18: Leslie Kaminoff: AI, Alignment, and the Future of Yoga

Leslie Kaminoff on Yoga Anatomy, AI Book Fraud, and What Yoga Is

Matt interviews longtime yoga educator and Yoga Anatomy co-author Leslie Kaminoff. They cover Kaminoff’s at New York’s Sivananda, a brief period as a Swami, and his perspective shaped by over 20,000 hours of bodywork focused on breathing. They discuss AI-generated fraud flooding Amazon’s chair yoga rankings, ethical uses of AI as well as the need for critical thinking around “fantasy physiology,” fascia claims, and pain science (including asymptomatic MRI findings and biopsychosocial factors). They explore alignment as person-specific, long-term hip health, and Kaminoff defines yoga practice via Patanjali’s Kriya Yoga (tapas, svadhyaya, ishvara pranidhana) and the breath’s voluntary/involuntary nature.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

00:52 How Yoga Anatomy Began

02:02 Making the Illustrations

04:01 Why Amy Joined

05:06 Leslie Yoga Origin Story

07:09 Sivananda Training Talk

09:26 Debunking Yoga Myths

10:29 AI Fake Yoga Books

18:57 Ethical AI Use Cases

24:00 Fascia Hype and Labs

27:03 Yin Yoga Debate

30:00 Mystery of Mind and Pain

31:58 Pain Without Damage

32:22 MRI Findings Explained

33:50 Fibromyalgia and Labels

35:15 Yoga Teachers Helping Pain

38:08 Fear of Spinal Flexion

41:00 Neutral Spine and Hip Wear

44:05 Feet First Alignment

47:00 Do Poses Have Alignment

52:33 Yoga Competitions Debate

54:38 Technique Versus Inquiry

58:39 What Yoga Really Is

01:02:47 Wrap Up and Where to Find

Transcript

Matthew Huy 0:00

Hello, my friends, and welcome to episode 18 of the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast, where today I'm interviewing Leslie Kaminoff. And I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts beforehand, and if you wanna stick around to the end, I also have a little outro on the things that I took away from our conversation. So it was great to have a conversation with Leslie, because I remember listening to his YouTube videos in the late '90s, early noughties, coming up with ideas which were kind of different to the rest of what everyone else was saying about anatomy and science. And so it was great to have a conversation w- with him today, and he, he's kept himself up to date by looking at things like AI, and we, we, we discussed that, how AI is being used for chair yoga books, potentially taking advantage of people. We look at critical thinking in the age of mis- misinformation, which is a real passion topic of mine, if you know anything about me. Uh, and of course, you know, we've gotta touch on pain, breathing, fascia, or fascia, as he likes to say. Um, and It was a really enjoyable conversation, so I hope you enjoy it. One little thing that I would change what I said was I mentioned downregulating the autonomic nervous system, and I see that term a lot. Downregulate your nervous system, I see that a lot online, and it really annoys me. So to be correct, I referred to downregulating the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, which means you're upregulating the parasympathetic. So by slowing down, decreasing, downregulating the, you know, the arousal response, we can increase the calmness response. So I like to be specific and correct, so I don't like to just throw around those terms, so sorry if I did during the episode. But nonetheless, here you go. Enjoy the episode, and I'll see you on the other side.

Speaker 2:03

Welcome to the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast, where we take a deep dive into the worlds of anatomy, physiology, and science to help you deepen your yoga practice. Now here's your host, Matthew Huy.

Matthew Huy 2:24

Today I'm joined by Leslie Kaminoff coauthor of Yoga Anatomy, um a yoga educator for many decades He's even studied with Desikachar and um resi resident in New York but I'll let him fill you in on a bit more of his background but, first of all, thank you very much for being here, Leslie.

Leslie Kaminoff 2:44

Sure. We gotta give a shout-out to our mutual publisher, Human Kinetics

Matthew Huy 2:48

Yep. Exactly. So yeah, so book, Lesley and Amy's book L- Yoga Anatomy is by Human Kinetics. So I told someone today, "Yeah, I'm going to be interviewing Lesley Kaminoff," and she said, "Oh, the author of that book that you find in every single teacher training and every single yoga studio?" Yeah, that's the one. Yeah,

Leslie Kaminoff 3:05

Yeah, well, we, lucked out on that. We kinda hit the mar- And, you know, you have to give credit to Human Kinetics, 'cause they're the ones who approached me to, to do the book. They saw an opportunity in the market. They just wanted a yoga version of de Lavier's book Strength Training Anatomy, you know? And, and, and so that had been their, it still is, their perennial bestseller and, and it was their insight that really led to the whole project. Yeah.

Matthew Huy 3:28

did they hear about you?

Leslie Kaminoff 3:29

I think they just searched the web for people that taught yoga anatomy. And I was the one that was able to bring in an illustrator that could actually get the job done, which was no small part of the, you know, of the process. And we did struggle mightily with it. We blew a few deadlines for the first edition and it was, it was not an easy book to produce. As you know, the artwork is a big, big deal and your stuff in, in your book, it, it's, it's more related to sort of the standard things you see that illustrate physiology and in all that. But

Matthew Huy 3:59

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Kaminoff 3:59

the, the idea of taking photographs of people doing yoga poses, translating that into skeletal structure, and then layering on the muscles you know, this is back in like 2005. We didn't have all the digital tools that we have now. It was quite the process

Matthew Huy 4:17

Yeah. Yeah, your artwork is really integral into your book. I think you maybe even I remember images of Amy, and then they've, you've traced her out and then added muscles on top of that or s- like that,

Leslie Kaminoff 4:31

That's true for all of those ill- That's exactly the process it went through for all of the illustrations. It, it started as photographs that my partner Lydia took. We'd send those to the illustrator who would then pose her skeleton in her studio in the shape of the pose, sketch by hand the skeleton into the outline, which is problematic as it is because her skeleton had one set of proportions and mo- our models have all different sets of proportions. So then another round of- Yes a, a round of corrections would ensue when we had to move the bony landmarks around to match up with the actual person, not with her studio skeleton. A- and then from there we would say which muscles we wanna show and so on. So it was, it was quite a process for all of those illustrations.

Matthew Huy 5:16

Quite a detailed process, yeah. And Human Kinetics did a similar thing for our book. Went looking on the web, Andrew,

Leslie Kaminoff 5:24

Okay.

Matthew Huy 5:24

Yogi.

Leslie Kaminoff 5:25

Yes

Matthew Huy 5:26

So they approached him, said, "Hey, do you wanna write a book about physiology?" And he wanted someone to do it with. He and I had been friends, worked together, collaborated, so he

Leslie Kaminoff 5:33

Nick.

Matthew Huy 5:33

to join him.

Leslie Kaminoff 5:34

Mm.

Matthew Huy 5:35

Yeah, so it... Kind of a similar process. Obviously, we know their process for finding authors now.

Leslie Kaminoff 5:40

Well, that's one of them, yeah. Actually I believe they approached Roger Cole first before they,

Matthew Huy 5:45

Oh, okay

Leslie Kaminoff 5:46

Sure approached me. But I don't think Roger was able to actually get the illustration side locked in. And, and so that I think is what made the difference with them then coming to me and seeing if I thought I could do it. I- originally I said I thought I couldn't do it, or not, not that I couldn't do it, that it couldn't be done. Because you can't reduce yoga asana to something as simple as what Delavier did in Strength Training Anatomy, which is like you show someone doing a bicep curl, you draw the muscles, you light up the biceps, you go, "Boop," you know? It, it's, it's not quite as reductionistic as, as that way of, you know, depicting what's happening in the body when you're doing an asana. So- Mm-hmm but I still wrote the proposal and then they approved it, and then I was really screwed and, and that's when I had to bring in Amy because she's the one who who has all the letters after her name and is, you know, the certified movement analyst and Laban teacher and, and, you know w- really has that kind of mind that can break things down the way she did in the analysis section. Yeah.

