10,000 THINGS YOGA

Our body is our home.

It is the elusive obvious. It is our symbolic reference point, and it is the point. It is difficult to focus on health and making health changes and not include the body in that dialogue. Yoga(s) are one way to do that.

The pose is not the point.

I understand yoga to be a grouping of types of practices that combine the ways we consciously or not conceptualize and experience our minded and bodily states. Yoga is much bigger than the Indian narrative, and as I understand it, includes the existentialists, the phenomenologists, Jung, Fraud, Maslow, and Watts, the mystics, (some pagan, some not), the somaticists, Gindler, Todd, Feldenkrais, Hanna…. the cadavers, the tree climbers, and so many more. AND yoga(s) have been found in all corners of the world during all ages. That the dominant culture now hears the word yoga to mean something is not going to change. The word genie is not going back in the bottle.

Though conversations about what yoga is or what yoga isn’t may be good ones to have in academia, I believe that in my body, yoga is “technical, durational, and alchemical” (Keates, 2018). I know that when I am trying to decide the right way to turn, it is my body conduct that measures up with my mind supported by breath that restores the channels of energy, feeds my organs through the pump of that energy flow, and all as an integrated whole. This is the best I can explain in words right now, other than to say when I practice I am the most at home in my body and therefore in the world.

Classes

Ah… so for now there are no classes scheduled. I’m working on it.

KATONAH YOGA® was founded by Nevine Michaan, and is a syncretic Hatha yoga practice refined over forty years, blended with Taoist theory, sacred geometries, pranayama, and meditation. For more information, please visit http://www.katonahyoga.com.