Ahimsa, (non harm-doing) is the first of the yamas, or the ethical rules of yogic practice. Ahimsa is the foundation upon which the rest of the yamas and niyamas are positioned, as well as being the underlying “goal” of practice in general. To do no harm is practically impossible as every action creates affect or karma. So living with purity of intention, compassion and acting in way that benefits and uplifts other beings and our world is considered a good antidote to doing harm by default of living.

Compassion literally means to suffer with. However, there is a line between suffering with, suffering for, and being a doormat. When does empathy become enabling? Where do suffering and self-absorption meet? How do we tend to our needs, the needs of others and the needs of the world at large without being consumed by the tragedy of so much need and so much suffering? All questions that I am pondering and perhaps you are too. I don’t claim to have any answers at all, except that I think the answer lies in the question. If we can we all consistently practice asking ourselves, “What is compassion?” and how we can act with absolute compassion towards ourselves and all beings, then I think we’ll find our way into some working answers in the quite near future.

Do No Harm website is a nice offering to helping us all out with reminders to Do No Harm. I’m rocking one their wristbands and it’s bringing that essential second of contemplation into most moments of my day.

The Do No Harm Message:

We seem to be living in a world that is getting less hospitable every day. Look closely at any endeavor our species has engaged in and it appears we are unaware of the harm we do, we ignore the harm we do, we intentionally do harm for our own gain, or sadly in some cases we do harm for our own pleasure and enjoyment.

Has no one taught us to do no harm?

If we haven’t been taught to do no harm, we see no harm in doing harm. We cause harm and shrug it off. We cause harm and laugh about it. We cause harm and brag about it.

Sadder still, our children bear witness to our actions and never learn to do no harm themselves. Above all else we must teach our children, by example and instruction, this basic moral principle of life.

We must begin to make better choices and treat each other, the other creatures who share this planet with us, and this planet we call home with greater respect and compassion.

We believe that the first and most basic moral law is, “Do no harm.” Because we can feel pain and suffering, we can imagine the pain and suffering of others, and we can act accordingly to minimize the harm we cause.

What does “do no harm” mean? Ultimately it means to give thoughtful consideration to our actions. “Do no harm” simply means to consider how our actions may affect the world we all share, to be compassionate in our dealings with all creatures, and not to thoughtlessly despoil our planet.

Doctors are asked to “first do no harm,” why not lawyers, businessmen, religious leaders and politicians? Why not us? Why not now?

It sounds like a simple idea because it is a simple idea, but it may be effective over the long run. Will “do no harm” solve all the problems in our world? Perhaps not, but this is an effort to decrease the suffering in the world and to increase the kindness.

We hope that “do no harm” becomes that little voice that guides our actions.

And we hope you will join us and spread the message “Do no harm.”

Show everyone you care and use “Do no harm” to sign-off in your correspondence in place of “Best Wishes”, “Yours” or “Regards.”

If you have a web site, be proud of your support and add the words “Do No Harm” to the top of your home page where everyone will see it.

Be bold and creative in thinking of ways to expose as many as possible to the “Do No Harm” message, but please, do no harm in doing so.

It is not necessary to mention the source of the message. This is certainly a case where the message is far more important than the messengers. All we ask is that you practice do no harm and take every opportunity to share the words “do no harm” with others.

If you wish to include this essay or link to the “Do No Harm” web page, please do; or if you wish to change the wording or write your own, that’s equally OK with us. If we are to change our world for the better, we simply must share the “Do No Harm” message with family and friends, with neighbors and our community.

RS: Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is the accessibility of yoga. It’s become an industry and pastime that has an image attached to it that tends to appeal mostly to certain demographics, yet at its heart it’s a practice that could be beneficial to everyone. Beyond all the products attached to it, which really aren’t necessary to own in order to practice, I think that most teachers and studio owners want to make classes appealing and available to everyone without veering too far away from the core principles of yoga philosophy. How do you as a studio owner and proponent of community priced yoga address that?

MS: I kind of see the yoga industry as a reflection of everything else that is going on in society. A few years ago when there was a boom in real estate and the financial industry and everything was becoming commercially marketed, yoga was one of those things. All of a sudden it just exploded and became very popular and there was a lot of money to be made. So the idea of yoga became something that was packaged and marketed and sold to the public in a way that happened to be fairly expensive…

People came to expect certain things in yoga studios; they wanted bamboo floors, a giant buddha statue, a sauna, showers, tea…  And that’s all great. It’s amazing to walk in to your yoga studio and feel like you’re on retreat or something, but then essentially the studio is pricing for a lot more than just the classes, and that price tag will exclude a lot of the community and in some ways I think the image of it all moves away from the essential purpose of the practice in the first place. I had dreamed of opening a low-cost studio for years, sans all the marketability and the stuff that came with it.

My original intention was to open a studio in Baltimore, or on the east coast in more needy, more impoverished cities and to make it accessible to people of color, transgendered people, spanish-speaking communities and the segments of the society that definitely were not being served by the popular model of yoga studios at that time. I carried around that vision for years and I asked people to participate with me and lots of people were supportive but no one really wanted to get into it. Then I did my teacher training at Yoga Pearl and when I finished I just didn’t know where I wanted to be or where I wanted to teach. I personally have felt like an outsider in many studios for whatever reason, I’ve had a pretty colorful past… And so I carried that with me and I never quite felt a sense of belonging, but I was looking for it.

One day I was walking along with a friend and I said “I’m just gonna do it, I’m just going to open a studio.” I found a space on Alberta (street) and luckily the landlord was a hippy who didn’t care if I didn’t know a thing about business, and didn’t make me pay a security deposit and just let me move in, and that’s how we came to be. I mean I knew nothing about making it work, I just knew what I wanted to charge and who I wanted to serve and I was extraordinarily idealistic, I thought everyone was going to really appreciate what I was doing, even the other yoga studios I thought would really appreciate it, and then I came to realize that was not the case, because it’s threatening. You know other studios have worked really hard to build their client base and then I came in offering yoga at half their price, and there was this fear that I would take the students. But actually that didn’t happen and my original intention did happen- the people that previously were unable to take classes came, there were artists and musicians and minorities and all these people who also hadn’t felt like they belonged in other studios and that’s not to say that’s right or wrong, but that’s just the way it was… and we’ve created our own little space and now there are lots of people who say “I feel like this is home for me, I really feel like I belong here. I can walk in here and feel like this is my place.” so I’ve done my purpose i guess.

RS: How did you start to practice yoga?

MS: I had spent most of my twenties severely depressed and extraordinarily angry and I started practicing because my friend who had been struggling with an addiction for a long time had gone to a retreat and had learned some yoga. She came back and she told me about it and kept saying “You should really do this.” Finally I found this $5 drop-in studio and I started going there. I was naturally flexible and I found it really easy right away so when I began I was very competitive with myself, and for maybe the first three years I was pretty much focused on the poses and trying to perfect them.

After I began to practice I noticed that I wasn’t as reactive to things, I wasn’t as depressed or having as many severe depressive episodes and I felt like I could get some distance between my myself and what was going on for me emotionally. It just kind of lessoned what was going on at that time which was a lot of depression, anxiety… It wasn’t all better, but it was definitely more manageable than it had been before and it wasn’t consuming me anymore. For the first few years I was just there, or I thought I was just there to exercise. I really wasn’t even doing anything else at the time, I wasn’t studying philosophy or meditating. I don’t think I even understood the breathing for a few years, I was just doing the asana and I was there for exercise and to perfect poses. But the other benefits came anyway and I remember that when I started doing it all the time I started telling everyone about it. It was such a grounding influence in my life.

Three years later I moved to Portland I was exposed to a lot of different teachers and teaching styles, but even before that that I was noticing other kinds of changes. I was more capable of dealing with stress and I became calmer, less angry and less depressed. None of that happened because I was making any attempt to do any of it, it just came from practicing.

RS: How has being a teacher or a studio owner affected your practice?

MS: Simply studying so much and taking a path that requires so much self-study has really transformed the way I practice and teach. Having the opportunity to look at students bodies and to observe them… You know sometimes there are have things about ourselves that we have a hard time admitting or seeing, but when we see it in someone else then we can say, “Hey wait a second, that feels really familiar, I can relate to that.” And so we learn a lot about ourselves watching other people. I’ve learned a lot about myself and my practice from my students.
Being a studio owner has been interesting in that I have learned what I value in teachers and what I admire, and I have adopted a lot of that in my own practice.

RS: What about the aspect of karma yoga (selfless service), do you feel that there is an element of that with the studio?

MS: Oh yeah! I didn’t get paid for a year and a half! and even now we’re not really bringing that much in. But I’m thrilled every day that we’re doing it. I’m so happy to be in this space, I’m so happy to feel like I’ve found some balance between financially supporting myself and staying true to my original intention and I feel like I’ve stayed on track and it’s been amazing. I feel really lucky.

RS: What was your vision for the future of People’s Yoga?

