The Weeks Well

This episode is such a great reminder of how great a practice Integral Yoga is—how deep, earnest, and sincere its roots. Swami Asokananda embodies this practice in all of his being, in every syllable. My conversation with him here, which we recorded about a year ago and I'm releasing for the first time, is amazing for teachers and for anyone seeking to deepen or better understand their yoga practice. We talked about many things, including how the reward of teaching is the act of teaching itself and what a master class is. We also talked about how every practice can be a revelation if you let it happen and how silence can be the teacher. One thing I found so compelling is the idea of the information-silence ratio: the idea that a teacher in a yoga class is masterful when she/he/they knows how to balance the "ha" of the teaching and the "tha" of the learning ("Ha" meaning the sun or action side of the practice and "tha" being the moon or receiving side).

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Terms:

1. Prana: the vital energy

2. Asana: postures, the third of the eight limbs of yoga

3. Hatha yoga: the physical aspect of yoga practice, including postures, breathing techniques, seals, locks, and cleansing practices

4. Samadhi: contemplation or ultimate freedom, the final limb of the eight limbs of yoga

5. Apana vayu: energy in the pelvis and lower abdomen, one of the five vayus (subdivisions of the life force)

6. Parampara: transmission of knowledge from one to another

7. Rajas: activity

8. Guru: remover of darkness, spiritual guide

9. Shisya: a succession of teachers and disciples

10: Karma yoga: performing actions as selfless services without attachment to the results

11. Satya: truth

12. Hatha: “tha” is the surrender part, “ha” is the activation part

13. Bandha: lock

14. Kriya: action, practice

15. Mudra: sign, seal

16. Pranayama: breath control, the fourth of the eight limbs of yoga

17. Vinyasa: a method of yoga in which movements form a flowing sequence in coordination with the breath

18. Yin: a slow-paced style of yoga

19. Pratyahara: withdrawal of the senses, the fifth of the eight limbs of yoga

20. Yama: abstinence, the first of the eight limbs of yoga

21. Niyama: observance, the second of the eight limbs of yoga

22. Dharana: concentration, the sixth of the eight limbs of yoga

23. Dhyana: meditation, the seventh of the eight limbs of yoga

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References:

1. Integral Yoga

2. Yoga Lineages series

3. Patanjali

4. Swami Satchidananda

5. Yoga Alliance

6. Sivananda Yoga

7. Iyengar Yoga

8. Viniyoga

9. Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Swami Muktibodhananda

10. The Yoga Sutras, Swami Satchidananda

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Episode credits:

Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Weeks Well newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠. For more info on Kim Weeks, visit www.weekswell.com.

Follow Kim on Instagram (@weeks.well), Facebook (@weeks.well), Twitter (@weeks_well), YouTube (@weekswell), Patreon (Weeks Well), and TikTok (@weekswell).

Copyright © 2023 Weeks Well®.

Richard Rosen wrote The Yoga of Breath in 2002, after he had been teaching for 15 years, and just before he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He has a lot to say about the nature of the breath, and our conversation was the first of what I hope will be many on this podcast. He doesn't like the word "control" in the translation of pranayama; rather, he likes to call it cooperation. I love this idea! You can read about all this and more in his book (like below). We explored how shortened savasana has become since the “typical” yoga class made its entry onto the modern yoga scene, how the earliest recorded poses didn't include backbends, and how Westerners, who like being challenged, sometimes walk away from a 15-minute breath practice when given the chance. Starting at around 32:00/33:00, you'll hear a lot about yoga for Parkinson's. Please let us know if you work with people with Parkinson's or have the chance to share this with someone who does.

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Terms:

1. asana: poses

2. ujayi: a breathing technique sometimes referred to as "ocean breath" or "victorious breath"

3. viloma: a breathing technique where you pause briefly during the breath

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References:

1. Richard Rosen

2. The Yoga of Breath, Richard Rosen

3. The Master Game,  Robert S. de Ropp

4. Yoga Room Berkeley

5. Think on These Things, Jiddu Krishnamurti

6. Donald Moyer

7. The impossible task of explaining yoga, Practicing Well episode with Barbara Benagh and John Schumacher

8. Yoga: The Poetry of the Body, Rodney Yee

9. Georg Feuerstein 

10. Shambhala Publications

11. Light on Pranayama, B.K.S. Iyengar

12. Yoga for Parkinson’s with Vickie Bell

13. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor

14. The techniques are not God, Practicing Well episode with Judith and Lizzie Lasater

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Episode credits:

Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Weeks Well newsletter⁠⁠⁠. For more info on Kim Weeks, visit www.weekswell.com.

