Origins of Kemetic Yoga
Let’s talk about Kemetic yoga, its origins, the people behind its development and some of the foundational principles that inform the practice.
Yirser Ra Hotep is the master instructor of Kemetic yoga and is the one that certifies Kemetic yoga teachers worldwide. Yirser is from Chicago and as a person he is just really laid back and cool. I believe he’s from the south side of Chicago, which is probably. why he’s got that little hood in him still, you know? Since the 1970s, he has been studying Kemetic yoga, practicing yoga, and then he started to study hieroglyphics; their interpretation and how to read them and during that time too, he’s taken over 40 trips to Kemet.
When I say Kemet, I realize that there will be many among you who may not know what that is - Kemet is actually the original word for Egypt; the word given to it by the Greeks. This is why we refer to Kemetic yoga!
When I began my research, I actually found out that when Yirser Ra Hotep was studying, his teacher was a woman who practiced underneath Paramahansa Yogananda. For those who are unfamiliar with Paramahansa Yogananda, he is an ancient sage figure originally from India who came to the West and was one of the most influential people that made yoga a big deal in the West. He has a book called the Autobiography of a Yogi, and it is phenomenal.
This link was really important for me because when I got back into yoga and restarted my yoga journey, I had moved overseas, and I was going through a really tough time and got very, very depressed. I felt very alone, isolated, and it was actually a documentary about Paramahansa called, “Awake” that started to get me out of that and lift me out of that depression and started to inspire me to practice yoga again.
When I identified this lineage, it was such a full circle moment for me and such an affirmation for me to think that Paramahansa is kind of like the first step in a trail that had led me to where I am. Then it can all continue to evolve as I am now able to carry that torch forward. So me being able to relay this information, and this history, and this practice is such an honor to me. It's not something I take lightly and is something that feels really like an important work and a responsibility to me. So I just want to give you an understanding too of what an honor it is to be part of this lineage which has allowed me to be in this place and to be able to pass it to you.
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So! Yirser starts to practice yoga, then becomes a teacher. He teaches yoga for some 30 years before he actually starts certifying yoga teachers, which I think is just incredible. He has now taught and certified over 5,000 teachers worldwide. I found the training to be really phenomenal, and there are some big takeaways that I want to share with you all that form the foundation of the practice. These are two pieces that I learned during the training and what is considered essentially Kemetic yoga.
On one hand you have Kemetic yoga, and on the other you have what is called Yoga Skills method. Yoga Skills method is something that Yirser developed, and it is based on two main principles:
1 – Rule of four breathing, which shapes the way that we'll breathe throughout the practice. Rule of four breathing essentially recognizes four parts to your breath, which is your inhale, your pause, your exhale, your pause. So you have four components to your breath; when you breathe in, the space in between, when you exhale, the space in between. The idea of rule of four breathing is that you are participating in all of those four parts of your breath for four counts. You inhale for four, you pause for four, you exhale for four, you pause for four.
2 – Geometric progression, which refers to the alignment of your body and sequencing of postures. For alignment, we want to ensure that we are not injuring ourselves, and that we're using the body's natural anatomy to support us in these various postures. What this commonly means is that the your shoulders line up with your wrists and knees are over ankles. The postures makes use a lot of shapes built from 90 degree angles with the body, which supports the weight in a way that is most natural to the body.
The idea of sequencing - the flowing of one posture into another - is that there's an ease to the flow of the movements. The beauty of this thought behind sequencing is that it protects your body during movements, but also to keep the nervous system calm. Part of the goal through the practice is to move you through sequencing that is not going to be jarring to your nervous system, that makes sense as a natural progression of the previous pose into the next pose.
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So that was the Yoga Skills method, and now other piece you have is Kemetic yoga, which to me is the more fascinating part and it essentially comes out of Yirser's and his teachers', study and development of understanding of looking at and of observing the postures in Kemet.
In this image, we have Ramses the II at the Temples at Abu Simbel, he's got his feet on the ground, his knees over his ankles, and he's sitting hands in his lap. It's a meditation, right? So these are the kinds of postures that Yirser observed and studied in Kemet during his visits and having learned how to read hieroglyphics. From these static images Tirsir developed sequences around these poses. Again, thinking about geometric progression - the natural flow of the body, the natural alignment - he developed a sequences of movements that make the most sense as a way to get into and out of each posture.
From my understanding, some of the inspiration for the sequences have come to him almost like that spiritual downloads. He told us in one of the sequences was something that came to him while he was on the bank of the Nile River. We know from African spirituality, Native American spirituality that there has been a direct call and an intention to have groups or have a particular individual connect with the ancestors and bring back information that they receive.
I understand that Native Americans did this a lot, particularly in the times when white settlers were coming through, and they needed to figure out the best ways to respond. There would be a particular person or persons who would spend some time where they would go to specifically connect with the ancestors to get information, and bring it back, and share with the group as an informed way to move forward.
So these ideas have long been in our history but sort of shunned in modern day, and we're not as connected to those things now. But just know that these practices have existed and continue to exist in a lot of the cultures.
With that, you now have a basic understanding of Kemetic yoga! Drop any questions you may still have in the comments and explore numerous Kemetic classes that are available to members in the Afro Yoga Online Studio.