SATURDAY
Class 1: Smart Strength: Building Upper Body Power in Ashtanga
Your jump back is stuck. Headstand feels unstable. Crow is confusing. Forearm Balance seems impossibly far away. You’re doing the vinyasa every day — so why isn’t it working? Because doing lots of vinyasa and progressing to harder poses isn’t a strength strategy. It’s just repetition. In this class you’ll learn how to build upper body strength systematically — starting right where you are, establishing a solid foundation you can trust, and making real progress toward the strength poses you want to achieve.
- Plank drills and smart vinyasa
- Headstand: coming up with confidence, balancing with ease
- Crow, Arm Pressure, Forearm Balance — step by step
Class 2: Crouch & Spring: Foundational Dynamism
Life is constant change, and a common response is hesitation and doubt - protecting ourselves, playing it safe, not even noticing we’ve stopped taking risks. This shows up in practice: transitioning doubtfully, arriving at poses tentatively, accepting mediocre outcomes without realizing you’re squandering the chance to build real strength. This workshop introduces crouch and spring mentality - the decisive, committed quality that builds both physical power and confidence. We’ll work with foundational transitions and poses, learning to set up, commit, and spring instead of hesitating our way through.
**What we’ll practice:**
- Transitioning into Chaturanga Dandasana in a way that builds strength
- Sun Salutation transitions, especially into Upward Dog, using decisive setup and spring
- Moving into standing poses (Warrior sequences) to develop leg and core strength
- Basic forward bends with commitment, not collapse
- Basic hip openers: the half-lotus progression through Tree Pose and Ardha Baddha Padmottanasana
- Jump-back transitions that create power instead of grinding
You’ll learn to take risks in controlled conditions, to act decisively instead of doubtfully, and to practice in a way that actually builds capacity.
SUNDAY
Class 1: Mysore
This class provides the student with a concentrated and heightened learning experience that will help he/she develop practical and technical yoga skills and be immersed in the inspirational magic and poetic soul of the practice. Each student will receive valuable one to one guidance from David on developing his/her personal practice. The student will develop skill in applying the practice techniques in ways that are logical, challenging, intelligent and fun. David focuses on learning how to follow the Ashtanga system and at the same time creating a practice that honors individuality, versatility and creativity.
Class 2: Yoga Sutras Talk: Book 1, Sutras 18 to 22
The Yoga Sutras offer practical insight into how to work with the mind, both in daily life and in your asana practice. In this session, David will give a talk on Book 1, Sutras 18 to 22, a key passage that points to the inner qualities that support real progress on the path.
We will explore five essential qualities to cultivate: • Sraddha: faith • Virya: energy and strength • Smrti: memory • Samadhi: meditation • Prajna: wisdom and insight
These five can be understood as inner “containers” you keep filling through steady practice.
David will unpack each word, what it means, and how to apply it in a grounded way.
The Shala Fort Greene
83 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY
All registration is done through https://theshala.com/.