Matthew Huy 6:48

And I'm going to be emailing her soon to also ask her to be a guest, so

Leslie Kaminoff 6:53

Oh,

Matthew Huy 6:53

you can put

Leslie Kaminoff 6:53

absolutely.

Matthew Huy 6:54

good word

Leslie Kaminoff 6:54

Yeah. Well enlightened anatomy should meet embodied anatomy. That's just, that has to happen. Yeah. Yeah

Matthew Huy 7:04

So could you talk us through your history, your experience with yoga, how you got started and everything else?

Leslie Kaminoff 7:09

Well, sure. It's got started right here in New York in 1978 when I was 20. My father was taking classes at the Sivananda Center, which is still in the same place here on 23rd Street. And I went, and like many people it was my first Shavasana that really got me hooked because I, I just landed in my body at the end of that hour and a half of doing the Sivananda routine in a very, very different way than I had ever experienced. And, and so that is what really got my attention, and I got more and more involved. I did a beginner's course. By the summer of '79, I was doing a month-long yoga teacher's training with Sivananda. And I started teaching. I started working with that organization. And it just kind of took off from there. I just never had another job after that. I just kept following my interest, and I was very fortunate to, to land in a variety of situations where I was able to learn from some very gifted people in fields of, in the fields of anatomy and physical rehab. I ended up at the International Sports Medicine Institute when I got sent to Los Angeles. I left out the part where I became a Swami with Sivananda, and they shipped me off to Los Angeles. But that was a, that was a nine-month period of my life when I thought that renouncing the world was what I needed to do, and, and I was wrong. And so

Matthew Huy 8:31

But what the Buddha went through also,

Leslie Kaminoff 8:33

I learned body work, so I started working with my hands, and that's kind of the unique perspective I bring to all of this, is having been a, a body worker with, I would say conservatively at this point, over 20,000 hours of clinical time working on people's bodies and focusing on their breathing. And so it's that perspective I bring to what I teach in yoga and in anatomy at this point in my life at the age of 68.

Matthew Huy 9:01

Yeah, the ripe old age of 68.

Leslie Kaminoff 9:04

Well, right. Yeah

Matthew Huy 9:05

yeah, a lot of yoga in your background. I actually started with Sivananda also,

Leslie Kaminoff 9:09

Did you? Where, where where was that?

Matthew Huy 9:10

Yeah, so that was my teacher training in Madurai in India. I forgot the name for a second there

Leslie Kaminoff 9:16

Okay, cool

Matthew Huy 9:18

S- So they, it was near the Neyyar Dam one in Kerala. So that was the... It was actually the first cohort of teachers in that ashram.

Leslie Kaminoff 9:28

in the, Madurai location?

Matthew Huy 9:30

Yeah.

Leslie Kaminoff 9:31

Okay. 'Cause yeah, 'cause Neyyar

Matthew Huy 9:32

there

Leslie Kaminoff 9:32

Dam's been doing trainings forever. I was there helping to conduct the training in 1981. And I just recently, on a trip to India last year, visited again after about 40 years, well, more than that, 45 years or so to Neyyar Dam to see the place. It's changed quite a bit. Yeah.

Matthew Huy 9:56

Did you ever know Swami Govindananda?

Leslie Kaminoff 10:00

I don't think so. That was probably after my time. Govinda Nanda was running the Madurai location

Matthew Huy 10:06

Yeah, he was, which he then left actually. He's created his own Sivananda Yoga Peetham ashram,

Leslie Kaminoff 10:15

Interesting.

Matthew Huy 10:16

also in Kerala,

Leslie Kaminoff 10:17

Yeah, well, There's kind of, as you know, there's kind of a split now between the Indian operation and the rest of the organization, and I don't think we need to go into that. But yeah, th- this, it's just organizational level stuff that happens with these ashram guru-based organizations.

Matthew Huy 10:34

Yeah.

Leslie Kaminoff 10:35

Yeah.

Matthew Huy 10:35

it's a funny sequence, the Sivananda one, really interesting one.

Leslie Kaminoff 10:39

Yeah. Start with

Matthew Huy 10:40

a

Leslie Kaminoff 10:40

headstand. Yeah, right. It's just, right off the bat, first asana after your sun salutations is standing on your head. Yeah.

Matthew Huy 10:49

Yeah, exactly.

Leslie Kaminoff 10:49

Yeah

Matthew Huy 10:50

One of the earliest poses, yeah,

Leslie Kaminoff 10:52

Yeah

Matthew Huy 10:53

and then followed by shoulder stand, so they're early on. I remember going to the ShivNanda training, and I didn't really know the sequence, and I went in there and I thought, I've gone to the wrong place. What kind of sequence is this?" And then it was really focused on philosophy, but actually in hindsight, quickly soon after, I realized it was just the right training for me 'cause it was so focused on philosophy and meditation and mantra and all that stuff. Whereas I had a lot of experience with the Vinyasa and

Leslie Kaminoff 11:21

Ah.

Matthew Huy 11:21

more dancy forms, if you will. So

Leslie Kaminoff 11:24

You know, to this day I do still recommend it for people starting out to get sort of a, a, a broad-based overview if they can handle the fact that it's a rather Hindu kind of an organization. And eventually, you know, as you did in your book in large part sort out some of the fact from the fiction of what they tell you is happening when you're practicing. Like turning yourself upside down makes, you know, more fresh oxygenated blood flow in your brain, and that's a good thing. And you have... That, that's one of the things I like about what you did with the book because a lot of that sort of fantasy physiology really was in need of some major debunking. Yeah

Matthew Huy 12:03

Thank you. And we sent a soft copy of the book to you to get your view on it, and you offered a promotional review, so thank you for that also, by

Leslie Kaminoff 12:12

Yeah. No, I, I, I thought it was a much needed, much needed contribution to the conversation obviously. So I hope it's alongside Yoga Anatomy on people's shelves and training programs at this point

Matthew Huy 12:24

Yeah. I hope so. Thank you.

Leslie Kaminoff 12:26

Yeah.

Matthew Huy 12:27

So you had a recent post which I found really interesting and I wanted to bring up.

Leslie Kaminoff 12:31

Yeah

Matthew Huy 12:32

You were talking about, speaking of yoga anatomy books, how y- in- I think you included a picture of basically the Amazon top 10 or something, and how most of them are actually written by AI. So could you go into what you said about that post and what you're thinking on it?

Leslie Kaminoff 12:47

Sure. Well, all... A- at the time of the writing of the post, which was a few weeks ago all of the chair yoga titles in the top 50 results in the yoga category on Amazon were fake AI-generated crappy books that were... It's AI, it's AI from top to bottom. In other words, they use AI to generate the book. They then buy back their own books from Amazon to generate verified buyers, which they then can then use AI to write glowing reviews of the book, and they take advantage of the way the AI algorithm works, which is to reward sort of pace of sales, and they shoot to the top of the rankings. And then legitimate real buyers, human people, mostly elderly because it's chair yoga, see the glowing reviews, they buy the titles, and that's how they make their profit. So there were 10... At the time I wrote it a few weeks ago, there were 10 chair yoga titles in the top 50 yoga books on Amazon, and all of them were just this AI garbage. So that's 20% of the top 50 was fake. And so I thought it just needed to be outed. You know, someone needed to point out that this is happening and that the buyers, you know, buyers should be beware

Matthew Huy 14:15

Yeah. And having looked at the images and the titles you can tell they're AI generated. I mean,

Leslie Kaminoff 14:23

Oh, yeah.

Matthew Huy 14:23

can tell. But

Leslie Kaminoff 14:24

Yeah

Matthew Huy 14:24

you know that these are AI slop and not real people writing them?

