Sangha

The Yoga Workshop has been part of the Boulder landscape for over twenty years. During that time our sangha of practitioners and teachers has gone through the natural evolution of change that is bound to happen within any community as life itself evolves. There have been births, deaths, marriages, divorces, doubts, revelations, insights. We’ve had dear friends come and go, many to return again. We’ve welcomed newcomers and visitors from all over the world as the Yoga Workshop community or sangha has gradually and organically been established.

Sangha One element that has remained the same over the years is our aim to provide a space for practice in which a direct experience of reality — whatever that is — can unfold. The principle teaching of the studio is founded on this ideal. By working together to discover the truth that lies within each moment we aspire to simply waking up to the present.

The past year has provided many genuine opportunities to wake up and to be present in the course of change. Beginning in January, 2009, Richard and I turned the job of running the studio over to our friends, De and Stephen West so that we could focus on writing and teaching. At the end of the summer it became clear to De and Stephen that running the studio was not the correct path for them. The eight month pause in our responsibilities allowed us to finish the book version of the Yoga Matrix (“The Mirror of Yoga” to be released by Shambhala Publications in August) and time to reflect on the teachings. Thank you De and Stephen!

We have refocused the studio for the New Year and would like to share our thinking on this: In the past 25 years the proliferation of yoga has been huge. Where we once were the only studio in town, Boulder now has a seemingly infinite number of excellent teachers and many fine yoga studios. As we continue to evolve at the Yoga Workshop, we see our role in the community as that of providing a compliment and support to the many other teachers and studios that are now here.

We will offer three threads of teaching; Community Classes, Master Classes, and Yoga in the World Classes. These threads of teaching are interconnected strands within the practice which when braided together bring balance, depth and continued insight into the nature of reality.

This vision for the unfolding of the Yoga Workshop as a learning center has taken time to become clear. We thank all of you for “hanging in there” with us as we worked within the confines of an incredibly busy work schedule, to bring clarity to our hopes for developing the teachings. We also thank the teachers at our studio for being patient with us during this process. We are delighted that all of our teachers will continue working with us; some teaching regularly scheduled classes, others developing courses.

For an update on those teachers who will not be teaching every week: Richard will be teaching courses, workshops and sessions of classes at the Yoga Workshop on an ongoing basis, and he will also give Studio Talks. De, Stephen, Michelle, Dan and Billy have all been brainstorming with us about courses and sessions of classes they will teach within the Community and In the World threads of our teaching. Susan is currently on retreat. Check out our Adjunct Teachers page for more information (coming soon).

We thank all of you for your support and we look forward to continuing to practice and learn together!