Can I receive
academic credits for this program?
Yes. The Evergreen State College
is
offering a 2 - 4 academic credit course, Yoga as Transformation (see
below), in
conjunction with Six Days on Freedom. The Evergreen State College
faculty member Sarah
Williams and adjunct faculty member Tim Kelly will teach the course.
Yoga as Transformation will provide dedicated practitioners and yoga
teachers with background readings, writing processes and practices of
scholarly reflection regarding the 6 workshop/intensive themes offered. This
class will take place during the retreat at non-conflicting times of other
retreat workshops. You will be contacted by faculty member Sarah
Williams with a complete schedule once you are registered. Tuition for
this summer course at The Evergreen State College is as follows:
Washington
Resident Undergraduate Credit: $113.30 per credit
Nonresident Undergraduate Credit: $251.30 per credit
There is a $100
tuition discount for Six Days on Freedom attendees who are also
registering for the The Evergreen State College course Yoga as Transformation.
The The Evergreen State College
faculty's signature is required in order to register, and should be sought
only after you have registered for Six Days on Freedom. Please contact
Sarah Williams at (360) 867-6561or williasa@evergreen.edu
for information on how to register.
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, 20 July.
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.
If
you are unfamiliar with journal writing or would like inspiration regarding
the process of journal work, we recommend Journal to the Self
(Kathleen Adams) and From Inside Out: A Yoga Notebook (Victor Van
Kooten).
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)
Rod
Stryker
Aghora
II: Kundalini
(Robert Svoboda)
David
Life
Jivamukti
Yoga
(Sharon Gannon and David Life)
Diet
For A New America
(Robbins)
Autobiography
of a Yogi (Yogananda)