So what was it like for a yoga student who is not a sailor to practice aboard a vessel? Hilary Hayes, a Yoga Mandala regular, wrote afterwards: “Often times spiritual endeavors such as yoga and meditation are practiced in sterile studios or in a still, quiet corner of our own home. However, these practices were developed to help people deal with life on a daily basis, to integrate the sounds of the mind with the movements of the body and practice on a unsteady platform will simply provide an alternative set of challenges to your practice.”

“Being on the Pegasus brought me into a deeper awareness of my body, which was first a bit unsettling but proved to be and experience both exhilarating and powerful. “

Concludes Hillary, “Yoga practice in the outdoors is considered a more advanced type of practice, because there are more sensory experiences to integrate into the practice, but for this same reason, it becomes a fuller practice, and the practitioner is that much more transformed.”

This year, Sumanasa Daren (who grew up sailing a schooner in Canada) is donating her time to teach yoga aboard Pegasus in a 2010 voyage. Places on the voyage (limited to six) are being auctioned individually to help raise funds for Pegasus which takes school students and youth-at-risk on the Bay throughout the year (www.pegasusproject.org). In addition to yoga, students will get to go on a voyage from Berkeley across the Bay and back, itself a spiritual experience.

If you would like to bid on a place, please visit their on-line auction at http://www.pegasusproject.org/celebration.html which will take you to the www.biddingforgood.com website where the auction is being held. If the voyage is over-subscribed, Pegasus will schedule a 2nd voyage with instructor Katie Culver. Students are also welcome to attend the Pegasus Celebration Dinner on November 21.

Dr. Peter Hayes, Director, The Nautilus Institute for Security & Sustainability, Center for the Pacific Rim

So please enjoy local water triple filtered on-site before and after your next class.

The founders of YM, grateful for the impact that the teachings of Tantrik Yoga had on their lives and their awakening, felt the desire to form a center where they could continue to cultivate their own path as a work environment and where these teachings and practices in the form of Hatha Yoga, Kundalini Tantra and Ayurveda could be made available to others. Though not financially well-off they pooled their resources and built the Yoga Mandala studio from the ground up. Their idea was to design the studio so that it would be reminiscent of old temples in India. They wanted people to feel the depth and beauty of what was on offer simply by being in the space of the studio amidst the hustle and bustle of Telegraph Ave.

Tantra teaches that personal, family and community spiritual fulfillment is founded on the cultivation of health. Hatha Yoga is the Tantrik science of establishing physical health, mental calm, and spiritual realization through the use of the precise exercise of the body (yogasana) and breath (pranayama). The yoga classes, workshops and courses of study offered at Yoga Mandala reflect this deeper more traditional view of yoga as the foundation of personal, family and community well-being and spiritual fulfillment. In Tantrik Yoga our physical body and it’s function is analogous to the “body” of the family and community. If we have a healthy connection to our bodies then this awareness can extend to our “other” bodies creating harmonious families and communities.

Ayurveda, another branch of the tree of Tantra and sister science of Hatha Yoga is literally the “science of life” (ayus=life, veda=knowledge). Where Hatha Yoga teaches us about our bodies structure, movement, and the energies that flow through it, Ayurveda teaches us how we are in essence inseparably one with Nature. Ayurveda teaches us how to be responsive in our relationship with Nature by nourishing ourselves through proper food, lifestyle, environment, relationships, etc. as relates to our age, constitution, season, and so on.

Cultivating a Yogic and Ayurvedic lifestyle enables us to live out our allotted years with great satisfaction, participation, contribution and contentment. Healthy and happy individuals make for joyful and contented families and communities.

Americans generally report a sense of purposelessness and deep dissatisfaction with their lives; the inevitable outcome of a society founded on greed, violence and the pursuit of personal happiness above the greater good. It has only taken 200 years for this path of rampant consumption, commercialism and the elevation of the importance of the individual over the whole of society to undermine the family, the community, and the importance of selfless virtuous conduct. No amount of money, material possessions, entertainment or psycho-therapy can alleviate the emptiness produced by such a path.

Tantra offers us a model of virtuous self-conduct, family and community which reflects the core values of enlightened societies the world over. Tantra teaches us that real satisfaction in life is not based on how much stuff we have, nor how interesting our personal story is. Real enjoyment of life and the contentment and creativity that flows unimpeded from such a life comes from a change in orientation. It is a shift from the obsession with “I, me, my” to experiencing ourselves as part of a larger fabric of family, community, society and world.

It is not necessary nor even possible to try to re-create the outer world to conform to an idealistic utopia from some golden age of the past. What is called for is to begin to honor the “sacred feminine” as the basis of all harmonious and self-fulfilling experience.

The sacred feminine is the base of all that exists. In Tantra, it is called the “Mother Shakti” – the energy and power manifesting all creation and the creation itself. Honoring the Mother Shakti is to practice kindness and generosity, acceptance and love, and to cultivate a community based on these virtues. It is a decided shift away from the never-ending hunt for personal satisfaction to the discovery of true contentment and happiness just as we are, and the expression of that joy and harmony as family and community.

Anthropologists have determined that the most important factor in the transmission of cultural values and in a functional model of society based on family and community is the grandmother. Grandmothers have always held the role of transmitting the continuity of transpersonal and cultural based values. What then is to be said of a society that puts our grandparents (and our parents) in “homes”?

Over time as the Yoga Mandala community grows, Yoga Mandala will continue to expand its emphasis on family and the sacred feminine with more programs for parenting, children, teens, family, and community derived from the Yoga, Ayurveda and Tantra tradition.

Yoga Mandala is a community center, a central hub of a wheel, and all of us are it’s spokes. Yoga Mandala’s classes, courses of study, health care services and long-range community projects that strengthen our sense of family and community all express Yoga Mandala’s commitment to the value of the sacred feminine principle, the Mother Shakti.

Yoga Mandala’s grand vision is really quite simple and natural. It is a naturally satisfying and enjoyable antidote to the ineffectual path of materialism.

Our vision is to provide the knowledge, resources, and home for people to come together to learn how to build sustainable community, improve health, and self-realize using the teachings, practices, and community model found in the traditions of Yoga, Tantra and Ayurveda.

We, at Yoga Mandala, extend an invitation for you to join our community of yogins. We need your support to realize our vision. Thank you.