YOU'RE INVITED TO JOIN US AT COMMUNITY YOGA CENTER FOR WINTER SOLSTICE SUN SALUTATIONS WITH INGA & KRISTIN!
On Saturday, December 21st, we’ll be honoring the Winter Solstice with a special sun salutation practice at Community Yoga Center. We hope you’ll consider being part of this seasonal event.
Practicing cycles of sun salutations with mantra is a beautiful yogic practice of offering gratitude for the light-giving force of the sun and recognizing the gift of life itself. It is a practice of reverence and commitment, and a special opportunity to connect in community.
Practicing a lot of sun salutations cycles (like 108!) can be an act of tapas. The Sanskrit word “tapas” can be translated to English to mean “heat causing change.” Practicing tapas involves purposely staying in the crucible of intense experience until its wild flames die to embers – embers that carry the potential to spark alchemical transfiguration.
Tapas recognizes the reality of suffering and asks us to willingly bear adversity to open to greater insight. It knows that sometimes we’re unaware of our own capacity unless we’re challenged and discover a force within us powerful enough to match the adversity we face. Practicing sun salutations in this way can be a kind of challenge that asks us to meet it with enough inspired passion, fortitude, and patience to willingly (and even enthusiastically) endure intense experience.
If you’re interested in welcoming intense experience in this way - as a part of the whole of our human experience, please consider practicing sun salutations with us on the Winter Solstice. It invites us to connect with a fierce kind of grace.
WE ARE BUILT ON GIVING
Our practice opportunities are provided solely through voluntary giving. The giving of many is what allows the practice opportunities to be offered so freely. Anyone who’s experienced benefit from our offerings is invited to give for the benefit of others. There are many ways to give beyond financial contributions. Giving includes all types of altruistic service, inside or outside our yoga community. Giving also includes generously sharing yoga and consistently practicing yoga with honesty and love. This kind of perpetual giving makes living yoga possible.
In giving, we loosen the grip of our greatest source of suffering - self-absorption. We expand our hearts in a way that recognizes we are not actually separate from others. Giving is a letting go of a sense of separateness that’s based in ignorance. When we practice giving, we feel into how we all depend on one another - how we are all part of the whole. In this way, giving is the natural response of the awakened heart.
You’re invited to give according to your volition and means - in whatever ways resonate with you. You might like to make monetary donations, contribute to our collective resources, or dedicate your time and skill to assist the community.