Welcome to Yogawaves, the Open Sky Yoga newsletter! This bi-monthly publication allows you to download our newest class schedule, learn what is going on within the Open Sky community, and take information and inspiration for your yoga practice. If you experience any difficulty viewing this newsletter, please click here.

 

WINTER SESSION (Nov 5-January 15, 2008)- WEEKLY CLASS SCHEDULE

Our new session of classes will begin November 5th! If possible, please send your registration by mail (check or credit card) the week before to ensure a space in the class(es) of your choice. However, if you miss the first week or two and space is still available, we will prorate the rest of the session for you. As always, feel free to join anytime at a prorated fee. A copy of the summer schedule can be found here:

UPCOMING SEMINARS IN ROCHESTER

Restorative Seminar with Eleanor Goldfarb November 18 3-5pm.

December 1-2:The annual weekend on "Aplomb," postural awareness seminar with Francois, including his innovative slide show on postures around the world. Open to all human beings!

Yoga for the Back-Worldwide teleclass: Thursday; December 6; 9:00pm EST / 6:00pm PST www.yogaspirit.ca

December 7-8-9: A weekend on Patanjali sutras and the yoga tradition, with a cutting edge philosopher. A perfect complement and follow up for graduates of Open Sky yoga teacher trainings, as well as a great introduction for yoga practitioners of all traditions.

Yoga for Menopause with Eleanor Goldfarb Dec 14 5-8pm

Mandala, a Path Towards Unity, January 2008: Nathalie Alvarez and i will bring for the first time to the United States our seminar on yoga and mandala, including expressive art.

Sanskrit Training, February and March 2008: William Broder will offer a two-weekend Sanskrit training for students and teachers of yoga. Keep your ears open!

South of France retreat July 13-20 2007: call or email for registration.

Trip to Kerala, South India, late 2008: Still a secret ,but it is already overbooked! I will guide a group to south India in late 2008 for a yoga and Ayurveda retreat,exploration of temples as well as an immersion in traditional life of India.

The Open Sky Yoga Teacher Training:     Registration for Essential Teacher Training starting in January 2008, are moving along. Wake up, we still have few spaces and take a maximum of 20 students. Please send your application and contact Francois by email if interested.
Brochure:
Application:

Robert Svoboda finally accepted my invitation to teach in Rochester, May 31/June 1. Save the date! Also, check the website for Baird Hersey, Overtone Chanting; William Broder, Basic Sanskrit Training; Laura Allard coming back with mountains of clay for a foot to leg and Anatomy of the Voice seminar; Donald Moyer, director of The Yoga Room in Berkeley….

MESSAGE FROM FRANCOIS:

YOGA: to be to feel to do to feel to be to do to be to feel to be

“When I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until it passes."
--Woody Allen

“Yehudi Menuhin plays music on the violin; it is with his violin that he expresses the divinity within him. I play asana on my body. What is the difference? How can we say that playing on the violin is spiritual and performance of asana is merely physical?”
--B.K.S. Iyengar, 1960

“I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.” 
--Miles Davis

As a joke on my computer desk, I have an icon for “to do list” (actually two icons, one related to personal life and one for business). I also have an icon “to be.” As you can guess, the “to do” lists are long and procrastination is often an issue--even for a yoga teacher! The “to be” list is short: “Be”! In fact, it should be empty. It’s the same kind of paradox as talking about Silence.

When we practice yoga, there often is confusion about the agenda. Is it for the journey or for the goal, or both? Is it a physical, psychological or spiritual exploration? I like to remember the words of science-fiction writer Ursula LeGuin: “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

When we create an asana (yoga posture), we play a position like we play a composition of music. First we have to build the underlying structure, the sacred architecture. In doing so we follow the cosmic and esoteric rules of nature. We also seek to expend minimal energy, to be as functional as possible. This is like establishing the foundation or creating the skeleton of beams when building a house. We have to create the optimal conditions so life can happen inside--so breath can breathe, heart can pulse with contentment, and fluids can flow and nourish the tissues.

For example, in sitting meditation the seat is essential, and how you sit on it.

The rest might not be up to us. In a good practice as in good travel, you are always surprised. How fascinating that “asana,” the Sanskrit word for yoga posture, originally meant “seat, to sit.” My teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar, says that the place where the body touches the ground is the brain of the pose. In standing, that would be the feet; in sitting, the sitting bones and the legs; in head balance, the head, or the sirsa (crown) of the head; in shoulderstand, the shoulders; and so on. First, observe the base, the seat; it is like setting up your altar for the ritual to take place. Then you realize there is somebody living in there.

In yoga we have an inward experience of that living space as well as an awareness of the structure; they influence each other mutually. Each asana has a different breath, as people have. One quest could be: What is the breath of this pose, where does it live, how does it resonate? So, pranayama (yogic breathing) is already there; it has nothing to do with breathing exercises and everything to do with awareness of what is.

