Lovely people…

We have just completed our latest YLP Yoga Basics Course. The course is organised over eight, 1.5 hour classes and is designed to introduce basic yoga practice, science and philosophy. Over the 12 hours we learn how to complete the Solar Salutation, the 12 core postures, yogic breathing, relaxation and just be…

As with all YLP classes and workshops its all designed to be inclusive, encouraging, fun and engaging. No one gets left behind… You can find out about our Yoga Basics Course here…

In the meantime here is a picture of the lovely people who took part in our last Yoga Basics Course…

 

Changing things…

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

-R. Buckminster Fuller

So many of the problems we face in life and in our world are rooted in us having a limited experience of who we really are.

If we could change our view and recognise ourselves not just as separate physical individuals, but part of a larger interconnected whole we may find ourselves leading a different life towards a more thriving, purposeful, sustainable world. Imagine what that new world would be like. Its starting to take hold in some places but there is a lot of work to do if this new model, as Bucky says, makes the current world obsolete.

The current model is clearly not working anymore. We are beginning to see that the existing paradigm – more of the same, will ultimately be self-digesting. We may need to move fast before it’s too late. Going to the odd yoga class may seem pointless, but the new model starts with you and your yoga practice- providing you with the tools to design and inhabit that world.

We now live in an age of conformity and control. Many of our institutions have succumbed to the idea that being rational, left brained, materialistic, economic, target driven survival of the fittest is the most important and that everything else is secondary. Just witness how education, health, environment, energy, transport, business, entertainment and building homes have all just been sucked dry by a market first, ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality. The world may appear to be bright, colourful, full of vitality and opportunity, but this is just maya (illusion).

None of the old paradigm is designed to help you regain or even realise an authentic, integration with your personal life and purpose. As soon you find that deeper awareness, the ‘unitive’ inner reality you will notice a softening of maya. It becomes translucent, allowing you to see and know a little more. When the world ‘everywhere’ seems a little brighter, more colourful, more purposeful, you know you have started to empower your inner architect towards designing and building the better model.  And then you start to explore that vital inner knowing of who you really are, what the cause of your ‘aliveness’ really is and how it shapes the world.

So choose the art and science of yoga to help you and others, your community, workplace and home thrive, adapt, change and grow. We all take small steps, but even these will bring profound change and expanded awareness in what you do and who you are – everyday.

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor. Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularising terms such as “Spaceship Earth”

A Natural Unfolding…

 

Many people are completely ‘wrapped up’ in themselves. You can see these wrapped people everywhere – in the way they dress, talk, act, think…..they are sometimes on the Six O’clock news. They live in your street, work in your office. They are everywhere!

They are wrapped up so tightly that you can’t see what’s inside. They also can’t see out, so neither of you get to know what is really there. The wrapped people often don’t know they are wrapped until its too late and the wrapping gets so tight, so overwhelming they they can’t breathe. They can’t see, they cant feel….

Yoga is the key to loosening and eventually removing the wrapping. To practice yoga in all its forms is to know and experience a gentle, natural unfolding of the wrapping. And instead a feeling exposed, the feeling is of freedom. The unfolding reveals a lightness, a confidence and creative momentum of purpose which previously went by un-noticed.

 

 

Drawing without purpose…

Last month we hosted an amazing Happy Spontaneous Me workshop as part of Chorlton’s famous Arts Festival. We are pleased to showcase a little piece from yogi Hannah Patterson who took part. We love the pictures from Hannah’s little shrine…

The combination of yoga and drawing is surprisingly beautiful. Not only will you express yourself from a deeper place, you create something to display that is a reminder of how perfect the present moment actually is, no matter how you’re feeling.

Within the workshop, we were guided through meditation and simple yoga postures and then asked to put pen/crayon to paper with some specific techniques. These techniques weren’t to teach you how to draw properly. Quite the opposite. You experienced how to draw without purpose, perfection or judgement. We were encouraged to draw with feeling, allowing our hand to wander across the blank page aimlessly. Very therapeutic.

The reason I love yoga so much is because it allows me to let go of the need to be perfect and achieve. I find peace in the postures and zone out from the people around me and I give up my urge to compete. In fact, I am merely comforted by the closeness of others. Happy Spontaneous Me gave me an opportunity to experience this two fold. After the yoga postures, we’d turn to the page to again connect with our inner world as well as having the closeness of those next to us – knowing that they too were connecting with their own self.

