Breath and Bandha, Knoxville, TN (2025)

08/01/2022

I’m happy to announce online teaching is finally available beginning today! 🙌

Monthly membership is limited to 100 people for August’s soft-launch as we fine tune, and founding members will lock in a discounted rate for life! Membership will open to all September 1st.

I’m even more excited about the community we’re creating! 🤝 The thought of getting to know everyone and focusing on what will help you the most puts a BIG smile on my face. 😁

August’s theme for classes, asana breakdowns, and discussion is “Cultivating Awareness”. We have a lot of great content ready to go and will be adding a few more videos in the next couple of days. There’s also a live handstand workshop this month! 🤸

Check out the link in my bio for more details and submit your email if your interested. I hope to see you soon! 💚

04/18/2022

Everything changes, and releasing what no longer serves you is vitally important to moving forward. Renegade yoga center has been my home studio since I started practicing, and was a great place to found an Ashtanga program with . I’m eternally grateful to for all he’s given and he’ll always have my respect as an exceptional teacher and friend. Thank you 🙏

I’ve been receiving a lot of messages inquiring as to why we’re taking our program elsewhere. I feel it’s the right decision and only have the best interests of our students and our program at heart. It’s not easy saying goodbye, but our path forward needed to be cleared.

I want to thank everyone who’s supported and encouraged us along the way. Ashtanga yoga is truly a healing and transformative practice, and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to share it with anyone who’s interested. The physical location may be different, but the practice remains unchanged and the passion for yoga is stronger than ever.

04/09/2022

Yoga practice is like any other personal undertaking, you benefit to the degree that you apply yourself. You can choose to go through the motions just to get finished, viewing practice as a kind of penance or punishment - or you can nurture it. You have the option to be fully present with each breath, working to strengthen the connection between mind, body, and spirit. You can make practice sacred - a way of honoring and showing gratitude as you dive deep into yourself in search of truth. The choice is yours and you alone will benefit accordingly.

04/04/2022

A few weeks ago a added malasana to my practice just before pasasana. It was in the sequence originally and removed as the authorized ashtanga sequences developed. It’s been helping with some other poses, especially pasasana.

Pasasana is a challenging pose for most. Getting the heels down and binding both legs takes a lot of strength, flexibility, and coordination. If you’re struggling, maybe practicing malasana will help.

03/29/2022

Knowing how to do something and doing it are two different things. You can theorize and intellectualize to no end, but it’s worthless without practice. Often the mind needs to get out of the way to learn something new about yoga. Practice reveals what can’t be theorized.

03/14/2022

🚨Hey Knoxville!🚨We’re excited to offer a SUPPORTIVE, FUN 🤩 and INSPIRATIONAL COMMUNITY to help YOU reach your health and fitness goals!

✨Modern Ashtanga✨ is NOT the average yoga class. You show up when YOU WANT during the open practice session, and we teach the skills that EMPOWER you for a lifetime ✅ Our expert teachers guide you through a sequence of yoga poses while giving tips that build strength 💪 flexibility, and confidence along the way. That’s right, you don’t have to be strong or flexible to get started!! 💯

You’ll receive the benefits of a 1 on 1 private lesson in a fun and energetic⚡️ community setting. 🤗
EVERYONE (yes everyone) is welcome, and NO experience with yoga is necessary, just bring yourself.🤝

For more information click the link in my bio, or visit modernashtanga.com 📲

💚We’d love to meet you!💚
🍊

03/07/2022

I’m grateful to have a practice that keeps me centered, balanced, and witness to emotional fluctuations. May you find peace within despite outside circumstances.

03/01/2022

I learned something interesting recently regarding the Yoga Danda - a wood arm rest pictured in the last slide. It’s a tool to balance Ida and Pingala nadis for pranayama and meditation.

At different times of the day, Ida or Pingala nadi dominates, and the other is restricted. This is one reason why the recommended time for meditation is between 4am and 6am - when both flow freely and are balanced. Applying pressure to the armpit opposite the restricted nostril for a few minutes causes it to open. This is the purpose of the Yoga Danda.

You can use your fist as well. If your left nostril isn’t flowing as easily as your right, ball up your left hand and apply a little pressure by closing it in the right armpit for a few minutes and see if works.

02/23/2022

The first time I practiced Marichyasana D my whole body was screaming at me to stop. In that moment I questioned my resolve to practice Ashtanga Yoga. After all, why would anyone willingly put themselves through that kind of stress?

Well, there’s a lot of reasons: getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, cultivating resilience, learning to breathe and relax despite circumstance, observing what happens in the mind, practicing detachment and equanimity…The list goes on.

Fast forward to today and Marichyasana D isn’t so stressful. Thankfully, there’s plenty of other asanas that push me out of the comfort zone and into a place where internal progress is made.

What keeps you coming back to the mat?

02/19/2022

Yoga sutra 2.16 Suffering which has not yet come is to be avoided.

We have to live out the karma that’s already in place, but the power to create future karma is ours in this moment. The life you’re living today is a result of decisions made yesterday, a year ago, and 10 years ago.

A thorough consideration of past, present, and future karma brings light to the path forward. As we become more connected with how past karma has created our situation and disposition today, the better and more intentional we can lay foundation for the future. Destiny is a result of past, present, and future karma.

02/16/2022

Sutra 42: Fruits of santosha

“Unexcelled happiness comes from the practice of contentment.

Contentment is one of the fixed rules for a spiritual aspirant who is very serious about the higher aspect of yoga and realization. It is impossible for one who is dissatisfied with oneself or with anything else in life to realize the higher consciousness.

Dissatisfaction is one of the great veils of avidya (ignorance) and therefore it is to be removed, because it causes many undesirable complexes and brings about a state of psychic illness, and if the mind is ill, no sadhana is possible.

