The Art Getting it Down on Paper…

We have completed our first mindful creative writing workshop with the Chorlton Book Festival this week – The Art of Getting it Down on Paper.

We swung from Steve Jobs, Picasso, Denis Potter and David Lynch. We moved back and forth from the writing table (our doing space) to a our meditation circle (our being space) and then brought it all together with a series of mindful based creative exercises.

Each exercise was designed to point towards the experience and  techniques of non-doing or non-attachment. Knowing how this way of working can be ‘turned on’ we can develop an awareness of effortless flow which comes from just brining attention to the act of doing rather than expectation of future outcomes.

These simple mind/body techniques bring about a sense of the present and ourselves in the centre of it, moment by moment. When that happens we open up and allow ourselves to ‘receive’ creative flow. But as Picasso told us, the flow of inspiration is always there but it has to ‘catch you working’  – you don’t sit and wait. You use it.  You have to get out of the way and allow it flow.

This  is at the heart of all creative action. Its also where real happiness is found in the joy of just being and doing.

 

 

 

New ways to invest in your yoga…

After talking to many of our regular YogaLifers we are changing the way you can purchase your YogaLife Project classes.

We will run three classes a week each with its own focus:

• Tuesday. Beginners/gentle level. Yoga Basics.

• Thursday. General all levels. Drop – In.

• Sunday. Intermediate/advanced level. Ready for the Week?

Starting from September 1^st 2015 we will offer three ways for you to pay for your YogaLife Project classes:

 Option 1: YLP 8 Class Pass:

Any 8 classes – to be used within two months. Valid from the date of your first class.

£64.00 (works out at £8 /class)

Option 2: YLP 16 Class Pass:

Any 16 classes – to be used within 4 months. Valid from the date of your first class.

£112.00 (works out at £7/class)

Option 3: YLP Drop –In Classes:

Pay as you go. £9.00 per class. Or you can use your YLP Class Pass.

Purchase your new YogaLife Project Class Pass card here… 

 

 

 

 

YLP Special offers:

Membership Discounts:

You can enjoy 10% reduction to the cost of any YLP workshop if you are in possession of a valid YLP Class Pass Card at the time of booking the workshop.

Introduce a friend or colleague:

The YLP is really grateful that many of you are spreading the word about the YLP and encouraging others to sign up to the Project. So from now on if you introduce a friend or colleague to the YLP and they purchase a card you can receive one free extra class to your YLP Class Pass.

YLP Good karma:

As usual free classes/cards are available to anyone who contributes their skills, creativity and time to help the YLP in marketing, workshops, events, projects etc…

Terms & Conditions.

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.

 

 

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.

YogaLife Project School gets go ahead…

This weekend we gained approval from the Yoga Alliance  to go ahead with the YLP Yoga Teacher School. This will be a fantastic new venture in our project to help change the world…

Scheduled to start late summer 2015 and spread over 24 one day modules the course will take students through everything required to teach yoga. Each module will tackle a core yoga theme such as  yoga science and theory,  teaching yoga nidra, posture and  everything in-between.  The course will also include 8 YLP ‘live’ classes where students will learn to design, manage and lead their own class. On successful graduation students will be able to teach in their own right and join the Yoga Alliance as a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT).

Over Christmas Mick (with some help) will be writing the course manual. No mince pies or Dr Who for him then…

Something missing?

Last night was one of those classes that seemed to finish before it began. It just flew by.

We talked a little about feeling incomplete. That knowledge that suggests there is something missing. In yoga science this knowledge is described as duhka, which expands into defining an overall basic dissatisfaction with our lives. We all have it, and as the Buddha told us, to be human is to suffer.   According to many great teachers this feeling of void, of emptiness, is pre-programmed into our DNA as a way of motivating us to search for something more lasting and profound. Whether you act on it or not, we all intuitively feel that hovering just out of sight is a deeper awareness of ourselves – a happier, more spontaneous, loving version.  We have a choice though. You can either direct your search outwards and shop or you can direct your search inwards and Be. The first route is the world of marketing and advertising and despite what they tell you, buying more stuff will not keep you happy for long. Eventually it will only serve to fuel your sense of void, which is exactly what they want. Not happy? Buy this, then this, then this, etc, etc.

