Marya Mann : Blog : Yoga With Hawaiian Perspectives: A New Twist On An Ancient Art & Science

Yoga with Hawaiian Perspectives: A New Twist on an Ancient Art & Science

KONA, HI – New 2-Credit Course at Hawaii Island Community College at Palamanui

Hawaii Community College is offering a new angle on ancient yoga methods for a college course at Palamanui in the new year. The interdisciplinary set of classes will energize students with a full-body workout in each class, but also explore Hawaiian, Asian, and Pacific Rim (HAP) perspectives on the classical bodymind practices.

Yoga practices that enhance strength, flexibility, and concentration can be traced back at least 5000 years to Southeast Asia, but while they are primarily associated with India’s Vedic culture, their reach is global.

“When you look at the breadth and depth of modern yoga,” says the course instructor Marya Mann, PhD, “you realize these movement and meditation methods share common roots with customs and stories from Traditional Chinese Medicine, Japanese mythologies, Australian rituals, and Polynesian shamanism.”

Going within oneself to find strength, knowledge, and empowerment, says Dr. Mann, gives students the experience they need to live fully in the world with humility, reverence, and self-discipline. “Yoga as a generic term means to ‘yoke’ together the body and mind, the physical and energetic, into a wholesome well-being, a sense of peace, a feeling of Aloha,” she says.

Living here in Hawaii, she says, “Kupuna (elders) teach us that the ‘Breath of Ha!’ is the breath of life, and that makes sense from a traditional Ha-tha yoga point of view too. Hatha means sun (ha) and moon (tha) yoga, the yoga which fuses opposites together through the breath. You find linguistic correlations too, with Aumakua – ancestors in Hawaiian – so close to Aum – the universal symbol of creation in Sanskrit.”

All indigenous, earth-centric and sun-loving cultures have a kind of yoga, she claims, and the Palamanui community college class will offer students a chance to explore some of them while learning the foundations of classical yoga anatomy, lifestyles, and philosophy. “Look at the story of the great Polynesian trickster hero Māui, she suggests. “In myth, he lassoed the mighty sun for his mother’s pleasure. Could he have been harnessing the sun’s energy for sustaining life, making a kind of Sun Salute to extend the daylight?

“The Japanese Sun Goddess Amaterasu entered her cave and drew her light inward. That reflects a Hatha yoga practice known as pratyahara, turning inward to find wisdom inside one’s own skin, where we have true sovereignty. Amaterasu only emerges after seeing her brightest self in a mirror, another yogic practice, svadyaya, self-study.”

A Kona-based Energy Medicine practitioner and artist, Dr. Mann has been teaching yoga and meditation since 1986. After receiving her PhD in Creative Arts and Dance, she was inspired by study and teaching in India and Bali to develop Evolutionary Yoga Flow, a system inspired by natural and universal movement principles that inform a safe and sustainable yoga and allow anyone to build their own authentic practice.

With reverence for the land, language, and hula traditions of Hawaii, she writes a monthly on-line column called Brave New Viewsletter and has co-authored a book, Healing Our Planet, Healing Our Selves. She has written yoga columns for West Hawaii Today and her work has been published in Huffington Post, YogaUOnline, Elephant Journal, Yoga Hawaii Magazine, and Ke Ola Magazine. The founder of Kona Coast Yoga & Wellness, where she has a clinical consulting practice, she is also the Managing Director of Pacific ArtWavEs Nourish the Children, a non-profit mindful art training program for children and families.

A leading voice in the evolution of Yoga, with more than 1000 hours of training in Ashtanga, Iyengar, and Viniyoga practice and teaching, she guides people of all sizes, ages, shapes, and cultures to integrate the wisdom of the body, the spirit in the heart, and the light in the mind.

Classes begin January 8, 2018 – Please Register Now!

HPER 198: Yoga
with Hawaiian Perspectives
TUESDAYS & THURSDAYS
8:00—9:25 AM
2 cr., CRN. 16598

To Register, please go to www.hawaii.hawaii.edu
For more information, contact Trina:
nahmmijo@hawaii.edu | #808-969-8816

Hawaii Community College is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution and is committed to a policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, arrest and court record, sexual orientation, status as a covered veteran, National Guard, victims of domestic or sexual violence, gender identity and expression, genetic information, citizenship, credit history, and income assignment. For inquiries regarding our nondiscrimination policies, please contact Dorinna Cortez, Interim VC for Student Affairs, dorinna@hawaii.edu. For disability accommodations, please contact Hā’awi Kōkua at 934-2725.