Get certified with the Comfort Zone

Registered 200 Hour School!

The Whole Self Yoga Teacher Training

Directors: Rudy Peirce and Ed Harrold

Faculty: Amy Weintraub, Sat Bir Khalsa, Larissa Carlson

This training will give you the knowledge, skill and personal development to provide an environment of physical and emotional safety for your students.

This training provides the latest research and practices for teaching yoga for weight-loss, inflexible athletes, depression and anxiety.

This training is an awareness – based experience, founded on the philosophies of Patanjali’sYoga Sutra, the practices of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the teachings of Swami Kripalu. It will immerse you in the Classical yoga system.

The intentions of this training are based on these teachings, the practices of ahimsa (non-violence), learning-from-direct-experience and self-observation-with-compassion.

Bring your love for yoga and we’ll help you develop the skills to teach yoga with your intuitive gifts.

ComfortZone Center For Whole Self Healing
Lewes, Delaware
2 – 13 day modules
April 18 – 30 and June 27 – July 9, 2010.

$2,850 Tuition

$2,450 Early Registration Tuition

(if registered & paid in full by 2/28/10)

For more info…to register…Visit: ComfortZoneYogaCenter.com

Our host Franz presides over an 800-year-old organic farming villa tucked into a forested Tuscan hillside about an hour southwest of Florence about 20 minutes from Sienna and the Chianti district. Renovated in the late 80s by his Mom, a devoted follower of Osha, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and avid world traveler, the estate, Podere Ebbio, has been restored from the neglect many rural properties suffered after WWII, into an authentic experience of the Italian countryside, close to the earth, bursting with life, sage colored olive groves, rambling vineyards, vegie gardens, rollicking animal life and storied wildlife (the rooting wild boars that visit at night and leave patches of snouted earth). At Ebbio the animal life greets you in the form of the welcoming trio of Mystico, the elder, and the alpha, a vocal pomeranean, Rinko, the playful 2 yr old Bernese and Rocco, the new kid on the block a sweet, deferring 3yr old Rhodesian Ridgeback. Besides barking a welcome to all visitors and perimeter transgressors, they play tag with the 1/2 dozen or more cat brood, who are always on time for meals in the vine-covered garden veranda where we have all our meals (except on occasion when the air gets a bit crisp. Then we retire to the expansive 2nd floor dining room/living room/great-room-like cathedral-ceilinged central room where we hang out in the evenings around the cavernous fireplace).

My darling wife Joyce co-manages the trip each year, drives the 2nd van when Franz doesn’t join us, helps with Italian translation, Internet and Cel Phone use issues, chief photgrapher (on her IPhone), provides emotional sanctuary for moi, celebrates each year by bringing a toy or book for each of Franz’s children (who live with their Mom, Isabella, now in Arezzo, a nearby city. Joyce and I decided to spend our first two days of the trip based at Ebbio with Franz, exploring  the local area. Franz is a great host, because he sees the potential of a situation and he knows everyone in the area, so he has offered to take us to a hot-spring spa nearby where he ‘ll meet his wife and have a family day and have time to spend with us. Isabella met us with the charming, energetic and mischiefous 5yr old Gabri and sweet, playful 3 yr old Julia.  After entering the snazzy spa main desk area, we change in the comfortable locker rooms and head out to the laidback lounging-by-the-pool area. Here, the pools are many, each hot, warm or cool, the faint smell of sulfur and what I would call a great collection of Italian and European lounge lizards, chilling (or warming) in these healing waters from the earth, walking around in terry-cloth bathrobes or just their suits, with the ever-present olive groves and vineyards in the mid-ground of the landscape, rolling rocky and verdant hills in the near distance. There are all types here. It’s hard to tell too much about anyone. There are a few families with young children, a few teens, but mostly adults clearly committed to chilling out, letting down their hair, melting into the soothing waters, slowing down and rejuvenating.

Joyce loves spending time with Gabri and Julia, developing her Italian. They’re much more flunt in English than we are in Italian. A rare, brief rainshower passes through, chasing the lounge lizards into the spacious indoor pools. I find one of the larger cooler pools and try to peel off a few laps, loosening the tensions from the relatively easy Boston to Zurich to Florence flight. After a snack at the spa cafe, Franz takes us all to his favorite pizza haunt in Sienna where it seems he is a dear old family friend. Most places we go, Franz has close friends. You could say, he connects! He’s full of life. Full of things to say. When we’re toodling around the Tuscan countryside in his VW van his banter with the children illustrates the beauty of the Italian language. There’s a quality of an uplifting sing-song playful melody bubbling forth like a streaming marble Piazza fountain.

