Kirtan Recordings - Govinda's, Sydney, Australia.
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Thursday, 10 July 08 - 09:58 PM (GMT +11:00) By Tri-yuga das in Preaching |
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As promised, here are the kirtans and bhajans I recorded in the Lotus Room at Govinda's during my recent trip to Sydney (to download, right click the individual tracks and 'save target as', or visit the upload site here at Internet Archives)
Next destination: Auckland!
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Sunday, 22 June 08 - 01:12 PM (GMT +11:00) By Tri-yuga das in Preaching |
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- Via automobile, which involves crossing the harbour bridge – total travel time 10mins in low traffic periods.
- Via the Devonport ferry, which docks just a short walk away from the Loft.
Teaching Yoga at Urban Yoga
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Friday, 13 June 08 - 08:05 PM (GMT +11:00) By Tri-yuga das in Preaching |
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I taught a yoga class at Urban Yoga last night. This is something I have not done for a while, since a few months back I handed over my classes to other teachers. I did this for 2 reasons: to give other teachers the service opportunity, and to free up some time in my busy schedule.
In this case I had to teach Sri Yasoda’s class as she was preparing for her up and coming trip to India with her husband – Krishna Katha.
The class was paaaccckkkeeeeddd! which is a tribute to Sri Yasoda’s fine teaching, especially considering it is only recently that we moved the class to Thursday night from Wednesday night. In a short time the class attendance has recovered from the change in schedule and rocketed to a full house.
The class was so full in fact that one fellow set up his mat outside of the room on the top landing of the stairwell!
I taught my standard style of class with a focus on breath and flow. It was upbeat and challenging, because that’s how we do it at Urban Yoga.
Our other teacher is Jolie, an experienced yoga practitioner of many years. She has gradually become a part of our Urban Yoga community over the past year and a half, and has recently moved into the woman’s ashram at the Temple. She is a great teacher, with a natural feeling for yoga. Her classes offer a contrast between her personal softness of character and the physically demanding nature of the routine she teaches. Her teaching style has also proved popular.
So it was nice to be back in the yoga loop and to see the Urban Yoga thriving first hand.
Visit to Gaura Yoga, Wellington NZ
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Wednesday, 11 June 08 - 01:00 PM (GMT +11:00) By Tri-yuga das in Preaching |
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When I visited New Zealand in March this year, I spent much time in Wellington, which is my home city. The major Krishna Conscious action there revolves around the ‘Gaura Yoga’ centre.
Gaura Yoga is my original Krishna Conscious home, where I first discovered Krishna Consciousness and later served for 5 years. Today Gaura Yoga is becoming famous as the thriving prototype of ‘Loft’ style preaching centres, an innovative and seeker sensitive style of KC outreach centre, pioneered and developed under the guidance of Devamrita Swami.
Gaura Yoga has developed significantly over the last couple of years while I have been in Melbourne, so I was surprised and inspired to see the latest manifestations.
The woman’s ashram especially is thriving with over 20 residents all engaged in creative and dynamic outreach services, with a foundation of strong sadhana and camaraderie.
The Gaura Yoga facility is a large, first floor complex including a large dining space, a lounge style space for hosting discussions and study groups, a large open hall space that is used for yoga classes, festival evenings and devotee gatherings and featuring a Pancha Tattva diorama alter (able to be close off for yoga classes), a large kitchen facility, as well as bathrooms and showers.
The facility also serves as the main meeting space for Wellington woman’s ashram, with some of the women living onsite and others living very near by. The centre is situated on the fringes of Wellington’s CBD and within 5 minutes of the cities 2 main Universities.
During the week Gaura Yoga runs yoga classes 4 nights, Kirtan Yoga sessions, Bhagavad Gita study groups, and ‘KrishnaFest’ on Sunday night – a dynamic and contemporary multi faceted presentation of Krishna Consciousness.
Krishna Fest is really the main outreach event of the week. It is an ‘all hands on deck’ affair, with teams of devotees working to together to produce dramas, presentations that incorporate projected visuals, highly musical interactive kirtans in all varieties of classical and contemporary styles, and a first class gourmet prasadam feast.
At least once a month the devotees put in an extra effort to make Krishnafest into a super-KrishnaFest. This festive creativity reaches its glorious peak during the prime festivals in the Vaisnava calendar – Janmastami (Krishna’s Birthday), Gaura Purnima (Golden Moon Mantra Jam), Narasimha’s appearance (Roar Sound), Govardhana Puja (Sweet Hill Festival), etc.
In addition to these weekly events at the centre, devotees have established a presence on the main University Campuses in Wellington by doing prasadam distribution, cooking classes and general contact cultivation. They also do catering at festivals around the Wellington Region.
