Chronic pain is an all too familiar challenge for many individuals, impacting their daily lives and overall well-being. Whether it's persistent back or neck pain, tight hamstrings, sore knees, or inflexible hips, these ailments can create significant barriers both on and off the mat. But what causes this pain, and how can we find sustainable relief?

Statistics indicate that chronic pain costs the United States an astounding $650 billion annually. As a neuromuscular therapist with over 30 years of experience, I have witnessed firsthand that a staggering 80% of pain is linked to imbalanced muscles, often exacerbated by stress. This form of pain—known as musculoskeletal pain—can be debilitating, but there's hope. Yoga, focusing on balance and stress alleviation, has emerged as a powerful ally in the journey toward chronic pain relief.

Unfortunately, many individuals find that traditional Western medicine provides limited solutions for pain management. The usual approach involves prescribing painkillers, muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatories, or anxiety medications. While these may offer temporary relief, they typically only mask the symptoms rather than addressing the underlying causes of pain.

In most cases, pain arises from imbalances within the musculoskeletal system. Often, our discomfort results from misalignment or poor posture, factors that might not be immediately obvious. Even those who consider themselves to have good posture may have subtle misalignments that the untrained eye can easily overlook.

Recognizing and understanding these common misalignments is vital for crafting a personalized approach to yoga that enhances posture and fosters muscle balance. By doing so, practitioners can choose specific yoga poses that alleviate discomfort and prevent further complications. Tailoring a yoga practice to individual needs empowers practitioners to reduce pain and boost their overall vitality.

Embracing a comprehensive approach, we elevate overall well-being beyond mere symptom relief. The structured yet flexible nature of these classes invites participants to discover the powerful synergy between body, mind, and spirit. As students deepen their awareness of their bodies, they learn to listen to their unique needs, transforming their yoga practice into a profound source of healing.

If you're grappling with chronic musculoskeletal pain, consider integrating my suggestions into your routine. This holistic practice targets the symptoms and addresses the root causes of discomfort, helping you achieve a greater sense of balance. With dedication and the proper guidance, you can reclaim your movement, diminish pain, and enhance your quality of life—both on and off the mat.

My "Yoga for Pain Relief" classes adopt a holistic perspective on pain management. Together, we explore yoga's remarkable benefits for neuromuscular issues and overall health through targeted asanas (stretches), pranayama (breathing exercises), and meditation. These ancient practices are being rediscovered in modern times, backed by scientific research that reveals their countless advantages.

In my classes, I take my participants on a journey to discover:

• the miraculous mechanics of the musculoskeletal system

• the actual cause of most aches and pains

• how to reduce pain and achieve better results from yoga practice

• how to select the correct asanas to balance muscles and relieve specific pain

• how to quickly reduce or eliminate stress and anxiety

• how to integrate yoga into everyday life

I have trained thousands of people in my workshops, including MDs, physical therapists, chiropractors, massage therapists, and laypeople. They have all learned how easy it is to reduce or eliminate pain and how to achieve a greater sense of well-being when following my protocols. 

Come join me on Zoom on January 11, 2025, as YTA hosts my signature class, “Yoga for Pain Relief.” Nagging injuries don't fix themselves, and pain medications only temporarily relieve symptoms. Take control of your health and integrate my ideas into your everyday life. You will soon find out how good your body can feel!

For more information visit LeeAlbert.com.

Join Lee on January 11 for Yoga for Pain Relief with the YTA!

In an interview for Yoga Journal conducted by Seane Corn (guest editor), Nikki Myers discusses her journey and how yoga fit into her addiction recovery.

Nikki Myers: It has been a big journey to reintegrate all parts of myself—to accept without judgment all the various experiences that make up my whole—and come to radical self-acceptance. I’m a drug addict. I’m an alcoholic. I’m a codependent. I’m the survivor of both childhood and adult sexual trauma. I’m a love addict. I’m a recovering compulsive spender. I’m a yoga therapist. I’m a somatic experiencing practitioner. I’m the founder of Y12SR. I am the mother of two living children and one deceased child. I’m the grandmother of five. All of this is true, and I say that with gratitude and grace. I’ve discovered that if I exalt one part of myself and diminish another, I create a separation that becomes a war inside me, and that’s the antithesis of yoga. Yoga is union, integration, wholeness. Until I accepted all these experiences, I was unable to achieve wholeness.

SC: How did you find yoga?

NM: Initially, in 1987, I found a 12-step program for my addiction recovery. During my first eight years in the program, I finished my undergraduate degree, and then I completed my MBA. I went on to work for a corporation in IT [information technology]. In 1994, on a business trip to Germany, I was served orange sherbet with champagne. I made a bad decision to drink the champagne. Back in my hotel room, I ended up drinking from the minibar like Denzel Washington at the end of Flight. I got up the next day and did what I needed to for work, but within a week I found my way to Amsterdam. I had been clean for eight years, but even in a foreign country I knew exactly who to become, what to do, where to go, and how to talk to get my drug of choice: crack cocaine.