Leslie Kaminoff 14:28

Well because I do bring a critical eye to everything I'm interacting with, especially when it's on the web. And I have been a user of AI for a while now so I'm, I'm kind of familiar with how it works and what it's good for, and most especially, what it's not good for. And so, you know, it, it's just, at first it was like, "Well, this looks fishy." I mean, look, it was... why am I perusing the yoga category on Amazon in the first place? 'Cause I have a book there, you know. And so I'm curious to every so often check in and see where it is in the rankings, right? And over time, it's been pushed down in the rankings by books that have no author. The other thing I should have mentioned is there's no human author on these books, although they generate a fake author with a, with an AI-generated portrait of this person. They generate a fake bio to try to, you know defraud the book-buying audience into thinking that there's some genuine person with an actual history writing this book, when in fact there isn't. And so I just clicked on a couple of these things out of curiosity, and I went down the rabbit hole. It's like, who is the publisher? You can't determine who the publisher is. Because if you look at Am- you know, the way Amazon lists the publisher, it just says, you know, self-published or something. There's no, there's no paper trail to go back to the people that are perpetuating this fraud. And then you look into the bio of the, the supposed author and it end, it begins and ends on Amazon, you know? Like, if you or I were, were curious about any yoga teacher in the world that is authoring a book, and they are a living, breathing person, and you, you just enter their name plus the word yoga into a Google search or whatever, you'll come up with, you know, what studio they teach at, where they live, what workshops they have led. And, and, and if they're significant enough a, a, a teacher to have a book in the top 50 or top 100 on Amazon, you will find their existence out there in the world, 'cause they've been at it for a while and, you know, they, they, they have some reality behind them. These authors, zero. None of it. It doesn't exist because it's all this fraudulent method they've come up with of selling these books. So it was not too hard to, to, to find it. And then I kept finding more and more and more, and more of these books started flooding into the category because this is a profitable thing for them to do. 'Cause once they buy their books back, they've got the books, they can put them back in stock, you know? So i- it's, it's this self-perpetuating fraudulent way of making money off of unsuspecting book buyers. And then I started thinking, "Well, why chair yoga?" And then the answer was obvious. This is a more... It's an elderly population. They're more susceptible to fraud, you know, and they want help. And you know, they're being basically defrauded by these unscrupulous publishers. I wouldn't even call them publishers. I mean, you know, for all I know, it's some guy in a basement with a computer

Matthew Huy 17:33

It's, yeah, it's pro- most likely not a publisher. I

Leslie Kaminoff 17:36

Yeah

Matthew Huy 17:36

seen i- ads on Instagram of how you can start writing one book a day and putting it on Audible and making money off this. And, or, but you don't even write it, you just put it through AI.

Leslie Kaminoff 17:46

It's just fraudulent slop from top to bottom. That's all it... There's, yeah. It's, yeah. And unfortunately, we're gonna be dealing with more and more of this as time goes on, and it's, the tools become more powerful. And, you know the, the benefits of AI are tremendous in fields of, of medicine and you know, research. And the positive uses of it are, are, are practically endless, but that also means by definition that the, you know, unscrupulous uses of it are, are equally endless. And there's sadly unscrupulous people out there that are gonna use it that way.

Matthew Huy 18:22

Yeah. People have a fear of AI robots taking over. They've taken over the chair yoga list on Amazon. But it's not the AI robots, it's people. It's always people at

Leslie Kaminoff 18:31

It's people using AI

Matthew Huy 18:33

using these tools badly. So it's always just down to humans. It's how we use these tools. The tool itself is not inherently bad, right?

Leslie Kaminoff 18:40

Well, it's the same with yoga, as I've been telling people, you know, And yoga's a power tool for that matter, right? So, you know, it, it, you can, you can use this tool to dismantle your neurotic tendencies or to energize them. You know, it's not the tool's fault if you, if you abuse it. And, and, and, and that's what we see in some of these situations that that, that blow up into scandal and so on, you know, that, that people are just sort of energizing their, their neuroses and their psychoses and their sociopathic tendencies, and it turns into, into, you know, these guru situations and they all, they all seem to end the same way.

Matthew Huy 19:19

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Kaminoff 19:20

Yeah.

Matthew Huy 19:20

Yeah, I was just interviewing Bernie Clark in my last episode, and

Leslie Kaminoff 19:23

А

Matthew Huy 19:23

was talking about how he had the a very good reason for doing it, but he said he heard if he did 1,008 rounds of Kapalabhati that, you know, it would bring enlightenment or something. But it ended up making him really not well. That's a good example of

Leslie Kaminoff 19:39

Sure

Matthew Huy 19:39

if you use it a good cause we need to be careful of balancing things out. And if yoga is about anything, it's about balance,

Leslie Kaminoff 19:46

sure. Well, yeah, and there's, you know, it's, it's easy to understand that, that people who get a little bit of a good thing would conclude that a lot of that good thing is a lot better and that's not necessarily true. You know, it's like the way we define healthy movement when we teach, and this is something Amy and I both agree on, you know because this actually comes from Amy through her work with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. So it's, it's really a BMC concept, Body Mind Centering concept, you know, that healthy movement is a little bit of movement that comes from a lot of places repeated a reasonable number of times. Because if you reverse all of that statement, you have repetitive stress, which is too much movement from too few places repeated too many times. So i- if you want the exact opposite of that, which is what healthy movement would be, it would have to be a little bit of movement from a lot of places, but repeated a reasonable number of times because you can overdo anything. And experience tells us that there are people out there that absolutely will figure out a way to do that and injure themselves even with otherwise healthy practices.

Matthew Huy 20:52

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. j- just going back to AI briefly like you said, it is a powerful thing. It can be used so I've used it f- to

Leslie Kaminoff 21:01

Mmhmm

Matthew Huy 21:01

me write some workshops, create new ideas. But now what I do, at the beginning of each workshop, I have an AI disclaimer, and I say how I used it.

Leslie Kaminoff 21:10

Sure

Matthew Huy 21:11

u- it's normally to generate an outline

Leslie Kaminoff 21:14

Yes. Mm-hmm

Matthew Huy 21:15

which I then drastically overhaul. And then the end I put my outline back into it, and it actually can be really good for saying, "I'd actually put section four ahead of section two,"

Leslie Kaminoff 21:27

Right.

Matthew Huy 21:28

that

Leslie Kaminoff 21:28

Yeah. For that, the, for, for the global kind of organizational work of exactly as you said, creating outlines summarizing vast amounts of text down to its essence, which saves a lot of reading time you know. Like, like if someone I'm interested in on Facebook has this TLDR thing going on, it's like, it's way too long, but it's interesting. I'll copy the text into the AI and I say... A- and sometimes people's writing style is very verbose and repetitive and whatever, but, you know, they're trying to get at a valid point. I can plug that into the AI and say, "What is this person really getting at here?" And they'll have, boom, a li- bullet list of points, right? And that saves a lot of time. So it's very good at that sort of thing. And it is good for, for editing, for copy editing. And, and it will generate summaries, you know. Like, if I have a blog post and now I need to get, you know, a two-sentence summary of it just for web purposes or whatever it'll- I'll use it for that, you know. So it's a, it's a great time saver, and as long as we have this sort of ethical grounding within our own sense of values to not abuse it and just let it put out slop that we stick our name on, you know, it can be a, an incredibly powerful tool. I was telling Jay Brown when we were discussing this on his podcast recently that it's really up to each individual person and their sense of values to know where to draw the line when you're using a tool like this. Because otherwise, you know you can very easily be seduced into using it as kind of a f- a false persona that you can put out there in the world. And I'm sure that that's happening. I know that in scientific review circles, like with journals, people are using it for peer review, which I think is kind of a sticky wicket, if you will.