An old swami teacher of mine would say that people who buy more and more stuff have increasingly larger voids to fill. Given where we are now; a divisive, increasingly unfair world of conflict, intolerance and pointless mass consumption, fuelled by 24 hour global media and a politics of limited ideas and leadership, we can only conclude that our collective feeling of duhka is deeper then ever. It’s pretty clear that we are not in the best of places at the moment. But it is also an opportunity as we say in consultancy…

So as yogis we have a responsibility to be happy. It is not difficult to do once you know that nothing outside of ourselves will bring happiness or peace of mind. All you have to do is stay present and know that is all all you need to be is free from want. Once we attach ourselves to things as way of a defining ourselves the opposite happens….we lose our experience of being alive.  The Yoga Sutras are pretty clear on this:

When we are established in non-attachment, the nature and purpose of existence is understood.  (2:39)

Remember though it’s okay to buy things. Just don’t mistake linking the things you buy with who you are.  That way you will never need to go to the Trafford Centre again.

 

Falling…

This weekend we hosted our last YogaLife Project workshop for 2014. Based on the Autumn Equinox the theme was balance, inner reflection and stillness as a way of responding the changing world around us. In amongst fallen leaves we held our balance, attempted to find the still point in our breath and know what it is to be centered, moment-by-moment. Towards the end we did a nice little writing meditation (or drawing depending on your flow) in answer to four questions, before concluding with a deep –guided relaxation and pear drop scones made from the falling fruit in the YLP gardens.

Wonderful.

 

 

News from Quebec…

One of our YogaLifers, Jody is out in Quebec at the original Sivananda Ashram set up by Swami Vishnudevananda in 1963 and is the headquarters of the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres. Situated one hour north of Montreal amidst 250 forested acres of the Laurentian Mountains, the Ashram boasts beautiful mountain views, tranquil gardens and woodland paths, a swimming pool and offers a wide range of outdoor activities in both summer and winter…

Like France, it’s wet! 

In India I did a yoga vacation. This time, in Canada, I’m here as staff so  the experience is very different. Here’s the daily schedule i’ve had for > the first 10 days…

Up at 5.30, Satsang (meditation and chanting)

6-8am, yoga practice.

8-10am, brunch.

10-11am, work.

11am-2pm, rest (and sleep!)

2-4pm, optional yoga 4-6pm.

 Dinner 6-7pm.

Work 7-8pm

Satsang 8-10pm….sleep!! 

I’d like to say i’m having R&R but the staff work hard! From tomorrow my duties change so i’m in the kitchen 6-10am! Each yoga class i’ve had a different teacher and mostly I hear a new little tip each time which is good.  I heard a good tip/variation for sun salutation from one lady. On the first forward bend, it’s palms flat on  the floor no matter how bent your legs are and on the second forward bend,  it’s legs straight no matter how far from the ground your hands are. My head stand is coming along…nearly at 2 minutes!

The energy here is great at the moment with the teacher training course and the kids camp both running too. If anyone has young-ish kids (8-15), I’d recommend bringing them to kids camp and introducing them to meditation and asanas – and they’re loving it! Camping, singing, games – i’m jealous! 

Wishing you well in sunny England 

Love and light.

Om, Jody xx

Quiet time after work…

Sunrise before Satsang…

Satsang in the Main Hall…

Sivananda Logo…

 

 

 

 

 

Your teacher….

Quite a few people, who are new to the YogaLife Project have been commenting on Mick’s teaching style, particularly those who have experienced other classes.

They comment on Mick’s attentive, engaged approach towards the class and the students, rather than just sitting up at the front and doing the postures. Many report that this approach gives them confidence. It helps them feel more engaged and connected to the class energy and the wider objectives and emphasis of the class.

Mick will adjust, encourage and constantly move through the class making sure everyone is getting the most out of the session. His concentration on mindful breath counting, attention and focus, makes sure that students stay in the ‘zone’ ensuring they really experience going a little deeper. One of the purposes of yoga is to link everyone and everything together. If the teacher gets in the way of this, then that’s a problem.

Here are some good points to watch out for.

1. The teacher is the conduit of yoga – not the source. If the teacher thinks it all about her/him then that’s not yoga – its just showing off which is one of the biggest obstacles to effective yoga practice you can imagine.
2. If the teacher is practicing their yoga in class, they are not concentrating on the class and the student. Not only is this dangerous, particularly for the less experienced, its also selfish.
3. The teacher must look to constantly orchestrate the class, keeping  its energy flowing and ensuring everyone is involved and focused. This requires a lot of energy and concentration from the teacher. Its a yoga disaster if the teacher is simply sitting at the head of the class thumbing through notes, mumbling instructions and looking distracted.
4. Take note of the content and rhythm of the session. A proper yoga class is a balanced mix of breathing, relaxation, concentration and postures. If its just postures…its not yoga. It’s just posing.
5. Finally if the teacher’s website exclusively shows lots of pictures of themselves in complex, challenging postures, half naked and oiled up, then this is a symptom of the four points above. Stay away from the class unless you want this….but doubtful you will not enjoy the benefits of real yoga.

Stay well and be happy.