I had little experience with yoga at the time. After Amsterdam, I got back into a 12-step program in Boston. It was then that a work acquaintance reintroduced me to yoga. At first, I practiced Bikram and then Ashtanga. My Ashtanga teacher taught yoga in an urban school, and when she went to India each year, I would sub for her. The school administrators would tell me, “When you leave, we have a two-hour window when we can do our jobs because the kids have a sense of focus.” I had personally experienced a calm from yoga practice; however, I got curious about how yoga made kids respond this way. I studied yoga philosophy with book recommendations from others, and started seeing all the similarities between yoga and the 12-step program. I made a decision to let go of the 12-step program, and thought a daily Ashtanga yoga practice would be my way of dealing with my addiction issues. I stayed clean for four years. Then I relapsed again in 2000.

SC: What put you on a path toward sustainable recovery?

NM: I realized I could not put the 12-step program, which gave me a cognitive base for recovery, in a separate box from yoga, which gave me somatic tools. I independently studied neuroscience, and received training in trauma through the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute (traumahealing.org) and in yoga therapy through the American Viniyoga Institute (viniyoga.com). In 2003, I created Y12SR (y12sr.com), which combines cognitive and somatic practices for sustainable recovery, to offer to others those things that benefitted me.

Y12SR is based on the Yoga Sutra II.16, which suggests that future suffering can be avoided. The program is designed to give us tools to help avoid the future suffering that accompanies a relapse. The first part of Y12SR includes workshops to connect the dots between neuroscience, trauma healing, the 12-step program, and yoga philosophy. The second part is leadership training to teach people how to take Y12SR meetings back into their home communities to support addicts in recovery.

*Reprinted from Yoga Journal, September 2, 2021.

Science and yoga have roots in curiosity, which drives exploration and discovery in both fields. Scientific inquiry is based on wondering about the natural world. Scientists formulate hypotheses and conduct experiments to uncover new knowledge. The questions lead the way, and answers reveal themselves. A hypothesis might prove wrong, or an idea might be revised with further exploration.

Similarly, yoga encourages practitioners to cultivate a sense of curiosity regarding their bodies, minds, and spiritual experiences. One of my earliest meditation teachers used to tell stories of how we in yoga are scientists, exploring phenomena as practitioners test an experience. For example, the blue pearl (nila bindu) is where a tiny blue dot appears in one’s inner vision during deep states of meditation. It may be a neurological perception as the brain tries to visualize sensory information. Enough practitioners “see” the blue pearl to codify the experience. 

In my current PhD work on Contemporary Human Anatomy Education, I am studying visual rhetoric, or how what we see in atlases or visual representations impacts what we understand. I started exploring anatomy from my movement background and with a desire to uncover different ways of seeing and understanding. While studying dance/movement therapy for a master’s degree in Baltimore, I explored yoga practice. It always felt like home. Soon after that, I moved with my husband to NY, and I began to explore even deeper with the Yoga Teachers Association and the wealth of yoga studios in NYC. At the same time, in the early 2000s, I was also beginning to attend anatomy dissections, as my movement therapy clients and yoga students did not look like the anatomy books but had unique variations in their bodies that I wanted to understand. I studied with several excellent teachers and soon taught as faculty in dissection labs, more recently branching out independently. I kept studying yoga throughout and teaching in teacher training programs, learning as much as sharing my knowledge. I don’t think we are ever “done” in either yoga or science explorations. As part of YTA, I was a board member from 2005 to 2014, from member at large to vice president, and then shared the co-president role with my friend and colleague Sylvia Samilton-Baker, who is on the current board. Part of the joy of belonging to this association has been the exposure to so many excellent teachers and styles of practice that continue to inform my work.

Photo courtesy Handspring Publishing, The Myofascial System in Form and Movement.

Fascial anatomy delves into the interconnected network of fascia, a specific connective tissue that envelops and supports the muscles, bones, and organs throughout the body. This fascial system forms a continuous web that links various body parts, and plays a crucial role in movement, posture, and overall function. It enlightens us about the intricate design of our bodies and fascinates us through its interconnectedness.  Myofascial anatomy originates from the myo (muscle) and fascia, which are linked together in extended connection areas. This is similar to our understanding of yoga (yuj) as the joining or yoking of separate things. 

As I work more in this area of anatomy, I enjoy serving as a communicator between scientists and all of us, as well as between our students and clients who want to feel their best to do the things they enjoy in life. The work in labs and lectures has also connected me to the far corners of the world, including Italy, Germany, Brazil, and many more. Both science and yoga are not just about learning but about continuous learning. They value observations, experimentation, and reflection to gain insights. By embracing curiosity, practitioners in both domains continually push boundaries, challenge assumptions, and strive for a more comprehensive understanding of the world around and within them, inspiring and motivating them to stay engaged in the learning process.

