Thursday
February 16, 2023
Winter · 1 entry
“Where’s the yoga here?” is a question folks often begin to ask themselves when they learn more about how yoga actually works.
Yoga as a practice is designed to cultivate deep states of peace and well-being. A state where we feel unafflicted by life’s highs and lows… where we see things as they really are.
What I teach is the Yoga of Synthesis— a framework for personal observation. This requires bearing witness to ourselves.
The five principal of yoga are:
1) Exercise
2) Breathing
3) Growth mindset
4) Diet (food *and* information)
5) Relaxation.
It can be really confronting to realize that we’re underrested and overtrained— or any other combo that highlights personal deficits that interfere with our attachment to gross shapes.
It’s not “do more with less” or “no pain, no gain.”
Its more like “How can I eradicate violence in my life.” And “how can I be a better friend?”
But that stuff, you can’t really see it in pictures. You can’t tell off the bat if you’re inside of a joy factory or a misery machine. Yoga rooms should be Joy Factories— most folks do a good job of creating misery machines all by themselves.
As a teacher of yoga, my job is to teach people to see more clearly by offering them instruction around what we’re really looking at— and, generally it’s not the macro shape— but the subtle forms.
It’s hard to get good data!
The simple truth of the matter is that it’s often in letting go of the big excitements and the construction of the sorrow of defeat. It’s letting go of the highs and lows.
It can be tempting to sell yoga off the backs of pretty people doing pretty poses, or promising transcendental experiences.
It’s all far less exotic than that…
Believe it or not, the Yoga of Synthesis is happening all day long— our work on the mat each morning helps in that process. If you’d like some help finding the yoga in your yoga practice, feel free to reach out.
Yoga as a practice is designed to cultivate deep states of peace and well-being. A state where we feel unafflicted by life’s highs and lows… where we see things as they really are.
What I teach is the Yoga of Synthesis— a framework for personal observation. This requires bearing witness to ourselves.
The five principal of yoga are:
1) Exercise
2) Breathing
3) Growth mindset
4) Diet (food *and* information)
5) Relaxation.
It can be really confronting to realize that we’re underrested and overtrained— or any other combo that highlights personal deficits that interfere with our attachment to gross shapes.
It’s not “do more with less” or “no pain, no gain.”
Its more like “How can I eradicate violence in my life.” And “how can I be a better friend?”
But that stuff, you can’t really see it in pictures. You can’t tell off the bat if you’re inside of a joy factory or a misery machine. Yoga rooms should be Joy Factories— most folks do a good job of creating misery machines all by themselves.
As a teacher of yoga, my job is to teach people to see more clearly by offering them instruction around what we’re really looking at— and, generally it’s not the macro shape— but the subtle forms.
It’s hard to get good data!
The simple truth of the matter is that it’s often in letting go of the big excitements and the construction of the sorrow of defeat. It’s letting go of the highs and lows.
It can be tempting to sell yoga off the backs of pretty people doing pretty poses, or promising transcendental experiences.
It’s all far less exotic than that…
Believe it or not, the Yoga of Synthesis is happening all day long— our work on the mat each morning helps in that process. If you’d like some help finding the yoga in your yoga practice, feel free to reach out.