MS: I really like what we’re doing now! I would eventually like to be able to offer a teacher training at lower cost. I would really like to have guest teachers come in and offer their time and do workshops that are also at a lower cost. But for the time being I really just like what we’re doing and I just want it be sustainable and what will come will come and I’ll know it when it meets me.

RS: What is your vision for the future of community yoga studios in general?

MS: It’s interesting because I get contacted all the time now from people starting studios. When we started, I searched the internet and I searched all over to find other studios that were doing similar things and found like, four. I mean, it was really slim pickings. I had one woman in Arizona from Tuscan Yoga who kind of mentored me through the process and since then I’ve had all these people contacting me from all over the country and asking me to mentor them, so it seems to be growing and everybody wants to know ‘how to do it’.

I don’t really know how… I mean, I think it’s got to be unique to each place. But I think we’re seeing a movement away from a mass commercialization of yoga and I think that in the future there’s going to be a seesawing where people will be trying to find their place, their financial footing, and trying to figure out how to stay alive as a business and still stay in-line with the values that yoga imparts. I think it will all wash out in a few years and we’ll find a middle ground, but I’m not really sure what that looks like yet.

I think that everyone who’s doing the community yoga right now is trying different things and eventually they’ll settle on a model that works. In the meantime there are some successes and some failures, some studios do donation or they do $6, $8 or $10 drop-ins or scholarships. Everyone is doing different things and we’ll find what works best eventually. At The Peoples Yoga our price was originally $6, then I went to sliding-scale ($6-$8), now it’s $8 to drop in, but people can become members for $55 a month and come as much as they want or we do discounted class cards if people buy 5 or 10 classes at a time, and we have scholarships available for people who can’t afford those options.

RS: Have you had that many people apply for scholarships?

MS: We have some regular students that we support every month through scholarship and trade. I probably give out five or six scholarships a month. I haven’t had to turn anybody away, which is great, and everyone that has gotten one has used it.

RS: What is entailed in a scholarship? And what do you trade?

MS: They’re awarded on basis of need. Pretty much they’ll get $40-$50 and they can choose to purchase a 10-class card with that or an unlimited monthly membership. So if they purchase an unlimited monthly then it will cost them $5. If they don’t come as often and then want a 10-class card then it’s $20. So they get that option and they’ll get that credit for every month that they apply for it.

Pretty much all the services that we need that we can trade, we trade; our construction, web design, photography… You name it, I’ll trade it! That means it takes months to get things done, but it does get done!  And since we’re doing yoga then we’re also practicing patience and contentment while we wait!

The People’s Yoga is located at 3016 NE Killingsworth St. in Portland, OR
All classes are $8. Scholarships are available.

The yoga industry is booming. In 2009 Americans spent an estimated $5.7 Billion on yoga and yoga related products like clothes, DVDs and books, that’s a figure that’s up 87% from 2004. 72% of those spending are women, 71% are college educated and 44% have household incomes of $75,000 or more. (From the “Yoga in America” Survey conducted by Harris Interactive Service Bureau on behalf of Yoga Journal)

Toronto yogahappening yogis making crow not war

Community yoga is booming! Free, by-donation and cheap classes are making the way into the schedules of most yoga studios, if not making up the entire schedule of many studios.

There’s a lot of bad news these days that we are collectively trying to come to terms with and figure out how to live with and live better so we don’t continue to cause so many disasters (oy humanity… why?), and we as a species and as residents of Planet Earth need contemplative practices more than ever.

So that’s why I’m just so pleased to see trends like community yoga (still missing a wiki entry, if any of you want to get on that… but hereby defined as yoga classes for the community at community prices, sliding scale from free to by donation to under $10) and yogahappenings growing and so quickly becoming important parts of many peoples practice.

Here in Portland I’ve started a site for a schedule of community classes around town (soon to also include free and by-donation meditation classes), and there are similar schedules for the Bay Area, and Chicago that I’ve found, and I’m sure many other places too. It’s my hope that maybe we can all link up and form a nation-wide (world-wide?) network for community yoga. That’s union!

Sunday was the first full day of spring. Spring is a time of birth and renewal. In order for things to be born or renewed, other things need to change, die or give way.

I’ve spent the last few days in Berkeley learning from a living master of movement and somatic studies, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. Interweaving through all the teachings here, and coincidentally most of my conversations and interactions with people in my life, are themes of change, discomfort and endings. Change, ending, and death are frightening things for most of us. These situations naturally make us uncomfortable. But without discomfort we would never grow, without death there can’t be life, without change there is only stagnancy.

Perhaps it seems out of place while flowers are blooming everywhere and nature is bursting with LIFE, but an interesting experiment to invite LIFE into your own life, might be to explore ideas of what can die. Not really in the literal sense, but in the energetic sense. What is stagnant? Where is dis-ease? What is bitter and hardened? Make room for the new growth by planning a funeral for things you don’t need anymore. Journal about them, make some pictures or collages, do your spring cleaning, talk with friends, and when you’re ready, with great respect, find a good burial place or cremation site and let all that baggage go. As the light is getting greater in the day, you can lighten your load as well.

Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe shares some wisdom and reflection on dying and grief, including a writing by the Dalai Lama.

The recently released Death: A magazine for Enthusiasts and Non-Enthusiasts Alike is an lovely resource with all kinds of literary, artistic and informative inspiration. Including this excellent video with Vito Acconci’s prose, “At least you can worry”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You might also be considering what the best music to play at a funeral would be…

Or if you would like to customize a casket…

Anyway. Don’t take it too seriously. As the folks at Upaya are urging us to do, grieve when there is loss, let grief open your heart, and then enjoy the astounding colors of the world around you and live as if you’re actually living!

Interview with Ryan Leier- Founder of Yoga For Youth and ONE Yoga Saskatoon

RS: Can you tell me about Yoga For Youth? What is it and what do you do?

RL: We’re a non profit organization made up of a group of yoga teachers and what we’re doing is taking yoga to the schools and communities through physical education classes in the public schools, and in after-school programs or though community centers. Our focus is on inner city youth, kids who wouldn’t otherwise have access to yoga classes. For the last year we’ve been working on teaching the inner city kids and then bringing them with us to different parts of town to teach and demonstrate to the kids at other schools.

RS: How many locations are you in right now?

RL: About 20

RS: Are they mostly public schools?

RL: The Catholic schools have been trying to bring us in and they’re really open to what we’re offering. It’s interesting, the Catholic schools want the whole tradition. They want to know the philosophy, the spiritual aspects and the moral codes. I was really surprised in a good way at how open they were because some of the public schools we’re in just want us to come and teach ‘special’ phys. ed. classes, and teach them fitness yoga. Yesterday I went into the Catholic school and the principle was doing an announcement right before the class and what he was talking about was the courage of Jesus and Martin Luther King to be non-violent. It was Ahimsa. It was great, it matched exactly what I wanted to talk to the kids about; being able to use the poses to develop courage so they could speak for themselves and not follow peer pressure

RS: It sounds like Yoga For Youth is sharing a lot more than just the physical practice of asana with these kids?

RL: Definitely, that’s what our intention is.

RS: Do you find that the kids you’re working with are receptive to the teachings? Are they more or less receptive to the asana compared to the philosophy? Where is their interest?

RL: For some of the kids something has definitely sparked, they know that the yoga practice can take them to a new place. We have some kids who are coming from lots of drug use. We have two girls who are from one of the inner city high schools who are starting to come to the studio now on their own, rather than going out and getting high… They both had serious drug use problems. A few of the kids are embracing it as a thing that has the potential to really change their lives in terms of how they behave and respond to their world. Then there’s another group that’s come in from the sports teams that are coming in to use yoga to get fit and to get them into better shape and prevent injuries. So it’s reaching the kids on different levels and I think that for the most part they’re receptive to what yoga is in its entirety, beyond just the physical practice.

RS: What is the average age of the kids that you’re teaching?

RL: Anywhere from 5 years old to 25 years old… I had a grade 2 kid the other day… I always ask the kids what they think that yoga is, and they say things like “strength” or  “peacefulness“, and one little girl put up her hand and said “Yoga is the art of relaxation.” They’re so smart!

RS: How did Yoga For Youth begin?

RL: A few years ago I was talking to the man who was my religious studies professor in college, he’s a Tibetan Buddhist who’s the head of the department for religious studies here at the university. I was telling him about my teacher Father Joe Pereira who does work with HIV and AIDS and drugs and alcohol addiction recovery in India, (The Kripa Foundation has over 50 locations worldwide. It was started by Fr. Joe and supported by Mother Theresa. Visit FR. Joe’s site here and learn more about his project here.) and I was telling my prof, Dr. Jay that I wanted to dedicate myself to serving Fr. Joe’s mission. Dr. Jay said, “Well, what experience do you have with working with drugs and alcohol?” and I said,

“None.”

“What about HIV and AIDS?”

“None.”

He said, “Well you’ve trained to be a teacher and you’re working to coach kids in basketball… Have you ever thought about serving yoga to the kids before they go through all the things like addiction and health problems and using yoga to reach them first?”

