Wanderlust

Like the wildly popular festivals that have taken the yoga world by storm, Wanderlust is a road map for the millions of people engaged in cultivating their best selves. For the 20 million people who grab their yoga mats in the United States every week, this book gives a completely unique way to understand "yoga"--not just as something to do in practice, but as a broader principle for living. Wanderlust helps readers navigate their personal path and find their own true north, curating principles that embody the brand and lifestyle--authentic yoga practices, provocative thinking, music, art, good food, eco-friendly activities, and more. Each chapter includes expert yoga instruction by renowned teachers; inspiring music playlists to motivate readers to practice; thought-provoking art; awesome recipes for delicious, healthy foods to sustain a yoga regimen; and fun, unexpected detours. This wide array of ideas and beautiful visuals is designed to be hyper-stimulating--whether a reader follows the arc of the book from beginning to end or dips into chapters at random, she is sure to find something pleasing to the eye, to feel motivated to practice, and to want to reach for her deepest desires and dreams. This book brings the Wanderlust festival experience into any reader's home.

Auteur

Jeff Krasno is the cofounder of Wanderlust, a series of large-scale festivals combining yoga and wellness with the arts. The events span the globe from British Columbia to Australia, from California to Chile. Jeff serves as co-CEO, overseeing festival programming, business development, and Wanderlust1s retail and media businesses. He is married to yoga teacher Schuyler Grant and is the proud father of three daughters. He lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Résumé
This book gives a completely unique way to understand "yoga" - not just as something to do in practice, but as a broader principle for living. Wanderlust helps readers navigate their personal path and find their own true north, curating principles that embody the brand and lifestyle.

Échantillon de lecture
Practice, practice, practice. All is coming

--Pattabhi Jois

CHAPTER 1

find your practice

A CALL TO ACTION

SCHUYLER GRANT

The unexamined life is not worth living.

--Socrates

This is the threshold. To plow through life, seeking pleasures, avoiding pain, rejecting dissonance, reveling in success, and cursing the vicissitudes of fortune. Or to pursue a life of inquiry, simultaneously nonattached and deeply immersed. To experience yourself as both the center of the universe and a dust mote on the filament of history. To choose to have a practice--a daily discipline of yoking your heart to your mind, your mind to your breath, your breath to your body, your body to the earth and the rest of humanity--is to pass this threshold into the examined, mindful life.

The exact way in which you engage in that yoking (in Sanskrit, the yoga) will change. Should change. The course of your relationships, your career, and your health will inevitably shift; the only constant is change. Likewise, your asana practice and other mind/body pursuits will, should shape-shift over a lifetime.

Passion, depression, contentment, injury, exaltation, loss. Will you engage or will you deflect? Will you be immersed or consumed? Like anything substantial, to live a mindful life isn't easy. It takes attention and skill. It takes beginning where you are, as you are now, yoking this larger intention to the present moment. It takes practice.

Let's begin.

SARAH HERRINGTON

Sit tall

Place hands mindfully open or at heart center

Close your eyes

The focus of this moment is resonance: OM. Like the ringing of a bell. Like an elliptical sound that begins and ends in full silence.

While OM is often written with just two letters, it is said to be made of four sounds: A, U, M, and the silence afterward. Together these sounds invoke a sense of wholeness, and of cycles. When we sing OM, we touch each part of our mouth's palate, from the front behind the teeth to the top peak, the inside of our mouth, to the depths of the throat, guttural. The sound moves in a wave this way, with a beginning, middle, and end, and then the after-effect: a feeling of shifted energy in the room, a vibration in the core of our chest.

OM is a sacred syllable that represents a very specific yet indescribable conception of the Absolute, of All. In the East, many prayers and powerful mantras start with OM. Here in the West, OM is often found at the beginning and end of a yoga class, opening the practice and sealing up the energy at the end like sonic bookends.

Said to be the sound of the universe, OM reminds us of interdependence: We are connected to the universe, and it is expressing itself through us. We are connected to each other in the room, and beyond the room. When we chant OM, we consciously join our intentions and attentions and expand our thoughts universally. The vibration flows strongly through the body and penetrates the center, resonating deep within us the feeling of yoga, union, with all.

Breathe into the space behind your chest

Heart open

Back strong

Empty all of your air and take a deep breath

OM

Sing from your guts, your heart, your throat

Sing from your spirit and your body

Sit for a moment in quiet, be the fourth part, the full silence

Feel the shift you've created with your own voice

The arch and the circle, the ringing, the reminder, the calling toward home

OM is the one eternal syllable of which all that exists is but the development. The past, the present, and the future are all included in this one sound, and all that exists beyond the three forms of time is also implied in it.

--Mundukya Upunishad

YOGA AS.KS US TO ACT: THE EIGHT LIMBS

It's safe to say that as human beings wandering this planet, we share a common desire to be happy. Individually, what fulfills that desire is as unique as our fingerprints or the color of our eyes. But if we look at the grand unifiers, we see a universal longing to create meaning in our lives, the desire to be content and to be free from suffering. It's what this book and the phrase "find your true north" are all about.

Cultural conditioning suggests we can find relief through objects like new clothes, cars, or the latest device. Ironically, this way of thinking may translate to yoga as well. We might be sure that once we nail that elusive posture all will be well. As most of us will agree, this is simply not the case. Learning to do a perfect-looking headstand doesn't equal lasting contentment.

There must be more.

Contemplating this might be enough to take you on a lifelong journey. Fortunately, if that sort of heady pursuit is not your thing, the system of yoga has an eightfold path that provides experiential suggestions to help you find your way. This is a path we walk not just by considering and thinking about, but by doing. Yoga asks us to act.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, a text roughly two thousand years old, presents this eightfold path as scaffolding for the hugely transformational endeavor of calming the mind and opening the core of the heart. The eight limbs are a blueprint for selfdiscovery and are intended to be studied and engaged with over a lifetime.

KEVIN COURTNEY

The Yamas

These moral principles can be likened to the basic tenets in almost all spiritual traditions, as they provide the foundation for living a conscientious life, from one's relationship to others to one's relationship with self.

AHIMSA: Nonviolence, compassion, kindness.

SATYA: Truth, truthfulness, honesty.

ASTEYA: Nonstealing.

BRAHMACHARYA: Often translated as celibacy, it is more broadly defined as the conservation of vital energy in order to direct one's attention toward divine pursuits and self-knowl…