It's difficult to separate the modern popularity of yoga from Rodney Yee. He was a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1999 to talk about yoga after creating his landmark videos AM and PM Yoga a few years earlier. Overnight his videos and teachings sold worldwide as millions wanted to learn how to do yoga the way he taught it.

As a yoga teacher of 40 years, and as a philosopher and artist with, by his own description, an “engineering and scientific mind,” Rodney has a lot to say about the type of expression and inquiry that the yoga practice is in its current form. We start this conversation by discussing his 2002 book, Yoga and the Poetry of the Body, and we move from there into talking about how, to understand or really dig deeply into the meaning of anything, you first need to define terms. We explore questions like: What is yoga? What is classical yoga? What is lineage in yoga? Are the main styles of yoga lineages? What are the “types” of yoga, like “flow yoga,” that are so commonly practiced today? I love his quote of Richard Freeman: "The map is not the territory," and his mention of Robinson Jeffers's poem "Carmel Point" that ends like this:

We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;

We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident

As the rock and the ocean we are made of.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did! Drop me a line at kim@weekswell.com to let me know what you think!

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Sanskrit:

1. Dharana: concentration 

2. Dhyana: meditation or contemplation

3. Ujayi: a breathing technique, translated to victorious breath or ocean breath 

4. Drishti: focused gaze

5. Trikonasana: triangle pose

6. Asana: postures

7. Urdhva mukha svanasana: upward facing dog pose 

8. Adho mukha svanasana: downward facing dog pose 

9. Pranayama: breath control 

10. Vipassana: a meditation practice

11. Ahimsa: non-harming

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References:

1. Yoga Shanti

2. Yoga and the Poetry of the Body, by Rodney Yee

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Mentioned in this episode: 

1. Angela Farmer

2. Viktor Van Kooten

3. Prashant Iyengar

4. Geeta Iyengar

5. Sat Bir Singh Khalsa

6. Bobby Mann

7. Lilias Folan

8. Richard Hittelman

9. Patricia Walden

10. Richard Freeman

11.  Richard Rosen

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Episode credits:

Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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