ready for healthy results?
    
People taking Kripalu’s Healthy Living programs are experiencing results.

My blood pressure is down, I’m not snoring anymore, and I’ve only used antacids twice since January! But most importantly, I feel marvelous. Healthier. I have much more energy, and I’m dealing with stress better.
—Marsha L., attorney, Arundel, Maine

Kripalu Healthy Living Programs give you the skills and resources to make sustainable changes for a healthier lifestyle. You can choose from six specialized programs: Health and Vitality in Midlife, Integrative Weight Loss, Fitness Challenge, Yoga for Health, Food as Medicine, and Health for Life.

Find out more about Kripalu’s Healthy Living Programs.
love, sex, and life
    
Sex is probably the least talked about—and most thought about—aspect of our lives. Renowned author, teacher, and sex therapist Gina Ogden wants women to start talking, break down barriers, and figure out what sexual energy really is—and isn’t. Gina’s work teaches us how to listen—to other women, to our own bodies—so we can begin to think differently about sex, establish healthy self-esteem, and rediscover passion and desire.

Read an excerpt from The Return of Desire, Gina’s brand-new book: "I seem to spend much of my professional life reassuring people that it’s OK to feel good. Too many of us have been led to believe it’s self-indulgent, immoral, the cause of all suffering. Don’t touch, don’t taste, don’t even think about it … "
Read more.

Gina will be leading a weekend program at Kripalu. Find out more/register: The Return of Desire, August 15–17, 2008.
new to meditation?
    
Spend a weekend with popular meditation teacher Bhavani Lorraine Nelson learning how meditation can help you cope with stress, improve your health, unlock your creativity, and even slow down the aging process. Whether your goal is enlightenment, revelation, relaxation, or simple clarity, Introduction to Meditation, and Bhavani’s wisdom, humor, and clarity, will guide you in customizing a practice that is perfect for you and your lifestyle. (And you can earn CE credits while you’re at it!)

Find out more about Bhavani’s
Introduction to Meditation, July 18–20, 2008.

Explore other meditation programs at Kripalu.

Listen to a sample and read a review of Bhavani’s CD Meditation Made Possible.

time for summer reading!
    
Clear your desk and stock up on great reading for the months ahead. The Kripalu staff summer reading list is back! Kripalu’s Director of Information Technologies recommends a book that has profoundly changed the way he thinks about food, a Front Desk staff member writes about one of his favorite books on the power of yoga, and Kripalu’s Assistant Editor recommends a book on women’s relationship with ambition. Increase your appetite for reading and enjoy the diversity of titles chosen by the Kripalu staff.

Check out staff reading recommendations!
calling all yoga teachers
    
Kripalu’s annual Kripalu Yoga Teachers Association (KYTA) conference invites yoga teachers from all traditions to come together with other amazing and dedicated professionals for a chance to deepen and invigorate personal practice and teaching skills in a place that fully supports a yogic lifestyle.

Yoga for the 21st Century: Personal Practice, Global Impact, August 22–25, is an opportunity to celebrate and explore the ways in which our passion for yoga can create peace both within and without, transforming ourselves, our students, and the world.

Find out everything you need to know, register, and view workshop offerings.
poetry as spiritual practice
    
Poetry, says Robert McDowell, is the most common language of devotion and the richest expression of spiritual practice. And it can help us fall more fully in love with our lives. Used in prayer, chant, and song, poetry expresses the sound and shape of the spirit. In Robert’s 5-day workshop, you will read, write, and use poetry as part of daily rituals, aspirations, and intentions, and engage in a reflective writing process for deeper awareness and enjoyment.

Find out more in Writing and Praying Poetry, July 13–18, 2008, with Robert McDowell.

Read an interview with Robert McDowell that appeared in Ode magazine.
healthy living recipes
    
It’s summer! Time to fire up the grill (or the oven) and cook up some burgers—take your pick between a vegan black bean burger or a sun-dried tomato turkey burger. These two recipes from Executive Chef Deb Howard are sure to be the hit of your next backyard barbecue or picnic. Not sure which one to choose? Nutritionist John Bagnulo gives you the scoop on benefits of each.

