Yoga Philosophy

There is a question I keep returning to, both in my own practice and in the classes I teach. It doesn’t come from a book or a lineage, exactly — though it lives inside all of them. It’s simpler than that. Yoga asks us this question: How available are you? Not available in the calendar…

Have you been in a yoga class and encountered mantra? It’s not incredibly common in the West, but in some studios (like ours) you’ll find it. In this post we’ll give you more background about why we work with mantra.  At a fundamental level, everything is energy. Physics shows that matter isn’t solid the way…

Subtle is, ironically, a simple word that is dense with power. And it’s one that sits at the center of yogic study. In yoga, we use the word subtle most often in reference to “the subtle body,” as in, the aspects of our being or body that are not strictly physical. This includes the energetic…

If you’ve been practicing yoga (asana) long enough, then you probably remember the buzz when yoga was becoming truly mainstream. Instead of the mysterious studio tucked into the strip mall, or the random loft space, or the studio you found by word-of-mouth—spaces were popping up left and right.  It seems like something similar is happening…

If you are looking to deepen your relationship to yoga, one of the natural steps is to take a dip into its rich history. But how do you wrap your mind around 10,000+ years?  Yoga is often examined in different eras. You have the Pre-Classical Era, around 2700 BCE, where fundamental Vedic scriptures came through.…

Let’s start with the most important part: Why should we care that there are myths surrounding yoga, and that perhaps it matters to debunk them? Maybe you love your yoga practice the way it is, and you don’t really care what exists beyond the four corners of your mat. It works for you—and why fix…