How can a teacher have a one-on-one relationship in a class of 50-plus?” “The teacher-student relationship was lost years ago,” he says. The packed classes of today are a world away from the way Borg-Olivier learned, during a time when teacher-student relationships were sacred and maintained for years. If you practice in a way that causes pain, injury and stress, you’ve missed the point of yoga completely.” “There are so many people teaching nonsense yoga,” says Borg-Olivier. And Iyengar, with his obsessive attention to alignment, and Jois, who encouraged practicing all of yoga’s eight limbs, would likely not approve. Much of the yoga being taught now, what Borg-Olivier calls “the aerobics of the 2000s,” is having a negative impact on the musculoskeletal system. “People do want fitness and long-term health, but what’s being taught now is short-term gains with long-term potential damage to the nervous, reproductive and immune systems.” “We’ve swung from one way to the other,” he explains. His spinal flow, inspired by Asian martial arts and his background as a physiotherapist, is designed to be a pain-free way for people to move while gaining all the benefits of the yogic tradition. I knew at the time that asana was a small part of it but I thought I could at least attract people.”īorg-Olivier is partner in Yoga Synergy, a yoga school in Sydney that has been running since 1984. “I wanted to show people it could be a bit exciting, but in retrospective it went a bit out of control.

“In the ’70s and ’80s, people perceived yoga to be boring, as meditation,” he says. He also believes that modern yoga has lost its way, becoming separated from both its essence and original philosophy. He has studied under some of the yoga greats, including Ashtanga Vinyasa creator Pattabhi Jois and BKS Iyengar.

Yoga may be a starting place into contortion due to increased flexibility but contortion itself or any intense stretching/flexibility program can also be a starting point into the art!Īustralian Simon Borg-Olivier, who will visit Lifestyle Yoga Dubai from March 27 to April 1, is a decades-long practitioner and lifelong student. Yoga and contortion are two completely different things that are independent of one another. While yoga began as an ancient art to prepare the body for meditation, these days many people associate the practice with extreme flexibility and the perfect handstand.

Yoga girl contortion