In this vinyasa practice we delay the vinyasa, as opposed to doing doing automatic, rote vinyasas. A delayed vinyasa provides an opportunity for a profound moment within the practice. It’s a moment between postures where we step back into downward facing dog versus automatically slipping into the habit of entering into an over used, tired, misaligned and intention forsaken vinyasa. To employ ‘The Delayed Vinyasa’ is as simple as skipping the habitual vinyasa from Uttanasana or Virabhadrasana or any posture that is preceded by the instruction of “and now go through your vinyasa.” It allows you to find your way back to downward dog where you can take a breath or two and then either make a decision to modify or skip the vinyasa. After that pause for the cause you may decide to attack the vinyasa with renewed energy, mental clarity and technique. This will keep you honest and in control, thus keeping injury at arms length. A delayed vinyasa will buy you extra time to feel the energetic effects of the previous posture and gives you a moment to restore the breath and plug into the power and joy of a well performed injury free practice. By at least limiting what I call the ‘automatic vinyasa’ to only the A & B Sun series we will potentially save the over use of the shoulders, elbows, wrists and low backs. Also as an added bonus, we conserve energy that can be used for the rest of the practice.