Yantra Yoga Book Tour 
Dzogchen Community America and SSI/Italy are collaborating to promote a series of free Yantra Yoga demonstrations throughout North America, in conjunction with the October release of YANTRA YOGA: The Tibetan Yoga of Movement by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, trans. by Adriano Clemente.
Yantra Yoga offers the practitioner a unique approach to Yoga practice, parallel to the Hatha Yoga of the Hindu tradition. Called the "Union of Sun and Moon", it is a dynamic system of trulkhor (movements) and tsalung(pranayamas) and differs from more widespread yogas in that it is done as a sequence of movements co-ordinated with breathing and specific ways of holding. This practice helps us to relax and achieve a state of well-being and harmony, at the same time enhancing physical health, energy, and mental balance. At a more profound level, it is an important practice to integrate body, speech and mind in a state that is beyond our normal dualistic concepts.Yantra Yoga is a very rich body of knowledge that includes 3 preliminary series, 75 yantras (asanas), 7 breathing practices, 7 lotuses and the vajra wave--108 exercises in all. Profusely illustrated with drawings and photographs,Yantra Yoga presents Tibet's trulkhor yoga tradition as taught by one if its master exponents, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. Yantra Yoga's movements, exercises, and methods of concentration are all based on an eighth-century text by Vairocana whose translation is included, illuminated by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu's commentary. Detailed charts for the timing of the breathing exercises are also included.
Yantra Yoga Book Tour Update
The Tour to Date
November – December 2008
by Naomi Zeitz
The first phase of the Yantra Yoga Book Tour ended on a high note in Los Angeles California the weekend of December 12 and 13 at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore in West Hollywood. Friday evening and Saturday afternoon we hosted approximately thirty-five new people altogether who had not had any previous contact with Yantra Yoga or the Dzogchen Teachings. Both groups, in the evening and the next afternoon, were very enthusiastic about both Yantra Yoga, presented by Oni McKinstry in a competent, inspirational and authentic way, and the Dzogchen Teachings. Oni has been an authorized Yantra Yoga teacher since 2005 and currently lives in Juneau Alaska.
As many of you know, we have sent Oni and her assistants around to four locations to date, to promote and support the release of the long awaited Yantra Yoga book (Yantra Yoga, The Tibetan Yoga of Movement published by Snow Lion Publications), since the book tour began.
The reason we began this Book Tour or YYBT, as we have come to call it, is multifaceted. The idea originated with Fabio Andrico, with the intention to protect the transmission and make people aware of this unique and amazing system of Tibetan Yoga, as well as to inform them that they need to study with an authorized instructor. After Fabio presented the idea to Rinpoche, who approved, it then expanded with the assistance of Luigi Ottaviani, the Director of SSI Italy, to become something concurrent with the ideas of Yeshi Namkhai and Luigi to develop outreach, interest and membership through means similar to this idea. Hence the format of the YYBT was born.
We went from San Rafael, Northern California to Portland, Oregon and wound up in Los Angeles, California. The first weekend of November we were at the Open Secret Bookstore in San Rafael, California, the Bay Area, which is near to Dondrubling, Berkeley; the oldest city-centered ling in the USA. Dondrubling was established in 2001.
The first stop on the tour got off to a bit of a slow start. There were a variety of factors. One was that it was the weekend before the highly charged US presidential election, it was the day after Halloween so many folks were recovering from late nights and too much candy, and also the weather was a downpour of rain, so many folks were not motivated to come out. Some people felt it would have been much better to host the event in the evening at this particular venue.
The local Community was very enthusiastic and made a good showing, filling us with a sense of support and enthusiasm. The Community kicked in to man the sales table, meet and greet people, do the technical end by filming and making photos, and helped with general set up and break down. We really felt it was a Community effort and that is one of the aims of the Book Tour, to engage the Community in both activity and outreach.
In San Rafael there were approximately ten new people altogether for both days, which was a little disappointing, but we considered the various factors, got feedback on how to improve and decided it was a good place to get our feet wet, test the waters and help us improve for the next stops on the tour, Portland and Los Angeles with a segue to Yoga Journal Trade Show and Conference in Miami Florida in mid November.
After San Rafael, Oni made a very long journey across the country to Miami, Florida, where Anastasia LaHera and Steve Ezequelle warmly hosted her. Anastasia, Steve and Oni, along with other Community members, manned a booth at the trade show exhibiting the Yantra Yoga book and Eight Movement DVD and talked to people about Yantra Yoga and the Dzogchen Community.
