Tias was honored to be featured by Yoga Journal as one of 30 respected yoga teachers to speak on the future of yoga. Check out what Tias envisions for the future of yoga below, and read the full article on yogajournal.com.
I think that yoga must become an antidote for online communication. So much of our communication today is disembodied as we cannot sense, feel, smell, or really see the recipient of our messaging. I see yoga as playing an important role in fostering somatic awareness. Not only does it help us feel the wind of the breath in our lungs, the pulse of nerves through our connective tissue, but it prepares us to better sense and feel another person. I hope that over time the yoga experience will become more relational. That is students will have the opportunity to express what is happening in their mind and body. I teach dyad work where students track their internal experiences in order to share them with a partner.
I hope that yoga will return to its more contemplative roots. While the physical discipline of yoga is rewarding, the direct experience of silence, stillness and sitting in open awareness is beyond compare. I attempt to teach the later limbs of Patanjali’s yoga of meditation and absorption. In order to heal from the stress and traumas rampant our planet today, the experience of soaking inward in moments of samadhi is invaluable. This requires slowing down and taking the plunge into the depths of our own interior. This can be frightening to some, but there is no other way to really transform on the path. So I hope yoga will move away from the mirrors and the outer display of posturing toward the very heart of being. This requires a capacity to be not only with feelings of expansion and joy, but feelings of loss, loneliness, and pain.
