Ride the New Wave of Yoga & Movement
It’s an Exciting Time to be a Yogi! New Approaches to Ancient Asanas that will Change your Experience from the Inside Out!
What’s an EMBODIED YOGA PRACTICE?
Yoga has always been an embodied experience, meaning that it helps you get back in touch with your body move holistically through your life. Modern Yoga practice, though, has drifted from these paradigms, emphasizing strict shapes & angles as well as repetitive fitness-sequencing patterns. The result, Modern Yogis are suffering from injuries like arthritic hips, torn hamstrings, injured vertebrae and more. This isn’t the fault of yoga, it’s the fault of how we are teaching yoga.
Return to Organic Movement!
Discover how you can unlock authentic whole body movement from the inside out, based on awareness, not angles.
An Embodied Yoga practice places it’s focus first on awareness itself, teaching that how we move is more important than how far we move. The movements themselves are based on Myofascial lines of functional movement within the body, rather than individual muscles and bones. Science has shown repeatedly that our bodies don’t move a muscle, but a chain of muscles. Our bodies don’t ‘stretch their hamstrings’, they bend forward to pick something up. Embodied Yoga works with our bodies in their most natural way.
There is so much more that can be said, but until you’ve experienced Embodied Yoga with Konalani, there is simply no way to understand it. It’s like trying to understand the heart with your mind— there’s just no words for it. If you have the time, take 5 minutes to do one of our Shakti Flows, or set aside more time and take a class with us. We’d love to see you in our donation based Weekly Live-Online Class, where you can receive personalized feedback as you move. Below are video links, as well as additional articles to help open your practice to a new wave of movement that is rolling through— We hope to ride it with you!
Feel First, Think Last (Or don’t think at all): Movement Should Come From Feeling
The embodied yoga practice of your Online Ashram Yoga Teacher Training teaches you how to feel your yoga postures from the inside out through introspective cues that lead to better personal alignment and higher degrees of range of motion in every yoga posture.
The yoga methodology itself is based both on new research in the fields of myofascia, sports medicine, and functional movement modalities, as well as Ancient yogic teachings from the 2,000 year old Yoga Sutras and 1,000 year old Shiva Sutras. All these sources are pointing in the same direction-- We must FEEL while we move, a principle called Anusamdhitsa in the ancient yogic language of Sanskrit, and Embodied Movement in more contemporary vernacular.
An Embodied Yoga (R)Evolution
We should all look different in our yoga postures, it’s what an embodied yoga practice is all about.
Shiva Sutra 2.2 discusses this concept clearly:"If on the occasion of every bit of knowledge, she looks within, she will have a FEEL of the Self which alone makes that knowledge possible…This is the ever-present joy of samadhi.” (Jai Deva Singh, Sutra 2.2)
As we interact with our external world we must bring our awareness back inside and continue to "Feel" the source of our awareness, which brings us to the source of our being and bliss. This is the essence of Embodied Movement that we teach in our Online Yoga Teacher Training, and we look forward to sharing this path with you.
“I couldn’t be happier and I couldn’t be more fulfilled than I do from the experience I had here.”
Alicia DeCastro, College Student, Alumni of ShambhavAnanda Yoga Teacher Training Program
Embrace Awarness, Surrender Shape: Cues that inspire Reflection, not Correction
You won't here us telling you to "Tuck your tail or square your hips" at Konalani’s Online Yoga Teacher Training, Why? 2 Reasons: They take you out of your body and into your head, and they don't work for a whole class.
The current “shape-based” yoga paradigm that stretches the body according to angles to ‘achieve’ a certain pose has led to an epidemic in yoga injuries and a misunderstanding of yoga’s innate purpose. New research in fascia and functional movement patterns are validating what Yogis have always known— the practice of yoga is a fluid experience of exploration that requires constant inner attention, and simply can’t be commanded from the outside-in.
Instead of just "tucking your tail" to de-compress the lumbar spine, we would ask you to slowly 'tuck and un-tuck your tail bone', and ask you to notice the effect it has on your low back. What position feels most supportive and spacious for you? It's a cue that encompasses anatomy and expands to include your personal experience. It's the best of both worlds, as it is proving to prevent injury, increase range of motion, relax the nervous system and put you more in touch with your internal awareness. It is called "Introspective Cueing", and asks you, the yoga student, to find your own individual alignment based on exploration and discovery rather than a catch all cue that tries to cue all bodies to do the same thing. Your Online Yoga Teacher Training will train you both anatomically and experientially to explore this more profound trajectory of the 'yoga cue'.
The Art of Vinyasa: Cultivating Creativity and Discovery in the Creation of the Yoga Sequence
We believe that each yoga posture of your yoga practice, as well as the overall yoga sequence itself, is a fluid and ever changing work of art that must be discovered, not memorized. That's why your 200 hour Online Ashram Yoga Teacher Training teaches you how to feel while you create yoga sequences, and cultivates the courage it takes to allow your experience to inspire your creation. With 42 yoga asanas, coupled with endless movement explorations, and step-by-step sequencing progressions, you will have all the inspiration you need to create works of art for years to come.