The Dynamic Yoga Training Method
Dynamic Yoga is not only a style of yoga practice. It is an approach to yoga based on how the bodimind inherently and naturally functions: the dynamics of integrity. It is not a theoretical or conjectural process. It is based entirely on action as the basis of movement, stillness and attention.
Effective yoga practice, and teaching, can never be a matter of opinion. It must be based on one irrevocable foundation. The inherent unity of the human body expressing as the dynamics of integrity. An integrity that functions through mechanical, physical, chemical and biological principles. These principles are inherent, universal and express their status continuously through the agency of the pain-pleasure mechanism. This mechanism is embedded on a cellular level and functions throughout the tissues of the body as the fundamental, precognitive means of survival and orientation. Deep sensitivity to this mechanism is necessary to integrate intention, action, function and structure on the basis of the body’s inherent integrity (unity). Only then can yoga (unity) manifest.
Dynamic Yoga is not concerned with endless accumulation of specific information. Life and Yoga are based on an infinite variety of specific applications of a limited number of fundamental principles. Dynamic Yoga is a precise and complete clarification of the underlying principles of yoga. Principles which are themselves derived from the fundamental principles of life. Just as the human organism is a specific expression of life, yoga is an inherent expression of being human. Both life and being human partake of an inherent unity. This unity does not reveal itself easily to the discriminating capacity of the human cortex. Nevertheless it remains continuously and inexorably present.
Dynamic Yoga is the natural expression of the Dynamic Yoga Training Method. This Training Method is based directly on the inherent unity of body, mind and spirit. A unity that is overlooked and compromised in almost all cultural activities, including the majority of yoga styles and classes. The overt, and most accessible, expression of this unity is the body: dynamic yoga therefore is based on accessing the deeper subtleties of being human from physical action. It is based on the recognition that both spirit and mind depend for their expression on the body and its capacity for action obvious and subtle. A dependency that permits them both to be fully accessed and realised through and from the body.
Therefore Dynamic Yoga does not rely on, or utilise, any esoteric or mystical concepts. It utilises only concepts that can be easily derived by anyone from the natural functioning of body, mind and spirit. Accordingly it does not depend on the blind acceptance of any external authority, not even that of the teacher. Instead it seeks and honours the authority of life itself functioning through the imperfectability of nature in and as the human being. By giving priority to biomechanical integrity the deeper relationships between body, mind and spirit are invited to express themselves. Then attention can focus on actions and their direct impacts. This gives the postures a power, and a spiritual dimension, that they cannot have if they are simply described.
The Dynamic Yoga Training Method is based entirely on the mechanical, physiological and cognitive principles that govern human experience. These principles are accessed and utilised through the agency of sensitivity to sensations actually taking place inside the body, and honest awareness of the dynamics of perception. This renders yoga practice a process of unlearning culutural impositions that mask and distort the integrity of nature.
This approach expresses the powerful simplicity of yoga practice. This functions through the balanced application of the five fundamental techniques. When stillness (asana), movement (vinyasa), integration (bandha), rhythm (pranayama) and awareness (drushti) are united they reveal the internal dynamics of integrity: the dynamic of the bandhas in the whole body (sarvangabandha). This dynamic simultaneously recovers structural (alignment) and functional (respiration, circulation and motion) integrity and reveals their inherent unity. This unity is the dynamic expression of yoga.
In the beginning this is a process of refining and focussing intention and attention. Eventually it becomes a natural and spontaneous expression of inherent integrity. As this integrity deepens the structural and functional dualities of the body (up/down, left/right, forwards/backward, inside/outside, action/release etc) lose their divisiveness and the complimentary nature of their opposition is experienced (dvandva anabhighatah). This resolves the imagined split between all dualities including body and mind, matter and spirit. Thereby the spiritual depths of yoga are accessed on the basis of physical action.
