12 Jan Telluride Yoga Center: Intensive With Nancy Stechert, 1/20-22/17
Popular Senior Iyengar Instructor Nancy Stechert of Hotchkiss Yoga Tree, a regular at the Telluride Yoga Festival, returns to Telluride to teach a weekend workshop, “The Freedom Within,” Friday, January 20 – Sunday, January 22, 2017 at the Telluride Yoga Center. (Yes, it’s that weekend.) Single classes are $40. Full workshop is $175. Sign up here now. Scroll down to listen to Nancy Stechert’s podcast.
Senior Iyengar Yoga Instructor Nancy Stechert
As the story goes, in 1951 the famous violin virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin was sitting in his osteopath’s office waiting for his appointment when a small book on yoga caught his attention. He was, according to online sources, already suffering from a variety of the muscular and skeletal aches and pains that have ruined the career of many a budding young string player. Since Menuhin knew nothing about yoga, curious, he opened the book,was immediately fascinated by the contents and wanted to know more.
As well as being one of the greatest violinists of all time, Menuhin was known to be an enormously generous man with global and humanitarian interests. In 1952, Menuhin was invited to India by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first Prime Minister, to give such a series of concerts. He met Nehru for the first time after one of the concerts and mentioned the book about yoga. Nehru immediately dared Menuhin to stand on his head. Much to everyone’s surprise, he did. Nehru then displayed his headstand. The light-hearted incident between these two icons made the headlines all over India. Yoga teachers from every quarter contacted the violin wunderkind to offer guidance. Menuhin took lessons from a number of them, but was not impressed – until he met BKS Iyengar.
Their first five-minute session stretched into three-and-a-half hours. And when Menuhin mentioned he was almost constantly fatigued, never really able to relax, and unable to sleep, in less than one minute, Iyengar allegedly had him snoring gently away for the first time in days. The two men formed a close friendship which lasted until Menuhin’s death 47 years later in 1999.
In his foreword to Iyengar’s “Light on Yoga,” often described as the “Bible of Modern Yoga,” Menuhin said this:
“Yoga, as practiced by Mr. Iyengar… is a technique ideally suited to prevent physical and mental illness and to protect the body generally, developing an inevitable sense of self-reliance and assurance.”
Yoga as practiced by senior Iyengar instructor Nancy Stechert – who first went to India to study with BKS Iyengar in 1983 – is all about aligning body, breath, and awareness to gain greater insights towards health and healing, inside and out.
In other words, what Iyengar taught Menuhin and countless other devoted students like Stechert, who then went on to help others help themselves.
Stechert’s upcoming workshop, “The Freedom Within,” at the Telluride Yoga Center, Friday, January 20 – Sunday, January 22, riffs off an idea found in Book II of the “Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,” the original yoga bible. Sutra 16 explains: “The pains that are yet to come, can and are to be avoided.”
How to avoid pain and experience greater freedom within?
Workshop schedule is as follows:
Friday, 2:30-4:30 p.m.: Hip Stabilization
Friday, 6-8 p.m.: Yoga Philosophy
Saturday, 9-11 a.m.: Stand in Your Power
Saturday, 3-5 p.m.: The Inner World of Forward Extensions
Sunday,10-12 p.m.: Backward Extensions
And listen to Stechert’s podcast:
More about Nancy Stechert:
In 1971, Nancy Crum Stechert first studied Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. She began an asana practice in San Francisco in 1976, making her first trip to India to study with BKS Iyengar in 1983. Stechert continued her studies at the Iyengar Institute in Pune almost yearly until 1990. (Since then, she has returned to India every three years.)
Stechert is founder of the Colorado Iyengar School of Yoga, in Denver, CO., and the International Yoga Center of Tokyo. She has taught at Iyengar centers in San Francisco and New York and served as an assessor for the Iyengar certification process for several years, also on the Iyengar National Board.
Nancy Stechert holds a Senior Intermediate certificate from BKS Iyengar and conducts teacher trainings and workshops around the world. Her teaching is exacting, yet subtle, and filled with a lightness and humor that lends ease and grace to her classes.
Stechert now owns and runs Yoga Tree in Hotchkiss, Colorado, where she lives.
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