Fall News from our beehive
Namaste, I hope this newsletter finds you in good health.
I wish you much sweetness during this time. It is the new year in the Jewish calendar; a time to wish each other a sweet year, a time for honest reflection, a time for accountability, a time to move consciously into the next cycle of time. Our
daughter, Madeleine, would sing you 'apples dipped in honey,' except that she is quite shy when you put her on the spot.
 One must catch her instead when she thinks no one is paying attention. Then the show is most delightful! Most recently, Madeleine came with me on a trip to Can
ada (teaching in Kamloops at my friend Marcia Wilsons brand new studio!!), and we took a father/daughter camping trip in Cathedral Lakes. What fun! Now I am scheming about how to do a real  backcountry trip with her (without me collapsing under the weight of all her things and mine), so please email me if you have tips for backcountry trips with a four-year-old.
We also spent a family week together in the Western Sierras in California, staying in a cabin and playing in lakes and rivers and hot springs.
This was indeed deeply nourishing for me, as the mountains are part of my being, and time as a family has never felt so precious to me as it does this year.
Oliver is on the cusp of turning one, and his big project currently is standing up and soon walking! What a gift it is to be with the little ones, and experience the world through their eyes. It really does make all the hard work of life worth it, and is an enduring source of sweetness and nourishment for Tracy and me.
One of the teachings of my tradition has to do with honey (madhu, in Sanskrit). Madhuriya means 'made up of honey'. Honey, and the process of making honey, becomes an allegory for this collective endeavor of creating a life of sweetness, a life of nourishment.
Bees gather nectar from flowers near and far. The bees bring back the partially digested nectar to the hive, regurgitate the nectar, and make honey together. Every taste is an experience. Some are sweet, some are salty, some are bitter, some are spicy; life is this process of tasting and experiencing.
Two aspects of this allegory that I particularly like:
(1) Not every flower is sweet, and life is full of every flavor. To say that the goal of life is sweetness, is unrealistic. Rather, I believe our goal is to create a life of deep nourishment. How we can engage in a process to create nourishment from our experiences is a far more interesting endeavor than the pursuit of a particular taste. For me, the sweetness of being with my family is often countered by the sadness and bitterness of being so often away from them. I was much away from my family this summer, teaching in Asia and Australia and New Zealand. I spent 56 days without holding my beloved, and 56 days away from the adorable faces of my little bees. However, the perspective I gain when I fly off to crops of flowers all over the world is invaluable-and this, perhaps more than anything, colors and flavors the honey I contribute to making.
(2) The honey making process requires community, relationships and yoking to one another. A bee does not make honey alone. The lesson of how much we need each other is never distant. As I am a true introvert by nature, I find it important to keep the need to be in constant relationship in the forefront of my mind. Engagement in relationships creates a far richer and more complex experience than simply withdrawing into the isolation of myself. However, I find isolation oddly desirable. And I would suppose extroverts need to learn to keep their own company, and turn to the hive within, so to speak.
Finding the value and the balance in community, relationships and yoking ourselves to one another is a delicate process, much like making honey or the ecosystem(s) honey derives from. The amount of water in a year will change crops worldwide and thus the taste of the honey. Whether the bees are able to survive the radical changes in the world--radiation, weather changes, and the like--will also change the quality (and the quantity) of the honey. Likewise, our individual paths and our paths in relationship to each others' paths will inevitably change the quality of the honey. On the one hand, the delicate dance of honey making in relationship is awesome, delightful, mysterious and powerful; on the other hand honey making is uncomfortable and fraught with the dangers of always changing external and internal worlds. The balance is never the same and thus nothing about the honey (quality or quantity) remains static. Radical change is always upon us. And, true to nature, my life, the lives of my family and the lives in our community have been changing radically. I feel it more than usual these days.
 For me, this year has been full of radical change. Oliver arrived in October of last year, and the difference between one and two children is huge. Anusara Yoga, which was what I taught for the last 14 years, has all but dissolved. Teaching partnerships have been forged and dissolved. It this year of great stress, deeper traits of character and values have come to the surface. I have heard it said many times that we know ourselves most deeply at the boundaries, and this has been a year of being pushed to the boundaries. In this heat, I have forged friendships with people I only knew distantly, and friendships have dissolved with people that I was once very close with. In the imagery of Harry Potter, this has been "the Year of the Sorting Hat."
