Integrating Asana, Vinyasa, and Prasara in Yoga Posture Practice

First off, I just wanted to say that Matt and I have been knee deep since the beginning of the year in creating the Circle Yoga Shala 500-Hour Teacher Training curriculum, so we’ve been quiet in terms of blog posts.  We plan to get back into a regular posting rhythm as the demands of that project lessen.  In the mean time, I wanted to address a couple of questions from one of our readers, Damon.  In response to my article on the integration of prasara into a more traditional asana/vinyasa practice, Damon wrote:

Ok so how would suggest combining an asana/vinyasa/prasara practice? And what place would you give to other Sonnon practices such as Intu-Flow and Flowfit? Could you give an example of how you might work these practices together over a week/month. And which of them, if any, you would regard as redundant.

I responded briefly to his comment on the post itself, but I wanted to take a more in-depth look at these questions in a proper post, so here we go.  I’ll do this by looking specifically at the thinking behind my upcoming hatha yoga training cycle. Read more >>

From Asana to Vinyasa to Prasara: The Evolution of a Modern Yoga Practice

photo credit: Dr. Tony George

Over the past 12 years or so, my yoga posture practice has changed dramatically. It all began when I walked into a Barnes and Noble bookstore in college and bought a beginner’s yoga book published by the Sivananda Yoga Center. The posture practice was a pretty standard, well-ordered sequence of asanas, preceded by one vinyasa (surya namaskar). This took me a long way toward exploring myself within the postures, but it wasn’t until I discovered “Power Yoga” that I found a way to become more immersed in some sort of connected flow through the entire practice.

During this time period (about eight years ago) I also discovered Godfrey Devereux’s Dynamic Yoga Method. Combining the energetic qualities of the bandhas and the spirals with the connective possibilities of vinyasas between asanas, I really felt like I had a fantastic, even fluid practice. However, it wasn’t until until the next novelty in my practice emerged that I discovered how truly connected and fluid a yoga posture practice could be.

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Making Homemade Ghee from Unsalted Butter – myCreativeEvolutionTV Episode 1

This is the first official episode of myCreativeEvolution Television. Woot!

In this experiment, I’ll show you how to make your own ghee in your own kitchen from unsalted organic butter for less than half the price you’ll pay for it mail order over the Internet. Making your own Ghee is a super simple process, but it does require patience, and it will probably take you about 2 hours. Before we get to the video, though, let’s first establish what ghee is, and then talk a bit about the benefits of using ghee instead of butter or some other fat for cooking.

If you’ve taken a stab more than twice in your life at cooking Indian food, you’ve probably seen “ghee” in an ingredient list. And, if you’re like me, you just substituted butter, olive oil, or some other fat because you didn’t have any ghee, you didn’t know where to get any ghee, and you honestly weren’t exactly sure what ghee was at the time. That was me until rather recently.

Ghee is simply the Indian or Ayurvedic version of clarified butter, which is commonly used in French cuisine. What they do is cook all the water content out of the butter, as well as the milk solids, leaving pure fat — YUM! To make ghee, we’ll just cook the butter a bit longer than we would to make clarified butter. This toasts the milk solids (which settle at the bottom of the pan), and gives the ghee a wonderful, unique flavor.

In terms of the benefits of using ghee as opposed to some other fat in cooking, there are two different categories — verifiable and mumbo-jumbo. Since ghee has been a staple in Ayurvedic medicine for millennia, when you research its benefits, you’ll find a lot of anecdotal, hocus-pocus-y claims. I don’t mean to say I think these claims are all false, just that they are not really objectively verifiable. In the interest of honest inquiry, I have separated claims that are scientifically verifiable from those that are more, shall we say, esoteric.

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Physical Disabilities, Motor Neuron Disease, and the Development of the Physical Body

“I am quite often asked: How do you feel about having ALS? The answer is, not a lot. I try to lead as normal a life as possible, and not think about my condition, or regret the things it prevents me from doing, which are not that many.”
– Steven Hawking

It may seem disingenuous to characterize physical development simply in terms of diet/nutrition, primal movement, and posture practice. The reality is that at least two of these strategies are completely dependent upon reasonable physical health. This might seem to mean that a large segment of the population – those with certain physical disabilities – would be rendered unable to participate in these activities and would therefore be unable to foster the kind of development in the physical realm that we talk about here at myCreativeEvolution.com.

I say, Not so fast. Let’s take a closer look:

A student brought up the specific example of Steven Hawking at a recent intensive retreat. We were discussing the model of the human being as having three aspects – the mind, the body, and the spirit – each requiring work in order to insure balanced development. His question was, “What about Steven Hawking? He can’t move his body at all? Can his development ever be seen in this model as balanced?”

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Successful Retreat!

“Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”
– Often Attributed to Johan Wolfgang von Goethe

The first Creative Evolution Workshop/Retreat has officially come to a close. It was a beautiful experience for everyone involved, filled with emotions of all kinds, hard work, wistful playtime, and fantastic food. Check out the pictures at Circle Yoga Shala’s Facebook Page.