Understanding How Yoga Works
An Evidence Based Approach

Understanding How Yoga Works
An Evidence Based Approach
 
This course offers a framework for understanding how to reap the great potential benefits of Yoga while providing the tools for analyzing the variety of claims that are being made about Yoga.
We will explore how various schools and Yogic traditions validate their claims exploring some of the major rationales for validity.
We will explore the large themes that these rationales fall into including:

• Traditional practices which are validated because that is the way the practice has been done for generations. What has been done in the past is what matters here.
• Radical Deviant Individual Empowerment Practices which are validated because they specifically run counter to traditions and societal norms without regard for societal rebuke. What gives the individual the greatest power in Chaos is what matters here.
• Practices based upon Authoritative sources such as Scriptures, Teachers or other external sources of validation. Right and Wrong are clearly demarcated and can be determined by Authority.
• Individual Empowerment Practices which push the boundaries of Traditions and Societal norms and yet take care to do so in a way that does not demand a societal backlash. The Good is determined by that which increases productivity.
• Group Empowerment Practices focused on Empathy, Communion, Caring and consensus. The Good is determined by the Group.
• Complex Interdependent System based Practices which are employed based on considering the interactions between contexts, conditions and the capacity of the people who are engaging in the practices. The Good is determined by how functional it is within a specific Context of Complex Interactions.

While these are not the only classes around which various schools of yoga assert their validity, we have found that most validity claims fall into one of the above categories. We will then examine a variety of claims and explore in which context and for whom these claims would function best. We will also make overt to ourselves what class of validity claim we personally find most compelling and explore the virtues and limits of our own form of assessment.
This is a demanding Course in that all the participants will be encouraged to examine their own beliefs and presuppositions.
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We Recommend this Course as an Introduction to our Inner Practices Courses.

Other Level 1 Courses Compatible with This Course

Yoga Basics I

​Developing the Posterior
Chain I

​Meditation I

Yoga Inner Practice I
Developing Self 
Acceptance ​