TYWLS+Teaches+Yoga+(INTENSIVES,+2013)

TYWLS Teaches Yoga, Winter 2013 Monday, December 9

Welcome! This two-week course will focus on yoga and meditation. In this course, you will learn about the practice and principles of yoga and meditation. After learning the basics, you will shoot and upload instructional videos to YouTube, creating a “TYWLS Teaches Yoga” channel to share yoga and meditation with other teens. We will visit yoga studios, have guest yoga teachers visit TYWLS, read selections from yoga texts/magazines, and watch videos in order to improve as both students and teachers of yoga.

Through self and peer critiques, you will select videos to upload to the “TYWLS Teaches Yoga” YouTube channel. You will each shoot/upload 4 instructional yoga/meditation videos: 1 in-depth pose tutorial, 1 philosophy discussion, 1 full 30 minute yoga class, and 1 guided meditation video. You will also write daily journal entries, and publish one reflection piece about your personal journey on the path of yoga. Come with an open mind and you’ll discover things you never knew about yourself!

Our Schedule: Homeroom: Report to your regular first period for attendance 8:15-12:30: Morning Session in 204 12:30- 1:25: Lunch on your own 1:27-2:17: Afternoon Session in 204 2:17 - on: After school programs or extended day begins earlier

Protocol: 1. Respect: Respect yourselves, each other, and the yoga studio environment. 2. Participate: Come ready to WORK -- mentally and physically! 3. Communicate: Let me know what you need and how you are feeling.

Essential Questions: What is yoga? What is meditation? What are the physical benefits of yoga and meditation? What are the mental benefits of yoga and meditation? How can yoga improve our lives? What is happiness and how can we find it? What are the many styles of yoga and how do they differ?

Outcomes: Create: Produce or develop a product for expression. [VIDEOS] Communicate: Make ideas and information understood, mindful of audience, purpose, and setting. [JOURNAL ENTRIES - REFLECTIONS, REFLECTION PIECE] Discern: View, read, and listen with focused attention to what matters. [JOURNAL ENTRIES - SUMMARY/ANALYSIS OF READING AND VIDEO SELECTIONS] Plan: Make deliberate plans, reflect, and persevere in order to achieve goals. [OUTLINE/BRAINSTORM FOR REFLECTION PIECE]

Evidence: Journal entries (reflections, analysis, documentation of their process) Instructional videos: 1 meditation, 1 detailed pose tutorial, 1 philosophy talk, 1 full class Reflection piece

Supplies I Will Provide: A yoga mat A laptop - 1 per 2 students (you can bring your own if you have one!)

Supplies you will need: Writing utensils Your own videocamera or Smartphone (if you have one) Appropriate yoga attire (we will be uploading our videos to YouTube under our school name, so be sure to represent yourself and our school with class and dignity. Please wear only TYWLS Logo T-shirts or PLAIN, SOLID COLOR tees and TYWLS gym pants or THICK (not see-through!) BLACK yoga pants. a washcloth (that you don’t mind getting sweaty!) a towel

Tuesday, December 10

__Watch__ movie: //Yoga Is: A Transformational Journey//

__Discuss__ themes:
 * Yoga
 * Enlightenment
 * Transformation
 * Meditation
 * Truth
 * Health
 * Freedom
 * Karma
 * Happiness
 * Love
 * Purpose

__Post__: Choose (at least) five of the quotes below. Write the quotes on sticky note(s) explaining the theme(s) YOU think they reflect.

