So I love the idea of writing. I love the decadence of casually saying or mentioning “Well I just wrote this lovely little piece on...” but in reality I just don’t want to write because it takes too long! I’m the kind of guy that goes to the gym, picks up a 10lb dumbbell, does one set of bicep curls and then wonders why I don’t have a six pack yet. Or my absolute favourite is when I walk in the door at home and expect dinner to be made for me – even though I am single and live alone. Thank goodness for take-out!

The hardest thing I think comes when sometimes I’m sitting at home on a Saturday evening and I have no actual plans and everyone I know seems to have plans already. How did that happen? When did they get an opportunity to do all that? Was I too busy doing other things while they were busy with each other? I seem to take the same approach to working out, writing, and cooking as I do to relationships – I simply assume that I will wake up one day and will have magically developed to where I want be overnight. It takes time.

That’s the problem, right? Time. There just isn’t enough of it. I’m like the White Rabbit running around singing “I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye! I'm late! I'm late! I'm late!" How come some people look like they can get everything done that they need to and others, like myself, just can’t get to everything on the To-Do list today.   Then at other times I swing to the opposite extreme and find myself sitting in front of my computer on a Sunday afternoon, again while everyone else has plans, alone and trying to figure out what the frack to do with myself!

One of my favourite teachers [I love you Judith Lasater] put it simply: all humans, each one of us, have one thing in common – we each get 24hrs in a day. I know it sounds so simple. But think of it. We each have the same opportunity to plan and set our days in motion. So how come some are able to get everything they need to get done each day and sleep their allotted 8hrs each night and some of us are madly typing away a column for an on-line magazine at 2AM and still haven’t responded to enough e-mails in their inbox or spent enough time planning out all their appointments, classes and when to do laundry and grocery shopping for the week? Ok maybe I’m just venting. But yes, even I who have sectioned off a large portion of my time and resources to cultivate a greater peace, awareness, love and all that other ooey (or Uy) gooey feel-good stuff get as humanly discombobulated as the next layperson – especially when it comes to getting things done.

Perhaps it’s a Western thing? I used to think that perhaps some are just more important than others and important people are busy people. Prior to teaching yoga, I was working in IT Project Management. Some who have only known me recently may be surprised by that; others who have been a part of trips or events I was helping put together are probably not. I lived in a world very accustomed to trying to figure everything out. We were future forecasting projects and manpower and time 4yrs into the future and estimated how long, how many people and all the other dynamics. Then we try to accomplish that in the set quota, but it never goes exactly as planned and always takes longer than expected. We set up these idealized dreams of how it’s all supposed to work out and then struggle when our team cannot meet it – coming up with various reasons why we weren’t able to meet it. Of course none of those answers to the reasons ever revolves around perhaps scheduling in more time. I would watch as the staff would frantically try to keep up with the paces. This doesn’t happen in workplaces alone though. How many times have you planned out your vacations, or even stay-cations and still didn’t accomplish enough? It’s almost like we’re setting ourselves up for pre-destined disaster.

Since I was recently discussing one of the niyamas, I thought we can discuss another one. Tapas. In the simplest terms it means to burn. T.K.V. Desikachar calls it “the removal of impurities in our physical and mental systems through the maintenance of such correct habits as sleep, exercise, nutrition, work and relaxation.” I love that. Correct habits. And that’s really it. We gotta burn off the rest and leave the best. Look at our day – the last 24hrs. What did you do? If all we are is this present moment then what I am is really what I have done. This would mean that my last 24hrs I spent 5hrs sleeping, taught for over an hour, 10min of handstands and headstands (it was an upside-down day!) 6hrs with friends (it was a particularly social day), about 1hr in travelling, spent 2hrs getting a tattoo touched up and maybe ate for maybe 30min. So the question is what did I do with those other 8hrs? I couldn’t tell you. I was doing something. I have been at my computer long enough that the glass of ice water is now a tepid half glass with a condensation pool at its base but I couldn’t tell you what I got done. But I was busy. Was I living the life I wanted? That’s a third of my day. And this was a Sunday! Tapas talks about the removal of impurities, burning. I like to think of it as refining ore. If I were to take my life and melt it down and burn off all the excess stuff, the things that bog me down and eat my time and energy away, what would I be left with? What would I want to be left with?