July Healthy Living Recipes
Sun-Dried Tomato Turkey Burgers
Black Bean Burgers
Desktop Wallpaper
Enjoy the beauty of the Berkshires every day with Kripalu’s desktop wallpaper. Available with and without a calendar.

Easy-to-download.
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Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to teach the art and science of yoga to produce thriving and health in individuals and society.

Visit Kripalu’s website.
welcome
The warmest month of the year and the heart of summer, July is a perfect time to seize the moment, think big, and expand your horizons. In this issue, we offer suggestions for great summer reading; programs aimed toward personal, spiritual, and sexual fulfillment; workshops that can help you make significant improvements with your health once and for all; a new way to think about the path of happiness; and so much more!
the path of unconditional happiness
by Michael A. Singer

As Americans, the pursuit of happiness is one of our primary cultural tenets. But we are given paltry guidance on how to embark on this elusive quest, much less attain it. In this inspiring excerpt from his new book, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, spiritual guide and teacher Michael A. Singer tells us precisely how—and the answer is simpler than we might think.

The highest spiritual path is life itself. If you know how to live daily life, it all becomes a liberating experience. But first you have to approach life properly, or it can be very confusing. To begin with, you have to realize that you really only have one choice in this life, and it’s not about your career, whom you want to marry, or whether you want to seek God. People tend to burden themselves with so many choices. But, in the end, you can throw it all away and just make one basic, underlying decision: Do you want to be happy, or do you not want to be happy? It’s really that simple. Once you make that choice, your path through life becomes totally clear.

Most people don’t dare give themselves that choice because they think it’s not under their control. Someone might say, "Well, of course I want to be happy, but my wife left me." In other words, they want to be happy, but not if their wife leaves them. But that wasn’t the question. The question was, very simply, "Do you want to be happy or not?" If you keep it that simple, you will see that it really is under your control. It’s just that you have a deep-seated set of preferences that gets in the way.

Let’s say you’ve been lost and without food for days, and you finally find your way to a house. You can hardly make it to the doorstep, but you manage to pull yourself up and knock on the door. Somebody opens the door, looks at you and says, "Oh my God! You poor thing! Do you want something to eat? What would you like?" Now the truth is, you really don’t care what they give you. You don’t even want to think about it. You just utter the word "food." And because you really mean it when you say you need food, it no longer has anything to do with your mental preferences. The same goes for the question about happiness. The question is simply "Do you want to be happy?" If the answer is really yes, then say it without qualifying it. After all, what the question really means is "Do you want to be happy from this point forward for the rest of your life, regardless of what happens?"

Now, if you say yes, it might happen that your wife leaves you, or your husband dies, or the stock market crashes, or your car breaks down on an open highway at night. Those things might happen between now and the end of your life. But if you want to walk the highest spiritual path, then when you answer yes to that simple question, you must really mean it. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It’s not a question of whether your happiness is under your control. Of course it’s under your control. It’s just that you don’t really mean it when you say you’re willing to stay happy. You want to qualify it. You want to say that as long as this doesn’t happen, or as long as that does happen, then you’re willing to be happy. That’s why it seems like it is out of your control. Any condition you create will limit your happiness. You simply aren’t going to be able to control things and keep them the way you want them.

You have to give an unconditional answer. If you decide that you’re going to be happy from now on for the rest of your life, you will not only be happy, you will become enlightened. Unconditional happiness is the highest technique there is. You don’t have to learn Sanskrit or read any scriptures. You don’t have to renounce the world. You just have to really mean it when you say that you choose to be happy. And you have to mean it regardless of what happens. This is truly a spiritual path, and it is as direct and sure a path to Awakening as could possibly exist. Once you decide you want to be unconditionally happy, something inevitably will happen that challenges you. This test of your commitment is exactly what stimulates spiritual growth. In fact, it is the unconditional aspect of your commitment that makes this the highest path. It’s so simple. You just have to decide whether or not you will break your vow. When everything is going well, it’s easy to be happy. But the moment something difficult happens, it’s not so easy. You tend to find yourself saying, "But I didn’t know this was going to happen. I didn’t think I’d miss my flight. I didn’t think Sally would show up at the party wearing the same dress that I had on. I didn’t think that somebody would dent my brand-new car one hour after I got it." Are you really willing to break your vow of happiness because these events took place?

