Leslie seated at a massage table demonstrating a technique for a roomful of students

Leslie Kaminoff is a best-selling author and yoga educator.

Author: lkaminoff

  • Fall travel and teaching is back…and so is my OM!

    Fall travel and teaching is back…and so is my OM!

    autumn leaves on the groundFall has always been my favorite time of year. Here in New York, in the northeastern United States, summer is notoriously hazy, sticky, humid and stinky. A crispness emerges in the air just past August, making it far more pleasurable to simply breathe, and it feels amazing to enjoy my lungs in this way.

    Particularly following my first (and worst) experience with COVID-19 in February and March 2020, enjoying my lungs was definitely not the case. Long COVID symptoms continued for a year as my body dealt with challenges including breathing difficulties, extreme fatigue, brain fog, and eventually a six-and-a-half-hour ablation procedure for AFib and other arrhythmias exacerbated by the virus. The good news is that I’m almost fully recovered from all of that, and have regained the strength and endurance to begin traveling and teaching again, something I’ve sorely missed.

    When I first experienced the coughing and bronchial inflammation common to COVID-19, I was tremendously grateful for a background in breath practice. I could see how anyone without similar experience might be sent into a panic as the length and depth of their breath became shorter and shallower. That panic alone might send someone to the hospital and onto a ventilator. Fortunately, after years of practicing yoga I knew at a somatic level that the length and breadth of my breath could be modified significantly, without dying. This is what yoga teaches in both asana and pranayama: it is a controlled stress experiment. From our first class we’re being asked to put our body in some weird, difficult position and then breathe. Yeah, right. For anyone without these experiences in their history, COVID must have been terrifying.

    I am connecting especially deeply with breath work these days, having been through my own breathing challenges. I can say with a high degree of certainty that had it not been for my ability to recalibrate my moment-to-moment breathing due to my training and practice of breath-centered yoga, my COVID symptoms would have certainly landed me in the hospital in March of 2020, and I’d most likely not have survived intact, or at all. 

    58.5 seconds of OM

    During the last years I’ve been using the length of my OM as a metric of recovery. It was pretty dramatic how short my OM was during the summer of 2020 – I would start coughing and sputtering and shuddering. Trying to get a “deep” breath was impossible, until I remembered that deep doesn’t have to be big – it can also mean very small and close to the core of my body. This anatomical understanding brought comfort and a something to focus on until my bronchia quieted down. I’m happy to say that – on a good day – I’m back up to about a one minute OM (well, 58.5 seconds to be exact, as in this video I made in April!). I can’t get there every day, but it is a relief to know it’s possible.

    OMs are how I open my workshops, encouraging each student to do their own length OM rather than chant in unison. When I don’t force my breath into anyone else’s pattern it permits me to relax into the process. It really isn’t a competition (well, that’s what Lydia says, but she’s the least competitive person I know!) and completing three comfortable, calm, personal-length OMs is a wonderful thing to experience.

    I’ve got a number of upcoming workshops, both in-person (in London at triyoga Camden), and over Zoom (so you can attend from anywhere), where breath will be the primary focus. SPECIAL NOTE: If you or someone you know will be in London October 7-10, I’d love to connect at one of the public programs, or in a private session – especially if I can be of any help with recovering respiratory function.

    And don’t forget, you can access a huge amount of my teaching material and one-on-one yoga content by subscribing to breathingproject.com.

    I hope to see you soon, either in-person or virtually. Enjoy the Fall (or Spring, if you’re down under)!

    Leslie

  • This is my job now.

    This is my job now.

    Teaching in front of a 100+ students in Weesp, Netherlands
    Leslie working alone in front of multiple computer monitors

    I have been composing this message in my head for a while now, but before I worked out any of the details, I did have a solid grasp of the title:

    “This is my job now.”

    At least, that’s what I keep hearing in my head every time I return to the challenging, complex work of building my new web platform at BreathingProject.com. It’s been a real stretch for me, not to mention a shift in identity. My skill sets as yoga educator, bodyworker and anatomy teacher have been built by working directly with other people, not by wrangling with audiovisual editing programs and web hosted content management. I am definitely in my wheelhouse interacting with other humans, not as I am now, sitting alone at my workstation, but…

    This is my job now.

