Consider the value of ecosystem patterns of thought and awareness

Forthcoming...

All endings are really just beginnings.

New Classes

I am continuously astounded by the variability of each yoga class that I teach in terms of the energy that it contains. Each class begins with a negotiation process between the teacher and the student, a negotiation of our egos and space. Are the students listening? Are they listening and not paying attention? Are they listening and paying attention, but my instructions are not making sense?! What are the areas of the poses that need more articulation and highlighting, or what are the general physiological trends of the student body? And of course, am I talking too much? Whatever the answers to these questions, I find that the most valuable seeds of the practice that can be transmitted in a class are those that emphasize the feeling-tone of a process within which we involve our imaginations to create a feeling-image within the pose that recalibrates our sense of ordinary reality. In his book entitled, The Heart of the World: a Journey to Tibet's Lost Paradise, Ian Baker describes the value of imagination from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective: "...imagination does not so much transform as reveal what is already present, the mind's inherent creativity realizing it's essential unity with all phenomena and events." So, in the context of our yoga poses, there are infinite forms of feeling that can be imagined and meditated upon that range from lotus,' swords of light, serpent hoods, tidal waves--mostly nature oriented images, since a study of our body's form cannot be extract from our evolutionary and environmental past--to mythical and transcendental visualization that bring us to the brink of the quantum field and the realms of the gods. Interestingly, while I find myself negotiating the waters of teaching a yoga class with a properly tuned level that will be valuable for the students, or focusing on the pragmatics, I enjoy it most (and think that the students are equally) when we can dissolve/relax our existences (or roles) as subjects and objects, our roles as students and a teacher, and simply relish in the soup of the present experience, that is the effulgent, radiantly unfolding lotus of the present moment that binds all of us inexorably upon a single golden thread.