Yoga Workshops Spring 2012

Transformational Yoga is an integral system, developed by Swami Vidyanand in India, that activates inner resources which allow you to live in a state of well-being and balance thus lightening the pressures of modern living. Integral Yoga is not only asana, but it is an attitude, an awareness of your interaction with life and should give you the ability to handle any challenges that life presents.

While Transformational yoga uses hatha yogic postures in order to stretch and streangthen the physical body, pranayama breathing techniques, mantra chanting, and meditation are also an essential part of a complete yoga system that purifies and awakens the chakras. As a result, you see the effects carried over into your everyday life, bringing equilibrium and serenity to the physical body, emotions, mind, and soul.

Find the silence in the center of your being, the stillness at the center of the cyclone. Today life moves at a fast pace creating stress, making it difficult to just sit directly in silent meditation. Therefore OSHO has introduced dynamic meditations that get you moving for a cathartic effect. If you begin with something active and chaotic, you can throw out all of the suppressions and built up tensions and after this cleansing a sitting meditation becomes possible. Then silence descends on you, you feel it growing inside of you naturally, it is not forced. By bringing our physical and mental energies to a peak, the following silence is easy - leaving us refreshed and energized.

In the second hour you will experience the powerful technique of Yoga Nidra, in which you learn to relax consciously. For true relaxation you must remain aware, in a state of dynamic sleep. This systematic method relieves three levels of tension: physical, mental and emotional. During this practice you seem to be asleep, but the consciousness is functioning at a deeper level of awareness. In this state between sleep and wakefulness, contact with the subconscious and unconscious dimensions automatically occurs. If the consciousness can be separated from external awareness and from sleep, it may be applied in many ways, such as: transforming your nature, increasing knowledge and creativity, and improving memory. Yoga nidra is the science of relaxation which allows us to dive down into the subconscious and establish harmony within.