Open Sky Yoga Center in Rochester, New York

Dear Friends in Yoga,

Wishing you a radiant new year full of contentment and discovery, leaps of faith, early-morning practice, adventures, travels inside yourself on the pranic highways and outside to meet different cultures. Letting go of preconceived ideas about everything! Reclaiming your faith. Exploring how to live an ethical life with clear boundaries and precepts but also enjoyment and sensual pleasure, nature, art, music, sexuality, social life, cappuccinos, chai lattes, or tulsi teas (those are not mutually exclusive).

Is there a middle way between Bocuse and Macrobiotic, between Patanjali and the Goddess!? Is it not possible to have the best of both!? The yoga and meditation world tends to be quite repressed and often adds layers of pseudo peace and pseudo Indian spirituality over it, which doesn't really help, hence pairing wine and chocolate with asana!

So I wish this new year for you to have a real life versus a double one. As Sri BKS iyengar said once, ultimate Truth is naked. No makeup, no role playing, just being yourself. That is what yoga proposes, clear perception using asana, pranayama and dhyana as vehicles.....authenticity connecting to the Source, primordial OM.

Open Sky gives you a number of opportunities!

Taking weekly classes to inspire and exhale (new session begins Jan 9).
Mini-seminars with Open Sky Yoga faculty: Opening Shoulders with Rick (Jan 14) and Restorative Yoga with Eleanor (Feb 12).
Advanced studies (teacher training) beginning early March (4 spaces left).
The journeys to Crete (July 2012) and South India (Dec 2012-Jan 2013) are almost full, and will have a waiting list by the end of January for sure.

Last minute news: Francois was invited to teach in Boston at Innerstrength center January 14-15. If you have yoga friends in the area, please let them know! (PDF)

To conclude, a few words on vinyasa as it becomes a mainstream word in the hot/flow/vinyasa/power/openyourheart/boot camp fashionable yoga. And we forgot the original meaning.

Vinyasa means to place (nyasa) in a special way (ni). The reference to a style of yoga is just a late spin in history. Of course the art of sequencing is essential. In art, in music, inside one inhalation or exhalation, within a breath cycle, there is a vinyasa, a progression, a rhythm, a beginning, an end and a story line in the middle. Great songs have an underlying structure, a harmonic vinyasa of chords. If you travel from India to Tibet you will cross the small Himalayas then the big ones; that is a vinyasa of travel. (I did it in the early 70s in the back of a coal truck!) There is definitely a vinyasa of restorative poses (supported back bends, chest/heart/lung/diaphragm openers, supported forward bends, supported bharagvasajaas and receptive inversions like viparita karani mudra then savasana. And a vayu vinyasa: apana (supta baddha), prana (setubandha), samana (jatara) and vyana (savasana) vayus.

....Maybe even a savasana vinyasa, deeper and deeper layers of experience of yielding, release, dissolution and inner silence. But then how do you sequence Being and silence in a state of yoga!?

See you soon, I hope, around the yoga block or around the world!

Open Sky Yoga, for the sake of it and for the sky of it!

Finally, Gratitude to Nathalie for her unconditional support, gratitude to all open sky teachers (Carla, Rick, Tom, Kristin, Alan, and Eleanor) and students (too many names!) who keep the sky vibrant and luminous. Gratitude to all teachers sponsoring me around the US, canada and Europe. Gratitude to all those working with a great spirit behind the scene 24/7- web and graphic designers, technical writers,office manager, altar cleaners (Josh, Dave,Susan, Cathy). Thanks to all of you, i can sleep and dream at night and tap into the bottomless well of Creativity and the Source of Life. So teachings happen, are transmitted, channeled, and stay alive.....

Francois Raoult
Open Sky Yoga