And I realized that’s where my strength was so I decided to put together this foundation. It’s been growing over the past few years, and hopefully it will continue to grow.

(Fr. Joe Pereira)

RS: Is Yoga For Youth still affiliated with Kripa and Fr. Joe?

RL: He supports it. It’s not really affiliated but he’s given me his blessing to teach as many kids and train as many teachers as I can.

RS: How many teachers do you have working with you right now?

RL: We have 8.

RS: Are they all teachers who have been your long-time students? Did you train all of them?

RL: Most of them have been my students for a long time or I’ve trained them. I want to keep it fairly consistent right now in terms of the kinds of things we’re teaching and the style of yoga.

RS: You began offering a teacher training last year, can you speak a little about it?

RL: I believe teaching yoga is something that really comes through if you have a practice. Someone who teaches, I think, really needs to have a daily practice or the integrity of the teachings doesn’t really translate. At the training we try to teach people how to practice yoga in their daily life beyond just the asana, beyond the 60 minutes or 90 minutes in a class, but in all other aspects of what they do and how they live.

This past year it was a ONE Yoga training and Yoga For Youth training, so anyone that did it could teach Yoga For Youth… In the future the training will be specific, either ONE Yoga or Yoga For Youth. Right now I’m working on our mission statement and developing an 8-week program with different sequences and a class every day with a different focus.

RS: What do you envision as the future of Yoga For Youth?

RL: We were working towards actually getting it into the provincial or at least city-wide curriculum, and I found it’s really difficult. Now we’re looking at getting it into more community type programs like after-school groups where the kids and parents can come and practice. In the inner city schools the thing is that you need to be there right after school gets out, otherwise it’s really unlikely that the kids are going to be able to find a way to come back for the group.

I would love to see it in the curriculum in Saskatoon and maybe even across Canada in different cities. I would love it if we could work with a behavioral specialist who would come in and research what the affects of yoga are on the kids. I think that if we could convince people of the value, we could make it a part of the school curriculum. Ideally I would love to see yoga be a part of every kids school day, 5 minutes of meditation and 15 minutes of poses. It would change the schools and the people completely.

RS: What is it about a yoga practice that’s different from sports or theater or other hobbies? What about yoga would help someone be more aware and more loving or encourage those traits?

RL: Yoga gives people the tools that they need to become comfortable in their own skin and to make good, conscious choices rather than following peer pressure or rather than following habitual ways or cultural standards that aren’t always kind, loving and truthful. I think that yoga helps people to connect with their personal power and their ability to love themselves and others.

Yoga also brings people to honor their bodies. In class we encourage them to come from their hearts and their feelings and intuition rather than doing poses because they’re competitive or because they think everyone else is doing it. It makes them mindful of their actions, their words, their thoughts and it empowers them to learn what they can do and what they can go through. We challenge people in yoga classes, we put them into situations on the mat that are really hard and we make them stay in it and find comfort and just breathe through it even when things get tough. I think that the longer someone can stay in a pose that’s safe, but is challenging and uncomfortable… That learning to work through their physical challenges and discomfort makes them more tolerant and loving people who are accepting of others and accepting of life.

RS: Where do you get your financial support? Do you receive any government funding through the schools?

RL: We receive individual donations and we do fundraiser/karma classes to buy mats and pay teachers.  We’re definitely on the lookout for a mat company to sponsor us if you know of any!

It’s been difficult to get funding through the schools because they have to be a bit wary of religious affiliations, or I guess, what can be seen as religious affiliation. I talked to a woman with the school board yesterday and the first thing she brought up was that some of the parents don’t like yoga being taught in schools because they think it’s religious.

RS: Other than some parents who are concerned about potential religious conflicts, how has the response been from the other parents, kids and teachers? Does it seem like there is some kind of general attitude or response to your program so far?

RL: For the most part, everyone really loves it and they appreciate it and they want more of it. The more time we spend in one school, the more the parents and the teachers see what the possible benefits of yoga are and what yoga can do for them and the kids as human beings. Beyond building strength or flexibility, the teachers notice that the kids are calmer and more focused. The teachers see them actually using some of the principles of yoga like kindness, truthfulness, and non-stealing.

RS: Can you say a little about the perception that yoga is a religion? How do you teach mindfulness and spirituality without teaching religion, or do you? Is that a part of your program?

RL: We talk about things a bit differently. We don’t talk about God but sometimes in Savasana we say things like “Let that force that is breathing you… Whatever you think it is… Let it take care of you and relax with it.” We talk about surrendering and letting to the earth and to the sky like with the native spirituality. Sometimes we use language like soul or spirit, but if we do use that language or if we talk about Jesus or the Buddha, we make sure to say that it’s just one way of describing things. We use a lot of language like joining with your highest self or conscience, and what we’re talking about is the power of love. I guess we use the word love interchangeably with god.

The inner cities have lots of Native American kids whose tradition has really been suppressed and dishonored in Canada so we often incorporate certain aspects of their tradition, like the elements, the earth, sky, fire and water into our teachings. And at the end of the class when we say Namaste we also say words from Crazy Horse, “I salute the light within your eyes where the universe dwells. For when you are at that place within you and I am at that place within me we shall be one.”

We like to honor those teachings of the Mother Earth and the Father Sky. We’re on sacred land, here on Earth, and also as our bodies and in our minds we’re sacred.

What we’re teaching is not religious. We’re not asking them to be any certain way. We’re empowering the kids to really be themselves and we’re basically teaching them that at the core of who they are, they’re no better, no worse, no different than anyone else, there’s no superiority and no inferiority. We say things like “Have a proud heart and a humble chin”. What this program is doing for these kids is uplifting the kids that really need to be uplifted who are shy, insecure and maybe unhealthy. And it’s helping to humble the kids that have learned to bully or look down on their peers. The program works to bring young people into their center where they really are perfect and there’s nothing wrong with them and there’s nothing to prove. We’re trying to teach them to connect to that part of themselves. I think that’s really the heart of what yoga is.

Click here to view the embedded video.

RS: What inspires you most, what motivates you to do what you do?

RL: Just looking in these kids eyes when they’re connecting to their source. What inspires me is these kids that are just shining and to be able to help them keep that shine and make it stronger. If we go to one school with 300 kids and 1 kid ‘gets it’. If just one kid understands the simple teachings of yoga it could have a huge impact on their whole life. If one kid came and said “Oh wow! That was really cool, maybe when I get older I’ll go and study that.” Or like a lot of these kids that we’re teaching now, maybe they’ll be inspired to become yoga teachers and teach their peers and stay on the path towards a peaceful and mindful life. I think that’s worth all of the time and effort that we put in.

RS: If you could design a t-shirt what would it say?

RL: LOVE!

But I also like Muhammad Ali’s poem that just says, “Me, We.” Because we’re all in this together, whether we like it or not or realize it or not, we’re all one, we’re all here on Earth together and we have to help each other out.

(Feed The Yogi will being selling Yoga For Youth T-shirts on the site in the next few months. Keep an eye out for them, all proceeds go to YFY)

Ryan and his lovely daughter and teaching assistant, Kiyah

Michael Stone is a psychotherapist in private practice, lecturer, yoga teacher and author. He co-leads the Centre of Gravity Sangha, a community of Yoga & Buddhist practitioners in Toronto and travels internationally, teaching in academic, yoga studio and conference settings. Michael offers courses and retreats that focus on integrating yoga postures, breathing practices, meditation and textual study. His research and teaching explore the intersection of committed spiritual practice and social action. Read his complete bio here.

Michael will be coming to Portland in late September to give a 3-day workshop hosted by The Yoga Space. In preparation for his upcoming visit I had the good fortune to chat with him the other day about his work, his philosophy and what ‘the intersection of committed spiritual practice and social action‘ really is.

3/3/10 Interview with Michael Stone

RS: What does it mean to have a yoga practice that includes all aspects of daily life and how does one go about making that happen or being mindful of that?

MS: So many people define yoga as a verb. It derives from the root ‘yug‘ which means to unite or to connect one thing or yoke one thing with another; the breath with the body, the mind and the spirit, the soul and god or whatever your vocabulary is. But actually the term ‘yug‘ is taken out of its verb form when it becomes ‘yoga‘ which literally means that everything is already inherently united. You don’t need to unite one thing with another because, in fact, everything is already inter-permeating everything else.

I like to translate the word yoga as intimacy, literally being one with everything. But I think that sometimes we get a little bit inflated about what our ideas of intimacy or oneness might be. Maybe we want to be one with pleasure or what we think is beautiful, but do we really want to be one with loneliness or one with pain or one with war… And really do we want to open up and be one with everything? So the core of the practice of yoga or the heart of yoga is really opening up to the reality of how life really happens, not the way we want it to happen or the way we think it should happen. And to recognize that underneath all of our ideas about how we think life should go, everything is inherently intimate. We are connected with water and with plants, with culture, with great art, and with friends in ways that are bottomless. What interests me about yoga practice is how the various limbs or practices of yoga can wake us up to that level of intimacy.

