After 20 years of searching for the Holy Grail into the Spiritual World of Humankind, I arrived at the doors of a Church Hall in Notting Hill Gate.

It was an impressive spring day in 1996. Sometime later, the first Yoga students stepped into the Shiva Hall of the Innergy Yoga Centre for an asana class that would last about 3 hours.

From that day on,  Innergy has continued to grow with a relentless attention to the Essence  of the ancient and deeply nourishing discipline of Yoga. The integration of an inner world with an outer projection of it.  A more intimate connection with one’s body and its functions leading to a deeper understanding of one’s feelings and the world of one’s ideas.

It has been fascinating to be in touch with so many people’s lives and aspirations and be part of their growth into a more aware lifestyle. Yoga is so much about Relationship.    

Relating firstly to the essential milestone of ‘who we really are‘ to the endless facets, diamond like, of ‘who we think we are’.  

The physical connection with our body, through the practice of the yogic postures and the flow of our breath, is the very first step to the awareness of relating. It is a tangible experience that can lead us to deal with the outer world with more confidence and a healthier attitude.

In our daily activities, most of our difficulties are to be found in the way we relate to situations, people, misadventures, gifts, responsibilities: we react with unconscious patterns of behaviour rooted in past experiences. It is an ‘old story’ that most of us are very familiar with. Yoga supplies the organic system to undo these stories,  helping us to transcend the restrictions of the past and evolve into a more intimate way of Relating: intimacy with ourselves and, therefore, with others.

We are now in our 12th year of existence at the Innergy Yoga Centre.

It has been a time of pain and joy that has tested our intentions and shaped our mental and moral qualities.   How to remain faithful to our ideals in such a demanding  and confusing environment of greed, selfishness, superficiality, competition, commercial rivalry,  denigration and the inevitable consequences of popularity. The positive event of lateral expansion, so typical of our western  lifestyle, the search for quantity in expanding markets, has naturally created a painful confusion in the realm of fading quality. How to reach a credible balance between quality and quantity where the integrity of ideals can be maintained without the need for compromise? As it happens, this precise issue is at the core of Yoga: the integration of opposing forces.

As I stood in front of the Acorn Hall, that memorable day, I knew that I wanted to create a Centre that would unify the need for popularity with the spiritual drive for evolution without the necessity for any compromise. Our activity at the Centre would encompass only Yoga in its most classical expression: Hatha, Pranayama, Meditation, Kirtan Chanting, Raja and Jnana and, finally, the fundamental Karma Yoga. It would be a home for the heart.

In a very short time the Centre developed the cheerful energy of youth and health and the carefree attitude of childhood. We were all deeply at work on ourselves  whether on the floors during asana classes or sitting on cushions during Raja Yoga debates.

Meanwhile, in the world around us,  Yoga was rapidly expanding in different styles and forms becoming, therefore, increasingly popular. Years went by and, as the numbers of Centres grew scattered around the city, we soon realized that childhood had slowly faded away together with our dancing nights at ‘Barefoot Boogie’ in Highgate’s Jackson Lane. 

Yoga had become business, BIG business.

Jobs were created, fitness clubs swallowed the physicality of yoga and the greed for achievement and commercial success grew inexorably.

Now, after 12 years of inner growth, unbothered by trends and fashions, Innergy is tuning in to the karmic energy of our present global environment which is so loudly screaming for Change. Enriched with the wealth and confidence gathered during these invaluable past experiences, we look for a new platform on which to expand our vision and reach out for those who, like us, feel the urgency for change and who are willing to come together in the Spirit of Yoga.

                                                          ((((((((((omshanti))))))

                                                                    Faustomaria