Matthew Huy 23:36

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Kaminoff 23:37

because I'm sure that there are people that are using it to write the articles that are showing up in journals, and then the peer review journals are sending it out for review, and the reviewers are using it. So at a certain level, it's just gonna be AI talking to AI

Matthew Huy 23:53

But hopefully there are humans overlooking that, and

Leslie Kaminoff 23:56

Well, it's the Human oversight part

Matthew Huy 23:57

for the

Leslie Kaminoff 23:58

is

Matthew Huy 23:58

synthesis.

Leslie Kaminoff 23:59

The AI w- itself will tell you how important human oversight is. They asked on Anthropic's Claude what it felt about being used in targeting systems for missiles in the war in Iran. This was a famous news story that was out, you know, couple of months ago. You remember when that school was bombed, the Iranian school, and all those schoolchildren were killed? AI was involved in the targeting decisions, and they asked Anthropic's AI how it felt about being used that way, and it said, "I f- I feel very badly about this." This is an AI talking. It said, "Humans need to be much, much more a part of the decision-making process when it comes to, to targeting things in wartime." You know, you, you have to, you have to really oversee this thing. I have to oversee everything that the AI does because it screws up. It hallucinates. It makes mistakes. It loses context. It's built for engagement more than it is for accuracy, and it will tell you that. It will tell you about its own limitations

Matthew Huy 26:25

Yes. Y- at the same time, I do find it is more evidence-based than a lot of opinions that I find online. So it at least uses its references. I was on a phone call today. someone asked me, "So are AirPods okay? I hear about the radio frequency being bad,

Leslie Kaminoff 26:41

Yeah

Matthew Huy 26:41

you know, potentially dangerous." And y- that's a good question for AI. Okay, are AirPods dangerous in terms of their radio frequency? And it gives a, an answer based on its review of all the information available.

Leslie Kaminoff 26:52

Yeah

Matthew Huy 26:53

yeah, even summarizing what the World Health Organization says, which at the moment there is absolutely no scientific evidence that is harmful. They do go through regulatory processes. You know, it is a low level of radiation, and it's non-ionizing radiation, which is very different to the ionizing radiation that you find in a place like Chernobyl you know? So I think it, yeah, it can also be useful when you check its references and you check that it is evidence-based.

Leslie Kaminoff 27:19

Yeah. I'm actually working on a series of articles, blog posts around that kind of issue because with social media and Facebook and Instagram, and memes in general, you know, in our field you often will see these articles that start with something like, "Neuroscientists have discovered," and then fill in the blanks about why yoga works, you know? And whether it's polyvagal theory or mirror neurons or, or some other finding in neuroscience that now explains why this or that mechanism is working in yoga. You know, critical thinking skills, and you cover this right at the beginning of your book, as I recall, Yeah are so essential when evaluating all this information. It's very seductive to say, "This practice in yoga produces this effect because anatomy or because neuroscience or because whatever." Yeah. And so, you know, there's this syllogistic thinking of this, then that, because of this, that it's very easy to plug these popular memes into. Right now it's fascia. Everything is fascia. Fascia, fascia, fascia, you know? And, and so there are some people in our field that have good critical thinking skills that are saying, "Hey, let's pump the brakes here a l- a minute," you know? I'm really into fascia. I love talking about it, you know? I love, you know, describing it when we're in the lab, which we're gonna be doing in August. We have another one of our dissection labs coming up. And so a l- people come in with a lot of questions about fascia, and we're like, "Okay, what do you mean by fascia? Are you talking about the ITB? Okay. How about this slimy, slippery stuff that you're seeing in between these different layers? That's fascia, too." Yeah. You know? You know, how about the pericardium? That's fascia, right? How about the l- the ligaments that are holding, you know... B- b- but wait a minute, those aren't... That's just your joint capsule. Where's the ligament? Well, it's just the thickened part of the joint capsule. That's all fascia, right? And so, you know, people use it like a, a magic word, and they don't really have the distinctions that one gets from actually having your hands in it and, and, and thinking critically about, you know, what are the different ways in which something like fascia come, comes into play in, in making the body function the way it does?

Matthew Huy 29:47

Yeah. Our chapter on the musculoskeletal system looked at fascia. I wrote that chapter and I talked about fascia, however you wanna say it, and I come to the same conclusion. Like, it is really interesting to learn about. You know, whether it's clinically relevant i- we're still figuring out, there are

Leslie Kaminoff 30:02

Well, if you have a frozen shoulder, it's clinically relevant. If you have adhesive capsulitis, it's clinically relevant because it's the adhesions in the capsule that are restricting the range of motion, you know? And, and if

Matthew Huy 30:15

for normal movement,

Leslie Kaminoff 30:16

for, well, I don't know, what does Bernie say? You talk to Bernie. He's got opinions on this stuff. Okay. You have opinions on yin yoga in the book, as I recall.

Matthew Huy 30:25

Yeah. And this is one thing where Bernie, I think, have a bit of healthy disagreement.

Leslie Kaminoff 30:31

Yes

Matthew Huy 30:32

a- and I remember him even having a blog post where he said, "I don't think the authors of The Physiology of Yoga quite understood what," et cetera. but I really like that respectful disagreement, and th- these are things where we're not quite sure. But Bernie, what he says is basically, you know, if we hold a pose for longer, that affects the connective tissue more so than the muscles. And when our, in our myth or fact sidebar, you know, I, we ask the question, does yin yoga affect the fascia, the connective tissue, more than than, you know, the muscles? And it's so interrelated that you can't really tease one apart from the other. I think maybe it doesn't. But also, does that matter? Would we want to stretch our fascia more than other things? How would that be beneficial? Like, what w- if- effect would that have? And if you just look at yin which is a beautiful practice, like I, It's a great practice. If you are spending hour doing yin, you do maybe six poses, something, is that the best use of your time? It might be, you know? But if you're doing that, then you're not doing something else, so which means you're not doing strength training. You're not doing time with your family, you know? so we all, we have to decide, how do I wanna spend my time? Like always that cost-benefit analysis. And y-

Leslie Kaminoff 31:50

an

Matthew Huy 31:51

I,

Leslie Kaminoff 31:51

investment in time and yeah, yeah.

Matthew Huy 31:54

What

Leslie Kaminoff 31:54

You, you-

Matthew Huy 31:55

is do yin if you love yin. Don't do yin because you feel like you need to because of your fascia. I think the real benefit for me is not in the fascia. I think it's in downregulating your autonomic nervous system and, you know, calming down, taking time out of your life, and it's great for that. It's so valuable for that

Leslie Kaminoff 32:14

Well, if you spend a lot of time doing yang stuff, yin is a great counterbalance. I think that accounts for a lot of its popularity because of all the decades people have spent jumping around in hot vinyasa type practice, you know you would, you would think that an energetic counterpoint to that would become necessary to certain, at a certain stage in people's practice or understanding of their bodies or, or whatever. One of the things I liked about the Sivananda practice was that you do Shavasana between all the poses, right? And, and so you're, you're really taking the time to absorb the for lack of a better term, energetic effects of what you have just done. How does it... How does my Shavasana feel after doing shoulder stand and plow? How does it feel after doing a backbend? How does it feel after doing a forward bend? How does it feel after doing each of the things in that sequence, you know, the twists and whatever? And so it- that to me is, is kind of a, a, a bit of a lost method. If, if, if all you've ever experienced is the, the fast-paced vinyasa flow kind of thing, So yeah, and, and what... You bring up an interesting thing, as you said, about down-regulating the autonomic nervous system. And, and this is where a, a big bucket of mystery comes into it from the scientific perspective because now you're talking about how consciousness and intention interacts with all of your systems when you're, when you're practicing. Now you're getting into the realm of let's just say a neuro-psycho-emotional immune response kinds of stuff, which, you know, we're barely at the point where we know the right questions to ask, let alone getting solid answers on all of this. Because someone's intention and how their consciousness is interacting with what they're doing and how that's affecting not just their autonomic nervous system, but their, their immune and inflammatory responses and, and the whole range of, of, of things that are interpenetrated with your, with your nervous system, it, it's, it's, it's, it's a huge aspect for people, you know? And we don't, we don't have some, some good answers to give people, you know, scientifically at this point. All we know is that there are people out there whose MRIs, if you take them at face value, would tell you that they should be in a wheelchair, and they're out there doing all kinds of stuff And there's other people whose imaging looks completely normal who are in chronic debilitating life-altering pain, right? So what you can sort of scientifically verify by, you know, imaging studies is just a, a fraction of the picture when it comes to, to a human being and how well or poorly they can function in this world. So there's a lot of mystery that goes into it. Look at a guy like David Goggins, you know? He's got no knees left. He's he's out th- and he runs ultramarathons And he's, he's in excruciating pain, but he's, he's, he's, he's dealt with it. It's just part of what he deals with to do what he does and be who he is. How do you explain someone like that, you know?