RS: Please explain what you mean by various limbs.

MS: Well, for Patanjali there were eight limbs of practice and I like that model. Especially for us westerners who I think live lives that are very compartmentalized. We can think that one part of our life is spiritual and another part of our life is more material, but actually that’s just semantics. Our lives are psychosomatic; they’re emotional, they’re spiritual, they’re political, they’re economic. You can’t separate any of those spheres. Everything you do is emotional, spiritual and political. If we think about the mind, the body, and the body politic as interconnected, then the eight limbs that Patanjali outlines really makes sense. Starting with ethics, including taking care of and waking up the body, releasing the internal patterns of breathing and then also moving into deeper states of meditation that help us see though the self image that we’re totally addicted to.

Having a path that makes us look at all aspects of our lives really makes a difference. Some people ask what the difference is between yoga and western psychology, and I actually think one of the biggest differences that Patanjali seems to suggest is that if you really want to change, the first thing you should look at is ethics. The first thing you should look at is the quality of your role in your relationships. In western psychology, maybe because of the Victorian times, we are afraid of talking about ethics. We tend to think of ethics as rules, rather than as suggestions for how to give attention to the quality of our relationships. It is quite fascinating to think that if you really want to change your life, to become more altruistic and creative, and less concerned with yourself, then you can start by paying attention to ethical practice like nonviolence, honesty, not taking what’s not given freely and so on…

RS: What you’re saying makes me think of a conflict between some approaches to yoga and spirituality where it seems that many emphasize the idea of ‘detachment’ from life and what I hear you saying is that it’s not at all detachment, but actually some kind of extreme merging, and as you say, intimacy with what life is, or happens to be doing.

MS: In the yoga tradition there are two words that are used that like twins and they’re never separated, one is abhyasa and one is vairagya, meaning practice and non-attachment. The core of our practice is non-attachment. Actually I would go further and say that for mature practitioners we practice non-attachment to our practice as well. But to begin with, what we mean by non-attachment is that what we cling to the most when we really give attention to the way that we create suffering in our lives is the fact that we are always compulsively fixated on ourselves. When we dream, we are always the main character. When we think almost all of our thoughts are stories about ourselves. Even when we create enemies or project nations to be our enemies, that is all to secure our own view of how we think things are. So what non-attachment means is not clinging to self image. It’s easy to practice non-attachment to your bicycle or your apartment or maybe even to some of your possessions but internal renunciation means not being attached to your view, not being attached to your self image.

That’s wonderful philosophy but what that actually looks like is engagement. The definition of non-attachment is engagement because when I’m not attached to how I think things should go then suddenly I’m open, I’m free and I’m engaged with how things actually are…So you and I don’t know each other, but I know a few things about you. The more that I learn about you the more it can also shut down an experience of really getting to know you because I might have some preconceptions of who you are and what you are like. That’s an example of non-attachment. If I can notice how my ideas about you and my ideas about me actually get in the way, then I can be open to seeing beyond those ideas.

So again, non-attachment actually means engagement. The more that I can learn how to not cling to how I think of myself and how I think of others, the more I can open to the interconnectivity that’s possible when I’m fully present. It’s really important to understand this point because yoga is about engagement in the world, it’s about action and it’s not about passivity. The teaching of karma reminds us that everything we do has an effect, so it’s really important to understand that you can’t be free of action. Every time you have an action, there’s an effect.

RS: One of the preconditions to the practice of abhyasa and vairagya is the release of raga (attachment) and dwesha (aversion), that you have to release your mind from the polarity of like and the dislike… How does that affect one’s actions?

MS: Raga and dwesha are both forms of clinging. It’s not so much about feeling bad or feeling good, but rather our attachment to feeling good and our tendency to lean away from what doesn’t feel good. When we learn how to work with our patterns of reactivity which are raga (attachment) and dwesha (aversion), then we can start to see how they operate in each moment of our lives.

The heart of the practice is being able to reduce our reactivity. We live right now in an attention deficit society where people are highly reactive. It takes its toll on our bodies and it takes its toll on our relationships because in highly reactive modes we can’t recognize intimacy when it shows up. Maybe I would even go so far as to say that the thing most of us fear the most is intimacy, because intimacy threatens our reactivity and most of us hold on to our reactivity because that’s the way we know ourselves.

It’s a funny paradox I think… I don’t want to say that you get rid of your reactivity because as human beings we’re always going to have reactive patterns. I think it would be naive to think that you can get rid of attachment and aversion. Rather, you can just see them operating, and seeing them operating you can get enough distance from reactivity that you can watch it operate instead of being hooked into it.

RS: So you’re saying that the practice is first developing the ability to see our own patterns of reactivity and then being able to observe them, and then perhaps we can become less reactive in how we act?

MS: Yes. You talked earlier about western psychology and some things you’ve read and I think that this is a good time to pick up on that. What’s so brilliant about western psychology is that it helps to really recognize our patterns of reactivity and it helps us to see how our patterns of reactivity are chronic, historical, and relational. What yoga really teaches us is how to see those patterns and notice how they’re impermanent, how they’re empty of self and how they’re malleable. That way when we see our patterns we can learn how to let them go and we don’t get as hooked into them and I think that’s really the heart of the yoga practice.

RS: In your interview in Ascent you talked about a moral obligation to practice. Is that what you meant?

MS: Exactly. When I see my capacity for anger and my capacity for greed, hatred, confusion and envy, and when I learn how to work on the yoga mat, or on the meditation cushion, or in relationships with my particular patterns of strong emotions, then because I see those potentials in myself, my practice becomes a profound form of social action because I’m not planting those seeds in my mind, but I’m also not planting those seeds in my body or in the body politic.

Every individual is a corner of culture. If we see that, then working with our patterns of reactivity is also working on a small corner of culture. By not contributing those negative patterns our practice becomes a practice of social morality in some way. When I said we had a moral obligation to practice it might sound like an overstatement, but what we see is that most of the problems in our families and in our communities are not separate from us. We have the capacity for all of the negative states that we perceive outside of ourself and we have to learn how to work with those states if we don’t want to contribute them to the culture.

RS: In your bio it says that your research and teaching explore the intersection of committed spiritual practice and social action. I often wonder about this fine line of taking action in the world and being aware enough to notice whether or not the action that we’re taking is helpful or needed or even wanted, in the case of trying to help other people. What is the intersection of social action and committed spiritual practice and how does one keep the other grounded in reality?

MS: Well the intersection has some history behind it. Traditionally, one of the models for spirituality in the Abrahamic religions, but also even in the yoga practice in early Buddhism is a model of ‘vertical transcendence‘, which means, “If I can wake up then I can be free of suffering and I do a practice so that I can become enlightened.” What’s really interesting about Patanjali is that he gets rid of the word ‘moksha‘ or gets rid of the word ‘enlightenment‘ and he doesn’t use it. I like to call his model ‘horizontal transcendence‘, which means that the purpose of my practice is not for me to wake up but the purpose of a practice is for all of us to wake up together. That way my practice includes plants and animals and other people, architecture, city planning and good food. That way we practice cultural awakening.

We don’t have time to go practice in caves or inner sanctums, in fact I don’t think there are even that many caves or forests left where you can go move and practice. I think instead we need to use the conditions of our life as the vehicle for waking up. If the conditions are your particular city with all its imperfections, then that city becomes what you use to practice. I think that in our secular age it’s really important to focus on practicing in a way that deals with the imbalances of the entire world rather than just our internal imbalances, because the fish really need us, and the frogs and the rivers need us and they need us now! They don’t have time for us to get enlightened, and maybe enlightenment is a holdover from another age and doesn’t really apply to us anymore.

RS: It sounds like what you’re saying is that there’s a difference in ideas about enlightenment. At one point enlightenment was perceived as something that was “beyond all of this” and what I hear you saying is that enlightenment is a connection and deep involvement with “all of this”.

MS: My understanding of enlightenment is that it’s waking up to the inherent interconnection of everything. I think every human culture throughout history has needed to find a way to reach the transcendent. Sometimes the transcendent was imagined as something beyond the body or something beyond the self, culture or the material plane. But actually, what if we push further and see that the transcendent actually means connecting with something that’s bigger than the stories you tell about yourself and your life? Then we see that we can have that experience with other people, we can have that experience in the natural world. You can have that experience eating an apple. To really drop in to the experience of eating an apple is to recognize your interconnectivity and your place in the world.

What I’m arguing for, if you will, in my recent book “Yoga For a World Out of Balance” is to see that we need to become more material… People say that we’re materialistic but we’re not really. We don’t love the material. I think we need to learn to love the material and then as we care for the material we see that the material is spiritual and there is no separation.

RS: One of the cornerstones of western psychology is the the development of the ‘ego’ or the sense of self, and this sense of self is critical to being functional in the world. Yet we also have to get beyond it if we want to engage in intimacy like you’re saying. How do we maintain enough of it so that we don’t end up institutionalized?

