Ep# 23 Ani Pema - Buddhist nun, on 50 years of spiritual practice developing her humanity.

Our guest today is highly respected Kundalini expert and researcher Lawrence Edwards. His life long passion to know that Truth of the inner life brings a deeply steeped background in science to a profound inner mystical experience. He chronicles the awakening, unfoldment, and integration of the underlying power of the Universe, the Kundalini Shakti, in his most recent book, Awakening Kundalini – The Path to Radical Freedom. A book I highly recommend for those serious about understanding Kundalini and the subtle process of Kundalini Sadhana. He has narrated an audio presentation of the same name with guided practices and lectures that summarize a lifetime of study and experience. 

He is the founder and director of Anam Cara, Inc., a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to teaching meditative practices from a variety of traditions. Dr. Edwards has taught at universities, hospitals, corporations, professional meetings, prisons, hospice programs, and yoga and meditation centers in the US, Canada, and India. He has been on the faculty of New York Medical College since 1998.

Dr. Edwards is a board-certified neurotherapist, and a licensed psychotherapist. For the last 45 years, he has developed unique insights that bridge scientific and mystical domains through direct knowledge. This growing direct awareness informs and enlightens every aspect of his life. The understanding and insights that have been revealed to him in this ever-deepening process of Self Realization are what he shares with us in this remarkable conversation.  

For Show Notes and to directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net– Show Notes, Links, and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ – For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.

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Our guest today is Lee Lyon, world-renowned meditation teacher and author/translator of the recently released, The 112 Meditations from the Book of Divine Wisdom, the meditations from the Vijnanabhairava Tantra, with commentary and guided meditations. 

Lee has traveled the world, from the 1980s to today, teaching 1000’s the art of simple meditation and introspection, showing the way to access the deep internal experience which is the goal of all spiritual practice. Lee’s gift is to make the complex and esoteric simple and available to the uninitiated through his marvelous storytelling. He makes the deepest and most profound mystical teachings available to everyone, particularly Westerners, without any knowledge of Sanskrit or Eastern thought. 

Lee’s brilliant translation and rendering of one of the most ancient and esoteric Tantras, Vijnanabhairava, entitled ‘The 112 Meditations from The Book of Divine Wisdom’, makes this rare tantric gem available to Westerners for the first time in an unencumbered and easy to read format. His thought-provoking and insightful commentary and guided meditations make studying this once abstruse Shaivite scripture a pleasure.  

In our highly illustrative conversation, punctuated with Lee’s gifted storytelling ability, he demonstrates his ‘slow it down and feel your way into it’ approach to teaching. He shares his early Canadian roots and the life-changing profundity he experienced in the great Canadian frontier while still in his teens, as well as his spontaneous awakening, and with complete candor and transparency the process of integrating his inner and outer experiences, finally culminating in a decade of work on The Book of Divine Wisdom. 

We hope you enjoy this conversation. 

For Show Notes and to directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net– Show Notes, Links, and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ – For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.

Our guest today is Leo Dale and we’re your hosts Marc Ketchel and Larry Holmes. 

Leo is an audio/video producer and a lifelong musician. Having traveled extensively particularly to India, he is just as comfortable on location anywhere in the world as in his studio in Melbourne Australia. 

Our conversation today covers a lot of ground, beginning from his early upbringing in a large Irish Catholic family of musicians where he’s #7 of 8. He shares his dramatic Kundalini experiences and insights including many while visiting the Indian ashrams of Baba Muktananda and his successor, Swami Nityananda at Shanti Mandir in Magod, Gujarat. 

His story is one of the effective integration of the dynamic Kundalini energy into a very productive and active worldly and family life. We think you will find it informative and uplifting. 

For Show Notes and to directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net– Show Notes, Links, and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ – For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.

Our guest today is with Swami Dayananda or as she’s known today, Ani Pema, a Tibetan Buddhist nun. And we’re your hosts Marc Ketchel and Larry Holmes.

Swamiji currently resides in Chiang Mai, Thailand, but has spent decades living and traveling in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Thailand. She is a direct disciple of Swami Muktananda, the Shaktipat (or Direct Transmission) Master, and spent the last 12 years of his life with him as he traveled the world initiating thousands into the Way of the Siddhas or Perfect Masters. 

