Sharon Gannon | |
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| Born | July 4, 1951 |
| Occupation(s) | Yoga teacher, animal rights advocate, singer, painter, songwriter, author, choreographer, dancer |
| Years active | 1970–present |
| Website | http://www.jivamuktiyoga.com |
Sharon Gannon (born July 4, 1951 [1] in Washington, D.C.) is a yoga teacher, animal rights advocate, musician, author, dancer and choreographer. Along with David Life, she is the co-founder of the Jivamukti Yoga method.
Gannon studied Dance at the University of Washington. [2] She began studying yoga, meditation and bhakti practices in 1969. Her gurus are Shri Brahmananda Saraswati, [3] Swami Nirmalananda, and Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. [4] . Through the grace of Shyamdas, she was initiated into the Pustimarg Sampradaya through Shri Milanbaba Goswami. She met her creative partner David Life in 1982, [4] and started teaching yoga in 1984. [5] She and Life studied Sivananda Yoga in India in 1986, and co-founded the Jivamukti Yoga Center in New York on their return. [4] [6] In 1990 they studied Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga in Mysore under Pattabhi Jois. [4]
Gannon was involved with dance, performance art, and music in the Seattle art scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s before moving to New York with musician Sue Ann Harkey in 1983. [7] [8] In Seattle, Gannon co-founded the band Audio Letter with Sue Ann Harkey and was part of the group that founded the Salon Apocalypse performance art salon. [7]
Since 1993, Gannon has presented annually at national and international conferences. In 2009 she began organizing the Jivamukti Tribe Gathering conference for advanced teachers. [9] In 2017, Gannon and Life transferred the ownership and operations of Jivamukti Yoga to Camilla Veen and Hari Mulukutla under the name of Jivamukti Global. Jivamukti Yoga is taught worldwide at Jivamukti Yoga Schools, and affiliated centers. [10]
Her celebrity students include Sting, [11] Russell Simmons, [11] [12] Madonna, [11] and Uma Thurman. [11]
Gannon is a lifelong and outspoken advocate for the rights of animals and ethical veganism. [13] [14] [15]
In 1999 she helped to set up the Animal Mukti Free Spay & Neuter Clinic at the Humane Society of New York City. [16] It reduced the number of unwanted pets that had to be put down in the city by 30%. [17]
In 2004, with David Life, she was recognized as "Friend of Ferals" by the Humane Society of New York and Neighborhood Cats. The Farm Sanctuary awarded Gannon and life the 2008 Compassionate Living Award. She has worked with PETA on various projects and campaigns as a "vanguard member". [5] She was nominated for the "Gutsiest Woman of the Year 1999" by Jane Magazine and awarded the Compassionate Living Award by Farm Sanctuary in 2008. [18]
Gannon has performed on vocals and violin in various bands, and in 2010 issued a solo album Sharanam . [19] She and Sue Ann Harkey founded the band Audio Letter in 1980; its album It Is This It Is Not This was praised by critics. [20] [21]
Gannon danced, directed and choreographed for her dance company Moon-Food in the 1980s. She and Life perform in the 2007 Asana: Sacred Dance of the Yogis; she features also in the 2008 Guruji. [22]
Gannon has written essays, short stories and poems, [7] and articles for magazines including Yoga Journal , [23] Origin,Mantra, and Chronogram.
Her books, some co-written with David Life, include:
Eugenie Peterson, known as Indra Devi, was a pioneering teacher of yoga as exercise, and an early disciple of the "father of modern yoga", Tirumalai Krishnamacharya.
K. Pattabhi Jois was an Indian yoga guru who developed and popularized the flowing style of yoga as exercise known as Ashtanga vinyasa yoga. In 1948, Jois established the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India. Pattabhi Jois is one of a short list of Indians instrumental in establishing modern yoga as exercise in the 20th century, along with B. K. S. Iyengar, another pupil of Krishnamacharya in Mysore. Jois sexually abused some of his yoga students by touching inappropriately during adjustments. Sharath Jois has publicly apologised for his grandfather's "improper adjustments".
Ashtanga vinyasa yoga is a style of yoga as exercise popularised by K. Pattabhi Jois during the twentieth century, often promoted as a dynamic form of classical Indian (hatha) yoga. Jois claimed to have learnt the system from his teacher Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. The style is energetic, synchronising breath with movements. The individual poses (asanas) are linked by flowing movements (vinyasas).
An āsana is a body posture, originally and still a general term for a sitting meditation pose, and later extended in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise, to any type of position, adding reclining, standing, inverted, twisting, and balancing poses. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali define "asana" as "[a position that] is steady and comfortable". Patanjali mentions the ability to sit for extended periods as one of the eight limbs of his system. Asanas are also called yoga poses or yoga postures in English.