MS: So many people talk about the self as the ego, or they say that the goal of spiritual practice is to get rid of the ego or kill the ego or get beyond the ego. Well, the only people I’ve ever met who actually have no ego are institutionalized. We need an ego. An ego is really healthy and it’s sacred. The purpose of practice is to cultivate an awareness that allows the ego to be flexible and porous, not fixed and rigid or stuck in historical patterns of reactivity, and also not inflated or deflated,and not propped up and also not judged. The self is not something to get rid of, the self is just a conglomeration of stories that we tell ourselves or that have been told to us. But seeing the self as just an encyclopedia or an anthology of stories helps unfix those stories so that the self becomes more of a process rather than a structure. The self does exist and it does function but it’s not hard and it doesn’t have a “core” that is eternal or fixed. The self is plastic, or to use a new term in neuropsychology the self is ‘elastic‘, and that is wonderful to know.

Your identity is not fixed. Who you think you are is not fixed. Your sexuality is not fixed. Your career is not fixed. Your relationships are not fixed… It’s all flow. Within that flow there’s great freedom, but from the perspective of the ego it’s scary because we want to fix ourselves and define ourselves. How many young people learn that they’re attracted to someone of the same sex and then they do a lot of work to define themselves as a dyke or a queer and for a while that’s so helpful because you can say what you are. But then maybe once in a while you’re attracted to someone of the opposite sex and then it screws up your definition of yourself as queer. That’s such a common story and I use it because it reminds us that the self flows in ways that are more like water than structured. We’re a lot more like trees than cars.

RS: How does that relate to the “anarchy of the gaps”- two systems that meet to point out the shadow of the other system? It sounds like in order to allow something to be elastic you do in fact need to see it in its function as a system, which include the gaps inherent in the structure of a system.

MS: Every system has a shadow or gaps. Nothing can be organized into a system, life just doesn’t work that way. Stephen Bachelor has a wonderful term that he uses in a book called “Living With the Devil“, and the term he uses is called ‘anarchy of the gaps’. The reason why I like that term is because anarchy refers to the fact that all systems are resilient and they self-organize. For example, a computer is not a good example of a self-organizing system. When it breaks it’s broken, and only now are we learning how to recycle them. But a forest is a good example of a resilient system. When there’s a forest fire and you go walk out into the black charcoal several months after the fire, that’s usually the time in the forest when there are the best wildflowers, because the forest is resilient.

We need to be resilient; we need to get depressed, we need to stay in bed sometimes for a month. We need our relationships to fall apart because we need to fall apart and regroup, and this is part of the healthy resilience of a person. I call that anarchy because it’s an example of how human beings internally and also culturally know how to self-organize in order to create balance. That’s something that I trust in ecologically, spiritually and politically and it’s something which is far more interesting than hierarchy. Two systems never quite fit together because each one has a shadow. And that’s why you need different systems to point out the shadow of other systems. Where systems don’t fit together, there’s so much vitality there… and that’s the anarchy of the gaps. I think that western psychology and yoga philosophy don’t totally fit together, but the places where they don’t fit together is way more interesting that where they do fit together.

RS: When a system collapses in on itself; when the forest burns or the relationship falls apart… Is that the self-reference point where we can meet up with our own shadow? Do we have to totally fall apart and then regroup to see it?

MS: There’s a good story about Charles Darwin, where after he finished “The Theory of Evolution” he experienced a deep depression. He noticed how when people become depressed they stop going out, they stare at the ceiling, they stay in bed and they don’t have sex. Darwin’s whole theory is based on the fact that we are driven to reproduce… But a person who is depressed is not thinking too much about that. After a few years of contemplating depression he realized that maybe depression had a purpose, and maybe it was an evolutionary purpose which was to slow us down and to make us look inward and see what’s valuable and what’s important in our lives.

I think that’s a good example of what you brought up because a lot of our symptoms have a purpose. You know this as a yoga teacher, you see people fall apart and they do everything they can to try and get back together and get back to work and to get their hamstrings working again. But you can also see how when people fall apart and their lives start to unravel, there can be something so creative and magnificent in that process if we’re patient and open enough to really see our lives that way.

RS: That brings us back to what we started with today talking about the attachment to pleasure and pain and learning to open and be with the experience that’s happening right now.

MS: If you go deep into your yoga asana practice and you really practice in a way that includes drishti, which is gazing, and bandhas, which are the bonding of breathing and our attention span, and pranayama, which is the un-restriction or the un-restraint of internal energetic pathways in the body… Then our practice becomes very psychological. Within a focused and concentrated asana practice we start to work not just with feeling good in our practice, but we move deeper into the realms where we learn how to really be present with strong emotions and turbulent thoughts and then that becomes a very deep form of meditation so that when we’re off the yoga mat we can use that kind of patience and attentiveness to serve others and to take care of ourselves.

RS: If you could put a message on a T-shirt, what would it say?

MS:  emptiness:compassion

Michael Stone is the author of three books, as well as other writing and articles. He is based on Toronto where he runs the Centre of Gravity Sangha and he travels and teaches internationally.
Michael will in Portland the weekend of September 24, 2010! This is what he has to say about that weekend’s offering:

“I feel inspired offering a workshop in Portland because in my imagination Portland, as a city, is an experiment that seeks to integrate urban life with creative ways of addressing social, ecological, transportation and economic issues. And the land along the coast is beautiful. Friday evening I will give a talk about the ways in which Yoga can be brought to life in this culture at this time without needing to escape our lives. We will explore the way yoga postures, meditation, ethics and art, all form a well-rounded path that allows us to practice deeply and then express our practice in everything we do.

On Saturday and Sunday we will look at yoga postures in subtle ways that focus on the internal pathways of the breath, proper gazing, and alignment techniques that allow us to turn the postures in vehicles of concentration. From there we will slow down asana sequences and see how practice matures not by adding more and more poses but by tuning into the psychological as well as physical patterns in mind and body. And we will do all this while having fun!”

For more information in registration for this workshop please visit The Yoga Space.

Street Yoga was founded in 2002 when the executive director began teaching a yoga class to homeless youth in Portland, Oregon. Since then, Street Yoga has grown to about 20 volunteers, offering 4 weekly classes in the Portland area, 2 weekly classes in Seattle and periodic wellness workshops.

Street Yoga’s primary focusing is teaching yoga and mindful self-care to young people who are at-risk or homeless. The students include:

Homeless Youth – People 14-22 years old, who are living on the streets or in very temporary shelter.
Girls in Foster Care – Girls 12-17 who are in state custody awaiting foster care placement.
Young People Recovering from Abuse and Trauma – Young people ages 6-11 who have a history of severe neglect, sexual & physical abuse and other traumas.

Most of the young people on the streets have a history of involvement with the foster care system or have suffered sexual and physical abuse, often both situations at once. Street Yoga works with younger children and youth in state custody, working to alleviate the ill-effects of homelessness on the young, and striving to prevent it altogether by heading off those very conditions which lead to homelessness in the first place.

Watch a video about Street Yoga and visit their site for more info, to get involved or request a class.

Yoga Hope is a non-profit yoga outreach program based in western Massachusetts bringing the practice of yoga and meditation to underserved women; women who have been incarcerated, are undergoing addiction treatment and rehabilitation,  living on the streets, battered women and women transitioning from hospital treatment for disordered eating.

Founded by Sue Jones, the program consists of volunteer teachers who offer their time and energy to teach classes and offer a scholarship program and teacher training to participants of the outreach program.

Here’s a video of Yoga Hope at work. Visit their site to learn more or get involved.

Shanti Uganda is a project that I am seriously excited about! The women that started this project are deeply committed to the vision of yoga as a healing tool and are doing wonderful work to spread the love and peace (shanti) of the practice. If you happen to be here in the Portland area I currently teach a weekly class to raise money for the project and I will be traveling to Uganda this winter to volunteer with the project for a few months. Class schedule here.

(Excerpt from site)
The Shanti Uganda Society began with a vision to bring the healing power of yoga to communities experiencing trauma in Uganda. Kim Ridgewell and Natalie Angell began to discuss ways to make this vision a reality and with the support of friends and family created ‘Shanti Uganda’. In 2007, Natalie left for Uganda and worked at a local school, began a yoga program for children and supported birthing women at a health clinic. Here, she met Lubwama Julius, who was a teacher at the school. Over the next year they began to support additional schools in the region and an income generating group for women with HIV/AIDS. The Shanti Uganda Society incorporated in 2008.

Shanti is a Sanskrit word meaning peace. It reflects the belief that peace begins within. In order for communities to develop a greater sense of solidarity and unity, they must first allow themselves to heal from within and act from a place of love and compassion.

I do believe that the yoga community is a force to be reckoned with. No matter what the school, the slant, the particular angle of the particular studio, whether the focus is on a mystical connection or a firm body, it seems that yogis worldwide are coming together in great numbers to work towards happiness and liberation for all beings.

