Dear Friends
I address all as friends as I feel ultimately, we are all connected in such a way friendship is possible should we meet in one way or another. It seems also quite possible that friendship of its varying degrees and levels is essential to a humanity who collectively face the same criteria that support our viability as an evolving species.
Have you ever noticed when we leave the confines of cities and find ourselves out on open roads in seemingly less inhabited landscapes people are more inclined to wave to each other.
We hear often today that we are living through incredible and changing times. Anyone with even only one eye open perceiving the shifting sands beneath our very tentative and possibly temporary state of normalcy can see the forces of immense change we are all dealing with consciously and unconsciously. So perhaps we are all now out on the open highways of life and would do well to wave to each other and point the way as best we can.
There is a powerful Indigenous American story read to children bridging the threshold into adulthood. It is a story to inspire the forming adult to seek and find their innate gifts and potentials to serve their own community in meaningful ways, and that the seeking is a right of passage and a quest for a numinous power they carry that may as yet be hidden to them. The story is called “Jumping Mouse” by John Steptoe. It is such a beautifully inspired story; it gives rise to the powerful feeling of recognition in a heart that may be still in search of its own power and freedom.
The story of jumping mouse echos in the hearts of many who find themselves caught in a normalcy and a daily routine that is mind numbingly bereft of meaning and is enervating. Many adults remain caught in this unfulfilled internal place for want of such a story and right of passage at their own adult turning moment. In our societies we lack mentors, guides, and disseminators of genuine wisdom, we tend to crash from puberty to adulthood like a wrecking stone.
I won’t give the story away and encourage you to take the time to read and contemplate it at the many levels at which it is intended to be understood.
In brief it is the story of a little mouse no different to its fellow mice except that it is willing to investigate and take the courage to step out of its predetermined mouse life of scurrying and hunting and staying close to safety. The journey the little mouse takes as a consequence of its investigative nature is epic for such a tiny mouse in a world of huge things and the culmination of the journey reveals the powerful transformation that arises from finding such courage and taking such a journey. I must have read this story outload to near a hundred groups of adults and children. There is rarely a dry eye as the story completes. For a story to touch so deeply we know its inherent truth telling is real and calls out to something not yet unsatisfied within us.
The story is one for each of us to contemplate in such incredible times of change as we all need a large dose of courage, insight and inspiration to navigate our way through the layers of deception and veiling to find the real and sound.
Where do we look for the stories that urge our psyche free of its caged conditioning, its immobilizing fears, and its unreconciled content. This will be different for each of us. Finding a form of guidance and inspiration is a resonance thing. We each resonate according to the nature of our souls and minds. No one’s path or method is inherently greater than anyone else’s. Having respect for what gives rise to meaning, knowing and courage for each of us is essential. To much noise and conflict is generated when one dogma, truth or way tries to drown out another’s.
I can say for myself, and some others, we have found a source of knowing, courage, guidance and empowerment in the traditions, teachings, practices and subtle depths of Yoga. What we are exposed through the Yogic Tradition is a total life transformational science and path is a radical and practical living wisdom. It educates a way that causes us to cast off the more limiting sets of beliefs, concepts, and societal norms that we have found lacking in depth, equal vision, and ethical roots and that also seem bereft of soul, meaning and genuine life purpose. Yoga describes a way through and beyond the limiting thought constructs entrained into us and yet without prescribing a set of religious beliefs or rules that are just another set of constructs. It inspires a journey not unlike the one of Jumping Mouse. It inspires a radical reappraisal of sense of self, and notion of what is real. For each of us the path is nuanced and different, as different as we each are as souls.
Some of us are not even aware we are stuck and caught like scurrying mice until we are exposed to such provocative teachings. Such teachings give us another place from which to view our ‘normal’ in different ways.
The challenge always in embarking of an inner or outer quest is finding authentic skillful guidance, teachings, and path. The power of discernment must be harnessed, knowing what questions to ask and how to look is essential. No quest is ever without challenge and confrontation and the need for a skillful guide, one who has already stepped the path with knowing footsteps is evident.