Sun Salutation, also called Surya Namaskar(a) or Salute to the Sun (Sanskrit: सूर्यनमस्कार, romanized: Sūryanamaskāra), is a practice in yoga as exercise incorporating a flow sequence of some twelve linked asanas. The asana sequence was first recorded as yoga in the early 20th century, though similar exercises were in use in India before that, for example among wrestlers. The basic sequence involves moving from a standing position into Downward and Upward Dog poses and then back to the standing position, but many variations are possible. The set of 12 asanas is dedicated to the Hindu solar deity, Surya. In some Indian traditions, the positions are each associated with a different mantra.
Lilias, Yoga and You is a PBS television show hosted by Lilias Folan, a Cincinnati, Ohio based practitioner of yoga as exercise. The show first aired on October 5, 1970 on Cincinnati PBS member station WCET and three years later was carried on PBS across the United States, where it ran until 1999.
Ustrasana, Ushtrasana, or Camel Pose is a kneeling back-bending asana in modern yoga as exercise.
Judith Lasater is an American yoga teacher and writer in the San Francisco Bay Area, recognized as one of the leading teachers in the country.
The Jivamukti Yoga method is a proprietary style of yoga created by David Life and Sharon Gannon in 1984.
R. Sharath Jois is a teacher, practitioner and lineage holder (paramaguru) of Ashtanga Yoga, in the tradition of his grandfather K. Pattabhi Jois. He is the director of Sharath Yoga Center in Mysore, India.
Yoga Makaranda, meaning "Essence of Yoga", is a 1934 book on hatha yoga by the influential pioneer of yoga as exercise, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. Most of the text is a description of 42 asanas accompanied by 95 photographs of Krishnamacharya and his students executing the poses. There is a brief account of practices other than asanas, which form just one of the eight limbs of classical yoga, that Krishnamacharya "did not instruct his students to practice".
Modern yoga as exercise has often been taught by women to classes consisting mainly of women. This continued a tradition of gendered physical activity dating back to the early 20th century, with the Harmonic Gymnastics of Genevieve Stebbins in the US and Mary Bagot Stack in Britain. One of the pioneers of modern yoga, Indra Devi, a pupil of Krishnamacharya, popularised yoga among American women using her celebrity Hollywood clients as a lever.
Srivatsa Ramaswami is a teacher of Vinyasa Krama yoga. He studied for 33 years under the "grandfather of modern yoga", Krishnamacharya. In India he teaches at Kalakshetra. He has run workshops in America at the Esalen Institute, the Himalayan Institute and many other centres. He is the author of four books on yoga.
Janice Gates was a teacher of yoga as exercise and mindful yoga, known for her emphasis on the power of yoginis, women in yoga and her work in yoga therapy.
The history of yoga in the United States begins in the 19th century, with the philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; Emerson's poem "Brahma" states the Hindu philosophy behind yoga. More widespread interest in yoga can be dated to 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.
Enlighten Up! is a 2009 documentary film by Kate Churchill on yoga as exercise. It follows an unemployed journalist for six months as, on the filmmaker's invitation, he travels from the US to India to practise under yoga masters including Pattabhi Jois, his first American pupil Norman Allen, and B. K. S. Iyengar.
Shiva Rea is a teacher of Vinyasa flow yoga and yoga trance dance. She is the founder of Prana Vinyasa Yoga. She is one of the best-known yoga teachers in America, and around the world.
Postural yoga began in India as a variant of traditional yoga, which was a mainly meditational practice; it has spread across the world and returned to the Indian subcontinent in different forms. The ancient Yoga Sutras of Patanjali mention yoga postures, asanas, only briefly, as meditation seats. Medieval Haṭha yoga made use of a small number of asanas alongside other techniques such as pranayama, shatkarmas, and mudras, but it was despised and almost extinct by the start of the 20th century. At that time, the revival of postural yoga was at first driven by Indian nationalism. Advocates such as Yogendra and Kuvalayananda made yoga acceptable in the 1920s, treating it as a medical subject. From the 1930s, the "father of modern yoga" Krishnamacharya developed a vigorous postural yoga, influenced by gymnastics, with transitions (vinyasas) that allowed one pose to flow into the next.
Cyndi Lee is a teacher of mindful yoga, a combination of Tibetan Buddhist practice and yoga as exercise. She has an international reputation and is the author of several books on her approach and runs her business from New York City.
Modern yoginis | ||
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| Women in yoga |
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