Sutra Summer Experience
Dive into sutra and study that will inspire your personal practice
Are you curious about the yoga sutras?
Maybe you’ve been practicing yoga for a while.
Maybe you’re a yoga teacher with training and experience.
And you’re ready to dive deeper. To discover. To understand. To remember again.
In this 8-week program, we will dive into personal practice, study, learn, connect, and converse on the yoga sutras.
Using somatic experiencing, personal reflection, and conversation, we’ll dive deeper.
Explore.
Discover.
Learn.
Connect.
And to do so in the space and support of a community of peers.
With the expert guidance and support of a yoga studio and team that love diving into the depths, advancing our personal and spiritual practices, and find total joy and excitement in guiding others to do the same.
“For those who have an intense urge for spirit and wisdom, it sits near them, waiting.”
– Patanjali, Yoga Sutras
Deepen your practice through study
If your personal study or practice has become stale. If nothing resonating with you lately. If this year of pandemic and hardship has left you feeling wrung out. Uninspired. A little lost.
You crave something more. You want to understand or deepen awareness, learn something, and grow.
You have a desire to reconnect. To comprehend. To feel inspired again.
You have a desire to feel competent, knowledgeable, and develop more certainty in yourself and your practice.
And you know that with the right container, with the right experience, you know you can get back to yourself.
Reinvigorate something that has been dormant. Reawaken the part of you that is inspiring, and interesting, and nourished.
Enliven your practice again.
Deepen your knowledge.
Call forth your own wisdom.
MIND
Weekly lessons to stimulate thought
BODY
Movement practices to awaken the body
WISDOM
Conversation to engrain knowledge
As yogis, as yoga teachers, it can be challenging to stay inspired.
Practice requires renewal. Inspiration. Growth.
Every once in a while, we have this desire, this urge, this need to dive deeper.
And yet we are often left to do it entirely on our own.
As humans, we have studied and learned in community for millennia.
And yet, here we are today, trying to do everything on our own.
And in this separateness, we build an unrealistic self-imposed pressure to show up in such a big way. To be something beyond who we are.
To keep up a false perception that we are perfect or nearly perfect.
Often as teachers, as yogis, we can feel a pressure to show up as a super-spiritual devout yogi, as if we are not just people, living everyday lives.
People learn in community.
Things today are often so separate. So individualistic. As people, we need community. A circle. A sangha.
We need peers. People like us. People who understand or share interest and passion for practice. People we can learn from. People we can talk with. People who will listen and understand.
We crave experience. Knowledge. Growth.
The old ways of finding community are no longer there. Or just aren’t the same.
Often teacher training programs just don’t offer enough of this space and time to be in personal practice.
And often the connections made in those spaces are not quite what we hoped for. As a person, you want more.
You want depth. You want mystery. You want inspiration.
You are curious about the bigger picture. Something beyond your everyday stuff.
You don’t need to go at this alone, yogi.
Whether you’re looking for guidance and support, resources and connections, or space to think and converse through some big ideas.
Summer Sutra experience is here for you.
To bring you back to yourself. To connect. In sangha. In aditham. In growth and depth. Through practice.
It comes through practice
Summer Sutra experience is for your personal practice, yogi. The program is simple. It is attainable. It designed to meet you where you are, and offer you richness and depth that gives you space to go with it where you choose.
To bring you back to yourself. To discover and reconnect.
To be a container for guidance, reflection, and learning.
In this experience, we will begin to deepen and understand concepts that have felt far from reach.
We will churn up and open to the wisdom within you, building off your personal practice. Offering space to dive further and deeper into what you have learned, what you desire to learn more of.
“Here begins the practice of yoga.”
– Yoga Sutra 1.1
Hi, my name is Julie and I am the owner and founder of Be the Love Wellness. I have studied and practiced yoga for 16 years. As a yogi, study has helped me discover myself and my surroundings, and helped me heal and grow in profound ways.
As a studio owner and teacher, creating space for deep and rich conversation is both a personal passion and a delight and joy. I promise to create a space that is both accessible and rich, that is both open and safe. And create opportunities where you can feel guided and supported into your own self discovery.
In this program, my team and I will create the container to journey into the sutras, crawl into the depth of study, and learn and grow to your heart’s desire.
LIVE CONVERSATION
Connection as an Aditham (study group) on the sutra of that week
WEEKLY LESSONS
Recorded lessons sent at the beginning of each week for self-paced learning
EMBODIMENT
Movement classes themed on that week’s lesson
Sutra Summer Experience
The Sutra Summer Experience is 8 weeks of well-rounded yoga and movement that combines inquiry, reflection, and beauty of yoga philosophy with somatic experience, movement, and reflection.
Three forms of the sutras in practice:
(1) Weekly lessons. Each week, you’ll receive a short video lesson on the yoga sutra(s) with extension activities including reflection and journaling.
(2) Somatic experience. Each sutra is accompanied with a practice crafted around the expression of that sutra.
(3) Conversation. Weekly meetings take place on Thursdays at 10:30am EST for 60 minutes. These are light, open, reflective conversations based in connection. They can be inquiry-based or practical or philosophical in nature.
We are very down-to-earth and open in our community. There is space for all.
What are the Yoga Sutras?
The Yoga Sutras are fundamental to yoga philosophy. They are guidelines written to help understand, in written form, the depth and width and range of yoga. They are ancient, based on assumptions and understandings of a time and lifestyle so different from how we live today.
All too often, they are approached in a one-size, hard-to-digest format that can be intimidating and confusing to yogis and newbies alike.
When you pick up a text on the sutras, let’s face it: it’s not exactly a page-turner.
Patanjali didn’t write for the reviews. 😉
The truth is, the study of ancient text is not something that comes naturally to many of us. And with so many translations, interpretations of the text, it’s hard to anchor into one form of guidance. What is true?
Here at Be the Love, we believe that yoga study should be easy to access and should be available to all practitioners.
Because, even in its simplest form, the power of this practice is incredible.
This program is inquiry-based learning in a very accessible, everyday life way. Through conversation, we’ll give you the tools to begin the inquiry process. Through practice, we’ll invite you to bring the inquiry onto your mat, and into your mind and body. We’ll guide you to feel into the words. And through this practice, we’ll bring you on a journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance that helps you not only better understand yoga, but rather understand life, and living, in a whole new way.
Join us on this journey, yogi. And expect to be surprised, encouraged, and guided each step of the way.
What to Expect
Each week, you’ll receive the following:
(1) A short lesson that introduces the sutra to explore, along with extension activities for personal reflection, to stimulate the mind.
(2) Yoga classes themed around each sutra to engrain practice through somatic experience, to activate the body.
(3) Weekly conversations to reflect, connect, and deepen awareness and understanding to develop language around the sutras, to invoke the wisdom.
We Recommend
We recommend finding a small notebook to dedicate to the reflections that come up for you, notes for sutras to explore further, and points of interest to share with the group.
You can, though not required, purchase the text to follow along at home. We will send a list of our favorites once you have registered for this program.
Live Course
This course will be live July 1st – August 19th, 2021. Weekly meetings take place on Thursdays at 10:30am or 7pm EST for 60 minutes via Zoom. Live meetings are not mandatory, but do offer a richness to the experience. You will have lifetime access to this program once purchased.
Each summer, we offer a different version of this program. This course is the 2021 version.