Consider the tone. Some studios are very religious, some are quite cheeky, some are both. Kundalini classes include a lot of chanting. Power Yoga is more like athletic cross-training. Are you open to devotional language? Or do you prefer the technical aspects of practice?

Consider your habits. Do you like surprises, or plans? Set sequences, such as Bikram, Ashtanga, or Atmananda, provide a predictable routine that’s eventually memorized. Other teachers will design a sequence for the season, or the moment.

Consider your safety. Yoga poses can be quite intense and even wearing on the body. Schools like Iyengar and Anusara are quite strict and detail-oriented about alignment. Styles like Vinyasa will weave instructions into a faster flow. Traditional styles like Hatha or Sivananda might not address anatomy at all. Think about the level of detail you need.

A practice that’s roughly 80% what we like, and 20% what we need, will address our weaknesses but keep us motivated to come back.

I’ve written more about the various styles of yoga here:
http://yogoer.com/yoga/styles.php

And there’s a great reading list on the Anusara website:
http://anusara.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&Itemid=183

There’s an event worth attention this Saturday. Ashtanga Yoga New York is holding a benefit for Odanadi, an organization in Mysore, India, that fights human trafficking (forced prostitution and modern-day slavery) and helps rehabilitate its victims with education, housing, and yoga.

YOGA STOPS TRAFFICK is a one-day global yoga event to raise awareness about human trafficking in India. On March 13th, 2010, Yogis around the world will roll out their mats for a mass sun salutation, to take a stand against trafficking and show their support to its millions of victims.

From Ashtanga Yoga New York:

We have a gathering this Saturday, March 13th at the school from 2:30-5:30.  It truly will be thinking globally and acting locally as yogis in 18 countries and 56 cities around the world join to raise awareness about human trafficking in India, led by a group in Mysore.  Our event will be casual and fun including homemade cookies, optional sun salutations, music and chatting and could be a lovely opportunity for us to socialize together. Please feel welcome to drop by at any time; it would be nice to have New York cheerfully represent!

More information:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=290490670058

http://www.yogastopstraffick.org/wp/

Ignoring the warning bells deep inside my brain, I grabbed a book, thinking that if the class got too long for my limited physical capacity, I would just slip outside and read.

Not so much. Turns out that the whole yoga thing is about staying in the moment, searching within yourself, absorbing the energy of the people in the room.

Just one class, and a few days later she was already “jones-ing for yoga.” :)

From At Risk: Of Resembling a Pretzel

It’s a Crow pose, almost a Tripod Headstand, in the beginning. Great video.

I think this guy is overusing his lower back. It looks like he collapses into his low back a little when he lands. And watch the curve of his spine from Up Dog into Down Dog. (I tend to do the same thing, letting lumbar flexibility overpower core strength.) What do you think?

So graceful! No “thunk” sounding right into the lower back. (Ok, there’s no sound in the video. I can pretend he’s perfect, though.)

Leslie Kaminoff at the Breathing Project

I just had to make a quick post about the open house I attended Wednesday at The Breathing Project. Leslie Kaminoff gave an amazing lecture on breathing and anatomy in yoga, I’m seriously considering signing up for his anatomy classes instead of heading for the Iyengar Institute. His approach is less detail-oriented than Iyengar’s; he says it’s “impossible” to manage a laundry list of alignment instructions while you’re doing a pose. “As soon as you’re focused on your right pinky, your left eyelid goes out of alignment.” So at the end, he says the guidelines for each pose have to come from inside. After all, “There’s no such thing as an asana — where are they right now? where are they stored? — there’s only people. Individuals. There’s Amy’s Down Dog, or John’s Down Dog, but there is no universal Down Dog.”

I think this approach is much more in line with the book I’m working on with Sabina Stahl, which is called Intuitive Lifestyle. It’s more about finding your intuition in asana practice, eating, and general life. So I’ve been reviewing a lot of anatomy notes, but wondering how precise and thorough we’re going to get. Also, in the four years since I did my teacher training, I’ve encountered some conflicting directions on anatomy, so I’ve been wondering how we’re going to reconcile those.

Leslie has a really interesting background. He started out at Sivananda in the seventies, when his father invited him to a class over on 25th Street. He ended up becoming a swami and heading up the LA center. “The early eighties were an interesting time to be a swami on the Sunset Strip.” Jane Fonda had her studio just down the road, it was the birth of the aerobics and body building movements, and the Nautilus machines allowed people to weight-train safely for the first time. He ended up leaving the ashram and working at a Sports Medicine center. There, they treated all the injuries associated with the exploding popularity of high-impact aerobics etc.; they treated Jane Fonda herself. He saw hundreds of x-rays of spines, and was startled to realized most spines don’t look anything like the nice straight columns we see in the books. The idea of asking these spines to do these yoga poses was terrifying, and he stopped teaching yoga for a few years. Eventually he went back to New York, to work for a famous osteopath, and then to the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in India. He would ask Desikachar WHY these poses had such profound effects, but no one there could answer his questions. So he began researching the anatomical basis for yoga’s benefits, and that study culminated in his book with Amy Matthews, Yoga Anatomy. The book is in its fifth printing in one year; there was “a real hunger” for this type of information.

It was also interesting to hear “you know, the study of yoga anatomy is only 30 years old. At Sivananda, it was ‘Now we will do Shoulder Stand. Do it.’ Maybe they would say ‘work the hands towards the middle back’ but that was it. Only when Mr. Iyengar landed in Ann Arbor did we start to get details.” Likewise, “the study of Bandhas is only 12 years old. Ashtanga was the first system to really make a big deal out of them,” so the precise study is still young.

One last nugget: “As a teacher, you can focus someone on a spatial goal, or on a spinal goal.” The former is trying to push them into a particular shape, the latter is more about the relationship between the parts.

Or one more: “Either we’re doing these postures to get them right, or to be free.” Eventually, we will lose any pose we’ve achieved (to age or infirmity), so we should aim for freedom and not achievement in the asanas.

Amy Matthews also taught a wonderful class about anatomy according to the Body-Mind Centering principles of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, and Jill Satterfield led us through a deliciously slow, mindfulness-meditation-oriented hatha class. Is New York City finally slowing down?

PS — All quotes are approximate.