Hi Everyone.

1. Tomorrow is Memorial Day and we will only have one class: 8-10 am, so you can sleep “late” and observe the dead in the afternoon.

About the dead, to put things in perspective, I’ve been scolded by my fellow Ashtangis for getting up so late now that I have kids: 4:30 in the morning. The earliest regular wake-up time I ever had was 3:15 am. It was consciousness altering. Michele and I would go to concerts, lectures and dance performances and fall asleep.

2. Speaking of Michele, she will be wrapping up her Ashtanga Basics course this afternoon at 5 pm. Next week will be the beginning of a regular class, open to drop-ins, dropouts and everyone else, on Sundays from 5-6:30 pm, Ashtanga Yoga for Beginners. She’s describing it as a class for people just getting started, or those who want to take a slower approach to the practice. If Mysore-style threatens your sense of homeostasis, you might try this one.

3. I’ll be doing my led Primary class this coming Friday, June 2nd from 5-7 pm. Please bring your burning questions and uncomfortable dilemmas. I’ll be offering a few more comments on my understanding of the differences between Body and Mind and the arduous and glorious job of getting them to sit down and talk to each other. Eventually talking leads to flirting, which leads to…

Namaste, Steve

Hi Everyone.

Great quote from Gary Snyder, poet:

     I was working for a trail crew up in Yosemite Park. I found myself doing three months of long, hard physical labor, out on the trails week after week. At the beginning, I found myself straining against it, trying to exercise my mind in a serious intellectual kind of way, while doing my work. I was reading Milton and had some other reading. And it was frustrating, although I had done the same thing before on many jobs. Finally, I gave up trying to carry on an intellectual interior life separate from the work and I said the hell with it, I’ll just work. And instead of losing something, I got something much greater. By just working I found myself being completely there, having the whole mountain inside of me, and finally having a whole language inside of me that became one with the rocks and trees. And that was where I learned the possibility of being one with what you were doing, and not losing anything of the mind thereby. Excerpted from The Real Work , (1969, New Directions).