Yoga classes and yoga teacher training by Scott Anderson at Alignment Yoga in Blue Mounds WI and Madison Wisconsin.

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Blue Mounds Dharma Center Teacher Biographies


Scott
Anderson		 Collette
Stewart


Scott Anderson, Director of The Blue Mounds Dharma Center: I began studying meditation in 1982 and began teaching yoga in 1989. Initially my motives were athletically driven – I desired a calmer mind to better focus on my high jumping. The meditation tapes helped enormously and I went on to have a successful athletic career at The University of Minnesota.

I was drawn to asana similarly. The relentless athletic training was taking a toll on my body, and I desired something to regain wholeness. Hatha Yoga seemed the logical solution, and for awhile, it was.

I delved earnestly into the Iyengar method. It suited my engineering mind beautifully as the body was dissected into clear-cut angles & lines. The difficulty of appreciating the non-linear, mysterious and the unknown was largely eliminated in favor of a deterministic model. For my young-man mind, this was perfect!

I practiced doggedly and attained a degree of proficiency in the most advanced poses. Unfortunately, however, contentment of mind and comfort in body remained elusive. I believed fervently in the yoga, so when faced with adversity, threw myself more fiercely into the practice. By 1991 I was practicing 4-6 hours per day.

By 1994 I was in shambles. My body was wracked with pain such that practicing asana became impossible. I could no longer enjoy my passion for bicycling or skiing. Even sleep became difficult, due to the relentless lower-back pains. For much of 1994, I focused on the meditation practice, which I’d largely put aside during this foray into the asana-focused technique.

By the middle of 1994, I stumbled upon a yoga teacher outside of Madison, Wisconsin. I was initially drawn to his philosophy; an integration of sustainable agriculture, sport and yoga. This crossing of paths proved fortuitous, as Roger Eischens showed me the way to a yoga that healed the rift between my body & mind. For the next six years I studied at his side while in residence at Cress Spring Farm. Living at a yoga retreat center and farming healed my body such that I could resume my joy of athletics, work full days and rejoin life.

By 2000 our egalitarian experiment had run its course and the community of Cress Spring Farm had largely disintegrated. I moved two miles up the road to the Village of Blue Mounds where my focus shifted from healing the mind/body rift to exploring the spiritual component of being. The inquiry became cultivating the trinity, rather than healing the duality. This quest has become the focus of my teaching – using this yoga practice as a vehicle to integrate the mind, body and spirit.

This is nothing revolutionary, really. The yoga texts are very clear that this is the aim of the practice. It’s really just the peculiar way Post-Modern Man has interpreted this ancient practice that leads us to think that yoga is anything but the integration of body, mind and spirit.

Hatha Yoga is a marvelous technology, as we may explore concepts of spirituality as they reveal in physical form. It gets slightly messy, though, as we must embrace the body as an assemblage of curves, energy flows and relentless vitality. While it’s easier to speak in terms of angles and lines, the point is really lost until we embrace the non-linearity and non-determinism that defines our physical form. Only then, can we begin to comprehend the spiritual forces at work.

I’ve developed an approach to Hatha Yoga that demonstrates the immutability of our body, mind and spirit. The techniques are very simple. The practice makes us better able to lead our lives, rather than recoiling from life. Simply put, this practice makes us more fully who we are, rather than more fully what we think we should be or what somebody else thinks we should be. That takes a bit of nerve, as the fullness of who we are is often less comfortable than conforming to a preconceived ideal. The results, though, are richly rewarding!

Collette Stewart: I began studying movement at a very young age through dance. As an adult, I earned a BFA in Modern Dance from TCU and Pilates certification through The Pilates Center in Boulder, Colorado. My goal in teaching is to allow students to appreciate the benefits of general movement and to help them uncover the inherent learning potential inside each movement experience. I have a holistic understanding of the body and teach in a way that promotes proper alignment, addresses individual pain and injury, and improves internal awareness. More information.

Testimonials

Scott approaches his classes with intelligence, discipline and knowledge. His knowledge of anatomy provides a language with which to communicate the body alignment desired, and his knowledge of biomechanics provides a basis for understanding the many challenging postures. His intelligence and intuition facilitate his perception and response to individual difficulties with the postures, that might result from previous injury or misalignment. His problem solving skills and his genuine desire to see each of his students overcome obstacles is impressive. He always attends to his students' needs, which is why there is such a great rate of improvement in his classes.

-Ellen B, Tucson

 

After an excrutiatingly painful sciatica experience that left me feeling like "a woman with a bad back", I began yoga classes. Each week at Scott's yoga class I would learn something new about my protective holding patterns, how they made matters worse, and how to undo them. His insight and intuition in class and privately eventually led me to not only let go of the thought of being damaged, but in to a level of core strength and postural integrity that supports all I do.

-Lynn, Madison

Blue Mounds Dharma Center - 2979 Main St. (Box 144), Blue Mounds, WI 53517 - (608) 437-5931 -

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