Yogic Warrior Conditioning: Expanding the Heart of Yogic Movement

with Alex Iglecia

Sunday, April 19, 2009
2:00 - 3:30pm

Yogic Warrior Conditioning® is a comprehensive health and fitness system that combines Yoga, Functional Training, Conditioning and Restorative Techniques to create strength, effortless movement, and deeper awareness of body, mind and spirit.

Mindful, natural movement and creativity transform our tissues and nervous system for better health and fitness, reduced stress, and enhanced coordination and clarity.

Yogic Warrior Conditioning® makes exercise more than exercise, and helps launch one’s yoga practice off the mat.

Yoga Garden San Francisco
286 Divisadero St, SF, CA 94117  (google maps)
(415) 552-9644

Sign up online today

It is the concrete, specific awareness of one’s own act of moving which is so satisfying. Something more is needed than simply body mechanics, that the feelings hidden in the body, the source of all its movement, must be involved.

- Mary Starks Whitehouse, Authentic Movement

Original examples of Conscious Movement include Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, Tai Chi, and Yoga. Today’s clubs and fitness industry are moving in the direction of conscious movement, but are they going to get it right? For example, should a class with yoga postures + boxing + loud music be considered conscious movement? What is the difference, ultimately, between the vertical inclusion of meaning and the horizontal inclusion of body techniques? I want to offer four distinctions, or criteria I believe are necessary to help frame the conversation about what makes a session or class, Conscious. These points are found in all the great mind-body programs. Does yours meet the standard?

• Intention: intention to transform and explore what meaning might be found in meeting the upcoming challenges.
• Learning: expanding one’s repertoire, nervous system, brain wiring (and however else you put it) creates new connections. Transformation and consciousness are interested in new connections.
• Inquiry: You, the you that inquires, must make deep and meaningful connections with the observed (your body, your relationships, your thoughts and emotions)
• Awareness: What you are capable of being aware of, or your ability to ware, must expand.

With these points in place, you can be assured that the exercise you are sharing with others or practicing yourself is indeed more than just exercise.

Epic Workout and Yogic Warrior Conditioning is but one expression of Conscious Movement, one that happens to explore the relationship between yoga, functional training and transformation. Now go move, learn, heal, and transform!

A Few Words on Fitness

With Epic and Yogic Warrior Conditioning, you take exercise vertical with depth and meaning, inquiry and transformation. Yet the fitness world is also changing horizontally, meaning that the techniques, methods and processes are being rearranged, improved, and evolved. Despite the idea that there new rules, I suggest instead that we are returning to the essence of our lives with new distinctions. Where are we going? What needs to be included in today’s fitness program, exercise plan, or yoga practice?

Mobility and Movement Preparation: There are techniques and methods that dramatically surpass ’stretching’ to optimally prepare your body for the movement you choose to train. Flip your mind and Tune In / Tune Up before your training, yoga asana and even meditation.

Corrective Exercise: Injuries of all shapes and size come as a consequence of our lifestyles and training patterns. More of the same is rarely the path out of pain, while noticing your experience often is. You can make the body resilient through intentional, purposeful movement that has the power to improve the way your body works at a deeper level.

Speed, power and elasticity: Remember that power has to do with time, and is not the same is strength. Consider power and strength with speed. Power is lost faster than strength, as easily demonstrated by a long-time yogi returning to a high-impact kickboxing class. Yet for all populations, there is the need for the ability to move and react quickly, and power is critical for getting through life effortlessly.

Core Training: Ab crunches are definitely out, and functional core work is in as we focus on training a body to respond and be active in the world. Whether the lessons come from athletics, martial arts, somatics or yoga, the truth about core is the same.

Resistance Training: A foundational aspect of every practice, we need to focus on function, linked system strength and real world strength. Isolated strength is an illusion, and the key is to practice with appropriate frequency. Strength is about full body connection and coordination towards a purpose. Strength comes from within, and should be trained with the end in mind.

Metabolic Training: Evolutionary cardio - Intensity vs volume is the name of the game, so the the ability to do higher levels of work and maintain output over time will take you where you want to go. Riding the edge of effort and ease will get you there faster.

Recovery & Regeneration: No matter your training modality or the features of your practice, recovery and nourishment - physical and emotional - is a must. This can be done at the gym, on the mat, or at home, and should not be ignored.

Thanks to Alwyn Cosgrove, who framed these concepts, then adapted by Epic Workout for a yogic perspective on exercise and transformation.

The International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) conference recently debuted in San Francisco, where I now reside, and revealed countless new fitness innovations to fitness professionals from all over the world. As the fitness and exercise world evolves, it is increasingly popular and critical to include expanded conceptions of wellness, holistic thinking, and mind-body programs. While this is needed and necessary for all types of teachers and trainers, I want to suggest that for the most part, this evolution is happening horizontally.

By horizontal, I refer to the span and variation of techniques and modalities. Vertical, in contrast, means depth or meaning. Every technique is expressed at some level of depth, and every vertical idea has to be expressed through some form. The changes happening in the fitness industry seem to be more horizontal (sell more technological solutions to basic health challenges) than vertical (make exercise more meaningful). Exercise programming is entirely horizontal and considers muscles, bones, neurons and energy systems. Your trainer shuffles around different techniques to change your body, for example. Mind-body programming is actually vertical and considers meaning, psychology, self and love. Your teacher uses poses or movement to get you to go inside you.

To make this more specific, fitness clubs and trainers are embracing yoga and other mind-body programs, but mostly just the surface features. Do this pose, take this breath, focus on this body area. While taking up conscious movement is a welcome change, it seems sometimes that these methods are used for their appeal rather than the results they deliver. This is viewed as a problem, for some. I argue it is ultimately not a problem. Though the depth work comes from the level of engagement and inquiry and awareness needed for transformation, some does slip in at other times. My own research suggests in a new way that yoga (and all body-mind) works, and that the real body-mind ‘connection’ can affect change. In other words, even if a mind-body or conscious practice is engaged in for entirely superficial reason (watch the judgment!), deep change can occur.

In the final analysis as a teacher, trainer, mover and shaker, I say this: do what calls to you and what fills you up. Do it with all your heart, all your passion, and all your commitment. Now go move, learn, heal, and transform!

The Sports Club/LA San Francisco has a magnificent new rack of kettlebells ranging from 10lbs to 80lbs. Kettlebells are without a doubt one of the single most versatile tools we can use use both for the diversity of techniques you can practice as well as the variety of qualities it can be used to develop. Another dimension is offered when you practice like a yogi. I offer you three tips for creating kettelbell-focused movements that are mindful and meaningful.

1. Set and know your intention each pre-kettelbell moment by asking a question - what is going to get me through this round? Then commit and take action.
2. Find your steady rhythm and find your breath. Increase speed until your breath starts to run away from you. Then play the edge.
3. Focus on the transition at the moment your round or exercise is complete. Hardly anyone pays attention to  the transition out of an exercise and into recovery, yet this is the very moment not to be missed. This moment offers you the opportunity to uncover the meaning behind the drill.

“Yoga is not about doing the pose a certain way.  It is about going inside yourself and learning.  Seeing the reactions, the emotions, the conditioned responses.  Once you see them in your pose, you learn to see them in yourself.  The real value of our practice is learning about ourselves.”
- Author unknown

Thank you Sankalpah Yoga in NYC for this awesome quote.

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The Epic Workout has relocated its home base to San Francisco, CA. Here, we will offer classes, workshops, and teacher trainings in addition to offering upcoming books and media for personal trainers, yoga practitioners and all movers, shakers, teachers and trainers.