NEWSLETTER

The Breath

Introducing Tools of Awakening with Abdi Assadi:

This past spring, my dear friend Abdi Assadi and I created a program called “Tools of Awakening.” Our goal is to offer classes that contain simple, accessible practices designed to help you cultivate more awareness and presence in your daily life. The classes are intended to support you in navigating everyday challenges with a sense of balance and fostering deeper empathy and understanding for yourself and others.

Our goal is that the practices will help you move through life with more love and awareness. With increased awareness you can create space between your feelings, thoughts, and reactions, allowing you to respond with intention rather than on autopilot. 

We started our program with a five-part exploration of the breath. Each class explores the power and gift of the breath, focusing on simple, everyday practices to enhance awareness and reduce reactivity. We also discuss the importance of using breathwork to bring calm and presence to daily life.

Explore the Breath Classes

Short meditations included in these classes are great for beginning and sustaining a meditation practice.

Access Short Meditation here

New meditation blog: “Beyond Thoughts.”  

Over the years, meditation has become the cornerstone of my spiritual and emotional life. Its impact is immeasurable, shaping every aspect of my being year after year. Each time I sit in practice, I’m reminded of the profound transformation it has brought into my life.

One of the most precious gifts meditation has given me is the awareness of a space that exists beyond my thoughts—a loving space, nurturing and filled with ease. Through meditation, I’ve learned that I don’t have to be governed by my thoughts, reactions, or emotions. Instead, I can observe them, be mindful of my responses, and act with intention in the world.

I believe that deep down, we all crave this – more awareness, more peace, and a deeper connection to ourselves. 

“Beyond Thoughts” is one in a series of meditation blogs where I share how meditation opened the door to this space and became the foundation of my healing.  It took time to reach this point, but if you haven’t tried meditation yet, I encourage you to start.

To learn more, read “Beyond Thoughts.”

Awakening 101 Resources

“Beyond thoughts”

Beyond the thoughts that occupy our minds, there’s a stillness waiting to be discovered—a place where true consciousness resides. In this blog, I share my journey of navigating through the noise of mental chatter and discovering a deeper awareness.

Tools of Awakening

These breath classes offer simple, practical techniques to help you increase awareness and create moments of pause. Sessions are bite-sized and designed for everyday life, making it easier to navigate with more consciousness and calm—no advanced meditation is required.

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Abdi Assadi is unlike any other healer or spiritual teacher ever encountered. He is an expert in martial arts, and a dynamic healer practicing a diverse array of Chinese and Eastern Medicine, indigenous shamanic rituals, and meditation techniques. With a clinical practice in New York City for almost 4 decades, Abdi has accumulated a vast knowledge of real life experience working with several thousands of individuals, guiding them through the most difficult times, and teaching them how to understand themselves. One of the greatest things about him is he merges the human psyche with the spiritual psyche.

Steeped in deep wisdom and insight that is rare to find on this planet in these modern times, Abdi has an extraordinary ability in perceiving and comprehending human souls and their individual psyche. Guided by the divine, Abdi guides you to open up and see beyond your limited Self, into your own soul. His impeccable discernment enables him to unleash personal remarks that pierce through your veil, statements that you will never forget and in an instant alter your perception of yourself and your reality.

– Quotes from Shadows on the Path by Abdi Assadi:


All spiritual masters teach us that love is an activity before it is a condition – and that love is all-encompassing.
Page 18


It felt like I was coming off a race track and driving in a school zone. He knew, years before I did, that my speed was my way of suppressing my early childhood anxiety, and that only slowing down could heal it.

Why do you need to use all these words like God and spirituality? It is right here Abdi, all around you, all the time
Page 40


one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
Page 51


Ultimately it keeps grace out of our lives because we are using our will power to manipulate every event and person around us.
Page 74


His lesson, which I had begun to learn for myself, is that outside circumstances do not define our internal experience if we can surrender into them. Painful or undesirable situations will always arise; true suffering comes from our ego’s desire to resist life as it is.
Page 77


Note from Pernilla:
I met Abdi in the fall of 2014 and when I arrived in his office the first thing he said was, “It’s time that you stop carrying other people’s anxiety.” In the year that followed, my entrenched codependency patterns reared their ugly heads and I was confronted with a part of myself that I had never even known was there.

A few years later, Abdi said, “When are you going to start writing your book?”I looked at him in surprise. I was not a writer. My expertise was centered around creating crazy good Excel spreadsheets. However, I started writing and collecting notes about life issues and life experiences … and here we are a few years later.

Sally Kempton is a preeminent meditation teacher of our time.

She is an expert scholar in Hinduism and all Hindu texts especially in Kashmir Shaivisim. Formerly Swami Durgananda, she left monastic life in the 1980’s to teach publicly. She has written several books and is one of the most known and loved spiritual teachers in our time.

Note from Pernilla:

I met Sally at one of her workshops at City Yoga in LA in 2003. She had the most gentle and loving disposition, and I just wanted to always be around her. I was fortunate to have been part of her two year-long “Transformative journey” courses in 2006 and 2007 and many retreats ever since. She is the true representation of unconditional love and transmits intense shakti from her Guru Swami Muktananda.

Sally is the primary building block and foundation in my spiritual journey. Without her, I would have never found and stuck with meditation – the most transformative experience of my life. Without her, I would have been lost without a clue where to go next. Her wealth of knowledge of yogic philosophy and incredible understanding of the human condition is what makes her a force to be reckoned with.  She understands your depth and makes you feel seen, heard, validated, and deeply loved.