[Pictured: Fabulous Feathered Pipe Dessert]

Yoga Sutra Book I: 36

Visoka va jyotismati

By meditating on the inner, sorrowless light within the heart, the mind develops stability

At my recent workshop at Feathered Pipe Ranch we started out by adding to our introduction, one quality that we each associate with the heart. What struck me is that no one had to “think about it”,  we all simply knew what was so when it came to identifying these qualities.  We use phrases like, “speaking from the heart” to mean that the words touched into something meaningful, universal and connected in us.  I have had times when words have literally silenced my analytical mind due to the note they struck in my heart.  Speaking from the heart can pierce through argument and conflict more directly than analysis or logic can convince the mind.

Meditating on the light within the heart is to FEEL its energy.  Not by observing it from the head but by consistently placing our attention/awareness in it, we experience the heart qualities as truths to be embodied, not ideas to analyze.  Having said that, it is exciting to me that the heart is being identified by science as its own information processing center.  Recognizing that we are fundamentally energy, not matter, researchers at places like the HeartMath Institute use highly sensitive SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device) technology to record the heart’s electromagnetic field.  They now know that the heart’s electrical field (ECG) is 60 times greater in amplitude than the brains (EEG) and that the heart’s magnetic component is 100 times stronger than the brain’s magnetic field.  The heart’s electromagnetic field is measurable 3-5 feet outward in all directions from the physical body, and probably further, but the instrumentation is only accurate to this distance at present.

I believe that Sutra I:36 is referring to what science now calls Heart Coherence.

Heart coherence is when, through practices like slow, deep, rhythmic breathing that develop easeful feelings in the heart, the brain matches the heart’s ease by releasing chemicals of well-being and anti-aging hormones.  This state is correlated with deep intuition and highly enhanced immunity.   Jyotisa means light in Sanskrit.   Light packets, or photons, are discrete indivisible units of energy that carry information.  If focused upon consistently, as in the slow breaths referred above, the light energy of the heart reveals itself as our joyful inner being with all of the qualities listed and more.

When the mind becomes stabilized in the heart qualities, these qualities take the lead.  Our individual and collective vision for leadership can be truly transformed when we choose to take the hero’s journey from head to heart.

Namaste,

Lynne

Namaste Friends,

Yoga cosmology refers to a Unified State of Consciousness from which we all individualize as sovereign minds that are creative by nature.   We create, or draw to ourselves, what we believe and feel and act on, on a consistent basis. Our creations reflect our most often repeated thoughts and words empowered by the emotional state in which they arise. These thoughts and words may be conscious or subconscious but either way, they are powerful influences in our lives. The closer that we align our thoughts and feelings to the state of Oneness, the more we overcome conditioning from influences of separation and fear.

A quote from a course I’m taking on the Science of Mind and Spirit mentions that, “We cannot INDIVIDUALLY (my emphasis) override thousands of years of collective belief or systemic oppression.  However, we can use this teaching (and our practices) to transform the systems from within, through our awareness, choices, actions, and love.”

Belief systems are fundamental to the choices we make and how we behave.  I believe that we have the ability to open ourselves to a state of Oneness that, by its nature offers solutions and inspiration to act for the highest good of all.  Because, it IS all, so it is acting in its own Self Interest.  I see evidence of this movement toward a new paradigm of connecting with Oneness to heal our collective trauma (we have to see it before we can heal it!) everyday and everywhere.

It is not the loud, in your face, media driven distraction, but rather quieter gatherings of like minded souls taking small and large actions to bring forward a kinder and more generous world.  If we have the intention to help birth a world that works for everyone, we will start to draw to us the opportunities to help in whatever small or large way that is perfect for us.

We were recently at the wonderful retreat center north of Puerto Vallarta called Mar de Jade, where I have held 4 annual retreats to date.  The owner, Dr. Laura Del Valle, had the vision to start the center over 40 years ago to in part, help fund a medical clinic for the local community.  Today, she has made manifest not only a medical clinic, but also a school, an organic farm, a trade school for sewing and trades and a cooking school.  Her vision is the antidote to the violent options that many young people turn to when they see no other future.  The result of the lack of vision was seen on February 22 across Jalisco State.  My retreat group flew out of PV only two weeks prior and it is the first time that I can truly say that we may have “dodged a bullet”, not metaphorically.