Matthew Huy 35:41

Yeah. Just in case any l- listeners aren't familiar with what you're referring to so there was a big systematic review, Brink Jinkjee, if I'm, if I remember the name correctly. I think it was in 2015. They reviewed all of the evidence on MRI findings of healthy, asymptomatic people. So these are people who would not normally have imaging

Leslie Kaminoff 36:00

Yeah.

Matthew Huy 36:01

they're healthy.

Leslie Kaminoff 36:02

Exactly

Matthew Huy 36:02

They have no reason to get an image. And the vast majority of people had something that would appear wrong and be for someone having pain. So people would have disc herniations with absolutely no pain, rotator cuff tears with no pain, meniscal tears in the knee with no pain.

Leslie Kaminoff 36:21

Labral labral tears, all of it. Yes, all of it. Neuromas. You know in fact, my most recent blog post is dealing with that. It's gonna be a series of blog posts that kinda deal with that whole issue, which, was famously brought into the public discussion by Dr. Sarno, John Sarno, who wrote a very influential book called Healing Back Pain, where he suggests that the way people handle their emotional lives have a lot more to do with whether they're in pain or not than their imaging studies, you know?

Matthew Huy 36:52

Yeah, the biopsychosocial model and how all of those,

Leslie Kaminoff 36:55

Mm-hmm.

Matthew Huy 36:55

not just biology, not just whether you h- have ar- arthritis, you know, some cartilage degeneration or whether you have a disc herniation, but also psychological factors, social factors go into,

Leslie Kaminoff 37:06

100%.

Matthew Huy 37:07

yeah, pain. Yeah, it's really fascinating. And something like fibromyalgia by definition, whi- which literally fibro refers to connective tissue, myo muscle, and algia, pain. So you're basically just saying musculoskeletal connective tissue pain. That's it. And the way you get diagnosed is that everything else gets excluded. So

Leslie Kaminoff 37:26

It's a diagnosis of exclusion, yes. Anything else that could explain this person's pain has been ruled out because all the other tests are normal, yet they're in excruciating pain. Boom, fibromyalgia, which is basically the medical profession saying, you know, "You're, you're a head case," and you know, there's a lot of gaslighting that goes on with these things with people. It, it, it's, Yeah, but that's just one... A lot of diagnoses are merely descriptions of people's symptoms in Latin, you know?

Matthew Huy 37:53

Yeah.

Leslie Kaminoff 37:53

if you go into to an orthopedist and say, "Oh, I have, I have pain here and it flares up when I play golf," you know and they do the exam and the whole thing, and maybe they'll do some imaging. And then after all of that, they say, "Yeah, you have medial epicondylitis." Well, that's, that's basically saying in Latin what you told the doctor. "I have pain here on the medial epicondyle." You know this happens all the time. It doesn't... A true diagnosis actually gives you some idea of what created the pain in the first place and, and what a possible therapeutic resolution might look like to deal with the source of the pain or what caused it biomechanically. And this is where it's kind of ironic that, you know, people come to us yoga teachers, and we're not physical therapists. We're not orthopedists. We're not physiatrists. We're not osteopaths. You know, we're just yoga teachers. But if you spend enough time with enough people and pay attention and listen, you know, you begin to see some things about how they're moving and how they're walking and how they're putting weight on their arms. And you give them a few ideas of how to do it differently and how to breathe,

Matthew Huy 39:04

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Kaminoff 39:04

and all of a sudden they feel better, you know? and that's not something you're gonna get from an orthopedic consultation. You're gonna know whether or not you're a candidate for surgery or a steroid injection or, or something like that. But when people come to us for help it's usually because they've exhausted some of those avenues and, and they're still having problems. And what we can do is help them focus on what's going right, not that we're experts on everything that's gone wrong. But it's like, "Yeah, you can still move. You can still breathe. You can still do these poses. Let's see if we can give you some ideas of how to maybe adapt them so that, You can be in less pain and, and do the things you wanna be doing in life."

Matthew Huy 39:48

That's exactly what I say on a teacher training if I'm leading the anatomy component on teacher training. And I'll say, "Okay, so what does this yoga teacher training prepare you to do?" And it's such an obvious answer. You know, the, it does what it says on the tin, to teach yoga. Okay, what about to help someone in pain? No, not necessarily. Or, you know, what about to cure someone of a certain condition? No. You know, it is just literally to teach yoga, and normally in a group setting, you know? Th- s- that's what this yoga tea- training does. It... And yet, there's so much more to that. It's, of course, it's a magical practice. But really, we just need to focus on my job is to teach a really good, amazing class, make you feel in your body, hopefully. And one other thing just about pain, quite often people will tell me before class, "You know, I've got this knee pain, this hip pain," whatever. And you know, I'll say, "Okay," you know, "just see how things go." I'll f- might offer a few suggestions or something. But quite often they just do everything, and they're absolutely fine. S- and so it's almost like I, w- it's almost like I didn't need to know that information because you did everything. You were absolutely fine. B- b- and it can be really empowering, I think, for that person

Leslie Kaminoff 40:57

Oh, yeah

Matthew Huy 40:57

that knee pain and to do the entire class and realize, "Okay, it wasn't so bad, actually."

Leslie Kaminoff 41:02

Absolutely. And there are some things that would be nice to know. Like, you know, you ask people beforehand if there's anything you should know about their bodies and they don't say anything. And then halfway through you, you spot someone that's moving a little weirdly and you go, "What's going on here?" And they go, "Oh yeah, I have rods in my spine." Or, you know, it's like, but they, they live with

Matthew Huy 41:19

to tell you

Leslie Kaminoff 41:20

it. They don't It's not in the front of their mind, you know, necessarily. They've been living their lives and, you know that's what I always tell people. This is, this You know, when this conversation comes up most frequently, it's when I'm asking people to fully articulate their spines, which includes some spinal flexion. And then the red flags go off because they've been told, "Oh, you know I have osteopenia. I have osteoporosis. You know, my spine is gonna collapse if I do that because I've been told flexion is bad." And I go, "Okay, we're gonna have this conversation yet again, you know?" Like, how did you get your shoes off in the waiting room to get in this room? Were you able to do that without some spinal flexion? You know, did your spine explode when you put your pants on this morning? You know, these are natural movements of the spine. You're gonna be more harmed by the fear you've been given of doing these natural movements than the movements themselves. And we're going to ask you to do things consciously, intentionally with your breath that will produce some healthy weightbearing forces in the bones of your spine, which is what they need in order to be strong. You, you mention Wolff's law in the book, right? Where bone responds by getting stronger when you put healthy loads into it. It gets weaker- Mm-hmm when you take load away from it. So the question is how do you produce healthy loading? How do you avoid unhealthy loading? It's not never do that movement. It's, it's it, it, it kind of makes me nuts when people come in having been given this advice by somebody who clearly didn't try it themselves. People that are willing to tell folks never to do spinal flexion should be willing to live one day of their lives doing exactly that and see how it feels and see what state it puts your nervous system in. Talk about your autonomic nervous system. It puts you in this fight or flight kind of situation where you're afraid of your own body, where you're afraid of natural movements. So that's a big debunking thing that's happening all the time when people come in with these sort of fear mongering restrictions they've been given.

