Sunday, December 30, 2018

Kripalu Yoga for the New Year

Step powerfully into the new year with yoga at the Temple of Joy Yoga Sanctuary! Kripalu Yoga teacher Jyoti (Jody Kessler) masterfully integrates ancient and modern wisdom using a creative sequence of postures, conscious breathing, and deep relaxation, and inspiring LIVE music, inviting life energy to flow more freely through us. The result is a total conditioning of body, mind and spirit. All levels and bodies are welcome. Try your first class FREE!




Kripalu Yoga with Jyoti
Temple of Joy Yoga Sanctuary
305 Taylor Place (on Ithaca’s West Hill)

Winter Session Jan 3rd-Feb 28th
Mondays, Thursdays & Saturdays 10:00-11:30 AM

Drop-ins welcome
First class FREE to newcomers!
Single class: $15
6-class package: $72 ($12 per class)

More info: revjyoti@gmail.com or 607-272-0968




Jyoti (Jody Kessler) has been practicing yoga for over 35 years, and she is a certified Kripalu Yoga Teacher. She is also a performing songwriter and recording artist, a leader of devotional and ecstatic chant, and an ordained Interfaith Minister. A former schoolteacher, she holds a Master’s Degree in Education. Jyoti has led transformational workshops in spirituality and music at retreat centers and faith communities, and has been on faculty at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. She regularly leads Kirtan and global ecstatic chant with her band, ONE LOVE.

Jyoti is a 500-hour certified teacher and a member of the Kripalu Yoga Teachers Association. She is also a certified instructor of Let Your Yoga Dance ® , a chakra-based fusion of yoga and dance.

In her classes, Jyoti weaves together her gifts as a motivational speaker, teacher, troubadour, and yogini to create a truly unique and inspiring body/mind/spirit experience.


Friday, December 28, 2018

Ring Out, Wild Bells


I love this classic poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Written in 1850, it still feels weirdly relevant now, as I think about the references to the need return from the false to the true, and to the "sweeter manners and purer laws." And the "false pride in place and blood, the civic slander and the spite" speaks so strongly to life in America today. Ring out, wild bells, and please ring in more love, kindness, and healing of divisions in the coming year.

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let it die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let it go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all humankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant and the free,
The larger heart the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Alfred Lord Tennyson  1850 (slightly paraphrased)

INSPIRATIONAL WORDS

INSPIRATIONAL WORDS
Poetry, readings & words of wisdom from modern and ancient sources