This was the first time that Yoga Journal (the most popular publication in the US about all forms of yoga) had this event in Miami, and they themselves were a bit disappointed with the low turn out as were our people, but we wanted to see of what benefit this kind of activity could have for us. Maybe in the future we can try again with a more enticing booth, like running the Eight Movements video, some power point presentation and a live demonstration. The yoga “market” is highly competitive in the US, almost everyone does yoga, so for something as precious, pure and undiluted as our transmission of Yantra Yoga, it requires a certain kind of approach that we are learning at each step to develop and improve.
The next two stops, Portland and Los Angeles, proved to be much more successful. In Portland there were three events. One evening at a local “new age” bookstore called the New Renaissance, and then two sessions of two hours on the weekend at a yoga studio. There were about eighteen people attending all three sessions. The local Community, spearheaded by Portland member Darren Littlejohn’s tremendous energy, and with the much appreciated imported help and dedication of Carisa O’Kelly from the Bay Area in California, rallied and made the tour more of a success than our first stop near Berkeley. The Community made a lot of effort postering and doing follow-up calls notifying local newspapers and other media of our presence.
In Portland we introduced a power point presentation. Carisa was the first one to use this in Portland and also did a great job modifying the one developed and used by Paula Barry in Baja California as part of a presentation Paula did of Yantra Yoga and the Dzogchen Community with the local residents as a forerunner to the Baja Retreat with Yeshi Silvano Namkhai. This talk and presentation were also very successful and we are grateful to Paula for the work she did creating this power point presentation, which became the basis for what we are working with now and will continue to expand and develop.
The one aspect in Portland that did not follow the original intention of the book tour was that not all the venues were free for the participants, and we intend in the future to maintain this principle. As we go along we are learning what we need to do to make this book tour a successful venture.
Portland also has the special challenge of an urban community with great distances and travel times between practitioners, to find a focal point of practice that can be surmounted. The Northern California area went house to house for some twenty plus years, and it worked very well, but having the ling has energized and moved the Community to a higher level of engagement with the practitioners and Community. It seems that Portland is moving closer towards establishing a Gakyil and eventually a ling as well.
The next and final stop for the time being was Los Angeles. We did the presentation on a Friday evening and a Saturday afternoon at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore, an old and established “spiritual” bookstore in West Hollywood. They have a very extensive email mailing list and publicity network, so this venue proved to be the most successful so far. The venue was free for participants, the power point presentation was closer to what we are looking for, the Dzogchen Community in LA also turned out in force and even after weathering seemingly endless congested LA traffic, they managed to come and help, support, greet, film, set up and donate electronic devices, etc.
Dewey Ambrosino was the major support and help in LA, helping us with all aspects of our visit, from finding us a very comfortable and convenient place to stay, to graciously chauffeuring us around in his 1965 classic Dodge Dart. Others from the LA Community, a small group with a lot of energy, came out to help and support once again. We have hopes that the LA community will grow, develop and once again form a Gakyil and become more active, through courses and outreach into the LA community at large. LA seems very ripe for what the Dzogchen Community has to offer.
The follow up to all these excursions of the YYBT are Introductory Courses to Yantra Yoga. We had a very well attended course in Dondrubling, Berkeley, and will host three other courses in Portland, Miami and Los Angeles. For more information about these courses please see: www.yantrayoga.org
It is no surprise that the energy behind this book and tour have stimulated interest and activity for Yantra Yoga overall. We have been asked by our two main instructors, Laura Evangelisti and Fabio Andrico, to look for new young practitioners along the way, so we are taking that task to heart as well! Be aware!
We were also so pleased and grateful with the response of the local Communities. Without the dedication and effort of Community members too numerous to mention, this Book Tour would not have succeeded. So we thank everyone for the tremendous effort, work and generosity!
What we saw that probably made us most happy, next to the possibility of introducing people to the peerless teachings of Chögyal Namkhai Norbu and this marvelous system of Yantra Yoga, is the activity and collaboration of the local Communities that this tour required. The enthusiastic willingness, interest, collaboration and effort shown by the local Community members to help and develop the Dzogchen Community have been most impressive to us. It seems that a major part of the fruit if this tour is that local Communities came and will continue to come together and organize and develop more concretely. And this was a big part of its intention, so on many levels it is succeeding.
We want to thank of firstly, of course, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu for giving us this precious lineage of teachings. We would also like to thank our kind and patient instructors, Fabio Andrico and Laura Evangelisti, for tirelessly teaching us, and for supporting and advising us through this new venture. Also Gabrielle Marazzi, Dan Zegunis, Thinley Koblensky, Nate Snyder and Dominik Niceva for the wonderful web site and graphics. Thanks to Luigi Ottaviani and Anna Bartenstein for many rounds of emails and invaluable advice. And without sounding like someone at the Academy Awards, which must be the LA influence, last but by no means least, the Tsegyalgar East Gakyil and Dzogchen Community for most generously taking a chance to fund this adventure into unknown terrain that is creating great benefit for all beings!
