What is yoga in its postural form? Millions of people in the United States practice yoga every day, and their practice takes the literal form of yoga asanas, or yoga poses. These poses are also being innovated every day in the unregulated market of yoga teaching which has set a suggested standard of just 200 hours of training. Most yoga trainings take less than a month to complete.
In this episode, I talk with Matthew Sanford, a nationally-recognized spinal-cord-injured Iyengar Yoga teacher who was one of the first advocates for accessibility in yoga. Matthew offers insights for any serious yoga student or yoga teacher interested in what makes yoga yoga. He talks about how a yoga pose yokes together what you can control and what you can't, and he describes how adaptive yoga students tend to be better students than able-bodied ones. As an Iyengar Yoga teacher who is deeply aware of the subtle body—i,e., prana, a word that loosely translates as "life force" and has no direct English counterpart—he talks about bodily and energetic alignment as something that creates a sense of relief.
The architecture of Matthew's talk is rooted in what he calls the "principles" of accessible yoga, which is to say a yoga practice that is accessible for any body. You'll hear that he credits BKS Iyengar as having the insight and intelligence for creating a system of teaching that is accessible and sustainable for everyone. While so much of modern yoga is seen and celebrated as being for the able-bodied doing and performing complex shapes, Matthew offers a depth of perspective on how simple practice can be.
For Matthew, connecting mind and body is not just a health strategy; it is a movement of consciousness that can change the world. He sees the poses as vehicles of discovery that extend beyond the physical body. Matthew's site: mindbodysolutions.org.
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Books and media referenced:
1. Geeta Iyengar, Preliminary Course
2. BKS Iyengar, Tree of Yoga
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Sanskrit words used:
1. Yoga: a yoking, to yoke
2. Prana: life force or "chi," a word that has no direct English translation
3. Ssana = pose
4. Pranayama = breath control/breathwork
5. Sirsasana = head balance pose
6. Sarvangasana = shoulder balance pose
7. Tadasana = mountain pose
8. Pratyahara = a technique of withdrawing the senses from outer stimuli/data
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Episode credits:
Original music by Kim's band Governess.
Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.
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