One who wants to attain meditation must practise yama and niyama. The awareness in meditation must be made free of all the mental errors, veils and complexes; therefore, one must practise santosha (contentment). The happiness that comes from it is unparalleled.”

-Four Chapters on Freedom
-Swami Satyananda Saraswati

02/10/2022

Check out my knees above the floor. This is just a little reminder that we all have different proportions and are more or less able to make shapes with our bodies. Good thing the focus of yoga (even asana practice) isn’t making shapes 😉 Be kind to yourself, it’s called yoga practice not yoga perfection.

02/07/2022

My friend got me thinking about injuries this morning and I’m grateful to have stayed mostly healthy in the years I’ve been practicing. Aside from achy knees when first working through primary series and occasional overworked muscles, my body has stayed in great shape overall.

Let me preface this by saying I spent 8 years or so lifting weights 5 days a week before beginning daily asana practice 5 years ago. You can’t maintain that kind of regimen without listening to the body when it says it needs rest.

I attribute staying mostly injury free to patience and non attachment to progress. We all want to advance in our asana practice but that’s really not the point. The point is to simply do it, and pay attention to what’s happening internally in the process. After all, the focus of asana practice is breath and bandha 😉 along with what’s happening in the mind. We work with discomfort - sometimes at the edge of pain. It’s a dangerous place to be and a small lapse in concentration or judgment at the right moment is all it takes to hurt yourself. Thankfully injuries are usually minor and temporary from what I’ve seen.

Admittedly, I like to get deeper into the poses and learn new ones as much as anyone. It’s challenging and fun. I also approach each practice with respect bordering on caution. Some days the body and mind are stiff, and that’s ok. This practice is meant to to be sustained daily for a lifetime, and remembering there’s no rush might just save you some heartache.

Picture is kapotasana progress. Maybe it takes years for me to get the heels, maybe it never happens, maybe it happens next month. Whatever the case, my focus is ahimsa.

01/26/2022

Utpluthih - uproot - a step by step guide:

Step (1) Abandon reason

Step (2) Summon mystical power

Step (3) Defy gravity

Step (4) Embrace suffering

For any questions see step 1

01/16/2022

I wonder what exactly it takes to sustain a daily Ashtanga Yoga practice. What keeps me coming back to the mat each day is likely different than your reasons. Seeing some students take up the practice only to quit raises a lot of questions. Does it take a certain type of person to stick with it? Maybe expectations aren’t aligning with reality? Are some people just not ready to face what the practice brings to light? Maybe ashtanga “isn’t worth it” for some people due to the physical intensity?

How ashtanga practice is approached has a lot to do with sustainability. There’s a lot of exercise options if you’re only interested in physical benefit. Ashtanga is medicine for the body, but it has to mean something more or the practitioner is likely to give it up when it gets tough - and it does get tough, that’s the point.

Considering practice as sadhana is the recommended approach, but sadhana doesn’t have to be ashtanga. So what is it that makes a dedicated ashtangi? Let me know in the comments 🙏

12/26/2021

Most yoga students are familiar with sthira and sukha, effort and ease as a definition of asana. It’s the most common transition of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 2.46, but like most Sanskrit translations, it’s crude and oversimplified. Let’s take a more in-depth look:

Sthira: stable, firm, steadfast, resolute, and courageous. The root “stha” means to take a stand.

Sukha: happy, joyful, good, easy, gentle, and mild. The literal meaning is good space. Su - good. Kha - space.

Asana stems from the root word “as”. It translates to sitting, abiding, dwelling, inhabiting, and being present.

There’s a lot to process from just three words: Sthira Sukham Asanam. The idea is fairly straightforward for posture practice - we work to balance firmness with release in order to be present in a comfortable space. Easier said than done for many asanas, and creating this balance in life’s many circumstances offers an even greater challenge.

✨May we all create the “good space” and “abide” there with “joy”✨

Happy new year!!

12/23/2021

There’s a story told of Krishnamacharya that involves Mayuransa. As legend would have it, during the years 1918 to 1925, K studied with a terribly long-lived teacher (reputed to be 230 years old). This teacher had the terribly long name of Yogeshwara Sri Ramamohana Brahmachari Guru Maharaja of Mukta Narayan Ksetra, and he was hard on Krishnamacharya who was in his 30s at the time. Reportedly, Brhamachari forced him to eat heaps of ghee then put weights on his legs to do Mayurasana outside their Himalayan cave in the thin air on the rocky ground coated in snow.

An old Hindi proverb tells us, Amrit paane se pahle vish peena padta hai, “Before one can get Amrita, one must drink poison. “Amrita” is the nectar of immorality and, in worldly terms, it is a symbol of success. This saying tells us that much must be endured before achievement comes. In this story, we see Krishnamacharya drinking his poison (doing hard work) before his fantastic success came later in life.
- Excerpt from an article by Eric Shaw
Second picture is Iyengar giving an assist to Vanda Scaravelli.

12/17/2021

When I first learned of tapas, the yogic fire of discipline that burns away impurities, I had a lot of questions: What impurities? How does daily practice cause heat to dissolve these mysterious impurities? Is it the actual body heat created in asana practice?.. and so on. After following the ashtanga system for some time it’s becoming clear. “Impurities” seem to be behaviors, actions, and even thoughts that no longer serve you, or likely never did. There’s no better way I know to connect with the body, mind, and spirit than ashtanga yoga, and the deeper you go, the more insight you get. It seems you reach a certain point in your practice and it’s impossible to ignore what could be holding you back. Releasing old patterns becomes as simple as letting them melt away. Lasting changes in behavior can’t be forced, but tapas work from the inside out making change inevitable.

Breath and Bandha