Vinyasa Yoga Explained

Transcript

[Music] hi this is david and i wanted to talk a little bit about some of the different styles specifically in this video i wanted to go over vinyasa yoga and how vinyasa yoga can be a staple in your yoga journey but there are also a few things to consider when it comes to vinyasa yoga so i wanted to take some time and discuss some of these concepts with you so um i hope you can take a minute to get comfortable grab a beverage and hopefully you can spend 15 minutes and go ahead and hear a little bit about what i have to say for my experience and from some of the things i learned and if you feel like contributing any information go ahead and like the video hit the notification bell and leave a comment below so we can kind of talk about this together as a community and really kind of you know just run over ideas together so without further ado let's go ahead and dive in this is going to be a discussion on particularly vinyasa yoga so in america we usually see four main staples of the asanas which are the physical styles of yoga and these include restorative yin hatha and vinyasa yoga you're going to see things like bhakti swari yogadidra kundalini these are all really popular styles of yoga that you're going to see around a lot as well as vinyasa yoga but more often than not you're going to see on tv shows and particularly where i i am located in southern california you're going to see a lot of hatha yoga and vinyasa yoga muni also has multiple meanings one of the meanings of vinyasa is to place in a special way which is what we do with the breath when you're in the style of yoga you're gonna move on an inhale and an exhale so you're gonna inhale in take a movement exhale another movement inhale movement exhale another movement now hotha you might still be stationed for five to 15 breaths so say lift my arms up in a half of the pose inhale it's one breath in relax shoulders it's two that's going to be more hotha when you're doing vinyasa vinyasa is going to be more inhale arms up exhale arms down so immediately you might start thinking of the syrian mascaras the sun salutations and those are going to be uh vinyasa sequence um you're also going to hear a lot in the sun salutations and other styles of vinyasa where you're going to be told to do your vinyasa this is where we talk about the second meeting of vinyasa vinyasa is going to be a sequence in between um a chaturanga upper dog and downward dog so you're doing your sun salutations let's take that for example you're going to be standing in your mountain poles you inhale as you inhale arms go up you exhale forward fold arms go down you inhale look up you got flat back exhale chaturanga you're gonna go into your plank which is like your push-up you're gonna inhale chest comes out inhale upward facing dog exhale you're going to bring the butt back you're going to be downward facing dog now that sequence of chaturanga you go to the plank position in hell xm chaturanga plate position inhale chest out upward facing dog exhale bring your butt back downward facing dog that's your vinyasa and a lot of times you're going to do that in between your positions as you're transitioning as you're going into your next position and that's what your instructor is most likely referring to when they say do your vinyasa as you're moving on to other poses you're going to do that a lot in astanga yoga it's going to be a staple in astanga yoga you usually when you do astanga yoga which is the only vinyasa that stays the same every vinyasa class is different but usually when you do your astanga you are going to be doing movements such as vinyasa in between the awesomeness particularly once you get to the seated positions the instructor though is going to be making adjustments on the fly depending on who's in the class what the class needs and why the class might need what whatever course of action might be best for the student so um keep that in mind and if you're teaching the class you want to keep in mind everything i just said the student the student safety should come first the comfort of the student should also come particularly important the actual benefit of the class should be also extremely important so you want to make sure that you're doing your best to get the most optimizing of your student possible but if you have the option to be creative and throw some vinyasas in there that would be great depending on what your your goals are for that particular class particularly if it's an astanga class usually stronger classes are a little bit more high maintenance they're definitely a lot more high you're going to hit the endocrine system usually when you do a stronger class you would train in uh mysore india first off to be a strong instructor so most aston instructors have trained out there under patrol b joyce who had passed away i believe in 2014 so um training to be a stunga instructor has been relatively difficult particularly since he's passed but um you can still train in astanga and you can do astanga styled courses they just might not be a purist astanga class per se that said usually when you do these classes they're done six days a week they're done pretty early about 6 30 in the morning no props usually for this style of yoga astanga not necessarily vinyasa vinyasa feel free to bring your block your blankets and uh your towel but um astanga usually doesn't utilize props or water and they just go for it it's a very athletic young man young woman style of yoga most practitioners do end up getting some sort of injury and then they usually move on to a hatha which is more balanced easier on the body style generally granted there are some hatha level threes that are very intense and will kick your butt more than a vinyasa level two would per se um so you want to keep that in mind anyway when you're teaching us your vinyasa or doing your astanga per se since we're on the topic of astanga you're going to want to keep in mind the needs of your students and what they've walked in with the ability to do and adjust affordably you want to hopefully push them so that they can get to a place where they can thrive that said you want to be realistic and you want to put them in the best chance to succeed so as an instructor you're going to want to walk a little bit of a tight rope which is not as hard as it sounds just give it your best of your ability have a caring heart keep an eye on your students and it's actually not that hard it's not rocket science luckily but it is something you have to be very much aware of what's going on and you want to be committed you know this is not the time for you to be on your phone or to be distracted hopefully you can get all that out in the car or before the class starts and then when the class is there be in the here and now and let everything about the class be your only focus that's usually the sign that you're gonna do a great job teaching the class if you're distracted um just try your best to check yourself a little bit there's