The Style of Yoga I Teach

For the Spectrum Yoga blog series this month, I wanted to write a little more about the style of yoga I teach. There are so many styles of yoga, and some of them might be familiar to you: vinyasa yoga, restorative yoga, yin yoga, hot yoga (Bikram and others).

The style I teach has elements of some of these other styles, but what I teach is (I hope!) unique. I have learned much of what I know from Kristine Weber of Subtle Yoga. I am still learning and developing what Spectrum Yoga is. In the meantime, I teach Subtle-inspired yoga for the nervous system.

Now that right there might bring up some questions. Some people are familiar with their nervous system, others are not. This blog is meant to give you a little primer.

The nervous system is the command and control center of your body. The Central Nervous System, or CNS, is made up of the brain and spinal cord. The Peripheral Nervous System, or PNS, is made up of all of the nerves branching off of the CNS. The Nervous System’s responsibilities include receiving, processing, and responding to sensory information.

The part of the nervous system that is most relevant to this blog conversation is the Autonomic Nervous System. The nervous system is quite complex. The Peripheral Nervous System is divided into two branches: the Autonomic System and the Somatic System. The Autonomic Nervous System controls functions of the body that are largely involuntary: such as pumping blood. However, and what is important to the style of yoga I teach, is that some autonomic functions can be consciously controlled.

Here’s an example: the Autonomic System handles breathing. Breath is essential to life; without it, we would die immediately. We don’t want to leave that up to conscious control. However, as many of us are aware: we can choose to control our breath. There are other autonomic functions like this too, such as heart rate. The style of yoga I teach aims to give you techniques to improve the health of the body through exerting some conscious control over things like breathing.

The ultimate aim of teaching you things like breathing techniques is to help you lower your stress response and increase your relaxation response. There are more complicated ways to describe these effects in the nervous system, but lets leave it there for now.

We all know by now that we live in a stressful society with lots of demands on us. Even very basic and necessary parts of our lifestyle, such as driving, can fill us with stress and tension. One of the obvious benefits of yoga is relaxation. However, the yoga I teach aims to cultivate the relaxation response in the body, so that even during periods of stress your nervous system trends towards keeping you calm and relaxed.

I know this is a lot of information, so I’m going to leave it there for now. I will continue this discussion of the style of yoga I teach in my next blog, and give you some concrete examples of skills and tools I can give you to strengthen your nervous system.

Until then, be well!