<!--www.crestaproject.com Social Button in Content Start--><div id="crestashareiconincontent" class="cresta-share-icon fourth_style"><div class="sbutton crestaShadow facebook-cresta-share" id="facebook-cresta-c"><a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.simplemindfulness.com%2Fmisadventures-of-a-yogi%2F&;t=Misadventures+of+a+Garden+State+Yogi" title="Share on Facebook" onclick="window.open(this.href,'targetWindow','toolbars=0,location=0,status=0,menubar=0,scrollbars=1,resizable=1,width=640,height=320,left=200,top=200');return false;"><i class="cs c-icon-cresta-facebook"></i></a></div><div class="sbutton crestaShadow twitter-cresta-share classic-icon" id="twitter-cresta-c"><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Misadventures+of+a+Garden+State+Yogi&;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.simplemindfulness.com%2Fmisadventures-of-a-yogi%2F&;via=SimpleMindfulns" title="Share on Twitter" onclick="window.open(this.href,'targetWindow','toolbars=0,location=0,status=0,menubar=0,scrollbars=1,resizable=1,width=640,height=320,left=200,top=200');return false;"><i class="cs c-icon-cresta-twitter"></i></a></div><div class="sbutton crestaShadow linkedin-cresta-share" id="linkedin-cresta-c"><a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.simplemindfulness.com%2Fmisadventures-of-a-yogi%2F&;title=Misadventures+of+a+Garden+State+Yogi&;source=https://www.simplemindfulness.com/" title="Share to LinkedIn" onclick="window.open(this.href,'targetWindow','toolbars=0,location=0,status=0,menubar=0,scrollbars=1,resizable=1,width=640,height=320,left=200,top=200');return false;"><i class="cs c-icon-cresta-linkedin"></i></a></div><div class="sbutton crestaShadow pinterest-cresta-share" id="pinterest-cresta-c"><a rel="nofollow" href="javascript:void((function()%7Bvar%20e=document.createElement(&apos;script&apos;);e.setAttribute(&apos;type&apos;,&apos;text/javascript&apos;);e.setAttribute(&apos;charset&apos;,&apos;UTF-8&apos;);e.setAttribute(&apos;src&apos;,&apos;https://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinmarklet.js?r=&apos;+Math.random()*99999999);document.body.appendChild(e)%7D)());" title="Share on Pinterest"><i class="cs c-icon-cresta-pinterest"></i></a></div><div style="clear: both;"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><!--www.crestaproject.com Social Button in Content End--><p>It’s rare that I write a book review but I had to write this one. A friend of mine suggested that I read this book with a guarantee that I would laugh my ass off while learning something. How could I pass that up?</p>
<p>I wasn’t disappointed.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://ow.ly/jkRxH " target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img class="alignright wp-image-2769 size-full" title="Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi" src="http://simplemindfulness.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Misadventures-of-a-yogi-cover.jpg" alt="Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi" width="450" height="705" /></a><a title="Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi" href="http://misadventures-of-a-yogi.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi</a></strong> is awesome. Brian Leaf brings you through his “humble quest to heal my colitis, calm my ADD and find the keys to happiness.”</p>
<p>Whether you’re a long-time yogi or think a “down dog” is a command to get your dog to sit, this book is for you. I wish he had written it about twenty years ago but he hadn’t experienced his journey at that point and I wouldn’t have been ready for the messages.</p>
<p>Everything happens at the perfect time.</p>
<p>I loved the book because I could completely identify with his overachieving programming and how that only led to a misaligned life, physical illness and unhappiness and how he unwittingly discovered yoga and its teachings to turn his life around.</p>
<p>His storytelling had me in tears of laughter as he details his own internal dialogue in so many uncomfortable situations. You can feel yourself there, thinking the same things and it’s hilarious.</p>
<p>He takes you from his first semester at Georgetown in 1989 where he signs up for a yoga elective because it’s the most exotic class he could find to a road trip of personal discovery that leads effectively to a decade of personal development and healing on many physical and emotional levels.</p>
<p>While I was laughing through his stories, I was focusing on how I could implement the lessons he learned in my own life. Concepts like how:</p>
<ul>
<li>An overachieving nature is simply a quest to please other people</li>
<li>The intimate link between our emotions and our physical body</li>
<li>Repressing feelings for so long that we no longer realize we even experience them and our bodies scream for a release</li>
<li>Our egos live in our heads and are incapable of feeling feelings</li>
<li>The happiest and most effective way to live involves constantly asking, “What is <em>most real</em>?” at any given moment and not trying to change it.</li>
</ul>
<p>Throughout the book, Brian uses his life story to describe how he learned about the Eight Keys to Happiness. From my own life experiences, I have to agree with him.</p>
<h2>The Eight Keys to Happiness</h2>
<ol>
<li>Do yoga. And if you already do yoga, do <em>more </em>yoga.</li>
<li>Follow your heart.</li>
<li>Cultivate and follow your intuition.</li>
<li>Apply at least three pieces of Ayurvedic/yogic wisdom to your daily schedule.</li>
<li>Meditate. And if you already meditate, meditate <em>more</em>.</li>
<li>Connect with your heart, and interact with others from that place.</li>
<li>Speak and act from your true self.</li>
<li>Become <em>most real</em>.</li>
</ol>
<p>Below is a Q&;A with Brian to help clarify some of these Keys:</p>
<p><strong><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2770" title="Brian Leaf, author of Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi" src="http://simplemindfulness.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Brian-Leaf.jpg" alt="Brian Leaf, author of Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi" width="150" height="200" />You offer eight Keys to Happiness throughout your book. One of them is &#8220;Follow Your Heart.&#8221; What advice do you have for people who would like to start living in that way?</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The best way to do this is, as often as possible, to ask the question, “What do I really feel right now?” The question is not, “What <em>should</em> I feel right now.” It’s not even, “What is appropriate right now.” It is, “What do I <em>really</em> feel, and what do I <em>really</em> want?”</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Asking these questions helps you get in touch with who you really are and what you’re really meant to do. Feel for answers that give you a deep sense of rightness, passion, and vitality. And, by the way, following your heart does not automatically mean giving up your nine-to-five job at the insurance company or leaving your spouse and fourteen children for your twenty-three-year-old Zumba instructor.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Sometimes the boring job at the insurance company is just right. You might need the paycheck that feeds your family and allows you to spend happy evenings and weekends together. Or not.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Following your heart only means tuning into and following not your ego, not your mind, not what you’ve been told is right, but a deep feeling of passion, vitality, and rightness.</p>