Sometimes we just run on auto-pilot. It happens before you realize it’s been happening. That life isn’t a series of decisions, but of reactions to other things and events going on and just trying to navigate through them to make it to some other side. Sometimes in life, you need to make a giant shift and change into an entirely new direction – full steam ahead. Other times some minor course corrections are warranted. But how do you do that when it comes to time?

Here is something that I have found helpful. Look over your calendar in the next two –three weeks. And remove one thing from it that doesn’t fit into your life right now. I learned that having to say ‘No’ to other people is really saying ‘Yes’ to yourself. Another way of preventing this from happening and getting trapped in things you would otherwise not desire to be a part of try saying to the person “Can I get back to you in 24hrs?” This gives you some time to think about whether or not this commitment is something you want to invest your time in and also doesn’t make you feel pressured to have to instantly say yes to someone standing in front of you. Time is valuable. Treasure it. Freeing up a few extra hours a month and who knows. Maybe you can finally plan a day of unplanned adventure – a scheduled day with no schedule. Maybe there’s time for that special little thing you have wanted to do that you haven’t told anybody else about yet. Or maybe you can finally get to that restaurant that’s way across town that you heard so much about but just can’t seem to make it over to. Or maybe, just maybe, you will submit the column you are writing to your editor before 3AM and not feel stressed when trying to help others relax! Jai!!

Numbers, numbers, numbers. They control every facet of our being. I mean seriously. Two inches in one direction and I’m the cock of the chicken coop and two inches in the other and I’m ashamed to get naked in the change room. Add a few zeros onto my bank statement and I walk around like the world is a beautiful, magical place full of wonder. Remove a few of those zeros and I’m a crying baby sulking in my kitchen trying to figure out why I’m such a screw up. A few degrees in one direction it’s the most beautiful day the birds sing to the tune of me walking. A few degrees in the other, and the world is a dark pit and what’s the point in even getting out of bed. To say it’s just a number dismisses so much.

When I step onto a scale I want...almost need it to say something about who I am and all of my energy effort and emotional sanity rests in seeing that, yes indeed I’m a good and wonderful person because the number says so. If it screams out an incorrect one, I will drive myself into a frenzy about how much I have failed as a person and in life. I should just take a shot and buy a lottery ticket, just the right numbers – six of them – and then everything will be terrific. That’ll fix it! It’s a long shot, but it’s the only chance I have. If only things were a bit bigger, a bit smaller, a bit more, a little less, if I can be that perfect number then everything will be just fine, and I can finally be happy.

Bank accounts, body parts, temperature, weight, height, age, area code, model year of car...I just want it all to be the right thing and then... and then... What if no matter how hard I ever try, they will never be the absolute perfect numbers all at the same time? Could I be happy?

I tend to be hard on myself. For years I battled my weight. There was almost a wonderful moment while wasting with full blown AIDS when I dropped about 100lbs in one year and heroin chic was in where I finally liked my reflection – course I was dying! The image in the mirror wasn’t the person I wanted to see. I got everything I wanted but at what cost? I hated him. And I took much time to tell him so! If you were to walk by the hallway outside my apartment door, you would have heard someone yelling at someone else...both the person yelling and the person being yelled at were both me. To say I was unsatisfied with myself was an understatement. No matter how much you liked me, I just didn’t.

