2001

Yoga Workshops

Between HAYC, Willow Street and Sun and Moon yoga centers there was some sort of yoga workshop or lecture almost every weekend.

In March of 2001 HAYC had a two hour lecture session on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali which is a collection of 186 short verses or sutras written 200 to 400 CE. In these sutras, Patanjali condensed and organized knowledge about yoga from older texts and since then it has become key reference material for those that practice yoga. The two-hour session was given by Maureen Cline, a local woman who had considerable knowledge of yoga philosophy. The two-hour session hardly did justice to the sutras as entire volumes of works have been written on each of the 186 sutras, but at least I had a better understanding of what they were. An example sutra:

#28  When the components of yoga are practiced, impurities dwindle; then the light of understanding can shine forth illuminating the way to discrimination awareness.

The end of March I went to another two-hour lecture by Doug Keller on titled The Flow of Grace – The Philosophical Heritage of Anusara Yoga. This was the first of many lectures from Doug on the history and philosophy of yoga that I would attend in the following years.

April was a busy month for workshops. The first weekend in April I attended a ten hour workshop spread over three days on anatomy and how it applies to yoga poses. The instructor was Jenny Otto who I had first met at the teacher training course.  I wrote the following about the workshop, Weekend Anatomy & Asana Workshop.  Two weeks later I went to another lecture by Doug Keller titled The Yoga of Wisdom and Realization.  Then at the end of April I went to an all day workshop by Rodney Lee who was a quite popular at the time having been on the Oprah Winfrey show a couple of weeks before. Oprah called him the “stud muffin of yoga”. I thought Rodney was a bit too full of himself, read my comments here.  The following year Rodney divorced his wife of 24 years and married one of his students which caused a ruckus in the yoga community.  This would not be the first teacher I studied with that married one of their students.

In May I went to an all day workshop by Rod Stryker at the Willow Street yoga center. Rod Stryker was married to the super model Cheryl Tiegs at the time. Rod’s yoga was quite different from Anusara yoga and, although I found it interesting, did not care much for his style. Later in May Mary Romeu gave a weekend workshop at HAYC on Attitude, Alignment and Action, The Three A’s of Anusara which I had learned some about from the teacher training I attended. I really liked Mary’s teaching, read my comments here.

In June I went to weekend workshop with Desiree Rumbaugh at HAYC. I was totally blown away by Desiree’s teaching, enthusiasm, and energy. From this first workshop with Desiree she became one of my all time favorite yoga instructors and in the following years I would attend over twenty yoga workshops with her.

HAYC

Sometime in early 2001 ownership of the Health Advantage Yoga Center changed hands. Betsy Downing, who founded the yoga center in 1991, had moved to Florida with her husband. Betsy operated the yoga center remotely for the several sessions no longer taught classes. After doing this for some time, it was becoming too much for her and she sold the HAYC to Susan Van Nuys. I had been taking regular classes with Susan now for two years and thought she was a great teacher and would make a good director for HAYC.

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