Yoga has evolved more in the last seventy-five years than in the previous thousand years. This assertion deserves some explanation in order to shed light on what this might mean for teachers and teaching in the present day and going forward. What are the evolutionary trends? How is yoga changing? As yoga teachers, what might we anticipate in the coming years, and where are we in the evolutionary process of yoga? 

In nearly every field of human endeavor, we find various perspectives that attempt to define or at least characterize what it is all about, including where it came from and where it is headed. With respect to yoga, there is a tremendous diversity of views about how and where it originated and how it has evolved. Much of the literature and commentary on the origins and historical development of yoga rest on assertion or conjecture rather than careful research and methodical consideration of the evidence. This tendency has generated many fascinating stories about the history ...

In doing yoga, we are gradually awakening to a clearer and truer understanding of who we are in our deepest, innermost being. How did the Buddha awaken? By tuning in. It’s the same in yoga: the best teacher one will ever have is alive and well inside. Much of the practice is about coming to hear that inner teacher, to listen to and honor the inner teachings. Many spiritual seekers have sought out external teachers as the source of their own enlightenment. A common instruction is to tell the seeker to walk around a sacred mountain. Upon returning less than enlightened and still asking questions, the teacher repeats the instruction and the pupil follows it, again and again. It’s not about walking around the mountain but tuning in inside. Eventually one comes to this—or not. Depending on how one teaches yoga, including in giving appropriate and effective hands-on guidance, we are ideally supporting each student in learning to find and honor his or her inner teacher, thereby nurturing th...

Perseverance & Non-Attachment

As we come to the experience in an asana in which we no longer feel any significant effect or effort in being in it, we might simply stay there, being in it, or we might find ourselves opening to a variation of it or transitioning to an asana in which we find it takes some greater effort to find stability and ease to be just as stable, relaxed, and present. However, if we always practice asanas in a way that involves no effort—that is one path—we might be missing an opportunity to engender deeper awakening and change through the intensity and diversity of experience that doing yoga offers us, to really do Hatha yoga, which is most deeply and lastingly done with the self-discipline (tapas) it takes to fully show up to the best of our ability, breath by breath, asana by asana, practice by practice, day by day, exploring the edges of possibility and discovering what happens amid it all. With persevering practice—abhyasa— we do stay with it; fully commit...

Steadiness, Ease & Presence of Mind

There are several basic elements that are ideally communicated to our students in every practice and given even greater clarity with newer students.  Among the most important is the idea that yoga is neither a comparative nor a competitive practice, despite some people doing their best to make it so.  

Exploring with this basic sensibility, the practice will be more safe, sustainable, and transformational. It’s a sensibility—a basic yogic value—that reflects the sole comment on asana found in the oft-cited Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: sthira, sukham, asanam—meaning steadiness, ease, and presence of mind (the latter, from the root word as, meaning “to take one seat,” which I interpret to mean to be here now, fully attuned to one’s immediate experience). It’s helpful to relate to these as qualities we’re always cultivating in the practice. Do note that Patanjali is not describing anything even closely approximating the sort of postural practices th...

Part of the sublime nature of yoga is that there are infinite possibilities for deepening and refining one’s practice. In playing the edges of effort and ease, exploring balance between surrender and control, and opening to self-understanding and self-transformation, there is no end to how far one can go along the path of awakening to clearer awareness, more integrated well-being, and greater happiness. There are also seemingly infinite styles and approaches to yoga, even different ideas about what yoga is, offering a rich array of practices that any of the seven billion of us sharing this planet might at any given time find most in keeping with whatever brings us to explore this ancient ritual for living in the most healthy and awakened way. It’s a fascinating, challenging, often mysterious path that ultimately reveals the deepest beauty inherent in each of us as we gradually come to discover the balances that most complement and support our diverse values and intentions in life. If...

With more and more students opting for open-minded teachers on a consciously evolving path rather than gurus claiming to transmit pure ancient teachings, students are increasingly setting higher standards for teachers’ overall knowledge and technical skill. An important facet of contemporary yoga evolution shines forth from the rapidly expanding fields of insight into the nature and functioning of the bodymind that is abundantly available for teachers to learn. With this we are beginning to see movement in the yoga community toward more robust standards of competence that are supported by both the received wisdom of tradition and emerging insights from multiple fields such as ayurveda (the science of life that is very much evolving), kinesiology, psychology, and neuroscience. 

What does this mean for yoga teachers in the twenty-first century? As we started this story a few hundred pages back, there is no end to what we can learn. If, as a community of yoga teachers, we are committed...

In its noun form, the Sanskrit term guru means “one who shares knowledge,” while as an adjective it means “heavy” or “weighty” in reference to spiritual knowledge. Some have suggested that the separate syllables guand rurefer to dark and light, with the role of the guru being to impart the light of transcendental knowledge. Regardless of etymology or specific definition, the relationship between guru and disciple is commonly one of the guru as the disciple’s ultimate source of learning or awakening, which is said to be viable only if the guru is genuine and the disciple obedient and devoted to the guru’s teachings. Rather than questioning the guru’s understandings or methods, the disciple must only absorb them in practice. 

One might find a sense of spiritual, paternal, or maternal comfort in the care of a guru or other spiritual guide who provides answers to all of the most basic or deepest questions of daily life. In explaining the benefits she has found in following a guru, a fol...

While the reality of yoga history is that yoga has always evolved through the creative explorations and new experiences of those deeply into the practice, today there are tens of millions of people worldwide stepping onto yoga mats with some intention related to living a better life. On every continent, in nearly every culture, across the cycles of life and the patterns of gender, ethnicity, religion, and belief, we find people practicing yoga. In practicing yoga, people are making choices about their practice that are related to the other realities of their lives: where they are, their values, their immediate needs and goals. In the spirit of human endeavor to have greater clarity, meaning, and well-being in life, we find that people modify what they are learning from their teachers, books, and other sources. In some instances the modifications are designed to make the practice more accessible, as in the pioneering creativity of TiramulaiKrishnamacharya (who created Ashtanga Vinyasa...

Downward Facing Dog Pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana)

Adho Mukha Svanasana is the foundational asana for all other arm support asanas and is an excellent asana for learning and embodying the principle of roots and extension. Following the basic principles of asana practice, explore Down Dog from the ground up and from what is at most risk of strain or injury in this asana: the wrists, shoulders, and hamstrings. We will look alternatively at the upper body (from the hands up) and the lower body (from the feet up).

In exploring Adho Mukha Svanasana, consider coming to all fours to explore the fundamentals of the hands, arms, and pelvis, then lift the hips up and back while moving toward straightening the legs. Healthy students with sufficient arm, shoulder, and core strength and stability can explore lifting the hips directly up and back into Adho Mukha Svanasana, either stepping over one foot at a time (relatively easier) or rolling over the toes on both feet simultaneously (more chall...

Ancient writings on yoga explain this with the koshamodel, in which prana—the life force that we cultivate through the breath—is the mediating force unifying body and mind (vayutattvain the Samkhya branch of ancient Indian philosophy). Rather than starting from the assumption that the body and mind are somehow separate, here we approach the practice as one of awakening to the existing reality of the bodymind as already whole—wholeness that we might not think or feel to be whole due to the conditions of the bodymind itself in its inner nature and all its sociocultural conditioning.In practicing, when we breathe consciously into a part of the body as directed by the tension highlighted in a particular asana, we are creating the opportunity to consciously awaken awareness there. Doing this in each of 840,000 asanas—the number mentioned in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika as a way of saying there is infinite possibility—we gradually awaken awareness throughout the entirety of our being, awakenin...