Follow Kim on Instagram (@weeks.well), Facebook (@weeks.well), Twitter (@weeks_well), YouTube (@weekswell), Patreon (Weeks Well), and TikTok (@weekswell).

Copyright © 2023 Weeks Well®.

Beryl Bender is an iconoclast. She coined the term "power yoga" in the 1980s and went on to write her first book Power Yoga. She took the Ashtanga Yoga teaching tradition and translated and made it accessible for westerners. She wanted the phrase to describe strength (versus just flexibility), appeal to men, and show that yoga could be a workout. In addition to later writing Beyond Power Yoga, her favorite of her books, she was also a Wellness Director way before it was cool. It is in this way that Beryl's career has occurred: She got her start way back in the 1970s in meditation, found yoga, integrated the two, and has been pushing the boundaries of what presence, stillness and practice mean. I just loved that she taught 100K runners in New York City a progressive yoga curriculum —and that not one person in any of those classes was injured. Talking to Beryl made me think so much more about what goes in to teaching yoga. Enjoy!

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Terms:

1. Dharma: one's duty

2. Karma: action and reaction

3. Raja Yoga: a system of concentration and meditation based on ethical discipline

4. Ashtanga Yoga: a style of yoga popularized by K. Pattabhi Jois

5. Jainism: an Indian religion focused on becoming liberated from the endless cycle of rebirth

6. Ahimsa: non-harming

7. Anekantavada: the second tenet of Jainism, it means relative thinking

8. Samskara: mental impression

9. Upanishads: the most recent part of the Vedas (the oldest Hindu scriptures)

10. Advaita Vedanta: a Hindu sadhana (path of spiritual discipline and experience)

11. Integral Yoga: a style of yoga brought to the west by Swami Satchidananda

12. Sivananda Yoga: a style of yoga founded by Vishnudevananda

13. Iyengar Yoga: a style of yoga developed by B.K.S. Iyengar

14. Yogas citta vrtti nirodahah: one of the Yoga Sutras, translates to yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind

15. Nirodhah: stillness

16. Tapas: spiritual austerity

17. Seva: selfless service

18. The Yoga Sutras: a collection of Sanskrit sutras on the the theory and practice of yoga

19. Rajasic: activity, restlessness

20. Svadhyaya: spiritual study

21. Ishvara pranidhana: worship of God

22. Kriya Yoga: a meditation technique focused on energy and breath control

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References:

1. The Hard & The Soft Yoga Institute

2. Power Yoga, Beryl Bender

3. Beyond Power Yoga, Beryl Bender

4. David Swensen

5. The Beatles

6. Huston Smith

8. A Search in Secret India, Paul Brunton

9. Judith Hansen Lasater

10. George Purvis

11. Manouso Manos

12. Aadil Palkhivala

13. John Abbott

14. Desikachar

15. Chelsea Roff

16. Rob Schware

17. Give Back Yoga Foundation

18. JJ Gormley

19. Erich Schiffmann

20. Norman Allen

21. Fred Lebow

22. Simon & Schuster

23. Warner Brothers

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Episode credits:

Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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⁠⁠Subscribe to the Weeks Well newsletter⁠⁠. For more info on Kim Weeks, visit www.weekswell.com.

Follow Kim on Instagram (@weeks.well), Facebook (@weeks.well), Twitter (@weeks_well), YouTube (@weekswell), Patreon (Weeks Well), and TikTok (@weekswell).

Copyright © 2023 Weeks Well®.

Andrea Ferretti is a risk-taker and explorer. After my conversation with her, I would also throw in the word futurist. She's one of the first people I've talked to who legitimately seems to be pondering where yoga might go in the next few decades and beyond. Throughout her career, she has sought to work for fast-changing communications outlets describing health-span practices. She first wrote for women.com in the mid-90s, which led her to work as an editor at Yoga Journal. Then, inspired by the podcast Serial, she launched her own popular podcast Yogaland in 2015. In the last few months she has pivoted to long-form content on Substack. Andrea says this about her time at Yoga Journal, which feels a lot to me like a description of our conversation and even of all my conversations on Practicing Well: “We were just trying to speak yoga language and be authentic.” I loved this conversation and hope you do too.

