The Jewel of Yoga

Phone: +46 707170928
Email: info@thejewelofyoga.com

The Jewel of Yoga
c/o Lynwood House
373-375 Station Road
HA1 2AW Harrow UK

While we have been influenced by many teachers and been deeply touched and inspired by the words of those that have walked the path before us, practice on and off the mat is and will always be our true Master. In that sense it is The Buddha who serves us as a role model, a Teacher. He lived a life of bravery and uncompromising seeking for depth. Left a life of comfort for a life of Meaning and for the meaning of Life, committed himself to Truth and abandoned many Masters, in search for it. To his example we humbly bow and we venture together in to a pathless land. We love yoga, all of it. Our practice is changing with the years and both the practice and the years are changing us but our love for the art of yoga just keeps growing. As our understanding of the practice deepens and we mature as people and yogis, we realise that yoga is not something you do, or an instruction manual describing how to live, but it's instead an open ended proposal that invites us to wake up to our innate intelligence and heart. For us it's become a loving exploration of our most naked humanity, of our incredible potential and our vulnerable nature. For that purpose we are open to all the fruits that the big tree of yoga has to offer without limiting ourselves to a particular view or branch. The powerful movement meditation of a flow vinyansa practice, the healing power of a yin session, the heart warming approach of Tibetan Buddhism or the insightful clarity that Vipassana meditation provides are only a few of the examples of the rich color palette that yoga offers us. Some people fall in love with a color, we did with the whole rainbow and find that each one of its tonalities is precious. Yoga is truly a jewel. So, we here formally invite you to come to one of our retreats and fall in love with yoga.

Yoga for us is a Life support system, a way of patiently un-filtering your perspective in order to be more present and unthreatened by the highs and lows of experience. It is probably during the lows, when you find yourself challenged, cornered by life, that you start to feel the need for a more intelligent and kinder way to relate to experience.

Suffering we can fix. There is a different way to relate to life´s pain, a courageous, kind and mindful way. A way of living that if sustained when the pain ceases, offers the possibility of meeting your full human potential, of rediscovering your most cherished dreams and moving towards them with confidence. It offers you the possibility of rediscovering what being human means and facilitates the building of bridges between one another, the birth of compassionate relationships. This Way, the way of Love, the way of Wakefulness, the way of Wisdom, is a beautiful one, but it´s a hard one. It's not an easy road to change one's habits. More often than not you will find yourself repeating thoughts and actions that have been proved unsuccessful in the past, just out of the force of the momentum, or you solidify your position around an illusory sense of conclusion and lose the freshness of the beginner.

