Integral Rolfing & Yoga, Structural Integration

		What is Integral Yoga?

		The corner stone of Lorenz's practice is to facilitate structural integration via Rolfing. "Integral Yoga" enhances the Rolfing process and increases its long term benefits. Integral Yoga offers the essential and or fundamental materials to create “ Union ” between body, mind and spirit. When you are able to stay conscious or “witness” the relationships between your body, mind and spirit, structural alignment and functional balance will be enhanced with minimal effort. With this objective in mind, Lorenz has created three goals in his teachings. 1) Use accurate assessment and design to create each class and a series of classes that allows the students' ability to progress; yet offers enough repetition for the deepening of experience and knowledge. (Lorenz's Rolfing, Movement Integration and yoga education make up the assessment and design for all of his yoga classes.) 2) Offer cues to enhance structural alignment and energetic awareness to develop a body based referent for each asana (posture) and pranayama (breath development exercises). (This results in the development and ability to control and balance the physical structure and the energy pathways of the body.) 3) Offer repetition and silent recitation of the previous cue concepts in each asana and pranayama; additionally, review why the series or krya is designed as such. (This will develop the student's ability to understand and independently create a private practice between classes.)

What fields of yoga does Lorenz draw from?
Lorenz has an extensive educational background in movement as a yoga practitioner, personal trainer, Pilates Instructor, and Rolf Practitioner. In 1997, he began to practice Kundalini Yoga. Since then he has continued his practice in Kundalini Yoga, while deepening his knowledge of Hatha and Iyengar Yoga. In 2006, Lorenz began to study with Tony Briggs, who teaches Naga Yoga, and is the strongest influence in Lorenz's movement practice today.

What types of students does Lorenz see in his private yoga practice?

1) Beginners: Beginning yoga practitioners who want to start off right and find a private practice that will really work for them.

2) Recovering Students: students for various physical reasons can not take a group class because of possible re-injury and thus require an individualized series of asanas (a krya) to support the healing and or strengthening process before returning to their normal class practice.

3) Seasoned Students: Students who are considered intermediate and advance students of yoga and or are yoga teachers themselves, come to Lorenz for his unique and often deeper perspectives that have not become main stream in the yoga community.

Why does Lorenz feel it is important to use Pilates & Movement Integration (MI) in this teaching of yoga?

Lorenz has found that new students need to develop two aspects of their yoga asana practice: core support and embodiment.

Core Support: The “core” is composed of the muscles closest to the spine, deepest to the rib cage and deep inside the pelvis. By focusing on strengthening those muscles and heightening the individual's relationship to their “core” in all movement patterns, the body becomes balanced and healthy posture can be improved. This will allow for a greater benefit to be felt both physically and energetically in all asanas.

Embodiment: Embodiment is the process of knowledge coming from experienced awareness. It is also the process of deep attunement both energetically and neurologically with the body's musculo-skeletal system. This offer greater balance, freedom, and vitality in all movement patterns and asanas.

Can you tell me more about Movement Integration (MI)?

Movement Integration offers a personalized relationship to your body's posture and functions, as a foundation to guide and prevent injury in one's life activities. A normal response to new and strenuous forms of exercise is often the development of new dysfunction and injury. This will occur in time because one is practicing impersonal choreography with poor body awareness.

Movement Integration does not have a set of fixed movement concepts. It creates comfort, easy, and efficiency in function, while offering improved physical, orientation and coordination qualities.

Movement Integration begins with assessment during simple exploratory postures. There are seven specific areas of assessment: structural alignment, functional comprehension, neuromuscular control, flexibility, strength, endurance, and energetic balance. As a session progresses, cues are given instructing the client on how to use his/her strengths to support and improve his/her weaknesses. The combination of conscious awareness and effortlessness is what truly makes impossible movements become possible, and common movements simply beautiful. Lorenz skill as a MI practitioner draws from Yoga, Rolf Movement, the Franklin Method, and several fields of movement work that focuses on the bodies energetic systems.

Don't look to your body as a jockey upon a race horse, betting it to perform better and only caring for it when it goes lame, for this leads to the degeneration of your body and complete disassociation from yourself and self-growth. Rather, become the centaur and learn to perform from the place of association, at first to your body/self and then to your environment/self. In the end, you will perform in perfect balance and make your once uncommon performance look common place. L.S.

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