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Terms:

1. Utthita triknoasana: triangle pose

2. Salamba sirsasana: headstand

3. Salamba sarvangasana: shoulderstand

4. Utthita hastha padangusthasana: extended hand-to-big-toe pose

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References:

1. Yogaland podcast

2. Yogaland on Substack

3. Sarah Powers

4. The Mindful Body

5. Yoga Shala

6. Jason Crandell

7. women.com 

8. JJ Gormley

9. Erich Schiffmann

10. John Schumacher

11. Barbara Benagh

12. John Abbott

13. CorePower Yoga

14. Maty Ezraty

15. Judith Hanson Lasater

16. Sally Kempton

17. The Roll Model, by Jill Miller

18. YogaWorks

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Episode credits:

Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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⁠Subscribe to the Weeks Well newsletter⁠. For more info on Kim Weeks, visit www.weekswell.com.

Follow Kim on Instagram (@weeks.well), Facebook (@weeks.well), Twitter (@weeks_well), YouTube (@weekswell), Patreon (Weeks Well), and TikTok (@weekswell).

Copyright © 2023 Weeks Well®.

I wanted to bring Barbara Benagh and John Schumacher back onto Practicing Well to take the conversation on yoga lineage further. They have been teaching yoga for decades—100 years between the two of them—so I brought them back to talk about what it means to be an elder in this craft. We discussed how teaching and learning have changed over the years, and how in their cases, their practice and teaching have both evolved. Both Barbara and John shared how difficult it is to teach yoga, to pass on these deep, truthful experiences, and to make that relevant for anyone. We also got into the business of yoga and where to place aging yoga teachers at a time when tastes between millennials and baby boomers (such as John and Barbara) are so different.

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Terms:

1. Kapalabhati: a breathing practice taught in hatha yoga for internal cleansing

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References:

1. John Schumacher Yoga

2. Barbara Benagh's Yoga Studio

3. What is yoga lineage and why does it matter? Practicing Well episode with John Schumacher, Gary Kraftsow, and Monique Schubert

4. Taking refuge from the world together. Practicing Well episode with Barbara Benagh, Richard Freeman, and Mary Taylor

5. Malcolm Gladwell

6. Angela Farmer

7. Donald Moyer 

8. Erich Schiffmann

9. Jon Kabat-Zinn

10. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

11. Washington Post article on 5-minute breathing exercises

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Episode credits:

Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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⁠⁠Subscribe to the Weeks Well newsletter⁠⁠. For more info on Kim Weeks, visit www.weekswell.com.

Follow Kim on Instagram (@weeks.well), Facebook (@weeks.well), Twitter (@weeks_well), YouTube (@weekswell), Patreon (Weeks Well), and TikTok (@weekswell).

Copyright © 2023 Weeks Well®.

As a model of 40+ years, Colleen Saidman Yee admits to being hyper-competitive and needing to be at the center of her classes and her universe. She found yoga in the late 1980s and has been teaching it since the 1990s. She owns Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor, New York, where her husband Rodney Yee works for her as a teacher.

We sat down to talk about Colleen's journey, which included lying about her age as a model, drug abuse, and major back surgery that happened early in her career. Having fused professionally and personally with Rodney since 2003, she has continued to explore more and more intersectional modalities, such as shiatsu, that she applies in her classes. Colleen was a delight. Listen in and let me know what you think about the episode!

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References:

1. Colleen Saidman Yee

2. Yoga for Life: A Journey to Inner Peace and Freedom, by Colleen Saidman

3. Nancy Vinik

4. Jessamyn Stanley

5. Stephen Hawking

6. Mother Teresa

7. Ramanand Patel

8. Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, by Lisa Feldman Barrett

9. Donna Karan's initiative: Urban Zen Integrative Therapy program

10. Esther Newberg

11. Rodney Yee

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Episode credits:

Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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Subscribe to the Weeks Well newsletter. For more info on Kim Weeks, visit www.weekswell.com.

Follow Kim on Instagram (@weeks.well), Facebook (@weeks.well), Twitter (@weeks_well), YouTube (@weekswell), Patreon (Weeks Well), and TikTok (@weekswell).

Copyright © 2023 Weeks Well®.

This week I review my 2023 conversations to date and reflect on some standout episodes, including: 1) Jason Crandell and plumbing the depths. 2) Jivana Heyman and his encouragement to use yoga to radically embrace all parts of yourself for the sake of activism. 3) Gail Parker's work reminding us that if we practice yoga, it’s our job to be thinking about how many people have the opportunity to do the same and, as teachers, how well we are able to meet all people where they are in class. I also talk about:

1) My upcoming conversation with Rob Schware and Beryl Bender Birch of Give Back Yoga Foundation and the yogic intelligence that we create and how that translates into yoga service.

