Ha ha! Thank you, Brenna! Isn't it great to be able to read and share these perspectives with one another in this format? It makes me so happy to hear from you. Thank you for being here...and...thank you for signing up for a paid subscription! I really appreciate the support. 😘
This resonates so much!! I've been reshaping my approach to my own practices and orientations and, by extension, my approach to being a psychotherapist and yoga instructor...lately I've been sitting with "somatic re-integration" as a way to refer to this shift I'm feeling...
What are the best ways to keep learning from you? Do you offer any trainings at the moment or have archives for purchase? Thank you so much 🙏
It makes me so happy to hear that this is resonating with you!! One of my most consistent offerings is a live-streaming class on Wednesday mornings 9-10:30 AM (EDT).
It is a group of long term practitioners. We take a gentle internal approach to everything and I find the work to be very satisfying for all involved. As a teacher and therapist i have no doubt the class would be of interest to you! It is an excellent way of checking in with an active inquiry every week...IF you can make the class. (Haha! You likely work at that time, but its worth a try to recommend it. Drop-ins are fine.)
Also, I am offering increasing ways to study directly with me here on Substack. A good start would be to become a paid subscriber. You will find articles and study manuals available here on for paid subscribers.
If you opt to become a paid subscriber, I would recommend as your next reading the article and full download:
Embodied Anatomy in Back Bending. I think you will find that VERY interesting.
There is a large archive of videos available on my web site too. But I think you should start right here on Substack and see if there is enough here to satisfy you for now.
Stay in touch! We can also do virtual sessions if you become serious about the study.
Oh thank you for all of this wonderful information! I'll switch to a paid subscription today and look at the back bending download first before making my way slowly through the rest. I would love to join the Wednesday morning classes. I don't see clients during that time so I just need to be sure my husband can be with our daughter which, most weeks, he can. And I will absolutely take you up on virtual sessions as I continue to get familiar with your work. See you Wednesday morning!
Thank YOU for this brilliance 🌅.. what I have learned from you fabulous women of yoga (yourself, Abigail Rose Clarke, Judith Hanson Lasater and others) as you validate our deeper sense of knowing through our bodies…has given me voice to teach from my belly and my heart.. 🦋
this is just so lovely. And it is interesting to think of the way 'alignment' already points us to straight lines. I love the way you've given a framework for what movement can look like - which would include stillness and pause. If we think of tadasana as a template for stillness within movement- a stillpoint that movement arises from and returns to - then it feels to me like it becomes much more alive. And the word "stack" certainly doesn't bring a sense of aliveness to my body and mind.
Because I've had the very immense pleasure of studying with you for so long, I know this came from you, but I don't know when it was exactly - but for years I've referred to this style of alignment as "relational alignment" rather than "positional alignment" - positional alignment focuses on the position of the parts - put this here, place that there, etc- and is externally oriented. In positional alignment, we NEED the teacher, or perhaps a mirror, to tell us if we're doing it "right". And there is some benefit to this, to be sure - I don't want to say that we never need some external input on movement, because living in a body it can be difficult to notice our habitual patterns, along with just the nature of learning something which is we don't know what we don't know. But relational alignment means we are orienting ourselves to the relationship we have with the earth. If I am giving my focus to the relational alignment my body has with gravity, then I immediately move from a focus on stacking and positioning my body in certain ways to a felt sense of space and flow. And then the teacher occupies a different role as well - rather than telling me if I am "doing it right" or moving my body into various adjustments - definitely a cause of some of these injuries you're mentioning- now the teacher is in the role of midwifing an experience by offering new pathways to imagining and orienting ourselves to the space within the body, or by placing a single light touch at one point in the body, as I've seen you do countless times and have myself done so often, and yet it never loses its magic.
I'll leave it here for now, but I am so grateful you put this out on the internet where lots of people can find it, and I hope they do!
Thank you my dear Abigail! What a pleasure it is to have been sharing this work/play/inquiry for the last 20 years!! (I think.) You were such a beautiful baby woman then and you are a positively brilliant and wonderful grown woman/human now. I just love you and am so grateful to be here with you!