This year Mar de Jade’s educational foundation started a program called, “One Retreat, One Child” whereby each participating retreat group can make donations to sponsor a local child for a year at the school. 2000.00USD funds one child for one year.  My group has surpassed this amount so now we are sponsoring more than one child!   I know that you are all generous people and that you may not be able to give more at this time, but if it is within your reach, it is a wonderful opportunity to  help build upon a positive uplifting vision for the young people of this region.

DONATIONS 

NOTE:   I noticed that the fees for the platform were quite high but there is a button to “opt out” of paying the fees.  There is also a place that says “leave a tip” and is set at 15% .  You can customize the amount by clicking on the 15% symbol and change or eliminate the tip if you choose.

Thanks for reading this.  I love and appreciate you all,

My class offerings are found here: Zoom Yoga Classes

Also:
Weekend Workshop at Tyee Arts
Feathered Pipe Ranch Retreat
Mar de Jade Winter Yoga Retreat

Namaste,

Lynne

Two wonderful books/resources that I have come across recently that have impacted my life:

Eat to Beat Disease by Dr. William Li

The Miracle Morning by Hal Elron
There is also a youtube documentary by the same name that is worth a watch, watch to the end.  This is someone who I believe was brought here to show us that no obstacle in life is insurmountable!

Greetings Friends,

This seemed like a good year end/new beginnings sutra.

SUTRA II.16  Heyam Dukham Anagatam

Suffering which is yet to come, can and should be avoided

Musing on this thread, came the following thoughts:

• Every effect had a cause.  
• Every cause had a moment of choice.
• This moment NOW is a result of the choices of the past, individually and collectively.
• The choice we make right NOW, this present moment, will determine future outcome, individually and collectively.

The consequential choices that we make in relating to others, boil down to acting from a place of fear and separation or from the choice for Love and unity.

One choice is determined by defensiveness and reaction to a perceived loss of power and so requires power over, manipulation and control. The felt sense is anxious, frustrated, angry.

The other choice is determined by an inner sense of authority, no loss of power is possible.  There is no need to manipulate or control because there is clarity on what determined the choices made, by self and others.  The felt sense is calm, understanding, peaceful.

Choices drive the behavior and actions which bring our future into fruition.  Although I may not  always make the best choice in the moment due to my own conditioning and projections, becoming conscious means that I can pause and lean into the choice for Love when the next opportunity, in the very next moment, arises.

The choice is ours.  The choice for a truly dazzling future is clear when we listen to the loving authority that abides within, and connects us all.

Happy Holidays and Peaceful Beginnings in 2026

Dear Friends,

April is National Poetry Month.

I was inspired by another yoga teacher and good friend to find a poem to share.

I chose Mary Oliver’s Morning Poem because, well, who doesn’t love Mary Oliver, and because her words resonate.  We are in a time where it seems as though we wake up each day to forces that seem to be daring us to be happy.  And yet, the beauty of the earth is all around us and its’ gifts are lavishly offered, without any expectation of return.  Perhaps the beast within us did choose this place and time on earth because it was exactly what it needed now in order to grow in courage and dare to be happy.

Mary Oliver: Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches–
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead–
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging–

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted–

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

CLASS AND RETREAT OFFERINGS

Monday Gentle and Wednesday Mixed level Zoom classes will continue through May 14.  9:30-10:45 PST    Class information is HERE or email me to be added to the zoom class list to receive the links.  NO CLASS APRIL 21 and 23.

Mar de Jade Yoga Retreat in Mexico,  January 31-February 7, 2026 has some availability.  CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.

Love and namaste,

Lynne

Photo Credit: Rodrigo Erse

Happy Valentines week!  I hope that yours is filled with heart felt love and connections.