Matthew Huy 43:28

Yeah, a- and there are, you know, evidence-based guidelines and evidence-based best practices, and those very regularly say to keep moving if you have back pain, you know, to

Leslie Kaminoff 43:40

Yeah.

Matthew Huy 43:40

as you can to

Leslie Kaminoff 43:42

Yeah

Matthew Huy 43:42

your spine through all different ranges of motion. There's been some really interesting research on physical therapists and medical practitioners and how they actually don't always follow these best practice evidence-based guidelines. And a lot of physical therapists, for example something around 50%, even without intending to, will share beliefs that are not aligned with evidence-based practices, including telling people to maintain a flat back, you know, a neutral spine as much as possible.

Leslie Kaminoff 44:10

Yeah

Matthew Huy 44:10

e- even in those you know, without meaning to, we can share these fear-based beliefs about rounding the back and stuff. Yeah, so I'm, I totally hear you on that.

Leslie Kaminoff 44:19

Yeah. And well, in yoga, that's rampant. I mean, this idea of finding Tadasana and all the asanas, you know, it locks people into this neutral spine thing. And then they wonder why their hip joints are wearing out because, you know, like all the movement now has to come from That's I said earlier, that's the definition of unhealthy movement, too much movement from too few places. Repeat that too many times, you've got repetitive stress. And, you know, all After all those years of keeping a neutral spine and trying to square your pelvis you're putting all that burden on the hip joints. And, you know, I just came from the yoga f- the Berkshire Yoga Festival this past weekend. And a lot of, you know, senior teachers, friends and colleagues of many years are there. And I'm not gonna mention any names, but a lot of the conversation was like, "When's your, when's your hip replacement schedule? When's the next one going?" You know? And, it's just rampant. You see it so much of, you know, enough years of doing this. It just, it overburdens the hip joints for so many people.

Matthew Huy 45:18

Yes. Although to challenge you a little bit there we don't know if that person would've needed a hip replacement if they had not been a yogi, you know? Because we only

Leslie Kaminoff 45:26

It, yes, it's a sample size of one, obviously, and you don't have an AB on the same person. What would their hips look like if they hadn't done that? And, and yet if you talk to, if you... Have you had Jill Miller on the, on the program?

Matthew Huy 45:42

No, not yet. I've listened to a podcast with her, but not yet.

Leslie Kaminoff 45:44

Where she talks about her, her hip replacement

Matthew Huy 45:47

Yeah. Okay, yeah.

Leslie Kaminoff 45:49

Yeah. 'Cause I was just with Jill this weekend.

Matthew Huy 45:50

I don't know

Leslie Kaminoff 45:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she'll be very upfront and honest about how she's absolutely certain that the way she abused her yoga practice led to her needing a hip replacement, you know?

Matthew Huy 46:01

Right

Leslie Kaminoff 46:02

And so... A- and, and you'll hear this from a number of people who, who absolutely recognize that they destabilized their, their pelvic structure with the way they were practicing. And so, you know, again, this is anecdotal from their own life and their own experience, and if you wanna be super skeptical, you can say, "Yes, but maybe you were predisposed to this. Maybe you had shallow acetabula. Maybe something else would've made it necessary even without the yoga." But I can definitely say from having taught yoga and had these conversations, and also being a body worker who works with his hands on people, there are certain ideas that have been promoted about how you align yourself in asana that are, that are, let us just say, counterproductive to long-term hip joint health. And when you point it out and show people alternatives, and all of a sudden they feel the difference in the pressure that's coming to bear on the hip joints or the less pressure that's coming to bear on the hip joints you can see that there are healthier ways of thinking about getting into and out of some of these poses. So

Matthew Huy 47:24

is that what you focus on in your classes and in your work with people privately, is m- making

Leslie Kaminoff 47:29

100%, 100%.

Matthew Huy 47:30

would you say?

Leslie Kaminoff 47:31

Yeah, and we focus a lot on the feet. You have to go to the feet. There's no way that you can't bring it back to the foundation of what it takes to be a healthy biped when you're, when you're teaching alignment. And I... One thing I do agree with in the Iyengar way of teaching is I think standing poses are an absolutely sort of essential starting point for opening the conversation about alignment because of us being bipeds. And, and there's an ethos that comes out of my teacher's way of looking at things, and I don't know if I ever heard Desikachar say this in so many words, but the way he taught is absolutely consistent with it. And that is that if you can, if you can produce even a little bit of positive change in something a person does a lot of, that will add up over time to a lot of positive change. And so that's why when you study with me, you'll, you'll hear me talking a lot about standing and walking, about the feet, because we do a lot of that. And breathing, we do a lot of breathing. So if you can produce even a little bit of positive change in the way someone's breathing, that will add up to an enormous amount of change over time, and the same is true with standing and walking. A- and so I consider arm supports, for example, to be intermediate level skills from that perspective. Because unless you can understand how your weight bearing on, on your feet, which are the structures that have evolved specifically for that purpose you're gonna have a lot of trouble understanding how to make this thing be a weight bearing appendage, which ha- it's evolved away from being a weight bearing structure, whereas your feet are those structures. So that's my perspective anyway. Amy, Amy, by the way, disagrees. Amy Matthews, my coauthor, takes a very developmental approach, and she's like, "Well, you know what about the fact that babies are bearing weight on their upper extremities before they learn to, to stand and walk?" And so she can, she can... And, and I, I 100% agree with and respect that perspective as well, and she will teach classes from that perspective, where she has people starting on the floor and evolving through, you know, various developmental stages whether it's in... from an evolutionary perspective or a developmental perspective. And she'll have them on their hands and moving around, and you'll end up on your feet having passed through the weight bearing stage on the upper extremities. So I'm not saying that my view is the only correct view. It's just one that I've found very useful in, in teaching. There are other approaches, for sure.

Matthew Huy 50:18

Yeah. I, and I might disagree with you on certain points about alignment also. Like, I just led a workshop called Alignment Doesn't Prevent Injury, So What Should We Do Instead? About how our bodies are extremely variable, how we have lots of different ways of doing the same thing. And though biomechanics or how you rather align yourself will affect the biomechanics of your body, that doesn't necessarily predict injury that reliably. And people have tried to do this with things like the functional movement screen, where you do about six movements, and you're assessed on how,

Leslie Kaminoff 50:48

Mmhmm

Matthew Huy 50:48

your movements are,

Leslie Kaminoff 50:49

Yeah

Matthew Huy 50:50

like, standard ideas of what we think of as a good movement. Like, if you squat, can you keep your back relatively flat, relatively neutral, and can you keep your heels on the floor? And yeah, the research just doesn't back up how good someone's movement is, quote-unquote, good, in terms of their prediction of injury risk. I th- I think a bit of healthy disagreement is good and

Leslie Kaminoff 51:11

I don't know if we disagree because it depends how you define alignment. If you're defining alignment as the catechism of cuing that, that people learn when they become yoga instructors, I agree that's not gonna keep you safe. But if alignment is simply finding the clearest possible pathway of weight through your skeletal structure and joint space, which will differ for each and every person, That's, I think, where we can find agreement, right?

Matthew Huy 51:46

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Kaminoff 51:46

Because a- alignment for, for most people who are trained to teach is simply memorizing the cuing for each and every pose and trying to get the students to execute it. So

Matthew Huy 51:57

Yeah.

