Weekly Letter: Holding onto the tradition

Dear Reader,

I taught Kalapabhati to my Yoga 101 class last weekend. I traditionally do it on one of the last 2 days we’re together because I want newer students to see that yoga can take on other shapes. It can literally move through you differently the longer you stay with it and the more pieces you gather.

In an unrelated class conversation, another student who has been coming for a time, asked how many different types of breathing techniques we’ve done in the Vinyasa class. I rattled off some names counting them off with my fingers and after I got to around 6, he stopped me to clarify and follow along.

I know the teaching breathing techniques is falling off. The more modernized the practice, the fewer techniques are getting taught. Modern yoga is looking more and more like the snippet of the movie Perfect, where Jamie Lee Curtis is leading an aerobics class and John Travolta is in the group of students, and less likely to resemble the deep inquiry of body and mind that I fell in love with.

To me, it’s not an indication to change, but a reminder to hold onto the traditions. To remember how sacred they are, because if we don’t share them, there will be no one left to pass them on.

~Carmen