In yoga, the heart center is considered the seat of the Self.  Energetically, its central location gives it the unique quality of connecting the lower centers of the body with the upper centers of the body and brain.  Science now knows that there are more neural networks connecting the heart to the brain than the other way around.  In other words, the heart informs the brain!  That is, if we don’t block it and at least give it a chance.  

For thousands of years priority was given to the lower centers of survival so that we could simply maintain as a species.  Then logic and analysis took priority and we seemed to completely bypass the wisdom of the heart.  But now as matter is being questioned as the fundamental basis of reality, consciousness is being given a more serious look.  In his book, An End to Upside Down Thinking, Dispelling the Myth that the Brain produces Consciousness,  Mark Gober makes the case that, in study after peer reviewed study, science has never been able to prove that the brain produces consciousness.  I believe it was Swami Satchitanada who said that the brain does not produce consciousness, it is a reducing valve FOR consciousness.  In other words, matter is not fundamental, consciousness is!  I love it when science catches up with yoga philosophy ;-).  And consciousness is not localized in the brain, it is in fact the foundation of all that we experience.

Yoga has long espoused that the heart center has its’ own power and language.  It knows and sees how we are all connected and will guide us in that direction as we become established in this center of awareness.  When our attention/energy moves into the heart, the body (and ego) can let go.  We come into a state of present moment awareness and the heart informs the brain that past trauma is over.  It also helps us to be open to future possibilities not based on the trauma of the past. 

I recently read that “fright” is a temporary and necessary survival reaction.  “Fear” is holding onto, reliving, storing in the body and projecting that fright into the future.  When we live established in the heart, we can more readily make the distinction between fright and fear.  The voice of the heart becomes our inner guidance system.  It gives us courage, care, kindness and a deep abiding feeling of love and connection from within.  And it is always available to us.

I’ve begun starting and ending my day while still in bed, by placing a hand on my heart and taking 5 very slow deep breaths.  It shifts my energy away from thoughts of anxiety or worry to appreciation and gratitude for the day that has passed or the one yet to come.  

Many Heart-y returns,

Love,

Lynne

Are you in the habit of setting an intention for your day?  This is not a to do list, it is the attitude with which you will accomplish your to do list.  Intention is always the start of the creative process, yet it may be completely subconsciously programmed in ways that sabotage our actions from the start.  If we start the day with fear, aggravation, dismay (ie: reading the news, thinking about our problems) we are already at a disadvantage intentionally as our awareness is already looking for conflict, division and contraction. 

If, instead, the day begins with a higher quality intent, and we recall it throughout the day, it can change the whole game.  Like any skill, it takes practice, practice and more practice and we fall down frequently but, so what.  Just get up and go again!   A high-quality intent is one which is more loving, expanding, leading toward connection and bringing caring into community.  Once we set the intent, our faculty of awareness is now looking for ways to help bring it forward.

We are ALWAYS creating from our intentions and adding to the energy of either fear or love in this world.  When fear arises, which is inevitable, rather that push against it or deny it, observe where it is felt in the body.  Soften around it.  Fear is literally trapped energy.  We don’t feel fear when we feel safe. BREATHE, soften, don’t make a story around the fear arising.  If we don’t GIVE the power of how we think and how we feel over to what frightens us, we will not become victims of fear.  The chemistry of fear, downgrades our genetic expression, lowers the immune response and keeps us in the cycle of fight or flight.

Gratitude is one of the most powerful antidotes to the energy of fear.  Dr. Joe Dispenza (You are the Placebo, Becoming Supernatural) repeatedly says that when you change your energy, you change your life.  In study after study, the practice of focusing on gratitude 3 times a day for 10 minutes for as few as four days showed a marked increase in the level of IgA (immunoglobulin A) a classic blood marker for regulation of the immune system, homeostasis and cytokine cells. 

