Knot Into Yoga™ represents a return to groundedness in hatha yoga exercise. In the West, yoga has gained legions of followers despite very esoteric and Hindu specific framework. Despite being Westerners themselves, you can hear these would-be gurus crying that to practice “real yoga” you must adopt the culture and even religion of India.

Not only does this not suit the practical needs of most Westerners who are quite happy with their culture and their religion, but it actually contradicts the original purpose of hatha yoga exercise as written about in the “bible” of yoga in 200B.C. - the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali. In the Sutras, yoga is defined literally as a “yoke” to “unite” the physical, mental and emotional efforts into one effort. How that unity is expressed or represented by the practitioner is their own right and privilege. No other person can define what yoga means to all people.

Being Knot Into Yoga for everyone. Like Patthabi Jois, founder of Ashtanga yoga wrote, “Yoga is 99% perspiration - 1% theory.”

If you’re Knot Into Yoga, it’s most likely because you were turned off by this fascist granola marketing promoted by a few who see themselves as yoga “authorities”. If you’re Knot Into Yoga, you have been demanding a return to the pragmatism of a pure form of exercise. Well, we’re Knot Into Yoga, too. And that’s how this website, this approach and this movement evolved.

Here is a list of how we choose to benefit from our yoga. Others may benefit in other ways because they define yoga differently. However, no one can define yoga for us. We define it for ourselves.

• K.I.Y. focuses purely upon the physical practice: integrating the structure, movement and breathing.
• K.I.Y. cascades development of strength, stamina, endurance, agility, mobility, coordination and flexibility.
• K.I.Y. strengthens the mind through “meditative” practices which concentrate solely on the physical action of breathing.
• K.I.Y. makes joints and connective tissue healthier by restoring lubrication and nutrition flow. 
• K.I.Y. improves circulation through the nest of connective tissue housing the organs, improving organ health.
• K.I.Y. releases and flushes out toxic chemicals stored in soft tissue caused by the endocrine’s response to fear, stress and trauma.
• K.I.Y. bolsters immuno-function by unburdening the body of physical strain and chemical toxicity.
• K.I.Y. gives you pain-free mobility for improved functional performance and quality of life.
• K.I.Y. releives excess stress through hard, uncomfortable physical exercise.

Our teachers will be sharing yoga poses, or asana, as well as breath-linking, or vinyasa and movement flows, or prasara, here in our blog. We’re Knot Into Yoga, so we only discuss the Bare Bones of the practice: how to move within and between postures, how to breath through and between poses, and how to structurally deepen postures.

Bookmark this page and check back frequently for updates. If you want to contribute an article yourself, email it to sonnon@rmaxi.com - the man who created K.I.Y.