June Solstice

Happy Solstice,

A lot is happening at Brewster Yoga & Massage..

As we move into summer, we're signing up KIDS (ages 7-11) for our Wednesday 11am 7 week series starting July 8th - August 26th. Please visit our website to view more about KIDS Yoga classes with Karen Corcoran. We'd like to have at least 4 children registered to run the program. Please pass along this information to those you know who have children.

We also have a weekly Toddlers class with Jessica. No preregistration required.......
Juliet leads our Teen Yoga Flow on Thursdays from 11-noon. No preregistration required......
Please confirm the Toddler and Teen classes in the morning at our studio 508-896-YOGA.

We're also planning the best time to offer Yoga for Golfers this summer. Please get back to us if you are interested. Several folks have expressed interest and we would like your feedback. We're considering Wednesdays from 4-5pm or Fridays at 3:30-4:30pm.

This Friday we offer from 5-6pm the first of our Herbal Lecture Series: 100 Uses for 7 Common Lawn Weeds. Be re-connected to the many blessings growing just outside your doorstep. What you may have considered a nuisance, may just turn out to be your best ally. Please give us a call to RSVP $10 please. Led by Kari, our resident herbalist, she is a wise woman full of information to guide you back to natural healing. Kari is available for private herbal consultations - 30 minutes for $20.

We offer herbs right our of the studio as well as a line of beautiful homemade organic natural body oils, salves, and butters. Kari and I made some and I couldn't find this kind of quality any where else (even those fancy natural skin care lines), so after making Body Butters together, I've asked her to make what we've brought in to the studio just for you.

This Sunday, June 28th, Kim will lead an Open Your Hips Seminar. Please preregister (cost $20) by calling the studio 896-YOGA. If you decide to come on Sunday, the cost is $25.

Sue, our NIA Dance teacher is going to be teaching my favorite routine, Yulanga this Friday at 8:30am. I'm definitely going to be there... come and dance with us....

Finally, our drum circle is this Thursday evening 7pm-9pm. Cost is $5... Please bring a drum and any extras you may have. Beginners thru advanced are welcome. You will be so moved by the experience of drumming!

Please call me if we can be of service to you.

Todays New Moon energy extends for the next 2 weeks. Use this energy to seed your desires and intentions.

Please scroll down to the very end of this email. I have pasted an email from one of my dear teachers, Tias Little honoring the life and teachings of Pattabhi Jois'.

May your heart be light and full of compassion.
Love, Kim

Remembering Sri K Pattabhi Jois
From Antwerp, Belgium
We learned the sad news of the death of Pattabhi Jois yesterday and so today we set up a humble alter to him during class today with a large striking photograph of his ebullient face as the centerpiece. There were fresh flowers decorating his image and Surya led a small aarthi, blessing his image by encircling the alter with the offering of a hand held fire while we chanted the "kaurpurgauram" mantra. It is astonishing to remark on the extent that his teachings have proliferated around the world, and here in Europe Ashtanga Vinyasa is popular. Certainly the vinyasa wave that swept through the USA could not have happened without the influence of Pattabhi Jois teaching.

His death falls mid stream in this week's training program and on our syllabus today are the teachings on impermanence. So the timing for our small puja to "guruji" was fitting and we reflected on how potent it is to witness directly the passing of a life. I remember guruji referring to the "birthing and deathing" of all things, and I have always treasured that phrase, for in his broken English he suggested that birth and death are not static but involve ongoing transformation.

I recall having studied with Pattabhi in Mysore for six months on my first trip to India in 1989 (and returned again to study in '95). Surya also studied and practiced in Mysore, prior to the two of us meeting. So we both have the Ashtanga Vinyasa practice as a common source for our teaching and practice. I learned the Primary and Intermediate series with Patabhi Jois in 1989. This was before Sharath, (his grandson who will lead the tradition form this point forward) was assisting in the classroom. There were just 12 of us in the room (Derek and Radha, John Scott, Lino Miele, Dina Kinsburg) and what I recall most was how nimble Pattabhi was given his 75 years at that time (he was born in 1915 and died in 2009, so was 94.) He was like a veritable lion the way he moved about the room-lifting people up and dropping them back, holding people in poses and climbing down to the floor next to or on top of his students. I particularly recall the weight of his girth on my back in baddha konasana! The abundance of core strength he demonstrated, down to the very marrow of his bones, was astonishing.

His passing is indeed a considerable loss to the yoga world, for not only did he have mastery of the yoga asanas and have the shakti to transmit this extremely formidable and rigorous practice to all those who walked into his shala, but he was a master of the language underlying the yogic teachings. He had moved to Mysore to study with T. Krishnamacharya from a small village in rural South India and attended Mysore University studying Sanskrit. From his guru

Krishnamacharya and through his studies he memorized the Sanskrit slokas from the Upanisads and bhakti sutras and Bhagavad Gita. On the occasions when Pattabhi Jois would lecture on the philosophy of yoga, and students would have opportunities to ask him questions, (which he abhorred because his mastery of English was always left wanting), he would quote verses from the ancient sources, reeling off lengthy verses in Sanskrit. He was not only a master of hatha yoga but was a scholar, and a bhaktin ( I remember how before the first class started at 5 AM, he could be heard in the front of the home performing offerings to his household deities). Pattabhi Jois had mastered the yoga teachings by a strict discipline of study and through a yoga sadhana that included in-depth memorization of traditional text-harkening back to the days when yogic teachings were limited to oral transmission. This ability to memorize scripture is now a dying art. With Pattabhi Jois' passing not only do we lose a great hatha yoga master, we lose a solid link in the chain of direct transmission of scripture learned by heart.

Two Hands Together,
Tias