What’s right for you? Traditional yoga vs modern yoga?
What’s the difference?
How do you choose what is best for you?
Most importantly, what will you enjoy most, traditional yoga or modern yoga?
Almost anywhere you go, in any class you attend at any studio, no matter what ‘style’ they offer, what you get is modern yoga.
There is an exception to all of the many styles of modern yoga.
Contemplative Practice Yoga® is traditional yoga. And it differs in important ways.
What Makes Modern Yoga Modern?
Just about every style of yoga you have experienced or heard about has its roots in the teachings of one man, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. He was born in the 1880s and taught yoga in India throughout the early part of the 20th Century. He had many young people come to study with him when they were teenagers. Many of them became famous teachers themselves. One of them moved to Hollywood in the 1940s, bringing this basic style of modern yoga to the United States.
In order to make the traditional practice of yoga modern – that is, attractive to the young people he taught – Krishnamacharya made modern yoga very active. He altered the traditional forms, combined it with gymnastics and calisthenics, and made it essentially a workout. A workout is something that young bodies are attracted to, and something middle-aged people believe they need to do to remain fit. So it became popular.
Modern yoga includes vigorous movement, often promotes sweating as part of “cleansing”, may involve “stretching” of your tight muscles, and usually emphasizes “challenging” yourself in various ways – just as you would in a work-out.
A fundamental principle of modern yoga is that you should control your response to pain or discomfort. In a modern yoga class, you may regularly push limits of comfort and strength. Even if the teacher tells you to modify poses for discomfort or physical limitations, the emphasis in a modern yoga class is on pushing, straining, and challenging. The mindset is overcoming limitations with activity and force, which is why injuries are common in so many modern yoga classes.
Traditional Yoga vs. Modern Yoga
How comfortable can you be? How calm and joyful?
These are the challenges that traditional yoga presents to you.
Traditional yoga, Contemplative Practice® Yoga, teaches you to be as comfortable in your body as possible – free from pain or discomfort. This is the goal of traditional yoga. It’s not about working out, it’s about feeling comfortable and at ease, calm and peaceful, in your body and mind.
Traditional yoga poses and techniques differ from modern yoga because our fundamental approach is different. Instead of pushing, straining, controlling or overcoming pain or limitations, we teach you to dissolve them – easily and gently.
We teach you to release the core tensions in your body. This is not stretching your muscles, it is releasing deep tension – two very different things.
You carry deep tension in the core of your body – so deep that you are not aware of it most of the time. This core tension is the greatest obstacle to physical wellbeing, and to mental and emotional clarity and calm.
The good news?
Traditional yoga teaches you to dissolve (versus overcome) limitations, discomfort, or pain. We teach you to do this for yourself.
There’s no pushing, forcing, or straining while doing therapeutic traditional yoga poses, because pushing and straining are unnecessary. In traditional therapeutic yoga, you meet the challenge of being fit while being completely comfortable and calm.
Traditional yoga provides gentle, simple, and comfortable physical practices versus the modern yoga push and strain work out.
You already know how to work out and push yourself. You already know how to force, strain, and overcome. You do this in many areas of your life already.
Traditional yoga offers you an opportunity to discover just how powerful gentleness is.
The path to comfort, ease, and joyful wellbeing starts with your willingness to be gentle with yourself – to dissolve obstacles and limitations versus overcome them.
Traditional Yoga vs Modern Yoga – What’s Right for You?
If you want to work out, to sweat, to overcome your pain or physical limitations, to force, push yourself, and strain, then a modern yoga class is right for you.
If you prefer to learn how to dissolve your discomfort or pain, to do so with gentleness, if you prefer to be comfortable and at ease in your body and calm in your mind, then traditional yoga is right for you.
Contemplative Practice Yoga® Therapy and Classes are Traditional Yoga
There are two ways to practice traditional yoga -- Contemplative Practice Yoga® -- private therapy sessions and therapeutic yoga classes.
Private yoga therapy sessions are one-to-one sessions in which your specific concerns are addressed. Each session provides practices that are appropriate to what you are experiencing and what your goals are for therapy.
Contemplative Practice Yoga® Classes are all therapeutically oriented. These small group classes provide basic therapeutic practices that dissolve core tensions while addressing the needs of the group in general.
The goal of all traditional yoga, including Contemplative Practice Yoga®, is to dissolve pain and limitations and teach you how to do this for yourself in a simple, sustainable way so that you may enjoy greater physical comfort and connect to your calm core.