Slow Your Roll, Bitches: My Yoga IS Healthy Yoga

It happens all of the time. New people attend my class, and they are experienced yoga practitioners. You know the type, usually younger, lithe, and so full of yogi zen you just want to slap the yoga off of their fucking faces. They have no idea the yoga they’ve been practicing isn’t healthy yoga.

 

I always frontload these people with my background in Viniyoga, my atypical cueing, and my history with yoga as a kinder way of saying, “Slow your roll, bitches. This is healthy yoga.”

 

Yoga (modern transnational physical yoga, MTPY for short) as typically taught can cause serious injuries. Yes, yoga is the bomb diggity, and I wish everyone would practice healthy yoga. BUT I’ve said it before, someone told you yoga would change your fucking life, but they fail to mention starting with a beginning yoga class and the first month of classes are going to suck eggs.

 

Yoga ain’t for sissies.

 

I’m a yoga iconoclast. At least 80% of the physical yoga taught in the U.S. today is absolute shit.  MTPY comes from a time when people didn’t know dick about physiology or kinesiology. And I’m going out on a very long limb when I say MTPY has its origins in gymnastics. You’re going to fall on one side or another of this theory. I only ask you to be aware of the emotions fueling your response.

 

Yoga Body has been distorted by critics because its implicit revelation is too uncomfortable to face directly.

— Matthew Remski

 

That said, not all of us are gymnasts, and modern life looks entirely different than life in the 1920s. For us to be clinging to a version of yoga in that vein is bullshit. Viniyoga, yoga reimagined by TKV Desikachar, takes into account yoga for every individual. It moves western yoga back to a focus on wellbeing and therapeutic benefit. Healthy yoga.

 

All of my flows are born of this philosophy. We may work the fucking vinyasa jam, but I’m guiding you through it with therapeutic principles. This brings me back to slow your fucking roll. Viniyoga is about working a flow with the intent of warming you up to stronger poses and backing you out of stronger poses.

 

 

For us older folks, it’s like driving a stick-shift. You can’t slam a car into fourth or fifth gear, you’ll stall out. You can’t drop from fourth gear into first gear, you’ll drop your fucking tranny.

 

Google that shit if you aren’t picking up what I’m laying down.

 

Your body on yoga is precisely like that six on the floor Porsche 911. Yeah bitches, own it. Sure, that 911 can go from zero to 60 in 2.9s, but you’re going to shift up through the gears to that speed. I know you can throw your body into a full version of ekapada ustrasana (one-legged camel pose). Don’t fucking do it.

 

 

I’m going to warm that shit up before we slam into the fullest expression of the pose. All of my flows build the heat and get the juices flowing and then we’ll move into those stronger expressions. Common sense approach to yoga, bitch.

 

Grace and kindness is the key. Give my alignment cues (soft knees, soft elbows) a shot.  Be mindful of your body. Check your fucking ego at the door. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to keep most of my original parts. I don’t make this shit up.