Work and Play in Colorado

I’m at the 16th annual Yoga Journal Conference at the beautiful YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado.

As I’ve had to explain many times to curious attendees, I’m not here as a presenter.  This has become an annual vacation for me, and a chance to re-connect with old friends, and to make new ones.This year, it is also a working vacation…

On Monday night, I turned in the FINAL corrections to the page proofs for the second edition of “Yoga Anatomy.”  As I was reading through the book from beginning to end, I was struck by how proud I am of this greatly improved version.  My co-author Amy Matthews has done a superb job of revamping the asana information, writing two beautiful new chapters about bones and muscles, and making the book far more user-friendly and accessible.  Our publishers and editors at Human Kinetics have devoted a good amount of energy keeping the project on track and on schedule for an October 31 release date.  It makes such a difference having a great editorial team to work with.

Yesterday, I met with my yogaanatomy.net producing partner Kelsey Kaufman.  She has done a superb job of cataloging, time-coding, organizing and distilling 80 hours of video that Amy and I generated last month during our Summer Immersions into a 20-hour anatomy fundamentals online course for 200-hour training programs.  We are all very excited about this, and many programs are already eagerly awaiting the release of the course next month.  What a joy it is to work with Kelsey.  I can’t imagine a better partner to have in this amazing project of bringing Yoga Anatomy to a worldwide audience.

Among the new friends I’ve met, I’m happy to count Baron Baptiste and Paige Eleneson.  Truth be told, Baron and I have crossed paths several times before, at Unity in Yoga Conferences, and at Desikachar programs, but I’m enjoying re-connecting with him and the memories from those events.  I’m deeply impressed by the commitment and enthusiasm of the teachers and students who have shown up for his Baptiste Power Flow Immersion. One of those teachers is Paige, who is the founder of the Africa Yoga Project. I was so moved by the work she’s done in Kenya, that I’ve asked Kelsey to figure out how we can donate our online course to the amazing group of African yoga teachers that she’s been training in Kenya.  I hope her much-needed work will spread to other parts of Africa and the world.  I encourage you to check out her site, and donate to her amazing project.