Conscious Evolution Revolution Gathering like minds and Raising the vibe
Related Articles
In my practice of yoga I have taken over 1000 yoga classes including hot yoga, flow classes, kundalini, and Iyengar.
My understanding of vinyasa is synchronizing breath and asana into a seamless process. While maintaining focus and awareness of myself (mind, body, spirit). With vinyasa flow as my initial yoga background I found my favorite teachers would construct flows that warmed you up from beginning to end, lead to a peak pose, and end with deep postures that I would have a much harder time achieving in my personal practice. My favorite teachers would intelligently sequence every pose together. My general dislike with the average flow class is how quickly they fumble through poses with little to no instruction. Sometimes this type of instruction leaves me sore and tweaked.
My favorite part of the traditional Iyengar system is the intelligent sophisticated cues that encourages me to slip deeper into the poses with more conscious awareness which creates more intelligence within the body. I also love how Iyengar yoga classes, especially yours, leave me feeling stretched out, open, and feeling better. Typically, in Iyengar classes, there is a focus on props or whatever is necessary to allow poses and sequences to be more accessible.
I also come from a Kundalini yoga and martial arts back ground. In both of these systems the physical practice is often explosive and repetitive which often creates a meditative state that one can get lost in while maintaining and expanding awareness. I definitely appreciate the power of this.
When I signed up for the vinyasa workshop at the Iyenar studio, I was not sure what an Iyengar teacher would do with a flow class structure. I thought it could be like a flow class with that Iyengar attention to detail. Possibly a slower flow that is more accessible with the intelligent sophistication of the style using the traditional and essential Iyengar poses and accessibility that leads up to a deep finale that would be challenging to obtain without the sequence
I found that the experience itself was interesting.
I found the workshop had very little breath cues or cues at all. To me it seemed the focus was on quickly jumping from one pose to another and allowing the student to figure it out along the way. Possibly to show suggestions of how one can move from one posture to the next but there was little guidance on how. I also found that since I am a regular student of yours a lot of the small flow sequences we practiced in the workshop were very similar as the flow sequencing that take place during a standard class.
The poses themselves were almost entirely described in sanskrit which was an issue for me. I could not stay focused on myself as much as I wanted as I often needed to check other students to see which pose I was going into next. I prefer when poses are suggested with sanskrit and english or possibly demonstrated simultaneously as to not take up extra time.
The class itself started off quick with quite a bit of hopping around between poses. I felt like I should have taken a yoga class to warm up for your workshop. I was not ready to be that explosive when the class began and I slightly tweaked my shoulder during the beginning which made me slow down and evaluate my practice a little closer. No worries, by the end of the class I was able to work out the slight tweak that was created.
