Yoga provides exercises and experiences that allow you to experience life more fully and vitally. This means that the breathing exercises, stretches, calisthenics, abdominals, standing poses, back-bend, inversion, spinal twists, and hip-openers that you do during a yoga class are pretty useless by themselves. The idea is that they free you up inside to be … Read more
This story is part of a series, this is the twenty-fourth part. You can read the first story here: The Wanderer, Part 1 and the most recent story here: The Wanderer, Part 24 The Wanderer Continued… They walked all morning while the sun rose over the horizon and then proceeded to cross the sky changing from a deep … Read more
Panini is a very well-known Sanskrit grammarian that literally changed the way that language functioned until the 20th century and helped to pave the way for many aspects of modern language as we know it. No one really knows when Panini was born or how he was raised, but most scholars place his birth around … Read more
Raja yoga is a term with different meanings depending on context; in the 1900s, Swami Vivekanada equated it with the sutras of Patanjali. Raja means best, chief, or king; when used in yoga it means the highest state of yoga practice or striving for samadhi (bliss). This is the feeling that you achieve in savasana after … Read more
Swami Vivekanada was born in 1863 into an aristocratic Bengali family and was heavily influenced by his guru Ramakrishna while he taught concepts and philosophies of Hinduism around the world. He was a charismatic and well-known man who traveled the world speaking on Hinduism and bringing its form of spirituality to the west. He was … Read more
Patanjali was the author of the Yoga Sutras, one of the most influential yoga texts in the modern world. He is also believed to have a snake-human form during his teaching. He with his human form used to perform daily routines and then transformed to half human – half snake shape covered by a curtain … Read more
Krishnamacharya is one of the more interesting figures in the paradigm of modern yoga’s founders. He probably had the greatest effect on the types of yoga that we practice today in the west and he healed many people during the course of his life. He used Ayurveda in conjunction with yoga to restore health and … Read more
I’ve just finished updating the blog to scale as it grows, as you may know I’ve been running out of space for all of my pictures recently, which isn’t good because readers love pics. Now I have a lot more space and the pages of the site should load much faster. I’m excited to continue … Read more
Krishna Pattabhi Jois is the founder of the Ashtanga style of yoga and one of the most influential yoga teachers to have brought yoga to the west through the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India. I studied there in January 2015. Jois was born on a full moon in 1915 in Kowshika in southern … Read more