Yes! Around 10 years ago I was fortunate enough to study with some very experienced Iyengar teachers and it was the first time I noticed that kind of yoga attracted an academic crowd. It was the first time I heard the words: "you can't do anything with a doctorate these days; you need to do a post-doc"! I got a lot out of that time but I also saw that academically minded people needed strict alignment cues. I have a lot of respect still for the Iyengar tradition, but as I've moved towards more somatic practices, I've definitely cut certain words out of my vocabulary, 'alignment' being one of them. I love your idea of riding a current.
But now I recall, even there with the Iyengar crowd, our teachers taught us that the 'same dog, different day' mentality could be exchanged for an attitude of curiosity. It's really down to teachers to invite such curiosity, especially when working with adults who may never have experienced an embodied practice before and simply want to 'learn to do it right'.
Thank you for your thoughtful and wise comment. I share your respect for the Iyengar tradition. I used to take joy in trying to figure out what was "wrong" with Iyengar yoga—even as I practiced it with passionate curiosity and love!
Eventually, I realized that Iyengar was simply brilliant. Whenever I thought he had it "wrong," I knew I needed to rethink and look deeper into what he was actually saying. This has been a long inquiry for me, and the older I get, the more respect I have for his work.
Much may have been lost in translation. When I was studying Iyengar yoga, many teachers in the West were still beginners. We were all new to it, eager to get it right, yet inevitably, some things were misinterpreted.
Now, I see that any sincere inquiry into the body-mind-consciousness continuum—whether through yoga, somatics, meditation, or other practices—has the potential to reveal the gifts we hold within.
NIce to have you here, reading and sharing with us all!
The history of yoga in the West is utterly fascinating and I feel indebted to all of you who explored it before I came along. The world was an entirely different place, even just one or two decades ago, and yoga has always been in the world. May the spirit of curiosity prevail, even in these polarised times!
"Movement is always a whole-body-mind-spirit event." One of many gems in this. Thank you Patty, love it.
I also love what you said about the "superstition of materialism" and how this infiltrates also how we see and move our bodies even in yoga practice. Feels exciting to uproot that often-unconscious assumption of materialism in yoga and really move and practice and learn and teach from the energetic perspective/reality.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, Meghan. I really appreciate hearing from you.
I too love the term, " superstition of materialism"! I picked it up from Depak Chopra somewhere in his early writings and have never forgotten it because it just rings so true!
Such a wonderful way to describe the frozen state of mind that we have culturally embodied. The world is flat! The world is solid! They feel so similar, don't they?
100% on board with this, Patty! For me, part of the problem arises when we get stuck in the teacher/student paradigm that draws on our early learning experiences. By this I mean, a teacher is going to tell/show me how to do something and as a student I will watch/listen and mimic the teacher. Then, of course? I can judge and be judged on whether I am doing it right/well or not.
This leads to breaking down skills and knowledge into parts, which is undeniably of huge value, but we may get stuck there as both the teacher and the student, and never progress into critically thinking about moving, which happens, for me, when the ‘teaching’ paradigm becomes one of facilitator/participant
So, yes, let’s understand the biomechanics if we want to but let’s use it as a way into the vast territory of the body systems and explore!
I also think that being a teacher means pointing to different ways of learning/expectations, opening up a conversation about the teacher not being the expert and pointing the way to the innate wisdom of students' own bodies.
Thank you for that comment, Beverly. I agree there is a real problem continuing to exist in the old familiar teacher/student model that is not as mutually respectful as it could be. Nothing wrong with the teacher having more insight and knowledge than the student. All the more wonderful. Someone needs to guide the way!
However, placing the teacher "above" rather than "with the group" has not proven to my satisfaction to promote real learning. The teacher most certainly needs to be more learned, more practiced, more studied, and even (hopefully) wiser than the members of the group who choose to study with her.
And, she should be wise enough not to allow her students to put her on any pedestal. Not only for her own good, but for their own learning. The wise teacher hands it all right back to the student! It is their responsibility to think critically and question everything. There comes wisdom!! So, you see - haha! - perhaps the wise teacher can even teach wisdom!
heck yes to this
Ha ha! Thank you, Brenna! Isn't it great to be able to read and share these perspectives with one another in this format? It makes me so happy to hear from you. Thank you for being here...and...thank you for signing up for a paid subscription! I really appreciate the support. 😘
This resonates so much!! I've been reshaping my approach to my own practices and orientations and, by extension, my approach to being a psychotherapist and yoga instructor...lately I've been sitting with "somatic re-integration" as a way to refer to this shift I'm feeling...