Photo of Lauri Nemetz, courtesy Handspring Publishing, The Myofascial System in Form and Movement.

More on Lauri and her upcoming schedules at www.wellnessbridge.com and on FB under Lauri Nemetz and Instagram under wellnessbridge, the.myofascial.system and anatomy_bridge 

Lauri will have copies of her books (including The Myofascial System in Form and Movement) available at the workshop, at Amazon.com, or locally at Hudson Valley Books for Humanity.

Who Am I?

I think the door to the room was behind me, but when I visualize this moment all I can see is Guruji sitting legs crossed on a small mattress, his back against the wall. A few disciples were gathered around him, and I sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, directly across from this small glowing man. Sri Brahmananda’s dark, darting eyes pierced me; they shot out light, or energy, or something electric that kept me focused. “Last life” he was saying to me with one hand raised, index finger pointing upward, “you were a famous dancer. This life dance will become meditation.”

In 1984 I was a modern dancer living in San Francisco when I met Sri Brahmananda Sarasvati. I began attending his morning and evening programs at an old Victorian on Folsom Street, home to the Yoga Society of San Francisco and Brahmananda Ashram. The first time I joined Guruji’s meditation, “Om Ko’Ham/Who Am I?” was the mantra of the day, written in white chalk on the blackboard. I was familiar with the mantra. It was one I had chanted years before as an overwhelmed college freshman. At that time, feeling so very adrift and out of my element, I had repeatedly asked plaintively to no one in particular, “Who am I?” 

This was the essence of the Guru’s teaching:  “Feel.” He would quietly instruct the disciples, “Who Am I?” and then he’d continue, hinting at an answer, “You are not your body.”   

I studied with Sri Brahmananda whenever he was in San Francisco and at Ananda Ashram in Monroe, NY, when I visited my family in Connecticut. I learned about yoga philosophy, meditation, and the power of mantra. The dancer in me was inspired to do physical chanting and I started experimenting. I discovered what I called Moving Mantras. 

My first Moving Mantra, “Om Ko‘Ham, Who Am I?” developed the choreographic techniques used in composing Moving Mantras—repetition, concentration on a single focus, and shaping words and moving them through the air and on the floor.  As I practiced and performed “Om Ko‘Ham, Who Am I?” again and again, my life changed. I was asking the essential question, “Who am I?” with my whole body and I began to receive answers. At first, I used Moving Mantras as my own personal meditation practice, but soon I began incorporating Moving Mantras into my dance classes.

A series of sad losses brought me home to Connecticut in 1990. One day a dancer friend invited me to a yoga class in Nyack taught by Paula Heitzner. Paula’s kindness and caring kept me coming back. Her classes taught me a whole new movement vocabulary and the intense practice seemed to wring the grief out of my body. I attended Paula’s classes religiously three times a week, sometimes four, slowly stitching together the fabric of my torn life. Paula encouraged me to begin teaching yoga, so I did, and dance continued to evolve into meditation. Paula also introduced me to my spouse Charlene Bradin, and together we founded Birchwood Center for Yoga and Massage Therapy in Nyack, which thrived for over 22 years until COVID closed the studio in 2020. During the Birchwood years I designed and implemented our 200- and 500-hour Yoga Teacher Trainings, Gentle Yoga and Restorative Yoga Immersions, and continued to develop Merging Movement & Meditation Workshops. 

Today my Merging Movement and Meditation workshops still include Moving Mantras, but also use ritual, simple but potent breathing exercises, meditative walking, subtle and full body mudras, repetitive movements layered with breath, and a gentle asana practice interspersed with moments of guided meditation to invite a tranquil mind. 

Merging Movement and Meditation workshops are open to yogis at all levels and anyone who loves to move and meditate, no experience needed. Come to this class with an open heart and curious mind and move into that sacred, joy-filled place of oneness, the quiet space where you can feel, Who am I?

Om Shantih,

Betsy Ceva

Join us for Betsy's workshop on October 19, 2024.

After graduating from Christ Church, Oxford, in Foundations of Mathematics, a philosophical subject, it seemed to me the most related field was grammar: only language-users know numbers and they both have rules for well-formed expressions, etc. It turned out that the first grammar book was written by a man named Patanjali.

I resolved to go to India and learn Sanskrit. I was there only about three weeks when I realized the average three-year old would know more Sanskrit than I would ever learn, and this was just about that time that I came upon Mr. Iyengar’s book. The yoga stood head and shoulders above any I had ever seen. A few weeks later I went to his house, and after an electric meeting with him, stayed in a hotel for about a year and learned all this highly intelligent and righteous man could teach me. Among many other things, I learned that the same Patanjali had written the Yoga Sutra and was a physician.

Even then, I was using yoga to help substance abusers and those with orthopedic injuries in the “expatriate” community, but after returning to the United States for medical school, my interest in how yoga works deepened.  

