THE WISDOM OF YOGA
registration $350 Full Weekend
$175 individual Day
VIRTUAL & IN-STUDIO
Saturday & Sunday are also sold separately as an option
This weekend workshop is a combination of movement practice and pranayama — one that will illuminate the tradition and highlight its practical relevance for us here and now.
While pranayama is compatible with and resonates with contemporary ideas of breathing practice and therapy, it goes further and deeper in ways that are surprisingly relevant to contemporary ideas about our nervous system and health.
Pranayama has long been an essential — though neglected — part of Hatha yoga that made the innovative approach of Hatha yoga such a unique contribution to the whole history of yoga. We miss an appreciation of these practices when we lack context for understanding them. And the ‘yoga language’ of pranayama can also obscure its relevance to contemporary understandings of wellness by seeming overly esoteric.
This weekend is about learning and doing the fundamental practices of pranayama and connecting them to our yoga practice — and more than that, it is about providing context, understanding, and appreciation of how deeply relevant these practices can be to health challenges we face today.
We’ll be connecting the ‘yoga language’ of pranayama to contemporary understanding of the nervous system and how it works to maintain our health, even touching upon the origins of the ideas of the chakras, and how a proper understanding of the chakras as tools for practice provides guidance and depth for our breath practice.
At the completion of the weekend, you’ll have had some refreshing and manageable asana practices — with some new insights — and a firm grasp of the fundamental pranayama practices, including an understanding of their compatibility with contemporary understanding of the breath. This will include layers of insight into the spirituality of the practices not touched upon in modern accounts.
CONTEMPORARY ECHOES
Saturday 11:00am - 1:00pm & 2:00pm - 4:00pm
$175.00
The asana session will explore poses, not just as a physical experience, but also subtler experience,’flow of prana’. The breath that the yogis emphasized as central to the practice. There will be a ‘flow’ of poses, but a relatively ‘slow flow’ not emphasizing physical challenge so much as the space for feeling the nourishing quality of the breath.
From there, we dive into the innovative perspective of the traditional ideas of the Nadis, Vayus, etc — and the relevance of these ideas to our contemporary understanding of our nervous system. This is especially important for addressing the problem of regulating the inflammatory conditions at play in contemporary health challenges such as chronic fatigue as well as long haul covid.
From there, we dive into the innovative perspective of the traditional ideas of the Nadis, Vayus, etc — and the relevance of these ideas to our contemporary understanding of our nervous system. This is especially important for addressing the problem of regulating the inflammatory conditions at play in contemporary health challenges such as chronic fatigue as well as long haul covid.
KEYS TO DEEPER REALM
Sunday 9:00am - 11:00am & 12:00pm - 2:00pm
$175
The asana session will explore simple approaches to ‘bandha’ and even ‘mudra’ in ways that support stability of body in the practice, as well as a deeper, supported experience of the breath.
We’ll carry this forward into the ideas that provided keys to the deeper realms of breath and consciousness. This will include an illuminating background to the idea of the Chakras — where the ideas came from, and how they evolved from esoteric tantric ideas into tools for practice that help us to regulate and understand our inner states — with surprising insights into what we are ‘witnessing’ when we ‘witness’ the mind in meditation.
Intimately tied to this is an understanding of breath as dharana, as well as the profound role of yoga nidra and the states of awareness we experience there as well as in meditation — and we will certainly include a practice of yoga nidra and of meditation!
DOUG KELLER
I came to teach hatha yoga by way of the yoga of meditation and years of academic study of philosophy, both eastern and western. In my studies of philosophy at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown and in my graduate work at Fordham University, I gravitated toward the senior Jesuit scholars whose excellence, open-minded intellectual zeal, spiritual fervor and personal integrity inspired me to dig deeply into my own studies, particularly of the classical philosophers and Christian mystics, and treat them as a personal journey of discovery.
As I completed my coursework for my PhD and taught at several colleges, I was increasingly aware that I was looking for more than philosophical ideas and systems -- I was looking for the experience itself that the mystics were talking about. Midway through my studies at Fordham, I met the meditation master Swami Muktananda during his last tour of the west, and he gave me the connection, the practice, the awakening and the understanding I was seeking.
With that, it was up to me to step through the door he had opened, not through concepts and theories, but through yoga. The next couple of years combined disciplined academic study with a deepening experiential practice. I halted my academic career just short of writing my thesis, and went to India in 1986 to practice yoga at his ashram and to offer my service. I spent a total of 7 years in the Ganeshpuri ashram, Gurudev Siddha Peeth, and 14 years of service overall in Siddha Yoga ashrams in the US and abroad, studying and practicing yoga, working in the kitchen and gardens, and teaching hatha yoga.
It was during my time in Ganeshpuri that I met John Friend while he was yet an Iyengar teacher who had come to study in Pune. We struck up a friendship and I was able to practice with him when I came back to the states, study further with him, and assist in his classes, workshops and trainings for the next few years.This opportunity came to be combined with opportunities to train with other teachers as well, broadening my experience and understanding of the roots of Modern Hatha Yoga practice — its different styles as well as its common roots.