My Ever Evolving Journey - Philosophy & History Of Yoga

As we wrap up our 3 day journey diving into the origin of yoga and exploring the different philosophy surrounding it, I find myself having to re-write my bio and my ever evolving journey. We had a wonderful guest speaker to teach this segment Matthew Remski. He is unbelievably knowledgeable on yoga's history and origins, from the early years - thousands of years ago, deeply rooted and connected to religion - to the more modern era with Krishnamacharya, Iyengar and Jois, to name a few. I have learned and am quite fascinated by the fact that yoga has been surrounded by scandal for centuries. I spent my first evening after day one googling many yoga gurus, fascinated by the history, biographies, myths and scandal of them all. There are just so many books I now want to read. Matthew's website with a full comprehensive bio on his education is here http://matthewremski.com/wordpress/

Before I move into my new evolved journey I will share a bit of interesting tidbits for you yogis out there. Krishnamacharya, considered the founder of modern yoga and vinyasa (flow), taught yoga asanas at the Mysore Palace as part of their physical education for seven years. He later in life called this era of his life as propaganda. It was here that Ivengar and Jois studied under him. Or to be more exact, Ivengar lived with him and did not attend the palace academy but was taught the asanas in 3 days to preform for the YMCA.

Class at Mysore Palace with Krishnamacharya

Iyengar, then later went to write "Light On Yoga" filled with photographs of himself in each pose. After the intense photoshoot Ivengar was hospitalized for 3 weeks. All three men were said to be joyless and even cruel as a guru.

Many yogis would sacrifice their own bodies into excruciating pain for a pose. This was / is not the yoga I have come to experience. You can take your own time to google Bikram, hot 26 and numerous yoga scandals out there.

Where am I going with all of this, all interesting tidbits aside? Yoga can be used as therapy, physical fitness, even a step further, as spiritual enlightenment but the vast exclamations that it can cure a disease or heal an injury is simply not true. Up to this day, there is no actual science behind yoga. Yoga is each individuals own experience, and theirs alone. So yes there are people out there that say that their own personal experience with yoga cured or healed something. What I have come to learn is essentially you can not teach yoga with the assumption that yoga, or even deeper, every pose is good for everyone.

With the above said, my yoga journey has not cured my back injury. That would be a very false statement. I have learned through fellow teachers and training ways to nurture my back injury (my glute regime), what I have been doing wrong that actually increased my back pain (thank you anatomy) BUT most importantly yoga is my personal journey to heal myself emotionally. It is when I get personal with myself, my body, my thoughts, become more mindful and find joy in life. This is what I am learning from my journey. Everyone's journey is different. If I could best explain what yoga does for me it is well said below.