Curious stories attend each of the topics in this workshop. Risking a spoiler effect, the following descriptions show my pathway to healing.

Scoliosis 

My first patient was a little bird of a woman, a hospital administrator whose yoga-teaching daughter had brought her from another state. She had a back curve above 100°, and was dying due to the constricting effects on her heart and respiration. I tried to slow down the progression, thinking perhaps we could stop it. After five months, I thought maybe I was fooling myself, but she looked better. A follow-up x-ray showed her curve to now be 68°!

Possibly 20 years later, my neighbor had a niece with scoliosis whom I treated successfully just about the same way. When she improved the neighbor, a Yale MBA exclaimed, “you’re a genius! The world must know about this!” That had never occurred to me but then I started recruiting patients to see if this was more broadly applicable. 

Now I’ve seen all kinds of scoliosis and believe that it is based on muscular asymmetry in the vast majority of cases. I treat it by equalizing the muscular strength on both sides of the curve. Currently I’m doing an FDA approved study, using both yoga to strengthen the weak side and botulinum toxin to temporarily weaken the strong side.   The results are so striking I’ve already published it, although I’m still accepting patients. 

Osteoporosis

Just before leaving India I had a goodbye party for the Iyengar community in my rooftop rooms at the hotel. It was a great party and afterward, when I blew out a candle in one of the lanterns, I had a vision of Mr. Iyengar’s bones. Their strength and integrity made them glisten. They were not at all grisly, but rather strikingly wholesome and robust. 

In my residency, another wonderful teacher, Edward F. Delagi, taught me Wolff’s Law—“The architectonic (basic support) of bone follows the lines of force to which the bone is exposed.” It explains many biological phenomena, including why we have that curious crook in our hip bones.

I put Wolff’s Law together with the vision on the hotel roof and surmised that yoga might help with osteoporosis. My friends said, “Loren, you’re crazy. Yoga for people with osteoporosis—you’ll break their bones!”  So I did a controlled pilot study with my own patients after office hours. I used poses that put pressure on the hip, the femur, and the spine, the most common and serious sites of fracture, and not coincidentally, the ones measured in the DEXA (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) scan.

Examining the data one evening I found no fractures, no herniated disks, nothing but a few sore muscles. My middle son walked by my desk and asked me what I was doing. When I told him he asked if I was going to publish it. I said, “No, this is just to see if yoga is safe.” He said, “Give me the data.” Five minutes later he came out of his room: “Dad, it’s significant!” I went to do my next study on the subject, making 1000 discs and gave them away to interested parties.  Eight years later it too was significant.

Rotator cuff syndrome

This time I was the first patient, having ripped my shoulder apart in what they called a massive tear. I could not raise my left arm. Even though I’m a doctor, it took months to get an appointment with the leading orthopedic surgeons. In the meantime, I missed some yoga poses so much that one day I stood on my head despite my injury. Maybe three minutes later my wife came downstairs and gasped, “Loren! What are you doing?” When I got up, I could raise my arm in a vertical position. And painlessly! This requires more explaining than we have room for here; it too will be a point of  discussion in the workshop. And coincidentally, we just completed an NIH (National Institutes of Health) study with 167 patients: highly significant.

Mic drop

Superimposing these empirical results on the highly theoretical and spiritual practice of yoga was not difficult. Painlessly adapting yoga to medical ends is greatly simplified by Mr. Iyengar’s work perfecting the poses: they are elegant, physiologically relevant, and safe.  What I will present is both the end of these troubling conditions for many people, and the beginning of the quest to refine and improve the yoga. We know the poses discuss in the workshop are effective, but there is no reason to believe that they are the only ones, or the best ones for the task.  

Learn more about Dr. Fishman at  sciatica.org or manhattanphysicalmedicine.com.

I remember my fascination with yoga began with arm balancing and inversions: something about integrating the parts of one’s body and consciousness to move as a unit and defy gravity, while remainingtranquil hooked me to the subject. So I went to my first yoga class at a yoga/spinning studio in Toronto, Canada called Spynga. I know: what??? We would vigorously spin for 45 mins and do “yoga” at the end for 15 minutes on the bike, with the occasional instructor moving us to the mat. I quickly realized that class style was not going to satisfy my curiosity and transitioned to a classic yoga studio (Yoga Tree) a few weeks later and began my dedicated, almost 6 days a week, yoga practice. My teacher at that time, Karin, showed us the transition from sirsasana (headstand) to pincha mayurasana (forearmstand) to vrischikasana (scorpion), and I scoffed and rolled my eyes. Just the idea of performing that sequencing was laughable. I wrote myself off, as my body had no clue, no reference point on how to even begin ‘training’ to perform such a sequence. That was 12 years ago.

