SAIIER 2018:Pitanga Cultural Centre
 Laboratory of Evolution – Centre of Human Unity |
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 Sanskrit Research Institute |
| Pitanga Cultural Centre | ||
Pitanga Cultural Centre dedicates its service to the development and enhancement of physical education and cultural activities in the light of Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga.
Pitanga offers a support for community members and registered guests of Auroville to explore and work with their bodies through physical education offering an extensive program of regular yoga, dance, body work, martial arts classes, and health treatments. Pitanga also hosts cultural programs of exhibitions films and concerts that helps to develop other aspects of the being. Pitanga offers a free service to adults and Children, 6 days a week, that helps people to unfold to their fullest potential especially in terms of their bodies.
Beauty, harmony and attention to detail are values that are fostered in the atmosphere of the centre.
Activities of the year:
Pitanga Cultural Centre offers a rich range of on-going activities; the following table shows our regular classes and health activities during this past year:
Highlights of the year:
- Our Iyengar teachers, Tatiana and Angela, were able to attend in-depth training at the Iyengar institute in Pune with specific emphasis on Pranayama. They both greatly benefited from this exposure and were then able to integrate the teachings into their classes and Tatiana offered a number of themed workshop afterwards where students could deepen their practice and an enlarged pranayama class.
- We saw an increase in Yoga classes this year as compared with last year.
- In the summer holidays of 2017, we finished extensive improvements to the infrastructure of Pitanga which included Store room, paving of walk way, new shelving and sliding door systems in the bathroom and we have repaired two times Aquadine water system. We also termite proofed the entire building.
We keep track of the numbers of Auroville community members and registered guests who availed of the services at Pitanga. We estimate at peak times we have 500 visits per week of people attending activities.
The opportunities given to our workers to use the summer quieter months to enrich their personal development helped create an enabling environment in Pitanga that increased the confidence levels of our team and helped foster creativity and accountability. We will continue to keep their development as on of our priorities.
Conclusion:
We are grateful to be part of the wider SAIIER body and to offer our service as a thread in the web of Auroville’s unending education. We will endeavor to give the best service possible for the coming year with joy and dedication as an offering to help community members to grow in awareness and development in all aspects of their being.
- “Perfection is the true aim of all culture, the spiritual and psychic, the mental, the vital – and it must be the aim of our physical culture also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use.”
Sri Aurobindo
Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, p.521
