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I Ching and the Human Body 2014
T R I B E
(Our class roster)
I Ching & The Human Body 2014 Class List:
Cintra Harback
Kathleen Lynch
Richard Heilbrunn
Indianapolis, Indiana
Bill and I began communicating frequently a few years ago. As a senior student of Chogyam Trungpa's or Lord Mukpo as Bill refers to him, I have encouraged him and others to share their experience with those of us that had not benefited from the blessing of sitting in the presence of this Mahasiddha. I "found" Bill by way of a blog post he wrote on the Drala Principle. This piece affected me dearly, not only by topic but in the Spirit it was conveyed.
Soon Bill shared his travel experiences and his discovery of Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arab (whom he considered a "distant mirror" or analog of Chgyam Trungpa, Vajrayana Buddhism and the drala principle). As Bill began to form a new foundation in his personal practice he generously shared his Vertical Time Yoga theories, The Human Design System and an invitation to study with him and an intimate group in Crestone Colorado last fall.
This retreat was under the pretense of "Vertical Time Yoga" but masterfully Bill was able to present the core of his practice including the items above with a foundation and understanding of the I Ching. Since the retreat Bill has offered an online class with weekly study material, audio instruction and explanation of these core concepts and how they integrate with each other.
Personally I am still a novice in this material. In this first class Bill presented foundations. As we prepare to engage in next round of material I look forward to building all this in to a cohesive practice. By engaging in the material up to this moment, studying I Ching delivers me to a Spirit of Intention, just like my sitting practice. I become immersed in natural elements and therefore the Principal of Drala.
In the Spirit of Transition we now find Bill, perhaps temporarily, forgoing his Stray Dog persona and travels as he becomes a householder. This presents a foundation for him to create and articulate the curriculum he generously has offered. The online class has begun fresh with Spring and a retreat is planned for May. I highly recommend studying with Bill to everyone and anyone.
Renise and Amber
Renise Krumpeck
Boulder Colorado
Bonnie McCandless.
Virginia Beach, Virginia
MY RELATIONSHIP TO THE I CHING: I have been throwing the I Ching now for a little over 6 months on a regular basis -- almost daily, although I do skip days now and then. I keep a notebook of my throws and notes on the audio lectures that Bill provides to us . All this has accumulated into somewhat of an intimate I Ching commentary on my life and my understanding of the way the I Ching impacts upon my world. I write down the numbers and their corresponding symbol and then the hexagram number and the Wilhelm/Baynes title. After identifying the hexagram, I write down whatever words or message in the reading that strikes me as meaningful or significant at the time. For instance, a few weeks ago I threw hexagram #5, Waiting, and wrote the words "allow vision to come; no action". And on another day I threw hexagram #35, Progress, and wrote the words "means expansion, means the day".
What all this means to me on a daily basis I cannot really articulate; the meaning varies but I will say that it helps to guide me by offering words of wisdom that I seem to follow subliminally. I do not take the messages literally but somehow I keep them in my heart and they keep me true to a vision that walks with me, neither ahead nor behind me, but beside me. Here is an example: For the last few days I have thrown hexagrams #24, 32, 54, 50 and 64. The messages I have written down all have to do with undertaking something, having somewhere to go, "an end is always followed by a beginning", taking up the new, crossing the great water. There may have been other messages in the readings more profound or significant, but I wrote down only those that dealt with an upcoming event, a new experience.
Yesterday my daughter and I booked a cruise to Bermuda for a "bucket list" item for the 3 of us -- myself, my daughter and my granddaughter -- to go back to the place where my daughter was born, where my husband and I spent 3 years stationed in the Air Force after we got married. It is a dialysis-at-sea cruise which allows me to get my treatments on board the ship, so it's a wonderful travel option for me. I had somehow known that this was the "event" that was coming along in my life, this was the "somewhere to go", the "crossing the great water", the undertaking that I was hoping would materialize but yet I was not in control of it, so I left it up to the powers that be. It seems likely to me that my I Ching throws somehow were communicating with me that this was the right time this travel plan and I expect strongly that I did everything I could to facilitate that happening. Was I following the messages? Were they pushing me to action? Did they give me confidence to move forward? I don't know, but I do know that there was a parallel force working in the daily coin tosses that had something to do with bringing forth this unique opportunity for me to travel back to a place that I hold dear in my heart with the two most important people in my life -- to share my memories with.
