Yoga 2025 October 2025 Newsletter- Why is Lineage important

 Lineage is important while learning yoga; it balances the values, culture, training, and history.  Lineage helps us understand where yoga came from.  There are contextual clues within the teaching that form and solidify the style it is or will be.  

There are many types of yoga, such as hot yoga, butti yoga, and vinyasa flow. Lineage helps define and differentiate these branches by tracing their development back to their roots. Imagine the tree of yoga, where each branch represents a path with its own lineage, all tracing back to a beginning.  

 For me, lineage plays a role in my yoga practice. Think about  who your teacher is, how you were trained. Did you have one teacher?  Did you have multiple teachers?  How much experience did those teachers have before they taught (you)? What do they know or what have they shared?   You can look at one of my classes when I was first learning (teaching) and see that I was trying to find myself in the lineage. What was my role?? If you compare that to a class from last week, the difference is amazing. There are multiple opportunities for self-realization and different methods in each class.  

The elements of how we teach are learned from our teachers.  I reflect on how I was trained. I look back on submitting karma classes or short videos for review.  I found myself using some of the same phrases my teacher used.  As I grew in my training, I found my own words that reflected the experience I wanted to relate.  The experiences are passed down to the students.  We are taught through the lens of self-realization, working toward enlightenment. Lineage plays a role in how you learn, what you learn, how it’s applied, and the guiding principles.  Lineage can be something small as a cue in downdog, to breathing techniques in postures, to a Yoga Nidra set-up. By having such a deep lineage, we are bound by experience, time, and history to continue the traditions and values of our predecessors. 

 As I find moments in my own training where I feel like a new door has opened, I ask myself how I got here and how I can help others to do the same.  Seeking answers, they are in the lineage.  Profoundly draped in the lines of our lineage, the ideals and values that help us continue on the path of self-realization and enlightenment.