Yoga Philosophy and the Path to the Inner Life
Yoga philosophy has always been a response to the stresses of life: the challenge of our fears, insecurities, conflicting emotions, and even a lack of a sense of purpose or fulfillment. Early answers from yoga philosophers tended toward asceticism (which was less practical for most people), or toward preaching socially acceptable fulfillment and moral purity based on the idea of ‘Dharma' taught at the time of the Bhagavad-Gita.
Perhaps because of the shortcomings of these answers, a shift took place in yoga philosophy to a deeper, more personal contemplation of our inner life. The power behind emotion and even desire is no longer simply rejected as an obstacle to yoga, but embraced as a path inward to a deeper level of yoga. Emotion is ‘rasa' — the ‘flavor' or even ‘nectar' of experience that enriches our inner pursuit of yoga in all of the different practices of yoga.
This deeper path is explored in tantric philosophy and in the path of ‘bhakti' or devotion — not simply devotion to a deity, but a path of feeling that illuminates our life. The Sanskrit root of ‘bhakti' is ‘bhaj,' which means to participate. The path of yoga as a path of feeling (and not just ‘doing') is an invitation to fully, wisely and even passionately participate in life and all that comes with it.
This talk will explore this expansive concept of yoga, and the tools of yoga as a path of feeling, knowing and doing — and even desiring — in a life of spiritual wellness. The same tools help us when we experience conflict in our emotions as obstacles and frustrations in our path. These same emotions become the path to going deeper, either transforming their energy into inspiration, or teaching us how to reduce their power over us.
Date and Time
2019/11/8 (五) 19:00-21:00
Price
NT$980
Suitable for
All Level
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Yoga For Better Living, Breathing and Focus
This two-day intensive is an opportunity for full yoga practice, covering a variety of yoga poses and practices, with an emphasis on making your practice comfortable, challenging, and of the greatest benefit to you.
Often the pace of yoga classes is a little too quick to explore and understand your own experience as you try to keep up with the pace of the class. This is a chance to slow down and break down the poses into the fundamental actions that make the poses work best for you: because yoga is not about conforming to an external standard, but about fulfilling your own form, with awareness and light.
First Day - Our Flexible, Spiraling Core
This practice will explore the experience of the ‘Core' in asana, and how it empowers our poses.
Though the idea of a strong ‘core' has been popular for some time now, too often it focuses simply on abdominal and spinal stability (and in yoga, on the ‘bandhas' alone), in isolation from the role of the arms and legs. In this practice, we will play with asana and vinyasa as functional movement, with the arms and legs incorporated into the integrity of the ‘core.' This approach will bring greater freedom and power to our practice, and it will include attention to improving the well-being of our foundation: our feet, knees and hips, as well as keeping our low back healthy and pain-free. We will include tips for resolving sciatic, low back and hip pain through asana.
The day will finish with some breath and relaxation practices (Yoga Nidra).
Second Day - From Hands to Heart: Spiraling into Neck and Shoulder Health through the Arms
Shoulder and neck fatigue and pain are very common complaints, and these are often treated as separate issues, and with exercises or corrections that don't really address the problem or bring a positive change.
Yoga poses teach dynamic integration between the actions of the arms, shoulders and neck, bringing greater freedom to movement, with less stress and pain. We will focus on the most common causes of neck and shoulder pain, and approach the practice with simple yet refined actions for addressing these problems.
Shoulder work in asana practice, with actions that spiral from the hands deep into the shoulders and heart, helps us to keep the shoulder joints aligned and free from damage and irritation, while maintaining the space of the upper body and pain-free alignment of the neck.
These are more than simply physical actions: yoga describes the subtle and empowering energies of Prana and Apana Vayu as being the ‘yin and yang' of movement — receiving and drawing in, balanced with letting go and expanding — can play a profound role in going deeper into these actions, especially when joined to the breath.
In this way, we can experience the practice as a flow of energy; pain is experienced because of blocks in this flow, which can be melted through thoughtful practice. This same awareness will be brought into breath and relaxation practices (Yoga Nidra) at the end of the day.