I've been studying Human Design on and off for about 3 years and although I've been familiar with the iching for many years, I didn't really become intrigued with it until I was frustrated by the Human Design interpretation of the iching lines and began to be interested in searching for the meanings of the lines myself.
My current relationship to the iching is one of daily morning practice with writing (ongoing now for about 4 months). I enjoy reading across different books and striving to understand the message. My response to the iching currently ranges from impatience when I can't or won't take the time to understand, to tears from the wonder of the tender precision of response. I delight in the variety of levels of interpretation and meaning, and I am in danger of ordering more translations (I have 5 already).
I have a strong mental/scientific processing kind of mind and I expect to find clarity in things that I study. However, it feels like the complexity and subtlety and poetry of the iching is so far confounding or at least restricting that strength. I find myself having a hard time remembering things I just read, and even if I get into a particular hexagram and feel like I understand it in the moment, the information seems hard to retain. It's frustrating and yet intriguing and I feel drawn into further study which is why I am here.
I am interested in listening to spirit and being more attuned to other realms, but have had a difficult time maintaining a meditation practice. So this morning iching study has been really good for me - occupies my busy mind and expands it beyond the linear as well. I have a strong somatic life-orientation as well, so the combined topics of this class really drew me to join. I am looking forward to sharing some of these interests with others!
Stever Robbiano
Latham New York
Until recently my only exposure to the I Ching was the strange guy who used to sit in the center square of Woodstock using yarrow sticks, and some obscure references in a Firesign Theater album many years ago. My more recent introduction was through my partner. I have been using the wisdom in the book of changes as I go through a period of numerous changes myself. My throws provide me insight into the possibilities of the day and I frequently find myself reflecting on them during he day. I have been gaining further insight through Bill's teachings and am looking forward to more as my path unfolds.
Luz Rodriguez
Cadanes, Asturias region of Spain
I've been fascinated by the I Ching since my youth. The Wilhelm translation has accompanied me in all the different places I've lived and I used to throw the coins any time that a big decision –or not that big- seemed looming over me. And of course, on every birthday just to have an overview of what might be ahead. Not that I understood precisely the lines but questions and intuition gave me some guidance.
When I met Bill in the Rocky Mountains Shambhala Centre (now Shambhala Mountain Centre) in 1997, he was a teacher very fond of poetry and we reconnected when he came to Spain from Morocco. Kathleen Lynch has been instrumental reconnecting again with Bill, this time around the I Ching and the Human Design which I feel very attracted to it and I asked Bill for a reading. It has opened another door to discovery!
I am Buddhist and have quite a daily practice that I enjoy … most of the time. I’m also dedicated to translating Shambhala dharma texts into Spanish and that helps enormously with the understanding.
Some classes on the I Ching I found quite difficult or confusing, too many doors at the same time and a huge lack of understanding… not that I am a very patient person anyway!
And last but not least, Spain is big on drala, we call it duende – it is said for flamenco dancers, players and singers that “they have duende” or that “the duende descend on them.”
Bill Scheffel
Crestone, Colorado
I bought my first I Ching in high school, circa 1971. The yellow Wilhelm/Baynes edition. I even fashioned my own yarrow stalks. As for my periodic throws over the next twenty years I was deeply intrigued and pretty much mystified. Then I met a teacher of the I Ching, Howard Bad Hand, a Lakota Sioux with a photographic memory of the book, with razor-sharp, dead-on insight, with an equally direct way of putting things, and with a swarm of Lakota spirits enhancing the atmosphere of his advice. Howard also taught me the "mechanics" of the book, the inner workings and logic that allow one to gain an objective handle on the I Ching's language, a place for ones intuition to take foothold and to unfold. I try to teach this class in this same way.
The I Ching ranges from being my hobby to being my way of life. Countless throws have awakened such lightning strikes of inner wisdom and/or outer drala messages that almost all my decisions-of-consequence for the last fifteen years have come from it, have come in tandem with it, have been validated by it. It has either saved or ruined my life. I can't help but feel it is a sword the late Chogyam Trungpa still wields over my head.
My daily practice is to throw the I Ching first thing in the morning, before the things I do to "evolve" and adjust my consciousness; meditation and yoga-body-work. When I prepare to throw the I Ching I feel I'm about to dine with my partner; which I am, I believe: the dralas, in particular the one I call "her." I write down the outcomes in black journals I buy at Ride-Aid, and along with the outcomes I write a bit about the day before. In Buddhism it is said one must have a "view" before one can meditate effectively, and the I Ching is normally my most efficacious view of the day.