This is only one of many studies over the last 5 years undertaken by UC San Diego in collaboration with Dr. Dispenza.  The studies measure a host of biological markers to determine if meditation results in positive changes in health and healing.  It turns out that there are profound healing effects on chronic disease.  It begins by leading with a loving intention and practicing elevated emotions like gratitude, daily.

https://featheredpipe.com/feathered-pipe-blog/clear-vision-innocence-lynne-minton/

We had a Seinfeld NYE.  Things did not turn out as expected and the sense of humor was not lost on us.  We booked the room almost a year out so that we could view the fireworks display off of the Space Needle in Seattle.  We could view the event from the rooftop of the hotel or else from the room if the weather was inclement.  Simply staying awake until midnight was a victory! We were captured by the anticipation of the dazzling display to come.  The clock struck,  

the fireworks began to burst forth from all sides and from the top of the Needle. The smoke built up, the temperature inversion and deadly still air held the smoke in place, In no less than two minutes into the 19 minute show, visibility had dropped to nearly zero.  No Space Needle, no fireworks to be seen.  Wah wah wah.

Many philosophies give a gentle warning against having expectations about what is to come.  My favorite humorous definition of expectation is ‘premeditated resentment’.  Instead of anticipating an outcome, we are encouraged to take things as they come and simply observe our response.  In so doing, we build awareness of our reactions, judgments and attachments. Of course, as part of a community, we take the appropriate actions to assist in creating a future that we desire but what is the response if things don’t turn out according to our expectations?

Every year gives us plenty of opportunities to react or respond, to grow or stagnate, to observe and change or default to status quo.  I’ve often contemplated why simply sitting and observing the moment is such a powerful agent of inner change.  Anthony DeMello, east Indian, some would say mystic rebel, Catholic priest says, “What you are aware of, you can control.  What you are not aware of, controls you.  Awareness, he says, releases reality to change you and that by simply being aware, all that is false and neurotic within you will drop away.”1

I believe this is one intent of all forms of meditation.  By simply sitting without expectation but with intent to Know Thyself beyond the programming of society, culture, family, religion, the subconsciously controlling mind rises to awareness.  Now we have the power to change the program.

By simply sitting in our own energy field, without agenda or analysis, simply opening the focus to the energy and space around us, will calm the analytical mind and begin to change the quality of how we think and how we feel.  This, in turn will trigger the brain to release its neurochemical magic that will move the body/mind chemistry toward wholeness and health.

The way out is by going in, as we go inward, we expand and as we expand, we include more and more of what used to seem separate from us.  Or we could say that we begin to experience a sense of Oneness. It sounds so simple; it has to be simple so that it is accessible to everyone.  If it isn’t accessible to everyone, it isn’t love, it isn’t oneness.  

We’ll be returning to Zoom Yoga in mid-February.   You can see more details on the zoom class link here. 

Patanjali’s yoga Sutra 34, Book III states in Sanskrit:

Hrdaye cittasamvit

One translation is, “ Perfect concentration on the heart reveals the contents of the mind.”

As a generalization, we probably don’t spend a lot of time concentrating on our hearts unless there is a concern about its health or we happen to be in the throes of new love. To quote Joe Dispenza, “Where we place our attention is where we place our energy”.  Since the heart is literally the driver of our physical life and the seat of our spiritual self, giving it attention can reveal much about our state of mind and the state of our energy.

Feeling and sensing are associated with the heart whereas thought is considered the domain of the head.  Our feeling and emotional states are intimately connected to how we are breathing. Qi gong master Lee Holden observed that anger is associated with resistance to inhaling or taking in another’s perspective.  Angry people tend to sputter and huff a lot.  Sadness, on the other hand is closer to resistance to exhaling.  One may feel choked up, and emote with ragged exhalation or crying.  In either case, even slow deep breathing is the key to restoring emotional balance and energy to the heart.

Love is a felt sense, a state of Being, that is whole.  As we breath slowly and smoothly with attention on the heart, we begin to feel its unique quality of wholeness, its desire for our well-being.  The healthy heart does not oppose or hate or fear anything.  It recognizes that fear and hate are not the opposite of love but are the separation from love.  When we place our attention on the heart and breathe deeply, we clearly see how the mind has created a mistaken identity of duality where insecurity, lack and fear can abide.  By coming back to the heart breath again and again, we move our state of being (mind and heart) from duality to unity.  We overcome our limitations and little by little begin to feel more whole, healthy and joyful.

