Gratitude Phrases

1. I am grateful for the blessings already on their way.

2. I am grateful for the blessings of this day.

3. May these blessings ripen upon all beings.

Poem by Robin Morgan

A Ceremony

We will grow old, and older.

One of us will die, and then the other.

The earth itself will be impaled

on sunspokes. It doesn't matter.

We have been imprinted on the protons

of energy herself,

and so stand in another atmosphere,

where an undiscovered star we will never live to see

casts shadows on a grove of succulents we cannot yet imagine.

There our interchangeable features still vibrate and blur,

each smile half of one circle,

each utterance spiraling like light

upward in shudders along the spine

as if the moon and you and I were slivers

of one mirror, gazing on herself at at last.

-Robin Morgan

Poem by Wendell Berry

I would not have been a poet

except that I have been in love

alive in this mortal world,

an essayist except that I

have been bewildered and afraid,

or a storyteller had I not heard

stories passing to me through the air,

or a writer at all except

I have been wakeful at night

and words have come to me

out of their deep caves

needing to be remembered.

But on the days I am lucky

or blessed, I am silent.

I go into the one body

that two make in making marriage

that for all our trying, all

our deaf-and-dumb of speech,

has no tongue. Or I give myself

to gravity, light, and air

and am carried back

to solitary work in fields

and woods, where my hands

rest upon a world unnamed,

complete, unanswerable, and final

as our daily bread and meat.

The way of love leads all ways

to life beyond words, silent

and secret. To serve that triumph

I have done all the rest.

-from A Timbered Choir, Wendell Berry

N Grams

Have you ever heard of an N gram? So cool~ It finds the number of times a particular word is used in books. I've tracked the number of times the word 'yoga' is used from 1800 to 2000 in all Google books.
Check it out! Below you can look at the books those words appear in.
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=yoga&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

Book Report List

AUTHOR	PRESENTER	TITLE
Mitchell Albom	Laura	5 People You Meet in Heave
Jack Kornfield	Susan Lollis	Guided Meditation – Six Essential Practices to Cultivate Love Awareness & Wisdom
Barbara Stoler Miller (trans.)	Susan Lollis	Yoga Discipline of Freedom – The Yoga Sutra Attributed to Patanjali
Michael Stone	Lise	The Inner Tradition of Yoga
Michael Stone	Lisa & Elizabeth	Yoga for a World Out of Balance – Teachings on ethics & social action
Goerge Feverstein (ed.)	Gale	Living Yoga – A Comprehensive Guide for Daily Life
Thicht Nat Hahn	Jewels	Answers from the Heart – Practical Questions to Life’s Burning Questions
Daniel Gilbert	Sheri	Stumbling Upon Happiness
Karen Armstrong	Hilary	12 Steps to a Compassionate Life
Sharon Salzberg	Heather	Lovingkindness
Sylvia Boorstein	Jason	It’s Easier than You Think – The Buddhist Way to Happiness
Dr. John Townsend	Paul	Loving People – How to Love & Be Loved
Donna Farhi	Vickie	Bringing Yoga to Life – The Everyday Practice of Enlightened Living
Stephen Cope	Marilyn	The Wisdom of Yoga
	Erika	Peaceful Piggy Meditation
	Erika	Have You Filled Your Bucket Today?
Thich Nhat Hahn	Megan	The Miracle of Mindfulness
Thich Nhat Hahn	Megan	Peace in Every Step – The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Swami Satyananda Savaswati	Susan Hadfield	Yoga Nidra
Neil Pollock	Susan	Stretck: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude
Mary Bond	Kathy	The New Rules of Posture
Jack Kornfield	Sandy	The Wise Heart

Meditation Retreat

The meditation retreat I mentioned this weekend is from True North Insight. Their webpage is http://www.truenorthinsight.org/
The particular retreat I was mentioning is called Wake Up to Life! and is being held at Guelph's Loyola House next November 2012. We'll all be yoga teachers by then! Here is the individual webpage http://www.truenorthinsight.org/index.php/en/schedule/residential-retreats/wake-up-to-life-loyola

Note from Jacqueline

There was a question about the homework that I thought I would clarify with all of you. In the "written assignment" section, you are asked to make a lesson plan for a beginner class. You do not have to write a script for each pose. Just list the warm-ups, poses, breathing practice, that you would teach and in the order you would teach them.

Supplies from Halfmoon

I'm interested in ordering some supplies from Halfmoon
If we coordinate the order, we can get free shipping. Let me know and I'll order in time for the next weekend YTT session and deliver your goods then. 

