Why the term Evolutionary?

The phrase Evolutionary Yoga is my way of articulating a process.  I find that the term evolutionary describes my view in a number of interesting ways:

• Most importantly, Yoga should help to facilitate the evolution of each individual.  The development of Evolutionary Yoga is like learning a language as well as I can, to have the richest vocabulary in order to “speak to” the needs of each person as articulately and appropriately as possible – to be truly flexible in my ability to teach.  Ultimately, the aim is to facilitate others to be their own teachers.  Which I suspect will eventually lead me to teach teachers.
  
  
• I see Yoga as a living, evolving art and science, not restricted, confined, or defined by culture or time.
  
  
• Evolutionary Yoga encompasses my evolution as a teacher. Because it is an open-ended approach, an ongoing inquiry, it allows me to weave in golden threads to the existing tapestry as I encounter them.
  
  
• Evolutionary Yoga is based on the evolutionary origins of movement.  The development of movement in human beings follows the same progression as the development of movement in the animal kingdom from the one-celled animals through the primates.  Ontogeny (human development) and phylogeny (the evolutionary development of animals) clearly show the evolutionary, organic origins of the yoga forms.  By viewing yoga asana and pranayama through the lens of developmental movement, one can see where an individual’s development may be inhibited or partial.  As adults, we can bring our awareness to these Basic Neurological Patterns while revisiting them experientially.  Developmental movement repatterning is a way by which each one of us can establish an integrated movement foundation, thus freeing ourselves from difficulties at a root level.  The scientific view that each one of us embodies evolutionary history within ourselves supports the yogic view that we are all one. 

One of the meanings of Yoga is ‘to unite, to merge.’  A living art and science, Evolutionary Yoga realizes this meaning through the merging of old and new, ancient and modern.  Truly, Evolutionary Yoga is part of a long tradition of exchange and integration that has gone on for centuries between India and China, between east and west, between old and new.  By developing Evolutionary Yoga, it is my intention to be inclusive of all the richness that is available to us from without and from within.