I am …<something>” and just identify yourself with “I AM” like this you become infinite, whatever you put after you become something that has limits, can be described.

I am Samy.

“I” the God, in this short time experiencing myself as this person called “Samy”

So the foundation of our existence is the “I” we use in every sentence, there is no basic-fundamental difference between us. We all have that “I” which has nothing to do to our body, our wealth, studies, intelligence, we are all connected.

This small differences we give so much attention is something else, is society that taught us, and indoctrinated us to think in a certain way. The place you where born or the circumstances you where given to evolve, to use that to create a separation between you and the god inside of you, inside everything, To create duality and EGO is one of the biggest mistake we ever made.

For me you are infinite potential.

Un-manifested potential, wherever you direct your attention, and how much discipline you put into that, or passion, that much you can achieve. There are universal laws that this body has to follow. But everything else is infinite.

There are yogis who chose their moment of death. Who can read minds, and have all kind of abilities. Some people are born like this, some develops this kind of powers.

Their only purpose is to make you realize everything is possible, the impossibility of one thing is only a wall in your head. And the purpose of all this “magic” happening around you is to make you realize who you really are.

 

You are a part of God, you just have to allow it to be. So instead of limiting yourself saying you are something.

Just say … I am infinite, and I can be whatever I chose to be.

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” T.S Elliot

With each new information, each book you read, each experience, there is something in you that is growing your level of understanding is growing.

Perception is changing, you start seeing things differently. The world in front of you changes with that.

How things turn to be better or worse is due to your own personal perception. You and you alone are responsible for what you are feeling.

Reading the same book twice, the first time it seem interesting, but try reading it after 1 year, and see now how many things you have neglected, how is it possible that the same book, had more messages than you were prepared to see before? that the writer was passing a message a lot deeper that you where expecting? and you missed that before…

The same thing is happening in life, improving your understanding and perception, this world transforms also.

“Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.”

“We don t see things as they are, we see things as we are”

Heaven for me is not a place, is an idea, that you have the power to transform everything you want around you, but first you have to have a “transformation” inside.

That you can break a pattern of thoughts that have built since you were born until today, and re-pattern them. Changing what was “a bad” experience in “a needed” experience for you to grow and to become who you are today. To see that every little choice or action took you here, in this present moment, for you to have an understanding and the necessary intelligence for you to enjoy this experience.

That everything has a meaning. When you see someone argue in the street, your mind goes for compassion that you reject that kind of behavior between two people, when you see two birds building a nest, you figure that you love the idea of commitment. And the list goes on.

For me bringing awareness in your life, on your action comes with practice. And it may start with yoga, since for me this is what brought me to the understanding of many things. But even Asanas- yoga postures, the physical aspect of yoga, are just the beginning, just another step towards something else.

It like going to a restaurant, the waiter is bringing you your order to the table and you start eating.

Or he comes to the table, giving you information about how the food was cooked, what spices are inside, and how the order of the spices while cooking is essential. The fact that the vegetables come from a village nearby, from a family of passionate field workers. And what kind of drink is preferable to have, so it can wash your taste buds so each new mouth feels like the first. And the fact that you are not only eating for your mind J but what kind of nutrition facts are in the meal.

Life has just more meaning, when you make your first steps from ignorance to understanding.