The Internet to the Inner-Net: Five Ways to Reset Your Connection and Live a Conscious Life / Kallayil, Gopi

The Internet has become humanity’s invisible central nervous system, connecting us at the speed of thought. More people today have access to mobile phones than have access to clean drinking water. Yet the most important technology is still the one within us: our brain, body, and consciousness.

A fast-paced career in the high-tech industry combined with a deep yoga and meditation practice has allowed Gopi Kallayil—Google’s Chief Evangelist for Brand Marketing and one of the leading voices encouraging yoga and mindfulness in the workplace today—to integrate his inner and outer technologies to a remarkable degree. Wisdom from his yoga mat and meditation cushion guides his professional career, and his work life provides the perfect classroom to deepen his wisdom practice. The Internet to the Inner-Net guides the rest of us to do the same. In some three dozen wide-ranging, sometimes provocative essays, Gopi shares his experiments in conscious living and offers insight, inspiration, and rituals—including yoga, mindful eating, and even napping—to help us access our own inner worlds.

If you’re looking for grounded practical wisdom that might simultaneously help you become more creative, adaptable, enthusiastic, effective, or resilient, you’ll find it in this user’s manual for the technology within—along with colorful insight into the successful Google culture. In five sections, from “Log In” (which offers mindful ways of connecting and engaging) to “Clear Out Your In-Box” (shedding what doesn’t serve you to make space for what does) to “Thank You for Subscribing” (a reminder to live with gratitude), Gopi lays out practices and perspectives that you can use starting right now to live with more purpose, fulfillment, and joy.