    So much has already been said and written about all the ways work conditions have changed for us in the last two and a half years. Speaking from personal experience, I can look at just one fact that sums it all up: after nearly two decades of teaching and traveling to lead multi-day workshops in locations around the globe, since March 2020, I’ve taught only 22 workshops. Excluding two week-long cadaver dissections, I have only shared physical space with students in six of those 22. Everyone else who’s learned and practiced with me since the pandemic has done so by looking at screens and hearing voices transmitted from spaces far away.

    By contrast, in the previous two and a half years, from September 2017 to March 2022, I taught at 60 live workshops, conferences and other events. So basically, my in-person contact with students has been reduced by 90% since Covid. So, for better or worse…

    This is my job now.

    I have accepted that this reality will never fully go away. Of course, I still gladly welcome all invitations to teach in-person events, but it is clear the conditions allowing that to be my primary focus are in the past. We’ve been working with all our hosts to produce hybrid events, live streaming the workshops and posting the recordings for ongoing access. All these recordings will eventually be archived permanently and fully searchable at breathingproject.com.

    This is my job now.

    And, I’ve become deeply aware of the difference between my job and my career: a job – any job – can be taken away; a career cannot. Personal, societal or technological changes are perpetually making certain jobs less relevant, or even obsolete. My career as an educator is a lifelong commitment, a deep part of who I am, and I will always find the means to keep doing it.

    Growing up I never had a master plan. I could only have become an educator, anatomist, bodyworker by dropping out of formal education at a pretty young age – and by following my interests – by observing and absorbing from some of the best people on the planet I could find – and by having the stubbornness to stick with it long enough to see the world come around to share enough of my interests. Since I never had a “Plan A,” I certainly do not have a “Plan B.” So, I’m on this train all the way to the end of the line. I invite you to hop on and ride with me for a while and see where it leads us.

    Leslie Kaminoff's signature

    P.S. Oh, yes. I almost forgot. This message has been a rather wordy way of saying that BreathingProject.com is officially out of Beta, which means we have hopefully worked out all the major kinks and glitches. Since some of the tech we are using is quite new, it took a bit longer than we had planned. Please continue to let us know about any functionality we still need to improve

  • Community Q&A Forum about one-on-one Sessions

    Community Q&A Forum about one-on-one Sessions

    USE THIS MODERATED PAGE to share QUESTIONS, COMMENTS AND IDEAS WITH LESLIE ABOUT THE “One-on-One sessions” ON BREATHINGPROJECT.COM.

    This content takes a deep dive into the theory and practice of how experienced yoga educators teach individual sessions.

    • When posting, please designate which video you are referring to.
    • Include a hashtag of the session title you are referencing (eg: #Basic Breath Work for Trauma).
    • By hashtagging your contribution, we will generate an easily searchable database of our comment threads.
  • Community Q&A Forum about Workshops

    Community Q&A Forum about Workshops

    USE THIS MODERATED PAGE TO SHARE QUESTIONS, COMMENTS AND IDEAS WITH LESLIE ABOUT “Workshops” ON BREATHINGPROJECT.COM.

    When posting, please designate which video you are referring to by copying and pasting into your comment a hashtagged version of the title of the workshop video you are referring to (eg: #New Harmony – Day 2 Afternoon Session).

    By hashtagging your contribution, we will generate an easily searchable database of our comment threads.

  • Community Q&A Forum about The Union Sessions

    Community Q&A Forum about The Union Sessions

    USE THIS MODERATED PAGE TO SHARE QUESTIONS, COMMENTS AND IDEAS WITH LESLIE ABOUT THE “Union SESSIONS” ON BREATHINGPROJECT.COM.

    When posting, please designate which video you are referring to by copying and pasting into your comment a hashtagged version of the title of the workshop video you are referring to (eg: #New Harmony – Day 2 Afternoon Session).

    By hashtagging your contribution, we will generate an easily searchable database of our comment threads.

  • The Anatomical Gifts That Keep on Giving

    The Anatomical Gifts That Keep on Giving

    University of Massachusetts anatomical gift donor form

    In a temporal twist of fate, last week I got the news that my father, Harvey Kaminoff, passed away about 5 minutes after I returned from the local FedEx office to overnight his anatomical gift donor forms to the UMass Medical School. Although my father’s death was sudden, it was not unexpected. Fortunately, I had just organized a family visit with him the day before his death at the nursing home where he had been cared for since last October. Over the decades of my anatomical study, Harvey expressed interest in donating his body to help others gain the same kind of experience he’d seen deepen my knowledge and practice.

