Yoga as Spiritual Practice

In this semester-long session, instructors Kelly Prentice and Iris Kish will guide students, faculty, and staff in discovering the real power of yoga, which is unleashed when we engage yoga not just as a set of postures, but as a way of life. We will refer often to Judith Hanson Lasater's book Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life, as well as the ancient texts, as a guide to explore some of the following topics:

• Spiritual Seeking
• Discipline
• Letting Go
• Self Judgement
• Faith
• Perspective
• Courage
• Relaxation
• Fear
• Patience
• Attachment and Aversion
• Suffering
• Empathy

Suggested reading: Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life by Judith Hanson Lasater and A Year of Living Your Yoga: Daily Practices to Shape Your Life by Judith Hanson Lasater

Following are some excerpts from the Preface of Living Your Yoga, written by Georg Feurstein, Ph.D., Founder-Director of the Yoga Research and Education Center in Oakland, California:

"The complex 5,000-year-old tradition of yoga is about a very simple thing: happiness (ananda). Yoga tells us that in order to realize lasting happiness, we must discover our true, spiritual nature. This requires that we commit ourselves to self-transformation, even self-transcendence. For although our true nature, or spiritual Self, is always the same, it tends to be obscured by our thoughts, emotions, and patterns of behavior.  The yoga tradition compares this circumstance to the brightly shining sun, which is ever radiant but periodically hidden from our view by drifting dark clouds.  Yoga helps us to remove obstructing (mental) clouds, so that we may come to enjoy the sunshine within. It’s an extensive program of reeducation through which we learn, step by step, to live in the light of our true nature…

Judith Hanson Lasater’s new book is a down-to-earth discussion of how we can use the age-old wisdom of yoga in order to reconnect with the sacred in everyday life. For many people, practicing yoga means to do yoga postures once or twice a week, or even every day. Although this approach can yield many benefits, such as better health and greater vitality, the real power of yoga is unleashed only when we engage yoga as a way of life, twenty-four hours a day. Yoga is universal and applicable in all situations. It is first and foremost a mental, or inner, discipline... Every single yoga technique — from postures to cleansing practices to meditation— is a tool for discovering the abiding happiness of the ultimate Self, or Spirit. In Living Your Yoga, the author, who has been practicing yoga since 1970, share with readers her own experiences on the always bumpy road to self-discovery…

The path toward yoga’s lofty goal of Self-realization is not in the least glamorous. On the contrary, it is quite humbling. For we must constantly, bravely, and compassionately face our limitations in order to realize our unlimited potential as spiritual beings. Judith Hanson Lasater, speaking from her own experience, points the way for other Westerners who are eager to apply the immense wisdom of yoga to their everyday lives."

If you are interested in being on the email list for "Yoga as Spiritual Practice", please email Alex Hendrickson at hendrica@lafayette.edu

Please bring a yoga mat and blanket, if you have one. A limited number of mats and blankets are available. Space in this class is on a first-come, first-serve basis.