Eric Shaw, MA.SE, MA.RS, MA.AS, has studied yoga and meditation for 30 years and taught both since 2001. He maintains a lively international teaching schedule and is the creator of both Prasana Yoga—a form that reveals alignment in movement—and Yoga Education through Imagery—lecture programming that teaches yoga’s traditions through archival imagery and new scholarship. He is an E-RYT 500, YACEP with two degrees in Art, and Masters Degrees in Education, Religious Studies and Asian Studies. His writing appears in Yoga Journal, Common Ground, Mantra Yoga + Health, and other publications. To learn more, please see: www.prasanayoga.com
Teachers
I have been focused in various eastern arts since 1980, when I first discovered meditation and martial arts through Aikido.
My main yoga training was with Shandor Remete, Matt Huish and Arkady Shirin over 9 years time in their Shadow Yoga and Shiva Nata styles. I spent a year working with Timo Jiminez in Ashtanga and two years with Tony Briggs and Karl Erb in Iyengar Yoga. Sianna Sherman and John Friend taught me many things within Anusara Yoga. Yogi Pramod of Tapovan was my teacher in India.
In academic study of the yogic traditions, Jim Ryan has been my primary guide. In my early years of practice, numerous other mediation and martial arts teachers also shared their understanding with me. My academic work in the Asian traditions, through an Asian Studies Masters, and the Christian traditions, through a Religious Studies Masters have steered my attention to this meeting ground between East and West that we call modern yoga.
Currently, I am working with Rod Stryker in his Parayoga form–when geography permits!
Outside of these teachers, I have taken classes or workshopped with a great number of yoga’s luminaries–partly to gain experiential understanding of the modern yoga scene and partly to learn whatever I could. This list includes Jane Austin, Barbara Benagh, Scott Blossom, Douglas Brooks, Seane Corn, Nicki Doane, Eddie DeModestini, Amrit Desai, T.K.V. Desikachar, Ana Forrest, Richard Freeman, Dana Flynn, Sharon Gannon, Paul Grilley, Julie Gudmestad, Joan Harrigan, Wendy Hambridge, Kate Holcombe, JinSung, K. Pattabhi Jois, Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, Gary Kraftsow, Joel Kramer, Andre Lappa, Cindi Lee, Judith Lasater, David Life, Tias Little, Noah Maze, Dharma Mittra, Paul Muller-Ortega, Aadil Palkhavala, Carlos Pomeda, Sarah Powers, Srivatsa Ramaswami, Desiree Rambaugh, Saul David Ray, Shiva Rea, Richard Rosen, Jim Ryan, Rod Stryker, Patricia Sullivan, Robert Svoboda, David Swenson, Chris Tompkins, Chris Wallis, Ian Whicher and Rodney Yee.
The commitment to the wisdom of the body, the life of the mind, and the path of transcendence by my parents–Jacquie Meadows and Stuart Shaw–both Methodist ministers–opened me to the blending of body, mind and spirit within yoga. Nine years of teaching Special Education (1991 – 2000) and a Masters in SPED was also a heartful testing ground for the undertaking of yoga instruction, and a long tutelage in art through two degrees there and decades of work as a painter and performance artist attuned me to the possibilities of creativity inside and outside the received traditions.
I am grateful to all my teachers, named and unnamed, for their help in shaping whatever understanding I have of my inner and outer life and the gift that is made of that to my students. Big om.
