Week 3: Roots

This week our focus is on connecting to our sense of inner knowing and on feeling more firmly rooted in who we truly are.

One of our teachers often says that at the depth of our being we are grand, divine, and wisdom dwells within each of us. However, our divinity and wisdom are obscured by the limitations of our conditioning and by the identities we assume in our lives.

Our task this week is to take a look at our thoughts, motivations, responses, and actions to see if they are rooted in our wisdom and divinity or if they are coming from a place of conditioning and limited identity. Do we stay true to our inner wisdom – thinking, acting, and speaking from our deepest knowing? Or do we abandon who we are and what we know to satisfy an expectation, appease another, or gain something we are conditioned to think we need or want?

Let’s move from quickly reacting to being firmly rooted to our deepest self, where we are stable, solid, unshakeable, not easily swayed by situations, events, and expectations.

In Baron’s 40-Day Program he introduces the concept of equanimity in week three. Equanimity is the quality of remaining centered and balanced without getting caught up in the stories constantly swirling about us.

Week 3: Yoga
On the mat this week, focus your attention on being stable, grounded, and centered. Allow your practice to be an expression of who you are, and where you are at, in that moment. Let go of trying to be someone you are not, of playing out some notion of who you think you should be, and of fulfilling some expectation you have been conditioned to think is important. Accept your uniqueness, your greatness, and let that fill you.

Week 3: Meditation
Continue to meditate. Meditation waters the root. It nourishes us at the very source of being – the source which is divinity itself, the field of infinite wisdom.

Always approach the practice of meditation with ease, and remember that the most important thing about it is that it should be effortless. The type of meditation we talk about is practiced as an opportunity to release deep-seated stresses and strains from the physiology. Always guard against imposing any new stress or conditioning on yourself. Remember, what happens with the mind is of no consequence as long as you are effortless with the technique. If you have the need to change your posture, to fidget or scratch an itch, feel free to do so. Also feel free to lie down if you feel fatigued or sleep coming on. Do your best to sit for a period of time that is comfortable for you – up to 15 minutes, 5 or 10 minutes is fine – and be sure to rest afterward.
Week 3: Diet
Pay attention to your cravings, your comfort foods, what foods you reach for when stressed.Make conscious chooses that support your health. Continue to choose fresh, whole food. Continue to let go of stimulants like coffee and sugar. Begin to think about next week and what 3 days will work best for you fast.



No force in this world can make you unhappy when you have mastered the art of transforming every experience into a possibility for expanding your consciousness.~Yogi Amrit Desai