Synergy focusses on the spinal awareness, movement & positions first.

To enhance flow of energy, healing potential as well as strength and resilience of muscular skeletal system. It serves the nervous and circulation systems to be in balance and harmony which facilitates greater odds of mental health.

This means calm hearted practice whilst still getting the muscular skeletal benefits. If you simple attempt any of these principles without ANY other Synergy knowledge, you will be able to practice yoga in any movement you perform. Awareness first. External alignment can actually disrupt experiential awareness although serves as a good function for people with zero body awareness starting out in their karma and kriya yoga practice.

No breath cues in movement, but occasional pranayama is taught. My interest in Simon and his teachings came from the pursuit of finding advanced pranayama teachers. Many teach advanced pranayama without a grasp of the basics. Pranayama can be better practiced without breath control and is iliicited automatically from the following 4 approaches.

The style looks like qigong and yoga had a baby. It’s yoga but fluid like dance in some ways, the practice part is to music.
You will get better balance in this style which is more lower body focussed than regular vinyasa.

1 activated movement
2 from the core
3 with natural breathing
4 with flow

1 Activated movement is unassisted internally driven not pulling legs/arms body into positions beyond their sovereign range. It also means not relying on gravity or momentum. Simon refers to this as active movement.

2 core is known as kanda in Sanskrit, it’s the major marma between svadistana/manipura chakras (sacral and solarplex). Studies show that people with weak low back/pain/injuries don’t initiate movement from here but move limbs first core second. Moving from here is intelligent movement from the gut brain

3 natural breathing calms the nervous system, audible breath is what amateurs do or beginner yoga practitioners. Ujayi breath should be silent to be satya ahimsa, (truthfully gentle)

4 flow is both smooth and using more than one dimension/plane of movement. It is non-linear. Eg straightening elbow and turning wrist at same time instead of repetitive mechanical movements eg bending and straightening elbow without turning wrist. Better for flow of energy in the blood, nerves and to use more muscles at once. Blood vessels and structures which communicate energy in the body are multidimensional, fractal spirals. So why do we try to move in geometric angles, it’s unnatural. Functional patterns are a popular movement who expound these benefits and understandably have much cynicism about mainstream approaches to modern postural “yoga”.