Journal

During my high school years and all the way through college, I considered myself an agnostic at best, and an atheist at worst. I wanted to believe in a higher power, but my outlook on life was so dim that it didn’t seem possible for a loving, intelligent deity to exist behind the suffering we see every day. It wasn’t until I went to India that my perspective began to change. I began to see the possibility of my higher self, the possibility that there could be more to life than capitalism. So forceful was my experience in India that it was no longer a question of believing whether or not something was out there, but a question of understanding what that something was.

My first fumbling attempts at creating a regular meditation practice took place aboard the USS Jason in the South Pacific in 1980. A quiet place for introspection wasn’t an easy thing to find onboard a navy ship. Climbing into the privacy of my rack, a cot-like bed stacked four high, I would close the curtain and meditate in a horizontal position. I couldn’t sit upright because I only had about two and a half feet of head space available. As any meditator can tell you, meditating while laying down usually leads to sub-conscious rather than superconscious states. With all my meditations quickly ending in sleep I soon gave up the practice.

In June of 2015, Lauren Walker, author of Energy Medicine Yoga, hosted a class at East West Bookshop. Coming out of the 5 hour “Pro-Aging & Detox” workshop, I was bubbling with new energy and new information. I felt clearer, lighter and as if I was a new person. I couldn’t wait to tell everyone I knew about it. The burdens, the toxins, the emotional baggage, the years of pain and discomfort in my body faded away that night. I had gotten used to going to sleep and waking up every morning with neck tension. That was the first night I went to sleep without any pain. When I woke up the next morning and throughout that day, I was still relieved of the tension and was bubbling with joy.

In the early hours of Sunday, August 26, we have a Full Moon in Pisces. This means that the Moon will be in Pisces while the Sun holds ground in Virgo.

For this lunation, what I’m wondering is this: how does the unseen, the mysterious, weave its way into our material world? Pisces helps us to understand that everything is energy and imagination, and that it’s all connected. Virgo then takes this knowledge of oneness and helps us to focus on the concrete and practical intricacies of whatever it is each individual can do to contribute to that oneness.

Gina Salā, vocalist, chanting artist, music director and sound healer talks about chanting, yoga, and spirituality. 

See Gina at East West Bookshop on Sunday August 26, 2018 at 5-7pm. $25.

Greetings Yogis, it is the month of  August  in the year 2018, and while it may have been minutes, or days or even years since you last took a deep, slow, fully conscious breath, fear not! However long it has been, the great teachings of the ages assure us, that what is important is not how long we have strayed away breath but that we come back it here and now. As you read on, you can begin to tune into the rhythm of your own breath, noticing where it is moving in the body. Maybe just by bringing your attention to it, the breath deepens automatically. Try not to force anything- as the great teacher and founder of Ananda Yoga (the lineage of Yoga practiced at East West Bookshop) Swami Kriyananda taught, “All progress in Yoga is made through greater and greater relaxation.”

I have been practicing yoga for nearly 30 years and currently teach adults. Most recently however, I participated in a kid’s yoga camp as a teacher for ages 6-8. What the heck, I thought. Yoga has proven useful in many aspects of my life, a valuable tool, let’s see what it does for children. First of all, it was a joyful, playful experience, creatively energizing and exhausting as well.  Children tend to move quicker than adults; most children will move into a yoga posture faster than you can say the name, especially if they have practiced yoga before.

It’s interesting to note that while Tolkien’s work was initially embraced by and associated with the Hippie culture of the 1960s, Tolkien possessed a personality in stark contrast with his readers. He wasn’t an older generation hippie professor like Alan Watts or Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) who talked the talk and walked the walk of the younger generation. He was outwardly the proverbial “Oxford don” touting a stately tobacco pipe as he poured over medieval Anglo-Saxon texts. Oh yes, and he was a devout Catholic! How is it that a story from scholarly professor captivated millions of young people in the cultural revolution of the 1960s? The answer? Inwardly, Tolkien was a mystic first, scholar second. 

I thought it would be appropriate to recall the roots and history of East West Bookshop, and being a bookshop, we can trace our roots back to a single book: Paramhansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi (AY).  Hailed by many as one of the most important spiritual books of the 20th century, it has also been found on the bookshelves of many celebrities, billionaires, academic critics, and spiritual leaders. Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, had a copy of this book given to everyone who attended his funeral. But the AY is more than just a famous book – it is the seed from which sprouted many spiritual trees, and it is from one of these trees that East West Bookshop was born.

If you know your moon and rising signs please listen to those too. Your rising refers to the quality and meaning of the path you are on in life. The moon refers essentially to ego and how life is likely to unfold over time. It is also important to realize that you have free will and can choose how you use these energies. You have essentially two choices in using your astrological energies. One is to serve ego related needs to the exclusion of most everything else. The other is to awaken from this ego state and serve that spirit which animates us all living its’ life through us as us.

The warm sunshine, smell of sunblock, and the salty sea air… sounds like summer in Seattle! Whether you’re a fan of the heat or not, there’s one thing we can all agree on that will make it better: Ice Tea! And local organic ice tea to boot!I was inspired to write this blog after restocking our favorite tea company Flying Bird Botanicals. They are a small business located up in Bellingham Washington. They only serve organic and sustainable products, from tea to local raw honey from Mt Baker.