Seeing and Understanding Bodies
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This training for yoga teachers, yoga therapists and serious yoga students is designed to refine your ability to observe subtleties of anatomical alignment, "tensegrity" (don't worry if this term is new to you — all will be explained), the movement of breath and even the elusive "flow of prana" in a wide variety of asana.
Seeing and Understanding Bodies was inspired by a series of workshops of the same name that my teacher Donald Moyer (now, sadly, retired) taught for years in Berkeley — though I put my own spin on the material. While yoga anatomy as it's typically taught can be useful, I tend to view anatomy more holistically, for example, studying whole bone movements rather than focusing solely on individual muscles and small parts of bones. In this vein, we'll examine the effects of chaining through the myofascia and liken effective asana to such tensegrity structures as suspension bridges and geodesic domes. To develop our eyes, we will systematically examine in detail the feet and ankles, the knees, the hips, the spine and ribs, the neck and shoulders, the skull and jaw, and the hands and wrists, in a wide variety of poses. We'll look for patterns and discuss ways to work with various imbalances and abnormalities. In addition to lectures, and a review of relevant anatomy, the workshop will feature a lot of supervised partner and group work, where you can practice your observational skills, and refine your ability of adjust students' practices to meet their needs. Although it won't be the main focus, we'll also practice some asana, etc.
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