Summer blasted in this week. I hope the heat will nourish your inner and outer gardens.

We had our first StreetYoga training, and it was very uplifting. Ten of us gathered and shared much knowledge and hope about our work. Out of this, eight folks have volunteered to be the first group of teachers, pairing up to offer two classes/week at Outside In.

Thank you to all the training participants and to all of you who contribute to this work.

Namaste, mark

The teacher training was held be Wednesday evening (June 25th) at Outside In. Andre and Sarahjoy shared from their deep experience with disadvantaged youth and teaching yoga in non-traditional settings respectively. We worked through the curriculum with our bodies and refined the offering we are creating. We felt out the lay of the room where we will be teaching. We will be getting together as a group one more time before we start teaching.

We elected to pair teachers up so that everyone felt comfortable with their role as an instructor. Those with a bit more experience will be connected with a teacher with a bit less experience. We examined our own core strengths. As well, we discussed ways to maintain contact with each other, to benefit from our willingness to share the discoveries and challenges of teaching homeless youth.

We have scheduled ourselves to teach from 3 to 4pm Thursdays and Sundays, pending final coordination with Outside In. I'll keep everyone apprised of that as it crystalizes.

One of the best things to come out of the training was the shared realization that we as teachers and volunteers will be invited and challenged to deepen our own awareness of Self. Not only is this good in itself, not only will that make us more genuine as teachers, but it also models yogic behavior that can positively infect our teaching. We will serve best not solely by speaking graceful invocations and leading smooth vinyasas, though those are quite valuable. We will serve best, i believe, by radiating out a sense of our own humble inner strength. This can be a model and a beacon for those tossed about on the cold pavement of the streets.

Andre suggested we read an article on racism called ‘White Privilege’. I was fortunate to find a couple of links to the article on the Internet, here and here.

The article challenges us to see not only privileges we gain by means our skin color, but those we might use, even unknowingly, based on our gender, religion, education, sexual orientation, housing status, you name it.

Larry brought up the issue of liability insurance for the teachers. I know little about this, but will be inquiring as to whether we're covered by a policy of Outside In's. If anything knows more about this than i do, please drop me an email.

As i mentioned before, Yoga Northwest magazine provided us with a nice blurb in their Masala section. We have had three inquiries from this already. As well, i connected with a woman in Vancouver, BC who is willing to donate 25 blankets, and Sarahjoy has graciously offered some extra mats that she has at the Sanctuary.

If any of you knows members of the yoga community who might be willing to donate class-time, space for teaching, mats and other props, or anything else that would be cool, let them know about us and see what happens.

Outside In will be organizing activities for youth and older people in the courtyard at Outside In over the summer in the afternoons. He asked if we would be interested in possibly teaching there, in addition to our work inside in the Day Program space. I said that i wanted to focus on one thing at a time, but i did think that some of you might be interested in giving this some energy for the summer. If so, let me know.

I have recently been reading Education and the Significance of Life , a gem of a book by J. Krishnamurti, and i think it's relevant to what we are doing. He believed fully that education fails most people because it trains them to be good at ‘technique’, good at fitting blandly and blindly into society, and does nothing to help people learn about themselves. The folks we will be teaching have been failed by many parts of our society, and i think it is good to remember that we can, with lots of love and patience, offer the youth a chance to learn about themselves.

He writes: ‘Life is pain, joy, beauty, ugliness, love, and when we understand it as a whole, at every level, that understanding creates its own technique. But the contrary is not true: technique can never bring about creative understanding.’

I'll stop now. Love to you all! m