YOGA

I first experienced Yoga and meditation in 1994 as a student at Amherst College. Over the next decade, both slowly became part of my daily life. I follow the lineage of Sri T. Krishnamacharya, who taught B.K.S. Iyengar and K. Pattabhi Jois.

Krishnamacharya’s teachings speak to me because they live close to art. Health, Healing & Beyond by T.K.V. Desikachar, his son, is a great introduction to his ideas. Krishnamacharya understood health as an integration of body, mind and spirit. The separation between the body and the form, the mind and the poem, fall away.

Going further back, Krishnamacharya’s teachings emerge from those of Patanjali (see The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali), for whom Yoga is a method for stilling the fluctuations of the mind, and from the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most sublime poems in Hindu literature. Yoga is the process of connecting body, mind, and spirit through awareness, through turning inward to observe the mechanics of perception.

I am especially grateful to the teachers at The Shala and the Iyengar Institute in New York City. I received certification to teach in 2005.

QIGONG + DAOISM

I was introduced to Qigong and Daoism through Ian Robertson Duncan. I continue to study with Ian, and am now a student of Classical Shamanic Qigong under Master Zhongxian Wu. You can read an interview with Master Wu here. “Qi” means vital or life energy (what in yoga is called “prana”) and “gong” means work or cultivation. Qigong helps us connect to and gather life energy, creating a healthy flow within (and without!) us. It is a path that focuses on observing ourselves as part of, and in relation to, the natural world. 

The moving forms and seated meditations of Qigong include three layers: posture (jing), breath (qi), and visualization (shen). These layers relate to those of the universe: earth (di), human (ren), and heaven (tian; meaning sun, moon, stars). Qigong teaches ways to maintain wellness, or flow, within this interconnected web. It shows us how to live freely, without fighting, becoming stuck, or sick.

The clarity and richness of Qigong and Daoism transform my life on a daily basis. I am drawn to the beauty, breadth, and depth of ideas and methods that connect body and world. There is at once something so direct and clear in the practices, something so challenging and obscure—like reaching up a hand to mix the sun into the moon.

For more information, I recommend reading Master Wu’s article Seeking the Roots of Classical Qigong, or his book  Vital Breath of the Dao: Chinese Shamanic Tiger Qigong, which beautifully articulates his knowledge and teaching. Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Dao De Jing is also great.

POETRY

Writing poetry is a way that I articulate and investigate being in the world. I am struck by the layers of meaning and sound that make a language, and how poems enact and contain experience. Like Yoga and Qigong, poetry is a practice of attention that explores relationships.

I began writing when I was young, and later completed an M.A. in Literature at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. I have published work in Free Verse, Guernica, Poetry Porch, Poetry Porch III, Sal Mimeo, and Verse, and am included in Green Integer’s The Gertrude Stein Awards 2005-2006. My first collection of poems, No Matter, was published by The Winged Way in 2008.

You can hear me read at The Stain of Poetry or follow my blog at http://thehandindreaming.wordpress.com/

PRIVATE SESSIONS

In addition to teaching public classes, I work one on one with clients to create individualized Yoga and Qigong practices. My goal is to help each person find a sustainable daily practice, and then to build on this over time. For references or to arrange a session, please contact me at jenniferintan@yahoo.com or 646.245.9478.

We do not know what the dragon means,

just as we do not know the meaning of the universe,

but there is something in the image of the dragon

that is congenial to man’s imagination. . .

It is, one might say, a necessary monster.”

-Jorge Luis Borges

We join spokes together in a wheel,

but it is the center hole

that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,

but it is the emptiness inside

that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,

but it is the inner space

that makes it livable.

We work with being,

but non-being is what we use.

-Lao-Tzu