Kyle Ferguson - Beyond Hot Yoga: On Patterns, Practice, and Movement

Copyright 2021 by Kyle Ferguson and Anthony Grudin. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic BooksBerkeley, California

Cover design by Jess Morphew
Interior photos by Andy DubackBook design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Beyond Hot Yoga: On Patterns, Practice, and Movement is sponsored and published by North Atlantic Books, an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are distributed to the US trade and internationally by Penguin Random House Publishers Services. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ferguson, Kyle, 1983 author. | Grudin, Anthony, 1976 author.
Title: Beyond hot yoga : on patterns, practice, and movement : with an
illustrated guide to a new ritualized yoga sequence / Kyle Ferguson with
Anthony Grudin.
Description: Berkeley, California : North Atlantic Books, 2021. | Summary:
A holistic method for practicing hot yoga that offers a new series of
postures based on a modern understanding of anatomy and movement
Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020045811 (print) | LCCN 2020045812 (ebook) | ISBN
9781623175948 (paperback) | ISBN 9781623175955 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Hatha yoga. | Thermotherapy.
Classification: LCC RA781.7 .F47 2021 (print) | LCC RA781.7 (ebook) | DDC
613.7/046dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045811
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045812

For the Second Circle Yoga family

Please dont hold any of these against anyone. They tried their best.

First, I want to thank my parents. Mom and Dad, thank you for letting me be weird, for holding out faith, and for always finding the high ground. You made some intense kids with crazy brains. Im humbled by your patience, commitment, and love.

To my siblings, you make this ride rich and true. Katey, thank you for being my anchor person. I have needed it often and youve never faltered. Schuyler, thank you for inspiring me to look at the world differently. You have always pushed me to be better, and it almost worked that one time. Jack, youre the worst. I cannot abide your capacity to actually make sacrificeslife-size sacrificesfor others. If you werent my role model, I would be really mad at you right now.

To my cowriter Anthony, thank you for getting me to do this. This here book would never have existed without your constant encouragement and steady hand. It has been a wild ride from hastily composed proposals to conceptual overhauls, to sea changes in the mission, to new titles, to print. You have been a careful shepherd to the clamorous flock of rabid emus that is my mind.

Likewise, thank you to Gillian and Alison at North Atlantic for believing in this project and guiding it through all of its forms.

To the Second Circle Yoga family of students, teachers, and founders; thank you for getting aboard this steamboat, giving it ballast and fuel, and riding it with me straight into the wall. To my co-teachers, Betsy, Emily, Robert, and Summer, you are remarkable, intelligent leaders and steadfast friends. You ended up teaching me in the end, and what I got was way more valuable. I love you all.

To all of my teachers, Im forever grateful. My sincere apologies if I missed the actual point; I have that problem sometimes. Also, thanks to Noah Gabriel-Landis at Priority Strength (http://prioritystrength.com) for help reviewing the material. And a special thanks to our amazing photo models, Robert, Betsy, Summer, Emily, Isaiah, Marnie, Chris, Rachael, Bo, and Sarah.

To my friends, hi! Thank you for showing me what it looks like to be good in the world. Youd better read my book or we are super broken up. Also, come do yoga.

Finally, to all of the students I have worked with throughout the years; thank you for practicing. You are the beating heart of yoga, as far as Im concerned. Thank you for finding your way onto the mat. Thank you for standing with the group, stepping up for yourselves, and bringing your full attention to the practice of embodiment. There is so much to learn. I am humbled to share the path with people who invest so fully in the art of being human. I encourage you to keep exploring the patterns of whatever you arewhatever we arein this wild and wonderful ocean of experience. It is a marvel to behold your work.

Thank you, Kyle, for your brilliant work as a teacher and writer. Thank you, Joyce Cellars, for your generous love and kindness. And thank you, Jazzy, Daphne, and Clio Cellars, for being so wonderful, and for occasionally napping at the same time (or visiting your gracious grandparents, Bethanne and Jeff) so that my part of this work could get done. Also, a huge thank-you to our editors at North Atlantic Books, Alison Knowles and Gillian Hamel, for their thoughtful attention to this project.

H ello and welcome to this book. Its about yoga, sort of. Please dont get too excited. Behind this books curtain is a (relatively) hairless monkey-thing who watches the movies and lets the dog lick all the way inside his ear-hole; who still occasionally bums cigarettes from the cool kids on restaurant patios and allows his own personal laundry to pile up, sometimes higher than he would allow guests to witness; whose excursions in the world have occasionally broken his brain a little bit.

This monkey is regularly confused by the lights and the not-lights all around him. Where are the mangoes? he asks, and he is pointed to a box of food so large he can climb his whole body inside of it. And then he can wander around the boxs insides for hours on end. Often, he forgets why he is in the box, so he buys some Oreos. Word on the street is these Oreos are vegan, which is nice, because this monkey fancies himself an exceptionally compassionate wanderer of the giant food box.

There is still, for this monkey, a recurring desire to climb trees and howl at passersby. He lives in a loop of grooming, feeding, and screeching at the other monkeys about where the boundaries are and where they should be. Every now and then he pauses screeching, and closes his eyes for a while, and gets a few ideas about getting fewer ideas, which is a bit of a conundrum because he has discovered that counting ideas also counts as ideas. So, who knows?

Yoga shapes make this monkey a little less confused and a little more happy. So he spends much of his time doing yoga shapes and talking to other monkeys about being less confused and more happy and also about how sometimes things work and sometimes they dont. How sometimes things last for a while and sometimes they dont. The mangoes will sit on the counter for weeks until little black flies start circling and the monkey goes fuck and then the mangoes are tossed out the door in the bag. Nothing stays the same.

Of course, this monkey maintains a strange belief that he is different than, you know, monkeys. Sometimes he pretends his yoga shapes are turning him into a not-monkey. Sometimes he likes to think he is the first monkey that will never die. But he is not. The Oreos are delicious, and they are just Oreos. The mangoes taste sweet, and then, out with the bag. The yoga shapes are shapes like all the others.