Through all of this, two things have become more clear to me: The first is obvious; how important my family is to me. On that note we are working to turn the ship of my business so that I can be home more. More on that below.
 And on a teaching note, my own voice and experience of yoga is emerging more strongly than ever before. Now that I am no longer teaching under someone else's banner, I have a deeper interest and responsibility to question all the things I took for granted, examine everything, cull the best from my past experiences and education, and move forward with my own creativity and vision. It feels great. If feels huge. It feels scary and exciting all at once. The trajectory of my practice and teaching is expanding, and I do not know where it will land.
 While I was buzzing around the other side of the world this summer, Tracy was hard at work manifesting and actualizing our biggest change. We have opened a programming space in Los Angeles. For now, we are calling it MYoga LA. Tracy truly is a creator of great beauty, and every detail of the space is exquisite.
 MYoga LA is not a yoga studio and not open for regular classes. Rather, it is a very special training space for yogis everywhere to come and enjoy educational programs. For example, next week I will offer a level two teacher training in our new home (there are still 5 spaces available in this program), and over the first weekend of November, I will lead a three day intermediate/advanced asana program, limited to 23 participants. We just had our first program at MYogaLA (the 2nd residential week of Good to Great), and it felt beyond fantastic to be home and teach in my own space. We are expecting many of our dear friends to grace the space and help us initiate it with their presence.
Even more importantly, Tracy and I are in process of forming a not for profit organization whose purpose will be to grow yoga and wellness awareness. We expect to donate the MYoga LA space no less than 70% of the time, so tha t not for profit programming may be provided in our home whenever I am not teaching there. In this way, we hope we may foster community in our city and grow yoga here and beyond. So, we wholeheartedly invite you to come to LA, join in one of our programs, or provide a worthy program for our community, and share in this place of great beauty!
Many of you have asked about where you can find me. I am currently planning 2013 and will announce my full schedule by the end of October. I am currently on a teaching trip to Chicago, St. Louis, and Wichita. Before the year ends, I will teach in South Africa (my first time ever in Africa!!), Oklahoma City, teach with my dear brother and sister Sue and Naime at DIG Yoga in Philidelphia AND New Jersey, then back to Australia and Asia, where I will continue programs that I have been teaching there with Christina Sell. I will usher in the new year in typical fashion, at YO, doing what we do best--ASANA.
 If I'm not teaching in your neighborhood, we can still be together often, As I am now offering ongoing Online Courses. The next Online Course begins in October. This 6 session course, called the Fundamentals of Poses & Practice, will be delivered via Webinar and other resources, is designed for all my students from beginning to advanced, and is specifically focused on deepening pose knowledge and practice. The Fundamentals of Poses and Practice will be followed by a continuation of the course for teachers, called Fundamentals of Teaching Poses. This course begins with the Fundamentals of Poses and then moves on to focus on the foundational skill set of teaching those poses. These courses make much of the work that I have been doing this year in yoga intensives and teacher trainings available to everyone in condensed formats. My vision is that these will become foundational pieces for anyone interested in doing yoga trainings with me. I am really psyched about this, and am pouring myself into the curriculum and into the endeavor of e-learning. Like classes with me on YogaGlo, this medium provides a way to bridge time and space for all of us. Today, I got an email from a student of mine in Saudi Arabia. She does yoga with me in her garage. She has signed up for the course and is thrilled to have the ability to study and connect. Needless to say I am touched that she is with me from so far away and grateful to technology for reaching her in such a (sometimes) isolated landscape.
Okay, that was a lot!
This is a time of gr eat change for many of us. I wish you sweetness, good health and prosperity. I look forward to seeing you on your mat. Thank you for the blessing of your company.
It is with your company that I become better.
Saprema kula smaranam, in loving remembrance of our community, and with wishes that your juicy, crispy fall apples glow glolden from your crop of sweet, flavorful honey.
Noah
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