Telluride Yoga Center brings “Gravity and Grace” to town, 1/22 – 24

20 Jan Telluride Yoga Center brings “Gravity and Grace” to town, 1/22 – 24

[click “Play” to listen to Peter Sterios speak about yoga]

The Telluride Yoga Center presents a man for all reasons: Peter Sterios.

Sterios is the principal of Sterios Architecture and founder, in 1997, of Manduka, a leading eco-yoga products company and key sponsor of Telluride Yoga Festival. He is a writer and former contributing editor for Yoga Journal, and an inspiring Yoga instructor/presenter at 2009 Telluride Yoga Festival. Sterios is in town to lead a workshop at the Telluride Yoga Center this weekend, Friday, January 22 – Sunday, January 24.

“Gravity and Grace: Creative forces for sustaining self-practice” is a catchphrase encompassing the teachings of a new lineage Sterios developed over three decades of study and practice in America and India. But Gravity and Grace rests squarely on the ancient yoga teaching channeled through Sri Krishnamacharya, the man credited with opening the door of yoga to the West.

One of Krishnamacharya’s essential lessons is not that a person needs to accommodate himself to yoga, but rather a yoga practice must be tailored to fit each person. To that end, Sterios challenges his students to observe how the subtle external force of gravity influences their practice, at the same time offering ways to surrender at the moment they experience resistance in their physical body. (The yoga tradition teaches we have five bodies or sheaths, but I digress.) Practicing surrender, students come to trust their feeling “minds” in our heart and belly, which opens them up to experience, at a psychological level, the subtle internal force of grace. Softening we become stronger, inside and out.

At the end of the day, all forms of Hatha-Yoga, or “forceful Yoga,” Gravity and Grace included, are about developing our body’s potential so that it can withstand the ultimate goal of yoga: personal transformation through the realization of our divine, unchanging Self.

To learn more about Sterios and his upcoming workshop, click the “play” button and listen to his podcast. Also watch the video