 |
 |
 |
|
Yoga with Grace 'Autumn Equinox
Everything lost is found once more.
All the hurt has become healed ... in a new life.
All that is feared is faced in a new day.' Faeries and Pixies dance amongst the waxing moon beams whilst nymphs relax amongst the flowers nibbling Fairy Cakes’; Just a taste of the delightful feelings and images evoked by the teachings and magical prose of Grace in her Nature Yoga Classes and Yoga Teacher Trainings. Grace immerses her yoga participants in a world of Cornish mythology reminding humans to feel beauty, life, nature and the creativity of our hearts. She empowered students through gods and goddesses, our ancestors lest be forgotten, and tides of the moons. Manitoba, Canada where she raised a family, taught yoga and ran her own studio in Winnipeg. Trained as a Sivanada Yoga Teacher and Trainer, she incorporates the teachings of Desikachar, Kripalu Yoga and her Cornish upbringing into her yoga and trainings. Grace entices participants up spiritual stairways drawing each into charkra rooms for colourful discoveries of the energy centres when teaching her Chakra Yoga and Trainings. Blessed are participants who experience Grace’s yoga. Grace also leads ‘Yoga Tidal Celebrations’ of seasonal equinoxes blessing all with her wisdoms.
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
Tirumalai Krishnamacharya "... the practice must be continually adapted to the individual's changing needs in order to achieve the maximum therapeutic value."  Shri Tirumalai. Krishnamacharya, of a family that can trace its origins back to the South Indian yogi: Nathamuni of 7th and 8th centuries was born in the village of Muchukunte, Karnataka State, in 1888. His formal Education, largely in Sanskrit, included Degrees from several universities in North India. He then studied for seven years under a distinguished yogi in western Tibet: Rama Mohana Brahmachari who instructed him the therapeutic use of asanas & pranayama. Then he returned to South India and established a school of yoga in the palace of the Maharajah of Mysore. Nathamuni was an ancient south Indian, a great yogi who created two remarkable works: the Yoga Rahasya and the Naya Tattva. The Yoga Rahasya has never been printed, but in his youth, Shri T.Krishnamacharya had a revelation of the contents of this book in a mystic dream on a pilgrim. Many of his teachings rooted on this book. After Independence he moved to Madras where he was well-known for his therapeutic use of yoga. He was married and had six children, two of whom are also teaching yoga (Desikachar and Shri Bashyam). As a yogi, healer, linguist, Vedic scholar, expert in the Indian Schools of thought, researcher, author… in other words, a legend. Shri T.Krishnamacharya synthesized a vast amount of religious and yoga understanding. If today, yoga is an inherent part of the everyday lives of millions of people across the world, it is due in large measure to the pioneering efforts of T Krishnamacharya who revived yoga in the early twentieth century. While preserving ancient wisdom and reviving lost teachings, Krishnamacharya was also a revolutionary innovator who developed and adapted yoga practices that were as would offer health, mental clarity and spiritual growth to any individual in the modern-day world. Krishnamacharya’s knowledge of yoga was so vast that he taught each student differently. In refusing to standardize the practice and teaching methodology, he created an understanding of yoga relevant for a broad spectrum of students. By integrating the ancient teachings of Yoga and Indian philosophy with modern-day requirements, Krishnamacharya created yoga practices that are as accurate and powerful as they are practical and relevant. He passed away at the age of 101 years in 1988.
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
T. K. V. Desikachar "Yoga is
to attain
what was
previously
unattainable..."  T.K.V. Desikachar is the son and primary student of Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, prominent yogi credited with being a driving force behind the resurgence of Hatha yoga in recent decades. T K V Desikachar, started his career as a civil Engineer . Having been inspired by his father’s teachings on Yoga in Madras (now Chennai), he left his engineering career and became a student of his in the sixties. In 1976 as a gurudakshina (offering) to his father and teacher, Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya , he established Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram (KYM), which is now a leading institute of Yoga and Yoga Studies based in Chennai, India. Today, TKV Desikachar is known and respected the world over as an authority on Yoga. He studied with his father for over 30 years. Teaching regularly in India and overseas, TKV Desikachar has participated in many international conventions and conferences. His books include the “Health, Healing and Beyond” and “The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice”. He has recently authored the first ever translation of the classical yoga text “Yogayajnavalkya Samhita”.??He has also co-authored with his son Kausthub, a book titled “Vedic Chant Companion”. His latest work “The Viniyoga of Yoga”, co-authored with Kausthub and Frans Moors, deals with the application of asana and pranayama to various needs.
