Timothy McCall, MD is a board-certified physician specializing in internal medicine, and the author of two books, Examining Your Doctor: A Patient’s Guide to Avoiding Harmful Medical Care (Citadel Press) and Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing (Bantam). He practiced medicine for more than 10 years in the Boston area before devoting himself full-time to investigating and teaching yoga therapy.
Dr Timothy McCall Workshop, 12-13 March 2018 at triyoga Camden
Reimagining Yoga Anatomy:Â The Emerging Science of Biotensegrity, Myofascia and Breath-Based Movement
In order for yoga poses (asana) to be maximally safe and therapeutic, they need to be supple, lightly-held and deeply grounded in the breath. Tensegrity is a word popularized by Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome. Rather than being rigidly held, tensegrity structures like domes, bicycle wheels and suspension bridges allow subtle movements (give) that render them more stable, and better able to withstand outside forces.
Tensegrity, or as it’s sometimes called in relationship to living beings, biotensegrity, offers an alternative way to understand yoga anatomy. This model explains better than the simple physics of levers and pulleys, the densely interconnected beings we are, in which forces act not just locally but often across the entire body. Adding to the subtlety of biotensegrity structures are the elements of breath and awareness — and where breath and awareness go, yoga teaches, prana (life force energy) follows.
We’ll engage in lecture/discussions, practice mostly gentle, breath-centered yoga, observe each other in poses and try various experiential exercises to deepen our understanding and heighten our awareness. Recommended for yoga teachers, yoga therapists and students with at least a year of regular asana practice.
We asked Timothy McCall to share a little more about what you can expect from the workshop:
Who is the target audience of the workshop?
Yoga teachers, yoga therapists, anatomy geeks, serious yoga students, health-care professionals, body workers, dancers and anyone else who is interested.
What is the percentage of yoga to discussions?
The workshop will have three central activities: lecture/discussions, practice and in small group and pairs observing bodies in practice. I envision about 25% lecture, 25% observation, 50% practice.
What are the key takeaways a student can expect from the 2 days?
A whole-new way of looking at yoga anatomy. As opposed to the standard reductionist way yoga anatomy is typically taught with its analysis of individual muscles and small parts of bones (which is useful but not the whole story), we’ll focus on a more global, interconnected analysis of the entire body. We’ll examine whole-bone movements, and the bones relationships with each other, and study the effects chaining through the myofascia, and even the flow of “prana,” all modulated by the breath.
What will I learn as a student?
To question and deepen the way they think about the body practicing yoga. I would like to open people’s eyes (and their bodies!) to a perspective that may be entirely or partially new to them. What they do with it is up to them. I hope that students find that this holistic perspective deepens their understanding and practice, even if some of its tenets may be different, and perhaps even at odds, from what they thought coming in.
How will I benefit from the workshop?
I believe this approach can both deepen one’s own yoga practice, and how one teaches.
Who can attend, beginners or advanced students?
At least some knowledge of yoga and a regular practice of it is recommended. Knowledge of basic human anatomy would be helpful though not absolutely required.
What drives you to teach this workshop?
This stuff has revolutionized how I practice and teach yoga and deepened my yoga therapy work.
What do you love about this workshop?
The experience that less effortful, more mindful, more breath-centered yoga can take you farther into healing and (surprisingly) farther into the asana than more striving, goal-directed approaches.
Join Timothy McCall at triyoga Camden from 12-13 March for a two-day immersion. Click here to book and find out more.