The First Weekend

Well, we made it through the first weekend! I found it exciting and exhausting all at once. I'm looking forward to my homework and the weekends to come.
Please feel free to comment.

March 25th, 2011

Hi everyone,

As we get closer to our first weekend together, here are a few things that still need to be considered:

1. Attached to this email you will find a "Tuition and Agreement Form". Please read it over carefully. Bring a copy of this, signed and dated, to the studio at our first meeting March 26th.

2. If you haven't submitted all of your post-dated cheques for the entire training, please do so. If you are planning to make a full payment for the course, including the $100 discount, the payment must be made in full prior to our first session.

3. A reminder that our books are in at the Bookshelf. This is optional, but you may start reading: Chapter One and pages 28-39 of Anatomy of Movement and Chapter One, "The Living Principles, of Yoga Mind, Body, & Spirit.

4. What to bring: We will have a one hour lunch break on Saturday. You may bring a lunch or go out to one of the restaurants nearby. You do not need to bring all of your texts, but you may want to bring Anatomy of Movement since we will be referring to it.

Please also bring a new journal. This journal will be something you will be using throughout the whole training: to record observations and to write about your personal practice. We will talk more about this on the first weekend.

5. We will be starting right at 9am each morning. Arrive early to give yourself enough time to settle in.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know. And please use this email address.

Thank you everyone.
We look forward to seeing you soon!

Namaste,
Jacqueline

The Ten Weekend Workshops

 2011 

March 26, 27    FOUNDATIONS OF PRACTICE    
Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 9am-1pm

April 30,31     STANDING UP
Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 9am-1pm

June 11,12     MOVING INWARD
Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 9am-1pm

Sept 23-25     MOVING OUTWARD
Fri 6pm-9pm, Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 9am-5pm

Nov 11-13      FINDING YOUR BALANCE
Fri 6pm-9pm, Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 9am-5pm

2012

Jan 27-20     SIDEBENDING AND TWISTS
Fri 6pm-9pm, Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 9am-5pm

Mar 30-Apr 1     INVERSIONS
Fri 6pm-9pm, Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 9am-5pm

June 8-10     PREPARING TO TEACH
Fri 6pm-9pm, Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 9am-5pm

Sep 28-30     THERAPEUTIC YOGA
Fri 6pm-9pm, Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 9am-5pm

Oct 26-28     BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
Fri 6pm-9pm, Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 9am-5pm

Reading List

ANATOMY
Required: Anatomy of Movement, Blandine Calais-Germain
                 The Anatomy Colouring Book
Recommended: Key Muscles of Hatha Yoga, Ray Long
                          Key Poses of Hatha Yoga, Ray Long

ASANA
Required: Yoga Mind Body & Spirit, Donna Farhi
                 The Ground, the Breath, the Spine, Esther Myers
Recommended:   Light on Yoga, BKS Iyengar

PRANAYAMA
Required: The Breathing Book, Donna Farhi
Recommended: The Yoga of Breath, Richard Rosen

PHILOSOPHY AND TEACHINGS

Required: Heart of Yoga, TKV Desikachar
Recommended: Awaking the Spine, Vanda Scaravelli

MEDITATION

Required: A Path with Heart, Jack Kornfield
                 Lovingkindess: the Revolutionary Art of Happiness, Sharon Salzberg
Recommended: Guided Meditations, Explorations and Healings, Stephen Levine
                          Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn

Books in at Bookshelf and first readings

Hi everyone,

Some of our texts are in at the Bookshelf. You can pick up the following: Heart of Yoga, Yoga Mind, Body, Spirit, Anatomy of Movement, The Breathing Book. There are some copies of Lovingkindness also available (more to come). The other texts are still on their way.

We thought you might be too excited to not dip into them before our first meeting! So this is optional, but for those of you who want to get a head start on your reading, here's where to begin: Chapter One and pages 28-39 of Anatomy of Movement and Chapter One, "The Living Principles, of Yoga Mind, Body, & Spirit.

The books are behind the front desk at the Bookshelf. Just let them know that you are taking the Yoga Teacher Training at Living Yoga and they will look after you. There is a 10% discount on all the titles.

Have fun!
Jacqueline

Welcome

Welcome to the YTT Guelph blog. I hope this can be a great way of communicating while we travel this road to becoming yoga teachers. I'm not terrific at this blog management thing, but with your patience and help I think we can build this into quite a useful tool.