The Yoga International Fall Retreat: Deepen Your Practice

This session will be less practice oriented, but no less practical: an examination of the emerging understanding of fascia in our time, the importance of understanding this for practitioners of yoga, especially in relation to pain problems and even ‘yoga injuries,’ and an examination of the relationship of this understanding to the ideas of the ‘Koshas’ and of the Prana body (pranamaya kosha) in particular. The idea of the ‘Koshas’ did not play a major role in hatha yoga literature (but has become part of our language of yoga, so it bears discussion). But the idea of the role of Prana, its movements and functions in the body as well as the relationship between ‘blocks’ (sometimes called ‘knots’ or granthis) in the flow of prana — on physical as well as emotional levels — in relation to problems of pain as well as obstacles to the practice of yoga — all of these concerns were at the forefront of this emerging approach to yoga that more consciously involved the body for the sake of spiritual evolution. We’ll be looking at the fascia as the practical medium of this flow of prana, and how it is the doorway between the physical and mental/emotional worlds of human ‘being,’ in terms that make sense to contemporary understanding while giving greater insight into the experiential (but not always empirically precise) language of the yogis. Included will be some insights into the ‘Fascial Distortion Model,’ which is an emerging understanding of chronic pain that arises from distortions in the fascia (very like ‘blocks’ to the flow of prana). This is important for understanding pain that arises from causes that are not always medically obvious, but nevertheless very real — and relevant to understanding not only how yoga injuries can arise and cause pain, but how yoga — done mindfully rather than aggressively — can be a tool for addressing such distortions.