Breathing

We are elemental beings, made of Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space. Explore the doshas (vata, pitta, kapha) and their subtle essences through this creative and inspiring series. Discover how the elements mingle and merge within you. Steeped in the teachings of Ayurveda, these classes will enlighten your understanding of what you are made of and how with practice, you can harness the power of the elements to bring balance and harmony to your body, mind, and heart. Classes combine movement, breath, meditation, along with education from various Ayurvedic texts.

Following up on our deep exploration of yamās and niyamas in the spring, our fall Zoom Club will be a journey back to the basics of practice: body, breath, mind. October will provide an opportunity for us to explore asana through the lens of Patanjali’s teaching. We’ll take four weeks to study how our posture and movement patterns reflectduality: instability and poise; ease and rigidity; presence and distraction. In November, we’ll study the breath and the inner practices of pranayama and pratyhara, drawing from the Vedic texts for inspiration. In December as winter escorts us inward, we will submerge in meditative processes that cultivate dharana and dhyana, attuning mind and intention towards stillness.

Contains 33 practices - after making your purchase, you will automatically e-mailed a document containing a Dropbox link.

There are a multitude of yoga techniques which manipulate the breath for a myriad of purposes. However, Patanjali’s pranayama sutras (sutras 2:49-2:53) consistently speak of pranayama, breath-control, as a means to still the mind and ultimately to induce samadhi. Over the course of a month, Robin has cultivated a life-time’s worth of uniquely meditative practices centered around the four phases of the breath. Through the deliberate application of mindful movement choreographed to the rhythm of breath, these sequences are layered with mantra, mudra, and sensory inhibition (pratyahara). Like a labyrinth, they lead the practitioner inward to experience a state of deep inner stillness, where all that remains is the silence between the breaths… between the thoughts…. (12 one-hour practices).