Introducing TRYoga Insights, a brief blog to aid your personal yoga practice. The beauty of yoga over other exercise systems is that it is essentially based on a philosophy of practice that emphasizes quality and experience over quantity and doing. I think it would be useful for the classes if I tried to discuss the philosophy of practice and give you food for thought on a weekly basis.

 

July 28, 2010

 We have been talking about having a creative yoga practice in the context of a traditional foundation. Creativity: "to bring into existence through imaginative skill".

  Ways to make your yoga practice more creative:

1. Start a short  practice at home. Example: A salutation. Triangle. Seated forward bend. Legs up the wall. Follow it up in a few days and change the poses.
2. Try a pose for two minutes or longer. Change your posture in subtle ways. Bend different or try a lighter or stronger approach.  Move around instead of being still. Be inquisitive, explore it. Use an intention of there is no right and no wrong.
3. Close your eyes and feel the posture more. When you awaken your internal sense of feeling you can “get into it more”.
4. Listen to jazz or music that moves you while you practice.
5. Breathe!!!

Next week we start Chapter 2 of Yoga Beyond Belief, " The Many Yogas"

 

July 22, 2010

Chapter 1 “Standing on the Shoulders of the Past”.  Ganga is very keen on keeping yoga and asana practice a creative process. He questions dogmatic authoritarianism: yogi’s have always done it this way,  for thousands of years, and because of that, it is the only way and the best way. Besides, knowledge is not absolute; there should always be room for growth. Nevertheless, traditional approaches are a great foundation and they especially give us the eastern taste of culture and history. However, history, no matter how closely followed is still an interpretation.  For our yoga practice to be alive we must go beyond the words and descriptions into our individual experience and then apply that experience forward at the next practice. In this way, your practice, (not some former master’s practice) changes and evolves and takes on a beauty and grace of its own.

Next week: Ways to make your yoga practice more creative.

July 13, 2010

Ganga started yoga studios in southern California in the ‘60’s. He originally trained in India in traditional yoga schools where he was given the name Ganga after the large, sacred Ganges river.  Over time he became disillusioned with approaches that relied too heavily upon dogma and authority and eventually  broke ties with the established yogic hierarchies and began to elucidate a “free, open and contemporary approach to yoga”. One of Ganga’s unique characteristics is that instead of telling you how to do yoga his way, “Ganga shows you how to do yoga your own way. It is based on working principles of careful inquiry, experimentation, and observation.” He and is wife Tracey continue to train yoga students and teachers at their mountain retreat in Santa Barbara.

Next week: Chapter 1 "Standing on the Shoulders of the Past"