“If you can adapt to and balance in a world that is always moving and unstable, you learn how to become tolerant to the permanence of change and difference.”
“Rigidity is insensitivity.”
~ BKS Iyengar, Light on Life
Dear Friends,
As we look toward the season ahead — and even further toward next year’s 50th anniversary — when we are inviting many of our long-time alumni teachers back to celebrate this incredible milestone with us — we are reflecting on what has remained constant. What has been essential during all these years of change and evolution? What is it that has inspired so many to seek out, and make special efforts to come to, the middle of nowhere? What is it that has made this place, hidden away at the end of a long dirt road, a home that so many in the yoga, health and wellness community come back to year after year?
The Feathered Pipe Ranch gives us opportunity and the freedom to step beyond our rigid and predefined perception of self. We can expand the definition of who we are supposed to be, our relationship with nature, ourselves, each other, and maybe even our practice itself. What we have come to believe is that the right place, time, and manner in which to do our practice is challenged at the Ranch. Slowly and gently, we come to realize that all of life is our practice. That the perfect, state-of-the-art studio with ambience, lighting and music just so is not what it is all about. That, as BKS Iyengar observed, the perfect posture only manifests within one’s ability to meet each and every moment with the sensitivity and willingness to adapt and find resonance with what is.
Judith Hanson Lasater, Erich Schiffman, Mary Dunn, Rodney Yee, John Schumacher and Patricia Walden, Andrew Weil, Jean Shinoda Bolen (to name a few)…what was and is it that brings them to return year after year and hold it with such fondness? It’s the Heart – the non-judgmental, “be here now” heart of the Ranch, that emanated through India and all the other “just crazy enough” founding free spirits. That heart continues to resound through and within our staff, community and the land itself. It’s the growing realization that it is not really about me, and that my practice is really about how I live my life and what and how I choose to give back and be a part of it. These are the subtle treasures to be unearthed during your time with us. This is the healing balm that we carry forth from our time together that can and will heal our communities and world.
Faith & Effort,
Eric D Myers
Program Director of Feathered Pipe Foundation
*Featured image credits: Kai Lee of SubtleDream.com