Blog Student News Trainees/Teacher News

Dear Yogis,

This Sunday (5th July) is the date set for in-house Teacher Training class.  As usual 2pm to 4pm.  I will not at this stage be zooming, but it may come in time.  I am offering a regular Sunday morning Dharma Class starting from July 12th.  This will include Yoga Nidra, Dharma Talk and Shared Lunch from 10 to 2.  That will mean that on future Teacher Training days you can spend the whole day here from 10 to 4 or any time within that. I am so looking forward to REAL PEOPLE IN REAL CLASSES. You will need to indicate interest.  Once I get three plus people we will go ahead.

NOT ZOOM,  but my tech expert is setting up VIMEO, so when we get this set up,  you will be able to do teacher training (and tarot training) from videos on your computer, where you want, when you want. Just by logging in to our web site.

To facilitate this, I bought a beautiful new camcorder  at Michaels in Melbourne yesterday (the last one of this brand and type available in Victoria), I tried everywhere.  To warn you – printers, cameras etc etc hard to buy at the moment because no shipments are arriving from OS.   The bottom of the market or the super expensive can be available but in the middle, nothing.  Don’t buy tech for another month – supply should start getting better by then.  Right now you will be encouraged to buy even when the item is not useful to you, or short term.. use the time to research what you really need.

With regards to COVID and Teacher Training. So many suburbs are in lock-down that looking at the list I can see that a few of you will not be able to come to Teacher Training. The usual covid requirements apply.  I need you to book your place –  email asap and let me know IF YOU CAN COME.  The cost is $20, and you can pay DD or bring cash (not coin please).

If you watch the VIMEO when they become available,  take notes from studying my DAILY newsletter, and are also able to come to the Sunday trainings  from July 12th, you will get more than ever before.  Certainly more than monthly teacher trainings, or 45 minutes of Zoom once a week.

Talking about booking for a service.  I went to Myer this morning.  They had a “covid monitor” on every floor taking temps and offering sanitiser at the beginning of every escalator, lift and door..  I bought a coffee and they wrote down my name and telephone number on a register.  There was a 30 minute visit limit per client.  No lingering over a coffee, although this was not strictly enforced (thank goodness – but there were not many clients).  I loved it.  If only it could stay like this.  No crowds, no rubbish, not much traffic, and all services working beautifully.

I travelled from Woodend to Melbourne by bus.  I do however think just 6 people on a big, modern, air-conditioned bus is a total waste.  In China they have a fabulous frequent service of mini buses that you call via your phone.  Mobilising a mini bus service, or even a limousine service as they do in the USA, then six clients from Woodend to Melbourne, and four customers on the way back could have made sense.  I appreciated the service on the big luxurious bus (especially with covid distancing in mind), but I was aware of the eventual cost to tax payers.  Nothing for nothing. Our taxes at work!

Everything is part of our yoga training.  I was especially reminded of this as different students responded to me about covid and my travel down to Melbourne Central today.

Some people emailed and helped me find the right train, the best coffee, things to see in this unusual time,   and were joyful..  I was just taking a train, not signing up to go to War!  This is what used to be a regular journey.

Others worried that I would get sick, and told me terrible tales…In the time of the Black Death they were the folk hanging Garlic around their neck, totally useless, but when there is nothing to really worry about they will find something. To them Murphy’s Law is actually Murphy’s Judgement on them.

Then there were the students who were worried about EVERYTHING. Pickpockets (yes, really!!), illness, people coughing, late trains, and dangers from every side..

Totally a waste of email time and effort.  Not helpful.

Living my yoga is like living every moment as both the first and the last moment of existence.  In the first moment we are fresh, alive and clear, we are in a state of awe. In the last moment we know that only that moment matters.  Each step is all that is.  We are going nowhere. Each step is all there is.  

In doing/living my yoga I am not on a track, but enjoying every moment, moment to moment.

As the Zen Master Dogen wrote “Mountains, rivers, earth, the sun, the moon and the stars are mind. At just this moment, what is it that appears directly in front of you? (Tanahashi 1985, p.88).

 

Have a beautiful day. Catch a train and experience travel it can be.  No crowds, clean, courteous and joyful. Enjoy the moment.

NAMASTE.  JAHNE

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Yogis,

IN THE STUDIO:  The second hand Paul Grilley DVD’s have sold and have been posted, but I do have some new DVD’s available.  If you would like a Yin Yoga or a Yoga Anatomy by Paul Grilley, please contact me.  I will sell them for $47.50 each plus $5 postage each.

What an unsettling time we are going through.  Nothing much to hang on to except for our yoga and our spiritual practice.  With that in mind, and wanting folk to come back to the REAL studio, no zoom, no computer stuff – we need real people – I am thinking of holding a Sunday morning practice.  Yoga Ninja at 10 (to let go of the week), followed by a Dharma Talk (to explore what is up ahead) , followed by a share lunch (to just be with others in a Buddhist way)?  Any takers – all by donation.  Can’t have many in the studio during Covid,  and in spite of this I would do it EVERY Sunday if I had enough interest, probably starting from the second Sunday in July..

The whole idea would be to help people improve their lives and mental states, rather than to give information about yoga and Buddhism merely to fuel an intellectual interest.