I know I’m waking up at Ebbio when I place my feet on the polished, large, uneven, rectangular brick-like tiles often found in Italian farmhouses and homes. Smooth, glossy, uneven, bumpy, radiant, cool to the un-slippered foot.  It’s Saturday and time to meet our group at the airport in Florence at 11am. Joyce and I each drive a van in. The drive is getting more familiar. This is my fourth trip, third program. But I’m still getting the route down cold and there is one wrong turn on the way in and one on the way home. But we don’t lose much time on the brief hour-long drive. Everyone showed up, in good shape.

A smooth transition at the airport helps us have a smooth transition to inhabit our base for the week, entering the world of authentic Tuscany, a rambling stone farm, sunny rooms with big tall windows looking out onto various views, back up the farmland into the forested ridge, out across the valley dotted with steeples, towns, walled castle-like mountain-top towns, a patchwork of fields, forests and fortresses. Everyone gets settled into their rooms, lunch is in 15 minutes

Our first meal, al fresco, of course, is full of oohs and aahs. The food as Ebbio is as good as it gets. It’s not fancy. It’s not complex. You know it’s fresh. Soups. Rice or pasta. Fresh romaine. Tomatoes that zing with flavor. Fresh bread. Cheeses with names I’ve never heard before, fruits of all types, pitchers of wine and pitchers of water, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Pasta with avocado pesto sauce, pumpkin soup, risotto, absolutely “produced today” fresh ricotta. And when you’re totally satisfied after munching down on this feast, some little dessert emerges from the kitchen. Italian pastry, a pound cake,tarts, custards. Each night it’s another unexpected treat. Seems that Franz has been chatting up a local baker who sends us up a treat each day at the end of the day. She’s happy to have a captive audience.

Franz runs the farm and “inn” with the help of a sister and brother from Rumania, Stella and Dino. They are the picture of ease in service to Franz qand us. Throughout the week they are there at every turn to make our stay comfortable. They won’t let us carry our bags up stairs. Bags are taken to our rooms. They serve and clean up after every meal and that’s what they do between their full list of chores, cleaning our rooms and the bathrooms, feeding the livestock, horses, mules, chickens, dogs and cats. One morning during a strole after breakfast we hear Dino whistling a tune. He’s up on a ladder propped into an olive tree. He’s trimming the branches. Another day he has plowed the entire field slated for a sunflower crop next year. Both he and Stella seem to be up and at it early each morning and into the evening. The sincerity of their service warms our hearts each day. Another endearing aspect of our experience in Italy. Sincerity. Generosity. Graciousness.

One of our guests, Sharon, a retired teacher from Connecticut, put it best when she wrote, “I revelled each day, thinking it can’t get any better than this. And each day I was surprised with new experiences that built into the most satisfying vacations I’ve ever taken”.

Next year’s program has been scheduled and I am taking registrations for it now. It’s October 3 – 10 (again), the first week in October, Sunday through Sunday. Click here to receive more information.

And Yoga Alliance has just approved our application to be a Yoga Alliance registered Yoga School. So graduates of our training will become 200hr certified yoga teachers and also will be able to become a Yoga Alliance registered teacher, using the RYT 200 designation.

Ed and I are so excited about joining forces to offer this training. We are underway planning the training, it’s sessions and readings. And we are ready to receive applications. To learn more about the teacher training, click here http://www.comfortzoneyogacenter.com/wholeselfyogateachertraining.html.  To request an application or to register, call Comfort Zone Center For Whole Self Healing at (866) 967-YOGA.

The first training will be two 13-day modules, April 18 – 30 and June 27 – July 9, 2010.  This training is a collaboration between Rudy Peirce and Ed and Wendy Harrold. Ed and Wendy founded the ComfortZone in 2006 as a community center created to raise consciousness by raising awareness through a holistic approach to whole-self health and well-being. Their goal is “to bridge modern day health and medicine  with holistic and ancient philosophy and techniques so we’re better equipped to handle our personal lives and the complexity of our culture today.

“The ComfortZone is a ‘whole self’ health and wellness center that’s enjoyed by our local community, in the beach resort of Lewes, Delaware, with daily yoga and fitness classes,  equipped with locker room facilities, steam and sauna. The ComfortZone is also a retreat and training center which offers affordable and modest housing through a strategic partnership with local hotels and the Cape Henlopen State Park (which overlooks the confluence of Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean). They also offer massage and Tuina bodywork services, Ayurveda and other healing services, a retail boutique with yoga clothing and accessories, meditation cushions, CDs, DVDs, books, gift items and more.