    I am extremely grateful to Amanda Collins, the Director of Anatomical Services at the UMass medical school, and her colleagues, who helped expedite the donation process in record time. The fact that Harvey’s body will be helping first-year medical students learn gross anatomy this fall in Worcester, MA tremendously brightened an otherwise sad occasion. You can read more about my father’s influence on my life and work in this Facebook post. It seems to have struck a chord, garnering more engagement than usual.

    In my decades-long study and teaching of anatomy, I have been personally and professionally enriched by the generosity of many donors like my father, and it has been an honor to facilitate an anatomical gift – this time from the family’s perspective.

    My dad in his youth, on the left, and with my three sons and me in 2017.

    While I’m on the topic of anatomical gifts, I’ve just learned that two spots recently opened up for our previously sold-out Movement Anatomy Hands-On Cadaver Lab in Colorado Springs March 14-18. We are limiting participation to 6 students per table, so if you’ve ever dreamed of learning anatomy in this amazing format, our lab will be as up-close and personal a setting as you will find.

    I will be teaching alongside the amazing Lauri Nemetz, MA, BC-DMT, LCAT, ERYT500, C-IAYT, a yoga and movement educator who specializes in myofascial anatomy as well as one of the lead dissector on the international team at the Fascial Net Plastination Project, and past faculty dissector for Anatomy Trains Dissections®. Once these 2 spots are taken, the course will be full, so reach out soon via the KNM Labs website.

    I have provided links below for those inspired to learn more about anatomical gifting, which serves a different purpose from the organ donation choice on the back of most drivers’ licenses. They fill a vital educational need, and many regions across the United States are chronically short of full-body donations for the kind medical study we do in our labs.

  • Hey, 2022…I’m back!

    Hey, 2022…I’m back!

    Well, a fresh set of Covid-19 antibodies wasn’t on my Christmas wish list, but I got them anyway. Between my original March 2020 battle with Covid, three vaccine shots, and a holiday bout with the Omicron variant that had me quarantining instead of festivating, I now assume I have sufficient immunity to get through 2022 with no further incident. I am very much looking forward to resuming teaching events scheduled for the first quarter.

    The next in a series of popular 2-hour online workshops I’ve been doing for our U.K. friends at Keen Yoga is coming up at the end of this month on Sunday, January, 30 at 9:00am EST, 2:00pm UK time. The topic is something we could all use right about now: “Introduction to Healing Through Breath-centered Yoga.” The workshop is rooted in the perspective that there’s always more going right for a person than has gone wrong – something I’ve had to remind myself more than once in the past couple of challenging years. The recording will be remain available to replay for 14 days after the event.

    Lauri and Leslie dissecting
    Lauri Nemetz and me during the livestream of our first KNMLabs dissection workshop in October 2020

    Looking ahead to March (the week of my 64th birthday!) Lydia, Lauri Nemetz and I will be back in Colorado Springs at the anatomy lab of our good friend Gil Hedley to lead a unique week-long cadaver dissection March 14-18. KNM Movement Anatomy Labs focus on interests of yoga educators, movement and fitness professionals, bodywork and massage therapists and artists.

    A unique aspect of this hands-on lab is the opportunity to apply some of what you see in the lab in your own body during evening movement labs. There will also be opportunities to observe one-on-one work related to structural observations during the day’s cadaver lab.

    We still have room for a few more participants, so click on the link above to find out more about this very special opportunity to experience human anatomy first-hand with an amazing group of individuals.

  • Miami, Memories and Me

    Miami, Memories and Me

    Here we are at the cusp of September 2021, well into a second year under the looming threat of the Covid-19 pandemic. I, for one, really didn’t think I’d be saying that. Many of my workshops got rescheduled from 2020 (one even postponed multiple times!) but I am truly thrilled and eagerly anticipating a fall season of travel teaching.

    Me (L) and my brother Rick, Key West circa 1963

    There’s a lovely synchronicity that my re-entry to live, in-person teaching includes a weekend workshop at Kino McGregor’s new Miami Life Center, titled The Anatomy of Yoga, the Yoga of Anatomy. This topic will provide a solid grounding to the yoga I teach, and practice but – separately – I consider South Florida my ancestral home.

