Deepen & Expand
Your Yoga Practice
3 Steps to Deepen & Expand Your Practice
1. Awareness
Becoming familiar with the sensations in your body and mind that signal ease as well as discomfort and dissatisfaction.
2. Discovery
Applying yoga actions to your areas of pain, suffering, confusion and paralysis in order to reveal new understanding and direction.
3. Practice
Adopting those yoga actions that bring your whole being (mind-body-spirit) into alignment.
Most yoga practitioners reach a point where they want deeper understanding.
Are you struggling to...
- – create an intimate understanding of and relationship with yourself?
- – deepen your spiritual practice and expand your yoga skills and toolkit?
- – commit daily or even weekly time for physical, emotional and spiritual growth?
- – remove emotional and physical blockages and recover from stress and burnout?
- – increase your energy, enthusiasm and overall health?
Introducing Yoga Actions
Yoga Actions are internal isolated movements — muscular, skeletal, breath, organic and energetic — for stabilizing, energizing and creating space, ease and well-being. With time and practice, you refine your inner awareness of the yoga action until you feel its reverberation throughout your entire being.
From the creative ingenuity of our own teachers as well as our own practice experience, we gathered together hundreds of yoga actions and passed along our favourites to our students.
How do Yoga Actions increase the value of your practice?
Not unlike the actions described above, the 118 Yoga Actions illustrated in the study guides develop your single-pointed focus. In essence, improving your ability to concentrate in the present moment vastly improves your capacity to create space for greater stability, energy and ease in your life and your yoga practice. Concentrating on one thing in isolation defines Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses from the outer world) and Dharana (concentration), which are two of the eight limbs of yoga necessary for deep meditation (Dhyana).
In practical terms, as a yoga teacher, I could demonstrate Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Dog) and then ask you to take the pose. This is a classical teaching method. However, it typically leads you to focusing on trying to get your body into the shape I demonstrated. And, as we can see in the world around us, body shape is almost as unique as thumb prints. Very few are the same. Your body’s version of AMS will not be the same as mine.
So, in order to take this uniqueness into consideration, as a teacher I can demonstrate in AMS, “finding the four corners of my/your hands and feet”. This focus on the action leads you to grounding these “ sixteen foundations” of the pose into the earth. The resulting greater stability, alignment and ease throughout your entire body emerges from the union of focused awareness and action. Finding the four corners of your hands and feet is one of the many yoga actions you will find explicitly described, demonstrated and illustrated in the study guides.
• 6 Study guides
• 118 Yoga Actions
• Over 600 images
Each Yoga Action consists of:
- – a detailed description and illustration of the action
- – 1 to 2 Pre-poses that demonstrate the action
- – 5 to 10 Peak and Plus poses that practice the action while gradually increasing your challenge and depth of understanding
- – 2 to 3 Post Poses that release, relax and integrate your practice
The Benefits of using Yoga Actions on your personal yoga journey
As a beginner you will:
Develop and expand your own personal yoga practice in order to heal yourself.
Awaken to the inner workings of your body and mind