I’m excited about my upcoming return to Laguna Niguel’s beautiful You and the Mat studio for a four day immersion in my favorite topic: Breath-Centered Therapeutics. The 4- day series of workshops take place from May 20-23, and will feature a clinical observation day.
Sunday’s session will be Respiratory Yoga Therapeutics: Clinical Observation – offering a rare glimpse into what happens in a private therapeutic yoga session. Through observation, questions, discussion and exchange I will demonstrate the principles of how to customize yoga practices, read the body to identify patterns of holding and tension, offer hands-on assists from an anatomically-informed breath-centered perspective, and explore yoga philosophy with anatomical understanding of the human system.
Three guest clients will have a unique opportunity to work one-on-one with me on specific respiratory issues to build awareness of their particular pattern of holding tension and receive support and encouragement from a group of people interested in their wellness.
I’m inviting you to help us find great clinic guests.
Do you have a challenging client or student or know someone (even yourself!) who could use this kind of breathing help? The person need not be a yoga practitioner, but should be experiencing some kind of breathing disorder or challenge. The time commitment is 1-2 hours on Sunday May 22, 2016.
Please invite anyone you think is appropriate to complete a clinic guest intake form. The deadline for submission is Sunday May 15 at midnight. We will be emailing all who have submitted an application by Tuesday May 17 informing them whether they are on the schedule.
It’s always gratifying to return to studios and towns where I’ve had great experiences previously, and I’ve got two upcoming workshops on consecutive weekends that fit that bill.
First, from April 22-25, I’ll be heading for the sixth time to Austin, TX to teach for my good friends at Yoga Yoga. It’s always a pleasure to teach in the big, beautiful room at their Westgate location (see below).
Then, on the following weekend, April 30 – May 1, I’ll be returning to Fort Wayne, Indiana for a Yoga Anatomy Immersion at the Pranayoga Institute of Yoga and Holistic Health. We’ve extended early bird pricing for this workshop through Monday, April 18 – sign up now to get the discount!
Lower numbers in the chart are as of December 12, and don’t reflect the days or mileage for our return trip to New York on December 15. The 39 cities on the chart are inflated since they count every time we returned home to New York. The actual number of cities we visited is 26.
Tonight in Paris, after finishing my last day of travel teaching for 2015, Lydia and I exhaled deeply and decided to map all our teaching travel for the year just ending. Seeing it all in one image fills me with many emotions.
First and foremost, I feel gratitude for the fact that I can do what I do. When I took my first asana class at the New York Sivananda Center 1978, I could not have imagined how profoundly my life would be transformed. I wasn’t alone. Over the last four decades so many others have been touched by Yoga, the world has turned into a place where someone like me – who is profoundly unemployable in any other field – can travel the globe sharing these teachings with the sincere, dedicated groups of lifelong learners we call Yoga Educators.
So – in tribute to this amazing year of teaching, travel, learning, and connecting – I am going to give a shout out to all the folks who made it possible for me to spend 127 days of 2015 journeying more than 90,000 miles* to 26 cities, seven countries, and meet close to 5,000 students in my classes and workshops. It has truly been an honor and privilege to spend time with the amazing students they gathered in their diverse spaces around the world:
Los Angeles, California – Larry Payne and his YogaRx Therapy training at LMU
Winter Haven, Florida – Kerry Wilson at Inside Out Fitness
Austin, Texas – Laura Forsyth and Lori McDougall at Yoga Yoga
McCall, Idaho– Debra Murphy at Shanti Yoga Studio
Sydney, Melbourne, Freehold, Australia – Michael de Manincor and Lisa Grauaug of Yoga Institute of Australia
New York, New York – Renee LaRose, Alden Conant and the entire team at YJLive! Conferences
Washington, D.C. – Rexx Samuell and his team at Buddha B. Yoga Studio
Lambertville, New Jersey – Sue Elkind, Denise Orloff and Caroline Joan Peixoto at Dig Yoga
Monroe, New York – Nicole Lewitan at Ananda Ashram
Glasgow, Scotland – Mark Russell of Kridaka Yoga
Minneapolis, Minnesota – Sarah Jane Wroblewski at the Yoga Center of Minneapolis (special shout-out to her wife Kim Bartmann for making us so welcome at a number of her retaurants)
New York, New York – Everyone at the Breathing Project and all the amazing students who showed up for my “Transformation Through Touch” summer immersion
Honolulu, Hawaii – Rich Girolami of Silk Bridge
Madrid, Spain – Blanca San Roman of Dhara Yoga
Vienna, Austria – Florian Reitlinger and Brigit Pöltl at the Yoga Zentrum Mödling
Asheville, North Carolina – Stephanie Keach and Julia Albertson, Asheville Yoga Center
Milano, Italy – Giulia Borioli of the Milano Yoga Festival, and my translator Vittoria Frua
Encinitas, California – Monique Lonner of Soul of Yoga
Cologne, Germany – Sonia Bach and her team at the yogaloft Cologne
Finally, Lydia and I would like to send a special thank you to my agent, Ava Taylor and her amazing team at YAMA Talent. Ava is an amazing partner, a great friend and a true trailblazer in the field of professional management for yoga talent and event production. She also showed us a great time in Cologne, Germany (photo evidence below).