After Muktananda’s passing she eventually found resonance with Tibetan Buddhism and was initiated into a monastic order as a nun in 2001 in Bhutan. 

Our conversation covers the full spectrum of her spiritual work in many yogic disciplines and spiritual traditions as well as the convergence of Transpersonal Psychology as taught by Jungian professors prominent at the time. 

In our conversation, we discuss her investigations and study of the effects of multigenerational trauma in spiritual practice and awakening. We explore the understanding of Shaktipat and subsequent Kundalini unfoldment. She shares with us what she feels is the most important understanding gleaned from the 50 years of her practice, what she calls embodied humanity. 

We discuss her discoveries through deep spiritual work in two of the greatest direct transmission lineages in modern spirituality.  Her wisdom and insights are rare and completely applicable to our current times. 

We hope you enjoy this conversation. 

For Show Notes and to directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net– Show Notes, Links, and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ – For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.

We’re your hosts, Marc Ketchel and Larry Holmes, and today we’d like to share our reflections, insights, and thoughts about what’s next and how to make the most of the current situation. This is a short conversation but one we hope will give you some perspective and add value to your life. What we discuss is how a simple shift in viewpoint can help each of us, in our own way, get the most of the current circumstances and make the process of going forward more fulfilling and rewarding. 

Show Notes

Jane Goodall “COVID19 has shown us that we are all connected…Many people feel helpless right now, but they must stay hopeful that they can influence one another through compassion and understanding.” 

Jane Goodall and Her Chimps – 60 minutes

Episode #20 Joe Smith – The Transformative Power of Breath

Resources, Tips, and Solutions

Power of Gratitude - Gratitude uplifts (you and others), inspires others to act compassionately 

Dalai Lama on Compassion – Time magazine article 

Transformative Power of Selfless Service

In the process of spiritual awakening, the act of selfless service is one of the most mysteriously transformational acts we can do in this life. 

Identify at least one frontline worker; healthcare worker, grocery store workers (often the lowest paid in your community). Find out what you can do to make their life easier or more enjoyable or in some way relieve the unimaginable stress and anxiety they live with day and night. 

It might be contributing to meals for healthcare workers program or to their family in your community or nationally, make face masks for them (they don’t have the time to make them and they are not being supplied adequately in most cases). Reach out to one that you know and ask them what you can do to help them and tell them how much you appreciate what they are doing. 

Importance of Food Banks and the Impact of Hunger

Here’s a startling fact from David Beasley, Executive Director of UN World Food Program, 260 million people are on the brink of starvation right now globally, 300k per day will die today.

Focus globally is you have the resources or locally with these resources: 

Feeding America Food Bank Network – 200 Food Banks across the USA.

Bread of the Mighty Food Bank - In our local food bank, $1 feeds 10 meals, which is a huge value for the $1. Not to mention the goodwill and karmic merit that accrues. 

Importance of Social Distancing and Wearing Face Masks

Social distancing is the most effective way to ensure your health and that of others. Wearing a mask is the second most effective way. Use a homemade mask to cover your n95 mask (if you are lucky enough to have one) to extend its life and save those resources. If you have any doubt about this as a win-win strategy to protect yourself and others, read this very short article: https://mashable.com/article/coronavirus-study-80-percent-of-americans-wear-masks/?utm_campaign=FEED+BLAST-Mashable+Top+Stories+Daily-20200509

Mary Reilly Nichols holds a BA in anthropology from Harvard University. is the Director of Nalanda Institute’s Yoga, Mind & Spirit and has been teaching yoga from a devotional/experiential perspective for over 30 years. She specializes in direct transmission experiential Yoga with an emphasis on the development of wisdom and direct experience through the lens of the non-duality traditions of  Advaita Vedanta, and the Tantric methods of the Trika school of Kashmir Shaivism and Kundalini Yoga. 

Her meeting in the mid-1970”s with the Siddha Master, Baba Muktananda, a Shaktipat Guru, changed the trajectory of her life. She spent 5 years under Muktananda’s direct tutelage living in his residential ashrams both in India and here in the US. 