I find myself emotional as I write this: the way I dismissed my physical capacity because my mind couldn’t ‘comprehend’ the mechanics. So much of my life and the life of those I’m fortunate to serve have been filtered through a mind that is dismissive, doubting, and defeating. As someone who now practices sirsasana daily, transitions into pincha mayurasana joyfully, and occasionally can stick a vrischikasana, it saddens me to notice that if I listened to my mind all those years ago, I may have never come to the strength, integration, and equanimity that I now know and feel in my life and yoga practice. And it’s something I often have to remind myself and others about in my yoga and coaching sessions. The idea of non-attachment: not being concerned with the outcomes and committing to practice daily. “Practice and all is coming” as per Sri K. Pattabhi Jois.

One of my most impactful teachers would often say ‘the practice will meet you where you are.’ For a while, I was at the asana. I wanted to gain space, range, and dimensionality in my physical body. I wanted to inhabit every fiber, cell, and square inch of my human husk. This desire led to increased sensitivity in my being and naturally, my practice developed more subtle streams. I never quite fully delved into the other limbs of the 8-limb path as much as I did asana, and knowing those petals existed made them an accessible support when needed. Pratyahara, the withdrawal of the senses, has especially allowed me to discover and open myself up to Greater Inspiration in unparalleled ways, including fleeting experiences of Samadhi (absorption). It also had begun to meet me in philosophical ways, although rather than feeding the socially conditioned split between mind and body, my life experiences led me to the practice of somatics, bridging the gap between sutra and asana. It was always my style to speak about the spirit while teaching asana, and in the last year, I feel I have shed a distinct covering on my soul, a layer of my self that was hidden beneath the voices of other educators and social constructs. I’ve come into my own, walking in a truth that needs no external validation, acknowledgement, or praise to be valuable and meaningful.

Yoga, alongside many, many other disciplines and practices, was one of my first entry points into the world of centering, integration, and harmony. It gave me a tangible practice that anchored my soul into my body. It gave me a sensitivity from pores to cells, mind to muscle. It gave me a resource for resilience, enduring life in a body that has experienced external diminishing since its inception. And as a teacher, it gave me an opportunity to witness other bodies, other beings, yearning for liberation via space, introspection, and proprioception.

It gave me a gift of a fullness of life. And I’m so honored to be a conduit in offering this gift to others.

Learn more about aasia at siaontheotherside.com.

Join us on June 8 for aasia's workshop, Quiet Channels: Creating a Steady Postural Base for Tranquil Asana.

I was teaching a private yoga session recently in which my student did great work to strengthen, stretch, and engage her body and mind. The work was challenging and fun. But at the end, after a few moments of relaxation in savasana, she sat straight up, dropping her head back slightly, and straining the muscles in the front of her neck to recover her balance. To me, it looked stressful.

I asked her to lie back down and took her through some steps for moving more smoothly back up to sitting:

• Roll onto your right side, with bent knees, embryo-like, using your right arm as a pillow for your head.
• Turn your chest and face toward the floor so that you can use both hands to press yourself up.
• Let your head hang while rolling up to sitting from the base of your spine, with your head coming up last.

She followed my instructions and then asked what the point was.

This gave me a golden opportunity to share what I’ve learned and what I am passionate about—everything is core. 

There’s not a lot of clarity about what core actually means. Some people use it interchangeably with abs and other people include more muscles in their definition. Some use it in a more metaphorical sense, to mean the center of the body. My view is that because the whole body is so interconnected, and everything moves out from the core to the periphery and in from the periphery to the core, you can potentially think of the core as including everything in the body.

My idea that the core is big, deep, and encompassing has come through years of working with my body.

As a young dancer, I sprained my ankles a lot. It was a chronic thing. One time, this happened in a ballet class. The force of landing a jump on a twisted ankle also broke my fifth metatarsal, a bone in my foot. After healing and physical therapy, Pilates was recommended to me as a way to become stronger and more physically organized. Pilates is an intelligent system of exercise using special apparatuses, designed to improve flexibility and strength through engaging the torso-stabilizing muscles of the abdomen and lower back. Since that intensive Pilates work so many years ago, I haven’t sprained an ankle again. How is it that becoming stronger in my core also made my limbs more integrated into my whole body, helping me to resolve the chronic problem of twisting my ankles? Maybe it's because the core and the limbs are so deeply interconnected. 

Later as a professional modern dancer in New York City, I learned how to initiate movement from my core in a fluid way, by understanding the core as an area I could release and flow from as well as an area to work, integrate, and activate. 

Realizing that my own understanding and experience of “core movement” is not universal has inspired me to create practices for my yoga students to make them aware of how their cores can be incorporated into every pose. After that private lesson where my student sat up in a way that didn’t engage her core, I was inspired to go back and dig through the sequence of poses and exercises we had done in order to find all the opportunities we’d had in the practice to incorporate her core, so that we could focus on them more in the future and she could develop a greater awareness of power in her own body.  

One by one, I unpacked the ways the core could be the focal point of each pose we had done. The idea was not to tighten the abdomen in every moment, but rather to find a range of relaxation and engagement originating in the core, as if the engine of the body resides there.

