A Yoga Teacher's Responsibiilty

Transcript

[Music] Yoga in a way predates religion. Contemplation uh within the true self was something that has existed for thousands and thousands of years. There's evidence that there were meditating yogis back easily 5,000 6,000 years ago. And now in America despite it getting kind of lost in the asa craze yogis are beginning to really look for that place that Swami Sachinandanda symbolized. Now looking back it's interesting how things have changed. um the number of yoga practitioners, the number of yoga teachers not just in America but in the world has grown exponentially uh in in that intervening time. I think you know for myself as a yoga teacher I take the responsibility not lightly that it is my obligation to continue to study to develop my understanding of of these concepts and also to develop better more effective ways of teaching it to people. Yoga holds the promise to help us to learn how to live harmoniously with the planet, with the earth, with all other beings, human beings, animal beings, plant beings, water beings, with mother nature [Music] [Applause] herself. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. [Music] Watch the animals. Watch the plants. There sort of ecological connection. They all have their usefulness in this planet. Everything, animals, plants, they all enjoy nature's gift as it is. They don't convert one into another. They don't complicate their lives. Only we human beings that we are in a lot of complications in our lives. He wasn't trying to say there is one right way. He was saying his his essential thing is the truth is one. The paths to get there are many. Just start walking. There he is. That lets you see how this is just idea. Hippa. All right. Got that real good. How are you? How are you? How are you? Krishna the tiger. We're going to let him run. Take him out and let him chase the lure. Chris is about a three-year-old 500lb big male tiger. A good boy. The relationship that we have with our tigers is something that comes from thousands of hours of interacting with them and creating a bridge of understanding. Consciousness in animals becomes a very touchy subject as to what really is conscious about them. What's the difference? And to me, the biggest difference is they are here now. They're living at that moment in such a multiaceted awareness level that we are not living here now. We are living in this process of what our mother did with cookies with us when we were 9 years old and how it changed our soul and what and I got more, he got less. We don't have the things we want later. Our attention is incredibly diversified into our past and into our hopes, wants, dreams of the future. The practice of yoga and the application of yoga is that we take our mind out of that past and try and be here now like the tiger is all the time. [Music] I weigh probably 110 lb and there's no way 110 lb girl is going to walk next to a 500 lb cat without having the disciplines that yoga brings into life. That relationship with the big cats requires this clarity of mind and a focus that we've found that the practices of ventricle yoga are able to build within people and they're able to take that next step. It certainly isn't for everyone. It's a very fine line of someone who wants to put out that edge and that effort. But integral yoga is what has given us the tools to transform people into uh tiger caretakers who are really going to be one- on-one with these amazing um big cats. [Music]