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Exploring the Essential Features of “Gary Kraftsow – Sacred Breath – The Shift Network”
With the Founder and Director of the American Viniyoga Institute
Gary Kraftsow
Unlock the transformative power of an authentic yoga lineage with a Western Prāṇāyāma master to cultivate a conscious connection with your sacred breath — and balance emotions, transcend struggles, and embrace boundless joy as you nurture a harmonious mind, body, and spirit.
Learn how to expand the threshold and vary the flow of your breath to support balanced sympathetic-parasympathetic regulation.
Did you know that your breath is a direct link between your unconscious, conscious, and superconscious minds? This subtle yet powerful connection has the capacity to transform many things you’ve been struggling with.
Master yoga teacher Gary Kraftsow says breathing with intention can reach the parts of you where stress, trauma, persistent health issues, and other forms of suffering tend to get buried.
In fact, as part of your autonomic nervous system, your breath is one of the few physiological functions that impacts your entire physiology. As you learn how to consciously control the breath…
… you also integrate all that you are — your physiological, psychological, emotional, and spiritual elements.
While studying in India as a teenager, Gary was initiated into the ancient breathwork practices of prāṇāyāma . His teachers were T.K.V. Deśikācar and his father T. Kriṣṇamācārya — a renowned yogi who brought the great tradition of authentic yoga to the West.
These gifted teachers changed Gary’s life, serving as a bridge between ancient and modern practice — and he’s been passing on these same healing practices to seekers and yogis around the world for more than 50 years now…
Join Gary for an illuminating new 7-week course and learn to customize time-tested prāṇāyāma practices to balance your autonomic nervous system, promote parasympathetic regulation, cultivate emotional wellbeing, boost mental clarity, and so much more.
You’ll learn to adapt and apply prāṇāyāma to your life, to manage stress, increase energy and vitality, and attune to spirit — creating a conscious, intentional relationship with your breath and other bodily systems.
The ancient art and science of prāṇāyāma is one of the most powerful, and yet rarely understood, practices to emerge from Vedic India. The secrets of prāṇāyāma were held and transmitted through lineages of initiates. Few of them have survived fully into modern times, making authentic prāṇāyāma teachings like this difficult to find in the West.
With Gary, founder and director of the American Viniyoga Institute, as your mentor, you’ll have the rare opportunity to dive deep into the traditional teachings of prāṇāyāma — accessing the full potential of the breath to consciously transform your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and wellbeing.
Gary has been practicing in these lineages for over 50 years and teaching for more than 40, which gives him a level of seasoned depth you would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.
During this 7-week live video course, you’ll explore:
- A deep understanding of the importance of breath — and how you can harness its power for health and wellbeing
- Techniques for controlling the flow of the breath to produce different outcomes, addressing whatever ailments you’re struggling with
- How to build your breath threshold — a powerful yet often misunderstood secret of Yoga — and why this is tremendously useful for your health and wellbeing
- How through working with the breath, you can consciously influence sympathetic-parasympathetic regulation and thereby optimize physiological processes
- An ancient treatment paradigm, Bṛṁhaṇa, Laṅghana, and Samāna, that’s used in both Ayurveda and Yoga Cikitsā (Yoga Therapy)
- The science behind the 4-part breath cycle to deepen your practice and learn to use these tools to manage and transform your condition
- Ways to address your specific emotional or physiological conditions with ancient heating and cooling techniques
- Chanting, meditating, and other complementary healing tools, woven together using your breath
- Weekly guided practices to bring these ancient traditions in your daily life
What You’ll Discover in These 7 Weeks
In this 7-week transformational course, Gary will guide you through the fundamental skills and competencies you’ll need to practice sacred breathwork practices from a traditional yoga lineage for managing stress, increasing vitality, and attuning to spirit.
Each session will build harmoniously upon the previous ones, so you’ll develop a complete holistic understanding of the practices, tools, and principles you’ll need to customize ancient prāṇāyāma practices to cultivate profound wellbeing.
Module 1: Foundational Prāṇāyāma Principles to Increase Your Energy & Balance Your Nervous System
As the course begins, you’ll explore how, through the practice of prāṇāyāma, you can consciously influence the autonomic nervous systems, and support sympathetic-parasympathetic regulation.
Then, Gary will introduce Kriṣṇamācārya’s teachings on how you can consciously control the directional flow of the breath — and how you can adapt the directional flow of the breath to produce different structural and energetic effects.
As a practitioner, you’ll begin to deepen inhalation and exhalation and gain progressively more control over the primary and secondary respiratory musculature.
