Greetings Reader,

After three weeks of practice, I feel confident in saying that I have mastered the art of being on vacation.

Ate it up. Crushed it. Knocked it out of the park. Stuck the landing.

It was great. I totally cleared my calendar of everything except all of my meetings and appointments to make sure I would have a few zeptoseconds every day to relax.

And when I wasn’t busy relaxing, I

• renovated my entire website,
• planned out my workshop and course schedule for the next 12 months,
• looked at dozens of paint colors, stone slabs, and assorted tiles on the way to finalizing the plan for our kitchen renovation,
• listened to a podcast by a Buddhist Marxist about Che Guevara and the Revolution of Consciousness,
• listened to an On The Media podcast episode about how to see through all the hype about AI,
• was a guest on the Ashram Talks podcast (on YouTube) for an episode about “Bhagavad Gita Showstoppers and Head Scratchers,”
• started reading the manuscript of a novel in progress that's based on the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita — and had a wonderful conversation with the author,
• started reading Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (I find it useful to question the idea of sacred revelation from time to time),
• wrote outlines for portions of three chapters of my next book,
• and hosted a Community Conversation that, thanks to my two co-hosts, went fabulously well

All of which has left me feeling refreshed and energized and ready to get back to work.

Now I know the head space I need to get into in order to make our upcoming trip to Spain a real vacation.

But that’s still 4 weeks away; plenty of time to keep practicing.

After all, practice makes perfect. It’s how you get to Carnegie Hall.

And, according to both the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita, it’s also how to do the seemingly impossible: bring the mind under our control.

The Sanskrit word abhyāsa appears in both the sutra and the verse, translated respectively as "practice" and “suitable practice."

The adjective “suitable” in the context of the verse is especially important because it implies that the manner in which we practice must be well-suited for our individual temperaments.

For example, the way I practice being on vacation might be totally different from the way you would practice being on vacation. My “vacation practice,” like my yoga practice, will only be effective if it’s well-suited to my temperament. Same with yours.

Of course, we have to be careful not to craft a practice that caters to our likes and dislikes — two of the five obstacles to yoga. Taking our natural aptitudes, inclinations, and psychology into account for the purpose of building a practice that helps us preserve what we should keep, change what needs to change, and jettison what's gotta go, is how we build a practice that can really help us to reach our potential for self-realization.

Or for learning how to chill out.

Now that I have some momentum in the chilling out department and a clear sense of how I should practice, I’m going to keep practicing over the next four weeks.

With any luck, I’ll be un hombre tranquilo by the time we land in Madrid.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Wishing you all good fortune,

- Hari-k

P.S. Speaking of websites, I didn’t do mine all by myself. My wife, Elizabeth, reorganized the whole site and wrote all the copy. That’s just one part of how she’s been taking a lot of the online marketing work off my plate so that I can stay focused on teaching and writing. She’s also the reason I can post very little on social media and still have a steady stream of new people finding their way onto this mailing list.

If you could use some clarity around your messaging or brand, need help with your website copy, or want a smarter approach to social media that doesn’t require living online, check out the Department of Clarity. Tell her I sent you!