Daily Schedule
09:30-12:00 Morning Session
14:00-16:30 Afternoon Session
Suitable for
All Level
CE Credits
10 hours of CEU credits for Yoga Alliance
Self-Care and Yoga: The Therapeutic Wisdom of Yoga with Doug Keller
An Immersion for yoga teachers and inquiring students
Our everyday pain problems too often arises from habits and patterns of movement that have become part of the ‘story' of our body, impacting our health. Traditional approaches to yoga have described the problem in terms of layers or ‘Koshas' which include the influence of breath, thought and emotion. We are coming to understand how concretely these ‘layers' are expressed in the fascia, with implications for dealing with maintaining our well-being as well as dealing with pain as it arises.
This training will be an initiation into seeing patterns of posture and movement expressing and impacting the Koshas, and how to approach yoga practice as a commitment to self-care, using the tools available through yoga as well as ‘Marma' — a tradition mentioned in early hatha yoga texts but not often explored. The idea of marma will be dove-tailed with contemporary body work focusing on the fascia, to give it grounding and relatability. And elements of yoga philosophy will be sprinkled throughout the training to strengthen the connection to the spiritual heart of the practice.
The training is structured to help teachers understand more deeply the therapeutic rationale behind alignment and action instructions in yoga poses — and to know when these instructions are helpful and appropriate, and when variations or a different emphasis are necessary.
Day One - Sacroiliac, Low Back and Neck Health: Working with the Layers or ‘Koshas' of Feeling in the Fascia of the Spine — With Implications and Applications in the Teaching of Asana
Traditional approaches to therapeutic applications of yoga have focused on the ‘Koshas' or ‘Sheaths' of energy. These layers were described functionally — and the more deeply we come to understand the functions of fascia, the more deeply a practical correlation can be drawn between fascia and the Koshas.
Our approach will be very practical, focusing on engaging muscles of the spine and ‘core' which help to overcome pain problems and increase freedom of movement and stability — and will also help us to understand more deeply the use of breath as well as intention, mindfulness and enthusiasm in asana practice — enhancing pranayama and meditation as well.
We'll be looking at the sheaths of fascia and muscles nested within them that profoundly influence low back health. At this point, research into low back pain is looking beyond trying to isolate factors in low back pain, such as individual muscles, and instead to the thoracolumbar fascia as a matrix of interrelated layers.
This will include not just the health of the lumbar spine and sacroiliac joints, but will also include an exploration of sciatic pain, which radiates from the gluteals down through the leg and sometimes into the foot. It is one of our most ancient pain problems, appearing even in the literature of the Greeks, and is as prevalent today as low back pain.
Our treatment of the low back and hips will also extend down to the knees, with an introduction to understanding knee problems that will be carried forward on the second day of the training.
From this perspective we find a constellation of related pain issues that can be handled through simple yoga routines that recognize and respect our own individual structure and movement patterns; and in our practice we will emphasize actions that are important for overcoming and/or preventing such pain patterns.
Day Two - The Lower Body: From the Feet to the Knees and Hips
Knee health and knee problems is an especially important topic for active (and previously active) people, and yoga practice poses its own challenges and cautions. And knee health usually includes all of the major considerations of the lower body: the feet and health of the arches, including challenges such as bunions; plantar fasciitis, hamstring and quadriceps tightness or imbalance, the IT band and imbalances in the many muscles surrounding the hips, including the gluteals.
The feet provide the foundation; and the actions of the feet profoundly affect the 3-dimensional movement of the knees as well as the hips. We'll begin with the feet, and the fundamental actions for maintaining the integrity and stability of the feet as a foundation — and how this is applied in the many different forms of poses in yoga.
From there we'll expand into assessment principles for the knees and knee problems, awareness of the most common kinds of knee problems and injuries, and principles for safe and helpful practice in yoga poses that will improve the condition of not only the knees, but the feet and hips as well.
This will also include introduction to self-care techniques relating the traditional marma system of Ayurveda with contemporary fascial understanding — which can be incorporated simply into practice, especially for people experiencing joint issues, neuropathy (numbness) and other common problems — for the knees, as well as for the hips and feet.
Day Three - The Upper Body: Upper Back and Neck, and Their Effect Upon Shoulder Health
Neck and head alignment — and our own subtle habits in using our neck — have a great impact upon the health of our upper back and shoulders, and are the root of a great deal of our upper body pain. This includes jaw alignment and tension, as well as tension arising from postural shifts beginning in the lower body.