One of the latest and most exciting developments in the Gaura Yoga scene is the New Gupta Vraja (styled to the public as 'Gaura Haven') retreat facility that the devotees acquired with the assistance of a highly favourable property developer named Zoran.
Gaura Haven is situated about 75minutes drive outside of Wellington city and consists of a modern house amidst a lushly forested river valley. Being placed upon hilly landscape, one is able to enjoy views of the distant ocean while standing on the sunny deck of the house. The house itself is clean and classy, and has been renovated by the devotees to accommodate up to eighteen people at a time, with 1 bathroom per 4 guests. In this way there is an emphasis on comfort and guest care.
The devotees run retreats at Gaura Haven every fortnight around concepts such as yoga, yoga psychology, cooking, kirtan and bhakti yoga. Because the facility is close enough to the city, is fully set-up for its intended purpose, and because Gaura Yoga has a sufficiently large body of regular clientele/guests, the once a fortnight format is entirely feasible.
During my visit, I was fortunate enough to experience all of the above features of the Gaura Yoga scene.
I was there at the same time as Devamrita Swami.
Almost every morning during his visits, all the local devotees, both men and women, gather at Gaura Yoga for morning Bhagavatam class. These are exciting community events, in which Devemrita Swami speaks dynamically on Bhagavata dharma, the challenges of contemporary application, the lifestyle of a devotee, the preaching mission and spirit, and casts visions for future preaching and community developments. After classes there is big kirtan and breakfast – a very inspiring start to the day.
During my visit, Devamrita Swami spoke on the ‘3-fold revolution’, an exciting vision for preaching and community development. More on this in later posts.
One evening while I was there, I was asked to teach a yoga class. It was a full house of about 35 people, and teaching it brought back many memories – I first started teaching at Gaura Yoga, and taught there for 3 years regularly.
On another night I attended the Mantra Yoga workshop – an evening of chanting various mantra’s, both on beads and with music, accompanied by explanations and discussion.
One sunny day a group of us visited Gaura Haven with Devamrita Swami. We lunched there and in the afternoon I explored the surrounded forest. In the evening a group on guests that the devotees are cultivating, including the Zoran the property developer and a couple who own a near by retreat centre that the devotees rent for their country wide Christmas gatherings, arrived for dinner. Devamrita Swami was an adroit host, entertaining the guests with light discussion and gradually bringing the conversation around to topics of Sanatana dharma and the practice of Krishna Consciousness. It was so naturally done – he is a master at the art. We had some kirtan and dinner and then made the night drive back to the city.
Urban Yoga's May Yoga Retreat at Krishna Valley
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Tuesday, 10 June 08 - 12:45 PM (GMT +11:00) By Tri-yuga das in Preaching |
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We (da boyz) arrived at Krishna Valley (aka New Nandagrama farm), Melbourne Yatra's 250 acre rural property, 2hrs Southwest of the city, at around 6pm on friday night.
Dale and Sagun unloaded the van while I set up the yoga space. The space we use there was originally built as a boarding school (Gurukula) classroom. It is a low, single story structure of very pragmatic construction - completely utilitarian, devoid of any efforts at aesthetic beautification. It is furnish with about 10 mismatched couches, all of delightful (not) 80's design. The lights are those harsh fluorescent tube lights, which immediately kill all ambiance and make you feel like you are in an operating theatre. Anyway, suffice to say I was not about to use 'em.
I brought candles, incense, a rocking sound system, a data projector, convector heaters, and a single halogen reading lamp with a dimmer. I set up the lamp, sound system and projector with my computer around a low table, and projected an arty slide show of India onto a sheet hung on the wall. Over the years I have accumulated lots of funky sounds for KC yoga studios: Krishna Conscious, Indian classical, and ambient fusion. So that created a mystical mood. I used the lamp to bath the room in a very soft golden light and lit candles and placed them on the window ledges. That created a cool effect as there are windows on both sides of the room and it is pitch black outside at the farm - no city lights for miles around. Thus the window glass in each window reflected the candle flame on the opposite side of the room as well as its own, and there was that effect you sometimes get of reflected images trailing off in infinite repetitions. I set up 2 large table clothes on the floor, placed a row of candles down the centre and cushions around the parameter. Altogether it created a great atmosphere.
By this time David had arrived, but everyone else appeared late. Veda Priya had prepared the evening meal, but we waited. Eventually everyone turned up.
We had 12 guests and 7 devotees. It was a real multi-national group. The dinner was nice and everyone was in good spirits, joking and smiling.
We retired for the night around 10pm.
The next morning the devotees got up early to chant. At 8 o'clock we started with our first yoga class, taught by… me! I had Sukanthi Radha sing some invocation prayers with the harmonium while everyone sat in meditation and chanted AUM.
