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:
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- Leslie Kaminoff: “Yoga as a therapeutic intervention recognizes that everything that is needed for healing is already present. Prana may need to be uncovered, but nothing needs to be added.”
- 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.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “The energy that gets air into your lungs isn’t in your body, it’s outside, it’s atmospheric pressure. You make the space and the universe fills it with air.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “Healing is different from fixing or curing. Sometimes healing involves changing your relationship to what has gone wrong.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “Our job is not to focus on what has gone wrong in a person’s body. Our job as yoga educators is to focus on what is still going right.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “There are correct ways to do techniques. There is no one right way to breathe.”
- T.K.V. Desikachar: “Your yoga practice must always be a little more clever than your habits (tapas).”
- 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: “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.”
- Amy Matthews, paraphrasing Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen: “Alignment is a clear pathway of weight passing through balanced joint spaces.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “Asanas don’t have alignment, people have alignment.”
- Amy Matthews: “An asana is a container for an experience.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “Variation is normal. Your body is normal for you.”
- T.K.V. Desikachar: “The recognition of confusion is a form of clarity.”
- Leslie Kaminoff: “If you can make even a tiny bit of change in something you do a lot of (breathing, thinking, walking), that’s a lot of change.”
- Amy Matthews, paraphrasing Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen: “Healthy movement is well-distributed: a little bit of movement from a lot of places.”
- Conversely, Leslie Kaminoff says “Unhealthy movement is too much movement coming from too few places repeated too many times (repetitive stress).”
- 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: “If you take care of the exhale the inhale will take care of itself.”
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- WATCH/LISTEN:
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- 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 YouTube channel
- Freeing the Breath: Health, Relaxation, and Clarity Through Better Breathing with Leslie Kaminoff (audio CD from Amazon)
- Yoga Anatomy YouTube channel
- Jessica Wolf’s Art of Breathing DVD (from Amazon)
- Yoga Alliance’s Yoga Talks with Leslie Kaminoff on Regulation
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- RECOMMENDED READING:
- ANATOMY:
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- 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
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- HISTORY / BIOGRAPHY / PHILOSOPHY:
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- Sri T. Krishnamacharya’s history of classical alignment in the Yoga Makaranda, part I (PDF) and Yoga Makaranda, part II (PDF)
- 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
- Leslie’s original post on providing certificates.
DOWNLOAD YOUR OWN CERTIFICATE HERE - Yoga Alliance “Statement on Yoga Therapy”
- Leslie’s blog post from 2008: “I’m Not a Yoga Therapist Anymore“
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- SCIENCE / PAIN / MEDICINE:
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- John E. Sarno’s Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection
Documentary film: “All the Rage” - Spine research on Chirogeek.com
- Paul Grilley’s Bone Photo Gallery
- Wiki entry on Polyvagal Theory and on Dr. Stephen Porges
- About Sue Hitzmann’s MELT Method; MELT Method practitioners in the region
- Books by Lynda Huey:
- Gertie balls for self-massage
- About craniosacral therapy somato emotional release therapy
- John E. Sarno’s Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection
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- YOGA PRACTICE:
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- 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
- Soleus exercise videos: from standing; against a wall; from down-dog
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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.”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.
Soma / Psyche – Introduction to a Talk by Frances Sommer Anderson
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
If you’re ready for a learning experience that will make you a more sought-after teacher, re-charge your personal practice, and change the way you think about yoga, breath, and movement, join our online community.
- ANATOMY: