nyc yoga conference?

[Guest guest]

How did it go? It looked like quite a roster. Any reports?

[Guest guest]

I went to the conference and I thought it was

pretty good, although very crowded. I think that they

had a much greater response than they had

anticipated, but you know in a way that's good because it says

yoga is alive and well. 1,600 people attended. <br>It

was a bit hectic, but if you went with an open mind

you really could learn a lot. T.K.V. Desikachar was

one of the keynote speakers and he had some great

insights on his dad's teaching style. I think one of his

best points was that when Krishnamacharya first

started doing yoga, it was not very widely accepted even

in India. Mr. Desikachar said that even his own

friends sort of shunned him for doing yoga, and he wasn't

born until Krishnamacharya was in his 50's or 70's

(forgive me but I can't remember the age exactly).

Krishnamacharya did extreme things like lifting heavy weights

with his teeth (and losing a few in the process),

stopping his heart beat and stopping a moving car in order

to call attention to what yoga could do for an

individual's health and mental processes. Krishnamacharya

wasn't trying to say that everyone who practices yoga

should go to these extremes in order to get the benefit

of yoga. You can order the tapes from Omega, if you

don't want to rely completely on my synopsis.

<br>Desikachar also had some very enlightening comments on the

use of chanting in yoga and whether you should use

some of these chants if you are not Hindu. I had not

thought about that before.

[Guest guest]

This is a continuation of my message.<br> Most of

the teachers were very good. David Life was there,

but I didn't take any of his classes because they

were completely filled. I think that it is interesting

that he is one the few students of PJ to be

recommended by him as an advanced teacher, but he had

developed his own style of yoga that isn't the strict

Mysore practice. Everyone I talked to said he was a

great teacher, so this isn't a criticism, just a

comment. <br> Even though I am posting on the Ashtanga

page, I'm fairly new to this style of yoga. I took a

post conference workshop with Beryl Bender Birch and

Thom Birch in order to learn the Primary Series

correctly. I thought that they were both great teachers.

They showed us where they had modified the First

Series and the way PJ had originally taught it.<br> Has

anyone out there read anything by Mircea Eliade? He was

a Romanian scholar who studied yoga in India in the

20's or 30's. He came back and wrote a doctoral thesis

which was later published as Yoga: Immortality and

Freedom. I thought it was a great comprehensive overview

of the roots of yoga, but no one else I've talked to

seems to have heard of it?