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Lisa Lahey: Your Immunity to Change and How to Overcom...
Lisa Lahey, EdD, is an author, the codirector of the Minds at Work consulting firm, and a faculty member at Harvard University. She is a featured presenter for the Inner MBA program, a new Sounds True multimedia learning experience that explores how to bring principles of presence and conscious leadership to the business world. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Lisa about the inherent difficulty of making large personal changes—especially when they are essential to the advancement of your career. They talk about the inherent human resistance to change and the need to be fully aware of our “inner landscapes.” Lisa explains how much of our resistance to change is rooted in self-protective patterns that need to be reckoned with before we can move forward. Tami and Lisa also discuss how to cultivate skills such as time management and communication, as well as what we can do to regulate work-based anxiety. Finally, Lisa details the three evolutionary steps for creating meaning and shares her hopes for the Inner MBA program.(67 minutes)
Your Body Is Not What You Think: Looking Beyond the Ph...
This model of a multidimensional body applies directly to the theme of the Deep Heart. I would not write about the importance of the heart unless I knew it intimately firsthand and also understood its critical role in psychological healing and spiritual awakening. If there are, as I propose, layers to the heart ranging from the relatively gross, through the refined, to the transcendent, then many of us will be able to directly or indirectly sense this in some way.
One of the easiest ways to sense the emotional and energetic reality of the heart area is to notice what we sense and feel when we fall in love or, conversely, when we lose someone we have loved via death or a painful breakup. Heart openings are intoxicatingly joyful, and heart breaks are extraordinarily painful. Have you ever wondered why this is the case? Are the opening and closing of the heart purely physiological, or might something else be going on? We will explore romantic love in a later chapter, but for now I’ll just acknowledge the central role that the heart area plays in human relationships and in genuine spiritual openings. The majority of popular songs and a large number of our most compelling stories revolve around love found and lost.
In order to explore your heart in any depth, it’s helpful to sense your whole body with as few ideas as possible. Clear the slate—be open to the possibility that your body is not what you think it is. Rather than approaching your body as a familiar solid object made up of skin, bones, muscles, organs, tissues, and cells governed by neural and hormonal networks, I encourage you to approach it differently—as a field of vibration filled with space.
In the next exercise, you will experience the body as a field of vibration. This meditation is inspired by the Vijnanabhairava Tantra, a key experiential text in Kashmiri Tantric Shaivism that was authored over a thousand years ago. It’s a good idea to record this guided meditation on your smartphone, and I recommend pausing between the steps outlined below for at least twenty seconds. Including the pauses, please allow for at least ten minutes in total. Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed, sit comfortably, and close your eyes.
BODY SENSING PRACTICE
Sensing the Body as Vibration
Take a few deep breaths and allow your attention to settle down and in.
Feel the weight of your body being held by whatever you are sitting on and let yourself be completely held.
Sense the bottoms of your feet, the tips of your toes, and notice a lively vibration. Imagine it growing stronger, gradually enveloping both feet, and then moving up both legs.
Sense the palms of your hands and the tips of your fingers. Notice a subtle vibration—a sense of aliveness.
Feel it enveloping both hands and slowly spreading up both arms.
Feel this sense of vibrant aliveness growing into your hips and shoulders.
And then into the belly and the chest, including your back.
Sense this lively vibration moving up the neck and into the head, suffusing the mouth, ears, eyes, and brain. Take your time.
Now let go of any focusing and sense your entire body as a diffuse field of lively vibration. Notice that it is difficult to tell exactly where your body ends and where the so-called world begins. Allow this sense of vibration to extend out into space in all directions: front … back … left … right … up … and down.
Rest in and as this expansive sense of vibrant spaciousness as long as you like.
Journey into the depths of your own heart with Dr. John J. Prendergast’s guide, The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence.
