What Type Of Yoga Do You Teach?

This is a question that I get often from my students especially when the class is just called "Yoga." I tell them my classes are Vinyasa Flow.

I am a registered Vinyasa Yoga teacher. Vinyasa is linking of the breath with a movement, generally inhalation upon opening and exhalation upon folding/closing. You would do this in a sequence of asanas where one pose flows into another. There is hardly a break.

Vinyasa Yoga is inconceivable without Ashtanga Yoga, and those who call themselves Vinyasa Yoga teachers without any knowledge of Ashtanga Yoga need to seriously think about what they are calling themselves. The vinyasa in Ashtanga is so important that, for every pose in the Ashtanga sequence, there is a vinyasa count. For example, Surya Namaskar A has 10 Vinyasas. You will hear teachers often call the numbers in Sanskrit: ekam inhale (circle arms up), dwi exhale (to uttanasana), trini inhale (to ardha uttanasana), chatuari exhale (to chaturanga), pancha inhale (urdhva mukha), shat exhale (adho mukha svanasana), sapta inhale (jump forward to ardha uttanasana), ashta exhale (to uttanasana), nava inhale (circle arms up), desha samastithi.

In all of the sequencing, the most important thing, at least to me, is to keep the hips oriented the same way. Therefore, if transitioning from sideways hips to forward hips within a flow, it is important to tell the students to do so manually or to link it with exhalation and cue it verbally so that the possibility of hamstring injury is minimal. And vice versa. This is very important in Ashtanga, for exmaple, where, when shifting hips, the feet always usher in the shift. The pivot of the feet will open the hips up or close them, so it is, as teachers, very important to remember the feet.

But not all yoga teachers will heed this. In a class I took at the Y in Winston-Salem, the teacher (a dancer) started the class out in prasarita padottanasana. I would never start my class out this way because it is too much of a hamstring stretcher before the muscle are warm enough and it is a pose that you hold for too long with cold muscles. Then she had us swing our body, without telling us what to do with our feet, to the right and to open up as if in trikonasana, and then swing back, again without telling us what to do with our feet, to open up to the left as if in trikonasana. So my feet stayed in prasarita padottanasana feet the whole time with heels out and toes in. Whoa! My hips didn't like that. Then she had us inhaling when folding and then exhaling when opening to virabhadrasana II. Weird. The vinyasa was off for sure.

Then when in paschimottanasa, she had us point our feet as we folded forward. Now that seems to me, beside the face that in paschimottanasana the toes should be pointed up and heels flexed so that you may gaze to your toes, it would encourage the rounding of the back rather than straightening of the back. So the pointing of the toes continued in all the seated poses. Pointed toes in upavishta konasana. Pointed toes in janu sirsasana with added arm circles which seemed weird to me because this circling didn't help us in leveling the hips and shoulders. Now in parivrtta janu sirsasana this may help. But we were not doing that.

One of the teachers asked me after class what type of yoga I would say she teaches. She underwent training at a yoga institute, but never knew what to say when asked that question. Her class was good with a good flow, so I said I would consider her classes to be flow. She seemed happy with that. Her class was definitely more breath-oriented with the appropriate inhalation and exhalation.

Without attention to inhalation and exhalation, yoga is not yoga. It is just stretching. Without attention to the mechanics of the body, yoga is not yoga. It is just stretching. Without attention to the present moment in the pose, yoga is not yoga. It is just standing.