My biggest impression after the Winter Gathering is just how grateful I am for the overlapping communities in my life. This event required me to play a lot of roles, from organizer and host, to presenter, space holder, and participant. Everyone at the event was someone who has been part of my yoga journey in […]
This past weekend I took part in a revolutionary act. Around 30 people met in the desert outside of Palm Springs, Ca. to experiment with new ways of being in community as Ashtangi’s. We gathered around a felt need to process the turbulence that has arisen in the Ashtanga community these past years as we’ve […]
I am signing this Pledge to acknowledge the harm that has been done in the name of Ashtanga Yoga and which I participated in from Mar 1999 on my first trip to Mysore until Sep 2018 when I tendered my resignation via email as an authorized teacher with the KPJAYI. When Karen Rain’s account of […]
Who can practice? Anyone can practice. AYW makes efforts to make the Ashtanga Yoga practice accessible to all interested students. We will use skillfull means to tailor the practice to the individual needs and aspirations of each practitioner. We will offer an informed opinion about the best way of using the techniques of Ashtanga Yoga […]
देवमनुष्या दिशो व्यभजन्त प्राचीं देवा दक्षिणा पितरः प्रतीचीं मनुष्या उदीचीं रुद्रा [Tait. Samh. – 6.1.1] Gods and men divided the directions. Gods took the east, pitaras took the south, men took the west and rudras took the north. Paschimattanasana, or stretching the west pose, is one of the archetypal forward bending asanas. It is a symmetrical forward bend that, […]
The traditional notion of Yoga as liberation can hardly be understood without its counterpart of karma. Karma is the mechanism that keeps an individual consciousness at the core of the human personality bound to the conditioned cycle of existence called samsāra. Samsāra is the provisional reality that we navigate in the course of daily life. […]
Kurmasana is known as the turtle posture. In the Hindu puranas Kurma is the 2nd avatar of Lord Vishnu, the maintainer, preserver, and protector. Vishnu is said to have 10 avatars or incarnations where he takes form to restore dharma or cosmic order. In several puranas, we see the story of the churning of the […]