Yoga as Transformation

2-4 Credits, First Summer Session

July 21-26, The Evergreen State College

Sarah Williams, 867 6561, williasa@evergreen.edu, Seminar Bldg 4161

Tim Kelly, 491 5641, lisaajwa@attbi.com

Prerequisites: Signature of faculty. Open only to participants of Yoga for Living’s Six Days on Freedom Retreat.

Supporting and supplementing the on-campus advanced training workshop, “Six Days on Freedom: Teaching Yoga

as Transformation and the Journey of Awakening,” this course provides dedicated practitioners and yoga teachers

with background readings, writing processes and practices of scholarly reflection regarding the six workshop themes

offered by renowned yoginis and yogis Beryl Bender Birch, Doug Keller, Judith Lasater, David Life, Shiva Rea, and

Rod Stryker. Interested students must first register for the retreat with Yoga for Living (at yogaforliving.com or at

800 650 5662). Next, contact Sarah Williams for a faculty signature by providing your name and student ID number

via email or telephone. Students may also contact Sarah directly for her signature on their registration forms during her

office hours, 3-5 pm on Monday afternoon through spring quarter. After contacting Sarah students may complete

the registration process with TESC Registration and Records in person or via fax or email.

Because of the intensive nature of this course and its focus on the Six Days on Freedom yoga retreat, our academic work will evolve

directly out of our retreat experience. We will meet during open times during the retreat week for an introductory session, a seminar,

and a reflective writing and co-authored narrative evaluation workshop. Meeting times will be announced at on-site registration,

20July. Following the retreat students will have two weeks to complete and submit their written work. Faculty will be available

throughout the week to meet with students, and will, themselves, be retreat participants. Because of the unique system of narrative

evaluation at TESC, students must participate in all course meetings during the retreat and complete the co-authored evaluation

assignment in order to receive credit. No late work will be accepted.

The Assignment: Your work is to compare and contrast your experience of yoga with the yoga of Patanjali’s yoga sutras.

Discovering who Patanjali was or wasn’t for whom and why, and immersing yourself in at least two versions of his sutras is step

one. However, rather than becoming overwhelmed with the overwhelming ambiguities, complexities, and apparent contradictions

of the numerous interpretations, translations, and commentaries, please make this first step, itself, an experience of yoga. That is,

if as evoked by Patanjali, yoga begins when a sincere student experiences the stilling of the movement of thought, yoga may

happen with your engagement with these texts.

Throughout your preparation for this course and your participation in the retreat, you are required to maintain a journal. Your

journal should live next to you when you read required texts and next to your yoga mat during the retreat. It might be helpful

to think of this journal as a place where you record something like ethnographic notes regarding your experience of the mind’s

vacillating waves of perception. These notes of your experience of yoga will be the basis for your final essay. This essay is due

(or must be postmarked by) Friday, 8 August.

Although a journal is required, it will NOT be submitted to the faculty. Rather, students will be invited to share from

their journals during seminar and to excerpt from their journals in their essays. In addition to reading the sutras, you

are required to read one text from the list recommended by the instructor with whom you have registered to work

during the retreat’s afternoon intensives. Again, the assignment is to compare and contrast your experience of yoga

vis-à-vis this text with the yoga of Patanjali’s sutras. The journal writing you do regarding this text, like that you do

regarding sutras and the retreat itself will be integrated and find expression in your final essay. This essay must be

5-7 pages in length, contain a minimum of 4 journal excerpts, a minimum of 2 references to the sutras, and a minimum

of 2 references to the students’ choice of her or his instructor’s recommended text(s). Essays must be typed and

meet academic standards including 1”margins, size 12 font, double-spacing, a title, and a consistent citation format.

However, the style of this essay is up to the student, although given the specifics of the assignment your writing must

be concise. Like the various interpretations, translations, and commentaries of the sutras, a student’s writing may

express her or his own engagement with yoga.

Required Texts: (Please read Stiles version of the yoga sutras and one other of your choice.)

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (Mukanda Stiles)

Enlightened Living (Swami Venkatesananda)

How to Know God (Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood)

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (Swami Satchidananda)

All required texts will be available at the TESC Bookstore throughout the retreat. However, students are required to have read at

least one version of the yoga sutras prior to the retreat.

Recommended Texts (Select one text from the instructor with whom you will be working):

Judith Lasater

Nonviolent Communication (Marshall Rosenberg)

Living your Yoga (Judith Lasater)

The Nine Stages of Spiritual Apprenticeship (Greg Bogart)

Shiva Rea

The Heart of Yoga (T.K.V. Desikachar)

Dynamic Yoga (Godfrey Devereux)

Tantra (Georg Feuerstein)

Yoga and Ayurveda (David Frawley)

Doug Keller

The Heart of the Yogi (Doug Keller)

The Doctrine of Vibration (Mark Dyczkowski)

Secret of the Siddhas (Swami Muktananda's)

Beryl Bender Birch

Everyday Zen: Love and Work (Charlotte Joko Beck)

Beyond Power Yoga (Beryl Bender Birch)

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (Georg Feuerstein)

The Miracle of Mindfulness (Thich Nhat Hanh)

David Life

TBA

Rod Stryker

TBA