I’d really recommend attending one of Mick’s workshops or classes. If you’re new to yoga, it’ll be a beautiful introduction to your journey. If you’re a regular practitioner, you’ll experience an authentic class and gain a little more wisdom to add to your tool kit.

Here are some pictures of one of my drawings from the workshop – it is part of my shrine at home as I genuinely think it is a brilliant expression of myself at the time. It may look totally arbitrary but to me it’s a reminder of my happy spontaneous self.

Hannah undertaking jappa drawing

Hannah’s shrine

Hannah’s shrine

You get in touch with Hannah here and find out about her inspiring work with healthy foods and healthy living…

Happy Spontaneous Me 2015 Om Yoga Show

Here is a small gallery featuring some of the spontaneous work produced at this year’s Om Yoga Show in Manchester.

Happy Days…

This weekend at the Om Yoga Show, Manchester Mick led another Happy Spontaneous Me workshop. This Yoga in Action practice is at the heart of the YogalIfe Project, to bring yoga to life out into the world through you. This may look like wild scribbling. It is in fact deep  yoga practice where concentration is on the ‘doing and the making’ for its own sake, not on imagined future outcomes. This is a karma yoga experiment  where you can be free from always trying to judge and evaluate everything you do. To disentangle yourself from getting trapped in thinking about comparisons with others or wether what you do is good enough against an imagined ideal. This is action done without worrying about results leading to inner contentment, a timless feeling of being present in the now through the flowing action of mark making on paper. This sense of effortless, creative, moment-to- moment connection of flow is what is meant by yoga. Being and doing. Union. As the Bhagavad Gita tells us.

2.47 This is the secret to living a life of real achievement.

For those of you who worry about what you are doing –  just stop. Look inwards and let go… Your intuition, inner knowledge spontaneously applied is more than good enough. And because its coming from the true source of who you really are its perfect and right!

Here are two short videos and some pictures.

Next Wednesday we are hosting another session (a little longer) at Chorlton Central as part of the Chorlton Arts Festival. There are only a few spaces left…Book your place here.

Getting into the flow….

On Wednesday 20^th May Mick is leading the special yoga in action YLP workshop Happy Spontaneous Me, as part of the Chorlton Arts Festival.

Happy Spontaneous Me, combines ancient yoga science and practice with the latest thinking on ‘flow’, creativity and happiness. The workshop takes the form of an active meditation, merging being and doing into one – a favourite theme at the YogaLife Project. Using simple techniques such as repetitive and free mark making on large sheets of paper, using chalks, pastels, pens etc, we begin by utilising a yoga mind set to connect, moment-to-moment with what we are doing. You can chose any action to be a flow creating activity. What is key is your relationship to the activity. Its not what you do its how you do it that’s important, and this is where yoga science comes in.

Being and Doing…

This is yoga practice, which can be taken off the mat and into the realm of where everybody lives and works. It teaches you to take notice, observe and find harmony with what ever you are doing. This experience is sometimes defined as autotelic awareness, or ‘flow’ when we are fully and consciously immersed into, and with whatever you are doing purely for its own sake. The term autotelic derives from the Greek, ‘auto’ meaning, self, and ‘telos’ meaning goal or task. When we are in the flow, action is effortless and smooth. The moment fully lived.

Happy Spontaneous Me, points to a deeper form of yoga practice called Karma Yoga or the yoga of action. At the YLP we call this ‘Being and doing’, where work is done without some future expectation of reward in mind but just for the sheer joy of doing it. When we pay attention to the activity for its own sake, not thinking about future results or past mistakes we become centred, we stay present. We are in our own yoga state or ‘union’ – the goal of yoga.

To get into the flow experience we have to change our mode of thought from trying to exert force over what we are doing towards an imagined result, to aligning our action with an inner harmony and intuition. This is an essential and fundamental yoga teaching that leads towards a happier more creative and fulfilling life. We are in a world now of image, appearance and desire. Most people are fooled into confining themselves this world placing themselves onto never ending treadmill of expectation, desires, and rewards. We know this causes frustration, anger and unhappiness. But its possible to step off the treadmill, still be in the world, but free, once we realise where real happiness and creative contentment can be found.

