Juggling Yoga as Spiritual Cultivation Practice

All the years of our lives are made up of seconds. Some seconds take us closer to our goals, some seconds can take years off our lives. A second marks our birth, a second will mark our death.

I’m setting aside a few minutes every day for documented that juggling can grow brain cells in quantities that are detectable by medical imaging. The same study went on to find that when you stop juggling, the neurons created will disappear again if they are not maintained. But I’m not doing it for some abstract benefit, like jogging because some doctor told me it would be good for my heart. Juggling Yoga is my spiritual cultivation practice.

Juggling Yoga as spiritual cultivation practice may be new, but the seconds of our lives don’t really know from new or old, traditional or radical. Hatha Yoga, Qi Gong, and many exercise practices have become very popular because they bridge a gap between the physical world, and individual spiritual experience. They do not insist that one set of movements is “spiritual” while our “normal” activities are less spiritually significant. Rather, they mark a set of movements which we take the time to infuse with conscious spiritual significance. The difference is not in the world, not in our bodies, but in the union we establish between the movement, the world, and our conscious effort.

Juggling cannot be faked. You are either juggling, or you’re not. Wherever you are, with three sacks to throw around, you are faced with a challenge. When you know how to juggle, you can start juggling, and in so doing reach a known state of mind through the physical activity of juggling. Juggling Yoga extends the juggling challenge. Engaging that challenge on a daily basis establishes a new baseline. Juggling Yoga becomes part of the emotional landscape of your consciousness. The world is filled with excuses for becoming angry, confused, depressed, afraid. It’s filled with distractions, emotional drama of all sorts. Juggling Yoga is a clearing. It is an engagement with the most natural force that exists (gravity) in even the most unnatural of places. A daily practice in Juggling Yoga grounds me.

All day long, week after week, year after year, I walk a path through my life in response to a world filled with distractions, adversity, responsibilities. Juggling Yoga gives me valuable seconds each day to declare a break from a reactive life, and establish a deliberate spiritual path. One that shows me progress. One which requires exacting attention, and one which demands more than lip service.

Juggling Yoga: A Daily Practice for Health and Well Being is available.

There will be a Juggling Yoga workshop at the OM Factory in New York City June 19th. Click for more information, and to register.