A simple practice for the next time you are feeling afraid, anxious, nervous.  Recognize where you are and where you would like to be in the moment.  Place one hand over your heart and breathe into it.  Breathe deeply 4-5 seconds in and 4-5 seconds out.  Stay with it for a minimum of 3 minutes.  Feel and sense, don’t try to think about, what is happening.  You may notice the thoughts settling down, the brain and autonomic nervous system switching from stress to ease.   The effects of this simple practice get stronger, swifter and more powerful with repetition.  The insights and fulfillment gained with practice will far outweigh the small effort required to undertake it.   You are literally aligning with love.

Photo by Cathal Mac an Bheatha on Unsplash

BEING    ENERGY    MATTERS

Patanjali Yoga Sutra

• II. 20 The Seer is pure consciousness.  It witnesses Nature without becoming reliant on it.
• II. 24 Ignorance is the cause of false identification of the Seer with the Seen.

“Because of our subconscious programming, the body has become the mind.   As a result, we rely on our known past to create a predictable future with no real change.”

“It is no longer the time to just know, it is time to know how.” (to create real change).
– Quotes paraphrased from Dr. Joe Dispenza

Dear Friends,

Lately I have been immersed in studies of how epigenetics, quantum field theory, and brainwave frequency are validating the practices of pranayama and meditation in their ability to raise our consciousness from a place of survival and separation to a place of unity and creativity.  Dr. Joe Dispenza quoted above, has been a leader in taking thousands of people worldwide out of the ignorance of identification with matter alone (the seen) and teaching them to identify as energy, more specifically, as creative energy (the Seer).

Subjects are taught meditative and breath work while connected to EEGs that are measuring electrical activity in all parts of the brain.  A subject’s mind slows down from Beta frequency (waking active mind state) with the help of breathing techniques and a meditative focus.  The analytical mind becomes quieter.  I was intrigued to hear that scientists referred to the calming of the analytical mind as penetrating a veil.  The yoga sutras say that ” the veil then becomes thin” when we practice pranayama.  In both cases this is the veil between the conscious and the subconscious minds.

With practice, and often after only one session, the mental waves slow to the alpha state where imagination is prominent and eventually to the theta state, where the mind is in a hypnotic or highly suggestible state.  This is where real life change can occur as this is where our subconscious beliefs about our abilities are stored.  Now we are connected to a field of all possibilities, the quantum field.  Here we can make the subconscious conscious, discard the old programs, write and install new ones.

As energy we can affect matter for healing, to evolve and to create.  The results and testimonials of intentional practitioners are revelations of our potential as creators.  We not victims of our environment, not even of our genes as epigenetics tell us. The abundant data show how after as little as one week of practice, novice meditators upgrade their metabolites, upregulate genes associated with health and healing and downgrade genes associated with disease.  The healing miracles we relegated to charlatans and the superpowers we read about in Book Three of the yoga sutras are becoming skills that we can measure and master with dedication and practice.  There are no limits!

Actually, the good news is that there are a few limits.  The frequencies in the field, like radio stations, are tuned to unity, connectedness and Love.  One cannot be in fight or flight, survival mode and enter the unified field. Our stressful lifestyles and agitated minds are what keep us in a perception of separation from the field.

Fortunately we have the tools to open our perception, most readily through the gateway of the heart/brain connection.

In 1991 it was discovered that the heart has its’ own neural network of over 40,000 sensory neurites.  It processes information including thought, feelings and memories independently of the cranial brain.  Heart/brain coherence is a field of study that is being applied to heal trauma among other things. The heart “thinks” not as a polarity organ like the brain that thinks in right/wrong, good/bad, happy/sad, etc.  The heart is a unified organ that does not “hear” criticism or dispense judgment.  Slowing down the breath, focusing on the heart and generating a feeling of gratitude, for anything that has happened or that you would like to see happen is a sure -fire way to increase heart/brain coherence. This in turn resets the vagus nerve, increases resiliency as measured by heart rate variability, and enhances whole body immunity.

I have never doubted that gratitude and love were two of the greatest powers to raise consciousness but it is kind of cool that it is now measurable, repeatable scientific fact!