Leslie Kaminoff 51:57

so the thing I say is, is poses don't have alignment, people have alignment, right? And what's even deeper behind that statement is the reason poses don't have alignment, the reason asanas don't have alignment is that asanas actually don't exist. There's no such thing as an asana that you can take out of a human being, look at, and describe its properties. it's like this platonic idealism which people are operating off of which has no relationship to actual human bodies. An asana only exists in the universe when a real live individual human body puts that body into a shape, and then you can have a discussion about what is the best alignment for that person in that shape. But the way that the cuing has developed actually is more of this platonic idealism where this is the alignment for this pose, this is the alignment for that pose, and then in order to teach it and keep the people safe, you have to teach them to do the alignment for the pose. So I think we may be in agreement if that's what you mean by alignment

Matthew Huy 53:04

Yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah. And I remember you saying that in a video about how poses don't have alignment. And just to say, which reminds me from 20 years ago, before Instagram, before TikTok and everything, you were putting stuff up on YouTube, and I think that's how I first found out about you, and saying stuff like that, which would really make me change how I thought about yoga. This idea of, like, poses don't have alignment, humans don't have alignment. So you were really ahead of your time in putting those things up on YouTube, which is great. But also, I think you had some, these really interesting things of In a different way, which is really useful for a yoga practitioner.

Leslie Kaminoff 53:40

I, I, I think so. And, and a lot of that comes out of the fact that, you know, both Amy and I come from a background in philosophy as well. She studied it formally in, in college. I never made it to college, but I have been studying it quite seriously all of my life. And, you know, when, when you, when you develop sort of a functional epistemology, you know, meaning you know what in reality your concepts are connected to, you know whether you're coming at things from a Platonic point of view or, for lack of a better term, a more Aristotelian point of view, you know. And, and so it's the Platonic thing that I was just describing that gets us into trouble with the with, with the alignment conversation because it's this idealism, you know, like the world of forms that Plato described. And if your asana kind of lives there and your goal in practice is to approach that ideal form as much as possible, I th- I think that's what's getting in- people in trouble, whether they realize it or not, that that's where they're coming from. But, but to, to have your idea of alignment arising from reality itself and ha- and have it connected to the reality of each person's human body, And this is where yin, by the way, in, in the work that, that, that, that Bernie does and you know Paul's col- gallery of bones and all of that, showing all of the variation that exists in people's bodies and the alignment of their joints and the orientation of their hip sockets and all of that, that, that's, that's a grounding in reality that we all need if we're gonna evolve a useful way of, of teaching something like asana and, and using a concept like alignment. So I, I think there's, there's a Venn diagram where your perspective and mine and Bernie's and Paul's really do come together, and where they intersect is let's look at reality And use that as a starting point for a conversation.

Matthew Huy 55:49

Yeah, I like it. I like how you talk about that. How do you see asana as this one perfect thing to pursue or individual to each person? And it's interesting that you say that because just a couple of weeks ago, I don't know if you saw this, but there was like the first annual kind of yoga Olympic games. Not Olympic, but did you see this yoga competition?

Leslie Kaminoff 56:10

I've been seeing crap like that for years. You know, yeah. Indi- there's a tradition in India of yoga competitions, and then Bikram took it up and, and turned it into a thing. And they wanted it to become an Olympic event at one point, and I did a whole video criticizing that perspective. That's on YouTube as well, you know. And I was like, "You know what? If it's something that even a moderately well-trained gymnast can do with no background in yoga, and make... and, and do a performance like that, it's, it's not its own thing. It's, it's it's gymnastics, is what it is. And I, I'm always wondering what it has to do with actual yoga, you know? But you have to make the case what asana has to do with yoga from that perspective as well, you know? And, and so, you know, that's, that's... That was a... That's a conversation. It's like a lot of what we call yoga is actually asana. And, and what its relation Is to the, the, the, the broader perspective and philosophy and objectives of yoga is, is a really important question

Matthew Huy 57:16

Yeah, I always say, you know, it's, yoga is not what you're doing with your body, it's what you're doing with your mind. So it doesn't exactly matter what you're doing with your body. So a handstand can be yoga. Lying down doing nothing can be yoga. It's where your mind is. But it is interesting you know, you and I, two white guys in the West talking about yoga, which comes from the East, from India, and yet I- India is where these yoga games are happening. So I don't know it's this interesting combination, isn't it, of the place where at least the philosophy of yoga originated, and now you're, we're seeing this kind of just one perfect form of yoga. And there is, like, a right or wrong in these yoga games of, you know, this is the right way of doing the pose, this is the wrong way. So yeah it's

Leslie Kaminoff 57:56

But that's

Matthew Huy 57:56

I think.

Leslie Kaminoff 57:57

Sure, but there is a right and wrong way of doing any technique, otherwise it wouldn't be a technique. So, you know, there when, when right and wrong enters a conversation, it's important to keep it in perspective. We're talking about the execution of a technique, whether it's Kapalabhati or Trikonasana, you know? And, and there is a place for that so long as it doesn't overwhelm or exclude the inquiry aspect of what we're using the pose for. But that's the Sthira and Sukha of the conversation of teaching. The Sthira, the structure, is the technique, and there is a right and a wrong to that. The Sukha, the space where the inquiry happens, there is no right and wrong because an inquiry is whatever you come up with when you contemplate what your experience is attempting this technique. And I'm always pointing that out to the teachers in my workshops is, you know, you need to understand this dynamic and make sure there's a balance of that when you're teaching. We've all been in situations where there's way too much technique to the point where it feels like there's no room for your experience. Just as you can be in a class where it seems like there's no technique, it's all about rolling around on the floor and just feeling what you're feeling, and it's like, "What are we actually learning here?" You know? And There has to be a balance at some point

Matthew Huy 59:20

Yeah, th- that's exactly what I said in my alignment doesn't prevent injury workshop is just that. If we're just, if yoga is just l- you know, feeling good in your body, like we're just rolling around, exactly that. So how do we define? There is a warrior two

Leslie Kaminoff 59:33

Yeah

Matthew Huy 59:33

you know what warrior two looks like, and if you've got a limp wrist, it's not warrior two. Nothing wrong with your wrist going soft,

Leslie Kaminoff 59:40

look, if

Matthew Huy 59:40

not a

Leslie Kaminoff 59:40

you're, if you're in warrior one,

Matthew Huy 59:42

two there's- Yeah

Leslie Kaminoff 59:44

warrior one. This is a warrior. This is surrender. This is giving up.

Matthew Huy 59:48

what are you,

Leslie Kaminoff 59:48

yeah

Matthew Huy 59:49

for the people who can't see you, Leslie, what are you doing?

Leslie Kaminoff 59:51

So, so I'm holding my arms up in... With my palms facing each other, which is what they do in Warrior I, and that's strong, that's Virabhadra, that's a, that's a warrior, right? But if I just turn my wrists 90 degrees and point my palms forward, this warrior is giving up. He's surrendering, right? So yes, there, there, there is a relationship between gesture and shape and asana and the name of the asana and the energy behind it. And at a certain point, it stops being what it is when you vary it enough. So the question is, what is the core of what we're trying to accomplish here? And you can then make variations or adaptations or modifications as long as you understand the function that you're going after. My teacher would always say this. Desikachar was a structural engineer before he was a yoga teacher, but this could have been said by either one, that the form of a pose must serve its function, just like the form of a bridge must serve its function. You can build a beautiful bridge that falls down and is not a very good bridge, right? So there is all of that. And to be fair, with the yoga competition demonstration thing, Krishnamacharya, you know, was someone who put on yoga demonstrations, and he had these young boys demonstrating for him, you know, the perfection of the poses. And when he ran out of young boys to demonstrate, because they all ran away one by one because his discipline was so abusive, there was only one person left who couldn't run away. His name was B.K.S. Iyengar, and he was Krishnamacharya's brother-in-law. And he started training him up, and that ended up,

Matthew Huy 1:01:31

Right

Leslie Kaminoff 1:01:32

you know, making him want to run away to Pune, where he could practice on his own and develop his own system. So demonstration has always been a part of this in the tradition because it's how you got people's attention. You know? It's how you show them what is possible. So, you know, it's not just us people in the West, you know, putting on shows. This is something that's been happening for a while.

