About Sanctuary Yoga
Joseph Roberson founded Sanctuary Yoga on January 1, 2005.
About Joseph Roberson
Yoga: Artist's Prayer from Joe Roberson on Vimeo.
A short yoga sequence set to Alex Grey's "Artist's Prayer" and accompanied by Tool's "Mantra."
Joseph Roberson, eRYT200, MFA, has practiced yoga and meditation since 1979 and has taught since 1992. His creative practice integrates many influences into a deep, broad and authentic understanding of yoga. In addition to his long exploration of yoga (including Kundalini, Iyengar, Anusara) and of meditation (including Buddhist Insight Meditation, Yoga meditation, Osho active meditations), YogaJoe is also a practicing visual artist and writer. For current resume, click here. For print-quality resume, click here.
Yoga is the Warrior Way
By Joseph Roberson
I practice yoga because it helps me experience Source. Yoga helps me to release my fears, worries, anxieties and concerns more and more often during each day, thus allowing the full flowering of love and the blissful radiance of Presence to grow.
I have to practice. Yoga is my addiction, and a fantastic addiction it is! If I don’t practice for more than two days I lose steam, I lose focus. Yoga is my life; if I miss my practice my life is akilter. Practicing even a little each day makes me feel better than when I don’t practice. Yoga is my energy management system.
Sometimes what I need is vigorous movement to overcome inertia; sometimes my yoga practice is purely restorative, still and restful; other times I want to play, to do handstands in the field! When I am depressed yoga practice keeps me moving; when I am over-amped and frenetic yoga slows me down and makes me feel centered and balanced; when I am feeling good yoga practice is like a moving sculpture, a living breathing dancing celebration of my life.
Yoga connects me to the flow of life coursing through my body, breath, blood, brain, mind, spirit. The aim of my practice is find the experience of flow, to dance in the flow of this life. The highest energy known to humans is love; love means accepting this body, this life, exactly as it is and exactly as it is not. From this alignment with reality, standing in this acceptance and love of the totality of existence one may, without fear, act resolutely and boldly without misgivings.
Yoga is the Warrior Way, acting from the highest faculty of human potential.
The real purpose of my yoga practice is to align with and to act out of the
deepest promptings of my heart and mind. Sometimes this is easy and
sometimes it is difficult; going with the flow is not laissez-faire; going with the flow means acting on the choice to follow the scent of bliss even when it’s scary, even when that means standing my ground despite disagreement, confrontation, evidence. Oftentimes the real obstacle to my being "unstoppable in the face of no agreement," to being fully engaged in what is and in what is possible, is myself, my own fear and lack of belief.
This human body is the most marvelous creation in this universe. People study one small part of the human system their entire lives and cannot understand even that small part. Many different schemes and models have been devised to explain this wonder of wonders: bones, muscles, heart, nervous system, mind, spirit, chakras, sheaths, koshas, ojas, nadis, meridians. This human system is beyond any human’s understanding. Yoga brings me into intimate contact with the mystery and majesty of the human body.
On lucky occasions, when mind-chatter and heart-turmoil subside, I feel the hush and the presence of the underlying Source, the energy or consciousness or void which interpenetrates every atom, molecule, cell, bone, feeling and thought.
This Source has been called by many illustrious Names, including God,
Brahman, Allah, but none suffices because words can never express something utterly beyond thought, beyond mind, beyond comprehension. This experience is the only thing that can bring peace, the peace that exceeds all understanding.
That’s why I practice Yoga.
"The future enters into us, and is, quite literally, altered by us,
into a different future.
This transformed future– what we see as possible– is part and parcel of what we experience as the present moment."
—paraphrased from Rainer Maria Rilke