#sol om on

[didanawisgi]

[didanawisgi]

[didanawisgi]

Raj Seymour, local Jewish yoga teacher, is planning to offer a Jewish yoga class in the fall. Click the headline for details.

ShalOM – The Practice of Jewish Yoga

I am writing this piece because I am exploring my spirituality, and yoga has been a powerful tool for me to discover stillness and intention.  My connection to my Judaism is very important to me and I am interested in investigating an integration of the two.   I began exploring a potential synthesis about a year ago and have slowly been able to join these two incredibly spiritual practices. In a discussion at the Hazon Jewish Food Conference many questions came up and were discussed:  How can we bring Judaism into our Yoga practice?  Is their any connection there?  Does it mean anything?  Do we want to explore it?  What can we do as like-minded Jews and Yogis, both as individuals and collectively?  While no definitive answers came from this discussion, a seed was planted for me to start something in Boulder.

I started a Jewish Yoga group, where Jewish Yoga teachers and practicing Jews and Yogis could meet and talk about the parallels and connections. There was talk of bringing sun salutations into prayer, comparison of the chakras and the sefirot, and the similarities between the Yamas and the Niyamas, the observances and restrictions, and the Commandments.  We also discussed the importance of having your own practice in both in order to be able to mesh the two. I was speaking with someone about the conversation a few days later and some interesting thoughts came up.  She said that she believed that the tenets of Judaism are to teach one to be a positive force in the world, while she believed a deep yoga practice teaches one to turn inward, pratyahara, and focusing on the inner self that can lead to withdrawal from society.  I believe there are aesthetics in all walks of life and that the yoga and the Judaism of the past is not the yoga or Judaism of today.  Each is evolving and changing in order to help people find meaning and balance in their lives.  There are tools in both to help individuals work on themselves and be a positive force in the community and the world....” - Raj Seymour

[didanawisgi]

A Rosicrucian Crucifixion: The Solar Crucifixion

“Ignoring the crucifixion in the literal sense, the Gnostics considered only its cosmic import. The agony of the Savior is not the agony of death, but the agony of birth. Only to him who has found his life by losing it is the mystery comprehensible.”

Illustration by John Augustus Knapp (1853—1938) in the book The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall (1928).