VERTICAL TIME YOGA:Restoring Primordial Alignment
I Ching and the Human Body
An On-line Class with Bill Scheffel

Photograph by Don Myer, from Coney Island series.

 

You are warmly invited to an on-line class in Vertical Time Yoga. The class is a month-to-month workshop that will continue throughout 2014 (see sidebar for details), and will include weekly web-pages, audio talks and a discussion page for posting comments, stories and insights. The curriculum of Vertical Time yoga falls into three sections:
 

I. Invoking the spirit of guidance through daily (or periodic) consultation of the I Ching. Daily consulting of possibly the world's oldest text is a form of sacrement, open-ended inquiry and even play. Fluency with the I Ching develops naturally as its insights confirm our deepest aspirations. This course provides a solid foundation for understanding the I Ching as both oracle and profound text of human character development.

A foundation of the "spirit of guidance" is this trinity of early teachings of Chögyam Trungpa: 1. Complete openness is the fundamental state of everything; from this we aspire to being open and without prejudice to every situation. 2. All situations form some kind of coherent pattern, called natural perfection in which meaning is naturally available. 3. From that, we aspire to absolute spontaneity - which is not something we can "do," but something we can make ourselves available to through intention. We can ask of the day, "What do you want of me?" and thus align with, rather than oppose, the spirit of the day.
 

Please download or stream this 13-minute talk by Bill on the I Ching as a daily practice.

 

 

 

 

Please see this page from last fall's class for an example of the I Ching curriculum.
 

 

Coney Diver. Photograph by Don Myer.

 

II. Guided forms of standing meditation and other postures of Vertical Time Yoga. Like the essence of all forms of meditation and contemplative practice, the postures of Vertical Time Yoga can be effective in restoring primordial alignment. As the photograph above might imply, the human body is capable of an almost infinite array of postures, each one effecting or manifesting our fundamental consciousness. The guided practices I'm sharing through VTY grew out of my own four-decade long involvement in teaching and practicing meditation as well as a journey of healing the chronic pain in my lower back.

Later in 2014 I will introduce and teach the Qigong of the Eight Trigrams of the I Ching, a seldom found form of qigong. In this form we can literally experience the energy, and healing power, of the I Ching trigrams within our own body.
 

 

Please download or stream this 13-minute guided standing practice by Bill.

 

 

 

 

Photograph by Don Myer, from Coney Island series.

 

III. PATTERN LANGUAGE: Exploring and applying the "contemporary emergences" of the I Ching. "Pattern language" refer to our type, the particular array of qualities we naturally express, as well at the unique pattern we make in conjunction with our environment. To study pattern language is not, ideally, a fixation on our personality, but a way of releasing our personality to be spontaneously present and naturally aligned with the world. Astrology, the Jungian influenced Myers-Briggs test, and the five Buddha family wisdoms of Tibetan Buddhism are all expressions of pattern language.

The Human Design system is a pattern language that helps us live within our own innate "authority," always a somatic one in which synchronization of body and mind is recognized. The Gene Keys map the archetypal foundation of the human experience, where each hexagram or gene key is linked to our own DNA and to the three-fold process of embracing the wound, releasing the gift and embodying the siddhi. This course will give students a working relationship to both of these pattern language systems.

 

Please download or stream this 13-minute talk by Bill on Pattern Language.

 

 

 

The pattern language of Human Design; the body graph of Bill Scheffel.



The Gene Keys pattern language; the work of Richard Rudd.

 

THE WHEEL OF VERTICAL TIME:

 

 

The Wheel of Vertical Time symbolizes the experience of alignment with vertical or eternal time within the relative or conditioned experience of daily life, the horizontal axis. The Wheel is the mandala in which all aspects of this class can be understood.

 

 

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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

 

 

Cost: $75/month
Register: by the 1st of each month through PayPal or by personal check.

 

The course will begin on March 3rd 2014 but new members can enter the class throughout the year - just contact Bill.
 

 

Each month will include: three web-pages, four audio talks, and a community discussion forum.

You may take a single month or the entire year.
 

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, more illustration.)

 

 

 

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.
 

 

Tiger and Dragon I Ching, by Rowena Patee Kryder.

 

 

Gene Keys by Richard Rudd.