2) The business of yoga: How can we make yoga more accessible to all while professionalizing it in the way it's offered to people?

3) Yoga lineage deep dive: I continue to be interested in the methodology for what master practitioners teach and want to look at how they are amplifying their messages and studies in the context of where we are in social media.

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Here are a few time stamps for the episode:

1:20 Summary of where we’ve come so far.

5:21 Reflection of Gail Parker’s book.

9:30 Themes for the rest of the year.

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Terms:

1. Parampara: the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student

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References:

1.  Yoga is more than the body, with Anjali Rao

2. Resting in the inner work, with Gail Parker

3. That little mind push-up, with Cyndi Lee

4. Taking refuge from the world together, with Richard Freeman, Mary Taylor, and Barbara Benagh

5. Is there any such thing as a yoga pose, with Rodney Yee

6. To more skillfully inhabit the body, with Jason Crandell

7. The democratization of yoga, with Doug Keller

8. The techniques are not God, with Judith and Lizzie Lasater 

9. Amanda Kingsmith won't stop until wee all have a long, deep breath

10. Sensitivity is your super power, with Jivana Heyman

11. How well is the business of yoga? With AJ Schneider

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Episode credits:

Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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For more info on Kim Weeks, visit www.weekswell.com.

Follow Kim on Instagram (@weeks.well), Facebook (@weeks.well), Twitter (@weeks_well), YouTube (@weekswell), Patreon (Weeks Well), and TikTok (@weekswell).

Copyright © 2023 Weeks Well®.

Anjali Rao, president of the Accessible Yoga Association, thinks of herself as a supporter and co-creator, someone who is focused on exploring the histories (plural) in yoga and the stories of people who’ve been obscured through religion, caste, capitalism, cisgenderness, and patriarchy. She wants to highlight these stories within the narrow confines of what many people think of as yoga practice, where there are major gaps in who can access yoga. 

Anjali thinks of Accessible Yoga’s role as one to create and expand on the definition of what "accessible" means at all. The organization wants to be disruptive and to go deeply into what they hope to influence as the un-commodification of yoga. Here we talk more about out her vision for Accessible Yoga and where she wants to take it in the context of all these changes in our definitions of yoga. 

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Terms:

1. Bhagavad Gita: a Hindu scripture that is part of the Mahabharata

2. Upanishads: the most recent part of the Vedas

3. Vedas: the most ancient Hindu scriptures

4. Arjuna: the hero of the Bhagavad Gita 

5. Parampara: passing on of knowledge from a teacher to student 

6. Dukha: suffering, pain, or unhappiness

7. Bhakti yoga: a spiritual practice within Hinduism focused on loving devotion towards a personal deity

8. Tantra yoga: a type of yoga that utilizes many different techniques, including mantra meditation, pranayama (breath control), etc. 

9. Mahabharata: one of the major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism 

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References:

1. Anjali Rao

2. Accessible Yoga Association

3. The Love of Yoga podcast

4. Sat Bir Singh Khalsa

5. Adrienne Maree Brown

6. Amber Karnes 

7. Practicing Well Introduction 

8. The Trauma of Caste, by Thenmozhi Soundararajan 

9. Resmaa Menakem

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Episode credits:

Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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Subscribe to the Weeks Well newsletter. For more info on Kim Weeks, visit www.weekswell.com.

Follow Kim on Instagram (@weeks.well), Facebook (@weeks.well), Twitter (@weeks_well), YouTube (@weekswell), Patreon (Weeks Well), and TikTok (@weekswell).

Copyright © 2023 Weeks Well®.

Gail Parker is a trailblazer, and the paths she's opening up are those not in the exterior world but of the interior body. Like most who visit with me on this show, she has been practicing yoga for many decades. She started yoga in Detroit the year after the riots there, and the peace she found in the practice was as immediate as it was thorough.

Gail's work is groundbreaking because it's specifically about how restorative yoga as a practice, like the practice of psychotherapy (she's a yoga teacher and a psychologist!), offers the opportunity to engage with trauma in a humanistic way. As in therapy, the long, gentle, gravity-based holding of restorative poses offer the chance to cultivate your own interoceptive awareness, which is awareness of what your body needs from one moment to the next. As you learn to recognize these messages and sensations, you open yourself up to what Gail talks a lot about in our conversation: the true Self, that's self with a capital S. After reading her groundbreaking book Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma, my teaching—and thinking—have never been the same since. I hope this conversation is also transformative for you.