I now have dozens of fully written-out black journals in my storage closet. They are my autobiography I guess. Some of the more striking entries have big stars and huge exclamations marks written next to them. These are the ones that feel like the came directly form the dralas, from Her. In those cases, these autobiographies are also my love letters.
The other day I snapped a photo of my cat Angus standing below my prized Velvet Elvis because at that moment I saw a hexagram that describes my situation: inside (below) – sensitive, skittish, squirmy, and dark; outside (above) — eccentric, awkward in almost every environment, weepy, and soft to the touch.
I have owned a copy of the I Ching since college, but until recently it was more like an art object than a text. I liked how it felt in my hands and savored its strange poetry, but didn’t have a clue how to make use of the judgments. Then, I started to get readings from Bill, and he taught a couple of workshops in D.C., and he introduced a related Qigong practice that gave me the sense of the trigrams in my body. About two years ago I began to throw the coins daily.
I confess that most of the time I am mystified by the results, but some days I feel the text come alive and speak directly to me. Lately, I’ve begun to see images in the environment that feel like hexagrams – though, like Elvis over Angus, they don’t always conform to the Wilhelm Banes translation. The daily practice has been profound and confounding, in that some days I just don’t see anything, and some days the text wakes me up to something I’ve forgotten, and some days one coin rolls into the country of lost things and is never recovered. Where does it go?
I practice in the morning and then walk to my day job at the National Security Archive, a nonprofit government transparency organization with a scary name, all the while dreaming of writing fiction and poetry based on my experiences growing up in Nevada, studying at Naropa, and living with two cats in D.C.
Elvis above, Angus below Hexagram.
Joseph Tonelli
Boulder , Colorado
My Relationship With the I Ching: I began consulting the I Ching in my late teens and continued on until my late twenties, at which time I took a break for a few years. I had been using the I Ching to answer very particular questions and began to feel that I was relying too heavily on it to make daily decisions, both important and mundane. I was also very biased in what I hoped the outcomes to be. Hence, I took a break with the idea of becoming my own authority again.
So I am excited to be approaching the I Ching in this new, intuitive way. Since beginning this course, I feel like the hexagrams are speaking much more to an inner experience and I don't feel as though I am looking for a particular outcome. It seems very appropriate for me at this time in my life to reconnect with the I Ching and include it in my daily practice as a source of guidance and "alignment with the energy of the day."
I am trying to come to it and this course with a very open "beginners mind." I have had some major life shifts recently, and as the Spring here in Colorado approaches, I am inspired to start fresh and see what this new year holds.
Grace Tuma
Cahoes, New York
Bowing to you ~ I Ching Tribe members. My personal history & experience started last year with Bill's September 2013 Crestone VTY Retreat. I have followed Bill off and on in his websites, since we had met through Shambhala Practicum, a Naropa on-line course that I had taken in September 2000 with Bill as my teacher. We actually also met at the Tea Room restaurant, when in Boulder for my Master's. Currently whenever I throw the I Ching, I record my results in my journal.
My readings at times are rather profound in the unfolding of the day and the correlation to the events in the day. I myself fancy "The Taoist I Ching" translated by Thomas Cleary. I appreciate being a current lineage ambassador of the I Ching...Thank You Bill !!!
VTY Class Materials and
Other Information:
1. I Ching and the Human Body: Introduction
2. TRIBE (Class Roster)
3. Hexagram Titles Etymology
4. The Hexagram
5. Table of Contents of all classes
The classic "Wilhelm/Baynes" I Ching, the foundational text of our course.
This class is based primarily on the I Ching, as both an ancient and contemporary system of wisdom that is found within the human body. (See last year's class, I Ching and the Human Body, for more illustrations and information.)
Use of the I Ching and practices of yoga and meditation are all ways of "invoking drala" or the spirit of guidance. Cultivating both courage and sensitivity to life attracts the drala or blessing that is universally available.
Texts
Over the course of the year, along with the Wilhelm/Baynes I Ching, these texts and others will be introduced. Purchasing them is optional, based on the degree of study you wish to pursue and your own predilection for translations you are drawn to.
The Taoist I Ching, translated by Thomas Cleary.
Tiger and Dragon I Ching, by Rowena Patee Kryder.
I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change. Translated by Rudolf Ritsema and Stephen Karcher.
Gene Keys by Richard Rudd.
