Yoga Day USA 2005

This event is scheduled for January 29, 2005.  What is Yoga Day USA?

Yoga Alliance launched Yoga Day USA in 1999, first as a fund raiser, then as a means to build awareness of Yoga throughout the community. This year, Yoga Alliance is sponsoring out largest campaign ever to reach out to the country at large. Yoga Alliance is encouraging registered Yoga teachers, studios, schools and other organizations to build awareness of the benefits of Yoga by hosting events that are FREE to draw in new students or to raise money for a cause of their choosing.

In other words, it's a day of either free workshops to encourage people to try Yoga or it's a day of pay to play workshops where the proceeds are donated to a worthy cause.  I know of at least one Yoga Day USA workshop that will be raising money for tsunami relief.  If, like me, you are no where near a Yoga Day USA workshop location, consider hosting your own workshop for family or friends.  Also, don't let the lack of a cause related workshop near you stop you from donating funds to a worthy cause.  You can always donate to the Red Cross/Red Crescent or to my personal favorite relief organization, Humanitarian Services.

Namasté

It's been a long time

It's been a long time since I regulary wrote here and nearly as long since I've practiced regularly.  I have a very hard time justifying writing anything here when I haven't spent time on my mat, I've felt like writing here would seem to indicate that I was practicing and that allowing people to believe that when I was not actually practicing at all would be a violation of Satya.  Yoga, however, is not time spent doing asanas and this long break in my asana practice has been a good reminder of this.  Yoga is union:

1.1 Now, instruction in Union.
1.2. Union is restraining the thought-streams natural to the mind.
1.3. Then the seer dwells in his own nature.
1.4. Otherwise he is of the same form as the thought-streams.
Yoga Sutras of Patañjali

Union, or Yoga, is restraining the thought-streams natural to the mind.  Yoga is both the act of restraining the thought-streams and it is the thing which is restraining the thought-streams.  When these thought-streams are restrained, one dwells in his own true nature; otherwise he is only the things which he thinks.  The Eight Limbs of Yoga are not Yoga but means of achieving and having Yoga just as physical exercise is not good health but a means of obtaining it.

The point is that there is much more to Yoga than just the asanas and to better highlight that, I've started to call an asana practice just that:  Asana practice.  Along those same lines, I'm making a concerted effort to incorporate the yamas and niyamas in everything I do.  The idea came from Yoga Journal's 2005 desktop calendar.  One of the first pages talked about Ahimsa and I figured that they would cover all the yamas and niyamas throughout the year.  I couldn't easily see if they did or not so I decided that I would cover them myself.  It was easy enough to divide the year into ten periods and assign one of the yamas or niyamas to each period beginning with Ahimsa.  I then made a sign which simply says Ahimsa and hung it where I would see it through the day.  This way, even though I am not practicing asanas, I am still focused on Yoga.

Namasté