* Lower numbers in the chart are as of December 12, and don’t reflect the days or mileage for our return trip to New York on December 15. The 39 cities on the chart are inflated since they count every time we returned home to New York. The actual number of cities we visited is 26.
Our trip to Italy has been quite wonderful so far, with stops in Venice and Florence before arriving today in Milan, where I’m about to start 4 days of teaching at their huge Yoga Festival. I’m told that 6,000 people will pass through this event. That’s a lot bigger than any of the conferences I’ve been to in North America.
We will return to Europe one more time before the end of the year for workshops in Cologne and Paris next month. Each of these events is very special. I am very much looking forward to meeting up with the yogaloft Cologne’s founder, Sonia Bach and her lovely wife, my talent agent Ava Taylor – both of whom have promised us a whirlwind tour of Cologne. In Paris, I can hardly contain my excitement about meeting and presenting with Blandine Calais-Germain – someone who has inspired me for years with her brilliant books on anatomy and movement.
If you’re anywhere in the vicinity next month, come join us!
UPDATE: Our Southern California workshop had to be postponed but will be rescheduled as soon as possible. Please contact You & the Mat for more information.
This fall I am embarking on an exciting teaching tour of four-day immersions. I really like this format because it’s inspired by the method of personalized teaching I received from my teacher, TKV Desikachar. Day-by-day, starting with conceptual basics, we’ll build on daily embodied practice, moving to observation with partners, clinical observation of client work, and methods of individualizing practice and teaching methodology.
Together, we will create an immersive experience, in an intimate space, with plenty of time to rest, settle and integrate the material.
I’ll be teaching a similar format, focusing on slightly different topics, in Southern California (You and the Mat, Laguna Niguel, CA), Honolulu (Silk Bridge, Oahu, HI) and Vienna (Yoga Zentrum, Vienna, Austria).
I got back from a whirlwind teaching tour to Australia last week and am pretty certain I know what timezone I’m in again! I’m looking forward to staying closer to home for the next couple of months.
You can find links to each of the upcoming workshops on my calendar page.
Leslie is resting up while I write this note following a wonderful day workshopping for Dhara Yoga in Madrid. The owners, Blanca and Pablo, found a beautiful loft operated by a woman who grew up in Lenox, MA (virtually around the corner from where Leslie raised his kids and keeps his horse!) and brought in a terrific group of yoga professionals, eager to learn more about the Krishnamacharya/Desikachar tradition. We’ve posted some snapshots from our time in this beautiful, vibrant city.
I’ve had some exciting trips this spring and we’re still traveling! I hope to meet you if I’m heading your way. To keep up-to-date, please check my calendar and my Tweet stream, but here are some of the highlights:
Lydia here. We are so excited to be returning to Europe this summer for the Barcelona Yoga Conference where Leslie is offering a two-day intensive, and hope you’ll help us spread the word. Leslie loves the opportunity to meet his online students in person, so if you’re one of them please come on down!
We put together a little interview including questions he’s been asked repeatedly about his adventures in Spain, as well as some fave articles and videos of his. Feel free to forward to anyone you know who may want to join us in beautiful Barcelona this July.
During your 2013 visit to Spain:
Did you have a favorite experience?
We stayed in El Gòtic and loved the easy access it provided. The Picasso Museum stands out as one of my favorite museums anywhere and walking to the beach for lunch and mojitos was also great!
How about favorite food?
I so appreciated many restaurants’ pleasure in offering wonderful, fresh-baked gluten-free bread, without additional cost. That just doesn’t happen here – when you can find it, there’s always a surcharge, and it’s not freshly baked.
Did you experience any notable cultural differences?
For sure: sense of time! Lydia and I think we’re late when we’re five minutes early. In Spain, half an hour late is a sampling error.…
Anything else to share?
You can take a look at this set of photos on Flickr. It gives a pretty good sense of some of the things we saw, found beautiful, different from home and memorable.
Lydia here to let you know about some upcoming travel we’re really excited about. We’re returning to Asia this June and hoping to meet a bunch of you this time! Leslie loves to meet his online students in person and overseas travel is a great opportunity for that.
He regularly gets asked questions about the 2013 visit, so we put together a little interview about his adventures and some fave articles and videos of his. We hope you’ll share them with anyone you know who might be able to join us in Tokyo this June. We’re really grateful for your support and hope to see you soon.
During your 2013 visit to Asia:
Did you have a favorite experience?
We fell in love with Hakone while staying at the Tenseien ryokan. We’ll be returning there between the Hong Kong Asia Yoga Conference and my workshop in Tokyo.
How about favorite food?
The absolutely freshest sushi of my life at Tsukiji fish market early one morning.
Did you experience any notable cultural differences?
Yes! the absolute horror exrpressed whenever we tried to tip anybody. To us it demonstrated that good service is considered obligatory, not something surprising or deserving of reward. Definitely different from the United States.
Anything else to share?
You can take a look at this set of photos on Flickr. It gives a pretty good sense of some of the things we saw, found beautiful, different from home and memorable.
I’m excited about my upcoming return to Laguna Niguel’s beautiful You and the Mat studio for a four day immersion in my favorite topic: Breath-Centered Therapeutics. The 4- day series of workshops take place from May 20-23, and will feature a clinical observation day.
First, from April 22-25, I’ll be heading for the 