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
Six Senses 'This morning
I awoke
with gratitude
to
feel & touch,
to see, to hear
to smell,
to know
I am me.' Dance in circles.twirling around. faster.faster until you are on your bottom, laughter so loud it drowns out the sound of your fall. The air spins, your mind alive, vision blurred, lips over moist. Get up and go again. Listen keep listening.. hear! Between the trees. Between the sky and the earth, there beyond the field is exactly what is beside you. Left cheek rests on the arm of the settee while tears roll down over your nose, you sniff but movement waits, movement waits further. Snuffy sniff sniff nose smells the aroma of slow simmering.the kitchen begs your forgiveness to move. Clouds form upon my wishing, blocking out the moon. Lay upon the wet grass, night dreams over take the presence of raindrops. Turn there beside me, all around me I am with, yes company....the tingling down my spine, the down lifts upon my face with the breeze of movement. Flowers entice me with colours to see beyond Stillness.
© 2007 |
||
 |
 |
 |
|
The Sound of Nature OM 'Swirling snow rests to blanket the small lake in white.' A white fox saunters to the lakes edge, to drink of the icy water. a snow rabbit looks on smelling the damp air this winter's morn.'  Seeking the unstruck sound. Ancient teachings of Yoga, Tantra, Samkhya, and Vedanta and modern science believe Nature, including human mind and body, and all its’ living components you, me, all living things, all things in existence are at their most essential level of vibrating, pulsing energy. For millennia, mystics recounted their experience of this energy is said to manifest in our hearing awareness as a humming vibration around and within everything else. In the Sanskrit tradition, this sound is called “Anahata Nada,” the “Unstruck Sound.” Literally, this means “the sound that is not made by two things striking together.” The point of this particular distinction is that all ordinary audible sounds are made by at least two elements: bow and string; drum and stick; two vocal cords; two lips against the mouthpiece of the trumpet; the double reed of the oboe; waves against the shore; wind against the leaves. All sounds within our range of hearing are created by things visible and invisible, striking each other and/or vibrating together, creating pulsing waves of air molecules which our ears and brain interpret as sound. Consequently, sound that is not made of two things striking together is the sound of primal energy, the sound of the universe itself; to our ears the unheard hummings of atoms and molecules. Ancients say that the audible sound which most resembles this unstruck sound is the sound symbolized as the “OM” & “AUM”. Traditionally, the ancient mantra of “OM” is composed of four elements: the first three are vocal sounds: A, U, and M with the fourth sound, unheard, is the silence which begins and ends the audible sound, the silence which surrounds it. One ancient YOGA tradition of AUM An exquisite explanation of OM, found in the ancient Vedic tradition in Sanskrit is in the marvellous Manduka Upanishad, which explains the four elements of AUM as an allegory of the four planes of consciousness. jagrat: “A” : pronounced “AH” as in “father” the first element - resonates in the centre of the mouth. It represents normal waking consciousness, in which subject and object exist as separate entities. This is the level of mechanics, science, logical reason, the lower three chakras. Matter exists on a gross level, is stable and slow to change. swapna: “U”: pronounced as in “who” the second element - transfers the sense of vibration to the back of the mouth, and shifts the allegory to the level of dream consciousness. Here, object and subject become intertwined in awareness. Both are contained within us. Matter becomes subtle, more fluid, rapidly changing. This is the realm of dreams, divinities, imagination, the inner world. shushupti: “M” the third element, humming with lips gently closed. This sound resonates forward in the mouth and buzzes throughout the head. This sound represents the realm of deep, dreamless sleep. There is neither observing subject nor observed object. All are one, and nothing. Only pure consciousness exists, unseen, pristine, latent, covered with darkness. This is the cosmic night, the interval between cycles of creation, the womb of the divine Mother. “silence” the fourth element - the spiritually awakened state; the super-consciousness state which transcends the previous three states . . . |
||