01 Jul Telluride Yoga Fest: Dr. Scott Blossom Returns
The 7th annual Telluride Yoga Fest takes place this week, July 10 – July 13, with a class for all levels of practitioners: 4-day Guru pass, $495; 3-day Namaste pass, $395; 3-class pass, $108; all-day intensive, $150. Buy here now.
Rock stars jump-started the yoga boom in the 1960s, when the Beatles hooked up with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Forty-plus years later, with about 20 million Americans actively practicing, yoga teachers are the rock stars. However, they claim very different turf from their cock-of-the-walk counterparts.
Rockers live in a hard-drinking, drug-taking world of gladiatorial rowdiness, selling sex and sizzle. Yoga’s perks are more esoteric and holistic: Dr. Scott Blossom and his fellow princes of the mat offer self-awareness, holistic health, and inner serenity. In their world, “Oh baby” becomes “OM.”
The inevitable success of the Telluride Yoga Festival, now in its 7th year, (July 10 – July 13,) and under the new owner/director team of Albert Roer and Erika Henschel respectively, is in part thanks to Blossom: he was the very first brand name in the business to sign on the dotted line when the event founder approached him. With Blossom on board, other luminaries needed little convincing to join the roster of top instructors who return to town year after year to help students stretch, externally and internally.
And after a time-out (three years) to focus on his young family, the highly respected instructor and therapist is back in town to lead four classes at Yoga Fest.
Blossom’s Thursday intensive, “Practices for Healing and Strengthening the Bones, Joints and Nerves,” integrates Eastern and Western anatomical perspectives to reveal the profound interrelationships between what Blossom describes as the “foundations of the body and mind.” (All levels welcome.)
“Prana Bhakti: Ujjayi Breathing for Beginners,” starts with simple practices for discovering how and where your natural breath is moving in your body, then moves through a sequence of asanas designed to reveal the intimate dynamics of Ujjayi breathing.
Founded by Zhander Remete, Shadow Yoga is a hatha yoga system that helps free the body of energetic obstructions and ignites your inner fire for healing and meditation. This practice, aptly named “Shadow Yoga with Scott Blossom,” consists of spiraling, circular, and linear movements designed to integrate yoga asana, martial arts, South Indian dance, and Ayurvedic medicine.
The Lotus Pose or Padmasana is one of the most iconic and potent postures of hatha yoga. Approaching this posture safely requires skill and patience. In “Growing a Lotus – Shadow Yoga and Asana Vinyasa,” Blossom guides a practice for developing the flexibility and internal circulation required for realizing the benefits of this wonderful pose. (More advanced.)
Dr. Scott Blossom is a Shadow Yoga teacher, ayurvedic consultant, and traditional Chinese medical practitioner. He has been studying yoga for over 20 years and teaching for 13. His primary teachers are the aforementioned Zhander Remete, founder of Shadow Yoga, and Dr. Robert Svoboda, Ayurvedic physician and scholar. Blossom is based in the Bay Area, where he and his wife Chandra Easton teach Shadow Yoga together. The couple also has an integrative medical clinic in Berkeley. The Telluride Yoga Festival is the only conference outside the region Blossom will attend.
“The power of yoga comes from the way we align our bodies with gravity using the bones and the joints. Someone who is leveraging a stretch using aggressive muscular effort is going to be creating an imbalance stress on a joint. We will be watching for that. Once again, what I teach comes down to attuning yourself with your body’s internal intelligence, the prana, and that is the first step towards becoming a true yogi.”
When movement flows from the prana, the egoic, aggressive orientation of the practitioner melts into a devotional act.
“Yoga becomes a moment-by-moment discovery of learning to do asanas in a way that responds to your physical and emotional needs in that particular moment,” explained Blossom. “The boundary between the preparation for and the act of meditating simply dissolves.”
To learn more, click the “play” button and listen to my chat with Scott Blossom.
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