Billions of things could happen that you haven’t even thought of yet. The question is not whether they will happen. Things are going to happen. The real question is whether you want to be happy regardless of what happens. The purpose of your life is to enjoy and learn from your experiences. You were not put on Earth to suffer. You’re not helping anybody by being miserable. Regardless of your philosophical beliefs, the fact remains that you were born and you are going to die. During the time in between, you get to choose whether or not you want to enjoy the experience. Events don’t determine whether or not you’re going to be happy. They’re just events. You determine whether or not you’re going to be happy. You can be happy just to be alive. You can be happy having all these things happen to you, and then be happy to die. If you can live this way, your heart will be so open and your Spirit will be so free, that you will soar up to the heavens. This path leads you to absolute transcendence because any part of your being that would add a condition to your commitment to happiness has got to go. If you want to be happy, you have to let go of the part of you that wants to create melodrama. This is the part that thinks there’s a reason not to be happy. You have to transcend the personal, and as you do, you will naturally awaken to the higher aspects of your being. In the end, enjoying life’s experiences is the only rational thing to do. You’re sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Go ahead, take a look at reality. You’re floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience. You’re going to die anyway. Things are going to happen anyway. Why shouldn’t you be happy? You gain nothing by being bothered by life’s events. It doesn’t change the world; you just suffer. There’s always going to be something that can bother you, if you let it.

This choice to enjoy life will lead you through your spiritual journey. In truth, it is itself a spiritual teacher. Committing yourself to unconditional happiness will teach you every single thing there is to learn about yourself, about others, and about the nature of life. You will learn all about your mind, your heart, and your will. But you have to mean it when you say that you’ll be happy for the rest of your life. Every time a part of you begins to get unhappy, let it go. Work with it. Use affirmations, or do whatever you need to do to stay open. If you are committed, nothing can stop you. No matter what happens, you can choose to enjoy the experience. If they starve you and put you in solitary confinement, just have fun being like Gandhi. No matter what happens, just enjoy the life that comes to you.

As difficult as that sounds, what’s the benefit of not doing it? If you’re totally innocent and they lock you up, you might as well have fun. What good does it do to not have fun? It doesn’t change anything. In the end, if you stay happy, you win. Make that your game, and just stay happy no matter what.

©2007 Michael A. Singer. From the book The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself. Reprinted with permission by New Harbinger Publications, Inc. www.newharbinger.com

Michael (Mickey) Singer is the founding director of the Temple of the Universe, a long-established yoga and meditation center where people of any religion or set of beliefs can come together to experience inner peace. Through the years, he has made major contributions in the areas of yoga, the arts, education, health care, and environmental protection.

Don’t Miss View calendar of Spiritual Practice and Inquiry programs at Kripalu.
spreading the word …
Accessing the Creative Life

"Creativity asks us … to believe there are new possibilities out there," writes Reverend Thomas Ryan in the introduction to his new book Soul Fire: Accessing Your Creativity. Directed toward readers in the second half of their lives, Soul Fire emphasizes the power of developing, tapping into, and reveling in your creativity. Interspersed with poetry and excerpts from inspiring articles, each chapter offers questions for reflection, creativity exercises, stories from various spiritual traditions, and Rev. Ryan’s personal experiences with accessing his own "soul fire"—a heartfelt, practical book for a joyful creative life and available this month at the Kripalu Shop!

Don’t Miss Soul Fire: Accessing Your Creativity with Rev. Thomas Ryan, July 18–20, 2008. 

Cultural Survival Bazaar at Kripalu, July 5 and 6

The Cultural Survival Bazaar returns to Kripalu this month for a weekend of music, cuisine, and fairly traded art and crafts from indigenous cultures throughout the world. Cultural Survival is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and promoting the rights and voices of the world’s 370 million indigenous people, and their multicultural fairs serve as an opportunity for education and fundraising for their work.

Find out more at www.cs.org.
quote of the month
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
—Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), Tibetan religious and political leader
Corrections We make every effort to ensure the accuracy of our information; however, errors do occasionally occur.