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Daniel Dale founded OmAgain in 2006. Practicing yoga since 1996, he has developed a keen interest in the classical texts and philosophy as well the practices of yoga. In 2002, he was working as a personal trainer when first invited to substitute teach yoga classes. He completed his first teacher training at New York Yoga in 2004, and has since completed further trainings with Srivatsa Ramaswami, Richard Freeman and Leslie Kaminoff. Daniel offers his humble gratitude to his teachers for all they have shared.
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VINYASA: About this approach to yoga
The school of hatha yoga known as vinyasa yoga is
distinct in its emphasis upon the intelligent linking together
of the postures in sequences where the movements are
seamlessly and systematically integrated with complete
inhalations and exhalations.
Vinyasa is a Sanskrit word for artistic variations, and has
long been in use in India, where yoga has long been
counted as one of 64 traditional arts (the list also
includes such diverse crafts as music, building and flower
arrangement). Thus “vinyasa yoga” suggests an approach to
yoga in which practice is treated as an art. In music, the
term vinyasa applies to tonal and rhythmic variations, while
in the case of vinyasa yoga it applies primarily to variations
upon asanas (yoga postures) and upon the movements that
link one asana to another in sequence.
The word vinyasa is derived from the suffix -nyasa (to place,
to put) and the prefix vi- (which can mean either
“divergent/apart” or “special”). Thus one might interpret
the literal meaning of vinyasa as “variations within
parameters.”
There are particular parameters for practice prescribed in
traditional vinyasa yoga, and it is these parameters that
make vinyasa yoga a uniquely breath-oriented approach to
asana. In a nutshell, the overall emphasis is the integration
of body, breath and mind.
Yoga is all about expanding freedom through the cultivation
of skillful action. The regular practice of vinyasa yoga
gradually trains the body and mind to learn how to
release. Vinyasa yoga is an art and a science of integration
that brings the practitioner into balance on both gross and
subtle levels. Beyond offering many physical benefits, such
as improving our circulation, lung capacity, balance, etc., the
practice can also improve our clarity of mind, enable us to
find stillness, and even increase our capacities to listen and
love. In yoga, we feel more alive, more free, more at ease,
more aware, and that we are part of something greater. We
have increased compassion, for ourselves as well as others.
As explained in the most essential of all the ancient texts on
yoga, the Yoga Sutra, yoga is the path to kaivalyam, or
ultimate freedom.
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Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful Earth. They have filled the Earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.
—Swami Vivekananda, in his Welcome
Address to the World’s Parliament of Religions in
Chicago ,
September 11, 1893
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With a client in Central Park
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The lineage
Vinyasa yoga or vinyasa krama, as well as Ashtanga vinyasa yoga, Iyengar yoga and Viniyoga are all branches off a common stem, rooted in the teachings of the late, great Tirumalai Krishnamacharya.
T. Krishnamacharya (1888-1989)
Probably the majority of yoga
practitioners in the Western world
today can trace a lineage
through their teachers, and their
teachers’ teachers, to this
remarkable master teacher.
For information and links
pertaining to the seniormost
teachers in this tradition, please
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A tremendous amount of our vital energy is squandered in the vacillations of the mind. If things go our way, we get elated; if things do not go our way, we get depressed. Yet elation and depression are made from the same cloth. It is when the mind is getting elated that we need to be very vigilant, because what goes up will inevitably come down.
—Eknath Easwaran
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