In all forms the yoga community is reaching out. In the aftermath of Haiti’s recent earthquake, yoga studios all over the globe have been offering benefit classes and percentages of sales to aid in Haiti’s relief funds. Here in Portland I have taught 4 classes so far (with one more to come) that have raised an average of $100 per class. Small fries for sure in the grand scheme of things, but every little bit helps.

Yoga practice isn’t just for those who can afford it, those who have the rights clothes or access to studios, dvds or books. As most of us know, the practice of yoga is beneficial for everyone! Obviously every body has different needs and will benefit from different approaches or aspects to the practice and these needs will evolve and change with the individuals.

There are many complaints about yoga becoming ‘watered down’ as it becomes more and more accessible to all. Though I definitely feel fairly nauseated when I hear about competitive approaches like making yoga an Olympic Sport, on the other hand I think that maybe this will draw in people, particularly young people, who might not have been interested otherwise.

And as more and more people are coming to the practice of yoga, there are more and more people who are feeling good in their bodies, heart and minds and are ready and willing to work together for positive action. Yoga in its simplest translation means ‘union’, there’s no denying the unifying force of this practice, no matter how it looks!

I have been researching a number of charitable yoga foundations who are working to offer the tools of yoga asana and meditation to those who need it most. In the next few weeks I’ll be posting on many of them and I’ll also be interviewing a few of these yogActivists for FTY News. So if you are someone or know of a person or project that should be interviewed or featured, let me know!

Namas té

xox- Renee

Image by Chad Haselden

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States, and he has become a human rights icon: King is recognized as a martyr by two Christian churches.A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King’s efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. There, he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and opposing the Vietnam War, both from a religious perspective. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. national holiday in 1986. (wikipedia)

The World Food Program is sending out all available resources to bring nourishment to the people of Haiti after the devastation of a massive 7.0 earthquake on January 12th.

Haiti is a place that is described as “hell on earth on a good day”. In the last decade this island has endured a political coup, mass social instability and a rash of kidnappings and murders as well numerous natural disasters including several storms in 2008 that destroyed over 70% of Haiti’s agriculture and most of its roads, bridges and infrastructure, creating severe malnutrition and hunger throughout the island.

Haiti is one of the world’s most impoverished countries with 80% of the population living below poverty line. According to the WFP Haiti’s hunger index was already “alarming” before the earthquake.

A list of organizations accepting donations is here.

I have been so impressed by the yoga community here in Portland and elsewhere coming together to raise funds to assist our human family in Haiti. I’ll be teaching 4 classes in the next 2 weeks here in Portland to raise money for Mercy Corps Haitian Relief Fund. If you know of classes or other benefits going on in your area I’d be happy to post them here on the blog and on FTY Facebook.

What does the Initiative do?
5 years ago the city and county launched a 10-year plan to end homelessness, our bureau (Portland Housing Bureau) funds a number of non-profits that are working to end homelessness in the community. We work to move people from the streets into housing, with street outreach, housing for people that are recovering from addictions or people with mental health issues, and with rent assistance and supportive service programs.

What is your job in the Initiative?
I write grants and oversee contracts with providers and non-profits. I work in planning with the organizations in the community on strategies that are going to end homelessness as quickly as possible. We’re working on this 10-year plan that goes through 2015, but in the meantime we have people on the streets, so our bureau also funds a number of emergency shelters and short-term housing so that people can get off the street quickly.

Where do you get most of your funding?
About half is city general funds and about half are federal funds and federal grant monies.

Does your program just place people in housing or do you do other things like help find them work?
It depends on the person. We fund providers that work with adults, people with kids, people with disabilities and mental illnesses, seniors etc. For example one organization that we work with called Northwest Pilot Project works only with people that are ages 55 and older. They do outreach to people that are outside or in shelters, many of whom have social security, but for various reasons they may not be organized enough, they may have mental health issues, they may have cognitive issues and they need help to negotiate how to get back into housing again. Or they might need rent assistance because their income is so little that they can’t afford rent. There are some federal rent assistance programs like section 8, but they may be on the waiting list for it. So NPP will work with seniors and help them to move into housing, and if the seniors can still work than the organization can help them connect with employment programs.

A lot of people who experience homelessness are simply having a short term economic crises and they don’t have any particular needs that are different from people who are low-income and in housing. With a little bit of rent assistance they can get back into housing and they’ll never experience homelessness again. For a smaller percentage of people that experience homelessness there are other issues that are going on; mental illness issues or addictions or both that’s making it hard for them to get organized enough to get off the street.

What are the main causes of homelessness? What are the demographics, who make up the homeless populations?
Its depends on the community. Here in Portland in a years time over half the people who experience homelessness are in families with kids. Again the majority of the people are having an economic crisis; someone lost a job, someone is having a major health crisis and couldn’t afford the bills and lost their housing. The main cause of homelessness like we see it today is lack of affordable housing. There’s been a huge shift that began about 25 years ago when the federal government was cutting funds to the affordable housing programs. If you look at the US Department of Housing and Development’s budget over the last 25 years, today it’s a fraction of what it was 25 years ago, but now we have even more people in need. The government has reduced funding for programs that serve low-income people, so we have more people living in poverty today than we did 25 years ago.

When I was growing up there were not families with children or seniors or people with disabilities living on the streets, that’s a relatively new phenomenon in US history, it’s just been around for about 25 years. If we had enough affordable housing and assistance for people that needed it, we wouldn’t have people on the streets. The existing safety net would be enough to help people who had some kind of a temporary housing crisis. Now we don’t have enough affordable housing, (there’s an estimated shortcoming of about 20,000 units of affordable housing in the Portland area) and until we have enough housing there’s going be people on the streets. It used to be that you could work a minimum-wage job and afford an apartment, but you really can’t do that anymore if you’re trying to support a family as well.

Why is it important to end homelessness?
I believe that everbody deserves a home. I’ve never experienced homelessness myself, but I’ve spent a lot of time with people that are living outside and it’s awful. Almost every mentally ill homeless woman has been sexually assaulted in the street. As a fellow human being I don’t believe that anyone should have to live on the streets. And it’s preventable, if 25 years ago we didn’t have homelessness like this, it doesn’t need to be this way now. There’s a lot that we can do with local funds and we need the federal government to step up as well.

As a financial reason, it’s actually just as expensive if not more expensive for people to live on the streets vs. paying for their rent and services. There are people that cost our community hundreds of thousands of dollars per year who are suffering from disease or illness. They’re on the street and they call an ambulance, the ambulance takes them to the ER where they get treated and discharged back to the street where the conditions are such that they can’t heal and so they end up back in health services. You can imagine how the expenses rack up, so the community is paying one way or the other. It makes more economic sense to prevent crises like this. There’s the moral reason and then there’s the economic reason. For families with kids and for young people homelessness is terrible. The long term trauma that it inflicts on kids affects them for the rest of their life. Unfortunately, most of the general public never see the families with kids unless they’re volunteering at a shelter.

From your perspective how does homelessness affect someone’s morale? It must be hard for these people and the families with kids to go through all of this and then still be out there looking for jobs.
It really affects their self worth, a homeless parent’s self worth is terrible. They’re struggling to look like they have it together to their kids but they’re feeling awful and they’re depressed and it’s very traumatic for anyone to be homeless. Lack of self worth contributes to violence and addictions and mental health conditions. I’ve seen people who were mentally ill who got off the street into housing and their mental health symptoms improved almost immediately. To have a door they can close, to be able to be quiet, get a good nights sleep, eat a healthy meal or to have privacy and dignity… It’s really remarkable to see the change in people who have been homeless for a long time when they get off the street.

What are the main misperceptions about homelessness?
The tip of the iceberg are the people that you see panhandling on the street. The people that you don’t see are the people who are out struggling and looking for employment or looking for a place to live, or they’re in families with kids and they’re sleeping in their car somewhere. You very rarely actually see a family with kids out on the streets.

Addiction is a huge problem. Can you imagine the hopelessness of someone who has no job, no place to live, no support network and they’re addicted to drugs or alcohol? Unless they have insurance they’ll have a hard time if they decide to get off their addiction and if they want to get into a detox program. If you’re someone with means it’s easy. But for people without means who want to quit, the waiting list to get into a detox bed can take weeks.

So that’s a big misperception is that people make the choice. There are people who may look able-bodied but there’s usually a lot more going on than what’s visible to a casual passerby. I’ve worked in a lot of shelters and outreach programs and I’ve had long conversations with about 2000 homeless people. I’ve never once met anyone that I thought was choosing to be out there. A real common perception is that people choose it because it’s easy or great. It’s horrible to be homeless; people yell at you, they spit at you, people get assaulted all the time, women get sexually assaulted, men get sexually assaulted, you have a lack of sleep, you get awakened by police who tell you to move on, it’s cold, it’s raining or snowing.

Last year we did a health-related survey of 650 people who were sleeping outside and found that half of the people we talked to were medically vulnerable. They had serious health problems like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, missing fingers and toes from frostbite. It was really very shocking. You may not see all there is to see just looking at someone.

