This past week I had the privilege of taking two different master classes with world-renowned power yoga instructor, Bryan Kest. I have considered Bryan to be one of my greatest influences since the first time I did one of his workshops at Saraswati’s Yoga Joint in Norwalk, CT back in 2006. His approach to the philosophy behind what we are doing on our mats, and the intensity with which he fills his classes is both mentally and physically challenging, and leaves you filled with motivation and inspiration at the end, along with a myriad of other emotions you never expected to surface.
The first class was given by Newport Power Yoga in Newport, RI on July 20th. This was a truly special occasion for me since it also happened to be my birthday! I was lucky enough to spend the day in Newport with my boyfriend, enjoying the beach and riding bikes with friends before heading off to the Hotel Viking where the class was being held. The format of this first masterclass was half lecture, half asana practice. Now, whenever I try and describe Bryan Kest to people who haven’t taken his classes before, it seems like the only thing I can say is “he’s gonna blow your mind,” or, “he’s a trip.” And boy did he live up to the description. Bryan Kest’s lecture truly blew my mind and I have been spending the past days since replaying his words of wisdom over and over again in my head, asking myself how I can incorporate his message into my own teaching, how I can change my language to better serve my students, or how I can adapt my own asana practice to be a more beneficial, healthful one.
Bryan’s message is simple, really: “People bring their shit to yoga, and turn yoga into shit”. That might sound confusing at first, but what he’s getting at is that we come to our mats with our brains filled with some of the most toxic poisons that exist: judgments, defensiveness, reactive responses, competitiveness etc.. All of these things turn our asana practice into something it was never meant to be: a competition with ourselves and with everyone else in the room. Bryan’s philosophy aims to get back to the core of yoga: the fact that the system of asanas was only created in order to keep the body healthy and supple enough to sit in meditation for longer periods of time. It is in meditation that the true yoga is experienced: strength and flexibility are merely the byproducts of a consistent asana practice, but not the goals.
A Bryan Kest lecture is a unique experience: how many times have you heard your yoga instructor drop the F-bomb in class, or let out a belch so loud you questioned his age? But that’s exactly the point, says Kest. He’s simply giving you chance after chance NOT to judge him, to not write off this swearing, burping yoga teacher from Detroit as just another dumb guy. And he’s right: he catches you leaning towards your bad habits of judging yourself and others, of comparing your body or your practice to the one on the mat next to you, and calls you out on it! For Bryan, the whole point of yoga is to simply touch all the parts of the body, to give them love and attention, to circulate the blood flow to every corner of the body in order to keep it healthy, to quiet down the mind enough to get rid of the incessant chatter that we are constantly replaying over and over again like a broken record, to eliminate stress (which he, and the new Lululemon bags cite is the cause of 99% of all illness) so that we can have a more positive experience off the mat.
Bryan’s philosophy fits perfectly in line with the one my teacher, Ganga White, gave us all during our teacher training: let go of the idea that you have to get anywhere at all: you are perfect exactly where you are! And if you feel like you need to push beyond your boundaries, you are missing the whole point of your asana practice. There is no physical goal: for Bryan, “every asana is stupid”. He talks about there being “no intelligent reason on earth to stick your head between your legs,” and he’s right! He doesn’t want you to give 100%, on the contrary, he’d rather ask for 50 and know that you’re taking care of yourself. But naturally the question arrises, “then why the hell are you about to teach one of the most challenging and intense asana classes I’ve ever taken in my life?” Bryan gets this a lot, and his answer is perhaps his greatest teaching:
Can you think of a safer, better environment in which to practice challenging yourself than on your yoga mat? How are you going to react in a safe and calm manner to all of life’s challenges, if you never practice being challenged in a safe place where you are surrounded by support? If everything was easy, you’d never tap into that place that makes you uncomfortable enough to let go of your habits and force you to react in a different way.
Ultimately, Bryan’s teaching is this: yoga is simply about strengthening the qualities of the mind that are beneficial to each of us and to others, while reducing the qualities of the mind that are limiting and harmful to us and to others.
So after his lecture we began to practice asana. I can honestly say that I have never in my life sweat more during a class while never doing one “advanced pose.” Everything that Bryan did was a basic movement, something “so easy your grandma could do it.” But the focus and intensity that he asked of all of us added so much energy and heat to the practice. I’ve never shaken so much, rested so frequently in child’s pose, and breathed so deeply for an entire class. You can’t help but keep your focus because Bryan is constantly reminding you as he walks all over the room to keep your eyes on your own mat, to exit the pose early, to fill your lungs entirely with air, to listen to the sound of your breath and to listen to the signals from your body telling you if what you are doing is okay or not. He doesn’t demonstrate a single thing, and he doesn’t need to. He is so easy to follow, his instructions carry you like a wave throughout your practice, making you laugh your ass off along the way. (If his rhyming and swearing doesn’t do it, I don’t know what will!)
At the end of a sweaty hour and a half of asana, all of which he calls “warm-up exercises” the real yoga begins: sitting meditation. He asked us all to sit comfortably and to let go of the ujjayi breathing, to just focus on what was happening in the body. And then it happened: the tears started to flow as he asked us to meditate on gratitude: perhaps the most powerful meditation anyone could ever do. There was no stopping it; one by one you could hear people start to cry as he asked us to think about our mothers and our fathers and our teachers and the trees and our friends and our yoga mats and… it was a domino effect of gratitude that filled me up with more joy and light than I have ever felt in a practice.
I imagine this is not a unique experience in a Bryan Kest class: it’s who he is. His ability to touch his students in a way that most never get to experience in a yoga class is inspiring. He challenges your mind in a way that leaves you thinking about it for days thereafter, and he challenges your body in a way that makes you glad you rested in child’s pose as often as you did.
His second workshop was held this past Saturday, July 23rd, at Kaia Yoga in Westport, CT. Many students were lucky enough to take his whole “Power Yoga Weekend” being held at the studio. I returned for his morning asana class with my yoga teacher, Lauren Lanham, my boyfriend, and my dear friend Laura Jacques (who owns the Flower of Life Yoga studio in Coventry, CT, and gave me my first teaching opportunity.) I was so grateful to share my practice with such beautiful people, and for the opportunity to take Bryan’s class twice in one week!
If you are interested in Bryan Kest’s Power Yoga, please visit his website for more information on his teaching style, philosophy, workshops and retreats, and on-demand videos and classes.