Ed and Rudy will be directing the training with exceptional faculty members: Amy Weintraub, Sat Bir Khalsa and Larissa Carlson. For Rudy this is the first time offering a YTT outside of his base at Kripalu. Though he has offered workshops around the country, a YTT is a huge life-changing experience, so it’s with great excitement that Rudy takes on the creation of this exceptional training. A resident staff member of Kripalu from 1982 – 1995 and a faculty member from 1988 to the present, he has taught yoga, developed many yoga programs, directed teacher trainings and a variety of programs including Gentle Yoga Retreats, Teaching the Deeper Practices, Yoga Teacher Mentor Certification training , and the Men’s Yoga Quest. Ed received his initial yoga teacher training at Kripalu. Ed started his professional career owning 2 yoga studios in NJ and eventually realized his dream in Lewes, DE with a large training and retreat facility known as Comfort Zone Center For Whole Self Healing. He has since been teaching and developing various programs such as Flexibility for athletes and Yoga for Weightloss.

In addition, Ed is the Director of a new medical project designed to redefine health care. These facilities are scheduled to open in 2010.

Bring your love for yoga and we’ll help you develop the skills necessary to teach yoga with your intuitive senses.

This week of yoga, relaxation, meditation, massage, drumming, labyrinth walks, poetry, philosophy, listening circles, filled me on so many levels. There were many things that I wanted to do. Some, at the time seemed essential, critical. Reading inspiration from one more wise author, guiding another family of postures, more time out in the woods and fields of this paradise, one more thought or feeling to share. I didn’t get to all of them. I would have loved to have more men in the program. There were many things that I wanted that I didn’t get. But from the very beginning I began to refill my well of the things that I really need. Time to stretch and relax. Time to meditate. Being in the presence of honesty, self-compassion, self-care.  What a satisfying retreat. Now, I’ve got my guideposts for this month and a group of men to stay in touch with about these days of getting back to my wife, my friends, my friends, swimming everyday, my 30 minute morning yoga practice 5 days a weeks, cycling, and stacking wood for the seasons to come.

So, I am offering a free CD (any of my 5 CDs) to any teachers who would like to run this attendance drive in their classes this fall. If you are interested, just send me an email with your plan ad I’ll send you a complimentary CD for your attendance drive. Get creative with it. Make it work for your class schedule situation. And let me know your experience with it at the end. I think Jenn ran it twice in a row, which builds on the momentum and gives more than one person a chance to win.

The benefits of yoga are available with regular practice. Let’s support regular practice!

In western NY and Northeastern Ohio I was entertained with the fascinating Native American and early settler’s names for their towns, e.g. Gowanda, Cattaraugus, Connewango Creek, Ashtabula County and Thistledown, Ohio. My first studio stop, after an overnight pit-stop just east of Buffalo at my dear friend Jean’s home, (Roast chicken, potatoes and veggies, best mattress I’ve ever slept on) was Jane Montgomery’s Peace Blossoms Yoga, in Akron, Ohio. I was fortunate to arrive in time to attend Jane’s Monday night moderate class.  Jane is a warm, cheerful and skillful 500hr teacher, who has studied extensively and leads a wonderfully satisfying class. I knew her well from the Yoga Teacher Mentor Training she attended. I was in bliss. I felt welcomed home in her masterful class. To cap off my arrival Jane and her husband David invited me out for dinner at one of Akron’s best eateries, Vegiterranean, Chrissie Hynde’s Vegan restaurant in the heart of a meat-eatin town. The best Tiramisu I’ve ever had!

The next morning I was honored to guide Jane’s 9:15 Kripalu Moderate class. The joy of this class for me was meeting Jane’s yoga community. This is one of her most popular classes and I was welcomed by her “regulars” who set out a delicious fruit and muffin spread for casual connecting after class. And through the connecting I heard the various stories of “why we do yoga.” From healing physical conditions, to peace of mind, and just staying healthy through this life journey, I heard how grateful they were for this oasis that Jane began in 1998, bringing yoga to this West Akron community. I felt like the trip had received it’s first blessing.

In the yogic perspective, Chip explains, “most physical and mental actions arise from a fundamental misunderstanding of reality and therefore entail suffering.”

“Everything that exists in creation, [Patanjali states], is different from pure awareness.”

“Everything that we might think of as me – physical, emotional, conceptual, spiritual, internal, external – is part of nature, or prakrti… all of me, even the innermost part, is material stuff, impermanent, and subject to cause and effect. Some of the stuff that me comprises is subtle…Some of it is gross…But all of oneself is prakrti.”

“Pure awareness, on the other hand, is not stuff of any sort and is therefore free of cause and effect. It was never created and never ends, existing beyond time.

“Because it [pure awareness] is immaterial, it has no location, movement , or other natural properties; nor does it have anything in common with consciousness or thought, other than the role of observing them. It is literally intangible, impersonal, and inconceivable.”

WOW, I thought. Pure Awareness is inconceivable. Beyond my understanding. The area of mystery. The domain of that which I know not.