If people are interested in helping what can they do?
There’s lots someone can do. The first thing that people can do is get involved in their community. Here in Portland people can go on our website or look at the Rose City Resource Guide which lists all the non-profits that are working with homelessness. Elsewhere, if you don’t have money to donate, volunteer. There are so many great non-profits. You can volunteer at a local food bank or shelter. Its best to find out what’s going on in your own neighborhood.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
My mom died the day I was born and it really affected me. I felt that I had to do something important with my life because my mom died in my birth. I’ve wanted to be of service since I was a little kid. I was always very sensitive to people who were hurting and I wanted to do something. I volunteered for non-profits from a pretty young age.

In college I studied Native American art but I was volunteering in homeless programs. My friends finally said, “Why don’t you just do that?” and being a social worker paid about 5 cents more per hour than working in museums, so I got my Masters in social work. While I was in school I met someone who was working in a shelter and I ended up taking a job with them. I couldn’t believe it, it just totally blew my mind the first time I started working at this shelter. I couldn’t believe that in America people were living like this. I’ve been working in the field ever since. I’ll probably always be doing some kind of social work. I enjoy the work that I do, but I can also write and speak and I like to do community organizing and planning. I think I’ll stay in this field until we’ve ended homelessness, which will hopefully be soon.

Where do you want to be in 20, 30 or 50 years from now?
I hope that homelessness has ended in the next decade. The next thing that I’m drawn to working with is corrections. We have more people in jail or prison per capita in the US than any other country in the world and I find that astonishing. I find the statistics astonishing on the number of people incarcerated that are people of color, or the number of people who are from poverty or who are mentally ill or abused. I’m very interested in working in that field. I mean, you’ve got a lot of people in there for a long time, why not take the opportunity to allow them to get their GED, get their education, learn some job skills? There’s this punitive attitude in America that people should just get locked up to suffer. The truth is that we’re spending billions to keep them there and they’re going to get out someday and they’re coming back to their communities. So are we just going to allow them to live on the streets or live without means? We could do so much better.

If you could make a bumper sticker what would it say? What’s your message?
It’s all about love and relationships. Try to be a love transmitter. Open your heart and your mind, send positive energy and love out into the world and be present enough to do that in your everyday interactions. Be kind to the person that’s serving your coffee or fixing your desk. If we could all be present and aware in our interactions I think the world would be a much better place. And I think that if everyone in the world had a pedicure there would be no more wars!

Links:
National Alliance to End Homelessness
Feeding America
change.org
No Where to Lay His Head

According to various national statistics, In the US as many as 3.5 million people experience homelessness in a given year and about 842,000 people in any given week.

40% are families with children—the fastest growing segment.
41% are single males.
14% are single females.
5% are minors unaccompanied by adults.
1.37 million (or 39%) of the total homeless population are children under the age of 18

December 13, 2009
Interview with Ryan Patterson from Away Inward Retreats.

In the last year and a half California-based massage therapist Ryan Patterson and his Partner Jason Frahm have taken four groups to Peru for a once-in-a-lifetime cultural experience including hikes to sacred Inca ruins, fire dances, earth offerings and plant ceremonies guided by Andean Shamans, massage, journaling, yoga (of course), Machu Picchu (of course) and a deep commitment to serving 2 local orphanages. I interviewed Ryan about the vision of Away Inward and his mission of charitable outreach.

How did Away Inward begin?
Jason had been working in southeast Asia; Thailand and Bali, but he had anchored in Peru to work on his project (The At-Onement Project) bringing education to remote areas. Simultaneously I was starting Away Inward as a charitable yoga foundation, mainly doing retreats. I had just started it when I met Jason. I had the bank account and the url, the business side of the setup, but I hadn’t done retreats yet. I went on a journey with him to Peru and the retreat center we stayed at was working with an orphanage (Casa de Milagros), so we spent some time there and we were introduced to the process that they had in which profits from the retreat center funded the orphanage. During that time we also found out about another retreat center (Las Casitas del Arco Iris) which supported a different orphanage that was part of a larger initiative that also included a daycare program for young children, a technical and vocational school for children and adults, and a free medical and dental clinic for the community. We both felt pulled to help support these programs and that’s where we came together to start the retreats to Peru.

What kind of funding opportunities does Away Inward set up for these two programs? What do you do, how do you do it, how much do you give?
We start with simply asking each of the guests to bring a bag of supplies; clothes, medical supplies etc. Before the trip we each do various fundraisers, I do raffles for massage and teach donation yoga classes. We typically take down about $2500 USD at the beginning, which may sound nominal to us but is actually a good amount for them.
The way we set up the retreats, our guests know that they’re supporting the programs, they know that’s part of the reason for the trip. When we stay at the retreat center attached to Casa de Milagros we spend a good portion of our last day there with the kids at the orphanage. On our way back (from Machu Picchu) we stay at Las Casitas del Arco Iris where we do a tour and our guests get to see the facilities and see what they’re supporting. Our company gives 10% of profits back to the orphanages and at the end of the trip we open the door to guests to donate as well. We typically raise an additional 8-10,000USD from the guests per trip. (Editor’s note: 3 trips to Peru per year averages an accumulative min. total of $34,500-$37,500 per year raised for the projects)

Do most of your guests donate after?
Yes, for sure. We’ve been blessed, but as I said we build that in from the beginning. So introducing the guests to the people, showing them where the money’s going and what they’re doing with it really makes an impact.

How is that for your guests? How are they affected by these trips and the visits to the centers?
They’re tremendously moved, in the last trip we had a few guests from Italy who had been fairly sheltered from the severity of third-world poverty. When they see people who have given their entire life such as Mama Kia, (who moved from Sweden to start Casa de Milagros, or Helena Van Engelen from Holland who started Casitas del Arco Iris) who have moved to Peru with the sole purpose of taking care of the kids that are left on the streets; when our guests see how much good work is being done they’re usually moved to tears.

Why do most of your guests come? What are their motivations?
Peru. It’s the destination that they’ve always wanted, thought about, but they would never go on their own. Most of them are into yoga also. We can work on the charitable side because we have the pull of Peru and the element of Karma Yoga, or of giving back. When we first designed the retreat it actually wasn’t about getting people to donate to causes, but we knew that just by staying in the retreat centers we could help the orphanages.

Can you speak a little bit about your personal philosophy and intention behind Away Inward? What does “Away Inward” mean?
Going inward to me is the notion of connecting with intuition or what some people might call a “sixth sense”, but I just call that inner awareness. For most of us in our day-to-day lives we have so much external stimulation that we lose track of simple things like our breath, how we feel, illnesses that are going on, stuff that we should be connected to and inherently know.
So I think that sometimes we have to go away in order to reconnect to that knowing, to our ‘center’. The destination’s not really as important as the going away. Going somewhere new takes us out of our routine, takes us away from obligations, cell phones, internet. Without those things we don’t have expectations and distractions that are barriers keeping us from listening to our bodies and our inner guidance, or that inherent wisdom. So I think that’s the main philosophy; to find a way inward. That was the original idea with Away Inward, to get out of your comfort zone, out of your daily routine and check in with yourself at a higher level.

What is it about Peru that would help someone to go inward?
In Peru we spend a lot of time with Shamans. We do things like creating ceremonies to connect with Mother Earth and saying prayers. It’s simple ceremony that brings back aspects we’ve lost in our culture and daily life. But here we can reinforce that connection. It’s a bit easier in Peru because there are so many people that are still connected to the earth and earth based traditions. For westerners that whole concept is a great catalyst for introspection and an invitation to tune in to a higher potential.

Are people able to integrate these elements when they come back from the trip? Or do you always have to go away to be inward?
*Laughs* Unfortunately a big part of me believes so. I try to hold on to it when I get back but I can feel it changing day by day. It’s back to the phone calls, back to the stimulation that distracts us from our center. That’s the whole goal of yoga, or at least my yoga practice, is to stay in that center. But having to work and carrying on with the daily routines can quickly move us out of center.

How does a yoga practice fit in while you are on retreat? Is it something that you encourage people to continue with when they come back?
On the retreats we have much more time for meditation, we can do walking meditation and we do silent portions of the hikes, all with the intention of grounding and reconnecting. We offer that to guests to bring home and we encourage them specifically to develop a meditation practice that will help them to maintain the essence of what gets created on the retreat.

When I first contacted you by email you mentioned that part of the work of Away Inward was to create community. I think it’s an interesting proposition that two totally different cultures can come together and “create community” and I sometimes wonder what people really mean by that, it’s a term that’s used in many different ways. How does it happen for you, how do you go about it?
When I talk about building community by going to Peru, I’m speaking more about global community and awareness. We’re bringing different worlds together. We’re taking people that know the energy of Manhattan sky-rises and we’re bringing them to third-world poverty and dirt floors. It’s about building awareness of the larger community of Planet Earth. Our guests build community within themselves too, they bond and form relationships and afterwards when we’re back we have a community of shared experience and we can talk about it and motivate to keep working together and then everyone affects their outer circle of relationships.