The Core and More

Your body parts are interwoven into one amazing, articulate whole. Your core is part of that interconnected whole, not something separate to isolate and obsess over. 

There are more ways to work with your core than just tightening it. You can brace yourself in a protective mode, firming and compacting your abdominals. Some poses, like chaturanga, really do require an almost absolute and total muscular engagement of the whole body—including our core muscles. You can also relax and release your core muscles, letting your belly billow, like it’s a water balloon being filled. Do this when you want to “open” your hips—because tightening the low ab muscles, which are located very near the hips, might be counterproductive in that instance.

One of my yoga students read in a magazine that she should hold her belly in 70 percent of the time. When she told me this, I thought, “Wow, that’s a lot of time.”

Just as there’s not one “right” way to do things all the time, there’s also not one part of our body that requires constant engagement and monitoring. Everything within our body is connected to everything else. So releasing habits of holding, especially in our deep core, can affect every cell in our body and give us greater range of motion. Facilitating different movement possibilities in our body is a good thing, like the flow of life itself. 

When we realize that our core is inherently connected to every part of us, we can fully experience the balance of effort and ease, both anchoring—grounding downward by letting go—and ascending—lifting upward by engaging all of the muscular strength and energy of your body—beyond our usual reaches. To me, it’s fun to explore different qualities that originate from my core—the capacity for everything from infinite relaxation to maximal activation—and every stage between.

Learn more about Jennifer Brilliant at jenniferbrilliant.com, and find register for her May 11, 2024, workshop, Radiate and Return: Relating to Your Core, here. 

Originally published on YogaInternational.com. Used with permission of the author. 

I came to teach hatha yoga by way of the yoga of meditation and years of academic study of philosophy, both Eastern and Western.

In my studies of philosophy at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown and in my graduate work at Fordham University, I gravitated toward the senior Jesuit scholars whose excellence, open-minded intellectual zeal, spiritual fervor, and personal integrity inspired me to dig deeply into my own studies, particularly of the classical philosophers and Christian mystics, and treat them as a personal journey of discovery.

As I completed my coursework for my PhD and taught at several colleges, I was increasingly aware that I was looking for more than philosophical ideas and systems—I was looking for the experience itself that the mystics were talking about.

Midway through my studies at Fordham, I met the meditation master Swami Muktananda during his last tour of the West, and he gave me the connection, the practice, the awakening, and the understanding I was seeking.

With that, it was up to me to step through the door he had opened, not through concepts and theories, but through yoga. The next couple of years combined disciplined academic study with a deepening experiential practice. I halted my academic career just short of writing my thesis, and went to India in 1986 to practice yoga at his ashram and to offer my service.

I spent a total of seven years in the Ganeshpuri ashram, Gurudev Siddha Peeth, and 14 years of service overall in Siddha Yoga ashrams in the US and abroad, studying and practicing yoga, working in the kitchen and gardens, and teaching hatha yoga.

It was during my time in Ganeshpuri that I met John Friend while he was yet an Iyengar teacher who had come to study in Pune. We struck up a friendship, and I was able to practice with him when I came back to the states, study further with him, and assist in his classes, workshops, and trainings for the next few years.

This opportunity came to be combined with opportunities to train with other teachers as well, broadening my experience and understanding of the roots of modern hatha yoga practice—its different styles as well as its common roots.

Yoga

The time of my growth in the practice of hatha yoga was divided between individual practice at the ashram in India and opportunities to study with teachers and expand during time spent at the ashram in New York state. There I was able to study with other teachers and in a number of styles—but principally with Kevin Gardiner, who is a certified senior level Iyengar teacher.

Kevin was the most influential to me in my growth because of his deep insight into anatomy and physiology, his facility with precise instruction and demonstration, and the integrity with which he stays true to his chosen tradition, exploring its depth while exercising his own very individual and discriminating intellect, manifesting the heart of a yogi in his practice and teaching.

Yet because my own path was more closely tied to Siddha Yoga at the time, I was more deeply involved in the development of the Anusara system. John Friend shared with me the evolution of his thinking based principally upon the alignment teachings of the Iyengar system, and his synthesis of those teachings eventually manifested as the Anusara style of yoga he founded in 1997. I was one of the first teachers certified as an Anusara teacher by John Friend, and I taught in the Anusara style for over seven years.

As a consequence of Mr. Friend's process of consolidation of his system under increasingly limiting conditions, I chose to give up my certification in that style. This freed me to further deepen my study and understanding of the health-oriented wisdom of yoga, as well as explore the yoga tradition as a whole outside of the confines of the Anusara system.

Vision

In addition to teaching the postural practice of hatha yoga, as well as pranayama and meditation, I have chosen as my focus on sharing insights into what yoga has to offer as wisdom in the face of chronic pain and health issues, which is an evolving field that promises to be a vital part of the future of yoga.

