Unquestionably, GYROKINESIS® is a much newer system than yoga. While yoga is an ancient practice that includes much more than the asana system, thought of by most westerners as the whole and total of yoga, GYROKINESIS® was discovered in the late 70s and put into a cohesive system form in the early 80s. The non-equipment work, GYROKINESIS®, originally called Yoga For Dancers™, predates the equipment of GYROTONIC®.
* photos from my recent GYROKINESIS foundation course *
Very much like the physical form of yoga, GYROKINESIS® is a total body system of physical, mental and spiritual coordination and integration. If you've ever seen the GYROTONIC® logo, it is a simplification of a drawing made by Juliu Horvath to express the energetic awakening he experienced through the work he discovered, which later became GYROKINESIS®. Juliu was living a solitary life in the mountains of St. Thomas, in what could be called a hermetic retreat. His six years of retreat and self practice were the birthplace of GYROKINESIS®.
The integration of the breath and motion in GYROKINESIS® is arguably one of the most important aspects of the entire system (as well as in GYROTONIC®). In both systems, every motion has a specific breath that is inseparable from it. The motion and the breath are one. Of course it is possible to do the motions without the breath, but in the purest sense, you're no longer doing GYROKINESIS®. The same can, of course be said of yoga. Complete integration of mind, body and spirit are the bedrock of both systems and if you take one piece out, like the breath, you're now doing an approximation of the totality intended. Every motion has a breath and the breath and the motion are united in duration and intensity. One does not follow the other, one is the other.
When properly committing yourself to a GYROKINESIS® practice, your goal is not simply a flexible, strong body. And the same can be said for yoga. In fact, yoga, truly, is not just about the asanas and pranayama. Milarepa was considered the greatest yogi in Tibetan history and no where in his autobiography does he describe doing anything that even resembles the physical form of yoga popular in the western world. Both in a proper yogic practice and in a proper GYROKINESIS® practice, the mind and body are being trained to be truly inseparable, the imputed differences between the two dissolving as your practice deepens, eventually culminating in what can be called liberation. In the majority of people who do hatha yoga in the west and people who do GYROKINESIS® classes, that union may never be realized. However, that doesn't diminish the shining light that both systems fully encompass.
In total, it can be said that GYROKINESIS® and yoga are cousins. While the physical execution of the two systems appears to be drastically different, to those with a trained eye and an attuned heart/spirit, they are two ways of achieving the same goal.