The Immersion Series

This Immersion is a three-part curriculum designed to help you transport your yoga to a powerful practice of freedom and fulfillment.  The sequence we follow correlates to the historic development of yogic practice and theory in India to reveal your personal path of yoga.  Our studies and practice together offer you a framework for clarifying your understanding of how the yogic path unfolds.  We combine an informed body of knowledge with asana practice on the mat, pranayama and meditation.  In this way you understand more clearly the steps of the path of yoga, how you might want to walk this path, and how your path relates to the great path of yoga.  Your capacity to expand the transformative power of yoga deepens exponentially.

We begin with the highest, zoom down into the foundations, and build up from there.  In Part One, we identify the key concepts of tantric yoga philosophy, explore how the technology of Universal Principles of Alignment works, and deepen our experience of all types of asana poses.  Grounded in mindfulness meditation as well as tantric approaches, we discover ways to practice breathing, meditation and contemplation.  Part Two builds on this orientation to the highest and grounds the yogic path in the study of personal liberation especially as articulated in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.  In Part Three we open into the realm of the heart, our relationships with others, and a path offering our lives in service to life.  We introduce subtle body anatomy as a way to begin to understand how our conscious embodiment can become liberated while alive.

This is a unique, ground breaking opportunity to undertake a journey combining greater knowledge with your yoga practice to discover the profound benefits of harmonizing with the conscious free pulsation of life, which is who we are truly.  Perhaps for the first time, Hindu and Buddhist insights which developed alongside one another in India, mutually inspiring and often contentious, are brought into respectful dialogue with one another to help the modern practitioner clearly identify and understand a sequential yogic path of fulfillment.

Each part of the Immersion curriculum includes 34 contact hours, as well as suggested sequential homework readings and practices.  The Immersion is a pre-requisite for those wishing to go on to teacher training.

Part 1: The Highest First

• Orientation to the tantric outlook of embodied life as an ecstatic expression of the freedom and potency of consciousness
• In-depth exploration of the Anusara Yoga Universal Principles of Alignment including the five UPAs, Loops, and Spirals
• Review and refinement of all poses of Anusara’s Level 1 Syllabus
• Introduction to some of the auxiliary principles of alignment
• Tantric philosophy and vision as it relates to asana practice, including the 3 A’s, ethical precepts, studentship, history of yoga, the 5 elements.
• Basic principles of the breath and pranayama techniques
• Establish a meditation practice, informed by mindfulness techniques from Buddhist Insight Meditation and integrated with tantric techniques.
• Introduction to anatomy including planes, the skeleton, main muscle groups of the shoulders and hips, and anatomy of the breath.

Part 2: Foundations for Fulfillment

• Identify and begin to unravel the obstacles to personal freedom.  Explore the foundations of yoga philosophy by delving into Patanjalis’ Yoga Sutras, the classic text that condenses ancient traditional yoga lore into verses that point out the path of yoga as well as the basics of Buddhist abidharma.
• Deepen your understanding of the Five Elements and relate them to a systematic overview of reality including limited, conventional reality all the way to liberated, ultimate reality.
• Consider how our actions of body, speech, and mind affect ourselves and others.
• Review the principles of alignment and poses of the Level 1 Syllabus, and begin to practice asanas on the Level 2 Syllabus.
• Organize your practices into coherent order by learning the principles of sequencing.
• Experience Viloma and Nadi Sodhana breaths as well as review natural breath and Ujjayi.
• Continue to investigate the mind and heart through refinement of meditation practices.
• Review the main muscle groups of the shoulders, hips, arms, and legs with beginning implications for therapeutics.

Part 3: The Practicalities of Living Your Potential

• Delve into the love and devotion, through the world classic Bhagavad Gita as well as the Boddhisattva ideal of Buddhism.
• Investigate tantric subtle body anatomy, including the chakras and how it relates to living enlightenment.
• Review the principles of alignment and poses of the Level 1 Syllabus, and further your practice of asanas on the Level 2 Syllabus.  Refine your accomplishment of all the major classes of poses, including standing, arm balances, backbends, hip openers, twists, and forward bends.
• Deepen your understanding of the elegant principles of sequencing that underlie the magic of yoga asana practice.
• Animate your asana practice with heart qualities and clarify your motivations for practice including service to yourself and others.
• Continuing practice with pranayama, meditation and contemplation.

Prerequisite: 30 contact hours (class or workshop) with a Certified Anusara Yoga Teacher or formerly CAYT or by permission of instructor. Recommended: An Introduction to Anusara Yoga Workshop, 3-10 hours.  Immersion is a pre-requisite for Immersion 2, which is a pre-requisite for Immersion 3 except with permission of the instructor.

Tasha first taught Anusara Immersion with Julie Miller of Kula Yoga in Avon, CT.  Her influence can still be felt in this training.