On the female body, yoga and gender... Part 1.

One of today’s topics in our yoga seminar in Krakow is “The Female body, yoga and gender” (here by Theo Woodcroft).

I’ll write later a piece of text about this overtly fascinating topic – now just sharing this photo. Here you see a collection of post/modern female yoga teachers. All of them have done just tremendous work in cracking down the asana work and methodology of the more conventional yoga traditions and lineages, that still tend to patronize, chastise and sculpt modern yoga bodies mostly according the old (male) asana traditions.

All these teachers are more or less underappreciated and not so well-known (in relation to their unique work as innovative leaders on their fields). This democratization process and "freeing" of yoga practices and making them more accessible to everyone (regardless of practitioner's age, sex, body type, health, ambitions, energy levels etc..) is something that will definitely be seen later as a remarkable development / turning point in the whole history of asana. No more all asana needs to be linear, symmetric, strong, controlled, masculine or hyper-conscious. AND it is happening right now - us even hardly understanding or noticing it!

(Also a couple of interesting male teachers are being mentioned here on the last row. In my opinion also Bianca Machliss & Simon Borg-Olivier would totally deserve a place on this chart for their work) Is there someone else that you think needs to be mentioned?