Dear Root Community,

If you are familiar with The Bhagavad Gita, you know that the reluctant warrior, Arjuna, succumbs to a great existential unraveling on the battlefield. His will paralyzed, his confusion about which way to go so utterly overwhelming, the greatest warrior sinks into despair.
To his charioteer, Krishna, he laments, “I cannot. I will not.”
And then he asks for guidance. He asks for HELP.
“Please tell me what to do,” he says. "Give me your instruction. I am lost."

And so the teaching begins for any of us. A loving dialogue between the Soul and the personality. The Self and the self.

When we hit that place, individually or collectively, where we no longer know how to move forward or how to do what we are here to do (or who we are at all), we become students of Life. We are initiated into our own un-learning, and as students we show up humble, willing to be awed, to be surprised, to be challenged, to be supported. To receive. To give.

From that place, the true teacher within comes into dialogue with the fragile personality and begins the essential instruction: how to UN-become who we have been (through indoctrination, training, habit) so that we can become who we are here to be.

Long ago, I grew leery and weary of the commodification of Yoga — the branding and peddling of endless styles and methods that felt so divorced and adrift from the principles and perspectives from which the practices once arose. I had zero interest in being trained to be merely the franchise of someone else’s work or have my body be reduced to a site for the memorization and reproduction of patterns. To do so felt fundamentally at odds with the experience and teachings that focus on consciousness and liberation.

But, in a culture that prizes numb consumerism and validation, we get a lot more training to check out and participate, unconsciously, in all kinds of passing on of patterns that do not serve us or the world.

As diverse as the many rivers that feed modern Yoga may be, they share a focus on freedom — these are liberatory practices. This isn’t freedom from the battle, as Arjuna learns, but rather the extrication of who we are (as individuals, as communities, as a nation, as a world) from whatever binds us and limits our capacity to see, know, understand, or respond to things clearly. Whatever keeps us thinking or speaking or taking action in ways that make us smaller, meaner, less connected.

What I practice and share and teach is about waking up to and getting intimate with what IS — not denying or bypassing it to pacify or coddle the curated personality. So long as we are seated and seeded in the most myopic understanding of who we are, we are more likely to impose limitations on others. The more we naturalize what are, in fact, learned and conditioned habits, the more likely we are to justify all kinds of abhorrent behaviors as inevitable and natural.

And so, I offer you UpRootEd (an education of Un-Training).

In establishing this program, I want to offer something that honors the actual Roots (plural) of Yoga(s) as sacred work by re-contextualizing it in the profound and complex histories/herstories, and to share what I am able to share (through my own limited experience as a fellow student) in service of supporting the experiential, the personal, and the actualization of these principles. This means we must re-think the old paradigms about HOW we learn as much as WHAT we learn, and honor our need to rest and digest and integrate, so we can take action from that place of clarity. This is big ask in a culture that reinforces the perpetual fight-flight-freeze and re-act cycle, privileges comfort over clarity, and perpetuates a sense of dis-connection.

As T.S. Eliot said, “Hell is the place where nothing connects.”

Well, Yoga is the place where everything connects. So, that is the framework of our journey together.

This is a first step, not the final answer. There is so much work to be done, but perhaps this can be an entry point. I offer this year of work as a way in — to build our individual and collective capacity to move toward a world that is truly just, kind, sustainable, and loving.

Above and below, without and within.

Some Basics:
Inspired by the primordial intelligence of the natural world and some perennial questions of the Gita, this year-long course begins Oct. 23, and will be divided into four seasons and offered via three tracks. Each season will emphasize fundamental questions (and qualities) that invite and guide us more deeply and authentically into our lived practice. We begin in the fall, as community, humble students on the field of dharma, asking better questions, willing to receive, and in so doing, un-become so we can become who we are here to be. We will pause in winter to rest, digest, and integrate. And in the spring, we will engage what we have metabolized to take action from that place of shifted consciousness. The summer will be our harvesting — final projects and completion of our work together. This is how we will link our Yoga with our work in the world.

This program is offered online, with the hopes that by spring or summer an intensive retreat might be possible. But you can do this work from anywhere.

This is not meant to be just another training in the industry of commodified yoga. Applicants must first speak with me, so we can discuss what this is and isn't, what it will demand (and offer), and I will ask that they take some time to reflect before committing to this deep work. And we will need to commit: even as it may be uncomfortable at times, because turning away from our discomfort (and the pain of others) is not working, and it certainly does not uphold the principles of Yoga as I have learned and practiced it.
 
As community, we will be digging down into many teachings through the critical lenses of social and ecological justice pedagogies, and from an embodied perspective, which will require a lot of humility, a lot of curiosity, a commitment to Self study, and a whole lot of care for one another.
 
This is not the program for everyone, nor am I the right teacher for everyone.

There are three pathways along which you might journey with us:
Path 1: For those who are interested in doing this work to dig in and root down in community and then bring the work into the world. This track is required by all applicants.
But some of you might also seek:
Path 2: CEUs through YA or IAYT
Path 3: The 300 RYT designation through Yoga Alliance.

The Root website goes into all the details about:

• the curriculum
• the focus and primary question for each season
• the role of mentoring in this program
• a draft class schedule
• guest teachers
• investment, payment plans and scholarships,
• and more.