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Zusatztext 77580208 Informationen zum Autor Rolf Gates, author of the acclaimed book on yogic philosophy, Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga, conducts yoga workshops, retreats, teacher trainings, and coaching and mentorship programs throughout the U.S. and abroad—and online. Rolf and his work have been featured in numerous media, including Yoga Journal, ORGINS, Natural Health, People Magazine, and Travel and Leisure’s 25 Top Yoga Studios in the World . Rolf is the co-founder of the Yoga, Meditation and Recovery Conference at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Lenox, Massachusetts and a teacher at Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Center in Northern California. He is also on the Advisory Board for the Yoga Service Council and the Veterans Yoga Project. A former addictions counselor and U.S. Army Airborne Ranger who has practiced meditation for over twenty-five years, Rolf brings his eclectic background to his practice and his teachings. Rolf and his wife, Mariam Gates, author of Good Night Yoga: A Pose by Pose Bedtime Story, live in Santa Cruz, California with their two children. Klappentext Yoga has never been more popular. Throughout the United States, people are turning to this ancient practice as a response to the pressures of today's hectic world. In Meditations on Intention and Being, acclaimed yoga teacher Rolf Gates draws on twenty years of teaching experience to explore and explain how to take the mindfulness of yoga off the mat and integrate it into every aspect of life. Presented in the form of 365 inspirational daily reflections, Gates helps readers-from experienced yogis to novices seeking a little tranquility-to fundamentally reconsider their relationships with their minds, bodies, and the universe around them through self-reflection. Over the course of seven chapters, he explores Effortlessness, Nonviolence, The Spirit of Practice, Mindfulness, Compassion and Loving-kindness, Equanimity and Joy, and Intention and Being, giving readers the tools they need to effect positive changes in their lives.Chapter One Effortlessness "The pose is what you are doing. Yoga is how you are being in the pose." —Rolf Gates I have chosen to begin with a chapter on effort. The remainder of the book will be about things that we do and choices that we make, and I feel that it’s important, before embarking on that journey, to explain that how we perform an action is as important as the action itself. Sometimes, even when we apply ourselves to all the right things for all the right reasons and get good results, we continue to experience the same inner suffering that drove us to seek help in the first place. It feels as though we will never be free of a nagging inner tension, a belief that as much as we want things to be okay, they never will be. This can be a permanent state of affairs but it does not have to be. With the right support we can discover something simple and easy to remember that will alter how we approach the process of change. We come to see that how we are being is more important than what we are doing. Doing a yoga pose while attached to a specific result is not the practice of yoga, it is the practice of attachment. Attachment focuses on the results and pulls our attention away from the process and opportunities for positive outcomes that present themselves as a moment unfolds. Starting a career, ending a marriage, or raising a family in a state of attachment to the outcome, likewise, is the practice of attachment and will yield the results of attachment. We can’t free ourselves from a way of being without consciously letting go of that way of being. We must let go of what the Buddhists call our “contracted states” if we wish to experience what exists beyond them. When I first started out ...
