California Rain: Harbin in the rain, Harbin YOGA, Harmonizing Effects of the Harbin Pools

Harbin in the rain ~


It was raining a lot at Harbin over the past few days. It's northern California winter weather - not too cold, but cold enough for people to appreciate the Harbin pools a lot, and their harmonizing and warming benefits. The relaxation response is a delight in the pools. ...


*

For as long as I've been going to Harbin (since around 1994), Harbin has always had 3 yoga classes a day (by donation). Prior to 2005, they were held in the main Stonefront Lodge building's living room, and after that in the Harbin temple. Yoga adds a lot to Harbin, bringing a salutary process which benefits the whole community in Harbin's curious 'ecology.' Yoga at Harbin mostly involves poses with some chanting and breathing, and classes can be quite full, especially in the summer months when a lot of people visit Harbin. It's Harbin's own yoga, with mostly residents teaching it and organizing it. One woman, who is still a resident at Harbin, started the yoga program.


*

Yesterday as I awoke, sleeping in my automobile near the Harbin temple, and was heading to the pools (for field research, in many senses), a friend invited me into the temple to participate in 3 people's yoga teacher training mutual practice, and conversation about this. I went. {The Harbin temple is beautiful, and warm, in winter rains}. These teachers-to-be were all presently in the Harbin Yoga Teacher Training Program. Two were friends of mine, and one was a very flexible man with long hair whom I had never met directly who often practices yoga poses in the pools. They were learning from each other. {I taught yoga for about 10 years}. It was nice to do a little yoga with everyone, but teaching and learning 'Harbin' yoga, in the context of the fluid place which is Harbin, is itself a fluid process. (Iyengar Yoga, by contrast, for example, which I know a little, but don't practice, is quite structured). In this Harbin yoga practice, I heard familiar new age thinking expressed in relation to the yoga - (e.g. Eckhart Tolle, and variations on New Age 'oneness'). I asked how people might engage yoga to elicit loving bliss at Harbin, with MDMA as a reference experience, naturally. I mentioned how music {e.g. Mozart arias from the "The Magic Flute" and contra dance} do this for me with great regularity. I also mentioned a yoga teacher I enjoyed a lot in the past, Mary Dunn, who taught in very fun and dynamic ways, that got close to eliciting great happiness for me. But I found the mutual conversation in the temple about this {harmonizing practice of} yoga less than harmonizing, so I headed to the pools.


*

Teaching and learning yoga - a very old and varied set of practices - particularly at Harbin, opens many kinds of learning opportunities.


*

In California, as well as across the United States, yoga is now a wide-spread practice emerging from the 1960s.


*

When in a class where people are teaching yoga poses, I can enjoy the class when the instructions are very clear and simple. Steps like these for the relaxation response - relaxationresponse.org/steps - work best for me, so that the body can unfold with the movement of the yoga positions on its own. I also enjoy yoga which is imaginative, freeing, easing, integrative, soft, regenerative and exploratory e.g. {scottmacleod.com/yoga.htm}. The teachers who get closest to this for me are Angela Farmer & Victor van Kooten ~ angela-victor.com.


*

In my experience, it's the neurophysiological 'soup,' which the bodymind creates in doing yoga poses and related movement, that is so harmonizing. This 'soup' can be great.


*

So when I had had enough of the yoga conversation in the temple, I headed to the pools, and they were very harmonizing and lovely, and in the rain!


*

How to cultivate harmonizing effects at home, and where and as one wants to?


The relaxation response, a bathtub, yoga poses, at times, and music are some great ways.













(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/01/california-rain-harbin-in-rain-harbin.html - January 20, 2010)