    In the early to mid-60s, I lived in South Florida, splitting time between an apartment above my grandparents’ bar in Key West and Miami Beach, where my mother relocated as she rebuilt life with two young sons after her split from my father. Far from being the fashionable, hip enclave it’s become, the South Miami Beach I knew in the 1960s was almost entirely the province of an aging Jewish population that had found refuge from the cold Northeast and the ravages of the Holocaust. Thinking about that time span now, it’s incredible to realize that for the people I was living with in Miami, the end of World War II was as recent a memory as 9/11 is for me.

    And now, after nearly two years of pandemic-separation, I will get to visit with my mother who lives back in the region, as well as teach in Miami! With so many memories intertwining on this return, I anticipate having a very resonant, heartfelt experience on this journey.

    I am very grateful for the opportunity to help Kino open her beautiful new facility, and for all the hard work her team has put in to make it possible, in spite of nearly overwhelming challenges. It takes a lot of guts to open a new yoga facility these days, and I’m happy to support anyone who’s willing to take it on. If you or anyone you know is in the Miami area, I’d love to have a chance to connect.

    This will be a hybrid event, with a limited number of vaccinated or recently negative-tested students attending the sessions in person as well as virtually, and filmed for replays by Omstars, a great online resource. I’m very much looking forward to connecting with the community there – even with all the challenges intrinsic to gathering with a group of people for an in-person learning event.

  • 2-hour Bandha Workshop available to everyone online, November 29

    2-hour Bandha Workshop available to everyone online, November 29

    Back on September 29, UK-based Adam Keen posted a wide ranging podcast interview with me that covered a lot of interesting ground. We had such a great chat, he invited me to teach a 2-hour online workshop to his students at Keen Yoga who practice mostly Ashtanga Yoga. He selected one of my favorite topics: “Demystifying The Bandhas,” and registration is open to all. Here’s the workshop description:

    The popularity of vinyasa-based yoga practice has created a wide interest in the theory and practice of Mula, Uddiyana and Jalandhara Bandha – the “yogic locks.” In this workshop, Leslie applies his unique, experiential approach to clarify and, above all, simplify the practical, anatomical basis of these powerful, yet widely misunderstood tools.

    One of the few benefits of the COVID-19 pandemic is that my teaching is no longer restricted by geography! Come join us online for some breath-centered practice with a strong focus on anatomical and personal inquiry.

    illustration ©The Breathing Project and Lydia Mann

    Sunday 29th November
    2.00-4:00pm (UK) / 9.00-11:00am EST
    Cost: £25 ($32) 
    Click here to book now

  • A bright spot for 2020…a live-streamed Yoga Anatomy cadaver lab!

    A bright spot for 2020…a live-streamed Yoga Anatomy cadaver lab!

    Hello Everyone.

    I hope you’ve been staying safe and healthy in the upside-down dumpster-fire that has been 2020 so far. I’m writing to let you know about at least one pretty awesome thing coming up.

    In a couple of weeks, Lydia and I travel to San Diego to produce a Yoga and Movement Cadaver Dissection Lab along with Soul of Yoga and the fabulous Lauri Nemetz, with whom I’ll be co-teaching.

    This week-long lab was originally designed to be in-person only but after the pandemic hit it was reconceived to also include a livestream, online event. Reimagined for a much wider online audience, it is now a 20-hour professional training that has been fully approved by Yoga Alliance and IAYT for CEU credits. 

    We’ll be streaming this training from a state-of-the-art anatomy lab in San Diego and I’m offering a special $50.00 discount code for online registrations. All you have to do is enter Y-AN.ORG50 when you sign up. Once registered, you’ll be able to access the livestream in real time, or review the recordings for up to one month. That means if your schedule doesn’t permit you to view the training during the livestream, you’ll be able to watch, pause, rewind, and review for up to one month following the lab. We look forward to answering your submitted questions, if possible during the next day’s session. The daily schedule of topics is attached below and on the Soul of Yoga site.

    If you are interested in attending live, we have a waitlist in case extra spots open up at one of the tables. To get on that list or to ask about any aspect of the lab, please contact me.