Welcome to 2025 - Online + In Person Yoga Update + more!
Greetings Yogis! We are still deep in the dark time and hopefully resting, recalibrating, restoring…before January 1 appears. Wishing you much joy and fortitude as we move into what will be an interesting year globally and may your practice deepen and support everyone around you, all planetary life and you!
Thank you everyone who has made donations of clothes, medicines etc for me to take to Cuba Jan 6 -16, where we (Yoga Va) are sponsoring a 3 day retreat for 30 Cubans. If anyone wants to help support this trip financially by making a non tax deductible donation by check/zello, please contact Yoga Va Treasurer, Kurt Feichtmeir for instructions: kurt@reisdesign.com Transport, food and accommodation costs are super expensive so any contribution of whatever size is invaluable. If you want to send me a card to take to the Cubans just wishing them well, whether you know them or not, also invaluable. Contact me through the website for address.
ONLINE OFFERINGS FOR 2025 SUMMARY
Most of my students know I am stepping back for the first part of the year to some degree. However, I am excited to offer some special programs instead of regular weekly classes to support practice and exploration in the coming months.
To Start the Year:
1/1/25 10am -12pm New Years Day Workshop Sign up for this now for a fun lively entry to 2025 - Early Bird ends 10am Monday 12/30.
To Sustain and Inspire your Yoga:
GIT - Get It Together! - 6 month Online Program on first weekends. See description below.
To Nourish and Evolve your Yoga and Teaching:
Yoga Salon - Verdancy on first Sundays Feb - July 2025. See personal description below.
IN PERSON RETREAT SUMMARY:
4/9-13 Knowing Our True Natures An earth based outdoor Meditation and Yoga Retreat at Pomo Tierra, CA - A few spaces left!
6/20-25 Summer Solstice Retreat Albion, CA - 2 spaces left.
Still Hibernating….Listen to a free short meditation and silly poem about Bears and keep one eye open!
Are you Ready to GIT? Get It Together in 2025 - This program is partly live classes at the beginning of the month (Gentle Friday Evening + More Advanced Saturday Am) and then 3 extra recordings, all based around a theme of the month. These 5 class recordings will be available all month and there will be a place to chat with others in the group and share feedback and qs. Registration opens for current online regulars on 1/1 and for everyone on 1/6/25. More Info
Verdancy - Plant as Guru
Our Yoga Salon 2025
My Personal Perspective: There has been so much writing and exploration of plant life recently with some amazing books and beings drawing us more and more into the marvels of plant and planetary life, into the possibility of both inspiring and healing our worlds through biomimicry. In this years salon which is open to all - you do not have to be a teacher just interested in the meditative and expansive life-connecting aspects of yoga, - we will be using some of the guidance from folks like David Bridle, Zoe Schlanger (The Light Eaters), Suzanne Simard, David Abram, Janine Benyus and many more. And of course Robin Kimmerer, botanist and wise Potawatomi Elder and activist. Robin’s writings over the years have influenced many of us and in our salon we will be bringing those inspirations, into our bodies, breath and ways of being beyond the mat. I am particularly intrigued by the recent short publication by Robin called “The ServiceBerry - Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World”. Whether you are interested in this program or not, you may want to listen to an audio interview with Robin about this plant and its impetus for Robin to cultivate a truer gift economy that upturns our usual more individual perspectives, and our lives so influenced by the commercial, industrial worlds we all live in.
This theme of magical plant life is so ancient and is reflected in the yoga texts, in poetry, in art and in the deep desire many of us, no matter where we live, to stay connected to the earth and its bounty. We are already many of us exploring these themes in our practice and as always, this sangha will be a place to both practice from my inspirations and these incredible gurus, and also to share each others experiences and insights. During the month, there are extra readings, suggestions, practices on a shared web page to enhance the theme and folks are invited to check in with one other person in the program in an optional buddy program that many have found a key part of absorbing the explorations and connecting with others in a nourishing sangha.
Our live program begins early on the West Coast - Not for everyone! but what we have found is that the practice and our discussions tint the day and leaves us free to extend the workshop into the everyday. So on first Sundays at 7am, optional silent meditation, is followed by a guided meditation at 7.15am which leads into a full asana practice. At 8.45am we move into small and larger group discussion, ending at 9.30am, with time afterwards for participants more informally to continue the conversation online.
Interested? Check out this link for more info and get your deposit in soon to reserve your space This program is designed around a small, committed group. Full payment is due 1/1/25 - 1/14/25. Discount for GIT program if doing both programs.
Celebrating the New Year 1/1
10am - 12pm
A fun lively online practice touching all the bases.
Info
I will love you and leave you with much gratitude to all, with a couple of things that have touched me at the end of this year. One is a short dharma talk by Diana Clark about “Leaning In Softly” and refers to an excellent Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer poem called “Willing” This poem begins with the quote from Mark Nepo: “To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.” In the dharma talk, Diana introduced me to the term “Phubbing” which is apparently what we do when we are not listening, but thinking we are, as we look at our phones and are only partially there. I was explaining this new term to my 8 year old grand-daughter Ella and she looked at me quizzically, as if one of her eyebrows was rising to indicate that this is what grownups like me do all the time! Ok, humbling…. and that is on the resolve list for 2025 - to listen, to lean in softly and not PHUB!
Another reflection arises re humility and cosmic awareness in this poem that I read in today’s class. Appropriate perhaps as we start moving into that aspirational time pre new year…..
Wishing you all well in 2025!
M
The Three Goals David Budhill
The first goal is to see the thing itself
in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.
No symbolism, please.
The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.
In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.
The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously.
Regarding this one, call me when you get it.
