The Great Goal

by Nevine Michaan, founder of Katonah Yoga

“The great goal is to support personal and communal well-being. You’re the third hand that’s going to take this mind and this body and this breath and manipulate it so that it pumps it up in to bigger function. The function you can do is make yourself, in a sense, healthy, round, well-adjusted, buoyant, radiant and concentrated because when you are all of those things then you have positioned yourself to be the center of a sphere. You’ve positioned yourself so that you’re round, so that if you fall, you will bounce. You’ve positioned yourself so that you’re not edgy, so that you don’t bang into people and hurt them or hurt yourself. You’ve positioned yourself, really, to be the best you can be. Because the symbol of perfection is round and buoyant and spherical and well-adjusted. So the goal of these practices is to bring you into a position that allows you to up your game so that you can be all of these things.”

Nevine seamlessly relates her approach to yoga through comparing it to the likes of a musician.

She says, “I like to play with the idea that yoga is music, and there are lots of different types of music – but all music is playing with the same notes, the same chords; so how are you going to time it, how are you going to put it all together? How are you going to use time to your advantage so you put together a piece of music that is joyful to play, and that is joyful for others to listen to?”

Nevine’s artful use of metaphor is one of her most well honed techniques when articulating her teachings, which are empowered by her practical approach to integrating the mind, the body and the breath.

“What’s really powerful is to develop the mind, body, and breath to work together. I think everyone should be self-responsible, to have integrity and to integrate all three”, which is why she has spent much of the past decade developing her Meditation Maps. “A reason to use a map is so you can understand the territory of the mind, body and breath. It’s so you can articulate territory and so you can explore territory; so you can eventually get to where you want to go. And where everyone wants to go is to find Joy.”  

Born in Egypt in 1954, Nevine moved to New York at the age of three. In her early 20’s, while studying history and comparative religion at Vassar College, she discovered meditation. She understood that there is a function, a formality and a fit to the universe and that yoga is a tool, a technique – a practice with repetition which gives us the opportunity to participate in life with intelligence and joy. 

Nevine started a daily practice in NYC with renowned yoga instructor Allan Bateman in the 1970s and became fully immersed in what would become her life’s work. She began teaching Yoga in 1980, and founded the Katonah Yoga Center in Katonah, New York in 1986.

Nevine continues to teach both online and in person through her studio and others’.

Nevine Michaan on Yoga for Joy
from the 2017 Documentary, On Yoga : The Architecture of Peace, by Michael O’Neill