Yoga: Just enrolled on Simon Borg-Olivier and Bianca Machliss' Essentials of Teacher Training Yoga Fundamentals Online course

I've just in enrolled in Simon and Bianca's online Yoga Fundamentals course. I had a peek at their Anatomy and Physiology course last year but was running around without an internet connection while waiting for my japan visa and couldn't actually do the course, although i have their Anatomy and Physiology of Yoga text book.

A few months back I became fascinated with the Spinal sequence that Simon and Bianca posted on their blog last year and wanted more. That Spinal sequence series of videos makes up part of the fundamentals course.

http://fundamentals.yogasynergy.com/

The course I'm on actually starts on 6th of July so you may have a few days to sign up if you want to join me, there are forum groups for the classes which you can take part in or not as you wish.

Looking through the materials it reminds me of the Online distance learning course I was doing at Nottingham last time I was in japan. That was an Ma in Linguistics but the set up was similar, online lectures, powerpoint presentations, reading materials, forums etc. This is all very professionally produced but then Simon and Bianca teach a course along these lines at the university so i imagine there is a lot of cross over of materials.

The main reason I'm taking it is that after meeting Simon in Turkey last year I'm fascinated by his approach to practice (we were both teaching at the Rainbow festival so this post where I was lucky enough to Interview Simon and talk about the breath http://grimmly2007.blogspot.jp/2014/05/interview-with-simon-borg-olivier.html).

He has an interesting background but it's how that background interacts with his years of practice and teaching that is interesting, Simon is a great experimenter putting all his research and discoveries to the test on and with his own body, an explorer in fact and what else where those old yogis of the past

At the age of six, he was introduced to yogic breathing (pranayama) by his father George who taught him to swim underwater, and the main bandhas (internal locks) through a family friendship with Rhodesian Olympian Basil Brown. At the age of 17, he met a Tibetan Lama who introduced him to the philosophy and practice of Tantric Yoga. In 1985, Simon met his primary teacher Natanaga Zhander (Shandor Remete) with whom he studied for almost two decades. He has also studied with such internationally revered Indian teachers as BKS Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois and TKV Desikachar. Since 2007, Simon has been developing his yoga practice and understanding by studying with Master Zhen Hua Yang.

During the past 20 years, as well as running a successful yoga school, Simon has continued to both study and teach at the University of Sydney. Simon has completed a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology, a research-based Master of Science in Molecular Biology and a Bachelor of Applied Science in Physiotherapy.

( and this link to Bianca Machliss http://yogasynergy.com/main/bianca-machliss)

I'm interested in how I can bring Simon and Bianca's approach/research into my own practice, bring about a better understanding of whats going on in my body with those most subtle of movements, the vinyasa, as much as the asana themselves.

I once wrote a post on what I called the hidden asana, that all the variations of an asana that we often think of as preparation for an asana are asana in themselves and should be valued as such rather than dismissed as a cheat. Turns out that Krishnamacharya thought the same and we can see that in Ramaswami's teaching But more........, that you could film your vinyasa and asana and then take a screenshot every second to and from the asana and that these would be hundreds of hidden asana, every one with their own subtle differences and I suspected benefits. My suspicion is that Simon and Bianca's course may give a sense of how true that actually is.

I thought it might be nice to do a series of posts as I work through the course so watch this space over the next 13 weeks.

Below are some screenshots.

The first is of the course resources...

http://fundamentals.yogasynergy.com/

The practice videos....

http://fundamentals.yogasynergy.com/

This is an example video from the spinal sequence but see this earlier post of mine where I look at his series and Simon:s use of the breath in particular in more detail

The breath: Simon Borg-Olivier made me fall in love with asana all over again.