Archive for January 8th, 2009|Daily archive page
heart of darkness
“ It’s a way we had over here with living with ourselves. We cut ‘em in half with a machine gun and give ‘em a Band-Aid. It was a lie. And the more I saw them, the more I hated lies. “
It is from the movie Apocalypse now and I have seen it more than 7 times over the years. In the documentary “heart of darkness” Francis Ford Coppola’s wife is telling us that they risked their own money and property in making this movie and she was willing to take that risk. I think that kind of willingness to risk everything you have is something that really gives a rich life. The movie itself transcends the Vietnam war and explains the painful dreamlike journey that life can be.
The pain was more than I could take and I released my legs from the Lotus pose. I started to see the connections with lines like ”Break on Through To the Other Side ” and how I experienced life. A journey where there is a dimension of peace and happiness which you cannot reach with logic. In the quest for this eternal truth and blissful state people have used psychedelic substances, alcohol, religion and meditation. The more I saw of the daily struggle for different people the more life seemed like a bad dream. The guy I talked to in England who had been living like a dog in a small house on the yard with his father beating him regularly was something I could not understand with logic but i could understand the pain to some extent. It opened a painful insight about human behaviour. For a long time I had dreams where the only option I had to survive was to kill other people. I get surprised with my own reactions to fear. My daily life was rather peaceful but then I had this dreams which really scared me beyond reason. After a long and intensive period of meditation and yoga I had a dream where I was chased as before but this time I decided I rather die than being in this loop of violence. All of a sudden the dream changed and everybody was walking around peacefully. It was like if a stone was lifted from my chest and I woke up full of energy. But this was just a short glimpse and The nightmares returned in other variations . An attitude I want to avoid is to become one of those “holier than thou” yogis.
“In short, most of us think we really are “holier than thou,” although we may not be willing to admit it. Most of us know we wouldn’t do the awful things that set us apart from those ordinary people who stumble along the way — all those folks who are just average. ” from abcnews …
. This holier than thou mentality creates a setting where you have to put a lot of dreams and emotions under the carpet and suppress them to fit in. I have tried kick-boxing, tennis, weightlifting, Ashtanga yoga, Sivananda yoga, Satyananda yoga etc. and I pick something there and something there and out of that i build something that suits me. If I should give some advice it would be to try to stay open in life and find the flow which feels good and right inside. here are two people I really find inspirational. First it is Travis Barker on drums and then Junior in break dance .
Review: Yoga Teacher training in the North of Sweden
Satyananda Yoga Sweden offers a 2 years yoga teaching training course. First i think it is misleading to say it is a 2 years course since the amount of teaching is just 2 months roughly.
The price is 80.8 Euro each day you stay in the Ashram ant the total for the course is 4672,364 Euro (58 days at the ashram). Just for the fun of it I made the comparison between the prices in India and in Sweden
Course in Yogic Studies – Four Months in Bihar Yoga Bharati, Munger, India is 1,200 Euro
4 Months at the Satyananda Ashram in Sweden would cost roughly 9720 Euro ( 120 days times 80.8 euro ).
The teacher training started with a week of introduction and we all got together in this big house in Bollnas, Sweden and cooked food together and off course did yoga. We had discussions as part of the schedule and the teaching training was only on theoretical level during this week. No hands on classes where you hold lectures to each other. They were clear to point out that the teaching was not supposed to be curing illness but rather to give relaxation and relieve stress. I felt in general that i was doing postures which would be great if I was 80 years old and had sever problems with my back. I was sitting in the padmasana posture one day and our main teacher told me that this posture is not good for the knees. This was a big suprise to me since I know people in India sit in this posture for months in a row. In general i did not feel that I was learning anything new regarding yoga and regarding the actual teaching part I was very alarmed that we did not actually held any lectures to each other. All of this was a bit alarming since I was paying 484 Euro for this week and I actually lost income because I was away from work. Maybe I am bit hard here but if it is an introduction week you should at least get a taste on how it is to teach to a group of people. We got copies from the Asana, Pranayama, Mudra , Bandha book and in general they were referring to different books by Satyananda. During this week I felt that I was doing practices that maybe are good if you are a total beginner but I for sure missed my daily program which I usually do at home.
The staff were friendly and the course was held in a very nice old swedish building. A lot of friendly people in the group and in general it was a very nice atmosphere in this place.
To sum up I think this is a great course for beginner since they can learn from the classes and they are happy with the level. If you want to go deep with your personal sadhana or want to become a full blown yoga teacher on all levels I think there are much better courses availible.
I do not write a full review of it because I only took part in the introduction week and I never enlisted for the full teaching course.
more info: satyananda yoga sweden (text in Swedish)
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At an early age I got interested in Buddhism and the prince who left his kingdom in the search for truth. How can I apply this story to my own life ? to be able to sit I took up the study of yoga. Is there a contradiction between yoga and science ? Sure we can get a theoretical understanding through books, but without the experience we are stuck. Why is it so hard to practice non-violence when the mosquito is landing on my neck ?