What are the best ways to keep learning from you? Do you offer any trainings at the moment or have archives for purchase? Thank you so much 🙏
Hi Emily,
It makes me so happy to hear that this is resonating with you!! One of my most consistent offerings is a live-streaming class on Wednesday mornings 9-10:30 AM (EDT).
Here ia a link to the Wednesday class:
https://www.shraddhayoga.org/schedule/livestream
It is a group of long term practitioners. We take a gentle internal approach to everything and I find the work to be very satisfying for all involved. As a teacher and therapist i have no doubt the class would be of interest to you! It is an excellent way of checking in with an active inquiry every week...IF you can make the class. (Haha! You likely work at that time, but its worth a try to recommend it. Drop-ins are fine.)
Also, I am offering increasing ways to study directly with me here on Substack. A good start would be to become a paid subscriber. You will find articles and study manuals available here on for paid subscribers.
If you opt to become a paid subscriber, I would recommend as your next reading the article and full download:
Embodied Anatomy in Back Bending. I think you will find that VERY interesting.
There is a large archive of videos available on my web site too. But I think you should start right here on Substack and see if there is enough here to satisfy you for now.
Stay in touch! We can also do virtual sessions if you become serious about the study.
Thank you again!
Patty
Oh thank you for all of this wonderful information! I'll switch to a paid subscription today and look at the back bending download first before making my way slowly through the rest. I would love to join the Wednesday morning classes. I don't see clients during that time so I just need to be sure my husband can be with our daughter which, most weeks, he can. And I will absolutely take you up on virtual sessions as I continue to get familiar with your work. See you Wednesday morning!
Wonderfrul Emily, I look forward to meeting you on Wednesday!
My heart and belly are so full from this 🫶🏼
Thank you for enjoying and commenting, Rebecca! ❤️
Thank YOU for this brilliance 🌅.. what I have learned from you fabulous women of yoga (yourself, Abigail Rose Clarke, Judith Hanson Lasater and others) as you validate our deeper sense of knowing through our bodies…has given me voice to teach from my belly and my heart.. 🦋
this is just so lovely. And it is interesting to think of the way 'alignment' already points us to straight lines. I love the way you've given a framework for what movement can look like - which would include stillness and pause. If we think of tadasana as a template for stillness within movement- a stillpoint that movement arises from and returns to - then it feels to me like it becomes much more alive. And the word "stack" certainly doesn't bring a sense of aliveness to my body and mind.
Because I've had the very immense pleasure of studying with you for so long, I know this came from you, but I don't know when it was exactly - but for years I've referred to this style of alignment as "relational alignment" rather than "positional alignment" - positional alignment focuses on the position of the parts - put this here, place that there, etc- and is externally oriented. In positional alignment, we NEED the teacher, or perhaps a mirror, to tell us if we're doing it "right". And there is some benefit to this, to be sure - I don't want to say that we never need some external input on movement, because living in a body it can be difficult to notice our habitual patterns, along with just the nature of learning something which is we don't know what we don't know. But relational alignment means we are orienting ourselves to the relationship we have with the earth. If I am giving my focus to the relational alignment my body has with gravity, then I immediately move from a focus on stacking and positioning my body in certain ways to a felt sense of space and flow. And then the teacher occupies a different role as well - rather than telling me if I am "doing it right" or moving my body into various adjustments - definitely a cause of some of these injuries you're mentioning- now the teacher is in the role of midwifing an experience by offering new pathways to imagining and orienting ourselves to the space within the body, or by placing a single light touch at one point in the body, as I've seen you do countless times and have myself done so often, and yet it never loses its magic.
I'll leave it here for now, but I am so grateful you put this out on the internet where lots of people can find it, and I hope they do!
Thank you my dear Abigail! What a pleasure it is to have been sharing this work/play/inquiry for the last 20 years!! (I think.) You were such a beautiful baby woman then and you are a positively brilliant and wonderful grown woman/human now. I just love you and am so grateful to be here with you!
Well, I wouldn't be who I am without you, obviously :)
And I'm pretty sure we're at 19 years now! Maybe 18. I'm just saying "almost 20" and then soon I'll start saying "more than 20"
Brilliant Patty! Palms joined at the heart. :-).