It would be important not to approach this time merely as an opportunity for study, but rather “talking the Dharma” an essential and time-honoured spiritual practice that (when completed well) develops wisdom, creates spiritual community, and gives us a context in which we can work on our habitual ways of being.  Put the big words away.  This is an opportunity to reframe our yoga (and our ego) so we can more intelligently interact with the world.  Know your purpose in this moment and there is no difficulty in knowing what to do!

Talking the Dharma is as important as meditation, it is not an optional extra. In the Pali Canon there are more cases of people breaking through to a new level as a result of exposure to the Dharma than as a result of meditation!

Dharma Study is the way that we develop wisdom – traditionally there are three steps..

*Wisdom which comes from hearing and learning

*Wisdom which comes from thinking and reflecting

*Wisdom which comes from meditative development

The last of these we recognise as REAL wisdom, but for just about all of us normal human beings, the others are essential steps without which the last wisdom never develops. We follow the precepts because it is what our heart wants us to do, fully acknowledging that we will frequently fail.   Sometimes it feels like sweeping a path in the middle of a dust storm, nevertheless less we keep on sweeping.

Working regularly with a group (a Sangha)  is supportive, challenging and constantly reminds us that our reactions are there to be transcended, not indulged.   It can become an exercise in mindfulness, communication and transcending our traditional ways of being – and at its best becomes a powerful way of practising the Dharma, creating harmony and a place of shared inspiration.

In our Sangha time we do not necessarily seek solutions to life problems, rather we will discover a new view of life which arises when the blocked energies within us find a way of release.

Join me.  Please email and register your interest.  It will be a small class due to covid, but useful and powerful nonetheless. The most effective way of helping others is to make spiritual progress oneself, and the best way to make spiritual progress oneself is to help others.

 

Have a wonderful day. and keep me in a bubble of wonderfulness as I negotiate buses, trams and people in my journey to the CBD today. I will be singing as I go.

NAMASTE.  JAHNE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Yogis,

Just to bring you up to date.  Have computer probs, but nothing that would make a difference to you – but makes me consider if I really, really want to do my yoga (or anything) on line via ZOOM.  The answer is easy.  No.  Once I have got my new camcorder, I will be loading every class I can onto VIMEO.  Seems a way that is more compatible with ME.   Re yesterdays newsletter.  If you want Paul Grilley videos – let me know.

On the technology note.  I considered a new printer.  The guy in my local store said wait at least a month.  All the good printers are unavailable due to the fact that so many more people are working at home, and hardly any commercial flights are coming from China.  The same goes for camcorders (mine was the last in its class in Victoria), and anything else technological.  There are a lot of industries suffering, but stores selling tech are booming.

With regards to classes.  Like every yoga studio we are not booming in this time of covid… but we are still here.  I am loving the new personal class structure.  Consequently,   I am  reinstating a floor exercise (with stretch bands)  class on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays at 6.30. and Saturdays at 10am.   I can take a maximum of four persons in my space… the classes will not require authentic ability, but they will not be easy. For ALL  classes, all the covid requirements remain valid as per the web site.  We need pre-payment for a ten week consecutive class pass- no casuals.  If you miss a class, you still are responsible for paying for that class. Unless there is an unexpected vacancy in the week you miss, you can’t do a make up class.  That’s the way it is during covid, we need to keep the class communities stable.  Go to “Classes” on this web site for details.  The photo above is of a poster available on etsy www.myyogabooks.etsy.com of the entire poem “ON BEING HUMAN”.  Also available on “www.jahnehopewilliams.net”

THE THERAPY OF YOGA…

The life of yoga is a life of continually, in each moment,  liberating ourselves from ourselves by engagement with the reality of the world around us however uncomfortable that may be initially.  It is a Bodhisattva path which puts the spiritual needs of the world first as it manifests in each concrete situation.  Therefore, it is a PATH OF THERAPY. (Unless of course you choose to see it as a fitness regime which many do). It is not simply the therapy of an individual –  client by client – but the mind of each client which seeks the healing of EVERY ENCOUNTER.

The yoga approach is to see whatever is happening as an opportunity for liberation.  To know what is happening, when it is happening.

The Master Dogen wrote:  “When one studies Buddhism one studies oneself; when one studies oneself one forgets oneself; when one forgets oneself one is enlightened by everything and this very enlightenment breaks the bonds of clinging to both body and mind not only for oneself but for all beings as well.  If enlightenment is true, it wipes out even clinging to enlightenment”.  

Yoga therapy as we do it in this studio sees the dilemma which brings a client to the therapist is some manifestation of the client’s Buddha nature calling to the client to liberate themselves from that conditioning.  It is an opportunity on the path to enlightenment.  None of us are “there yet”.  The client and I set out together.  Eventually they will have to walk the path alone, and for themselves.  Like learning to ride a bike,  in Buddhist training – yoga training, we benefit from having a “good friend” beside us.   (PS a good friend is not someone who tells you what you want to hear and takes you home the pretty way – a good friend loves you enough to tell you the truth, sometimes the difficult truth for both the giver and the receiver).

To begin your path at this studio, please enquire to me personally:  yogafirst2@bigpond.com

Have a wonderful day..

Namaste:  Jahne