4-week online class via Zoom
Tuesdays, January 7 - 28, 2025
6 pm – 7 pm ET 
$50 Paid Patreon Members / $55 General Admission

Please note: This class is lecture based, and will contain no actual yoga. All classes will be recorded for those unable to attend.

Study Hindu art, literature and scripture to better understand the meaning behind the traditional yoga asanas (poses).

Art historian and yoga instructor Brenda Edgar will offer a deeper understanding and appreciation of asanas (poses) both familiar and new. By learning about the history and meanings of these ancient movements—in which we make constellations of our bodies by taking the forms of the gods, goddesses, sages, heroes, and animals—we invite a deeper and richer experience of the practice.

Each week will be explore a different theme, including Lord Shiva, Sri Vishnu, Devi, the Great Goddess, and Earth/Cosmos (Sun/Moon, plants, animals). We will investigate each theme through illustrated lectures focusing on Hindu art, scripture, literature, and culture. We will learn about the different yoga asanas that are associated with the theme, and explore their original intended meaning, along with their correct form and potential modifications, with or without props. Our goal will be to learn to embody living representations of that imagery.  At the end of each class, the instructor will also share a practice plan that incorporates all the poses from that week's class.

Students will come away with a much-enriched understanding of the Hindu cultural significance of yoga poses, the "iconography" of yoga, and a deeper understanding of the stories and beliefs that the asanas represent, as well as the cultures from which the practices come. They will also have some ideas and tools for making their own practice more deeply meaningful.  

People from all religious backgrounds, or no religious background, are equally welcome.

Brenda Edgar is an Art Historian in Louisville, KY.  Her research interests include relics and reliquaries, medieval medical manuscripts and depictions of disease in medieval art, as well as the historical role of altered states of consciousness in the creation of art. She teaches Art History courses at Indiana University Southeast, and is also a poet whose work has appeared in numerous literary journals. She also teaches yoga, drawing on a background in Mysore-style Ashtanga yoga, in which she seeks to combine her talent for teaching, deep reverence for the Hindu tradition, and subtle sense of humor to make yoga enlightening and fun.

Images:

1) Shiva as Lord of the Dance, 10th or 11th century, bronze.  Art Institute of Chicago, Public Domain Dedication. 

2) Gajalakshmi Being Lustrated by Elephants, c. 1780, public domain.