Power Yoga by Beryl Bender Birch

Power Yoga by Beryl Bender Birch

Demonstrates Astanga, an ancient form of yoga that features a series of choreographed gymnastic stretching, strengthening, and breathing positions.

Beryl Bender Birch is the bestselling author of Power Yoga, Beyond Power Yoga, and Boomer Yoga, as well as one of America's most well-known yoga instructors. Beryl has been teaching the classical style of ashtanga yoga for 33 years and educating yoga teachers as spiritual revolutionaries since 1980, with degrees in philosophy and comparative religion. Yoga Magazine named her one of the Pioneers Shaping Yoga Today issue in 2000. At Syracuse University, Beryl studied philosophy and comparative religion. In 1971, she attended her first yoga class in California.

She then worked as a biofeedback researcher and studied the physiology of meditation for several years on the West Coast. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the Tibetan Buddhist who founded Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, as well as Shambhala International, was one of her early teachers. Munishree Chitrabhanuhu, the first Jain monk to leave India and come to the United States at Harvard Divinity School's invitation, was another major teacher for her. These two guys had a profound influence on her life, meditation practice, and teaching approach.

At Winter Park, Colorado, Beryl began teaching yoga and meditation to skiers in 1974, working with both professional and recreational skiers. Norman Allen introduced her to the practice of ashtanga yoga when she relocated to New York City in 1980. Sri K. was Allen's name. Pattabhi Jois' first American student, and the first Westerner to master the ashtanga series and bring it to America.

Beryl began teaching ashtanga yoga to runners at the famous New York Road Runners Club in 1981, and she eventually rose to the position of wellness director at the club. Beryl and her world-class runner husband, Thom, were among the first to introduce yoga to the traditional sporting community. Beryl and Thom taught tens of thousands of students the ashtanga yoga system of asana, pranayama, and dharana (concentration). Beryl coined the term power yoga in the late 1980s as a method to make ashtanga yoga more accessible to American students (almost concurrently, Bryan Kest, located in Los Angeles, coined the same term.) The words power yoga communicate the distinction between the intense, flowing form of yoga Beryl and Thom were teaching and the peaceful stretching and meditation that many Amerikans practice.

Power yoga is a high-intensity, fitness-based style of yoga. Beryl visited Sri K. at Feathered Pipe Ranch in Helena, Montana, in 1987 to meet and learn with him. Pattabhi Jois, the founder of the ashtanga yoga vinyasa system and the teacher Norman Allen had studied with. For the next six months, Beryl and Thom studied with Jois every day and followed his tour of California.

From 1987 to 1990, they pursued their study under Pattabhi Jois. Beryl is the founder and director of The Hard & the Soft Yoga Institute in East Hampton and Vermont, as well as the Give Back Yoga Foundation, which she founded in 1980. She now teaches yoga all over the world, leading and encouraging students of all levels with her down-to-earth style, the Middle Way of Jina Yoga (incorporating the conventional astanga eight-limbed system). She presently contributes to Yoga Journal's asana column.

She lives in East Hampton with her six racing Siberian huskies and competes in sprint events in Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire for the New England Sled Dog Club.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780020583516
ISBN 10	0020583516
Title	Power Yoga
Author	Beryl Bender Birch
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Simon & Schuster Ltd
Year published	1995-01-01
Number of pages	286
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.