One of many memories, from the BadAss Yoga Teacher Training class at Evolution, probably about 2015.    Other photos- and sayings – were posted on the wall at the site of the Lancaster Tennis & Yacht ( & Yoga ) Club on Saturday March 24, 2018, when we remembered the first yoga reunion held there.

It’s was both a reunion and a Find Them Opportunity to seek out students that I remember from Very Long Ago.

Some of the rosters are long lost:

• The first class in the Bricker Room at Lancaster Theological Seminary, March 21, 1995.
• The ten year reunion in March 2005, in Lancaster.
• The six years of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, a legacy of the Saint Joseph Hospital when it became a profit center.  Now closed.

 

 

• Ten years of yoga in Harrisburg at WomanCare, Kunkel School.

Trying to find students from all these Lancaster Classes:

• The Yoga Room, when it was across from the celery farm ( now a Sheetz at East Petersburg.
• the Leola area class at the community center way out past Lancaster Labs.
•  Radiance.
• Above the swimming pool at the Village of Olde Hickory ( Later, they replaced the drafty, cold, full frame glass doors that we loved),
•  the Sunrise class at the Jewish Community Center ( now Emerald community center on Oregon Pike).
• That very first Bikram class, full of heat and energy, in the tiny room at Gary Terriman’s house on Clearview Avenue.
• Then, driving every week to Reading to do hot Bikram yoga up on the hill.

Soon after, I drove to Harrisburg/ New Cumberland every Wednesday night to join the Kundalini Class with Siri Neel ( the man) with its wonderful community spirit.

Later that year, I went to monthlong Teacher Training at Kripalu in February 1995.  The day they fired the guru. Hmmm. #MeToo-ism 23 years ago .

There were so few yoga teacher then. It was possible to teach in sequence.  Classes were full with waiting lists. Students signed up for 6 or 8 weeks and they showed up. Yoga was new then and everyone wanted to learn. If you missed a week it was difficult to catch up. There was NO Drop In.

Well, now the student is in charge and the teacher never knows just who will be there. So its a welcome challenge for an experience teacher to teach to the needs of the student on the spot.

Recently, very recently, I was introduced as “old school.” That might be an insult wrapped in a compliment. But I bow to it. I teach yoga as a path to meditation. I teach yoga as a system of alignment and balance, with every body a miraculous individual set of muscle, bone, energy fields, and desire.