Scott Anderson, Ph.D.

You may think that writing about alignment would arise spontaneously for the founder of Alignment Yoga, though I’ve struggled to coalesce my thoughts into a manageable blog posting. After some serious procrastination, I’ve decided that tonight is the night to put fingers to keyboard, and tease apart some ideas about alignment. In the prior blog posting, I discussed how simply feeling your body is the essence of practice. Independent of technique, cues or alignment, embodiment is perhaps the greatest gift that can arise from investing the time and energy into mind/body practice. Riding on the coattails of this de-emphasis on form is a de-emphasis on postural alignment. This was and is intentional - alignment is overrated. Many people inhabit bodies that may be considered misaligned, yet experience little if any pain. Other people may suffer terribly with the supposed symptoms of misalignment, yet their bodies are fundamentally well aligned. In working with bodies, causality is

As many of you may have seen, my wife and I recently decided to close our Madison-based Mound Street Yoga Center. This decision has been a long time in coming, as the fortunes of our iconic, single-room studio have been declining for quite some time. I am nostalgic for its former glory, though honesty, I am also relieved to openly discuss the years-long decline that consumed more and more of our time and energy. A lovely chapter is closing, and in its wake, another chapter most assuredly has begun. Embodiment: enjoying one of my favorite sweets following a run on Pre's Trail in Eugene, OR Part of this closing-of-chapters involves my approach to teaching Yoga. As my previous blog posting initiated, I’m reflecting on 30+ years of teaching Yoga. What does it mean to do something for thirty years, and how does this longevity inform future actions? I’ve traversed many paths within the corpus of Yoga – from purity-of- essence -alignment, to the most vigorous of Vinyasa-flo