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This Week’s Juice (5/14) Tomato Teaser – a subtle combination of refreshing fruit and veg to give you all the vitamin C, potassium and sodium you need after a workout, plus the added benefit of lycopene from the tomato which is a very powerful antioxidant! Don’t forget to bring your jars back!

1_02e29c5_0 — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:37:44 +0000

Juices Delivered after the following classes:

monday 9.30

tuesday 5.45

thursday 5.45

thursday 9.30

friday 9.30

“I’m Amazed” by Claire Garland

1_02e29c5_0 — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:08:28 +0000

I was recently turned onto a band called My Morning Jacket and a popular song of theirs is “I’m Amazed” . The first time I heard it, I knew immediately that it would be perfect for what my husband jokingly, yet lovingly, refers to as my “greatest yoga mix ever.” I am very drawn to lyrics and love to figure out the meaning of a song. The whole song is great, but a couple of lines in particular caught my attention: “I’m amazed at the love we rejected. I’m amazed what we accept in its place.” At least this is what I thought they were. Until I sat down to write what will be my first blog (really?) on these very words, I didn’t realize I mis-heard a couple of words. The lines are actually “I’m amazed at the love we rejected. I’m amazed that we accepted this place.” Unlike “my mama looked ok young” for “my woman from Tokyo” , this was a fortunate lyrical mis-hear, because these few words made me stop and think. Not just a little, but a lot. What I heard was something that in a few short words summed up to what many great spiritual traditions speak. There is perfect love available to us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it is free, asking nothing in return for its offering. It is the Source of the creative energy that made manifest the entire universe, so it is pure, incredibly powerful, and unconditional. Because we are made in the image of this love, It is in us and of us. Paramahansa Yogananda, speaks of It in this way: “The only way I can describe real love to you is to tell you its effect. If you could feel even a particle of devine love, so great would be your joy – so overpowering – that you could not contain it.” Yet, amazingly, we reject it. Not because we don’t want it. We do. We just don’t know how to find it, and in our misadventures, wind up accepting lots of amazingly and ultimately disappointing things in its place. Maybe we work too hard, thinking success and money will bring us true joy. Or maybe we socialize and drink too much thinking that’s where we’ll find it. In fact, Jennifer Hamilton, who recently lead a workshop at the studio, pointed out that the genesis of human being’s attraction to drugs and alcohol is spiritual in nature – it is a longing for the love that is the native, joyful state of the soul. Each person’s longing for love inspires a great quest (whether we are aware of it or not), and this quest is highly individual. What we think will lead us to love begins with and is informed by our families, our culture, and traits and tendencies that we bring into this incarnation. So with all of these very strong and real influences, how do we find this love, and does it really exist? This is where, for me, yoga comes in. Yoga teaches about this Big Love, and one of its most important lessons is that it is not something that can be understood with the mind. It must be directly experienced with the heart. Yoga teaches us how to slow down and still our minds, so we can tune into the Love and Joy that is our birthright. So every time I decide to watch TV for hours or spend too much time surfing the internet or reading about other people’s lives on Facebook, I am rejecting an opportunity to practice stilling my mind and opening myself up to this experience. Is TV or other people’s lives and all of the other other things we accept in the place of Love really that fun/compelling/entertaining? Modern Family and Chris Martin, maybe. When I have my first real experience with devine love (in this, or a future life), I’ll let you know…I am certain of the answer though, and I know I’ll be utterly amazed, and compassionately chuckle at the relative staleness of anything I accepted in its place. Sometimes lyrical mis-hears are a good thing. Maybe the meaning I gave these words are even what the songwriter, James Edward Olliges, intended.

What We’re Reading, Readings from Class and Other Great Books

1_02e29c5_0 — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:30:34 +0000

Curious about what makes us teachers tick? While we know the greatest teacher lies within, it is very difficult on our own to access that part of us without the wisdom and guidance of others who have come before us. Here are some books and readings from master teachers who have helped (and continue to help) us on our highly individual paths to that greatest Teacher of all:

From Dana Murphy: Your Word is Your Wand by Florence Scovell Shin

From Natalie Ullmann: Meditation for the Love of It by Sally Kempton

From Claire Garland: The Divine Romance by Paramahansa Yogananda; Yoga Anatomy by Leslie Kaminoff and Amy Matthews; Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda (a must read). Visit www.yogananda-srf.org for more writings by Yogananda; The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali translation and commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda

Excerpt from The Divine Romance :

From a talk given on October 10, 1943 at the Self Realization Temple on “How to Cultivate Divine Love” ...The Universal Nature of Love

“ In the universal sense, love is the divine power of attraction in nature that harmonizes, unites, binds together. It is opposed by the force of repulsion, which is the outgoing cosmic energy that materializes creation from the consciousness of God. Repulsion keeps all forms in the manifested state through maya, the power of delusion that divides, differentiates, and disharminizes. The attractive force of love counteracts cosmic repulsion to harmonize all creation and ultimately draw it back to God. Those who live in tune with the attractive force of love achieve harmony with nature and their fellow beings, and are attracted to blissful reunion with God.

In this world, love presupposes duality; it springs from a mutual exchange or suggestion of feeling between two or more forms. Even animals express a certain type of love for one another and for their offspring. In many species, when one mate dies, the other succumbs soon after. But this love in animals is instinctive; they are not responsible for their love. Human beings, however, have a great deal of conscious self-determination in their exchange of love with others.

In man, love expresses itself in various ways. We find love between man and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, friend and friend, master and servant, guru and disciple – as Jesus with his disciples and the great masters of India and their chelas – and between the the devotee and God, soul, and Spirit.

Love is a universal emotion; its expressions are distinguished by the thought through which it moves. Hence, when love passes through the heart of the father, fatherly consciousness translates into fatherly love. When it passes though the heart of the mother, motherly consciousness translates into motherly love. When it passes though the heart of the lover, the consciousness of the lover gives that universal love still another quality. It is not the physical instrument, but the consciousness through which the love moves that determines the quality of the love expressed. Thus a father may express motherly love, a mother may express friendly love, a lover may express divine love.

Every reflection of love comes from one Cosmic Love, but when expressed as a human love in its various forms, there is always a taint to it. The mother doesn’t know why she loves the child; the child knows not why he loves the mother. They do not know whence comes this love they feel for one another. It is the manifestation in them of God’s love; and when it is pure and unselfish, it reflects His divine love. Thus, by investigating human love, we can learn something of divine love, for in human love we have glimpses of that love of God’s.”

FREE Friday Night Community Class. 7:00 – 8:00 PM. Open Level. Warm.

1_02e29c5_0 — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 21:51:53 +0000

New Student Special – Two Weeks Unlimited Yoga for $50

1_02e29c5_0 — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:02:41 +0000

Get into your vinyasa rhythm and experience all of the amazing Baker Street Yoga teachers. Try a hot, warm, beginner or open level class…three times a day if you’d like! We look forward to you taking complete advantage of us!