She currently teaches in a diverse range of settings from academia, to yoga studios and Institutes, to stress management in psychiatric clinical settings and is involved in ongoing research on the mind/body benefits of yoga and meditation.

Her story is unusual in many ways, but importantly she began her remarkable and often dramatic journey as a very normal young college freshman when the latent Kundalini energy awoke, quite spontaneously while she was studying in her dorm room. She had no interest in spirituality and describes her normalcy in her writings about her awakening on her website, http://www.meditationmary.com/home/

 “I first met Shiva one evening in my dorm room during my freshman year at college. It was a few weeks into the first fall semester at Harvard.  I had scored a single room as a freshman by claiming on my roommate questionnaire that I was impossible to live with, had erratic sleep habits, and smoked minimally 2 packs a day, which was all true.”

“There were a handful of people I knew in those days who meditated but the whole thing held no appeal for me, I thought it looked pointlessly unproductive and boring.”

The intensity of her study and depth of her experience is very insightful and instructive, particularly for those who will never meet a true Shaktipat Guru in the physical form. She is adamant about the fact that you can still have a very rich and satisfying relationship with the Supreme Guru who resides in your heart as the essence of your breath. In our conversation, she elaborates on the details of how she engages this divine relationship. 

This is a conversation not to be missed. In fact, you may find yourself listening to it several times. Grab a drink of your favorite beverage and enjoy the conversation. Please leave your comments on this post on the websites below. We respond to every comment personally. 

To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net- Show Notes, Links, and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ - For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.

Our guest today is Joe Smith, who we interviewed in Ep# 19. You can see all the details of Joe’s amazing career as a senior executive in multiple healthcare companies where he managed employees in the thousands and budgets in the hundreds of millions. I asked Joe to come back and share with us in this very focused interview his experience with HeartMath and his decades-long work with breath and the deep insights he has received through this work with one of our most important biological functions. 

In our conversation, he shares his clear understanding of the physiology of breath and how to use it to awaken our highest potential. He shares the simple yet immensely powerful techniques to achieve the state of coherence, our most optimum brain state in a matter of minutes. He says, the state of brain coherence makes everything else you do clearer, easier, and more efficiently accomplished. Who wouldn’t appreciate that? 

To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net- Show Notes, Links and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ - For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.

Related Resources

HeartMath and HRV with the emotion of Gratitude

HeartMath Research Library

Scholarly articles on HeartMath science and HRV

Our guest today is Joe Smith, retired healthcare executive, Consciousness explorer, endurance athlete, brother, husband, father, and grandfather. His remarkable story is one of adventure, pushing the envelope, and real-life wisdom. 

Our highly engaging conversation with Joe was over 4 hours long, and we were just getting started. What we are sharing with you today is only a small part of the full-life wisdom that Joe shared with us. But you can be assured, this is not the last time you will hear from Joe, the story is to be continued. 

What he shares with us in this conversation is his extensive deep-dive research and experimentation over four decades with psychedelics. Principally plant-based entheogens like psilocybin, and LSD and their consciousness-expanding affects. He also shares his extensive relationship with the breath, including hundreds of free diving experiences in oceans all over the world, extreme immersion in Rebirthing, Holotropic and Transcendental breathwork. All his experiments and experiential research has been with the intention of opening wide the doors of perception and non-dual unitive awareness. 

Joe is retired now and enjoying his time with the children and grandchildren while keeping his daily exercise routines outdoors where he communes with nature for hours each day usually on his bicycle, but when snow is on the ground he breaks out the snowshoes or skis rarely missing an opportunity. 

Prior to his retirement, he had an illustrious career in the healthcare sector starting as a cardiopulmonary technologist and then came into his own as a founder/director of a long string of healthcare facilities most often around a comprehensive set of exercise modalities, in both freestanding and hospital-based facilities. 

As a President or senior executive of multiple healthcare organizations, he managed personnel in the thousands and budgets in the $100 millions. His track record and accomplishments are frankly remarkable. 

Needless to say, he has accumulated a lifetime of wisdom; as a businessman, father and husband, and a serious consciousness explorer. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net- Show Notes, Links and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ - For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.

