Judith Hanson Lasater

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Judith Lasater
Born
Judith Hanson Lasater

(1947-03-08) 8 March 1947 (age 75)
NationalityAmerican
OccupationYoga teacher, author
Known for Yoga Journal

Judith Lasater (born 8 March 1947) is an American yoga teacher and writer in the San Francisco Bay Area, recognized as one of the leading teachers in the country. [1] [2]

Contents

She helped to found The California Yoga Teachers Association, the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco, and Yoga Journal magazine. She is the author of numerous books on yoga practice and philosophy.

Life

Early life

Despite being trained in Iyengar Yoga, Lasater took her honeymoon at the Sivananda Yoga Ashram in the Bahamas. Paradise Island, Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat - panoramio.jpg
Despite being trained in Iyengar Yoga, Lasater took her honeymoon at the Sivananda Yoga Ashram in the Bahamas.

Lasater gained her bachelor's degree in physical therapy, and a doctorate in East-West psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. [4] In 1970, while still a student, she developed arthritis and, feeling debilitated, began yoga at the YMCA in Austin, Texas. She stated that she instantly felt better, and has not suffered from arthritis since then. [5] She began teaching yoga in 1971 when the YMCA instructor left, and she took over the class. [5] [6] She was an early disciple of B.K.S. Iyengar. [7] To widen their knowledge, she and her husband Ike took their honeymoon in the Bahamas to attend Vishnudevananda's yoga teacher training course at the International Sivananda Yoga Ashram there. [3]

Yoga teacher

She taught her yoga classes in the 1970s in a simple rented room, hanging a photograph of Iyengar on the wall. The journalist and historian of yoga in America, Stefanie Syman, writes that the key was doing away with all religious elements in her yoga teaching. [8] In this way, she helped to popularize Iyengar Yoga in America, and was instrumental in creating the slow, gentle Restorative Yoga based on Iyengar-style asanas. [7] [9] She co-founded The California Yoga Teachers Association (CYTA) in 1974, and later became its president. [10] [5] [11]

Founder of yoga institutions

Lasater co-founded the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco (it had been the CYTA's teacher training institute [3] ) and Yoga Journal magazine. [10] [12] With her husband and William Staniger, she published the 300 copies of the first issue of the journal, becoming its copy editor and later associate editor. [13] She helped to make the journal accurate, technical, and with a strong emphasis on yoga's therapeutic value, continuing a tradition started by Indra Devi. [14] In so doing, Lasater helped to bring about what Syman describes as a revolution, "wresting [yoga] back from the swamis", [15] something that in Syman's view was possible only because of her teacher Iyengar's stubbornness, determination and knowledge. [15] Syman states that Lasater went on to argue that physical yoga was sufficient, able in Lasater's words to absorb "elements of the other Yogas, such as Mental (Jnana) and Devotional (Bhakti) Yoga". [16] She continues to serve on Yoga Journal's advisory boards, [10] and is a regular presenter at its annual conference. [17]

Leader of yoga in America

Lasater has been called "One of the nation's [i.e. the USA's] foremost [yoga] instructors", [1] and a "yoga teaching star", [2] having led workshops in 44 American states as well as in Australia, Bolivia, Canada, China, England, France, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, and Russia. [6] She has written numerous books on yoga; they have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. [18]

The yoga therapist and teacher Janice Gates devoted a chapter of her book about women in yoga to her. [19] Gates quotes Lasater as saying that the problem is always practitioners' attitude, not the practice itself; people in the West often seek an austere yoga in the hope of controlling their bodies, but, Lasater notes, "When the Buddha sought enlightenment, the 'austerity stage' is the first one he tried and the first one he dropped". [20]

Family life

Lasater is married with three grown children. [21]

Works

— how to deal with stress in one's life, using Restorative Yoga, with advice on problems such as back pain, insomnia, and pregnancy
— how to bring the spiritual lessons from yoga into the challenging situations of daily life
— short book on yoga poses and breathing for pregnant mothers
— a guide to practising and teaching yoga, explained through poses like Trikonasana, Vriksasana, and Virabhadrasana
— how to develop core strength in the abdominal muscles, using yoga
— aphorisms and affirmations to accompany a yoga practice
— advice and exercises for dealing with violence, using what Buddhism calls 'right speech'
— deeper understanding of yoga through the relationship of asana practice to anatomy
— using Restorative Yoga with new asanas to relax actively, using props such as chairs to rebalance body and mind

Related Research Articles

Iyengar Yoga School of modern yoga

Iyengar Yoga, named after and developed by B. K. S. Iyengar, and described in his bestselling 1966 book Light on Yoga, is a form of yoga as exercise that has an emphasis on detail, precision and alignment in the performance of yoga postures (asanas).