A while back, in a yoga class of one of my teachers, we were having a discussion about this same topic. We started a dialogue while in postures about the sound of the voice in the mind that I would use to talk to others if something was going wrong with them. How does it sound? Sympathetic? Compassionate? Understanding? And then what is the sound of the voice in my mind that I use to talk to myself when things are going wrong? Was it the same voice? For me it was a definite ‘NO!’ The question then posed was would I talk to others with that same voice? People like my mother or my 6yr old nephew? I would never. I would really have to hate someone immensely to speak to them in that fashion and even then I probably wouldn’t say it completely do their face. And yet it’s the voice I speak to myself with everyday, the sound of my own comments when I look myself in the mirror and think it acceptable. Yet if I was ever caught uttering it out loud to another it would be considered verbal abuse.

It hit me hard and I decided to make a decision from that day forward. I went up to my bathroom mirror and looked myself in my own eyes and said that from now I was no longer going to be in an abusive relationship with myself and I was never allowed to ever speak to myself in that tone or manner ever again. Period. End of discussion. And thus ended the worst and longest bad relationship I had ever been in.

A few months ago a friend of mine was talking about this movie “What the Bleep Do We Know?” which has this clip about water crystals. A scientist took water from a pristine holy fountain and motion captured it freezing under a microscope to get an image of it – and it was breathtaking. This got him thinking. He then took some distilled water and did the same thing and he found that distilled water forms hexagonal shapes. He then poured distilled water in bottles and labelled the bottles with different words and phrases. The words with “Love and Gratitude”, “Hope” and “Peace” had beautiful crystal structures formed. Words like “I Hate you” “You make me sick” had the results of these round misshapen images often looking distorted and missing even the beauty of neutral water.

How shocking!  What is more staggering though is that we human beings are composed of about 75% water. In the movie, an actor states this quite simply saying “If our words can do that to a bottle of water, just what do you think they can do to us?” This incredible link shows us how our thoughts, attitudes and emotions can directly affect our environment and ourselves. Maybe Stuart Smalley’s approach to life has been right all along “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” Or maybe this little girl has the right idea!

In yoga there is one of the niyamas (self-observances) that captures this discussion quite clearly – Santosha. Santosha means contentment, or the ability to be comfortable with what we have and what we do not have. It’s an interesting sensation contentment. What would it be like if you were content? Right now in this moment? What if everything was exactly as it’s supposed to be? Hmm... A funny question isn’t it?

So at some point, I removed the scale, and decided to retire the measuring tape. I spend much less time with bank statements and number crunching but it’s a challenge I struggle with. I still check the weather and dress appropriately but spend much less time wishing life were a different way. And every now and then when I pass a mirror, I take an old one-liner out and hit on my reflection. Sometimes I just close my eyes and wrap my arms around myself and think about each cell in my body saying “I love you. I am so grateful for the work you do!” I blush at myself and sometimes our casual banter goes back and forth. One day I caught myself saying to my best friend “Is it wrong to sort of fall in love with myself, but not in a narcissistic way?” LOL!

And OK fine, on occasion, really late at night, we may make out a bit. But I never let me go all the way...not unless I buy myself dinner first! Jai!

Starting writing, I thought, like in class, I would start with a foundation and build upon that. Yoga itself means “to yoke” – this idea of connection. In simplest terms it is the connection of mind and body.

It’s a funny thing. You would think that my thoughts and my body would be connected, but experience has shown me otherwise. I have been lost in thought I don’t know how many times and have just plum forgot to eat – even though my body has been crying out with pangs of hunger for hours and I just couldn’t hear it. Or how about other times when my stomach is churning and I’m trying to figure out what I ate earlier to make this happen to me - as I am traveling to a job interview. And yet right after the interview is over, whatever it was I ate earlier must have digested finally because my tummy is fine now.

“Hello! Earth to Daniel!! You’re missing cues here!”

So what is one thing that I can focus my mind on and my body on so they can find common ground in a communication or this dialogue of connection? Breath. And so, as in a yoga class and as in life, we begin with breath.

