I am honored and excited to be offering this course on the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali from September 19th to November 19th, 2017.
For the yogi of any school, the YSoP is a central text in the cannon of study and deserves attention and application. If we are really seeking to know what we are capable of and how this great boon of yoga in our age could beget the dawn of a new way of integrating in times of uncertainty, we owe it to our past, present and future selves to learn Patanjali, now.
I am teaching this course because, I want to learn and also understand yoga in a cohort of thinkers and seekers. This has been the way yoga all along- discussion and inquiry amongst a cohort of seekers and thinkers. When I read what people write about yoga, I can see that much of what the YSoP has to offer is either presented as a gloss of the “eight limbs” and the first 4-12 sutras of chapter one, with little or nor emphasis on the YSoP as a whole. The text is rife with contexts as intriguing and supportive as the known popular versions.
This is limitation is due to a lot of factors, primarily the language barriers we find in Sanskrit, with time made available to inquire and especially the over emphasis on body shape and external images. There are also corresponding theory with supportive texts that enliven these theoretic dry bones, leading the student to be inspired, live in the moment and see what the sensory minutiae of life has to offer.
Having studied, chanted and explored the YSoP and its corresponding and supporting texts that make it understandable and accessible, I want to help steer the the local conversation and application of the theory to a deeper, personal, user-friendly place where a cohort can talk about YSoP in an extemporaneous way and exemplify its knowledge in our lives. The fruit of this is happening now as we converge here on the topic of yoga. Take this workshop to further your and our inquiry.
I chose the days and times, Sundays at 11am and Tuesdays at 7pm, with a make up on Fridays at 9am, so folks who have missed the long running YSoP study I have been offering at Near East Yoga, would have a chance to delve deeper into the philosophy and weave this powerful thread of information into their continuing karma of a regular yoga practice.
The YSoP is prevalent in our age because of countless sages who chanted it, practiced it, taught it , unchanged, for nearly 2000 years. It still holds up as an aggregate of its many supporting teachings and allows the sadhaka (student) to progress beyond yoga being merely a path to take but to actually exist in a state of being latent in the form of the body that without insight of the YSoP can remain unrevealed in this lifetime- even when so much effort has been expressed in the spirit of yoga.
Sri K Pattabhi Jois often said yoga was “99% practice 1% Theory”. I am offering this workshop in the spirit of that small but important 1%
Cheers, Casey J Palmer