BYC Newsletter #10

Dear Yoga students and those interested in Yoga,

Handout for Newbies to Yoga

Welcome to the Blackstone Yoga Center

Welcome to the practice of yoga. No matter what your yoga experience is, yoga is like my great old house, which says to all my needs, “I’ve got just the space for you.” Whether you are really disciplined and can make a 45 minute space each day for your yoga practice, or—if you are like the most of us and can only find a few minutes, if that, for a yoga mat—the point is not how much time you give but the quality of what you give. If you give yoga just a few moments of full attention, then yoga will begin to make a space for itself in your life without any effort from you. That is the mystery of yoga.

The yoga session offered here at the center is a space for you to practice awareness, and to learn how to apply awareness to your everyday world, at work and at home. Applying awareness is like applying sunshine to a cloudy day. The sun makes no effort to shine. The sun just is. And the clouds do not have to be forced to leave; they just do.

The practice of yoga is discovering how to get in touch with the light of awareness that is the background to every thought, feeling and action we make. Yoga is the practice of shifting our attention away from compulsive thinking which is the mind, to the space that holds the thoughts. That space is our true Self, our essential being. Yoga is asking the question; Who am I?

But the mind that is full of waves cannot reflect our inner smile. Yoga, as the sage Patanjali wrote, is the stilling of the mind. When the mind is still, we can see reality with a clear eye, and we can allow insight and joy to arise from within where it has been hidden by our limiting sense of ME. The practice of yoga is learning to let go of the nagging feeling that there is more to life and that fulfillment lies in the future. Yoga is the rising awareness that we are okay as we are, that just simply being is enough.

As you allow yoga to work its magic in your life, you will find that you become more here to the present moment. Being aware of your breath during the day as you walk to the kitchen or the water cooler, for instance, or using the time spent at a traffic life to become mindful of your present moment is practicing yoga. It matters little when you become mindful of your present moment. In fact, there is more benefit to being present and aware during an argument than on a yoga mat, where being mindful is easy. Yoga, as we are practicing this ancient science of liberation, is portable and directly shines its light on our shadowed world of confusion and conflicted thought. Like a flashlight, yoga can be kept in our pocket to throw light into the mind where ever we are. Darkness cannot stand the light of yoga.

I encourage you to bookmark the Blacktone Yoga Center web site, because it is an extension of our sessions and enables you to experience what is happening in those sessions you don’t attend. Many of the questions and answers, the insights, and the helpful tools of yoga are posted there in the section What’s New. Also, the Spiritual Journal is a running commentary on what is being discovered daily by this writer in his practice of yoga. There is no arriving in yoga. There is only the unfolding.

So, again, welcome to the present moment, because that is where your practice of yoga begins.

I wish you all a full and present Thanksgiving, where your attention can be placed on loved ones and not just on the stress of the preparation for the meal. May the preparation be as joyful as the communion with those we love.

Om4All
Ed Conley
www.blackstoneyogacenter.com

Thank you,
Om Peace
Ed Conley

11/22/06

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