Excerpted from Parabola Spring 2012: The Burning World, by David Ulrich and Laura Dunn Recently, we collaborated on a series of classes in creativity and yoga. “Why?” — is the question we are asked frequently. Why creativity and yoga? Why would a yoga teacher and practitioner (Laura) collaborate in a series of classes with an [...]

“Meditation does not involve discontinuing one’s relationship with oneself and looking for a better person or searching for possibilities of reforming oneself and becoming a better person. The practice of meditation is a way of continuing one’s confusion, chaos, aggression, and passion—but working with it, seeing it from the enlightened point of view. That is [...]

(By David Ulrich, Reposted from The Slender Thread) A sudden answer to a long perplexing problem, a burst of insight that deeply informs your creative work, a moment of wisdom that changes the shape of your life forever or even the fabric of society; these moments are highly inspiring. As artists and creative individuals, we [...]

I love yoga for two reasons: Outer Awareness & Inner Awakening First, yoga has given me the gift of health and vitality. I was never a very athletic or healthy child. I was always in the nurse’s office for one reason or another. I was always the last picked person for volleyball in elementary school. [...]

Why do you stay in prison When the door is so wide open? -Jalal ad-Din Rumi Waking up and seeing for the first time, again. I am trapped. Sitting in meditation. Moving through asana. Watching. What is seen? The realization that indeed I am trapped. Trapped in thinking. Trapped in doing. Trapped in the habitual, [...]

My body feels good. My body does not feel good. My body looks good. My body does not look good. Why all the fuss? We don’t realize this most of the time, but what is real in us is our awareness, which resides behind, above, and within the body. It is paradoxical. The body is [...]

“And when He sees me in all and sees all in me, Then I never leave Him and He never leaves me. And He, who in this Oneness of Love Loves me in whatever he sees, Wherever He may live, In truth, He lives in me.” -The Bhagavad Gita In a recent dialogue with a [...]

© Nicholas Hlobeczy Poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes: “Try to love the questions themselves. … Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” To question is life itself. I wrote this ten years ago. And understand it more clearly [...]

Among the first four Yoga Sutras, attributed to Patanjali and translated by Barbara Stoler Miller are: This is the teaching of yoga. Yoga is the cessation of the turnings of thought. When thought ceases, the spirit stands in its true identity as the observer to the world. Otherwise, the observer identifies with the turnings of [...]

Ashtanga Books Yoga Mala, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga, Lino Miele Ashtanga Yoga: Practice & Philosophy, Gregor Maehle Ashtanga Yoga: As it Is, Matthew Sweeney Ashtanga Yoga: The Definitive Step-by-Step Guide to Dynamic Yoga, John Scott Guruji: A Portrait of Pattabhi Jois Through the Eyes of His Students, Guy Donahue & Eddie Stern Classic [...]