The Pancavaktra Yoga Academy is based within the `Dovelands' Yoga School. `Dovelands' was established in 1992 by Mr. Mike Gould and under his tutelage has been running Hatha Yoga Classes within the East Midlands for thirteen years. Mr. Gould has actually been teaching Yoga for thirty years

Pancavaktra refers to the `Five Faces of Shiva', the principle of multifaceted consciousness. Thus the Academy seeks to enable its students to see `yoga in the round', to develop their awareness of a number of different forms of Yoga, such as Jappa, Karma, Kundalini and Jnana in relation to basic Hatha practises. Very importantly, the Pancavaktra Yoga Academy seeks to ensure that Indian Classical Yoga is understood in relation to its actual historical developments in India, how it interfaces historically and in the present with Buddhist Tantric Yoga. Also, it aims to enable students to understand the philosophical essentials of Hindu Yoga, and how these can be dramatically different to Western principles of Philosophy of Mind and Western Relativist Ethics.

So the historical context of the Pancavaktra Academy is concerned with re-establishing and re-enforcing, in the midst of the present Relativist mind set of Western Culture, the Classical principles of Indian Yoga as they were reformed in the schools of Classical Yoga 300BCE-3000E, concentrating particularly on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad-Gita of this period. In addition it is a historical context in relation to the re-defining of the Classical Tradition by the Sankaryacarya in the 800'sCE when the relativization of the Moral Precepts of Tantric Buddhism began to erode the Classical Indian system of Yoga. Thus we see in Modern Western Culture a similar erosion of Classical Ethical principles as a consequence of our Western Scientific Relativism, and the Pancavaktra Yoga Academy seeks to reassert, like the Sankaraycarya did in the 800'sCE, the need to practise Yoga through Moral Certainties, rather than in a Western Relativist state of consciousness.

However, new developments in Western Science indicate that a Paradigm Shift is now evolving in which Hindu Metaphysical concepts such as the classical principle of the immutable and unchanging Eternal Ether of the Upanishads, are now being seriously considered as valid scientific observations about the nature of Reality.

Thus in terms of future history, the Panacavaktra Yoga Academy is presenting a Teacher Training Course that is very much at the forefront of new developments in Western Empirical Science. We can therefore offer our students a TTC that is going to be vitally relevant in the context of the future of Western Culture and how it is moving closer now into accepting the core Classical principles of yoga as the basis of Western Mind Philosophy. This is a radical shift in the West out of a Relativist framework for Ethics, Science and Culture, back into our own Traditional Classical Greek Platonic foundations for Thought and Morals. So in the light of current changes in Western scientific thinking we feel that the Pancavaktra TTC is going to be crucial for the training of new yoga teachers and in developing their understanding not only of yoga's historical context, but also in how it is fast becoming the Metaphysical and Ethical model for developments now in Western Philosophies and Sciences.

Contacts: Tel: 01889 566980
email: dovelandsyoga@btinternet.com
Web Site: www.dovelands.co.uk