Read the Orange book

It's come up in various conversations over the last month amongst fellow teachers to read the 'orange' Bikram book. I have read it, I pretty much bought it straight away when I started practicing. Like most books or even movies & in yoga practice you always seems to miss something the first time round. I can re read a novel a few times, even though I know the ending and the gist of the story, there are some scenes, chapters or events that feel like I'm reading it for the first time. 

Like in your personal yoga practice you might not hear certain instructions until your ready. I feel this is true with the Bikram books. You might not absorb the information until your ready. Now is the time to hit the books again. I've been told I'm at the point in my teaching path that I need to start going a bit more above & beyond. It's easy to just spill out the dialogue each class but I need to be understanding more about what is going on in the postures. What is happening inside. There are plenty of lines in the additional dialogue that touches on what is happening. "This is a compression posture, compression of the pancreas." But why do we need to be compressing the pancreas, what is happening in the pancreas as it is being compressed, why is this beneficial? That kind of thing.

Sadly at training this connection between anatomy, the postures & the medical benefits wasn't really touched on in great detail. Don't get me wrong Emmy, Rajashree & Bikram all gave informative lectures involving anatomy, pain & psychology. A favourite line from Dr P. the anatomy lecturer was 'that's a yoga question, Bikram will answer that,' whenever any question came up about a posture & it's related anatomy. Which is fair enough I suppose, he's the doctor not the yoga guru. 

I need to go fourth and find answers. They are out there. The Orange book is my first stop. Time to re read it. In one posture clinic we were told 'how can you tell your students to read the Bikram books if you've never read them yourself.' Another amazing wealth of information is Diane Ducharme's forum Bikram Yoga for You. Then I will be able to talk more between postures about why and what is happening in an informed, educated way. 

Extra special book now, signed by the boss