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Kripalu Yoga is an inquiry-based yoga methodology that promotes the awakening of the life force (prana). Using classic asanas, pranayama, meditation, and relaxation techniques, Kripalu Yoga increases awareness of body, breath, and mind and encourages natural alignment.
A typical Kripalu Yoga class includes meditation, pranayama, breath coordinated with movement, pratapana movements that warm up and condition the body for sustaining poses, and creative sequences that contain postures and the six movements of the spine. There is not one particular set or series of postures. Kripalu Yoga classes will often end with some time for students to initiate individual movement inquiry (meditation-in-motion) before ending with Savasana (relaxation and integration).
Off the yoga mat, this inquiry-based approach to life also encourages natural alignment and increased awareness—of our thoughts, words, feelings, and actions. In this way, Kripalu Yoga is the inquiry into optimal living.
Kripalu Yoga emphasizes the mechanics of yoga (proper breath and alignment) as well as the inner, spiritual dimensions of yoga practice. Students are encouraged to honor the wisdom of their bodies and to work according to their bodies’ limits and strengths at any given time.
The primary objective of Kripalu Yoga practice is to awaken the natural intelligence of life-force energy (the flow of prana) in order to promote thriving in all aspects of life.
The foundations of Kripalu Yoga come from the life and teachings of Swami Kripalu (1913–1981), a highly respected kundalini yoga master, prolific writer, and talented musician from the Gujarat province of India, who is known for the intensity of his spiritual practice and the depth of his compassion.
The Kripalu tradition is founded on Swami Kripalu’s teaching of Sanatana Dharma, what is called the Perennial Wisdom in the West. This is the recognition that yoga and all the world’s wisdom traditions stem from a single universal truth that human beings can experience directly through a variety of disciplines, techniques, and practices.
In the 1960s, one of Swami Kripalu’s most devoted students, Yogi Amrit Desai, began teaching and articulating the principles of “Kripalu Yoga” in the West (he was living in Philadelphia). His focus from the beginning was on how contemporary Western students could apply the principles of yoga to their everyday lives. In 1966, Yogi Desai founded the Yoga Society of Pennsylvania; his teachings were so popular that by 1969, the society was sponsoring more than 150 classes a week for 2,500 students, and Yogi Desai had designed the first Kripalu Yoga teacher training and trained the first groups of teachers.
In 1972, he and his wife, Urmila Desai, founded a yoga ashram in Sumneytown, Pennsylvania, where hundreds of students came to study and live a life dedicated to the practice of yoga. It was there that the Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training evolved and was eventually taught by the senior members of the community.
From 1977 to 1981, Swami Kripalu lived at the ashram, where he practiced intense yoga and meditation (10 hours a day) and occasionally taught ashram residents. Many of Kripalu’s senior teachers and retreat center leaders continued to be inspired by their encounters with Swami Kripalu.
Today, these senior teachers and leaders continue to develop the Kripalu Yoga methodology and its inquiry-based approach to learning as well as the practice of yoga off the mat and in work, relationships, creative expression—in all aspects of life.
In 1983, the Kripalu ashram moved to its current location in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In 1996, the ashram model was dissolved and Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health became a non-profit educational organization.
Source:Grace Welker
Grace is the Editorial Director at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health and has been writing about and for Kripalu for five years.
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