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 * 1) “Our bodies are our gardens—our wills are our gardeners.“ Shakespeare
 * 2) “It is health that is the real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.“ Mahatma Gandhi
 * 3) “Wellness is a connection of paths: knowledge and action.” Joshua Welch
 * 4) “He who has health has hope and he who has hope has everything.“ Arabian Proverb
 * 5) “Nobody can hurt me without my permission.” Gandhi
 * 6) “The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this lifetime.” Sogyal Rinpoche
 * 7) “The part can never be well unless the whole is well.” Plato
 * 8) “You only lose what you cling to.” Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha
 * 9) “What each of us believes in is up to us, but life is impossible without believing in something. “ Kentetsu Takamori
 * 10) “Do not ask for less responsibility to be free and relaxed—ask for more strength!“ Shengyan
 * 11) “Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other.” Joseph Addison
 * 12) “Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.” Cicero
 * 13) “Want to be happy? Just be yourself.” Author Unknown
 * 14) “The most important pieces of equipment you need for doing yoga are your body and your mind.“ Rodney Yee
 * 15) “Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.” BK Iyengar
 * 16) “Change is not something that we should fear. Rather, it is something that we should welcome. For without change, nothing in this world would ever grow or blossom, and no one in this world would ever move forward to become the person they’re meant to be.” Author Unknown
 * 17) “Yoga is 99% practice and 1% theory.” Sri Pattabhi Jois
 * 18) “To perform every action artfully is yoga.“ Swami Kripalu
 * 19) “Yoga is invigoration in relaxation. Freedom in routine. Confidence through self control. Energy within and energy without.” Ymber Delecto
 * 20) “Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you. Exhale, and you approach God. Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God.“ Krishnamacharya
 * 21) “You control your happiness, no one else.” Author Unknown
 * 22) “Yoga is the practice of quieting the mind.” Patanjali
 * 23) “Yoga exists in the world because everything is linked.” Desikashar
 * 24) “The best way out is always through.” Robert Frost
 * 25) “Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.” Mary Radmacher
 * 26) “The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.” Abraham Maslow
 * 27) “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.“ Hippocrates
 * 28) Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live. “ Jim Rohn
 * 29) “A mind free from all disturbances is Yoga.“ Patanjali
 * 30) “Worries are pointless. If there’s a solution, there’s no need to worry. If no solution exists, there’s no point to worry.“ Matthieu Ricard
 * 31) “Intelligence comes into being when the mind, the heart and the body are really harmonious.” J Krishnamurti
 * 32) “Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past, or a pioneer of the future.” Deepak Chopra
 * 33) “In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” Deepak Chopra
 * 34) “Make the driving force in your life love.” Dr. Oz
 * 35) “You must find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible.“ Deepak Chopra
 * 36) “Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment.“ Matthieu Ricard
 * 37) “A man should look for what is, and not for what should be.“ Albert Einstein
 * 38) “Your health is a state of mind.” Author Unknown
 * 39) “Silence is not silent. Silence speaks. It speaks most eloquently. Silence is not still. Silence leads. It leads most perfectly.” Sri Chinmoy
 * 40) “To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.” Buddha
 * 41) “Yoga is almost like music in a way; there’s no end to it.” Sting
 * 42) “Even if things don’t unfold the way you expected, don’t be disheartened or give up. One who continues to advance will win in the end.” Daisaku Ikeda
 * 43) “It is my conviction that there is no way to peace—peace is the way.” Thich Nhat Hanh
 * 44) “Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.” Osho
 * 45) “Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible.” Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
 * 46) “Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.” Shunryu Suzuki

__Watch__ movie: //The Peaceful Warrior//

__Write__: JOURNAL ENTRY #1: Relate one of the quotes (from Socrates to Dan) to yoga.

“You can live a whole lifetime without ever being awake.” “There is no higher purpose than service to others.” “People are afraid of what’s inside and that’s the only place they’re ever going to find their answers.” “The trash is anything that’s keeping you from the only thing that really matters … this moment … here and now. And when you are in the here and now you will be amazed at what you can do and how well you can do it.” “Sometimes you have to lose your mind before you can come to your senses.” “One must learn to meditate in every action, let go of pride, addictions and knowing everything.” “The only true courage is absolute vulnerability.” “Find the love in what you do.” “There are no ordinary moments … There’s never nothing going on.” “The habit is the problem. One must become conscious of one’s choices and responsible for one’s actions.” “How do you know that I’m not your own intuition speaking to you right now?” “Death is just a transformation. The sad part is that most people don’t live at all.” “The accident (tragedy, loss or obstacle) is your training. There is no stopping or starting, only doing.” “If you don’t get what you want you suffer and even when you get exactly what you want you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever.” “The gold is a craving (an addiction). You don’t surrender your dreams. You surrender what you will never have control and accept that you are something exceptional anyway.” “Happiness is in the journey, not the destination.” What time is it? Now Where are you? Here What are you? This moment



Wednesday, December 11

__Listen__: [|Inspiration Meditation]

__Write__: JOURNAL ENTRY #2: Reflection on Inspiration Meditation

__Read__:

3 Steps to Being a Yogi by Alanna Kaivalya [|Original Article (Yogi Times)]

Those of us who’ve fallen in love with yoga know full well how it begins to consume our thoughts and our world. And, in the beginning, it can be hard to know how to feed our obsession and bring the joy we feel through yoga into our daily experience. Well, luckily, there are 3 simple guidelines we can follow. These guidelines come from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra (sutra 2.1)

