When I tell people that I practice and teach Yoga, I often get the same question: “What style of yoga?” I’m always hard pressed for an answer.

I want to say: Can you imagine a yoga that encompasses all that is, your entire life, your relationships, your lifestyle, your body, breath and mind? A yoga that is able to change you, make you a better person, and enable you to live a richer life?

Some call what I study and teach, Viniyoga. But T.K.V. Desikachar, the man who first used this word, which means ‘special application,’ has since expressed serious concern that it has become a brand name for yet another style of Yoga.

Desikachar explains that style implies a fixed form. And Viniyoga or more correctly, Yoga as described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, is anything but fixed.

This viniyoga of Yoga is nothing more than the appropriate application of Yoga to the individual student, and it is practiced daily at The Breathing Space, a small Silverlake studio trying to do something big.

I met Robert Birnberg, the director of Community Yoga in 2000. It was a difficult juncture in my life. I had just quit an editing job due to a six-month bout with pneumonia and bronchitis. My body was weak, my immune system and mental state fragile. In simple terms, I was suffocating.

Although had been trained in classical ballet and pursued a vigorous asana practice for 11 years. I was so afflicted, that I had difficulty even raising my arms. I attended my first class at Community Yoga shaky and unsure, on the verge of a complete meltdown.

From the instant I set foot in the comfortable, home-based studio, I felt stronger, more hopeful. The class was small (8 people) and intimate, Before the physical practice, we sat around drinking delicious tea, each sharing our conditions and our goals in a lighthearted, often humorous manner. Rather than a confession session, it felt like hanging out with like-minded souls in the spirit of “sanga” or community. Hence the name “Community Yoga.”

The physical practice consisted of elegant, flowing asana with emphasis on the breath, the precise linking of body, breath and mind. As Robert says, “Yoga is far more than a stretch class.” The deep stretching and strengthening of the spine was perfectly integrated with pranayama, mudra, mantra, sound, bandhas, ritual and Sutra study. In one ninety-minute class, I experienced all the elements of yoga, as laid down by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. Here was the true ashtanga, all eight limbs of Yoga taught with naturalness and a simplicity that was profound.

And this is all presented in the context of a heart-to-heart student-teacher relationship. This deeply supportive, transformational relationship between student and teacher has always been at the core of Yoga. The more attention the teacher can give to each individual student the better. For, as Robert is fond of saying, “Group classes are a recent invention. Never in Yoga’s first five thousand years was there group classes for adults.”

What Robert Birnberg attempts every day is magic---and it works. Here is a rare teacher, going against the grain of the mainstream, presenting a pure, holistic version of yoga. And what keeps him going, trying to bring his teachings to a largely commercialized, physically obsessed yoga community is his strong sense of lineage.

This is, unfortunately, another concept central to traditional Yoga and unknown to most modern practitioners. Robert and his students, myself included are part of an unbroken stream of teachers, with teachings carried through Roberts teacher Kausthub Desikachar, Kausthub’s teacher T.K.V. Desikachar, and his teacher T. Krishnamacharya, and tracing back to the sage Nathamuni (Yoga Rahasya) and on to the father of classical Yoga, Patanjali (Yoga sutras).

It is not just this pedigree that makes this unique perception and application of Yoga so compelling. It is that the approach is utterly practical and solution oriented. Based on the Yoga Sutras, which can be studied as a manual for living and reducing suffering (dukha), Robert’s yoga addresses the yamas and nyamas not as observances for ascetic withdrawal but as improvements in everyday behavior. Satya (right communication) becomes me practicing, with Robert’s guidance, asking my boss for a raise, or my mother for some long overdue praise. Ahimsa (not harming) is linked to remembering my friend’s birthdays with a homemade card or some flowers. Yoga’s guidelines for living are always discussed in concrete specific terms, not new age platitudes.

The end result is continually improving relationships, starting with oneself. I have witnessed countless people overcoming, with the support of Robert and Community Yoga, physical, emotional and spiritual problems. In the few years I have attended classes, a steady stream of students report positive changes in all aspects of their lives. When Yoga is correctly applied to each individual, everything just gets better.

“Yoga should never be a fixed thing, a style. Robert often reminds his students.

“To be truly effective for all different people throughout a lifetime in which the only constant is change, Yoga must to be continually modified and adapted to the individual. To teach a fixed style is to deny our uniqueness and become stagnant ponds, cut off from Yoga’s infinite ocean of Possibilities.” If you look to the sutras, all yoga is viniyoga (Sutra III: 6), vi and ni defining yoga as “special” and “adaptive.”

He jokes that soon people will start saying, Oh, You teach the style that is not a style, I love that style.” Robert Birnberg studies with Kausthub Desikachar in South India and throughout the world. Robert works therapeutically and trains teachers internationally. www.longexhale.com ph: 323-661-1500.†