Now that man spread a lot of light while he was here on earth.

I have laughed so hard at things Robin Williams said that I have had water come out my nose.  He made the Vietnam war a topic that could be approached through his healing gift of comedy and his great love for humanity.

He did some amazing things with the spotlight he had on his life.  Having a spotlight on your life all the time cannot be fun or easy. 

I do not know what his mental health status was.  But he seems bipolar to me.  He was certainly manic on stage doing his stand up routines.  And I suppose he dealt with the lows that accompany those highs.

A lot of people I know try to judge if it is right or wrong for someone to take their own life.  I do not know and I do not think it is my place to judge it.  I just know it has to be so sad.

If he was bipolar, I have read that that tends to go along with a very high risk of suicide.  It usually happens in a mixed state.  A mixed state is a manic phase (high) with depression (low) at the same time. 

I am lighting a candle and dedicating my meditation and yoga practice to him to help him transition into a better place in his next life.  That is a Tibetan belief.  Also making things that smell good is supposed to help the recently departed to head toward the light. So I will cook some yummy smelling things, too.  For about a month, that is supposed to do some good.

One reason I study yoga and meditation is that it is so helpful for regulating moods and for helping to get thoughts more organized. 

Yoga is a practice to get the mind stable, basically.  And meditation is too.  The Yoga Sutras (the equivalent of a yoga bible that is 2500 years old) talk about the mind. 

Chapter one, verses 12-14 of the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali (translation by Mukunda Stiles):

The vacillating waves of perceptions are stilled through

consistent earnest practice

and dispassionate non-attachment.

Of these two, practice is the continuous struggle

to become firmly established

in the stable state of the true self.

That practice is indeed firmly grounded

when it is pursued incessantly,

with reverence,

for a long time.

Robin Williams, you were a light to many people.  I hope you find great peace.

One of my favorite things about teaching yoga is getting to know such a great community of other yoga teachers.  Today's guest post is from a wonderful, magical yoga teacher and Reiki (energy work) healer.  Thiery is wise and kind and teaches a gentle yoga class that has some transformative powers! She also teaches Reiki and she would be a great person to learn it from. Aside from all that, she is funny.  Read on.  You'll see.

(Contact Thiery Goodman at <[email protected]> for her Reiki or yoga classes or sessions.)

I went to the coffee shop and worked on my mandala today.  I forgot to bring in the rest of the pens, but I had a nice blue pen.  I used that to color in the next layer.

There were two ladies- one older, one younger- church ladies- seated beside me.  They were gossiping about the other women in their church and what bad decisions they were making about men.  

I stared at the eye of my mandala.  But then my tea and cookie came.  I continued for two more minutes, but... not much happened today.  I guess I was too busy thinking about the girls making terrible decisions about men at church.

I can gnaw on a thought for a long time.  Like some old pit bull, I can lie around worrying some bone I have to pick with someone for a long time.  I can spend a lot of my life being right. 

The question is this, though, "how much energy am I wasting being right?"  Is it worth it to be right this long?  How much of my life passes by with me worrying, fighting, obsessing, feeling sad and unworthy?  Is there another way?

Yoga offers some wisdom about this.  In the Yoga Sutras (a 2500 year old book of poetry in Sanskrit that is something like a bible of yoga), there is a verse that talks about this.  It goes, "pratipaksa bhavanam".  That means, "think the opposite."  

So what if the next time you feel like you might fail at something, you took this advice and pratipaksa-ed that bhavanam all over the place?  What if you cultivated the opposite thought: "Oh no!  What if I am a great success?!" 

Can't really hurt to try, now can it?

One thing yoga is great at is getting you to move into new positions and feel what it feels like to be upside down, or facing directly into your foot, or some other unexpected place.  It gets us out of our comfort zones.  And we have the chance to look at things from an opposite place, an unfamiliar perspective.  In this way, life takes on three dimensions and so do we, right along with it.

My friend and stellar yoga teacher, Lavonia Elberton (yes, she's a drag queen), is a guest on my yoga channel on youTube, Yoga Makes You Well.  She based her video on this idea of cultivating the opposite thought by demonstrating poses that she really doesn't like.  Check her out at http://youtu.be/4CE-_TsWaIw