Soul of Yoga, Nov. 2024, Encinitas, CA

Workshop handout (PDF)
Signed certificate (Fillable PDF)
Student Survey
QUOTES:
  • NOT an endorsement, but worth knowing that there are yoga people making these stupid claims.
  • 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.”
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “There is no such thing as an asana without the person making the shape. You can’t abstract asana outside of the person doing it.”
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “Breath (and thus yoga) 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: “Proprioception is the ability to sense – within your connective tissues – your position, location, orientation, and movement.”
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “We exist in compressive forces of nature causing our bodies to spiral.”
  • T.K.V. Desikachar: “The recognition of confusion is a form of clarity.”
  • Leslie Kaminoff: “Pain means your system is working, not broken. It’s giving you a message you can no longer afford to ignore.”
  • 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.”
  • 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: “Breathing is the shape change of the abdominal and thoracic cavities.”
  • T.K.V. Desikachar: “The form of an asana must serve its function.”
  • BoS : CoG : RoM – Leslie’s movement philosophy: start with BoS before moving on to changing your center of gravity (core in motion) before RoM (full expression of the pose). If at any point you experience difficulty, go back to the prior step:
    • BoS: Base of Support
    • CoG: Center of Gravity
    • RoM: Range of Motion
  • Roll down/roll up cues: Knees unlocked, weight centered in the feet, shoulder girdle relaxed, with a sensory goal of lengthening from head to floor.
  • 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).”
  • T.K.V. Desikachar: “Your yoga must always be a little more clever than your habits.”
WATCH/LISTEN:
RECOMMENDED READING:
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

Some of my favorite anatomy illustrations by Lydia are available for sale at lydiamann.redbubble.com

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