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Terms:

1. Yoga nidra: a form of guided meditation

2. Ayurveda: an ancient Indian medical system that relies on a natural and holistic approach

3. Vata: one of the doshas (a mind-body type) in Ayurveda; controls movement in the body, the activities in the nervous system, and the process of elimination

4. Pitta: one of the doshas; controls digestion, metabolism, and energy production

5. Svadhyaya: self-study and recitation of sacred texts 

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References:

1. Gail Parker

2. Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma, by Gail Parker 

3. Transforming Ethnic and Race-Based Traumatic Stress with Yoga, by Gail Parker

4. Practicing Well with Cyndi Lee

5. Practicing Well with Jivana Heyman 

6. Practicing Well with Judith and Lizzie Lasater

7. The Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda

8. Oliver Black 

9. Song of the Morning

10. Detroit Institute of Arts

11. Acharya 

13. Existentialism

14. Humanistic psychology

15. The Untethered Soul, by Michael A. Singer

16. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction 

17. International Association of Yoga Therapists 

18. The Surrender Experiment, by Michael A. Singer 

19. Deep Listening, by Jillian Pransky 

20. Octavia Raheem

21. Tracee Stanley

22. The Nap Ministry and Tricia Hersey

23. Rhonda Mageee

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Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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www.weekswell.com.

Follow Kim on Instagram (@weeks.well), Facebook (@weeks.well), Twitter (@weeks_well), YouTube (@weekswell), Patreon (Weeks Well), and TikTok (@weekswell).

Copyright © 2023 Weeks Well®.

For many in modern yoga, Cyndi Lee’s name needs no introduction. She started practicing yoga in New York with Sharon Gannon and David Life, who founded the Manhattan-based Jivamukti methodology. With both a BFA and MFA in dance, she soon decided to open Om yoga Center in 1998 (with just $800!), because the choreographed movements of the sun salutes she'd learned through Jivamukti made so much sense to her, and, to boot, the practice felt spiritual. She had fallen in love with yoga and wanted to share it with as many people as she could.

She was also falling in love with Buddhist practices, alongside people like Alan Ginsberg at Philip Glass's apartment in New York. That's just one of the threads that made this conversation so interesting. Cyndi has spent her teaching and business career weaving her yoga into Buddhism and vice versa. She has spent decades teaching—and training—students how to practice the "middle way." This is a choice, she says, that you must choose to live every day. Cyndi's intersectional lineage journey is one of the main reasons I wanted to sit down with her, and learning about where she has been, what she's doing online, and what she's most passionate about teaching right now did not disappoint.

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Terms:

1. Gom: Tibetan word for meditation

2. Jivamukti: a path to liberation through compassion toward all beings

3. Sangha: community

4. Dharma: one's duty

5. The Brahmavihara: the Dedication (May all Beings Be Happy…)

6. Theravada: a school of Buddhism that draws its inspiration from the Tipitaka, or Pali canon; focuses on self practice

8. Mahayana: largest Buddhist sect in the world; focuses on the bigger view that includes compassion

9. Vajrayana: form of Tantric Buddhism; advanced practices received in direct transmission from master

10. Prajna: best knowledge or best knowing 

11. Tadasana: mountain pose 

12. Sadhana: a daily spiritual practice

13. Prajnaparamita Sutra: "Without form, mind cannot be expressed; without mind, form cannot be made manifest." 

14. Upaya: skillful means

15. Maitri: loving-kindness or friendliness 

16. Boddhisattva: enlightened beings who put off entering paradise in order to help others reach enlightenment 

17. Vipassana: a technique of mediation used to see things as they really are

18. Jukai: to receive the precepts

19. Shanti Deva: an 8th century Buddhist monk

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References:

1. Cyndi Lee

2. May I Be Happy: A Memoir of Love, Yoga, and Changing My Mind by Cyndi Lee

3. Mindfulness and Behavior Change: Harvard Review of Psychiatry study

3. Sharon Gannon and David Life

4. Gelek Rinpoche

5. Philip Glass

6. Rudy Wurlitzer 

7. Alan Ginsberg

8. Tricycle Magazine

9. Upaya Zen Center 

10. Roshi Joan Halifax

11. Enkyo Roshi 

12. Richard Davidson

13. Transcendental Meditation

14. Santipada Monastery

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Episode credits:

Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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Subscribe to the Weeks Well newsletter. For more info on Kim Weeks, visit www.weekswell.com.

Follow Kim on Instagram (@weeks.well), Facebook (@weeks.well), Twitter (@weeks_well), YouTube (@weekswell), Patreon (Weeks Well), and TikTok (@weekswell).

Copyright © 2023 Weeks Well®.