Soul of Yoga, Nov. 2024, Encinitas, CA
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:
- Prana chant video
- The Warrior Series: Upwardly Mobile video and article on Yoga Journal website
- Tom Myers’ Deep Front Line dissection video
- Gil Hedley’s courses and video clips
- Freeing the Breath: Health, Relaxation, and Clarity Through Better Breathing with Leslie Kaminoff
- YouTube channels: free shorts from YogaAnatomy.net online courses and Leslie’s Breathing Project Q&A series. Got a yoga or anatomy question you’d like Leslie to address? Send it to questions@yogaanatomy.org.
- Jessica Wolf’s Art of Breathing
- Yoga Alliance’s Yoga Talks with Leslie Kaminoff on Regulation
- Jill Miller – “Hip Replacement Surgery” on J. Brown’s podcast
- The Man Who Lost His Body, documentary about proprioception
RECOMMENDED READING:
- ANATOMY:
- Yoga Anatomy, 3rd edition
- Yoga Journal article: Anatomy 101: Understanding Your Tailbone by Amy Matthews and Leslie Kaminoff PLUS: the missing illustration
- More Leslie Kaminoff content on Yoga Journal
- Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists by Thomas W. Myers
- Your Body, Your Yoga and Your Spine, Your Yoga: Developing stability and mobility for your spine by Bernie Clark
- HISTORY / BIOGRAPHY / PHILOSOPHY:
- Sri T. Krishnamacharya’s history of classical alignment in the Yoga Makaranda, part I (PDF) and Yoga Makaranda, part II (PDF)
- 100 Years of Beatitude – T. Krishnamacharya’s Centennary (low-resolution VHS transfer)
- Religiousness in Yoga: Lectures on Theory and Practice by T.K.V.Desikachar
- Claude Marechal’s article describing some of the teaching of Professor Krishnamacharya: Teachings
- Health, Healing, and Beyond: Yoga and the Living Tradition of T. Krishnamacharya by T.K.V. Desikachar and R.H. Cravens
- Yoga Yajnavalkya (PDF) or book, by A. G. Mohan
- Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham
- The “Yoga Sutra of Patanjali”: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books) by David Gordon White
- “Seizing the Whip: B. K. S. Iyengar and the Making of Modern Yoga (PDF)” by Eric John Shaw, California Institute of Integral Studies, Asian and Comparative Studies
- “Sacred Thread: A Comprehensive Yoga Timeline: 2000 Events that Shaped Yoga History” by Eric Shaw
- “The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West” by Michelle Goldberg
- Leslie’s original post on providing certificates.
- Yoga Alliance “Statement on Yoga Therapy”
- Leslie’s blog post from 2008: “I’m Not a Yoga Therapist Anymore“
- SCIENCE / PAIN / MEDICINE:
- YOGA PRACTICE:
- The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice by T.K.V. Desikachar
- Yoga for Wellness: Healing with the Timeless Teachings of Viniyoga by Gary Kraftsow
- Intelligent Yoga: Re-educating Mind and Body by Peter Blackaby
- Wild Thing Is Not Impossible (but it still might not be worth doing) by Amy Matthews
- Teaching Inclusive, Safe And Ethical Yoga – Part 1: Empowerment by Yonnie Fung
- Yoga for Bendy People: Optimizing the Benefits of Yoga for Hypermobility by Libby Hinsley
- Students of T.K.V. Desikachar:
Should We Keep Mula Bandha All The Time?
WHAT IS FLEXIBILITY, AND HOW MUCH DO WE REALLY NEED?
HONESTY IN YOGA CREDENTIALING
Some of my favorite anatomy illustrations by Lydia are available for sale at lydiamann.redbubble.com