David Romanelli - Yeah Daves Guide to Livin the Moment: Getting to Ecstasy Through Wine, Chocolate and Your iPod Playlist

I magine a man meditating on a secluded mountaintop. Imagine another man with jiggling manboobs dancing at a rock concert. Now imagine something in between, and you have me and my approach to life. I tell you this not because I want you to envision me chesty and hairy while showing up to meet you for lunch. Rather, I want you to think about fun and faith in the same sentence. Because there is a place where the party and the prayer can coexist peacefully. There is a place where the chocolate tastes sweeter, the music sounds better, the inspiration feels richer, and the visions look clearer. That place is The Moment.

This book is an inspirational manual, a funny, irreverent guide that encourages you to protect those sacred moments when life happens and memories are formed. When we pollute the moment with excessive distraction and stimulation, it affects our ability to slow time, to record memories, and to truly appreciate life. Whether it's the chaos of the cell phone interrupting the perfection of a great sunset or the stress of work clouding precious time with loved ones, so many of us are missing the important moments in our livesnot because we don't care, but because we're so busy.

I believe there's an urgent need to reclaim The Moment.

The following story inspired my fascination with the impact one moment can have on a lifetime. When I was fifteen years old, I went with my dad to Game 1 of the 1988 World Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. With my hometown Dodgers batting, the heavily favored Oakland A's were ahead 4-3 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Things were looking bleak for the Dodgers. Their MVP Kirk Gibson was worn down from the long season and sitting out the game to rest his injured body. But in a last gasp of hope, and a man on second base, Gibson was summoned to bat.

Facing the A's dominating relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley, Gibson was so badly injured that were he to get a hit, he could barely run to first base let alone to second. He dug into the batter's box but struggled to get his bat on the ball as he fouled off pitch after pitch. The fans awaited what would surely be the overmatched Gibson's inevitable strikeout. And then the amazing happened. Gibson got a hold of a pitch and drove a high fly ball deep into the October sky and over the right-field bleachers for a home run! The Dodgers dramatically won the game and went on to the win the World Series. It is still widely considered one of the greatest moments in the history of American sports.

You want to know where I was sitting when he hit that home run? In the back seat of my dad's car driving down the 405 freeway. That's right we missed a moment for the ages so we could beat twenty minutes of traffic in the parking lot.

It happens to everyone. We leave early from an event because we're trying to beat the traffic or we forget to enjoy a meal because we're watching the news while eating or we fail to notice a full moon because who has time for a full moon when a hundred e-mails await your reply? As the great yogi Iyengar said, We throw ourselves from one endeavor to another, believing that speed and movement is all there is in life. And in this mission for speed and movement, we miss so much of the life experience.

For this reason, there's an increasing need for a personal ritual or practice that enablesand deliverssanity and clarity amid the chaos. Yoga became my way of carving out more moments. But I didn't discover this without striking out a few times.

Right out of college, I went to work for a sports talent agent, doing PR for NBA legend Shaquille ONeal. Shaq enjoyed calling me Slowmanelli on account of my less-than-speedy gait around the office. You could say I was oh-so-slowly finding my way.

After that job, I pursued a few other careers, but nothing really resonated until my buddy Ian Lopatin invited me to a yoga class. The energy in the room was intoxicating. I felt muscles release, tightness melt, and a clarity I didn't know was possible. After that first class, I was hooked! Yoga got me to that same place that I'd experienced watching the Dodgers, going to Grateful Dead concerts, and pining for my latest love. Yoga was a fusion of everythingphysical, mental, and emotional.

So along with some similarly inspired friends, I promptly quit my job, and headed for Arizona. We like to say we dropped a yoga bomb on Phoenix. In quick order, we opened yoga studios that are now considered pioneering in the international yoga community. The studios offer a modern presentation of the ancient practice, fusing everything you know and love about Western culture (fashion, music, technology) with everything you know and love about ancient Eastern culture (Feng Shui, sacred geometry, soothing chants). Our mission was to make yoga more accessible to the masses by busting through yoga's stereotype of being an overly serious, pseudo-hippie, woo-woo experience.

A few months after we opened the first studio, I started teaching yoga. I added mainstream music to my classesfrom Willie Nelson to Frank Sinatra, Erykah Badu to Phish, the Gypsy Kings to George Straitto make the ancient practice a little more familiar. I called my style Yeah Dave Yoga because in college I had a tendency to ask profound questions my friends didn't know how to answer so they'd simply reply, Yeah Dave.

To each of my yoga classes, I add a message using fun themes, quotes, and a touch of humor. My students have proven a captive audience for my questions and ideas. And more important, the questioning ensures that my students never get bored. God knows there's nothing worse than being bored. I've been known to eat at a restaurant and order the check with the meal, such is my dislike for sitting and waiting with even the slightest chance of being bored.

So, despite my life as a yoga teacher, I am hardly preaching on a pulpit of patience. For though I love yoga and travel the globe teaching it, sometimes it asks too much of a person to remain on a three-by-six yoga mat for sixty to ninety minutes. Clearly, yoga is not for everyone. But there is one benefit from yoga that is absolutely and totally relevant to everyone: an enhanced ability to live in the moment. While so many would want this ability, they might not want to do yoga to get it.

And such is my motivation for writing this book. I seek to show you there are no prerequisites to living in the moment.

While this book is influenced by yoga principles, yoga gurus (Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois), and yoga-inspired philosophers (from Wayne Dyer to Caroline Myss), you will soon realize this is not a yoga book. Living in the moment doesn't involve any crazy stretches, far-fetched formulas, or life-changing diets. It doesn't require you to give away your possessions, commit to wearing loincloths, or memorize sacred texts. In fact, I will show you that living in the moment can be learned so quickly that it merits abbreviation. So I've removed the word