But I am not creative…

Yes you are! If you breathe, you are creating yourself everyday moment-by-moment. Imagine if you could harness that amazing, powerful creativity and direct it with purpose into the heart of your everyday.

Everyone is creative – that’s the whole point. The fact is that when you are in your yoga flow, self created expectations, desires or limiting feelings about oneself are stilled. They simply do not matter. You will feel in total control, present and fulfilled. In the workshop, emphasis is on letting go, stepping outside your comfort zone and learning to get out of the way.

During the workshop we will learn to:

• Understand how to make any activity into a flow or yoga experience.
• Unlock your creative flow and liberate your inner joy
• Develop a sense of meaning, effortless control and involvement in what you are doing.
• Discover a deeper a sense of self and your purpose.
• Feel what it means to be totally present and not lost in an imagined future or past.

Life flows through you…

When we practice this technique correctly and with an open heart you will sense a new type of reality different to what you feel in your day. A world of effortless, creative being where your sense of self and purpose is there to be felt and acted upon. A richer, rewarding more creative life that flows from and through you and not determined by the imagined expectations but being right here, right now.

Happy Spontaneous Me workshop

At Happy Spontaneous Me we use mark making and drawing as a way of supplying a simple creative flow producing action. We use timed exercises, combined with breathing and drawing, fast mark making, flowing and mindful action techniques combined with guided relaxation and special pranayama. The main technique is karma yoga combined with jappa (simple repetitive) action. Mick will guide you through all of these techniques to get you into the flow…You will not need any art or yoga experience.

You can book you place at Happy Spontaneous Me here.

All material is provided

The constant architect…

Next Saturday Mick and the YLP is hosting its second workshop of 2015 ;

Inner Architecture: The art and science of Being.

This is a workshop we have been wanting to explore for some time. For many years Mick has given talks on architecture and creativity that were really about yoga. He also gave many talks on yoga that were really about creativity and architecture. So the solution? A workshop that that does both…

Inner Architecture, will distil the art and science of yoga into a three parts, introducing techniques to allow you plan and design and make changes that open you up to your potential and purpose which modern science tells us is almost unlimited. Utilising meditation, physical practice, creative action and guided relaxation, you can design, you can build,  you can inhabit your own world.

Book your place here…

You are the architect…start designing.

Architects help to shape the space and matter of the world to meet a specific purpose. If it can be done in a way that creates a little meaning, joy, harmony, without harm and with a sense of place then all well and good. That’s architecture. It gives us meaning. It gives us identity. It gives us a home.

You might think you are not creative, imaginative or artistic. I can’t draw… You think you don’t have the science or the maths. Nevertheless, you are an architect. And a pretty skillful, creative one too…you are the constant architect of your own world, your own life.

This is how it works.

Moment by moment we are all simultaneously creating and experiencing our own reality. That means that everything you experience, think, see, hear, react and respond to is your responsibility. You have a choice, you create it, you make it,  give your experience reality. This reality is shaped by how you have learned to design and build for yourself a set of attitudes, values, beliefs based on what you assume is real. Or what you have been told is real…

As an architect you can decide to design your world based on what you ‘think is real’ or what you feel intuitively is real.

However building your world based on wrong ideas, attitudes means you get distracted or confused and we create for ourselves a fragile architecture. The first thing we need to do as our own architect is to know how to observe the world around you and know the difference between looking and seeing…

The non-permanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.”

The Bhagavad Gita 2.14, “

Get it right we find ourselves inhabiting a happier, fulfilling world of promise and love, seemingly designed to support  your intention and purpose. It’s an architecture that expresses who you are and what you can do. You are the architect. You can decide and shape the world, as you want it more importantly as you need it.

Deciding to be your own architect takes creativity, and compassion, trust and openness. These are tools you already have in abundance. But you only find them once you let go and turn your focus inwards.

Once you turn your attention inward, you can begin to design and create. Through yoga practice you will become aware of your levels of consciousness. You will find that the capacity to design and shape your world, and this realization will become a source of fulfillment to you. It will be your very own architecture from which to observe and operate in the world providing a sense of purpose, timelessness, stillness unaffected by events and external forces. In the world but not of it.

When we our plan our architecture around the present, the now, we you learn to enjoy life from moment to moment and do not worry about the future. If you take care of your present, you see your potential flows…ready to be shaped by you the architect of your life.