I started the class really gentle, with lots of emphasis on awareness and breath. I built it up over 2 hours. Outside our warm yoga space, a thick mist lat over the landscape and a soft haze of rain misted the air. Occasionally the sun would light up the fog. By the end of the class everyone seemed totally relaxed and in a happy, peaceful space.
We had breakfast together and then gathered for some discussion on yoga philosophy. We discussed everyone's current level of understanding and I slowly brought the discussion around to exploring some foundational concepts in yoga/KC philosophy to do with the human condition. We discussed conditioning, perceptions and paradigms, impermanence, duality, the hierarchy of self (body, mind, intelligence, ego, consciousness). At the end we had a bit of a debate about science and problem of subjectivity and imperfect senses.
After that we went for a walk to the 'swamp'. The path wound down through classic Aussie bush, across a small steam into a valley. The 'swamp' was actually quite scenic, forming the outskirts of a lake. The surrounding boggy ground was lush with rich grass grasses, and the blackened stumps of trees leaning a various angles. The birds were singing beneath the overcast sky.
On the way back I battled Dale, Tim and Sagun in sword fighting with sticks. I easily held off Tim and Sagun, dealing repeated killing thrusts though weaknesses that appeared in their defences. Dale was more of a challenge and we sparred all the way back up to the yoga hall. There things got serious. He is a noble warrior but eventually I defeated him, dealing a mighty trust up under his rib cage and deep into his heart, however, in the fight I lost my right ear to a downward strike that grazed the side of me head. After that we discarded our swords and proceeded in hand to hand combat. It was an epic battle and he is a tough and experienced opponent. He is stronger but I am quicker and more agile, and so I had him on the back foot. Eventually, it was time for lunch. Laughing, we embraced; a new found respect for each other. It was a good fight between 2 brave warriors.
Lunch was tasty and healthy, cooked by Veda Priya.
After lunch we had a break with free time for recreation and rest.
In the evening we again gathered together for a session of meditation, deep relaxation and guided meditations. This was hosted by me. It was getting dark so I set up candles around the room and put on some deep ambient meditation music – the AUM drone…
We started with sitting meditation, in which we explored the 7 points of meditation posture, and did some pranayama breathing. Then I got everyone to lie back and we toured the 64 points of the body for deep physical relaxation. When everyone was settled into a state of deep stillness, I began the guided mediations (I will post some examples of these in future). We did a couple of visualisations focused primarily of deepening the state of relaxation and contentment, and then explored the various layers of self, culminating in a contemplation of the concept of pure consciousness, and then visualised the journey of transmigrations through different bodies (reincarnation). Amazingly enough, some people managed to stay awake for the whole session ;-) (it is extremely easy to drift off when laying in savasana for long periods).
Everyone seemed to enjoy the session greatly, and many commented that it helped them to better grasp the concepts we had discussed in our morning session.
Later in the evening we prepared prasadam popcrorn – with the option of salty or sweet ;-), and watched the classic film ‘Gandhi’.
On the final day we started with a yoga class expanding on the routine of the previous day. Then was breakfast. The morning passed in a relaxed manner. Sukanthi Radha and Melaina started up some kirtan. Melaina revealed herself as an amazingly talented classical flutist. The sweet melodies wafted across the rural landscape, rising and falling gracefully for over an hour.
Then we called everyone together to wind up the retreat. We had a nice group discussion and everyone spoke of what a nice experience they had had. An overwhelming point of agreement was how nice a group feeling was generated. Everyone felt like they developed warm and friendly connections with one another during the weekend. It was a natural family-like atmosphere. For me, that was perhaps the most encouraging feed-back possible.
Then we enjoyed the last meal of the retreat – an opulent lunch cooked by Dale and his team. Keshava, Veda Priya, Manigriva, Sudevi and her child, and Christain all joined us (they are residents of the farm).
After that we did a general clean-up and packed for the return trip. I went with Dale, who drove, and Sagune. I finished my rounds and then retired for a nap – it had been a big, yet successful, weekend.
Harinam Massif
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Wednesday, 21 November 07 - 10:03 AM (GMT +11:00) By Tri-yuga das in Preaching |
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- The amazing acoustics in the foyer of the train station
- The ecstatic swirling dancing outside the train station
- An encounter with a modern day Jagai and Madai (2 young men who joined the dancing with a wild and unbridled masculine fervour, climbing on each others shoulders and hanging from a McDonalds under-veranda sign)
- A jam with the Spaceman busker, accompanied by his high pitched alien electronic ragamuffin stylee (he was real happy to see us).
- Harinam up China town
- Adam’s faces.
... More items are available in my News Archive
