I met Scott Blossom back in September when I took his 7-day Samavesha immersion course. I became so intrigued with the type of yoga he is doing—an energy-based asana practice that is more about moving prana than moving your knee exactly over your ankle—that I have done little else since. Scott's also an ayurvedic practitioner, and when I found out that his teacher, Dr. Robert Svoboda, was going to be joining him for a day-and-a-half workshop at One Yoga Center in Santa Cruz, I jumped at the opportunity to go.

The Nov. 9-10 workshop was called Sthiram Sukham Asanam: Living in Rhythm With Our Prana, and was mainly about how to align your energies (sthiram, the stable, and sukham, the relaxed) with themselves and also with the energies of the universe.

Scott led the yoga sessions, and Robert led inspired discussions about everything from Saturn to sanskrit to female health to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (the philosophy of which, he says, accounts for a whole bunch of our problems in our society).

I liked Robert immediately. He is not only brilliant—a scholar in ayurveda (the Indian health system connected with yoga) and astrology—but he also has a terrific, dry wit. He talks about the conservation of energy in our own bodies, calling different actions efficient or expensive. My favorite of his adages was: "Crisis is a bad time to freak out."

Both Robert and Scott talked about how, in the West, we tend towards overactive asana practices, but they only serve to deplete us and create instability of the nervous system. The idea, they say, is not to sweat profusely, but to practice balance. If you are already practicing balance, that's great. But don't become complacent. Another gem Robert threw us:: "Let's not dislocate our shoulders as we pat ourselves on the back."
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Missed it? Scott and Robert will be doing another tag-team effort at CIIS in December. I'll be out of town, sadly, but if you attend, let us know it goes!