Lance Allred: The New Alpha Male
Lance Allred is a former NBA player (who was the first legally deaf player in the league), public speaker, and author. With Sounds True, he has published The New Alpha Male: How to Win the Game When the Rules Are Changing. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Lance about the experiences he had in professional sports that led him to reevaluate what it means to be a man in contemporary society. Lance explains how his upbringing in a rural, polygamous commune informed his original ideas about masculinity, highlighting the subconscious assumptions about money and power that affect American men’s self-worth. Tami and Lance also discuss the roles of emotional vulnerability and surrender in the lives of modern men. Finally, they talk about the principle of perseverance and the increasingly urgent need for all cultures to reexamine their assumptions and core values.(63 minutes)
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Meet The Author of Sovereign Self
The Author
Acharya Shunya is an award-winning and internationally renowned spiritual teacher and scholar of Advaita (nondual wisdom) and a classically-trained master of Yoga and Ayurveda. The first female head of her 2,000-year-old Indian spiritual lineage, she has dedicated her life to the dissemination of Vedic knowledge for the spiritual uplifting of all beings. She is the president of the Awakened Self Foundation with its international headquarters in San Francisco and founder of the spiritual nonprofit Vedika Global. Learn more at acharyashunya.com.
The Book
A comprehensive guide to yoga’s most influential texts, making their profound teachings both accessible and immediately practical for modern seekers. Filled with hidden insights and engaging guidance, Sovereign Self will help you awaken and recognize your potential to be joyful, resourceful, abundant, limitlessly expansive, and sovereign.
Show us a day in your life.
I lead the life I want to lead, every day, my heart leading me, and not because I must.
In the early morning I say a prayer of gratitude to my guru and meditate on the beautiful and divine, forever sovereign presence in my heart, that is my true Self.
Self rises silently in meditation to fill my heart with light, and bless me from within. I become, as if renewed, to meet my day with my spiritual power, full on.
Many spiritual seekers and members of my Vedic lineage often join me through my day.
I go hiking with students, lead them through meditations, and impart Vedic wisdom from my 2000-year-old Vedic lineage from India.
From lunch onwards, I like to be mostly by myself in my study, to think and imagine, to feel and to surrender to my higher Self, and capture my inspiration in words. On many days, I spend time in Vedic ceremony and its consciousness awakening inner rituals and meditations.
I also value spending time with my husband. Sanjai is a trained Ayurveda chef. Here we are enjoying the fruits of his labor in our kitchen.
Has your book taken on a new meaning in the world’s current circumstances? Is there anything you would have included in your book if you were writing it now?
In today’s uncertain world, embracing one’s unimagined power can open up possibilities as we synchronize with our true Self.
According to the Vedas, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita—India’s oldest body of sacred yogic wisdom—human beings can be inspired to awaken from conditioning, shed limiting patterns and shackling attachments, and tap into the wisest, boldest, and most authentic and fearless parts of ourselves—which dwell as an invisible potential inside our heart, called Atma, the boundless one. This mighty Self, with all its hidden powers, becomes activated through right knowledge, meditations, and insights, making us true masters of our destiny, able to forge a path of sovereignty in every circumstance, good or bad.
Knowing the sovereign Self in our heart can alter the course of our life; this Self-knowledge can become a source of inner equanimity in any circumstance in life, not only when life is fun and people around us are acting supportively and lovingly, but also when life is unpredictable and people’s behavior is shadowy and dark.
Naturally, this book has taken on a new meaning since I wrote it because today, our world is besieged by uncertainty and possibilities of disease; death is stalking each one of us, invisibly. To add to our collective sense of anxiety, we’ve also witnessed one of the most polarized elections in this country’s history. Social and racial injustice is at an all-time high. Our reality and our values stand to be changed forever. Now, more than ever, the sanctuary beyond fear and impermanence lies within the rediscovery of our true, invincible nature.
If you are a sensitive and evolved soul who believes in dharma, nonviolence, equality, and justice for all, my book, Sovereign Self, will be like a balm to your soul, a flame lit softly in a pitch-dark room—a path revealed, where none existed before.
Share a photo of you and your pet. Did your pet have a role in helping you write your book?
Noddy, my six-year old labradoodle, has been my constant companion through the writing of Sovereign Self, which took almost three long years. The process required me to let go and descend deep within the mystical realms of my being, and connect with the true Self—the boundless essence, Atma, which I talk about in my book.
It is from here, from that boundless essence where I have always been perfect, complete, and inseparable from Source, that ideas would emerge spontaneously and words would become sentences that shall become path-showers for seekers all over the world. Many times, I would meditate and be lost in trance for hours. Noddy would sit patiently by me, and even sacrifice his desire to bark at his arch-enemy, “Mr. Squirrel.” As long as my eyes were closed, my baby would be quiet as a mouse. But the moment my eyes opened, he would greet me with an explosion of love and affection: “Woof, woof, welcome back to my world, mama; how was your inner world, mama, did you find me in your heart, mama?”
Noddy and our next-door neighbor’s German Shepherd, Peet, have unresolved karmic issues from a relationship in their former lifetime. As a result, whenever Peet barks, Noddy barks back with recognition and emotional resolve to sort the karma issues in this lifetime itself! As I wrote and talked about the human ego and how it becomes lost in the chase of relationships and things, the experience of watching them go back and forth in their dance of egos, through playtime and tug-time and wagging-tail-time and angry growl-time, made me smile, and reminded me that we really are always enough in who we are. This is what Noddy means to me—when he kisses me with all his inner sweetness intact, he reminds me that while my ego may be employed in worldly tug-of-wars, my true Self remains whole, happy, and incredibly sweet within. Noddy, you are such a reminder!
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Kintsugi: Filling in the Cracks of Your Life with Gold
The time has come to get started on the biggest work you will create in your life, the most important house you will ever own, the home of your soul. Let’s rebuild your life with strong materials of confidence, self-esteem, and courage. I want you to be a free and confident person, and to achieve that, we need to work hard.
Begin by getting to know yourself. You have no idea what you are like or what you are capable of achieving. During the most vulnerable years of your life, people made you believe that you weren’t capable, that you couldn’t do things, that you didn’t know how to, and that you were worthless. They ignored you, overlooked your achievements, and punished you, and all that has wreaked havoc on your self-image. Look for silence and try to reconnect with your essence. Discover yourself, and explore yourself. It’s no easy task, I know, but that’s no reason to avoid it. Observe yourself without judgment, and get to know yourself a little better each day, the same way you would with a new friend, car, or house.
Start analyzing. Stop being afraid, stop worrying, and stop running away without looking back. Forget about fear, stop reacting, and start analyzing. That is the key: to analyze instead of reacting. Life is a dynamic process, which is good news because you can grow, learn, change, and above all gain confidence.
Contextualize what happens to you without rushing in your appraisals. Now you are capable of identifying when you are carrying out partial appraisals based on fear or a negative self-image that do nothing but activate your alarm systems and generate anxiety for you. The first step toward gaining confidence is understanding, the second is detection, and the third is management. Engage in rational thinking to avoid the tunnel vision effect that a closed and imperceptive mind has tried to contaminate your soul with. Simplify reality, and eliminate the fear factor. I propose an exercise of imagination. Imagine you are at a meeting expounding your point of view on a project, and that suddenly your boss takes out a piece of paper and starts taking notes. You don’t actually know what they are writing, but if you feel afraid, you will believe they are taking notes on the things they didn’t like, when you don’t really know. Perhaps they loved it. Or perhaps they have simply remembered a task they still have to do. So when you don’t know something for sure, don’t rule out any of the options, either negative or positive. This, precisely, is what tunnel vision consists of.
You have many more virtues than the ones you imagine, and you are capable of many more things than you may believe.
Learn more about this powerful practice of healing trauma in Kintsugi: The Japanese Art of Embracing the Imperfect and Loving Your Flaws by Tomás Navarro.
Tomás Navarro is a psychologist who loves people and what they feel, think, and do. He is the founder of a consultancy practice and center for emotional well-being. He currently splits his time between technical writing, training, consultancy, conferences and advisory processes, and personal and professional coaching. He lives in Gerona and Barcelona, Spain.
Read Kintsugi today!
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Integral Transformation, Part One
Tami Simon speaks with Ken Wilber, in the first of a two-part series. Ken is one of the most influential and widely read American philosophers of our time. He is the founder of the Integral Institute and has published over 25 books, including A Brief History of Everything, and The Simple Feeling of Being, as well as the Sounds True audio learning sets Kosmic Consciousness and The One Two Three of God. Ken discusses, “What is genuine transformation?”. (40 minutes)