Form and content: That is a polarity you cannot ignore in movement, in fitness or even in advertising! How can the external image reflect the inner substance? Look at plastic surgery; it reflects suffering, inner drama, frustration about aging--not contentment. A depressed front spine will compress the heart and the digestive organs, creating even more depression and disturbing natural functions.

So we adjust the living sculpture of the body from gross to subtle levels. Then, attention goes with the pulses of life, the underground river of prana.
Many yoga practitioners, blinded by the fact that it takes physical energy and stamina to align and sustain a pose, fail to experience the ethos, the field, the ecology of the pose.  Yoga can be sold as a form of fitness, stretching and intelligent toning, with little or no processing of internal life or connections with a bigger picture. Ironically, that often is what people mean when they ask, “Do you teach Hatha?”  It means they are not interested in yoga’s spiritual overtones. They might already be content with their religious orientation. Or, they just want to exercise--not sign up for another belief system, reevaluate how they inhabit their bodies, or think about their life mission. Many don’t want to think or question, just do and sweat! And please, make the cool-down or the relaxation short; we didn’t pay a class fee to lie down or sit!

I said “ironically,” because in India, Hatha Yoga, referring to the text “Hatha Yoga Pradikipa,” is a very esoteric set of practices, certainly way beyond physical planes. It plays with the polarity of the sun and moon energies, the solar and lunar plexuses.
The so-called “fitness” industry, seeing which way the wind blows, certainly has adopted yogic concepts like inner strength, inner peace and body-mind connection. How many health clubs have added the word “mind” to “body” to better sell the same old things revamped with a pseudo-spiritual glow?!  It’s become a common way to market weight loss or a flat tummy. Of course you have to meet people where they are. But still, at some point it should not be called yoga anymore. There is a lot of bad spiritual yoga out there--and also great, sound fitness classes.

Is yoga—or any—practice based on form or content? As in music, we cannot separate the technique from the interpretation and the emotional content. In music, you have to learn to play an instrument or sing, so there is a physical component. But really, would music qualify as fitness? It would be like playing the cello to burn calories, the saxophone to lose weight, or playing the piano to sleep better and give flexibility to the finger joints! The doing, the mental fluctuations (vrttis) or the level of anxiety sometimes mask the core of the being. As Patanjali, the great Indian philosopher, says in his sutras: “With the attainment of focused mind, the inner being establishes itself in all its reality” (in Bernard Bouanchaud’s translation) or, “the seer dwells in his own true splendour “(in Iyengar’s). Otherwise , we identify with the activities of the mind. With the practice of pranayama, all that veils clarity of perception is swept away.

Can you have a deeper, more direct perception of everything that is, including people?
Traditionally, yoga practice is more about being in a pose and discovering ways to sustain it. The fast-paced, sun-salutation based yoga that we see developing with various denominations (Power, Vinyasa, etc.) is quite recent in history. Westerners have endorsed it more than the meditative forms because the culture is extremely fast, with an obsessive-compulsive edge. Consider that anorexia or anorexia-like patterns such as never enough, low self-esteem and substance abuse are quite common.  And since like attracts like, as we say in Ayurveda, the choices people make in their lives tend to magnify the issues. Of course, there is an obesity problem, so people have to move and break the sedentary ice; but what I see is that the already-thin people over-exercise—often plagued by sports injuries—while the overweight crowd just watches ab-machine commercials and dines at all-you-can eat buffets, which the American culture promotes at the same time as diet pills.

What really matters is the emotional balance, the equilibrium of the nervous system, the contentment of living a meaningful life, the ability to sleep well and have a rich dream life. To have no regrets when you finally dissolve at the end.  I remember the words of John Lennon: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

If you feel oppressed or ill at ease with yourself, open from inside. Learn to breathe freely, practice a receptive passive backbend and see that your ribcage may be too much of a cage.

See what will come out of the cage and see how the cage transforms itself into an adaptable weaved basket! Open the doors of the inner kingdom and the windows of the brain (the sensory organs), soften the skin so the life force can flow everywhere and irrigate the vessel. The breath then will reclaim its full territory. Then you can be. Relaxation and meditation allow you to be free; then you can act.

Namaste,

Francois

NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL SEMINARS with FRANCOIS: 

(click on the picture to download this flyer)

* Visit the Open Sky Yoga store at 5 Arnold Park featuring paintings by nationally recognized artists, props and cds that are great for relaxation and essential books for deepening your practice.

CONTACT US:


Open Sky Yoga
19 Birch Crescent
Rochester, NY 14607
585-244-0782
http://www.openskyyoga.com
joann@openskyyoga.com
yogawave@rochester.rr.com


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