1. **Cultivating Tapas**: The first step in staying engaged as a yogi is to cultivate tapas. Directly translated, tapas means “to burn.” The indication here is that we turn up the fire of our discipline and we engage in our practice on a consistent basis. In several other places in this important yogic text (The Yoga Sutra), practice is defined as something that we do regularly over a long period of time. And discipline, or tapas, is a follow-up on this particular directive that encourages us to allow our practice to simmer until we are fully cooked, like Rumi’s famous chickpea. The best way to do this is to keep up with a daily practice. This is easy for those of us who have the luxury of rolling out of bed and into a yoga studio on a daily basis, but what about those of us with limited time and budgets? Well, there are a myriad of resources out there to help us successfully stay engaged with yoga on a daily basis. There are YouTube videos, podcasts, DVDs such as Sadie Nardini, Ashley Turner and Kino MacGregor and many more you can find on line. All of these outlets are designed to support you in bringing your practice home and turning up the flame.

2. **Knowing Yourself or Svadhyaya**: The second step in becoming a yogi is getting to know yourself. In the text, it’s called “self-study” or svadhyaya. But, we have to be clear about what part of ourselves we’re studying! This isn’t an intimate look at the ego or what we project out into the world. And it isn’t a way to start making excuses for ourselves by saying things like, “Oh, it’s just the way I am.” In fact, this is just the opposite. This kind of study entails taking a look at the substrate underneath the ego and the mind and discovering the foundation, or core of our being. What a yogi might call the higher self, soul or atman. The study of this actually gives us ultimate freedom to transform our outer trappings so we can be any way we want to be and walk in the world from a place of authenticity. A good, simple way to engage in svadhyaya is to start training yourself to listen to the still, small voice inside. Not the one that speaks in sentences or raises it’s voice in protest to challenges, but the one that says “yes” to what you know is right, or what you feel lights a spark in your soul. It’s the voice that will sometimes speak only in a subtle feeling of clarity or relief... the voice we rarely pay attention to. When we give it more credence, then we’re really living our yoga.

3. **Give it all away**: The third step is to give it all away. Yep, all of it. I don’t mean your gold watch and your summer house... though, I suppose you could if you were feeling particularly generous for some reason. Rather, I mean your weakness, struggle, doubt and self-loathing. The term for this is Isvara pranidhana and literally translated, means “to give your life-force to a higher power.” There is no investment on yoga’s part as to what your higher power is - you could be a devotee of any faith, a believer of none or a lover of the earth. All that is fine, but whatever makes your heart tick - whatever you pray to at night - that can also be a receptacle for all that holds you back from the true freedom that is your birthright. If we can follow these three guidelines, we can live like a yogi in the modern day world. It can be (as Mark Whitwell would say) “a non-obsessive, daily practice.” Like brushing our teeth or writing a thank-you letter, we engage in our yoga practice in order to make our world, our mind and our hearts more peaceful.

__Watch__ video: "The Happiness Advantage" media type="custom" key="24683690"

__Discuss__ main points: Your brain at positive is 31% better Dopamine: makes you happier; turns on learning centers. Therefore, we must INCREASE POSITIVITY (Dopamine production). Do these things for 21 days to retrain your brain:
 * Meditate
 * Exercise
 * Write 3 things you’re grateful for every day (new things each day)
 * Journal about a positive experience
 * Random Acts of Kindness (write 1 positive email to someone every day)

More inspiration: __Watch__ and __Read__.

No More Excuses! It's Time to Step Up to Life! by Alanna Kaivalya

Recently, on Facebook, I was alerted to the following video:

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It's an extraordinary account of one man's personal transformation through yoga. By the end, tears were streaming down my face, and the desire to shout from the rooftops, "YOU CAN DO IT!" was overwhelming. Thought a better forum would be right here on HuffPost.

Over the years, I've had thousands of students. Two of them have defined what Arthur Boorman also illustrates: that anything is possible. I spent a couple of years working both with a quadriplegic man and a blind woman, both of whom never let their supposed limitations hold them back. They would attend classes with able-bodied folks, doing their best every breath of the way, often inspiring others in class to step up and try things that they were doing. Excuses dwindled and inspiration ran high with examples like that present in the yoga room.

Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment Would you capture it or just let it slip? -- Eminem, from the song "Lose Yourself" It is fascinating to watch the human psyche either defeat or empower us. Over and over, yoga practice gives us the opportunity to step up or fall short. We are challenged to stick with our posture or compelled to give up. Arthur Boorman and other students who have chosen to say "Yes!" to life are testaments to the power of the human will to overcome any obstacle. There are no excuses for people like Arthur, only possibilities.

For Arthur, his handicap was visible and obvious, just like my two past students who inspired so many on the mat. For the rest of us, our handicaps can lie dormant and insidious inside our minds, and harder to bring forth into the public eye. These are the handicaps of our beliefs.

The belief that we are too fat. Too old. Too young. Too inflexible. Too hyper-mobile. Too injured. Too healthy. Too poor. Too rich. Too stupid. Too smart. Too righteous, not righteous enough... Do we need to continue? These beliefs create limits that put us in boxes, or as Morpheus from "The Matrix" would describe, "A prison for your mind." The wheelchair, cane or crutches might not be on the outside, but anytime we give up on ourselves and forget to celebrate every possibility to live life outside the lines, we are condemning ourselves to a life of limitations.

It's time to celebrate yourself, to stand up, own the moment, to choose life. Giving up on ourselves is the greatest mistake we can make in our lifetime, this brief few decades we have on this planet. Nothing gets better unless we make it better for ourself.

Our work is to go beyond the challenges that life has set up for us. We all have problems. All of us have some injury, some event, some circumstance, some curve ball to dodge. For some of us, those curve balls are flying faster at us than it is at others, but we've all got these things to deal with. It's a matter of stepping up to the plate. Because we can grow, or we can die. We can go big or go home. If we let life suck the life out of us, we've already lost.

It doesn't matter what we can't do; it matters what we believe we can accomplish. There are a multitude of stories of people triumphing over every type of hardship. These examples serve as evidence that it's possible for each of us to do the same, because every single one of us is cut from exactly the same cloth; there is no human being on this planet that is "better" or "worse" than any other. If our neighbor can rise up beyond his means, mechanism, or situation, than it is proof that we can do it, too. Arthur Booman was told he couldn't walk. So, what did he do? He ran.

Yes, we start where we are. Yes, we deal with the reality that is presented and choose to move beyond it, pressing against those prison walls of our comfort zone. Arthur didn't start with a headstand, but he fell over and over again until he got it on video and put it on YouTube for all to see as a testament to what is possible.

The difference between the possible and the impossible lies in the choices that we make: to either affirm life or deny it. That's it. Really. That's it. I know it feels like it can't be that simple. "But, look at me!" we say, "Look at this circumstance or condition, and all those people who tell me I can't." Well, instead of looking at them, how about looking to all the people who tell us that we CAN. Because those people exist. Every one of us has some person out there who believes in us more than we believe in ourselves. And, for some of us, those figures might mean the difference between life and death.

"The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there's no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who's on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it's alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself." -- Joseph Campbell It is the moments that we've chosen to rise above our circumstances and challenge the boundaries that have developed our character and made us who we are. In every story known to man, it is this quality that defines the "hero." Joseph Campbell outlines this in his work "The Hero's Journey" and goes further to say that each one of us desires to be the hero in our own life's story.

The only way we do that is by stepping the *heck* up.

Stop playing the victim of circumstance. Stop yielding to the condition of our current existence and use that existence to affirm the life within us and open ourselves to the world that lies before us. Heroes are born this way, and they are the ones we look to for inspiration. Wouldn't it be amazing if we no longer had to look with envy at the hero outside of us but made the conscious, compelling, personal choices every single day to realize the hero within? Arthur Boorman is more than a hero to the more than 3 million people who watched him on YouTube... he's a hero for himself. He's proven to himself what he is capable of and has established the kind of self confidence that an unshakable person has when someone looks at them, and says, "You can't," and they just laugh. They laugh because they know it's a silly, unfounded saying and they understand that of course, I CAN.

__Post__: Ask/tell Arthur Boorman anything. Speak from your heart.

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__Teach__: Begin to create teaching cues for the following poses.

Cues for Yoga Poses:

Friday, December 13

Creating a script for meditation videos/recordings:

[|Link to Guided Meditations]

Monday, December 16

Yin Yoga
 * Compassion Meditation
 * Analysis of Yin Yang symbol
 * Characteristics of Yin Yoga
 * Differences between Yin and Yang Yoga