Ashtanga Yoga Montreal, September 2022

QUOTES
      • T.K.V. Desikachar: “Without the breath it’s not Yoga.”
      • T.K.V. Desikachar: “Your yoga practice must always be a little more clever than your habits (tapas).”
      • T.K.V. Desikachar: “The recognition of confusion is a form of clarity.”
      • Leslie Kaminoff: “The benefit of learning a new breathing technique is unlearning your old way of breathing.”
      • T.K.V. Desikachar: “If you take care of the exhale, the inhale will take care of itself.”
      • Leslie Kaminoff: “Yoga is not about doing the asanas; it’s about undoing what’s in the way of the asanas.”
      • Leslie Kaminoff: “Asanas don’t have alignment, people have alignment. Asana is something people do, it does not exist outside of an individual’s body.”
      • Amy Matthews: “An asana is a container for an experience.”
      • From Leslie’s work with Amy Matthews, which references her work with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen: “Alignment is a clear pathway of weight passing through balanced joint spaces.”
      • Leslie Kaminoff: “Figuring out (swadhaya) what is negotiable (tapas) and what is not (ishvara pranidhana) – based on your anatomy – is the basis of Yoga practice.”
      • 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.”
      • Leslie Kaminoff: “If you can make even a tiny bit of positive change in something you do a lot of (breathing, walking), that’s a lot of positive change.”
WATCH/LISTEN:
RECOMMENDED READING:


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