Indra Devi Pioneering yoga teacher of Hollywood stars

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K. Pattabhi Jois Indian yoga guru (1915–2009)

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Asana Postures in hatha yoga and modern yoga practice

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Downward Dog Pose Standing posture in modern yoga

Downward Dog Pose or Downward-facing Dog Pose, also called Adho Mukha Shvanasana, is an inversion asana, often practised as part of a flowing sequence of poses, especially Surya Namaskar, the Salute to the Sun. The asana is commonly used in modern yoga as exercise. The asana does not have formally named variations, but several playful variants are used to assist beginning practitioners to become comfortable in the pose.

<i>Yoga Journal</i> American magazine on yoga as exercise

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Yin Yoga A slow-paced school of modern yoga as exercise

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Virasana Kneeling posture in modern yoga

Virasana or Hero Pose is a kneeling asana in modern yoga as exercise. Medieval hatha yoga texts describe a cross-legged meditation asana under the same name. Supta Virasana is the reclining form of the pose; it provides a stronger stretch.

<i>Light on Yoga</i> 1966 book on the Iyengar Yoga style of modern yoga as exercise

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Yoga as exercise Physical activity consisting mainly of yoga poses

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<i>Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience</i> 1943 yoga book by Theos Casimir Bernard

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Mindful Yoga Buddhist-style mindfulness practice with yoga as exercise

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Restorative Yoga is the practice of asanas, each held for longer than in conventional yoga as exercise classes, often with the support of props such as folded blankets, to relax the body, reduce stress, and often to prepare for pranayama.

Angela Farmer is a teacher of modern yoga, described as "creative, free and unconventional" and an "iconoclast". She is known also as the creator of the first yoga mat.

Donna Farhi is a teacher of yoga as exercise and the author of five books on practising and teaching yoga. She has been described as a yoga "superstar".

Sarah Powers is a yoga teacher. She co-founded the Insight Yoga Institute and created Insight Yoga, a combination of yoga, transpersonal psychology and Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, described in her 2008 book of the same name. She was closely involved with the creation of Yin Yoga.

Yoga in the United States Yoga in the United States

Yoga in the United States has a long history, foreshadowed in the 19th century by the philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose poem "Brahma" is a statement of the Hindu philosophy behind yoga, and Henry David Thoreau, and starting in earnest with the Hindu leader Vivekananda's visit from India in 1893; he presented yoga as a spiritual path without postures (asanas), very different from modern yoga as exercise. Two other early figures, however, the women's rights advocate Ida C. Craddock and the businessman and occultist Pierre Bernard, created their own interpretations of yoga, based on tantra and oriented to physical pleasure.

Yoga using props Use of objects to assist yoga postures

Props used in yoga include chairs, blocks, belts, mats, blankets, bolsters, and straps. They are used in postural yoga to assist with correct alignment in an asana, for ease in mindful yoga practice, to enable poses to be held for longer periods in Yin Yoga, where support may allow muscles to relax, and to enable people with movement restricted for any reason, such as stiffness, injury, or arthritis, to continue with their practice.

References

  1. 1 2 Kidston, Martin (2006-11-25). "Asana in Montana". Helena Independent Record. Retrieved 2006-12-04.
  2. 1 2 Powers, Ann (2000-08-01). "American Influences Help Redefine Practice of Yoga". The New York Times . Retrieved 2007-10-03.
  3. 1 2 3 Syman 2010, p. 349.
  4. ↑ Gates 2006, pp. 89, 93.
  5. 1 2 3 Schneider 2003, pp. 84–92.
  6. 1 2 "About Judith". Archived from the original on 2006-11-01. Retrieved 2006-12-04.
  7. 1 2 Isaacs, Nora (2007-04-05). "Exercisers Slow It Down With Qigong". The New York Times .
  8. ↑ Syman 2010, p. 262.
  9. ↑ Gates 2006, pp. 89–90.
  10. 1 2 3 "California Yoga Teachers Association Board of Directors". Archived from the original on 2006-08-23. Retrieved 2006-12-04.
  11. ↑ Hann, Joelle (23 August 2007). "Between Poses, a Barrage of Pickup Lines". The New York Times .
  12. ↑ Syman 2010, p. 244.
  13. ↑ Syman 2010, pp. 244, 262.
  14. ↑ Syman 2010, pp. 248–249.
  15. 1 2 Syman 2010, pp. 253–254.
  16. ↑ Syman 2010, pp. 254–255.
  17. ↑ "Yoga Journal Conference Presenters". Archived from the original on 2007-10-23. Retrieved 2007-10-03.
  18. ↑ "au:Judith Hanson Lasater". WorldCat . Retrieved 15 August 2019.
  19. ↑ Gates 2006, pp. 88–94.
  20. ↑ Gates 2006, p. 91.
  21. ↑ Gates 2006, p. 94.

Sources

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