I welcome you to become familiar with this model called “The Pentagram” or “The Pentagon”.

This model helps to illustrate 5 NATURAL COMPETENCIES of EVERY HUMAN BEING that helps lead to a deeper trust in the HEART and contact to WHOLENESS.

The 5 NATURAL COMPETENCIES are:

Body - Breath - Heart - Natural Creativity - Consciousness

This pentagram - or 5 pointed star - can be a nice support for our yogaSOMATICS practice, both as practitioners and as teachers. It can help give a good trust into the natural human competencies that lay within us all, that can be expressed as such through our unique qualities. Perhaps it can help us to find a good grounded trust in our own natural humanness, as well as observe the humanness in all of our students.

In this YSTT Module 4, we will be giving good attention to a paradigm shift based in acceptance, kind neutral observation, “being with our students rather than fixting symptoms”, awakening empathy within, seeing/feeling life as the moving, fluid energy that it is. The pentagram model gives a gentle structure around exploring these themes.

This model was brought forth by Jen Bertelsen, founder of the Vaekstcenter in Nørre Snede, DK and Danish spiritual teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen lineage.

Please listen to the guided audio (12 minutes) while sitting quietly a few times this week. You can also download it to save for later.

Please reflect upon the practice and answer the following questions. Return your response in a doc. or PDF format by email to ateekayoga@gmail.com by 17 February 2025

  • Of the 5 Natural Competencies, which feels like your most natural way inwards towards yourself?

  • Was there anything that made a certain impression on you or was “new” for you when you listened to the meditation?

  • Share a few words about your relationship to EMPATHY. What does empathy mean for you?

  • How does it feel to “leave the world to its own devices” (this basically means just letting things “be as they are” ) for a few moments? Can you recognise moments in your life when you are able to “let things be”? In the moments that you can't/don´t . . . how does that show up in your body and emotion sensation. (Be gentle and soft with your answer, we are not trying to condemn anything . . . just to observe patterns that occur from time to time)

  • If you have a student in your class who you would describe as “restless” or “not-paying attention”, how does that feel in your body? What emotion does that illicit in you? Of course the answer can be different from scenario to scenario, but just in general . . . how does that affect you?



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