June 24, 2015

TEND YOUR GARDEN.

Our family project this summer is to care take our school's community garden plot. My childhood home in Colorado had a sizable organic vegetable garden, as well as fruit trees and berries. My memories of summer are rich with the smell of soil, and the feel of picking, weeding, washing and cooking food from our gardens.

I've had my eye on the community garden for many years, but I'm out of town too much to tend to my own plot. At last, I get to share some of this experience with my children.

We come into this world as seeds -- first planted then sprouted. Each of us has gifts. We each have liabilities. We grow in our own unique way.

Life is growing and tending one's own garden, striking the balance between cultivation and wildness. A garden requires careful cultivation, thoughtful planning, and intervention. We weed out what does not belong and place things where they will thrive. Our gardens require permeable boundaries to the surrounding landscape -- places that are wild, and places where the "more" of consciousness might seep in.

And good gardening requires letting go and backing off, allowing the decay and breakdown to happen so that more life may emerge.

Teaching yoga poses is much like gardening: plan your class, craft your sequence and let the wild intermix with the cultivation so that it comes alive. In the end, let it all go (Savasana, "Corpse Pose"), return to the earth and see what arises next.

As a teacher, every sequence becomes compost for future sequences. Experience is recycled and more experience arises and the future unfolds. What do you want? How important is it? What are you willing to give up to get what you want? In order to cultivate some aspect of the pose (square hips to the front in Vira I), we must let go of some other aspect of the pose (lift the back heel up). As we gain clarity about the goal, we simultaneously reflect and address what needs to be given up or disregarded to accomplish our priority.

Over time, we increase our capacity to accomplish a priority in a pose and take back some of the ground we gave up or modified.

And there is always more that lies beyond the boundaries of cultivation. More depth, more skill, more awareness, further poses, more life, more wilderness.

Here at yoga school, we are tending the garden of our everyday offerings and classes. I am tending our social media plots every day. (I have created dedicated studio destinations -- including Facebook Page (YOGAMAZÉ Studio LA), Instagram (@YOGAMAZEstudioLA) and Twitter (@YOGAMAZEstudio) ). Please like and follow us for more info on classes and fun yoga posts.

Our teaching team has expanded and we have more class offerings (Form, Flow, Fly). Tell your friends and come experience the beauty of the space and the excellence of our teachers for yourself.

In July, we will spend a week working with sequencing strategies in a teacher's enhancement clinic here in LA. Each day that week we will plumb the depths of a particular strategy of class construction and prioritization. Teachers will have the opportunity to teach and receive feedback about sequencing. If you are interested in expanding the range and depth of classes that you teach, check it out! I'm currently germinating the seeds of this for an online course too, coming soon to a computer near you.

In August, I am also offering another stand alone week-long 50 hour Teacher's Enhancement Intensive at Yogatree in San Francisco. We will cover a range of teaching skills and refine and expand our capacity to plan, speak, see, show, touch, and improve the our craft of teaching.

This fall will mark the sprouting of another season of in-depth teacher training courses here in LA and beyond. Our now familiar 200hour and 500hour programs here at home, as well as my first ever 300/500 hour training in Europe, are among the things I'm looking very forward to.

For each of you, our avid readers and fans, we are offering 48 hours of 20% off EVERYTHING. Whatever you wish to join us for. Use code summeroflove upon checkout to realize this opportunity to jump-start your own cultivation.

As for my garden, the kiddos are growing like bean sprouts. They look bigger every morning when they wake up. Tracy and I keep seeing flashes of bigger people in small bodies and it's both wondrous and scary.

Madeleine finished Kindergarten with flying colors and has decided to move on to first grade. :) Her confidence has grown tremendously this past year, she is developing more skills to manage her anxiety, and her sweet and loving disposition continues to blossom. She is the proud caretaker of a turtle named Deedles.

Oliver is as charming and mischievous as ever. He loves to sweep the porch, rake the leaves, skim the pool, pick flowers and tries to smuggle his clippings from the yard into his room and stash them in bags until they get moldy. He is now the proud caretaker of two mice named "Baby" and "Daddy," both girls.

Tracy and I steal a bit of time for ourselves now and again. Intimacy is a garden that needs tending too, and we are conscious not to let everyone else's needs of us keep us away from each other too much.

It is always a joy and a challenge to live together, parent together and work together. It's a wild ride, filled with great joys and big mistakes, and one that continues to teach me more about myself than all the yogic practices I have done on the mat and on the meditation cushion.

We wish you abundance and good health. Tend your gardens, cultivate your gifts and leave room for the wild. I hope our paths cross soon, on the mat or in the woods.

Love, Noah and Tracy and YOGAMAZÉ