Power Yoga Master Class – UNIT/Eric Bennewitz (Hamburg, Germany)

Power Yoga Master Class with Bryan Kest is a yoga workshop in Hamburg, Germany, hosted at UNIT with Eric Bennewitz. It is a chance to practice live with the teacher who created Power Yoga, in a class built around his own understanding of the method. It suits students who know Power Yoga as a style and want to learn it from its source, and anyone curious about what the practice looked like before the name became a general label for vigorous classes.

What to Expect

Kest's classes are not only about intensity. He teaches that power lies in strength, which he calls yang, and equally in gentleness, which he calls yin, and that health comes from a balance between the two. That balance is personal, so each student has to find their own.

In practice, his classes ask you to breathe deeply through the nose and to honor your limits. When sensation turns into strain, you back off. You also leave comparison with the people on the next mat out of it. Meditation and gratitude run through the practice rather than sitting at its edges. His stated aim is a system of exercise that fully integrates body, mind, and spirit.

Expect a class where effort and ease are both taken seriously, and where how you meet your own body matters more than how the pose looks.

About Bryan Kest

Bryan Kest is the creator of Power Yoga. Born in 1964, he began practicing yoga in 1979, at the age of 14. He was one of the first Westerners to learn Ashtanga, studying in Hawaii with David Williams and in India with Pattabhi Jois. He has been teaching since 1985.

Kest often points out that "power yoga" has become a generic term for any strenuous class. His own version is broader than that, and it rests on the idea that strength and softness belong together. Students who come to a master class with him are getting that original framing directly from the person who developed it, after decades of teaching.

The Place

The class takes place in Hamburg, at UNIT with Eric Bennewitz. It is one stop in Kest's live teaching schedule, which brings his Power Yoga master classes to studios across Germany and neighboring countries.