It’s the one thing we all do so naturally that many aren’t aware of it. Yet at some points, our most critical and stressful times, it’s the one thing we stop doing. Again, we also aren’t aware of it. You know that huge big sigh that happens from time to time? Or that large gasp of air in shock and then a long pause afterwards?

In order to create a big sigh of air or that gasp, one has to hold one’s breath. That may not sound like a big deal, but I like to think of it in terms of driving. What if every once in a while, in the most stressful times on the road, the car just decides to slam on the Emergency Break. How about if the vehicle did it dozens of times throughout the day? Would that seem odd? No indicator and no handbrake access; just holding up the energy inside, right when you need it the most. Most likely that car would be thought of as $!@!?! or broken and taken in to a mechanic or something. Not so with us. We think of it as normal – if we even notice it at all.

In yoga, breath is called prana. The word not only means breath, but life force or life essence. In Daoism, the Chinese called it Qi. In Latin, the word breath is translated as spiritus – or in modern language, spirit. Many cultures throughout the world see this as something much more than the body pulling in oxygen molecules and breathing out carbon dioxide. There is an ethereal quality to it - something beyond.

So somewhere in this magic connection of breath the body and mind can find a way of communicating in a way that actually helps both out and taps into something beyond. Just pause for a moment. Sit down. Turn off the music and other sounds and listen. Wherever you are, let the outside noise become quieter and turn up the volume of the sounds inside the body. Take an inhale breath through the nose. Take an exhale breath through the nose. What does the breath sound like? Is it laboured? Are the inhales and exhales the same speed or is one faster than the other? How about the quality of the sound? Is the breath flowing smoothly or does it feel choppy? Does the chest move with the breath or does it come more from the belly? As these words are being read, are you finding a different change happening? Are you becoming more aware of what’s going on inside with the body by focusing your thoughts inside? Have you changed or shifted your posture, position or cadence of breath without even being asked to? Congratulations! You are now practicing yoga! It can be just that simple.

As my teachers have stated – this practice of yoga is a return to the present. Sometimes the mind is stuck in other places – in the past or the future. It’s as if we have splintered off many parts of ourselves and allocated certain pieces to different tasks, functions and roles. Yoga is a return - a return to the here and now - to the present. Being aware of and living in this absolute moment as it is without judgement or outside influence and recognizing that this is the absolute best place to be right now. I like to think of it as the re-set button to ourselves. Is that a lot to swallow? Absolutely! That’s really deep, way out there! But is there a way that can translate simply into something that is much more tangible and doable? Yes - through breath.

I like challenges and small opportunities to try something new. An experiment if you will. For the next week is it possible to try to take maybe a minute or two each morning and each night to stop and take 10 full breaths? Take these full breaths without any distractions or other activities going on. Does that sound too radical? For some this may not, but for others this may be a huge shift and I totally get that.

It occurred to me early in my practice that I really didn’t consider myself someone worthy of nice things. What an odd thing to come up when it came to breathing!! But taking time out for me was contrary to the way I lived my life. If this sounds easy, then it shouldn’t be a problem to do and will be no big deal. If taking 10 breaths for self every morning and night is challenging or seems like a dumb idea, then maybe that is saying something about what we think we deserve or don’t deserve. I don’t know. I do know that as life moves into a greater awareness with small simple things, the larger big things tend to be revealed.

It all begins with one breath at a time. In and out and in and out and in and out again! Jai!

Hello and Namaste. My name is Daniel and I am excited, delighted and pleased to be one of the new columnists on PositiveLite.

When I first spoke with Brian about the idea of doing it there was a sense of dread and anticipation but this were outweighed by the hope that these words may help bring joy, laughter and knowledge in a casual and upbeat way.

I am a yoga teacher and have been practicing for quite some time. I got into it at a time when I was diagnosed as having full blown AIDS. Through this journey I have learned much and hope to convey that in a way that is kind, loving and considerate. More information about my work can be found on my website: www.danieluy.com.

