Saturday, August 18th 
2:00pm-5:00pm
£35 / £30 Early Bird (before 11th August)
Edward Clark will take students on an exploration of the dynamic potential of backbends and inversions within the framework of Tripsichore Yoga Theatre’s vinyasa technique. This workshop will start with the fundamental relationships of pranayama and asana and pranayama and movement/flow. As we progress, it will focus on inversions and backbends within this framework of breath, pose, and flow. Edward Clark fuses his keen artistic vision with a deep understanding of the essential pursuit of yoga practice. His classes are entertaining, demanding and exhilarating.
There are two aspects to inversions and back bends – the thrill of the spectacularly acrobatic and the peace of nearly effortless balancing. Both require skill and physical intelligence. They also require a degree of courage and a willingness to experiment. There are many methods used to attain inverted postures as well as back bends and a fantastic number of variations are possible. We will look at a number of these in this workshop. We will, however, be confining our explorations to what we see as having a distinctly yogic approach. The postures will be attempted using the yogic methods concerning breathing and focus. This means that they are – comparatively – safe to attempt. A deeper practice isn’t just about achieving harder postures. Rather, it is also about the grace with which you perform them.
Tripsichore Vinyasa Yoga is both challenging and fun. It encourages the student to explore the furthest range of their physical potential while providing the technical approaches that ensure safety. The Tripsichore Yoga style has been developed for 30 years and, in investigating yoga, has endeavoured to reconcile the idea of making advanced physical practice enhance the ends of a spiritual quest. While Tripsichore is known for its amazing variety of unusual postures, these have been discovered through the use of orthodox yoga techniques. These techniques have been experimented with to expand the range of what can possibly be derived from sound basics. The results have shown that there is a lot more to yoga than just standard asanas.
The idea behind Vinyasa is fascinating – in short, it proposes that the act of synchronising the breath with yoga movement, the mind is brought to a place of deep concentration.
In a Tripsichore workshop, you’ll be sure to learn some new and interesting variations on inverted postures and new ways to achieve back bends. You’ll find out how to be more flexible and how to do things that look like they require considerable strength but, in accord with yogic principles, you’ll also discover that these are achieved with grace and ease.
The Tripsichore sequences seek the integrity of the postures by assuming that the mind’s intention can be integrated with the body’s movement with breathing techniques. The refinement of these techniques – something that seems deceptively simple – provides the means through which the body achieves remarkable shapes of considerable beauty.