• QUOTES:
  • • Leslie Kaminoff: “There are correct ways to do techniques. There is no one right way to breathe.”
    • 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.”
    • T.K.V. Desikachar: “Your yoga practice must always be a little more clever than your habits (tapas).”
    • Leslie Kaminoff: “The benefit of learning a new breathing technique is unlearning your old way of breathing.”
    • Amy Matthews, paraphrasing Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen: “Alignment is a clear pathway of weight passing through balanced joint spaces.”
    • 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).”
    • T.K.V. Desikachar: “The recognition of confusion is a form of clarity.”
    • 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: “If you can make even a tiny bit of change in something you do a lot of, that’s a lot of change.”
    • 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.”
    • Amy Matthews: “An asana is a container for an experience.”
    • T.K.V. Desikachar: “Without the breath it’s not Yoga.”
    • T.K.V. Desikachar: “The form of the practice should serve the function.”
    • Leslie Kaminoff paraphrasing T.K.V. Desikachar: “Yoga is in the movement from a starting point to a goal that orients us in a certain direction. We may discover that the original goal is not well-suited to us, and we shift direction. This too is Yoga.”
    • Leslie Kaminoff: “Yoga is not about doing the asanas; it’s about undoing what’s in the way of the asanas.”
    • T.K.V. Desikachar: “The success of Yoga does not lie in the ability to perform postures but in how it positively changes the way we live our life and our relationships.”
    • T.K.V. Desikachar: “Yoga is relationship.”
    • 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:
  • • 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

• 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

• HISTORY / BIOGRAPHY / PHILOSOPHY:
  • • 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: weekend workshop (14 hours) or Monday’s immersion (5.5 hours)
    • Yoga Alliance “Statement on Yoga Therapy”
    • Leslie’s blog post from 2008: “I’m Not a Yoga Therapist Anymore“
    • Benjamin Lorr’s Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga

• SCIENCE / PAIN / MEDICINE:
  • • John E. Sarno’s Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection
    • Spine research on Chirogeek.com
    • Paul Grilley’s Bone Photo Gallery

• 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
    • Your Body, Your Yoga: Learn Alignment Cues That Are Skillful, Safe, and Best Suited To You by Bernie Clark
    • Wobble cushion

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