Topics of discussion may cover a variety of subjects but my life does revolve on yoga, yogic philosophy, health and wellness, meditation and endeavouring to live a much healthier and free life. I also hope to write about some of my hobbies and activities that I enjoy partaking in – spinning poi and fire-spinning for example.

What I share is by no means to condone or discourage anyone from being who and what they are or where they are in their own life, merely showing where I am, faults and all, and what direction and path I am seeking to move towards. If any of this my writing is helpful then it’s worth something. I believe in altruism and giving back as a piece of my own healing in life. I also believe in clean and healthy living as a viable option for success in life, but having said all that, I will write about hamburgers – just saying.

This past Saturday I had a great opportunity to hang out with my mother at the CanFitPro (Canadian Fitness Professionals) Conference and Trade Show. My journey to where Toronto’s leading health and fitness experts were congregating en masse was an interesting experience. There was a part of me still scared about associating there.

The fat child and dying young man aren’t exactly models of physical wellness but apparently they remained undetected beneath my current shell's exterior. My mother is in the process of her own transformation as well and was looking for new ideas and information on how she can advance herself further. While perusing through the displays and booths, we noticed that none other than Richard Simmons was in the house and we thought it’d be a big hoot to go and check him out. Yes I’m sure you have all heard the jokes. I know I have made quite a few in my own time.

So here I am with mom in tow off to see Richard Simmons. The cluster of women (and sprinkling of men) around some fixed point indicated he was in the vicinity. At 63yrs old he was still as lively as ever. Part of me wants to mock this man with the fading afro and gaudy rainbow top, and yet another part is quite drawn to him. Here is someone – a professional like myself, who has picked up the call in promoting positive changes in living and I want to tear him down somehow.

The crowd was quite boisterous and we didn’t feel like fighting for his attention so we thought we’d wander through some of the booths nearby. The sound of the cheering crowd drew us back. The work-out had begun and here I am along with my mother standing in a large group of fitness instructors, yoga teachers, personal trainers, and health enthusiasts watching this wiry old man shake his groove thing with back-up dancers to boot. He then yells out to the crowd while in deep squats, “Drop your ass cause it belongs to me now!” I can swear I’ve heard those words before, just not in public. I suggested that we join in but then the “this is far too weird” dread set in. I turn to my mom and state quite plainly that I will not participate in the crowd, but if I can get up on the stage with him, I totally will.

As the words leave my lips, not five minutes later he’s calling all the men in the audience onto the platform to join him. And so off I go. It occurs to me as I’m walking onto the stage that I don’t know a dam thing about aerobic work-outs! “Oh crap! Please don’t let him call me to the front” I whisper to myself as the class begins. You know how people say that yoga and dance and movement and aerobic work-outs are all the same in rhythm and design? They lie. Regardless of my own embarrassment and inability to complete it with perfection, it’s over before it’s begun and I wasn’t laughed off the stage. Yay!

A few minutes later Richard addresses us and talks about the beginning of his career. He tells of how he was primarily a teacher to students that weren’t really welcome in regular places. Many of them were overweight. This resonates with me. He then calls all the people who are losing or have lost weight to come up and join him. I turn to my mother and she is already moving towards the stage. I look on with pride, and a video camera, as we begin the next part of the work-out. Richard turns around and looks toward my mother and motions her to the front of the stage and the crowd cheers and I tear up.

Perhaps this man is onto something. For all the years that he’s been working and thousands of people he’s been reaching out to help, he’s taken a lot of flack. But in this moment, at this time, seeing my mother in the front row centre stage with a fitness guru trying to change her life, I’m inspired and humbled. Insults be dammed! I am going to do my thing and hope that I may be a fraction as inspiring as that was for me.

The delight of the day came at lunch when we sequestered to one of the restaurants nearby where the waitress turned to me after I placed my order with a surprised look on her face and exclaimed, “Everyone is here for the fitness thing and you’re the only one who wants to eat something fried!” What can I say? I have to be me. Jai!