Blog Student News Trainees/Teacher News

Dear Yogis,

Covid has shown us that there is a deep sadness in society.  In spite of the fact that we can email and speak to anyone anywhere in the world, to this point we have lived very insular lives.  We have not venerated the old people, respected our expanded families, or engaged with our neighbours, and have attempted to fill this vacuum by smoking, drinking, eating and even overworking. The covid pandemic is making us aware of this hole in our lives.  Human beings always want what is taken away from them.  We have had community taken away, we have been confined to our houses, and guess what – we want community.  Covid is showing us to ourselves. In this way and others, it is valuable and necessary.

As a community our children in particular have rejected the traditions of our our parents and grandparents but have not found anything to replace them, and right now,  generally do not know what to do.  Even our parents may not have been able to transmit these deeper traditions because they have not fully understood them, perhaps not even experienced them.

On my YouTube channel,  have spoken of the lady in the supermarket gazing at the empty shelves and crying.  She had passed the point of panic and was crumbling in front of me.  Her only reality had been taken away and there was nothing she could fall back on.  There are many people like this. They have no inner resources, not just the spiritual resources but the practical know-how that grandparents knew.  I have volunteered classes to teach “the old ways”.  Hardly anyone is interested unless I dress these ideas up in fancy yogic terms… the superficial forms.  When living values are absent then the rituals and dogmas are lifeless, rigid and even may I say it, oppressive.

Buddhism like Christianity and other traditions have to be living institutions in order to respond to the needs of the people.  This applies to our yoga class and studio, zoom or studio.  Unless they are living and working in the market place and responding to what is happening around them, they cannot transmit the jewels they have received.  On the other hand, people have to be ready to receive them.

For many years people have had the traditions stripped away and nothing put in their place.  They have nothing to believe in.  Imagine living in a world where there is nothing worthwhile, beautiful and true, and now even the distractions are being peeled away with the restrictions imposed by Covid.

It is not necessary for everyone to become a yogi, a Christian, a Buddhist or a member of any other religion.  I encourage students to look at Spirit and go back to a tradition in which they had felt nurtured. Not just look at it, BUT LIVE IT.   A place they can reintegrate and reroot.  If they do this, then they can use this knowledge to transform and renew their traditions and discover the jewels that are there.  In this way they can value other traditions, other ways, and become a benefit to everyone.  We need to reach out so others can reach out

The yamas in Yoga, the precepts in Buddhism and the Commandments in Christianity are important jewels that we need to study and practice.  We can never study and live them enough.  The more we study them, the more profound we realise they are, and how deeply they can contribute to the happiness of the family and society.

The first of the yamas is “I shall not kill”

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals.  I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.

Yogis (readers).  I invite you to become part of our community.  Choose where you want to start.  Reading, a course, YouTube, Zoom?  Choose from the menu on the home page.  It doesn’t matter where you start, it only matters that you do start.  There are many ways… If you are not sure, email me, talk, we can find a way together. yogafirst2@bigpond.com

HAVE A GREAT DAY – KEEP WELL AND PROSPER

NAMASTE – JAHNE

 

Dear Yogis…

Hooray we are (reliably) back.  I love writing the newsletters, and thankfully some of you like recieving them.  As I said…as we did with the old files, we will be going over the lists of subscribers and checking as far as we can who is responding, and at least reading… as much as we can tell.  The computer program helps.  When we culled the Teacher Training files after months of notifications that we would,  we got the most response months AFTERWARDS when people realised they weren’t any longer part of the team.  Don’t leave it that long this time.  Sometimes we have to start at the beginning…again.

BALANCE:  In yoga, meditation and life there must be balance.  In meditation, between relaxation and attention, between focus and analysis.  In the very old Tibetan Temples there was no electricity of course.  They were lit with butter lamps.  It was in this way hard to see that the walls were covered with paintings.  If you wanted to see the paintings you had to get close to the wall and then deal with the draughts which repeatedly blew out the flame.

It describes perfectly the state of meditation, the goal of which is to see past disturbances into the nature of reality.

Balance and stillness are not the same.  Finding balance means accepting and learning to live with change.  That’s the basis of adaptation.  Covid is teaching us this skill.

