Yoga & Yoga Anatomy Workshop with Leslie Kaminoff

This is your opportunity to study with Leslie Kaminoff, a senior teacher and expert on yoga anatomy. Leslie is well known for the book ‘Yoga Anatomy’ he co-authored and his years of international teaching.

Teaching for the first time in Amsterdam, you can join him for a full weekend of yoga, yoga anatomy, alignment, breath-centered yoga, and fascia related mobility. You get to learn from the master and explore topics that are a must for every yoga practitioner and teacher.

Session 1: Awakening Our Inner Resources – Proprioception and Interoception in Yoga Education

By recognizing the fundamental job of a yoga teacher is to help students re-inhabit their bodies, we can make a few key changes to transform our teaching language into a more empowering experience for our students. Specific classroom strategies that promote better body awareness will be re-imagined and demonstrated for commonly-taught practices. A discussion of long and short term skill-sequencing will also help prioritize teaching choices for students of every level of experience.

Session 2: Re-Imagining alignment

This highly interactive workshop relies on students to bring questions about their own asana practice and teaching language. Leslie will promote an experimental, experiential atmosphere of inquiry regarding the teaching of alignment, safety and effective cueing of asana.
Starting with clear, simple principles that govern musculoskeletal function, Leslie will help you put your asana on a solid foundation literally from the ground up (and from your head down).

Topics include:

• Functional principles of alignment

• Breath-centered, anatomically-based cueing

• The relationship of bandha to support and movement

• Why instructions like “tuck your tail,” “lengthen your spine,” “square your hips” may be doing more harm than good, and what kind of language to use instead

• The use of gazing (drishti) and imagery to foster increased neuromuscular integration

Session 3: Introduction to Breath-Centered yoga

Yoga practice in the tradition of Krishnamacharya and Desikachar exhibits many distinctive principles and practices not found in other Hatha Yoga lineages. Details of breath sequencing, coordination with movement and spinal action are just some of the subjects we will explore in this highly interactive, experiential and informative session.
Leslie will introduce these breath-centered teachings from a historical, scholarly and anatomical perspective while leading participants into a progressively deeper understanding of the vital forces at work in the human breathing mechanism during yoga practice.

Session 4: Creative Chaos in the Classroom: Spirals, Fascia, and Fluids

Yoga is typically practiced on rectangular mats in rectangular spaces making it very easy to impose a linear geometry on our bodies completely at odds with its true nature. There are no straight lines in the body, and we can’t “square off” parts of our anatomy. In fact, we don’t actually have “parts” at all.
This workshop will explore – through practice and inquiry – how to tell a different story about our bodies; a story of spirals, fluids, continuities, chaos, and freedom.  Breaking out of the “tyranny of the rectangle” can lead to breakthroughs in how we move, feel and think about our embodied existence.