The expansion of yoga beyond the practices taught in more ancient times is, to me, an expression of the freedom at the heart of yoga and of consciousness itself. This freedom was described in tantric philosophy as not simply liberation, or moksha, but Swatantrya—the freedom of consciousness to expand and create through its own inspiration.

Essential to this was an appreciation of our individual self as ahamkara—literally the I-maker. It is a term that recognizes that the self is a process of making, and this opened avenues for practices that sought a more healthy, integrated emphasis upon living a spiritual life within and accepting of the body.

This concept itself is something that has slowly evolved, and has arguably come to include modern yoga's emphasis upon health and well-being as part of the aim of yoga—which includes emotional well-being and a well-adjusted attitude toward the world that includes social concern.

I found the essence of this inspiration to be expressed by Swami Muktananda, who first initiated my journey into yoga: “God dwells within you, as you, for you. See God in yourself and in each other.”

Yoga concerns our own relationship to the self from whom we came, as well as our relationship to the self we are coming to be. It is deeply personal, experiential, and ultimately unmediated by any system of conceptual thought. The teachings of yoga simply provide us with the introduction to our own self—in both senses. To experientially realize that these two are not really separate is the essence of spiritual breakthrough.

That breakthrough is what the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart (14th century) described as the breakthrough into our own heart, where the Divine most fully dwells. This is the teaching I want to share, along with the practices and means offered by yoga to support that journey.

Please join us for Doug's workshop on April 13, 2024, New Perspectives on the Feet. Note that there are separate registration pages for the Zoom and In-Person options.

The other day I was speaking with a new teacher. She told me that she did a 200-hour training. “But when I got out there and started to teach,” she said, “I realized that what I had learned in my training was completely inappropriate for the people who were turning up for my classes.”

*Sigh* – I’ve heard this story way too many times.

My first experiences with yoga were slow and mindful in the ’70s and ’80s, so I was surprised when, after returning from living in Asia for 4 years, I went to a class in 1995 in New Jersey which was a fast, sweaty, thumping-with-music kind of workout. The teacher and her front row students could do all sorts of amazing things with their bodies – and those of us hiding in the back were labeled “beginners” (in a friendly enough way) and encouraged to work harder because, eventually, we’d get there too.

But, I would later learn, “You’ll get there eventually” isn’t accurate. Mobility is largely genetic and use-dependent—if your mom was Gumby, you’re probably golden, or if you were trained as a gymnast or dancer, you have some advantage.

Thankfully, very soon after that, I found some Viniyoga classes and in them, something that resonated with me and how I’d originally learned to practice. It also dovetailed well with the qigong I had studied. These classes weren’t easy, but they also didn’t feel out of my flexibility league or risky. They were intentional—I was confident in what I was doing with my body, and I felt like every pose had a purpose and there was a mindful, logical order to the sequences.

Clearly things have changed in the yoga world over the past 30 years. With a growing body of promising research and increasing recognition from health care professionals, yoga teachers are more aware that many people are coming to yoga for reasons other than flexibility or fitness, such as stress relief and the mental health benefits.

Which means yoga teaching is necessarily changing.

Recently, I’ve been hearing and reading about “functional” yoga. It’s a term that’s being used to describe more adaptable ways of teaching and practicing. Instead of creating goals around accomplishing poses, the idea is that you use asanas as a way to support movement in your daily life.  

“Functional yoga” is an offshoot of the functional movement trend in the fitness industry. It’s being positioned as an alternative to “aesthetic” yoga practice, or doing asanas to create pleasing looking shapes. So instead of focusing on trying to do the pose “the right way,” you focus on how your body feels with the movement and how the movement supports your needs.

This, in turn, is meant to help you develop strength, flexibility, balance, and stability. Like other functional fitness training, functional yoga may target specific functional movements such as squatting, lunging, twisting, reaching, and bending.

And all this is great—because asanas should be functional. I’m a big fan of function.

However, I’m left wondering… If your yoga practice isn’t functional to begin with, what have you been doing to yourself? And, for teachers, what have you been teaching others?

Have the past 3 decades of yoga in the West been such a dysfunctional mess that now the consensus is that a new style of asana practice must be developed to counter the effects? In order to rectify the problems created by ignoring biomechanics and individual differences for so long?

The older I get, the more I enjoy and need asana practice, and I know many people who feel the same. It’s great that yoga teachers are working on trying to teach yoga in a more functional way. But if many teachers have been trained to teach a fundamentally dysfunctional practice, what is the scale of the harm that has been done? What is the scale of harm that is still being perpetuated by not focusing on the functional?

Recently I saw a video of a physical therapist saying, “We do too many forward bends in yoga, and so our hamstrings are weak, overstretched, and thin. And we do too many quad exercises in yoga, and so our quads are overdeveloped and tight.”

Which left me wondering, Who is she talking about when she says “we”? And what kind of yoga is she referring to exactly? What kind of yoga did she learn when she studied it? What kind of yoga does she believe everyone is doing?

