essentials on the path
Mentorship & Community | Satsang and Sangha
Essentials on the Path - Mentorship & Community
A look inside a unique yoga mentorship program
Are you looking to grow your experience, understanding and to refine your yoga practice. Are you a training or trained Yoga teacher but feel you need more inspiration, guidance and mentorship to enhance your proficiency as a teacher or guide to others.
Yoga as a vocation is hard to fob. It becomes evident to those we share practice with if our depth and skill could be greater. People seek a high degree of competence in those who guide them in yoga practice.
A YTT 200 hour program can only equip you so far.
We have over the years developed a unique mentorship program to serve those who have trained or who are practicing themselves and would like to fill in the gaps in their own knowledge and experience.
Our program gives you direct access to the two founders and senior teachers of Shantarasa. The subject themes are guided by the inquiry of the participants. This is a much better option than a google search to answer your questions.
The Shantarasa teachers bring 50 years of experience to you, they have spent their whole adult lives sitting with remarkable teachers, studying the yogic path in great depth, have a direct relationship with an extraordinary lineage of yogic adepts, and pass something of high value to the students of the yogic path.
Yoga opens us to a vast living library that teaches ways to wholeness and freedom. Sometimes the vast knowledge of this tradition and its unique perspectives and practices require translation and reorientation to contemporary context.
LIVE INTERFACE AND TEACHING
The program extends over twelve months offering an online session once a month. It is a live interface where teaching and practice is shared. Subjects cover all facets of yoga practice and study. for example:
ways to refine, adapt and recontextualize postural practice
guidance in pranayama and mudra practice to meet specific needs of body and mind
yoga psychology that gives us direct interface with ourselves at the mental level for greater self knowledge, understanding and capacity to shift debilitating mental tendencies.
the practice of mantra and meditation to find easier access to stillness and to establish a mental baseline that is more spacious, calm and perceptive.
Participants often struggle with their commitment to practice or events in their own lives or teaching experience and our discussions assist in bringing new insight and ways through the obstacles ultimately found within ourselves
Opening the pages of some of the yogic texts reveals the power and relevance of the living teachings within them.
Yoga Nidra
The yoga of reversal and counterbalance
In the company of other students of the yogic path we find community and a shared experience.
In effect the mentorship program is like an online Satsang which could be described as a yogic community event and practice in and of itself.
FIRST SESSION OF 12 | JUNE 5th
Our first session we will explore the subtle energies that govern every facet of physical and subtle function within us, including our minds. We will bring pranayama and mudra into practice to better balance, seat, activate and potentize these powerful currents of energetic within us. Such practice and understanding gives us a way to recharge and refine ourselves.
To use a tech analogy - if a computer has too much data saved and not enough memory it begins to either malfunction or collapse. We are similar. If our minds are congested with the energies of over thinking, concern, fear, anxiousness and agitation all our energy is being consumed by unskillful mental tendency. Equally our mind may lack energy and feel dull, exhausted and overwhelmed. Thinking is one of the greatest consumers of energy, especially non beneficial thought tendencies. On average most of us rotate the same thoughts and their nuances through our minds 95% of every day and the energy drain is monumental. All devices need a recharge. Our recharging system lives within us but we need to know how to access it and plug in.
We will open this subject and learn simple accessible practices that correct physical and mental imbalances and conditions. Daily practice yields tremendous benefit. Everything can change from appetite and sleep patterns to energy levels. We may develop a more peaceful, focused and calm mental state and experience greater perceptive and creative capacities.
We are energetic and vibrational beings, our physical vehicle is the means of expressing, actualizing and expressing that. The quality of our energy and minds determines the quality of our experiences, our traits and our state.
The choice of this subject for our first session is in response to the subject choices of those enrolled. By far the most popular subjects of the 2024 mentorship program were mudras (hand gestures), pranayama and yoga for women. Many of the same participants wish to extend that study this time round.
You are most welcome to join us. You can register for the full program and receive a generous discount or come along one session at a time according to your schedule. The sessions are conducted Thursday evenings at 6.30pm. those enrolled for the full program have access to all session recordings extending 12 months after our completion. Casual attendees will receive the session notes.
These sessions are to serve your practice, insight, teaching skill and self development. Yoga was always intended to be imparted teacher to student, the human interface adds an indefinable quotient to learning and expanding. We are here to serve each other.