In June of 2018, Desi and I spent a week each in the cities of Regensburg, Munich, and Berlin to work with the local Bowspring communities there and to teach public weekend workshops. The Bowspring method has grown in Germany since our first workshop in Frankfurt in October of 2013 at the Young Ho Kim’s big yoga studio, Inside Yoga. It was from that event that yoga teacher Bastian Schlickeisen and osteopathic doctor Pawel Gnosdorf from Berlin began regularly practicing the new springy, curvy alignment in their yoga poses and applying the postural ideas in their sports and their therapeutic work. Now almost five years later, daily Bowspring classes are taught in Berlin, Munich, and Regensburg, and the method is also spreading throughout Germany via our online best-selling instructional videos on TINTyoga.com, Young Ho Kim’s company based in Frankfurt.
In general, Germans will embrace a new technology if it makes sense, it’s logical, and it is works particularly with a high degree of effectiveness and efficiency. This is why the Bowspring method continues to grow in Germany – the readiness to move with springy lightness is greatly enhanced with this alignment, and its effectiveness can be explained through the biomechanical understanding of the visco-elastic properties of fascia. For the Germans, Bowspring might not be so easy to learn, but it terms of dynamic functional alignment it works, so they are willing to dedicate themselves to its regular practice.
Due to Bastian and Pawel’s influence over the last few years, Bowspring has its largest Germany community in Berlin. Today, our current Bowspring teachers in Berlin include Bastian Schlickeisen, Liz Coffman, Daan Willem Dragt, Sybille Diekhert, Wiebke Holler, and Bianca Scheiber. Pawel has recently moved with his family to a new paradisiacal home in the Azore islands, off the coast of Portugal, where he and his wife Elisa are teaching springy fascia yoga, and applying curvy alignment ideas to surfing and in his osteopathic work.
Despite meeting some resistance from the establishment yoga community in Berlin over the last few years, all of our German Bowspring teachers have persevered and now are beginning to be invited to teach the method in mainstream yoga studios. Times are changing in the European yoga world, and students are now very willing to explore alternative alignments for enhanced functional movement and for greater therapeutic effect. Bastian calls Bowspring – “post-classical yoga” or \”21st century yoga\” to emphasize that it is a new paradigm of curvy, springy, fascia-oriented instead of the standard linear, static, musculo-skeletal modern postural yoga alignment.In Berlin, it was a very diverse group of students ranging in experience from several Bowspring teachers to a couple of students who were brand new to Bowspring. We set up the teachers and most experienced students in the front row of the classroom, which was a successful strategy to best visually guide the newer students on all of the poses that they had never seen before.

Although the basics were prioritized in the Berlin workshop, the more experienced practitioners were able to deepen their practice with several significant alignment refinements. After the workshop, Bastian reported that he thought our fourth annual Bowspring event in Berlin worked for everyone since there was a good balance of verbal explanation and physical practice. According to Bastian, “The whole workshop was more flowing and running than ever. Being so, it was a good translation or implementing of the idea of a liquid body as an initial point of a fascia-oriented yoga. The workshop was liquid-like, but not arbitrary. It had direction. One could say: The workshop was toned.”Desi teaching Zig-Zag Legs in BerlinFocusing on alignment for the feet in Square Legs in All-Fours Bowspring teachers demonstrating Propeller pose in the Berlin workshop Students exploring Propeller posep Mindfully transitioning down to the floor into Side Bow Hip-opening in Humble Cat Loosening up with some playful group poses Bastian in Crouching CatsBastian and Desi playing around in handstand at an abandoned Cold War military compound in Berlin.sClick on the above picture to find all the weekly Bowspring classes offered in BerlinRegensburgKatharina Stern started practicing Bowspring 3 years ago after taking our Berlin 2015 weekend workshop. She has been teaching yoga for 11 years and running her yoga studio, Tarayoga in Regensburg for 9 years. Although she and Susanne Harner teach the only Bowspring classes at the studio, there are several other types of yoga – Yin, Vinyasa, etc. on the daily class schedule at Tarayoga.About 25 experienced Bowspring students attended this year’s 12-hour workshop, and most of them were repeating students from last year’s (Summer 2017) workshop that we taught at Tarayoga. With so many experienced students at the Regensburg’s weekend event this year, we were able to practice a lot of Level 2 poses and sequences including a full 2-hour Roots kata on Sunday morning. Since the students had developed a lot of focus and inner strength of the nervous system over the last couple of years of regular Bowspring practice, we were able to keep the flow of the katas for longer periods of time without having to stop to demonstrate or verbally explain.The students told us after the workshop that they appreciated going to a higher level of practice that challenged their boundaries, and which also gave them a clear comparison of how they have progressed since last year. With these experienced Bowspring students we could also emphasize alignment nuances and deeper levels of sensitivity while slowing down the breath. Although the classes in Regensburg were Level 2, the focus was on go slow and deep with the basics and the elemental forms particularly in the hands and feet. Desi highlighted the meme in the Bowspring method, “Basics are the new advanced.”

