Despite the fact that yoga today has grown from an obscure alternate lifestyle to a booming industry, it has difficulty finding its place in our society. Websites and course catalogs have tried to fit yoga classes into many categories that don’t quite fit, from Wellness to Athletics to Recreation to Religion. Yoga more accurately constitutes its own vast category including a wide variety of ideas and practices. Often associated with Hinduism, itself an artificial category imposed by British rulers, yoga is also found in Buddhist traditions.
Yoga includes physical exercises for health, without which the other aims of life and fulfillment of human possibility are difficult or impossible. The physical practices of yoga arose before modern medicine as a way to support this fulfillment but they were always combined with other practices such as breathing techniques and meditation. Yoga includes a vast array of diverse philosophies representing just about all permutations of ontology from nominalism to dualism to the non-dual, providing theoretical interpretations of experiencing its practices.
Yoga is predicated on the notion that fulfillment is possible to the highest degree despite the hardships we face. There are proven practices we can undertake to help us clear away the obstacles we have to full collaboration with life, which then reveal what has been previously obscured, our birthright all along of bliss and freedom. In this state, in this body we experience tremendous gratitude and a natural ongoing inclination and skill in serving the ultimate well being of others as well as ourselves.Natasha Judson,
The Greylock Independent, July 2014
Photo: Leslie Parke
Tasha Yoga celebrated its new location at 20 Spring Street, Williamstown on June 20 at 7:45pm with a reception. The reception followed an all-level yoga class at 6pm. This celebration coincided with the summer solstice and International Yoga Day. Teacher Natasha Judson has been teaching alignment-based yoga in Williamstown for 15 years. Judson says, “I love being part of the vibrant scene that unfolds on Spring Street., at the heart of the cultural district in Williamstown. A panoply of people organically can find their way in, often from all over the globe, so I feel more connected to my community and to the great unknown. It’s great to be more accessible to my new neighbors. Now after more than 12 years in town we can offer yoga in a beautiful historic building. This space combines the organic tensile strength of old wooden rafters with the precise alignment of steel I-beams. So our physical studio mirrors our aspirations in yoga practice as well, organic intelligence and precise alignment to feel more alive, healthy and happy in our lives.”
Natasha Judson, M.Ed., teaches diverse alignment-oriented yoga classes, privates and trainings at her community-based studio Tasha Yoga in Williamstown, MA as well as other locations in the region. She has studied yoga asana regularly with Patricia Walden and meditation with Dr. Paul Muller Ortega.
Contact: TashaYoga.com for a class schedule, upcoming workshops, and more information about the studio.