Understanding a Yoga or Wellness Perspective

About This Class

In this extended Q&A and lecture workshop, Bryan Kest delivers a wide-ranging, deeply personal exploration of what yoga truly is — and isn't. Drawing on the original yogic tradition, modern medicine's findings on psychosomatic disease, and his own lived experience, Bryan argues that physical yoga poses are merely a vehicle for developing awareness and a quiet mind, not endpoints in themselves. He dismantles the cultural obsession with flexibility, strength, and aesthetic performance, explaining that the real yoga is the cultivation of benevolent mental qualities — gentleness, humility, calmness, acceptance, and moderation — which directly counteract the stress that modern medicine identifies as the root of up to 90% of all disease. Bryan introduces the concept of enlightenment as simply "turning on the light" — becoming aware of what you are doing so you can choose to stop feeding harmful mental habit patterns. He uses vivid, humorous storytelling (the nail biter, the nose picker, the used car) to illustrate the law of impermanence, the mechanics of addiction, and why gentleness is the only path to genuine self-care. The workshop also addresses how all yoga styles are equally valid when practiced with awareness and equally harmful when practiced with aggression, and why the challenging physical class that follows is a safe laboratory for practicing calm, humility, acceptance, and non-judgment under pressure. No poses are taught in this portion; it is entirely a spoken lecture and Q&A suited to students at any level who want to understand the philosophical and psychological foundations of a yoga practice.