Love Unfolds Like Flowers in the Sky

October 23, 2021Mary Taylor

From a talk by Richard Freeman, 2006

The Yoga Sūtra, which as you know was composed by Patañjali, is kind of a universal text that comes in four different chapters called Pādas. Pāda means foot and so you can look at the Yoga Sūtra as four-legged animal with good balance, good footing. The subtle and complex teachings are organized so that they loop back on themselves from different perspectives as you work your way through the text. In that way, if you make it through the entire book, you might be enlightened. But don’t count on that because, clinging to the idea of enlightenment pretty much guarantees you’ll never get there. Regardless, any one sūtra is enough to keep most of us occupied and happy for years.

categories Newsletter, The Laughing Elephant
tags From the Sangha, Mary Taylor, Richard Freeman

Fascia, Connections and Consciousness

July 27, 2021Mary Taylor

We get glimpses through yoga practice of how intricately everything is connected. Without a conscious directive of mind, an inhalation expands the chest making room for the heart to float as a reminder that our true nature is spaciousness of heart. Love. If we’re lucky, we breathe out and notice feet touching earth. We become grounded and awake, tuning in to layers of perception—mind, body, and emotion.

categories Newsletter, The Laughing Elephant
tags From the Sangha, Mary Taylor, Breathing, Liz Long, Fascia, myofascial bodywork, Yin Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga

The Vagus Nerve and Breathing

April 27, 2021Mary Taylor

Back in the early ’90s, Richard began giving Studio Talks at the Yoga Workshop on Sundays after the afternoon Mysore class. Often he would begin the talks by leading a chant and then as he explained the chant, the lecture would unfold from there. Chanting is a way not only to focus the mind on ideas presented in traditional texts and to offer devotion to powerful messages of the teachings, but it is also a remarkable way of dropping into the body. It’s a practice. When we chat the exhale is extended as in pranayama, but because we’re not calling it pranayama it can sometimes be a more easeful exhalation. Vibrations from the chant can be experienced throughout the body. This automatically calms the mind as we become absorbed in the sensations, sounds, or meaning of what we are chanting.

categories Newsletter, The Laughing Elephant
tags From the Sangha, Mary Taylor, Pranayama, Breathing

When Frogs Croak

January 31, 2021Mary Taylor

Back in the early ’90s, Richard began giving Studio Talks at the Yoga Workshop on Sundays after the afternoon Mysore class. Often he would begin the talks by leading a chant and then as he explained the chant, the lecture would unfold from there. Chanting is a way not only to focus the mind on ideas presented in traditional texts and to offer devotion to powerful messages of the teachings, but it is also a remarkable way of dropping into the body. It’s a practice. When we chat the exhale is extended as in pranayama, but because we’re not calling it pranayama it can sometimes be a more easeful exhalation. Vibrations from the chant can be experienced throughout the body. This automatically calms the mind as we become absorbed in the sensations, sounds, or meaning of what we are chanting.

categories The Laughing Elephant
tags From the Sangha, Mary Taylor

Footprints

December 14, 2020Barbara Verrrochi, Kristin Leigh and Melanie Jane Parker

In this year of extraordinary groundlessness, practitioners of all lineages seem to be focused on grounding. Although there are over 7,000 nerve endings in each foot, it still requires effort to drop down out of the whirring mind and into our base of support. Our teachers offer us techniques to remember our connection with the earth: noticing where the body meets the floor, sensing the density of our bones, and rooting through our feet.

categories Newsletter
tags From the Sangha

A Way of Giving Over

October 29, 2020Julia Napier

The past seven months have redefined us in almost every way: how we work, practice, communicate, grieve, teach, learn. It is impossible to describe the overhaul we have undergone, but the most significant changes I have experienced during this time are as a parent. I tend to describe myself in three ways: writer, yoga practitioner, mother. But the experience of the pandemic has recast this trinity into an all-encompassing field.

categories Newsletter
tags From the Sangha

A Teacher’s Prayer

September 13, 2020Marcia Solomon

If you are reading this newsletter, you are certain to know more than one teacher of yoga and perhaps you are a teacher of yoga too. The life and livelihood of a yoga teacher are always precarious, subject to the winds of change. Schools and methods can move into or out of favor quickly. But right now, in these times, things may seem to be especially unsettling

Sacred texts can be a source of comfort when they help to remind us that there’s really nothing new happening here. The Taittirīya Upaniṣad, an early Upanishad found in the Yajur Veda, contains a set of verses commonly know as “A Teacher’s Prayer”. Below are two excerpts.

शिररं मे िवचष णम् ।
िज ा मे मधुम मा ।
कण$%य' भ)*र *व-.वम् ।
23ण: कोशोऽ*स 8धया *पहीत: ।
-.त> 8 गोपाया ।।

śarīraṁ me vicarṣaṇam
jihvā me madhumattamā
karṇābhyāṁ bhūri viśruvam
brahmaṇaḥ kośo’si medhayā pihītaḥ
śrutaṁ me gopāyā

May my body be vigorous.
Let my tongue say the sweetest things.
May my ears hear many subtle teachings.
You are brahman’s sheath, covered in wisdom.
Guard for me what I have learned! (from I.4.1)

यथाप: Aवता यिCत ।
यथा मासा अहजFरम् ।
एव> म' 23चा*रण: ।
धातरायCत. सवFत: Iवाहा ।
A*तJशोऽ*स Aमाभा*ह AमापKIव ।।

yathāpaḥ pravatā yanti
yathā māsā aharjaram
evaṁ māṁ brahmacāriṇaḥ
dhātarāyantu sarvataḥ svāhā
prativeśo’si pramābhāhi pramāpadyasva

Just as water flows downhill,
Even as the days pass by into months,
So, O Sustainer, may students arrive
Coming to me from all sides!
You are close by. Shine forth. Approach me. (from 1.4.3)

Although today we cannot “sit (ṣad)- down (ni)- near (upa)” one another in the traditional sense of the word “upanishad”, we can continue to keep our teachers, our communities, and the texts themselves close by in our hearts and in our minds.

Marcia Solomon taught at our studio for many years and now teaches Sanskrit.

categories Newsletter
tags Marcia Solomon, From the Sangha

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From the Sangha

When Frogs Croak

January 31, 2021Mary Taylor