What I’m hearing from you is that you’re encouraging a community that’s less something physical or spatial with borders, but rather a community of understanding or a coming together of knowledge from different cultures and exposure for people who wouldn’t otherwise be exposed.
Right, it’s exposure to knowledge with a lot of cross-polination. A lot of information we’re getting from the Shamans in Peru is similar or even the same as the information coming from the yoga practice and from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

What is your definition of a healthy community?
A healthy community to me is a larger awareness within each individual. A healthy community is made up of individuals who have a broader sense than just how they were raised or what they know specifically.

What was your original motivation or calling to this work?
I was in Thailand and a lady I met there mentioned visiting the orphanage. It wasn’t even something that I had thought of doing, but I did and then I ended up spending the next three days there and that opened the door for me to really want to participate in an orphanage in the third world in some fashion. Eight months later I was in Peru with Jason. When we went, we knew that there was an orphanage affiliated with the retreat center but that wasn’t the original purpose of the trip. But then we got there and we realized it was the obvious thing to focus on and so it fell into place.

How long have you been teaching yoga?
2.5 years

Can you tell me what drew you to yoga as a practice and how your practice has shaped what you’ve decided to do with your work/ career?
Yoga has enhanced my compassion, and it’s definitely changed my view of people. My senses of awareness, service and gratitude have all opened up with my yoga practice. In my work as a bodyworker and massage therapist yoga has made me much more intuitive and connected to my clients. It’s given me a way to stay open and healthy.

What is your vision for the future of Away Inward?
To duplicate what we’ve done in Peru in other locations. We’re in the process of working with someone in Bali who has an orphanage and a midwife center. In the long term we want to have 3 or 4 destinations annually that are all tied in to charitable organizations.

Are these retreats accessible to people at different levels of income? Do you have a scholarship?
In the future we’d like to have a volunteer program, where we can bring people down who will work longer at the orphanages, but we don’t have that in place yet.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I don’t recall ever having a mission really, like I never thought “I want to be a fireman“. I went to college for pre-med, then I went skiing for a few years and I was on ski-patrol. I was always kind of in the field of health and healing, but as a kid I wasn’t specifically drawn to anything I can remember. Bodywork just kind of happened, a friend suggested it and I tried one day of massage school and I just knew I would do that for a while. That’s how I came to yoga, I was looking for a way to heal without putting my body through so much work.

Where do you want to be in 20, 30 or 50 years from now?
I would love to have a local studio in California and one in Boise, Idaho which is where I’m from, and one that’s abroad. I’d like to have a company that runs retreats and a sustainable retreat circuit that’s available to other teachers with similar goals.

Do you have any major influences/ inspirations?
Someone like Mother Theresa, someone that can roll up their sleeves and work without worrying about what they’re going to get back from it.

Do you have New Year’s resolutions?
I’d like to find a consistent volunteer program here in California where I can volunteer and be involved.

If you could make a bumper sticker what would it be, what’s your message?
Turn off your television. Turn on your heart.

Away Inward Retreats are one week long Cultural Immersion Retreats.
Prices range from $2300USD- $3700. Included in the cost are meals and transportation, daily yoga and meditation, mindfulness practice, 3-4 hours hiking daily led by Andean Shamans to sacred Inca sites, ceremony, massage and visits to Casa de Milagros and Casitas del Arco Iris.
Airfare is not included
The next trip scheduled is March 7-13, 2010.

For more information visit http://www.awayinward.com

Other Links:
Casa de Milagros
Casitas del Arco Iris
The At-Onement Project
Ryan Patterson’s personal website

Ryan Patterson and Jason Frahm

“Discrimination targets individuals and groups that are vulnerable to attack: the disabled, women and girls, the poor, migrants, minorities, and all those who are perceived as different.
… But these victims of discrimination are not alone. The United Nations is standing with them, committed to defending the rights of all, and particularly the most vulnerable. That is our identity and our mission.”

-UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

For those of you wanting to know more or to become involved with this noble effort to create equal rights, fair treatment and equal opportunities for all people, check out the UN human rights page of resources.

Also traditionally on 10th of December the 5 yearly United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights and the Nobel Peace Prize are awarded. This year the Nobel prize went to US President Barack Obama. Read his acceptance speech here.

Excerpt from their site:

That sounds good to me. Check out their site for podcast archives, great links, a bibliography and even a movie. Grow your own!

“Slow Food was founded in 1989 to promote the pleasures of the table and regional food cultures and to protect them from the homogenization of industrial food production. With gastronomy bound inextricably to agriculture, the environment and the health of communities, Slow Food has naturally broadened its focus over the years to actively support producers who demonstrate a small-scale, sustainable and local food production model.

In 1999, Slow Food launched the Presidia project which has since involved thousands of small producers across the world, strengthening local economies and saving cheeses, breads, vegetable varieties and breeds from extinction. The worldwide Terra Madre network was launched in 2004 to give a voice and visibility to these farmers, breeders, fishers and artisan producers, and to bring them together with cooks, academics, youth and consumers to discuss how to improve the food system and strengthen local economies. Today the Terra Made network is made up of more than 2,000 food communities.

Slow Food has chosen to celebrate its first 20 years with Terra Madre Day in recognition of these communities’ remarkable achievements and their crucial role. Terra Madre Day will be celebrated by food communities and Slow Food’s network of more than 100,000 members across 150 countries, grouped in 1,300 convivia – local chapters – who are working to defend their local culinary culture. The convivia have always formed the backbone of Slow Food, spreading the philosophy far and wide by organizing events and activities.

Slow Food develops countless activities, projects and events all around the world, at the local, national and international levels. Most of these actions revolve around four key themes: food biodiversity, food and taste education, connecting producers and co-producers (shortening the food supply chain)and developing networks.”

After the recent Climate Talks in Barcelona, Young Friends of the Earth posted their Barcelona Report Card assessing the performance of climate-change initiatives and country’s Kyoto Agreement performance. I think it goes without saying that the U.S.A was a delinquent and poorly scoring “pupil”, a surprise to some might be that Canada, Denmark and the entire European Union were too. Listen to the children, they obviously know what’s important to succeed!

Adjustments are an important aspect of taking a yoga class. Hands-on guidance helps students to find alignment within their postures, alignment without which they would undoubtably become injured if they continue to practice improperly. If Heit wins his lawsuit it could severely impact the roles which teachers are able to fill in a class. Granted, there are plenty of teachers out there who probably have no business giving many adjustments. But, having practiced regularly at The Yoga Workshop myself and as a student of its owner Richard Freeman, I feel confident in saying that not only is every teacher at YW competent and knowledgeable, but they are all very well trained in observing, assisting and giving gentle and correct adjustments.

While I don’t doubt the severity of Heit’s injury, I highly doubt that he sustained it while practicing at the Yoga Workshop and I find it absurd that he would think to blame it on a teacher who not only makes a living teaching yoga (read, barely gets the bills covered) but is also a highly qualified teacher.

Injuries sustained while practicing yoga, are unfortunately , quite common. I see this as a symptom of our western material-obsessed culture. Practice yoga with most of the true Indian teachers and they’ll have you lie down to rest between the simplest movements and focus on your breath. Yoga asana wasn’t meant to be undertaken as a purely physical exercise. It’s too bad that Mr. Heit was injured and I can empathize, having incurred more than a few yoga-related injuries myself (generally when I was focusing more on my physical goals rather then any truly admirable aspects of my practice), but it is each of our responsibility to take care of ourselves.

That said, this is an important wake-up call for all us teachers and studio owners out there. Physical adjustments should not be made that are forceful or unsafe. Not ever. Teachers should consistently study their anatomy and continue to learn from more experienced teachers, especially when it comes to observing and assisting. Coming back to the foundations of Yoga, the Yamas: Ahimsa, means non-harming. Teachers should not impose their own ideas of form onto the function of a body by force; gentle and compassionate is best. And students should not inflict violence on their own bodies by grasping for postures they aren’t yet ready for.

I hope Mr. Heit heals quickly and well and that this unfortunate incident will strengthen and educate rather than crippling those who are ultimately in service of better health and stronger bodies, minds and hearts for all of us.

(Just a note about the picture for this post: I didn’t want to use Luke’s stunning headshot, nor could I find any satisfactory images on Google for “yoga lawsuit”. I’m thinking that maybe the light of awareness will come alive in all of us the more we meditate on what Yoga really is anyway.)

Are your grocery shopping experiences mundane, boring, and a chore to be finished as quickly as possible? My guess is, that unless you’re shopping at a fun-filled farmer’s market, your grocery list probably doesn’t elicit cries of “Whoopee, it’s time for food shopping!” Unless, that is, you’re part of Improv Everywhere…

I know I’ve posted about them before, but I had to share this Grocery Store Musical

Improv Everywhere is based out of NYC. If you don’t live there but you want to get your improv on, hook up with Urban Prankster for flash mob fun!