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Kimberly Tollman

Biography:

Yoga to me is therapy on several levels. My background is as a licensed Marriage Family Therapist, mainly working with severely mentally ill and emotionally disturbed patients. Although I love and deeply believe in the benefits of traditional mental health therapy, nothing has expanded my own coping skills more than my yoga practice. My first experience with yoga was in an intermediate hot Vinyasa class. That experience led me to my Hot Power Fusion 200-hour TT @ Core Power Yoga that following year. Although my base is in the 26 posture/Bikram style sequence, I absolutely love teaching vinyasa style classes as well. I have also taught many community based classes, including charity events and large groups of elementary school kiddos. The most important and consistent piece that yoga brings into my life, is returning to my breath, as well as the idea and belief that everything is going to be ok! Letting go of things and being calm and present was not a natural thing for me before yoga came into my life. I'm a native of Orange County but have traveled as far as South Africa, Europe, Canada, and many parts of Mexico. After a major car accident 3 years ago and enduring many challenges, the one thing I was able to rely and lean on is that amazing and beautiful yoga breath.....the breath of life. This is exactly what gets me through any obstacle that arises on my path. My journey of physically getting back to yoga after my car accident was a rough road, but I can gratefully say that with everything I've learned and grown from, I am back, enormously humbled, and have found a deeper and better way of living. I look forward to sharing energy and light on the mat with any and all levels of yogis. Favorite posture: Standing Bow This posture not only challenges the flexibility in one's body, but it also challenges the balance as well as the monkey mind (that inner chatter that can hinder the beauty of being truly present). I love seeing and feeling the progress that my own body and mind have made within this posture, and being able to see the progress that students journey through as well. Balancing on one foot while holding the other and kicking into a backbend, while trying to quiet the mind is not an easy task!

About my classes

Yoga came to the attention of an educated western public in the mid-19th century along with other topics of Indian philosophy. In the context of this budding interest, N. C. Paul published his Treatise on Yoga Philosophy in 1851.

The modern scientific study of yoga began with the works of N. C. Paul and Major D. Basu in the late 19th century, and then continued in the 20th century with Sri Yogendra (1897-1989) and Swami Kuvalayananda. Western medical researchers came to Swami Kuvalayananda’s Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center, starting in 1928, to study Yoga as a science.

Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self

According to Jacobsen, “Yoga has five principal meanings:

Yoga as a disciplined method for attaining a goal;
Yoga as techniques of controlling the body and the mind;
Yoga as a name of one of the schools or systems of philosophy (darśana);
Yoga in connection with other words referring to traditions specialising in particular techniques of yoga;
Yoga as the goal of Yoga practice.”

Yoga is my favourite way to pretend to work out

The West, in the early 21st century typically associates the term “yoga” with Hatha yoga and its asanas or as a form of exercise. During the 1910s and 1920s in the USA, yoga suffered a period of bad publicity due largely to the backlash against immigration, a rise in puritanical values, and a number of scandals. In the 1930s and 1940s yoga began to gain more public acceptance as a result of celebrity endorsement. In the 1950s the United States saw another period of paranoia against yoga, but by the 1960s, western interest in Hindu spirituality reached its peak, giving rise to a great number of Neo-Hindu schools specifically advocated to a western public. During this period, most of the influential Indian teachers of yoga came from two lineages, those of Sivananda Saraswati and of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya.Teachers of Hatha yoga who were active in the west in this period included B.K.S. Iyengar , K. Pattabhi Jois , Swami Vishnu-devananda, and Swami Satchidananda . Yogi Bhajan brought Kundalini Yoga to the United States in 1969. Comprehensive, classical teachings of Ashtanga Yoga, Samkhya, the subtle body theory, Fitness Asanas, and tantric elements were included in the yoga teachers training by Baba Hari Dass, in the United States and Canada.

Source: Wikipedia