In this opening module, you’ll explore:
- The difference between prāṇa and the breath — and how working with the breath is a means to work directly with prāṇa
- How through working with the breath, you can influence sympathetic-parasympathetic regulation and thereby optimize physiological processes
- Different ways to control the directional flow of the breath
- The important role of āsana in preparing the body and breath for prāṇāyāma
- Two guided practices, Anuloma Krama and Viloma Krama, which are specialized methods of controlling the flow of inhalation and exhalation
Module 2: Bṛṁhaṇa, Laṅghana, and Samāna to Increase Vitality, Restore Calm, and Balance Your System
You’ll explore an ancient treatment paradigm that’s used in both Ayurveda and Yoga Cikitsā (Yoga Therapy), known as Bṛṁhaṇa, Laṅghana, and Samāna.
Traditionally, bṛṁhaṇa means to restore, energize, nourish, or vitalize; laṅghana means to calm, reduce, or purify; and samāna means to equalize, balance, or regulate.
The Bṛṁhaṇa, Laṅghana, and Samāna effects can be created through the intelligent application of the appropriate methods.
Gary will guide you to explore various methods of producing these effects, including your choice of which āsana to use, breath adaptation in āsana, adapting the directional flow of the breath, and prāṇāyāma.
In this module, you’ll explore how to:
- Select specific āsana to create a Bṛṁhaṇa, Laṅghana, or Samāna effect
- Adapt the breath in āsana to create a Bṛṁhaṇa, Laṅghana, or Samāna effect
- Adapt and control the breath in prāṇāyāma to create a bṛṁhaṇa effect, laṅghana effect, or samāna effect
- Use āsana with specialized breath adaptation as well as pranayama to produce a Bṛṁhaṇa during a guided integrated practice
Module 3: Understand the Science Behind the 4-Part Breath Cycle, and Discover How to Build Your Personal Breath Threshold
As Gary will explain, the breath cycle refers to one full breath that includes inhalation, retention of the breath after inhalation, exhalation, and suspension of the breath out after exhalation.
The breath threshold is a measure of the maximum duration of one breath cycle that can be comfortably maintained over a minimum of 12 breaths.
The breath ratio refers to the proportional relationship between the four parts of a breath cycle. You can practice ratio no matter your threshold, exploring how far you can go.
In this module, you’ll discover:
- The nature and quality of each of the 4 parts of your breath cycle, and learn how to develop each of them (make them longer, hold, etc.)
- Your personal breath threshold, the value of expanding your threshold capacity (length and ratio), and why it’s so useful for health and wellbeing
- Why and how to select and practice a particular ratio no matter your threshold
- The purpose of a Bṛṁhaṇa, Laṅghana, or Samāna ratio, and how to create each type of ratio
- How to use breath adaptation in āsana to prepare for a Bṛṁhaṇa, Laṅghana, or Samāna ratio
- A guided experiential to put Samāna into practice
Module 4: Ancient Heating & Cooling Techniques for Addressing Your Specific Emotional or Physiological Conditions
You’ll explore the various techniques of prāṇāyāma and learn how to practice them in the context of two other, different ancient treatment paradigms:
Sūrya, Sun (or heating), and Candra, Moon (or cooling). This paradigm refers to energetic and psycho-emotional heating and cooling.
Uṣṇa (heating) and Śītalī (cooling). This paradigm refers to thermal heating and cooling.
As Gary will explain, the various prāṇāyāma techniques are categorized according to how and where the flow of the breath is “valved.”
The valve refers to the location (throat/nostril/tongue) and method by which the volume and speed of the flow of the air are regulated. Valving of the breath creates vibration at the valve sites, which determines the specific effect of each technique.
In this module, you’ll explore:
- The various valving techniques of prāṇāyāma
- How to choose an appropriate prāṇāyāma technique for practice to achieve a desired specific effect
- The correct method of creating the valve for each prāṇāyāma technique
- How to pick appropriate breath-centric āsana to support the effect of each prāṇāyāma technique
- How to select an appropriate ratio for each prāṇāyāma technique
- An experiential practice using the Laṅghana technique
Module 5: Create a Conscious Relationship With Your Autonomic Nervous System to Manage Stress
The body’s stress response complicates your health and wellbeing.
Your stress response can be a causal or contributing factor in illness or disease, and a complicating factor in its healing. Chronic stress can impact your system at anatomical, physiological, emotional, and cognitive levels which, in turn, can impact relationships and your productivity.
From the perspective of yoga teachings, the key to managing stress lies in your ability to create a conscious relationship with your autonomic nervous system — and how to adapt and apply practices that will help restore balanced sympathetic-parasympathetic regulation.