Yes! Around 10 years ago I was fortunate enough to study with some very experienced Iyengar teachers and it was the first time I noticed that kind of yoga attracted an academic crowd. It was the first time I heard the words: "you can't do anything with a doctorate these days; you need to do a post-doc"! I got a lot out of that time but I also saw that academically minded people needed strict alignment cues. I have a lot of respect still for the Iyengar tradition, but as I've moved towards more somatic practices, I've definitely cut certain words out of my vocabulary, 'alignment' being one of them. I love your idea of riding a current.
But now I recall, even there with the Iyengar crowd, our teachers taught us that the 'same dog, different day' mentality could be exchanged for an attitude of curiosity. It's really down to teachers to invite such curiosity, especially when working with adults who may never have experienced an embodied practice before and simply want to 'learn to do it right'.
A lovely article. Thanks
Hi Laura,
Thank you for your thoughtful and wise comment. I share your respect for the Iyengar tradition. I used to take joy in trying to figure out what was "wrong" with Iyengar yoga—even as I practiced it with passionate curiosity and love!
Eventually, I realized that Iyengar was simply brilliant. Whenever I thought he had it "wrong," I knew I needed to rethink and look deeper into what he was actually saying. This has been a long inquiry for me, and the older I get, the more respect I have for his work.
Much may have been lost in translation. When I was studying Iyengar yoga, many teachers in the West were still beginners. We were all new to it, eager to get it right, yet inevitably, some things were misinterpreted.
Now, I see that any sincere inquiry into the body-mind-consciousness continuum—whether through yoga, somatics, meditation, or other practices—has the potential to reveal the gifts we hold within.
NIce to have you here, reading and sharing with us all!
❤️
The history of yoga in the West is utterly fascinating and I feel indebted to all of you who explored it before I came along. The world was an entirely different place, even just one or two decades ago, and yoga has always been in the world. May the spirit of curiosity prevail, even in these polarised times!
"Movement is always a whole-body-mind-spirit event." One of many gems in this. Thank you Patty, love it.
I also love what you said about the "superstition of materialism" and how this infiltrates also how we see and move our bodies even in yoga practice. Feels exciting to uproot that often-unconscious assumption of materialism in yoga and really move and practice and learn and teach from the energetic perspective/reality.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, Meghan. I really appreciate hearing from you.
I too love the term, " superstition of materialism"! I picked it up from Depak Chopra somewhere in his early writings and have never forgotten it because it just rings so true!
Such a wonderful way to describe the frozen state of mind that we have culturally embodied. The world is flat! The world is solid! They feel so similar, don't they?
😂😂😂
Xoxoxo!!
100% on board with this, Patty! For me, part of the problem arises when we get stuck in the teacher/student paradigm that draws on our early learning experiences. By this I mean, a teacher is going to tell/show me how to do something and as a student I will watch/listen and mimic the teacher. Then, of course? I can judge and be judged on whether I am doing it right/well or not.
This leads to breaking down skills and knowledge into parts, which is undeniably of huge value, but we may get stuck there as both the teacher and the student, and never progress into critically thinking about moving, which happens, for me, when the ‘teaching’ paradigm becomes one of facilitator/participant
So, yes, let’s understand the biomechanics if we want to but let’s use it as a way into the vast territory of the body systems and explore!
I also think that being a teacher means pointing to different ways of learning/expectations, opening up a conversation about the teacher not being the expert and pointing the way to the innate wisdom of students' own bodies.
Thank you for that comment, Beverly. I agree there is a real problem continuing to exist in the old familiar teacher/student model that is not as mutually respectful as it could be. Nothing wrong with the teacher having more insight and knowledge than the student. All the more wonderful. Someone needs to guide the way!
However, placing the teacher "above" rather than "with the group" has not proven to my satisfaction to promote real learning. The teacher most certainly needs to be more learned, more practiced, more studied, and even (hopefully) wiser than the members of the group who choose to study with her.
And, she should be wise enough not to allow her students to put her on any pedestal. Not only for her own good, but for their own learning. The wise teacher hands it all right back to the student! It is their responsibility to think critically and question everything. There comes wisdom!! So, you see - haha! - perhaps the wise teacher can even teach wisdom!