Yoga 101 7 Billion Ways To Be Gentle

About This Class

In this short Yoga 101 talk, Bryan Kest challenges the notion of a fixed, prescriptive approach to yoga poses. He opens with the idea that there are 7 billion ways to do any yoga pose — one for every person on the planet — because each of us is a unique product of our genetic lineage and life experiences. He illustrates this with vivid, relatable examples (loss, injury, physical discomfort) to show how our day-to-day state profoundly shapes what our bodies need. The core teaching is that the goal of yoga is not to replicate an external shape, but to get quiet, tune into internal feedback, and make intelligent, compassionate decisions about how to explore each pose. This is an accessible, philosophy-first orientation to mindful, self-compassionate practice.