Matthew Huy 1:01:56

Yeah. So one last question, Leslie, because I know it's getting to be an hour. You've gotta move your car

Leslie Kaminoff 1:02:02

to go move my car 'cause of

Matthew Huy 1:02:02

York parking, right?

Leslie Kaminoff 1:02:03

alternate side parking here in New York City, yes

Matthew Huy 1:02:07

So, you know we've talked a bit about what yoga is not, just one last question. In a few words, for you, what is yoga?

Leslie Kaminoff 1:02:14

Huh. What is yoga? I would just have to go with, okay, yoga practice. I think the most practical, useful discussion around yoga practice comes to us from the first sutra on the chapter about practice in Patanjali, which is Tapas Swadhyaya Ishwara Pranidhana, right? 'Cause that's the definition of Kriya yoga. And so what that tells us is that Tapas has to do with inducing a change in the system outside of its ordinary way of functioning. It's producing some friction against your habits. Tapas is a kind of friction, 'cause it means to heat or to purify by heat or to cook, you know? And so this is about changing the things that are changeable in your system from maybe habitual way of operating to something a little more conscious. It also tells us that there are certain things that are not changeable, that we can't change which by their nature are outside of our ability to control, and it... So that's telling us that the attitude towards that aspect of our existence is to surrender. That's the Ishwara Pranidhana. But it also tells us that there's this principle of Swadhyaya, which is the, the inquiry, the self-inquiry, the, the, the ability to focus on the difference between the things we can change and the things we can't. And this is absolutely 100% the serenity prayer. This is asking for the strength to change the things you can, To accept the things you cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. That's Tapas, Swadhyaya, and Ishvara Pranidhana. And,

Matthew Huy 1:04:10

That's

Leslie Kaminoff 1:04:10

and the really powerful perspective on this that, that comes from my teacher is that the breath is at the center of this conversation because breathing is both voluntary, we can change it, we can manipulate it, But it's also involuntary. We have to surrender to, to that fact as well. And, and so we have a built-in teacher of yoga in our system, and it's called the breath. And when you do Swadhyaya on the breathing, it teaches you yoga. It teaches you this principle of Tapas, Swadhyaya, and Ishvara Pranidhana. So that, to me, is the most practical, useful lens through which to view this topic of yoga. There's a lot of other interpretations of yoga, obviously. The first chapter of Patanjali, it's all about Samadhi, you know?

Matthew Huy 1:04:59

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Kaminoff 1:05:00

this idea of yoking, of joining. You know, just you look at the word itself, yuj. So there's a lot of conversations to be had, but for me, that's the most practical one

Matthew Huy 1:05:10

Yeah, that's great. I really like that. I like how you tie it to the Serenity Prayer. That's really nice.

Leslie Kaminoff 1:05:14

I can breathe it. Absolutely

Matthew Huy 1:05:16

yeah, accept the things that we cannot change, that'd be such a huge thing. Yeah.

Leslie Kaminoff 1:05:19

That's the hardest tapas of

Matthew Huy 1:05:20

there

Leslie Kaminoff 1:05:21

That's, that itself is tapas. They, they all s- spin on each other, you know? And- Yeah and, and that's, that's I think the beauty of some of these teachings, is that they're really derived from our own anatomy, from our own physiology, from the fact that we're breathing. We are these breathing conscious creatures, and immediately that involves us with this conversation between the relationship between that which is voluntary and that which is automatic or autonomic. So it's, it's a great conversation to have

Matthew Huy 1:05:52

Descartes famously said, "I think, therefore I am," but he could have also said, "I breathe, therefore I am," right?

Leslie Kaminoff 1:05:58

There's been a lot, a lot of things that would not have led to this Cartesian mind-body split. I write about that in some of my recent blog posts. So people can find them at lesliekamenoff.yoga

Matthew Huy 1:06:11

Right. Leslie Kaminoff. And so if people do wanna study with you more, follow you, what should they

Leslie Kaminoff 1:06:16

LeslieKamenoff.yoga, that's the platform that we put all of my stuff on now, including the, the courses and the blog posts and just everything. Archives from over the years. It's, it's all there

Matthew Huy 1:06:28

Yeah, you have some great blog posts. I definitely recommend it. Yeah

Leslie Kaminoff 1:06:30

Yeah, I'm going old school with the blog post these days.

Matthew Huy 1:06:34

Good. All right. Thank you very much for taking the time today, Leslie. It's really been great to chat with you, so

Leslie Kaminoff 1:06:40

Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. And next time I'm in London, we should get together and hang out a bit.

Matthew Huy 1:06:45

That'd be great.

Leslie Kaminoff 1:06:45

Yeah

Matthew Huy 1:06:46

yeah. Which reminds me of this story that I wanted to mention briefly. I remember years and years ago, I was teacher at TriYoga, and this is on the days of Twitter, and I said, "Oh, TriYoga, you should bring Leslie Kaminoff

Leslie Kaminoff 1:06:57

Right

Matthew Huy 1:06:58

cause you'd never been to TriYoga. then a year later you were there, so I think I'd

Leslie Kaminoff 1:07:01

Someone listened. Someone listened. The other, either it was Jonathan or Jenny or someone, but I ended up there and yeah, yeah. And London is other, other than New York, it's probably my favorite city in the world, so I look forward to coming back at some point. All right.

Matthew Huy 1:07:15

summer. Don't come in January, February, but in the summer it's

Leslie Kaminoff 1:07:17

The fall is usually when I go there. That's pretty good too.

Matthew Huy 1:07:20

It

Leslie Kaminoff 1:07:20

yeah.

Matthew Huy 1:07:20

is nice.

Leslie Kaminoff 1:07:21

All right, man

Matthew Huy 1:07:21

All right. Thank you very much, Leslie. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you for your time. Really

Leslie Kaminoff 1:07:25

It's been a pleasure. It's great to connect.

Matthew Huy 1:07:26

Thank

Leslie Kaminoff 1:07:27

take care

Matthew Huy 1:07:27

you. Thank you very much.

Speaker 4 1:07:28

So that was the end of that episode. Really hope you enjoyed it. Um, a couple things that stood out for me. The, the, the simple saying, "Poses don't have alignment, people do." So rather than, you know, chasing this perfect ideal alignment, um, focusing on what the person in front of you is doing I think is, is a great idea. And all of the people I speak to and th- all seem to come to the same conclusion, that critical thinking really matters in this day and age more than certainty. Um, and yoga is, is inquiry, not the pursuit of perfect poses. And something that has stayed with me a few days after interviewing Leslie was his definition of yoga or what, what it means to him, and how it is that balance of having the strength to change the things we can change, to accept the things we cannot change and, and the wisdom to know the difference, which you find, I think, in many different philosophies, whether they're religious or, or not So that's maybe something you can carry with you. What are the things that I can change in my own life? What are the things that I just need to surrender to? And how can I get better at knowing the difference? Thank you again for tuning in, and it would really mean a lot if you could please leave a five-star review and rating, or five-star rating and a review as it goes. It really helps the discoverability and helping other people finding this podcast. And please do share it. I'm working really hard, along with my assistant, Cheska, to help, um, produce these regularly. So if you could share them, you know, put up a story on your, on your Instagram or whatever. Just take a screenshot of what you're watching right now, listening to, and put it up on your social media. I'll be sure to share that. It would mean, uh, the world to me. You can find me on Instagram as yogawithmatt. All right, so thank you very much and see you next time. Cue the outro music.

Speaker 6 1:09:30

Thank you for listening to the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast. We would be grateful if you would leave a review and a five-star rating. Be sure to tune in next time for more science-based knowledge to get enlightened and help others