Soul of Yoga, 2016

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Flickr set available. You’re welcome to use these as long as you credit them “Photo: Lydia Mann” and tag them “lkaminoff” (on social media sites).

QUOTES:
- T.K.V. Desikachar: “Yoga is relationship.” Also, “The object of meditation for the teacher is the student.”
- T.K.V. Desikachar: “Yoga therapy is 90% waste removal.” Also, “If you take care of the exhale, the inhale will take care of itself.”
- T.K.V. Desikachar: “The recognition of confusion is a form of clarity.”
- T.K.V. Desikachar: “The success of Yoga does not lie in the ability to perfom postures but in how it positively changes the way we live our life and our relationships.”
- T.K.V. Desikachar: The practice of Yoga must reduce both physical and mental impurities. It must develop our capacity for self-examination and help us to understand that, in the final analysis, we are not the masters of everything.
  YS 2:1 tapah svadhyaya ishvara-pranidhana kriya-yogah
- Leslie Kaminoff: “Breath is the great teacher of tapas, svadhyaya, isvarapranidhana. Tapas refers to that which you can change; isvarapranidhana relates to the stuff you can’t change; svadhyaya refers to self-reflection, the introspection that allows us to distinguish one from the other.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “Yoga is not about doing the asanas; it’s about undoing what’s in the way of the asanas.”
- Leslie Kaminoff/Amy Matthews mash-up: “It is far more powerful to engage someone in an inquiry than issue a series of instructions and corrections.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “Breathing is how we mobilize the spaces in our body. Posture is how we mobilize our bodies in space.”
- There is still more going on in your system that is going right, as long as you are drawing breath.
- Leslie Kaminoff: “There are correct ways to do techniques. There is no one right way to breathe.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “What we are after in our Yoga practice is freedom. One of the first things to get free from is the idea that there is a *right* way.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “The benefit of learning a new breathing technique is unlearning your old way of breathing.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “If you can make even a tiny bit of change in something you do a lot of, that’s a lot of change.” Also, “People get the greatest benefit from the simplest things we teach.”
- 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.”
WATCH/LISTEN:
RECOMMENDED READING:
- ANATOMY:
  - Yoga Anatomy, 2nd edition
  - Yoga Journal article: Anatomy 101: Understanding Your Tailbone by Amy Matthews and Leslie Kaminoff
  - More Leslie Kaminoff content on Yoga Journal
  - Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists by Thomas W. Myers
  - Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery – 2nd Edition (Revised) by Eric Franklin
- HISTORY / BIOGRAPHY / PHILOSOPHY:
- SCIENCE / PAIN / MEDICINE:
- YOGA PRACTICE:

Leslie performing kapalabhati on a bathroom scale

Leslie Kaminoff performs kapalabhati on a bathroom scale, illustrating Sir Isaac Newton’s law: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

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