Yoga has plenty of principles for the head and neck, including bandha and mudra, that are related to the breath as well as asana, and which can be applied simply and effectively to address upper body pain problems, including neck stiffness and headache pain as well as breathing and functional disorders that affect our everyday health, including sleep.
This day will include a lot of suggestions and adjustments, not only for yoga practice — covering a wide range of poses, but also suggestions and manageable exercises for everyday life, to deal with neck and shoulder tension that arise in the course of the day.
The principles covered for working with the head and neck in asana and pranayama will naturally lead us into working with the shoulders, and seeing how these principles apply in all classes of asanas. This will take us further in our understanding of what we learn through postural and movement assessment, and the theme of the neck and shoulders will carry forward into the following days.
Days Four and Five - From Hands to Heart: Spiraling into Shoulder Health through the Arms — with attention to the health of the wrists and elbows, and their impact on shoulder opening
Shoulder work in asana practice, with refined actions that spiral from the hands deep into the shoulders and heart, helps us to keep the shoulder joints aligned and free from damage and irritation, while maintaining the space of the upper body.
Just as the feet, with the actions maintaining their arches, support the health of the knees and hips, our hands likewise have arches — and actions practiced to maintain the health of the wrists will also support the health of the elbows and shoulders, facilitating the opening of the shoulders while protecting the health of the rotator cuffs.
Shoulder ‘opening' is usually treated through stretches emphasizing external rotation of the arms, and moreover they focus on the action of the arms at the shoulder joint itself. But practice of both internal as well as external rotation is vital for freedom in the shoulders, and these rotations can be practiced more organically as ‘spirals' which flow from the hands and wrists up to the shoulders.
We will cover the most common forms of movement problems, injuries (rotator cuff, cartilage and ligament injury) and pain syndromes involving the shoulders, elbows and wrists together, and will work with exercises and asanas for improving the ‘spirals' by which we achieve greater freedom of movement, support healing from injury, and freedom from pain.
This will include self-care techniques based in Marma, which will be a complement to the focused practice of variations in arm and shoulder actions that can be introduced into yoga poses, as well as remedial exercises for improving shoulder health. Pain assessment as well as principles for working with different levels of pain and injury will be included, especially with regard to rotator cuff injuries and related limitations and pain problems arising from the AC joint and collar bone restrictions.
The two days devoted to the shoulders will allow us to go in depth into the actions of the arms and shoulders in the many classes of yoga poses — what the benefits of these actions are, what variations are possible for people with limited movement in the shoulders, the anatomy we need to understand to work well with the shoulders, and what the applications of this work is in pranayama practice as well as mudra in meditation.
Daily Schedule
09:00-12:00 Morning Session
14:00-17:00 Afternoon Session
Suitable for
At least one year of yoga practice
CE Credits
30 hours of CEU credits for Yoga Alliance
Doug Keller's background reflects a lifelong commitment to studying, imbibing and sharing the vast field of knowledge and practice known as yoga. After receiving degrees in philosophy from Georgetown and Fordham Universities in the United States, and teaching philosophy at college level for several years, Doug pursued his ‘post-graduate' education in the practical experience of yoga at the Siddha meditation ashram, Gurudev Siddha Peeth, in India, for seven years, and spent a total of 14 years doing service, practicing, training in and teaching yoga in Siddha meditation ashrams worldwide.
He received intensive training in the Iyengar system in New York City, practiced Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga in India, and became one of the first certified Anusara yoga teachers, producing three highly respected books on asana, pranayama and yoga philosophy. His work has since taken him beyond the confines of the Anusara system. Doug's further expansion in learning is reflected in his latest and most in-depth work, ‘Yoga as Therapy', which is one of the most comprehensive, innovative and useful treatments of the structural aspect of yoga therapy available.
Doug's teaching is rooted in a vast and inclusive perspective of study and practice that honors the insights of the many streams of wisdom that flow into the river of yoga. A regular columnist for Yoga+ Magazine, writing the ‘Asana Solutions' column that addresses specific therapeutic problems, Doug is a ERYT500 with Yoga Alliance and a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists.