In this module, you’ll explore:
- How to attune to your autonomic nervous system and identify how stress causes sympathetic-parasympathetic dis-regulation
- How to select the appropriate prāṇāyāma ratio and technique to restore balanced regulation
- How to pick appropriate breath-centric āsana to support the specific prāṇāyāma practice
- How to adapt breath-centric āsana, prāṇāyāma ratio, and prāṇāyāma technique depending on the time of day of practice
- A guided practice designed to help you reduce stress and feel relaxed and at peace
Module 6: Prāṇāyāma Practices for Increasing Energy & Vitality
Fatigue is defined as a lack of energy and motivation that can manifest physically, mentally, or both.
Fatigue can be the result of an unhealthy lifestyle. It’s also a common symptom of many conditions and a common side-effect of medical treatments and commonly used over-the-counter and prescribed medications.
In this module, you’ll explore:
- How burn-out and fatigue cause sympathetic-parasympathetic dysregulation
- How to select the appropriate prāṇāyāma ratio and technique to revitalize and nourish the system, and restore balanced regulation
- How to pick appropriate breath-centric āsana to support the specific goals of a prāṇāyāma practice oriented towards revitalizing and nourishing the system
- How to adapt breath-centric āsana, prāṇāyāma ratio — and prāṇāyāma technique depending on the time of day of practice
- A guided practice designed to help you feel restored as you increase energy and vitality
Module 7: Attuning to & Merging With Spirit Through Prāṇāyāma Practice
As this course comes to a close, you’ll explore the yoga perspective on Spirit, and how the breath can be used to help us attune to it.
The Vedic tradition uses the word ādhyātmika, meaning “of or relating to the True Self, the Soul or Spirit, or the Supreme Spirit.” Of course, the way each of us thinks about this varies depending on our past conditioning and/or our current orientation.
In world traditions, the dimension of the Spirit is expressed through symbolic language, whether it’s being used to refer to something individual and deep within — or something all-pervading and universal.
In any case, we cannot access this dimension through logic and reasoning but, rather, through faith and the power of symbolic language.
The primary practice for attuning to this dimension in the yoga tradition is mantra japa and meditation. Central channel (suṣumnā nāḍī) prāṇāyāma is considered the best way to prepare yourself to merge with the spiritual dimension of life.
In this module, you’ll explore:
- A yogic mantra that expresses the indwelling Spirit
- How to regulate the breath through the mental recitation of a mantra
- A technique to access the central channe l (suṣumnā nāḍī)
- How to attune to and commune with Spirit
- A guided central channel prāṇāyāma with mantra japa
Here’s What You’ll Receive
- Seven 90-Minute Class Sessions With Gary Kraftsow
Experience a unique opportunity to be mentored by and learn from Gary Kraftsow, founder and director of the American Viniyoga Institute — from the comfort of your own home. Each class session includes a livestreaming video option and will guide you to explore the ancient art and science of authentic prāṇāyāma yoga, a multidimensional breathwork practice to transform your struggles into calm, vitality, joy, and a deeper sense of meaning. - Seven Video Recordings of Class Sessions
After each class, the video will be available for you to stream in a high-quality format. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can watch anytime and anywhere at your convenience. - Seven Audio Recordings of Class Sessions
After each class, the audio will be available for you to stream. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can listen anytime and anywhere at your convenience. - Seven Transcripts of Class Sessions
You’ll also receive the entire class transcription after each session is completed. You can then review, print, and highlight the most important insights and practices you were given. - Interactive Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson
Between class sessions, you’ll have the option of completing related exercises, practicing new tools, and answering questions to accelerate your learning and integrate each week’s lesson.
About Gary Kraftsow
Gary Kraftsow has been an innovator in the transmission of yoga for health, healing, and personal transformation for over 40 years. He began his study of yoga in India with T.K.V. Deśikāchar in 1974 and received a Viniyoga Special Diploma from Viniyoga International in Paris, France in 1988.
Gary received his master’s degree in psychology and religion from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1983 and opened the Maui School of Yoga Therapy around that time.
In 1999, he founded the American Viniyoga Institute, LLC. Since then, he has become a renowned speaker and teacher of the Viniyoga methodology at many conferences and schools nationally and internationally. Gary has protocols for two National Institutes of Health studies, one on yoga for chronic low back pain and one on yoga for anxiety. He also helped develop a clinical trial on mind-body stress reduction in the workplace.
He is the director and senior teacher at the American Viniyoga Institute (AVI®), author of the books Yoga for Wellness and Yoga for Transformation, and the educational DVDs Viniyoga Therapy for Low Back, Sacrum and Hips… Viniyoga Therapy for Upper Back, Neck and Shoulders… Viniyoga Therapy for Depression. .. and Viniyoga Therapy for Anxiety.
He has also produced multiple online workshops and is in the process of creating the AVI Digital Library, which offers both live and on-demand classes.
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