So what does all this have to do with the incredible times in which we apparently live. Such times ask each of us to be willing to look up from the ground of busy mice business. Such times ask each of us to look up, to slow down and breathe, to allow some silent contemplation and internal questioning. The silence is needed to quiet the noise of all we are being told and encouraged to believe and reach deeper for an inherent intuitive power of intellect and heart that clears our perceptive power. The silence is accompanied with stillness to slow down the pace of the mind, the endless production of thought streams to listen and to hear. If our society encourages activity of inhumane levels in the domains of our work, family, entertainment, recreation and aspirations we do well to press the pause button to question such a societal thrust and peer induced pressure. What engine are we being encouraged to feed and in what way is all our activity feeding that engine.
We deserve the reflection time to come to know what powerful reality and truth we wish to nourish with our efforts. It is even more meaningful to know how our efforts might be serving a shared or collective good that supersedes the engine of a money, success, and control driven societal set of norms.
Such inspired people then generate societies with soul and heart in which everyone can be nourished and enlightened within and through living process in ways that allow nuance and individual expression.
So if anything this moment of writing to you all as friends is an invitation from one human being to another to find your path of reflection, your means to ask the right questions, your ability to awaken a power of perception and listening that penetrates the noise and dictates of our current times and that seems to ever increase the divides between us all as a family of human souls. Governance does not dwell in the halls of parliaments, councils and institutions who often forget what it is they serve. It dwells in a collective group of mature people who nominate their natural leaders and who can arrive at a set of core values that are inherent to life and are true to the heart of the human quest.
Yoga is one path, a very ancient path that precedes world religions, cults, secret societies and dogmas. If yoga presents as a dogma or a religion, it is not true to yoga. Yoga in essence is a meta science of spiritual evolution and liberation. But it is not the only path. Like the story of ‘Jumping Mouse’ we each need to hear our own hearts call and find our way to follow it.
200h Yoga Teacher Training - commencing Early 2024
for deepening personal practice
requisite knowledge to begin to teach others
Course covers
WHAT IS YOGA - Exploration of the foundational and central principles that guide and inform authentic yoga practice.
HOW YOGA WORKS - The yogic view of the mind, the body, the purpose of a life, and how to influence conscious, vital and empowered living. Includes study of the subtle body anatomy and physiology, the balancing and cultivation of vital energy – exploration of 5 koshas (sheaths), 4 bodies (physical, subtle, causal and supra causal) the system of subtle energy channels and their centers, prana (life force) and the 5 vayus (winds) as aspects of prana and how all this understanding effects practice and experience.
APPLIED PHYSICAL ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY - As it applies to asana practice, including returning to optimal alignment. Identifying the causes of misalignment, and the use of simple release methods to restore optimal alignment within the muscular -skeletal system. Understanding how the body achieves health and vitality. Understanding the importance of strong digestive function and a balanced nervous system. An online practical anatomy course is part of this component of study.
YOGA NIDRA - As an ancient and traditional practice which expresses the science of human transformation. Training to guide the complete stillness of body/mind. Yoga Nidra is much more than relaxation.
BREATH - The science of breath both physical and subtle. Its importance to overall health of body/mind. Practices to extend and equalize the breath. Breath as key to the balance of the mind. Breath as tool to manage periods of imbalance. Research that supports the yogic emphasis on importance of breath awareness.
THE COMPLEMENTARY SCIENCE OF AYURVEDA - The twin science to yoga. It describes the nature of individual constitution. This basic knowledge enables us to practice and live according to our constitutional predispositions and to environment and season. When applied to yogic practice we develop a more intelligent approach to holistic living.
ASANA - What is asana? Understanding of the three stages of practice. How to practice according to our constitutional predispositions, developing intelligence in practice. How to modify and adapt asana to meet individual needs and to progress to greater depth over time. How to adjust asana in class safely and effectively. Sequencing a class, designing an ongoing practice. Benefits and contra-indications of asanas.