What is Iyengar Yoga?

Transcript

well we are here today with Peggy Kelly has been a longtime yoga teacher in Austin what is aenar Yoga wellar Yoga is Yoga so it is about the study of Consciousness and one of my favorite definitions of yoga is that it is a practice that moves you to a place where you haven't been before so it keeps life very fresh it keeps life fresh on a daily basis if you practice every day which he does and he's 92 Mr AAR himself and has been a living um example of what the practice of of yoga can bring to one's life which is Clarity confidence um um completeness in a sense a a feeling of integration he has been really the great teacher in the last 30 or 40 Years of yoga ASA but he also has translated the yoga sutras and written a book called light on pranan as well as light on yoga so he's made it clear to his students that the um philosophy of yoga the practicing of the yamas and the yamas is expected of the person who takes on the path of practicing the asanas and the pranama and that all of those limbs or aspects of yoga practice are part of a bigger picture which includes meditation and Enlightenment or some that he always gives when people ask him you know what is it in your practice that's giving you such Clarity and such ability to keep practicing uh into your 90s he'll say headstand and shoulder stand are very very important but what we're finding is that they are poses that need to be taught very very carefully in this culture because many of us live inside of a little box because we are driving a lot we're at our computers a so the shoulders and NE NE become very very tight and in order to do headstand and shoulder stand safely if the um upper body has limitation it can make those poses dangerous so what we try to do in iar yoga is we use our rope wall we use tools then as time goes on and practice develops up to 10 15 20 minutes in those poses so that um the full benefits of being in a different relationship to gravity can be appreciated and can be kind of soaked up by the body and he just remains this amazing role model for those of us who are teachers of someone who even into their old age is able to to prac and we had um a symposium on yoga Therapeutics and that really too is what the method has come to be in a way famous for because of the um attention that's given to alignment uh many of the poses become theraputic for people if they have muscular skeletal or even internal um things going on so I've had students who are insulin dependent diabetics who've been able to get off their insulin by practicing you know dedicatedly two or three hours a day and it's the rare person who has that kind of time to dedicate to their yoga practice but it can alter the internal chemistry of the body and then with the Rope wall and belts and blocks and the furniture that we have we we help so I would say that the AAR method has come to be famed and prized for its attention to detail its use of props it's to uh bring Health to bodies that otherwise might not even think of doing yoga that it's possible for people of of all ages and sizes and um shapes the method is very um profound and it's taken me for example over 40 years to begin to feel like I'm scratching the surface of it because I think that yoga has a lot to offer to people over 40 people over 50 people over 60 your practice what have been the benefits of practicing AAR yoga oh for me personally huge because because I found out about two and a half years ago that my back is broken so I didn't even know it it was just a chance x-ray that showed it and um there's a huge emphasis in the igar method on standing poses and getting the legs strong and I think that work helped me a lot so that my back didn't feel the effects of being broken and my legs were strong to support that back and also I had asthma when I was in my late teens early 20s and my asthma disappeared and um it's just been a good anchor for you know difficult emotional times in my life as well and I really feel strongly that you know when any of us get on our map for even 20 or 30 minutes a day that it just shifts things so that the world seems a little brighter a little a little Kinder because we practice that kindness to ourselves and that kind of clarity on the mat and that can spill over into our lives we have uh bks yard.com is one of the websites that has a list of teachers worldwide and we have our website um Austin yoga.org that um tells a little bit more about his method and our classes well thank you very much Peggy Namaste Namaste my pleasure [Music]