In the Level 2 Bowspring classes, we teach more complex positions and movements, but the primary attention is on keeping the breath slow and soft while sustaining the hollows in the key areas of the body throughout the katas and the pulsation within the pose. It takes so much presence and inner fullness to stay flowing in the Bowspring katas for several minutes at a time without disengaging and unconsciously returning to our default alignments. Boundaries or challenges in Level 2 Bowspring are typically concerning the degree of our mental focus, emotional maturity, and strength of the nervous system more than degrees of flexibility, muscle strength, or hardening of the front body.Side spiraling in One-arm Balance with Open Leg Back Cat – Level 2 – RegensburgRegensburgKatharina and Desi

MunichJennifer Metzger, Diana Marino, and Annette Munzinger, all former Anusara yoga students from Munich, attended one of our 2016 Bowspring workshops in Spain to see how I had developed and evolved my understanding of alignment and yoga philosophy since they last saw me prior to 2012. Like any experienced Anusara yoga student, who tries the Bowspring for the first time, the three women were initially stunned at how different the new curvy alignment is compared to the standard model (UPA’s). They later claimed that although the new alignment ideas were not easy to learn in those first classes, they immediately experienced freedom in their bodies which gave them the impetus to continue to study and practice the Bowspring. In fact, over two years later, Jenny and Diana now teach 100% Bowspring classes, while Annette ‘bowsprinkles’ or incorporates some Bowspring methodology into her regular yoga classes at her studio, Jaya Yoga in Munich.

By the way, Diana has published a wonderful children\’s book for yoga, the title of which translated into English is the \”The House with the Heart Door\” (you can order a copy of the book on her website- dashausmitderherzenstuer.de/). In her public yoga classes for children, Diana teaches the Bowspring is a delightful way and they love it. (We will be doing a full blog on Bowspring for Kids in the near future.)In the first 10 hours of her Bowspring practice, Jennifer began to experience a transformative release and realignment in her jaw. She had years of the chronic condition TMJ — a tight misalignment in her jaw — which pulled her chin and mouth to one side and caused nightly grinding of her teeth. Jenny told me recently that after that first Bowspring workshop, her jaw felt so much better that she could really never go back to doing mainstream yoga again.

For many years, I tried to help yoga students with their jaw problems by instructing them to create a natural curve in their neck through ‘Shoulder Loop’ and then to lengthen that curve through ‘Skull Loop’. Now after working with Desi over the last 6 years, I realize that my old teaching of ‘melt the heart’ and Shoulder Loop invariably deflates the upper back and reduces the upper thoracic curvature. Then with the additional alignment of Skull Loop, the neck tends to lose its natural curve, so then the jaw hyper-contracts. Jenny was faithful to my Anusara alignment for years, but her chronic jaw condition did not improve unfortunately. Thankfully now after 2 years of practicing the Bowspring method, Jenny’s jaw and mouth have dramatically reformed and the clenching in her jaw is gone and her pain is much reduced.

Additionally, Jenny had chronic hip pain for over 20 years which was completely cleared after practicing 20 minutes of Bowspring every day for 2 months! Such a powerful therapeutic transformation through the Bowspring practice has led Jenny to drop teaching mainstream yoga and to offer now only Bowspring classes in Munich to a growing base of enthusiastic students who are open to alternative methodologies of mind-body health and healing.

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Gratitude and respect to all of the German yoga students who are brave, open-minded, rational, and willing to stick with the Bowspring method despite some of the political push-back from the mainstream yoga world in Germany. The Bowspring is an revolutionary method of postural yoga that has taken deep roots in Germany, and so it is not going away anytime soon regardless of the status quo being afraid for such radical change!John and Desi setting class context with introductory teachings in MunichA Munich city gateDesi and Gabi in Open Leg Twisted Cat Munich – All Levels Workshop 2018