:: What is interdisciplinary yoga?
My teacher Don Stapleton, PhD., Founder & Director of the Nosara Yoga Institute, writes about his philosophy of
Yoga : An Interdisciplinary Approach 
After reading the following words in the Prologue: Your Body as Earthen Vessel of his book Self Awakening Yoga, (Healing Arts Press copyright 2004 www.InnerTraditions.com) I was compelled to seek Don Stapleton out as my teacher. Now, three years later, I have studied under his guidance, wisdom and love for more than 300 hours towards my teaching certification. Above all, he is a trusted friend, personal and attentive to my growth, discipline and ever questioning nature as a student. He is my guru and I am forever grateful to both Amba, his wife, and Don for tending the fire within the hearth of my home.
Enjoy your reading. peace & good health.
:: COMING HOME TO WHO YOU ALREADY ARE ::
"In the many wisdom traditions throughout history, the body has been called a temple for the spirit. We prefer to begin with an image that is less grandiose than a temple. A temple is an awesome destination. To go to a temple requires that I come outside of my home and everyday life in order to come in contact with the presence of the sublime. Rather than a temple of magnificent marble columns and lofty spire, we are inviting you into an image of your body that is more personal, more like a cozy seat in front of a hearth, shared with your most trusted friend. And this trusted friend beside you is yourself - not the lofty teachings of an authority on mystical transcendence, but the wisdom of your own inner counsel.
Among the many views present in the work of yoga today, we hold a perspective that comes from an inquiry into who you already are. In our view, yoga is an inquiry that begins when you come to the questions of meaning an purpose in your life. Yoga can be a mirror for you to behold the power, beauty and wisdom that is bubbling inside of you. We sincerely desire that the time you invest in this inquiry will result in a deeper appreciation of the flesh and blood home of your own body. Nothing less than a homecoming to the cozy security of your home within.
In contrast, yoga is often presented in the West as an austere and esoteric discipline, somewhat unattainable. The books, journals and media have produces image of perfect postures modelled by perfect people that become internalized as secret goal we long to achieve. These presentations can easily become more ways to separate ourselves from our in-born wisdom by glamorizing the technology of yoga and idealizing the authority special star yoga teachers. Yoga can appear as yet another way to look outside of ourselves for the peace and harmony we seek.
What if there were another way to a harmonious integration of body, mind and spirit that did not require you to leave the truth of your own inner wisdom and the comfort of your body as your home? What if you relaxed into a relationship with yourself in which you have the attitude of fascination, being so absorbed in the intrigue of your actual experience that you become interested in yourself as you are, interested both in the pleasure and the pain of being you? Is it possible that the environment of your body could feel like home - like a place you would want to be in which there were no goals you had to impose upon yourself to make your body different of better? To return to the vivid sensations of being at home in our bodies requires a new kind of journey that does not travel beyond ourselves as the source for self-improvement. To come home to ourselves, we are needing a return to the original creativity of spirit which allows us the freedom and benevolence to begin with ourselves as we already are.
Our sense of who we ar as individuals develops within the context of our culture's wisdom, history, and traditions. But hidden in the nature of being identified within any group - be that family, religion, or culture - is the seductive force that homogenizes all idiosyncratic differences into the unifying characteristics of the group. To come to intimately know ourselves as individuals requires turning inside to identify personal meaning and fulfillment.
In looking to the historic traditions of yoga as a map for making the inner journey, I have discovered that unless I look to the early spirit of inquiry and creativity modeled in the origins of Yoga, I am likely to get caught up in the expectations inherent in the contemporary versions of yoga that are cycling through our culture at the moment. Many popular forms of yoga are offered with such fundamentalist zeal that personal inquiry is discouraged and experimentation with the traditional form is met with caution and fear. Routinized or formulaic approaches to yoga that do not vary with the individual or take into account the developmental needs that arise at different stages of life can become internalized as a substitute for genuine self-inquiry into what stimulates our evolutionary capacities toward growth and change.
mud\'med\n.: wet , sticky, soft, earth, as on the banks of a river
hut\'het\n.: a small, cozy house, shelter, or cottage
adobe\e-'do-be\n.: a sun-dried brick of clay and straw use to build a structure
We use the word "yoga" in a similar in a way in which the word "adobe" has become universal. The word adobe is not indigenous American or Spanish, as I had always thought. Adobe is an Arabic word that found its way into use throughout the world, from Africa to Israel, from India to Costa Rica, from Santa Fe to Peru. In all those places, adobe refers to huts and cottages that are constructed of mud bricks.
