Building A Yoga Community

Dear Readers, my name is Jordan River, born and raised in South Lake Tahoe, now a resident of Carson City, and I am trying to connect our local yoga enthusiasts and interested beginners into a community focused on becoming better at understanding our practice and all it has to offer.

I just started teaching my classes in March, and realize I know only a small demographic of our local yoga community and I would like to meet more. Tailor my classes to your needs.

For an outsider looking in, yoga is often perceived as simple stretches or a gentle way to exercise. For those who have already tried a yoga class, you have already discovered it can be far more challenging than you may have anticipated. For those who have been injured physically or emotionally, yoga can feel inaccessible if you have not found the right class or instructor. Yoga can be done by anyone and any age if the class and the instruction is right.

In almost all yoga classrooms you will find students practicing postures in various styles of instruction. This form of yoga is called asana, which means movement, and has become the face of modern yoga. The postures we see today are fairly new to the yoga tradition and most were only added to the practice within the last 100 years.

Yoga includes much more than just asana. It is a healing practice that brings balance to the mind, the body, and the spirit and has no judgment. The tradition of yoga is over 5,000 years old and the application of many of these ancient traditions can be lost in the modern yoga classroom.

I want to use the full spectrum of the yoga practice to bring healing and peace of mind to as many people as I can. But I am only one instructor, and it is too daunting for one person to reach every interested individual's needs. But I want to do my best to reach as many as I can manage.

So I encourage students to speak to their instructors. Communicate your needs. Most instructors want to accommodate you, the student, but they don't know what you need unless you express it.

I intend to incorporate as much of the entirety of the philosophy into the classes I teach. I want the community to have access to as many avenues of the tradition as there is to learn.

I want the students of my classes to have the choice to simply enjoy the exercise for the movement it is, to learn a bit of meditation and breath control integrating that into their asana, to learn some of the history and philosophy involved, or...

To learn all of it, integrate it together into not just their practice in class, but to understand it well enough to take it home to their personal space and yoga mat. To teach it to others as they learn and spread what they have learned.

I look forward to the day I meet students so enthusiastic about their practice that they want to learn the esoteric details of the spiritual energy moving around them, why exactly we breath the way we do, what are the Sutras and how to we apply them to our lives? I hope that I ignite that sort of enthusiasm in the students that haven't already asked those questions.

Or the ultimate question... How do I use yoga as a path to enlightenment?

Yoga can heal a physical injury. It can reveal an emotional trauma that the student didn't even know they had and heal that too. It can reveal altered states of consciousness and clarity that cannot be described in words. It can give peace to that voice that will not rest in your head, it can give peace to that emptiness that just won't fill in your heart, it can expand the mind and the universe that surrounds you.

Or it can simply be a fun way to exercise with friends and family that leaves you feeling phenomenal instead of drained and sore. It is up to you.

Tomorrow, Saturday April 7th, will be the first yoga in the park of the season and a great way to get outside in the sun and have a little fun. Anyone is welcome and feel free to bring the family. It will be held every Saturday at Mill's Park depending on the weather.

If you would be so kind, please follow this link to a 1 minute survey that will ask you what times you would like to see classes held. I want my classes to reach as many students as are interested in attending.

Feel free to visit my website at www.jordanriver.info and please follow on Facebook for upcoming events, schedule updates, and workshop classes. Please email me with any suggestions or questions you have at jriveryoga@gmail.com