Chatting with Bryan Kest at Buddhi Yoga

With this year zooming past, we can’t believe we’re already in the holiday season and before we know it, our 200-Hour teacher training at the studio will be starting. We’re always talking about how yoga is more than poses and looked back at this interview with Bryan Kest, one of our YOGA TRAINING SAN DIEGO guest teachers.

Q & A with Bryan Kest

You have a really unique way of minimizing the emphasis on the actual poses themselves and putting more emphasis on how people are going into the poses and what’s going on mentally while they’re practicing. How do you usually do that?

I try to emphasize what’s important to me. And that’s obvious in my class, what’s important to me is not the pose. But the pose has importance, that’s why we’re doing poses, you know? But the poses have importance for, I think, a different reason than why people do poses. Poses have physical benefits, exercise benefits—you exercise and something doesn’t get flaccid or doesn’t atrophy, it stays toned. That’s why I actually like the poses. It’s this practical stuff there’s nothing esoteric about it. It’s not about doing a pose a certain way and having some kind of esoteric experience. So I like to do poses in my own practice, I like to keep healthy and fit physically, because that contributes to how we feel. But it’s not the most important thing to me. Because your loose hamstrings don’t make you a better parent, you know? Loose hamstrings don’t make you a better employer, sticking your legs behind your head is not gonna help your community. What’s really important is your state of mind because that has the biggest effect, not only on your physical health which is what we’re understanding now, but it also has a big effect on all the relationships in your life. So, my priority is to get the mind in the right place because I want my body to be healthy and that is the most important aspect of a healthy body, and I want the relationships in my life to be healthy. Then I complement that with just getting the blood flowing, keeping the muscles toned, and keeping the body tension-free. Just basic physical qualities that have a nice effect.

See more of Bryan’s Interviews available on Vimeo.

You can catch Bryan and more rockstar teachers at our YOGA TRAINING SAN DIEGO this January, and/or at his Power Yoga Master Class at Buddhi Yoga.