Which led me to thinking about the Niyama Ishvara-Pranidhana.  This “observance” is defined as “surrendering to God”. It is interesting that in discussions about how to define God, one response that comes up is “mystery.” Along with other names of God, Christ, Yaweh, Jehova, Allah, Ishkala,  there are other terms as well, Great Spirit, Mystery, Goddess, Providence and simply “life happening.” I wonder then, is there a relationship between this inconceivable Pure Awareness and this concept that has baffled and confounded our species for all time.

And as we’ll soon see, The Yoga Sutra invites one of the other central questions baffling humanity, “Who am I”.

Back to Chip:

“Pure awareness is what actually sees consciousness unfolding, primarily on a screen we call consciousness. The screen of consciousness is the foundation of  human experience, a part of the phenomenal world it represents, and under ordinary circumstances it actually feels like the subjective “eye” that is observing everything.  In Patanjali’s view, though, no aspect of creation, including consciousness, can see itself, because it is material stuff. In the same way that a television cannot view it’s own programs, consciousness requires a witnessing awareness.”

Here’s where I usually start to have an image of watching a movie in a movie theatre. Who’s watching? Who’s the screen? Who’s the projector? And who makes up the movie?!

“Pure awareness has no sense of itself at all. Immaterial, unmoving, non-conceptual, it is completely submerged beneath the waves of consciousness. Like the rest of nature’s stuff, consciousness is embroiled in an ongoing process of creation, spiraling from form to form, pattern to pattern. This incessant re-patterning of consciousness distorts its actual relationship to pure awareness. Although pure awareness is unchanging, its lack of substance or motion renders it invisible to consciousness. After all, the contents of consciousness – perception, thought, memory – are all made of stuff and arise from material transformations. Because of these attributes, consciousness is an instrument poorly suited to detect the pure awareness that is watching it. In other words, consciousness is a thing that is only good at showing things.

“Like the rest of creation, the aspect that Patanajali calls consciousness, or citta, is evolving. Its evolutionary goal is to refine itself to the point where it can become so still, unmoving, and equally absorbed in all phenomena that it becomes very much like pure awareness itself. In that instant, it can reflect pure awareness back to itself, making it realize that it is distinct and separate from nature. In other words, the underlying purpose of creation is to reveal pure seeing to itself.”

Okay! Well, if you ever wondered what the purpose of life is, there is the yogic perspective. To reveal pure awareness to itself.

There’s just a little more introduction, Motion and Stillness, Effort and Effortlessness, and then we get to the first Sutra.

Our reference will be the new Translation and Commentary, The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, by Chip Hartranft (2003 Shambala Classics). This commentary, written just a few years ago in 2003, reads clearly and as Stephen Cope comments, “combines intellectual precision with emotional accessibility.” This book, along with Stephen Cope’s two giant contributions, “Quest for the True Self,” and “The Wisdom of Yoga,” provide a firm foundation of yoga philosophy that is valuable for any serious student of yoga.

I have experienced why Stephen Cope recommends Chip’s “Sutra” so highly. It reads easily and beckons one on to the stunning, sometimes obtuse territory of this classic road map of human consciousness. I will share blogposts as I move through this commentary on the 196 short aphorisms that demystify how the mind works, and they will be compiled in the literature/study section.

In the very first pages of the introduction Chip lays out these enticing thoughts.

“The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali is one of the most enlightening spiritual documents of all time. It analyzes how we know what we know and why we suffer. It also provides a meditative program through which each of us can fulfill the primary purposes of consciousness: to see things as they are and to achieve freedom from suffering.

The practice of yoga is  meant to… reign in the tendency of consciousness to gravitate toward external things, to identify with them and try to locate happiness in them. Steady practice teaches consciousness how to turn inward toward itself and realize the true nature of its underlying awareness.”

Please join me on this journey of exploring the Sutras by reading along.  I welcome your comments and questions–this will be a journey we take together as yogis and yoginis in pursuit of an understanding of the true self.  If you are interested in purchasing the same version I am studying, you can visit Amazon.com (or click here) to order it new or used.

As an awareness, for next time I will be reading Prakrti and Purusa, pg xi – xiii in the introduction. I am taking this in small chunks. It bears chewing well!

If you are interested, please send your thoughts and proposals directly to rudy@gentleyogi.com with the subject line “Roadtrip Drop In.”  We will see what emerges.  Since this trip to Kansas is an annual occurrence, I would love to create an annual yoga-studio-to-yoga-studio trip each year.  Thus, if something does not work out this year, we can certainly plan for next year.

Know that spaces in programs fill quickly and that housing is limited at the Kripalu facility.  Come stretch and strengthen this spring with Rudy on April 10-12 (a weekend) by calling Kripalu today to register (1-866-200-5203) or you can sign up online by clicking here.