Thursday, February 7, 2008

Good Morning

We had a fun time in San Marcos last night. The Level 2 class worked on chataranga some (always a favorite), jathara parivartonnasana and on partivritta parsvakonasana.

This weeks sutra is more on practice-
1.13 Practice is the steadfast effort to still the fluctuations of the mind.

One of the ways that Douglas Brooks translates "Citta vritti" is instead of saying "Stilling the mindstuff" he says "harmoniously align." Therefore, yoga is the means by which we harmoniously align ourselves.) The idea is that the choice to stop one thing- to say "no" to the vrittis in this case- is the affirmation of something else. (Yes, to stillness, for instance). At any rate hidden in every "no" is a "yes" and within every "yes" is a "no" and that process of choosing one or the other is a process of yogic alignment. (He spins a better yarn about this than what I am able to do right now, but you get my point, I hope. ) At any rate, practice is the steadfast effort to align ourselves. Not bad, huh?

The beginners learned Outer Spiral last night, continuing with the discussion of spanda and balanced action being that which delivers us to the place of the middle, the place of the heart. So now they have learned the five Unviersal Principles of Alignment. (Five weeks, Five Principles. Like that. We start with Open to Grace, then Muscle Energy, then Organic Energy, then Inner Spiral, then Outer Spiral. Kelly will continue to work with them on putting the principles all together and applying them to new poses over the next two weeks and when I return I will teach the students The Loops. Voila! The Method in Eight Weeks. (Of course, as we all know there is a lifetime of refining, but nothing beats a Beginning Series to learn the basics in an organized, straightforward way.) Hopefully these folks will transition into the other classes and keep going.

Our plan is to do one more Beginning Series this spring and then resume with another one in the fall. We will keep classes going this summer but we may combine some of them and run a reduced session. Kind of depends what folks are planning on for the summer and how many people will be away. I myself am gone a lot this summer so Kelly will be handling a lot of the teaching over the summer.

Okay- lots to do today. Must get on with it. See you guys soon. Love.

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