In my estimation, the word yoga has similar universality. As I watch the word yoga enter mainstream culture, I appreciate its wide reference to a multitude of practices and modalities that share the foundational intention of bringing abut integration of all aspects of one's being through a combination of physical and mental practices that both expand self-awareness and produce spiritual attunement.
Our bodies, like the clay we impress with the designs and shapes of our imagination, are infinitely malleable. We are the beings endowed with the ability to both shape and be shaped by the worlds we live in.
:: YOGA AS INQUIRY :: STAY CURIOUS
"As Yoga has entered into the mainstream culture, we have noticed that the word "yoga" has become a generic term which refers to a multitude of practices and modalities sharing the foundational intention of bringing about the integration of body, mind and spirit. By contexting yoga as interdisciplinary, we draw from the Eastern and Western traditions of body-mind culture to stimulate the creativity which makes it possible to have yoga come alive in today's world.
A teacher and student who opens into an interdisciplinary inquiry of yoga is capable of participation with the evolution of yoga through the validity of their own experimentation and discovery. Ultimately, we view the goal of yoga to be an avenue to self-awakening.
Traditionalists who prefer to keep yoga pure to the conventions of a particular school or historical past in India, are facing an erosion of support for a fundamentalist view that there is a true yoga. What are often being presented as historical records that strictly outline the do's and dont's of yoga are being revealed as contradictory, historically unverifiable and given widely differing interpretations. What is verifiable is that yoga in many forms has been practiced for centuries and is the result of a continuously evolving process of inquiry.
By calling our creation, "interdisciplinary," Amba and I wish to contribute to the field of yoga education as supporters of creative evolution. We do not view yoga as a 6,000 year-old-science or religion that must be historically related to be of use in our growth as human beings on the planet at this time. We do view yoga as an art - like the art of painting for example. If you want to learn to paint, you begin with the style and material of the teacher who introduces you the experience. You learn the basic of the approach and open into the wider field of experience by studying many artist, many styles and many traditions. But if your prematurely fixate on the style of one school of thought or expression, you will never find your own personal style. Each new teacher will give you a window to see your unique expression and contribution to the field.
In addition to yoga as an art, we also believe that you is a science, the truth of which is revealed through direct, personal experience and results. We believe that the archetypes of experience which are unfolded through various yoga posture and movements are open for a wide variety of experimentation and are revealed as meaningful in the life of every individual who take son the practice of yoga - in whatever form one is introduced to the experience. "
"Come home to who you already are!" In experiences of yogic inquiry, you will discover your ability to listen to your body through communication with your internal self. You will find that your body is a place of refuge, renewal and self-regenerations, as well as a source of intuition and wisdom. The energy that your receive is the energy of sensory awareness, An attunement to the pulse of your own inner being. You will come the sense that your body is not just a house that you enter from time to time, but a home - a place that is continuously being fashioned by you to fulfill your needs and to make deep contact with the unfolding layers of yourself.
After all, the story goes that God got his hands stuck in a lump of clay to fashion an image in his own likeness. If we are to participate with the creative force moving through all of creation, isn't it possible that we must claim the power within our being to shape the world in which we live - from the inside out. "
"Consciousness is not something we learn or create, it is discovered through a process of unlearning habitual patterns which keep us locked into the past."
:: ISN'T THAT INTERESTING? ::
Yoga provides a process of inquiry that leads to consciousness within ourselves. The immediate physical benefits are the results we experience. We have energy. With this new abundance of energy, we direct our attention back in to deeper and deeper levels of awareness, expanding into the domains of the primal programming in our biological organism. Yoga develops one's ability to tap into the inexhaustible source of creative energy that keeps bubbling up when you stay open to learning form your own experience. The opportunity to teach you is a privilege in that our students draw out realizations that remain hidden to us until they are called forth. The relationship between student and teach is a direct connection to staying fresh and involved in the inquiry process."