We are getting to this time of the year when inevitably one takes a retrospective look at the last twelve months and either smiles, blows out air through puffy cheeks or drops a tear or two. I'll do all of the above when I kiss 16 goodbye for it's been really full, fat and juicy, giving me two long lists of stuff to write under both 'Good' and 'Not good'. Very busy, very intense, vey emotional, very painful, very beautiful, very insightful, very tiring, very enigmatic, very full. Very is the word. I could be more specific, but you don't want a list of my problems, you've got your own and mine are neither more interesting nor exciting than yours. Let's just say that it has been one of those years, the ones that you remember.
What i could not digest nor release, built up quite a lot of tension and stayed as added weight on my body and just before the end of the retreat season, it finally cracked me and my back on a rather light surf fall, leaving us both a little broken for two long months. I had a couple of teaching weeks before closing up the season, so I did my best to carry on as mindfully as possible through the days before going back home to curl up in bed and, literally, breathe through the pain, but this of course, just made things worse and led to another two long weeks of intense pain. Thankfully, the worst most stubborn edge of the injury finally released and I have now enjoyed a generous period of wonderful rest, when i have indeed smiled, cried and pffff-ed out so much air through puffy cheeks that i should be an empty shell of a man by now, if it wasn't for the few, ok many, cookies i have eaten these last pre-Christmas days.
The worst of it lasted only one month, but when a man can't pee standing up, those are thirty very long days. As the pain receded and the fear of permanent damage, was substituted by the relief of recovery, the simple pleasures of life become so sweet and have been spending my time, resting, sleeping, reading, meditating and watching The Voice with the girls. Today I had a lovely walk on the beach with Jenny, warm sun on the skin, glittery ocean and blue skies. Amazing. Always running for happiness, it is however when one stops for a while that happiness shows itself. Not only priorities but perception too, tend to change when pain keeps you awake at night. Despite the pain, I have found this extremely interesting... and useful too so I've been quite self-involved during this time. I have accumulated a bunch of items to my worrying long 'to do list' and I have been distant to most people except close friends and family (sorry for that) but it has been worth it. I feel better. There is still some pain in my body and I feel quite fragile, but I'm somehow... more awake, I guess. We retreat for a reason, after all.
The acute pain of the first month made it impossible to do yoga. It's been now, what, some sixteen years since I started practicing yoga and it's soon going to be ten since I work as a teacher and during this time i have never really had a complete break from it, a yoga holiday in reverse. This injury called for a complete reassesment of the most basic postures and to some extent feelings, thoughts and memories, for which I needed to take myself out of the way and let the wisdom of the body work and heal itself. I have talked very much to this body (and to all of you) and it was time to just listen. So this has been a major meditation retreat for me, the only way I know to take myself out of the way completely. I have spent countless hours, crouching first, laying later and finally sitting, moving my attention through my body, my organs, my spine, my joints, my heart, allowing each part to rest, to breathe and let go of the excess me in them. When the pain touched on something deeper I've exhaled longer or dropped a few tears, or if even deeper, I've hugged Jenny, taken a break and gone back to it again. Back to listening in silence. So grateful for this beautiful practice and for all those who practice and teach it. Don't know what I would do without you.
As a result of this intense open exploration, now that I back on my mat, both my meditation and my asana practice have changed, adapted to the new circumstances and gained depth from both past mistakes and successes. They are more precise, they have, because they need to, a greater sense of focus and I seem to have found a way to thread strenght, elasticity and intention in equal amounts and physical, psychological and emotional sensations don't seem to oppose or contradict each other so much either. And although I am eager to fully recover and jump on my surfboard again, I must admit that I have quite enjoyed this whole process, all in all, this injury has probably been good news in disguise. I had pictured my long awaited holiday amidst palm trees, sipping coconut water with Jenny and Iomi in between surfs in perfect tropical waves and instead I got to be curled under the blankets in my bedroom with sporadic limp-trips to the toilet, but with the advantage of hindsight, you know?, it was good. or rather it was what it had to be. Isn't it always?
There is never a conclusion in life, and so there is never a conclusion in meditation, or yoga. Wisdom, unlike knowledge, is not an accumulative process that ends at mastery one day. For Wisdom, mastery is only the beginning. Wisdom sees truth only and since truth is ever changing, there is no end to it. So I cannot tell you that what I have learnt is definite, that would mean there is no room for more learning and that is not possible. But It is also true that I have learnt a lot through this very full 2016 and it is in moments like this that I feel really honored to be a yoga and meditation teacher. It gives me a vehicle to give back a little to a life that has given me so much. To give back to you who maybe is struggling, or injured, or going through a hard time for whichever reason and has the hope that yoga and meditation might help. Well, it does, and i'll do my best to explain how. I am immensely grateful for the kindness, support and appreciation that you have shown Jenny and me not only this last year but through the nine previous ones too, we feel touched and privileged that you call us your teachers.
I'd like to wish you a happy new year but I can't. The truth is that you'll have a mixed new year, with some happy and some unhappy bits. So instead, I'll wish you have a peaceful mind and a soft heart. That will carry you through both sunny and rainy days. And if at any point, you want to be taken care of for a week and learn more about this beautiful jewel that yoga is, come down to Portugal, we welcome you with open arms!

While traditionally translated as life is suffering, we prefer to think that he said something like this: there is pain in life my friends, great pain due to numerous reasons, this is an unavoidable fact. However, the way with which you are dealing with your pain is greatly unskillful and is creating more pain for you.

Therefore, we practice. We practice observing and loving our minds, our bodies and our hearts. We practice opening up to ourselves and opening ourselves to others with love and confidence. To train in the intricate art of “spiritual warriorship”, we continue to explore the many branches of the tree of yoga. We keep a strong spiritual home in meditation, and explore the palette of the body in hatha yoga, always in a mindful marriage with the breath which takes centre stage in our practice. We approach relationships working with conversation, shiatsu massage and modern dance. We absorb wisdom from all sources possible making ours any practice that offers results towards cultivating the awakened quality in us.