The answer, of course, is the mainstream stuff. Which, it appears, fitness and movement professionals are now starting to call out as dysfunctional and to dismantle.

Of course, I feel empathy for people who’ve spent a lot of time and money learning to teach yoga that is not functional to begin with; however, the alternatives are out there—and they’ve been out there for a long time. You will have to chip away at the veneer that’s crusted over social media in order to find yoga that has always been taught functionally, but it’s there, mostly ignored or labeled “beginner” or “gentle.”

I always thought more functional ways of practicing were overlooked because they weren’t exciting, but who knows, it looks like functional may become the new sexy.  

Please join Kristine on February 10, 2024, for Subtle Yoga: The Science Behind Slow, Mindful Yoga Practice.

It was the late 1960s, and I was living in Kamakura, Japan, where my parents were doing research for their degrees in Asian art history. Each Saturday, we would go to our local Zendo of the Sanbo Kyodan lineage, where Zen-Buddhist master,Yamada Roshi, resided. To prepare our bodies and minds for a full hour of this rigid and disciplined form of meditation, my mom had a local yoga instructor give us a weekly private class in our home, beginning when I was six years old.

Upon our return to North America four years later, my parents continued their spiritual quest, exploring numerous world religions and traditions, even moving us all into a commune that we later realized was a cult that they had to kidnap us from in order to escape!! Crazy times, for sure.  

But between all this exposure to different religions and ways of thinking and seeing the world, the one thing that became solid within me was the knowledge that at the core, the true teachings are all the same. No matter the external package, the message is universal. And so it was with ease that I slid into Hindu philosophy and, more specifically, the traditions of Kashmir Shaivism, when I met my own spiritual teacher in my mid 20s. My on-and-off lifelong meditation practice became steadier, and I now had a sangha to study and grow with. I had been working as an actor in LA for a number of years, and after being cast as and playing the role of Amanda Krueger—the mother to horror icon Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child—I found that my opportunities suddenly became limited to horror films only, which was not at all the kind of work I had wanted to do. For that, and a few other personal reasons, at the height of my career I decided to walk away from it all, and I moved to an ashram in Ganeshpuri, India, where I chanted and meditated and did yoga daily and offered my seva working on their mobile hospital, where we would travel from village to village, serving the Adivasi population, providing basic medical care and nutrition, and my job was education through storytelling, with the aid of an interpreter. 

I was learning all about the Yamas and Niyamas, taking wonderful yoga classes with world-class teachers, and blissing out on nightly kirtan, rising before dawn for sublime meditation, and chanting the Guru Gita. I also was undergoing so much Tapasya, as layers and layers of my outer shell was being annihilated. It was the most blissful and the most difficult two years of my life. One morning, I awoke to discover a deep transformation within me. I felt completely ready to dedicate the rest of my life to the seva I was doing and to commit to a monastic life, living full time at the ashram. I hadn’t spoken a word to anyone about this shift that I felt, but I just felt certain that this was where I wanted to spend the rest of my life.  

But that very morning, seemingly out of the blue, one of the monks found me during breakfast and asked me to follow him to his office. Once there, he informed me that my guru had, just that morning, instructed him to “let me go.” 

“What do you mean by 'let me go'?? Am I being kicked out?” 

“It is time for you to leave the ashram,” I was told flatly. “You haven’t done anything wrong, but you can no longer stay here. You are to pack your things. You will be taken to the airport and sent to the ashram in New York, where you will have one week to find a place to live. Your time in the ashram is done.”

I was shattered. Shattered to the core. And New York? I had spent most of my young adult life on the West Coast and knew only one person in New York, an author I had met in the ashram in India. I rented a room in his apartment and found myself a temp job with a fortune 500 company, of all places. At its holiday party, I met the man who, two years later, became my husband. Fast-forward a few years and my husband and I moved to Rockland County, NY.  We bought a lovely home and began to create a family. I was taking prenatal yoga at Yoga Mountain, and a few of the teachers suggested I take their teacher training program, and the rest is history. I received my 300- and 500-hour certifications there and opened my own studio, Willow Tree Yoga, in 2006.  

For me, yoga is how I live, how I breathe, how I see the world, and how I move through the world. I am an extremely rough work in progress, with faults and blind spots galore, but I am forever grateful to the teachings and practices of yoga that have seen me through the death of my daughter (who died in my arms moments after her birth) and have given me the strength to go through my son’s three open heart surgeries (to rework his heart that is missing its left ventricle). Every time I sit on my mat and face a class of students, I am filled with gratitude for the incredible gift and honor that we, as yoga teachers, are given, to be able to share this incredible practice with our fellow journeymen on this mystical, challenging, and ever-sacred path of life. 

So hum.

Please join us for Beatrice's workshop on chair yoga stretch on January 13, 2024. Note there are both in-person and Zoom-only options.