Jorgen & Ann

Hi there,

I've been reading Erich Schiffmann's book "Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness." Here are a couple of passages I really liked.

First he writes about going to Krishnamurti's school after he finished high school.

"I did not need to take exams that year because I had already finished high school in California, so I was able to take classes without the pressure of examinations. What a luxury. Everyone should experience this at some point, the joy of learning without the background noise of knowing you are going to be tested on the material. My whole attitude toward school and learning changed that year."

Then about going to India to study with Desikachar--I really like this:

"Desikachar had an interesting teaching style. All the classes were privates in those days, and I was seeing him three times a week. I'd come in, sit down, and we'd start talking. He'd ask me how I enjoyed living in India, how I liked the food, how it was living near the beach, and so on. He'd tell me about his kid, he'd ask me more questions . . .and in the back of my mind I was thinking, "Well, when are we going to start with the yoga? I mean, I did come halfway around the world to be here, and I'm only going to be here a limited time, and the minutes are going by, my hour is nearly up . . ." But the conversation would continue like this until I actually asked him a yoga question and got him talking about yoga. Once I realized that this is how it worked, I came prepared--with hundreds of questions. That's how the syllabus of our time together was organized. It was all based on my curiosity, my pulling it out of him. I liked that it was like this, though at first I thought it was strange, that he was not very giving. I was used to going to school, being crammed with information, and internally recoiling from the overwhelming onslaught of largely unwanted and seeminly irrelevant information. But this was fun. It made what I was learning absolutely relevant to me. We progressed at the rate my understanding was able to go and in the directions my interest led."

Have a great day,
Ann


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