Ask anyone who has a regular Yoga practice that if they have time away from their regular practice, the difference of how they feel.

This difference is not usually a positive difference. The mind can get lazy, more easily irritated and the bodies energy flow gets blocked which can show up in the form of pain, or unwanted sensations in certain areas of the body.

The breathwork involved with Yoga and the Asanas work together for the full body mind connection. The common cry from people when you ask them about starting Yoga is 'I'm not flexible enough to practice yoga', that's why we do Yoga:)

If you never start you will never have the calmer mind, flexibility with the strength you are seeking, along with the awareness to utilise the tools that Yoga gives you.

Yoga helps to promote the calm mind, and the mind can be a complete minefield sometimes. Imagine the mind being a wide open and un-touched field, now it becomes a 'mindfield' where anything is possible.

These tools from Yoga range from conscious breathing when an apparent crisis arrives, to getting up out of a chair or out of a car and engaging the correct muscles to perform these tasks.

Yoga teaches us many, many useful tools which are to be utilised daily for skillfull living.

Why Yoga?

Why not Yoga?

 

The Taoist Yin Yang symbol incorporates two intertwined snakes, one white and one black and the eyes of these snakes contain the opposite colour, i.e. the white snake has a black eye and the black snake has a white eye.

 

The Yin Yang symbol is static, but implies tremendous and continuous flux between order and chaos. Everything in this world is on this continuum between control and out of control. Nothing will ever be perfect because, like the snake's eye, it contains the seed of the opposite.

 

An infantile approach to life, when things are not perfect is to have a hissy fit – a temper tantrum and spit the dummy. When things are not going your way, when others disagree with you, when you rub up against ideas you don't like, you could scream, smash a few things and start calling people names.

 

If you step back for a moment, before soiling your pants, you will see that nothing is ever perfect forever. Imagine you have just spent a full day of your precious time carefully mowing the lawns and manicuring the gardens. From the very second you finish the lawn and gardens will do their natural thing and start changing, and within a short period of time, you have to apply control again to balance the increasing chaos.

 

I realised a long time ago it is better to embrace the change and the image of the surfer represents this well. The waves are the continuous ups and downs of life – you can't stop them, nor do you want to, because then there will be nothing to ride and no fun. The idea is to learn how to skilfully ride the waves. At first you will not be able to stand up for more than a few seconds. With practice you get better, and eventually you actually enjoy the waves and actively seek out bigger ones for more of a thrill.

 

If we bring all this back to Yoga practice, then our mat is the surfboard and the asana are the waves. The skill, understanding and expertise we gain learning how to ride the postures carries over into all other aspects of our lives.

 

And like the garden, the moment we finish our practice, the need to do another practice arises.

 

Hatha Yoga – any style of yoga that incorporates asana, contains this control / out of control dichotomy. Ha = Sun and Tha = Moon and is pretty much the same concept as Yin Yang.

 

Learn to see your practice as an opportunity to cultivate your personal garden, to gain the skills to ride the waves of life, and to bring balance into the world. It is a journey not a destination.

 

Namaste

 

James E. Bryan E.R.Y.T. 500

   James E. Bryan, Knoff Yoga

Before studying Yoga with Nicky Knoff in Auckland, NZ in 1982, I was running marathons as an antidote to sitting on my ass all day in an office job.  I found the long-distance training meditative, as I used to focus on my heartbeat and turned running into meditation.

I started attending yoga classes three times per week for the first three months and then seven days per week for the next four years, before attending a Teacher Training Course at the Iyengar Institute in Pune, India in 1986.

When you practice intensively, you quickly discover that your body is connected to your mind and your mind is connected to your body.  It was very obvious to me that if I practiced in the mornings, my days went much more smoothly.

Over time, my relationship with my body deepened as I explored the extremes of asana practice and I found there were edges you needed to be careful with and not over-step.  I found that it was not the shape of the asana that was the goal of practice, but the mind-state from the practice itself.  My long term practice has confirmed the body is the temple of the spirit.

Nicky Knoff, Knoff Yoga

When young I was into exercise of all types: swimming, skiing, field hockey, baseball, tennis, squash, javelin throwing, and bush walking.

I was living in Japan and travelling the world when I started practicing yoga in October 1970. The more I practiced and learned, the more I appreciated the art and science of yoga.
 
Yoga changed my relationship with my body because it taught me the importance of a holistic and balanced practice. To get the full benefit of yoga, I needed to include all the limbs of yoga.  Asana is great, but incomplete without Pranayama and Meditation.  Asana, Pranayama and Meditation are incomplete without the understanding and application of Yoga Philosophy.

Our bodies change over time.  As we age we lose much of what we took for granted.  The beauty of a holistic practice is that as one area contracts another expands.  As asana becomes restricted, pranayama and meditation offer more.

Long-term yoga practice has taught me that we are much more than a body.  When we are young we focus on the physical, but as we mature we can continue to expand our consciousness and grow into our potential as spiritual beings.

Injuries and trauma to the body become long-term sites for future degeneration.

Imagine a clear stream of water flowing smoothly over rocks.  The water is clean, healthy and refreshing to drink.  This is also how the flow of blood, lymph and nerve energy are meant to be in the human body.

Now imagine placing a log across the stream and blocking some of the water flow.  The water down-stream will be impeded and become stagnant; resulting in green scum, mosquitoes and general yuckiness.

Injuries, operations and trauma to the body, which damage tissues: muscle/blood/lymph/nerve (meridians and nadis) likewise cause stagnation and impede the healthy flow of these streams – setting the scene for degeneration and disease.

It becomes more important to practice yoga after an injury or operation, than it was before!

Of course, it has to be the right type of yoga, with appropriate techniques for revitalizing energy flow.  To rehabilitate the practice has to be gentle, progressive and intelligent.  For example, after a hip replacement or traumatic childbirth, it would be the height of stupidity to jump back into a strong asana practice.  But, it is equally inappropriate to do long holds as in Yin Yoga.

Yoga Therapy is a term that is being suppressed because of its' 'medical' association, but it describes the right approach to heal the body and to regain full functionality.  Yoga Therapy taps into the tools of Yoga (asana, relaxation, pranayama and meditation) to ease the body back into functionality and health – to be the best it can be given the changed circumstances.  A hip prosthetic is never going to have the range of mobility and stability of a real one.

Because of the Yoga Alliance (www.yogaalliance.org) restrictions, we have had to change the term 'Yoga Therapy' to 'Yoga – Holistic Healing'.  The name has changed, but the approach has not.

In the Knoff Yoga Teacher Training program we offer two levels of Yoga Therapy:

Yoga – Holistic Healing A
Yoga – Holistic Healing B
 
See www.knoffyoga.com for more information.  These two Courses are extremely useful for yoga teachers to learn the techniques and skills necessary to help their students with injuries and trauma.