Pure Yoga, Hong Kong, October 2025

Workshop handout (PDF)
Signed certificate (Fillable PDF)
Student Survey
Flickr set:

You are welcome to use any of these photos professionally or personally, as long as you credit “Lydia Mann” (IG and Facebook: @lydiamann)

QUOTES:
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “Breathing is shape change. Desikachar taught that spinal movement is shape change in your cavities — you cannot breathe without those movements.”
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “Yoga isn’t about doing asana, it’s about undoing what’s in the way of the asana.”
  • T.K.V. Desikachar: “Yoga therapy is 90% waste removal.”
  • T.K.V. Desikachar: “If you take care of the exhale, the inhale will take care of itself.”
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “An inquiry has no wrong answer because it has everything to do with you at a particular moment.”
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “Be conscious of universalizing your experience because it always leaves someone out. In other words, use “I” statements rather than “You” or “We” statements.
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “It is far more powerful to engage someone in an inquiry than issue a series of instructions and corrections.”
  • Leslie Kaminoff on teaching bandhas: “If you’re going to ask someone to engage a muscle, you better make sure they can release it first or it’s just tension on top of tension.”
  • T.K.V. Desikachar: “Sthira is alertness without tension; Sukha is relaxation without dullness.”
  • T.K.V. Desikachar: “Without the breath it’s not Yoga” i.e., if what you are doing is so intense that you’ve lost focus on or access to your breath, it is no longer yoga.
  • Amy Matthews, paraphrasing Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen: “Healthy movement is well-distributed: a little bit of movement from a lot of places.” This was further clarified by Leslie: “a little bit of movement, coming from a lot of places, repeated a reasonable number of times.”
  • Conversely, Leslie Kaminoff says “Unhealthy movement is too much movement coming from too few places repeated too many times (repetitive stress).”
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “Breath is how we mobilize the spaces in our body. Posture is how we stabilize our bodies in space.”
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “In yoga we’re not looking to add anything that is missing from the system. It’s to focus on what is still going right in the body and help unblock what is in the way.”
  • T.K.V. Desikachar: “Sometimes you need to give people 90% of what they want so you can slip in 10% of what they need.”
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “If you can make even a tiny bit of positive change in something you do a lot of (like walking or breathing), it leads to a lot of positive change.”
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “Yoga isn’t about doing asana, it’s about undoing what’s in the way of the asana.”
WATCH/LISTEN:
RECOMMENDED READING:
KNMLabs.com next lab August 9-15, 2026
Should We Keep Mula Bandha All The Time?
Should We Keep Mula Bandha All The Time?
Have you heard advice about maintaining mula bandha all the time? Have you heard advice about maintaining any body position all the time? Join Leslie and students as they examine well-meaning advice, habits, and practices you can follow to honor the balance into your system.

WHAT IS FLEXIBILITY, AND HOW MUCH DO WE REALLY NEED?
Do you do yoga to live a better life, or do you live to do better yoga? Your answer may surprise you, and it will help you learn where to set healthy limits in your own practice.

HONESTY IN YOGA CREDENTIALING
RECOMMENDED READING, continued:
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