<p><strong>You say that yoga is your calling. Do you believe that everyone has a calling?</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Yes, I believe that everyone has a calling. It could be to teach math, practice medicine, build schools in India, raise a family, or trade stocks. I believe identifying and following one’s calling brings happiness and a sense of peace. Plus, when we are following our calling, we serve the world best, like playing the right part in a giant symphony.</p>
<p><strong>You speak quite a bit about listening to intuition. How can you tell when an urge is intuition and when it is simply thoughts or desires?</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">For me, the litmus test of the legitimacy of an urge or intuition is to do yoga and meditate. Yoga quiets my mind and engages my heart and intuition. If after yoga and meditation an urge or concern goes away, it was just a passing whim. But if during practice, it builds and intensifies, and especially if all other thoughts fade away, leaving one urge shouting to be heeded, then I know I must follow it.</p>
<p><strong>In your book, you share ten yogic yamas and niyamas (Ayurvedic/yogic wisdom) and encourage readers to pick one to follow for a week to see how they feel. What are the yamas and niyamas and where do they come from? </strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The yamas and niyamas are the Ten Commandments of yoga. They come from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, written about 2100 years ago. Patanjali is very famous as the author of the sutras, but in reality, he was probably just compiling and categorizing existing knowledge. He was sort of the yogic Wikipedia of ancient times.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The ten yamas and niyamas are:</p>
<ul style="padding-left: 30px;">
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">non-violence (ahimsa)</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">truthfulness (satya)</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">non-stealing (asteya)</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">moderation (brahmacharya)</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">non-covetousness (aparigraha)</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">purity (shaucha)</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">contentment (santosha)</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">discipline (tapas)</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">self-observation (swadhyaya), and</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">meditation on the divine (Ishvara-pranidhana).</li>
</ul>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Swami Kripalu, the namesake of Kripalu yoga, taught that the yamas and niyamas are like beads on a necklace — if you pick up one, they all follow along. Actually, he said it a bit more poetically, “By firmly grasping the flower of a single virtue, a person can lift the entire garland of yama and niyama.” In other words, dedicated practice of any one of the yamas or niyamas will result in cultivation of them all. This works because, for example, if you follow non-harming, you can’t lie to a friend because at some level the lie would harm her.</p>
<p><strong>Another one of your Keys to Happiness is &#8220;Meditate.&#8221; What advice do you have to offer those who are new to meditation or having a hard time sticking with it? </strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Meditation can be torture at first. It can be just terrible. But it gets much easier. The key is taking small bites. Start with only five minutes. And use the breath as a point of focus. Otherwise, meditation can be five solid minutes of the mind obsessing on lunch.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">I remember one time meditating in a very sacred room at the Kripalu yoga ashram and feeling really guilty because my mind was so ridiculously noisy — my thoughts were so loud in my head that I forgot that no one else could hear them.</p>
<p><strong>What do you mean by “Becoming <em>Most Real</em>?”</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Becoming <em>most real</em> means becoming aware of what we are doing and feeling all the time. It means noticing not only our imagined or desired reality —the one we’re cooking up in our mind to soothe our discomforts and fears — but also the reality that actually exists, the one that is most real.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Here’s an example. Yesterday I was stressed about a deadline for a few chapters I owed my agent. I was all worked up and feeling pretty miserable. I figured that if I could just stop feeling stressed and feel relaxed instead, that then I’d be happy. So I breathed deeply, I meditated hard. I struggled. I pushed and fought — trying to talk myself out of it, trying to shift awareness, trying to trick myself, if necessary, into switching from feeling stressed to relaxed.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">But then I asked, “What is <em>most real</em>?”</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">I noticed that I was feeling tense and stressed. That I knew already. But I also noticed that I was struggling to change things, trying to force myself to feel relaxed. And that was the key. Because then I went from being lost in the struggle to being aware of the struggle. I went from identifying with the struggling to identifying with my deeper self that sees the struggle. For a moment I was grounded in the unflickering flame of my true self. For a moment I achieved the very aim of yoga.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">You can practice being <em>most real</em> by asking yourself, “What am I trying to feel right now, and what am I actually feeling right now?” These two are related: What you are trying to feel right now, or more specifically, the fact that you are trying, is what you are actually doing; it is <em>most real</em>. <em>Most real </em>is not the state you are trying to achieve but the state you are in. That’s where you’ll find the greatest vitality, peace, and happiness.</p>
<p>Check out <a title="Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi" href="http://misadventures-of-a-yogi.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Misadventures</a> if you want to laugh your ass off while discovering how to be infinitely happier.</p>
<p> ;</p>
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Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi
