BYC Newsletter #31

Dear Yoga students and those interested in Yoga,

It was Wednesday and I felt oddly disconnected from being a yoga teacher, like I didn’t believe I was one. I certainly didn’t need to be a yoga teacher, and as my evening class approached I felt I had nothing to offer. A woman had come by during the day and said she might come. And I didn’t know if any of the regulars would show up. Yet, whatever was going to happen seemed to be okay.

Before class at 7:30 I found some quiet time and just accepted my doubts about what I am doing. Then two women came in, a mother and a teen age daughter. We talked a little and she said they both had Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD) and that they thought yoga would help them focus

"Have I got a book for you,” I said with excitement, going to the living room and bringing back Thom Hartmann’s book The Edison Gene in which he presents a positive perspective on ADHD. Instead of treating ADHD as a disorder, Hartmann sees it as a gift, a crisis-survival gene that through human history has enable mankind to evolve from one level to another. Hartmann calls it the Edison Gene named after Thomas Edison, who was kicked out of school for being ADHD. “I have always felt that way too,” the older of the two women said, and she wrote down the name of the book.

As I write this piece I realize that the practice of yoga is coming into our culture now because we are individually or collectively stuck in a dysfunctional pattern of behavior. We feel the pressure of spirit or life—or God if you will—to evolve to our next level of consciousness. Whatever we find that works must come from outside our existing belief systems, because it is our beliefs that have created our dysfunction.

Like the Edison gene, yoga is a living seed that is passed from teacher to student through the generations of man, and during times when our strategies for survival no longer serve us, we look to insight and new perspectives that show us how to transcend our bottlenecks.
Limitations and disorders have only one purpose, and that is to give us reason to transcend our limited concept of ourselves. Without experiencing the pain of containment, we have no hunger for freedom. And without the hunger for freedom, we don't open our heart's to grace.

This morning I find my yoga renewed. Just think of yoga as being like yogurt. In order to make your own yogurt you have to get some yogurt that has living bacteria in it. Using much of the labeled stuff you get in the store won’t work because it isn’t alive.

If you want to start your own yoga practice, stop by and you can get a fresh cup.

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Next Wednesday I'll be recovering from eye surgery as we continue the on going saga of Ed trying to get his eyes in focus.

Thank you,
Ed
Om Peace
3/4/07
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