This is a special weekly series that we are initiating as a compassionate offering to our global community. It will include actionable guidance, insights and techniques to help everyone stay grounded, think clearly, and find ease during these challenging times. 

The format is short, generally 30 -45 minutes in length, packed full of actionable insights and techniques from experts and teachers with a proven track record of dealing with the circumstances we are all challenged by today. 

I believe you will find the time well spent and expect you will want to take notes or listen to each episode many times. If you find value in what we are sharing, please take the time to pay it forward and share it with your friends and family. They will appreciate it very much.

Please note, this series is in addition to our regularly scheduled long-form interviews and conversations which will continue on a weekly basis. So, beginning this week you will receive two episodes each week. We hope you enjoy them. 

We’re going to begin our series this week with authors Kimberly and Jim Carson, nationally recognized chronic pain experts, health educators, and Mindfulness therapists. Their research and program development at the prestigious Duke University Medical Center (Duke) and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) are documented in their latest book, Relax into Yoga for Chronic Pain: An Eight-Week Mindful Yoga Workbook for Finding Relief and Resilience. Their pioneering Mindful Yoga intervention methods are known as “Yoga of Awareness” has brought ease and relief to thousands of patients and yoga practitioners alike for more than two decades. You may remember their very popular episodes: Kimberly Carson Ep# 17, and Jim Carson Ep#6.

If you haven’t listened to those episodes please do. Their wisdom is deeply insightful. 

You can contact Jim and Kimberly directly at their website, mindfulyogaworks.com or order their newly released book here on Amazon. 

To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net- Show Notes, Links and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ - For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.

Related Episodes

Ep# 6 Jim Carson, Ph.D. - Author and Chronic Pain Expert on How to Effectively Treat Chronic Pain through Meditation, Breathing and Yogic Movement.

Ep# 17 Kimberly Carson MPH, C-IAYT, E-RYT– Author, Nationally Recognized Chronic Pain Expert, Health Educator, and Mindfulness Therapist. 

Our guest today is Kimberly Carson, author, nationally recognized chronic pain expert, health educator and Mindfulness therapist. Her research and program development with her husband, Jim Carson, PhD., at the prestigious Duke University Medical Center (Duke) and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) is documented in their latest book, Relax into Yoga for Chronic Pain: An Eight-Week Mindful Yoga Workbook for Finding Relief and Resilience.Their Mindful Yoga intervention methods known as “Yoga of Awareness” developed by Kimberly and her husband Jim, has been shown in research trials to significantly reduce pain and fatigue in women with metastatic breast cancer, breast cancer survivors, as well as women with fibromyalgia.

Kimberly and Jim’s work are unique from others in the field of pain management, because the methods and expertise they have developed over the last two decades are all backed by rigorous clinical trials. These extensive human trials have empirically proven to the yoga and scientific community alike the efficacy of their methods. 

Kimberly is currently serving on three large National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinical research trials evaluating yoga and mindfulness interventions in opioid-dependent chronic pain patients, metastatic breast cancer patients, and MS patients and is the co-author on 25 peer-reviewed articles. 

She is also the author of Relax into Yoga for Seniors: A Six-Week Program for Strength, Balance, Flexibility, and Pain Relief.She co-directs national yoga teacher training programs for yoga teachers and healthcare professionals focused on health challenges specific to aging as well as cancer and chronic pain at Duke’ Integrative Medicine Center and OHSU. Both of Kimberly’s books are available on Amazon.

In our conversation, Kimberly shares the genesis of her passion for relieving pain through mindfulness and yoga as a healing art and science, her deep insights gleaned from decades of in-depth clinical work and the daily practice which guides her highly engaged life as a wife, mother of twin teenagers, educator, researcher, and author. Her skillful mastery of the conscious flow of life and the total integration of all its elements will inspire you in your own daily journey. 

We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did, and if you do, please share it with your friends. 

Related Episodes

Ep# 6 Jim Carson, Ph.D. - Author and Chronic Pain Expert on How to Effectively Treat Chronic Pain through Meditation, Breathing and Yogic Movement.

To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net- Show Notes, Links and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ - For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.