 

 

Mapping out your intentions…

This weekend we completed our first workshop for 2015 with the third annual hosting of our popular new year, Back On Track workshop.  Based on intense practice combined with moments of complete stillness through deep Yoga nidra and Sankalpa making this workshop was based on three key principles:

1. Your Passion: When you just feel compelled to do.

2. Your Purpose: When what you do feels right. When you feel your most creative, purposeful and productive.

3. Your Potential: When what you do makes a real and lasting  difference for  others and yourself.

When we practice yoga we begin to know what makes us do what we do. When we know what is useful or can be discarded in our thinking, we make changes knowing that like a good building  everyone is designed and constructed for a certain purpose. Our roll as yogis, as a human beings to is allow that purpose to flow into the world.

This year we put a new creative spin on our Sankalpa by asking our YLP yogis to make a map, firstly describing where they are right now (location) where they want to go (destination)  and the route they would need to take  to get there (intention) .  The map would serve as a  tool to  describe self observations – and then how to intuitively move on towards what ever goals or tasks they are designed to do.

To support this, Mick gave a short talk on looking, knowing and observation in yoga. Describing,  piece by piece the difference between the observed and observer, from the external to internal experience  finally leading to an experience (however partial) of  our deeper consciousness, the observer of who and what we are. The witness which knows where we are going and how…..The Sankalpa is the result of this experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on Track is one of the YLP’s, Yoga in Action workshops, designed to show how yoga science and practice can be used to reveal  a more creative, fruitful and meaningful life.

 

Fourteen going on fifteen…

So 2014 is nearly over, although as yogis we know there is no such thing as time….just change.

First, a big thank you to our YogaLife Project tribe who had to put up with building works for the last month or so. The church space is now nearly finished and we start on the hall January 5^th. Our classes and workshop will take place in the new church space.

Witnessing change all around us, even in the form of builder’s dust reminds us that nothing is permanent other than the continuous moment of stillness inside you. The goal of our practice is to experience that stillness so that we can project it out into the world. It doesn’t require anything extraordinary other than you just being yourself.  That’s when yoga really takes off and impacts on everyone and everything around you. You can be a force for change. In fact without you, change would never happen and that simple goal will continue to underpin the YLP.

This year, the support shown from all of you has given us the confidence to ramp up our projects and activities in 2015. We start with our usual Back On Track workshop on 17^th January. A yoga intensive to help refocus your intention for the coming year combined with a Sankelpa, a personal yogic business plan – a self generated reminder to help you keep focused on what you need to do.

Next year also sees the start of our YogaLife Project Teacher Training School. We are very excited about this new venture which is planned to start around August- September. We are also starting a brand new Beginner’s Class called, Yoga Basics on 6th. January. This is designed to help rationalise the class levels more efficiently so that everyone can get what they need from the YLP (remember you need to book ahead now except for the Thursday Drop-in). Other ideas include a whole day workshop called: ‘Live like a Yogi for a Day’. Where we will offer a pocket sized ashram experience of full on yoga, meditation, eating, teaching and talking. The whole event will be a dry run to future longer events such as retreats. We are also continuing to develop our Beginner’s Meditation Course held at YLP HQ starting 24^th January 2015.

We are also making better use of social media. We have a new twitter, @YogaLifeProject so that you can easily keep in contact with Mick and the YLP.  We also plan to make a couple of short films explaining  how we bring real yoga, to real people, who live real lives…Other plans include more downloadable stuff such as short, How To eBooks and apps featuring more of Mick’s guided relaxation and meditation.

If there is one thing we can take with us into next year – it’s the idea that everything good in the world starts with you. Try if you can to see the whole thing, the bigger picture, the wood, not the trees. It’s a message we are beginning to hear a lot, and have to act on, if we want to live sustainable, happier, purposeful lives. Mick, this year joined the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). Based in California and founded by one of his heroes, Dr. Ed Mitchell the sixth man to walk on the Moon (Apollo 14). This team of scientists are researching into consciousness with a mission to help bring profound change on how we live in the world. This is yoga by another means and IONS have developed  the world’s largest on-line resource on meditation research. Here is Mitchell in 2012 asking us to see a bigger picture. Not me, or you but all of us.

So thank you everyone for your support. It has been brilliant. Next year we plan to go both higher and deeper.