by Marco Mandrino

Dears, I'll write about a very serious disease that in different percentages is afflicting all of us.
Deep down, none of us can honestly say to be immune to this contagious illness. I personally try to pay a lot of attention to limit its influence in my life and to my choices. I noticed that the disease decreases spontaneously and proportionally to the increase of my awareness. Yes, it subsides, but it's never completely eradicated: it's always there, latent and ready to take advantage of any moment of weakness to recover strength and momentum. Sometimes the same sickness is expressed in a reaction to something or somebody and thus we find a justification for it.

Our first International Yoga Teacher Training in Costa Rica has just finished. I would like to thank everybody who participated and gave us the honor of their dedicated commitment.

This for me has been an opportunity to meet very motivated people who in spite of the inevitable difficulties, were totally dedicated to reach a deep change. I'm grateful to everyone of them for what we shared along this path.

I don't know if this will change the World, but I'm pretty sure the change has to rise from within, and this experience taught us how to establish an authentic and deep relation with the others. Thank you.

Marco Mandrino

Before reading this article, just stop a moment to simply think, or better, to write, what the idea of the title means for you.

Does it mean anything? Do you think it's important? Does it give you any meaningful indication? If it doesn't tell you anything, if it doesn't shake your curiosity, if it doesn't wake in you any transport, well, you have already wasted too much of your time with this article and you can easily move to something else now.

Yoga during dark times

I hear people saying, repeating like mantras that this is a difficult moment of crisis and recession, everything is falling apart, there are no certainties.

Insecurity is widespread, fear for the future is what covers the world in these days. The legendary "economical recession" is the mother of all the misfortunes that never seem to end.

And then the tendency of becoming stiff, smaller, compromising more and more. It's not the right moment to take risky initiatives, it seems like it's not the right moment for anything.

Most of you will just ask "Who are these guys?". The few who know them will instead wonder why talking about them in the website of a Yoga school.

To answer the first question, The Avett Brothers are a band with 4 published albums, plus several eps. The music they play doesn't fit in a category, it's a well combined mix of country, roots rock, rock and many more.

This morning, in a café, the sport magazines weren't available so I took a newspaper just looking through the pictures, reading a few headlines.

Doing so, one headline popped up to my eyes: "Hunting ended in tragedy". A 12-year-old boy, was mistaken for a wild boar and shot by a group of hunters. It is evidently a tragedy and I'm very sorry for the child, and his parents in spite of everything.

But then, reading the article, I saw the words of some lady from some association claiming that the hunting needs more regulations so that the hunters can better practice their passion.

The constant human debate amidst longing for the divine and the savage instincts

When I think about you and me as fellow travellers in this "thing" that we call Earth , I envisage "Living Entities" on whom divergent qualities that we can describe as divine in one end and demonic in the other , are cohabiting in a same and whole Body-Mind-Being. Is because of this that our imagination has so wonderfully described the "Bad" and the "Good" , using tales , visions , images , etc. etc. and the accounts have been so effective because we are both and inside everyone of us both polarities coexist with no exclusion. I'm using the term "polarity" just for a simplified and descriptive understanding because in reality there's not polarity but only a One and a All and a Us embodying it all. In spite of it we feel divided , thorn , offended: we are "something" wanting to be something else , we are living a reality while constantly dreaming of a different one , we refuse what Is by persistently desiring something more...sometimes something less.

The curtain is drawn over the second edition of the Bliss Beat Festival.

The yard around Cascina Bellaria is silent again. The frame tent that hosted the Main Stage, the gazebos, bar, all gone. After so much celebration, Cascina has drifted back into silence.

But something remains, something in the air.