WHY WE MEDITATE. There are a number of reasons to meditate, just as there are a number of reasons to keep bees, or anything which is dependent on us.  We always need to ask good questions.  Perhaps reflecting on these questions – In doing this, am I making things better or worse? Are my efforts making things better or worse? Most importantly, am I serving others or just serving myself?   It is not always easy to get the correct answers to these questions, but asking them should be a priority.

“The lessons taught by a teacher with a positive motivation penetrate deepest into their students minds.  I know this from my own personal experience.  As a boy I was very lazy.  But when I was aware of the affection and concern of my tutors, their lessons would sink in more successfully than if one was hard or unfeeling on that day.

So far as the specifics of education are concerned, that is for the experts.  I will therefore confine myself to a few suggestions.  The first is to awaken young people’s consciousness to the importance of basic human values, it is better not to present society’s problems purely as an ethical or religious matter. 

It is important to emphasise that what is at stake is our continued survival”.  HH The fourteenth Dalai Lama 2006.

In my garden I am still dealing with the ravages of winter – not as bitter as it used to be, but very wet.  My Tibetan gongs like damp air, but I am looking forward to sunshine.  I have ordered my new bee colony which will arrive in September which is not long away now.  By that time I will have cleared away what remains of winter and everything will be ready for the bees in the spring.

Don’t forget to click our “classes”  on the home page of this site to see our zoom classes.  Teacher Training on the 2nd August will be zoomed.  So all you folk who have said how much they want to join us CAN.  We wait to see if you are ready for “spring”.

HAVE A GOOD DAY.

NAMASTE – JAHNE

Good morning Yogis,

I hope that we are back on air,  there was a hiccup, not with my writing, but with Mailchimps sending practices.  So, over the next couple of weeks, I am going to comb through the contacts we send the newsletters to, and if you never respond, if you haven’t clicked on it and read it (yes computers record this), I will take you off the list.  If I am left with just a few dedicated readers, well, it is what it is.  Buckle up guys.  It is a time of decision and weeding in this particular garden.

BEES:  Studying bees is like studying ourselves.  My palate never gets sick of the taste of honey, and because I love honey I have always admired the insects who magically make it.  I also am in awe of their community has often been the model for human society.  You can find references in Virgil, in Homer, in Plate Shakespeare, Marx and Tolstoy and of course our special friend Pliny the Elder.  His book, completed in AD77 …

Bees have a government. They pursue individual schemes but have collective leaders.  What is especially astonishing, they have manners more advanced than those of other animals, whether wild or tame.  Nature is great in  that from a tiny, ghost like creature she has made something incomparable.  What sinews or muscles can we compare with the enormously efficiency shown by bees?  What men in heavens name, can we set alongside these insects which are superior to men when it comes to reasoning? FOR THEY RECOGNISE ONLY WHAT IS IN THE COMMON INTEREST.

The inscriptions on many old beehives reads “NON NOBIS” meaning We work but not for ourselves”.  When in old drawings we see the old fashioned SKEP hive, it stands for some view of the goodness of work.  Sometimes this skep encourages us to reflect on the golden age of the past when work was simpler and slower.  However, in the bees world, there are no sickies, no holidays.  You are born, you work you die, no time off even to go to school..  No sooner had man admired the life of the bee and their tirelessness than he felt that he (or his wife) should emulate them in some way.

In Victorian times (as noted by Mrs. Beeton) the beehive was a symbol of industry.  It shows in one illustration that the world could be ordered.  A world in which different people did different tasks and no one envied the position of their neighbour.  A place for everyone and everyone in their place.  Like good supermarkets, industries, and families, a  good hive needs a balance of foragers and receivers.

At this time of covid there is much we can learn and receive from bees.  Honey has long been known as a medicine and strengthener of the bronchi. Muhhamed Ali the boxer took a mixture of vitamins and honey before his fights… and said that he “…danced like a butterfly, stung like a bee”.

Is there a beehive in your garden? Is honey part of your diet? Try my honey cough drops you will find the recipe on www.wildnweedy.blogspot.com.

Let me know you are there.  Don’t forget we will be zooming Teacher Training, The Tarot Training and Anatomy/Physiology lectures.  

NAMASTE.  JAHNE