nothing wrong with having life go on it's understandable but you have a job to do and your job is to be there for your clients your students your patients so try to get that together and if you need help there's help out there there's resources there's books there's a friends there's mentors there's a lot of different help even videos like this can give you some insight on tips that you can do what i would do is i used to listen to um my sports radio in the car i would do a little breathing and i would make sure that i feel really good and competent before i would go in and teach my course and then when i went to the course i knew everyone that i was taking care of my family my friends um i knew everyone was where they needed to be everyone was relatively safe with what needed to be taken care of anything that had to get done could wait until after class that was a really important thing for me to always keep in mind anything that really needed my attention he could wait but in that moment i was going to give the class my attention and that's kind of the recipe i would try to give to my clients and patients and they did a fantastic job embracing that i know parents traditionally struggle with that mindset and it's hard to tell a parent not to worry about their kids and not to think about their kids but when they're in the yoga class the goal is for them to let go and to reset their neurons to a point where they could not think and just heal and if they're worrying about their kids or their family or their spouse and they're really not giving themselves the ability to let go so our job is to try to help them feel like they're in a safe enough space where they can reflect on their family understand that they're exactly where they need to be and that if even if their family did need them they can wait and let them wait um take this time to get better and go back to them refreshed and that's kind of the goal and the point of these sessions you know we're not here to per se change anyone we're just here to kind of be a guide and help people get where they need to go just like we've gotten where we needed to go with guidance and help and i look at some of the principles of some of these great men and women that laid a path you can take for example jesus and the idea of jesus going to pray for 12 hours straight and in doing these specific duties that jesus had to do it's very obvious that people wanted jesus and needed jesus particularly for miracles or guidance but there were times where he had to shut all that off and do what he needed to do to be ready for his journey and to be refreshed so he could go to them and give them what they needed so that's kind of the mindset that i try to apply um i think it's kind of noble personally to try to live and follow the way that jesus walked i haven't heard anyone tell me that that made me a bad person for trying to models my behavior after jesus so i think uh i think you might be okay there whether you believe in those stories or not i think there's some great lessons there and i really advise everyone to take a look into the boundaries of jesus and the healing that jesus particularly was presenting for himself and others through having such boundaries where he can be refreshed and do the duties that he needed to do whether that was through the temptation for the time being that he was isolated or through his um extended time frame or through his training that we don't know too much about um you know so those are those are things that you have to keep in mind as an instructor is that as you're teaching an azure guide you're just kind of presenting options for your clients your patients and your students so that they can hopefully make well-informed decisions on their life that can be productive for them and find their own mentors and guides besides you to continue on the path usually when they start on this path they're going to have quite a bit of questions and a lot of those questions can get answered by continuing to do the work and just coming to class what i like to do particularly in my vinyasa classes since usually we we want to pass the time through some sort of some sort of knowledgeable community of of positive energy and motivation i like to grow into yoga sutras it's a really good idea to throw them in when you can sometimes i do it in savasana at the end sometimes i throw it in during downward dog when we're in those static positions and really trying to get breath and trying to find ways to muscle through these difficult time frames so for me that has been really helpful and i definitely highly recommend that um as instructors you give that a shot going into yoga sutras um at those times and particularly if you have one or two that you really like or the yamas and niyamas uh any of the eight limbs anything that you really cherish as part of the yoga journey feel free to throw that in as an instructor it's your course and your class and as much as you're in there to just kind of keep an eye on the patients clients and yoga teacher trainers it's also your opportunity to be creative and to flex a little bit as an instructor to provide some sort of positive value so take your time and find something that's really beneficial that you want to do on there so let's go into the third meaning of vinyasa and of course uh it's pretty obvious by now hopefully if not don't worry about it um but the third meaning is the actual class vinyasa so um the vinyasa class is um never going to be the same it's going to be a lot of uh inhaling and exhaling and doing your movements on the inhaler and exhale it's going to heat you up going to definitely heat up your endocrine system and it's going to usually be one of the most strenuous styles of yoga as comparative to hatha definitely more than yen and definitely far more than restorative so you can expect to probably get a good sweat from doing your vinyasa style yoga classes vinyasa is arguably the most popular style of yoga that you're going to see in america and probably in any i would say first world country that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best it's just the most popularized by the media um that's it's probably what people would consider the most fun i would tell everyone and i do tell this to most people to be greedy try all the styles kind of see what you need when to do them when i would do vinyasa um as a good cardio for me i would do it definitely if i'm trying to get a solid version of cardio and i didn't do a specific cardio i would do it then i would do it if i need to detox um vinyasa is great for that there's a lot of great ways and reasons to do vinyasa so i encourage you to look into them and really allow yourself to to explore what types of vinyasas you like and hopefully you can come to some great fulfilling courses and classes doing vinyasa whether you're going yourself and or teaching so i hope that's been helpful i want to thank you for taking the time to check out this video i'm going to invite you to like and