Experience Yoga on the go with ‘Yoga Virtuoso’

By Shari Jayawardhana
In recent years, Yoga has become popular in the West with even Hollywood stars favouring the Yoga mat over other fitness regimes. In its native South Asia, Yoga is experiencing a reawakening. “Sri Lankans are starting to wake up, they want to start doing yoga,” says Lyndon Mason, a British Yoga instructor based in Sri Lanka.
Lyndon launched ‘Yoga Virtuoso’ a Yoga app for Apple mobile devices in March 2014. The app is based on over two decades of intense training from the best Yoga teachers. Lyndon spent eight years in South India training with famous Yoga masters like Vishnu Devananda. Recalling his years of training, Lyndon stated the following: “It was my journey of inner exploration.”
In 2001, Lyndon settled down in Sri Lanka and began to teach Yoga from his Kailash Yoga Studio in Hikkaduwa. His Yoga classes are conducted twice a day and are patronised by adults and children representing countries such as India, Singapore, Israel, Belgium, Germany, United States, Russia, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Italy and Australia. According to Lyndon, “If you learn the alphabet, the ABCs of yoga, you can dance for the rest of your life.”
Few things are quite as inspiring as seeing your Yoga teacher doing what appears nearly impossible, and then discovering in time, with practice, that you can actually do it too. Many students who come to Lyndon have gradually improved over time and are professional Yoga instructors in their own merit.
Lyndon was first attracted to Sri Lanka because of surfing. Being an avid surfer, he advises that Yoga can enhance one’s personal art expression and athleticism. One of Lyndon’s students had the following to say, “I very much enjoyed Lyndon’s lessons. They helped me with my back problems but what I really noticed was how much my surfing was improving because of Yoga and the lack of injury. Yoga has been very good for me in many aspects of my life. As far as surfing goes, Yoga and surfing is like strawberries and cream.”

A young student praised Lyndon’s Yoga classes; “I love his voice; he has a very calming and a good tone of voice. It gets easier to get to the posture when he is talking. I like that it is the same routine every day so I can see myself developing more and more and someday I can even become a Yoga teacher.”
Free edition
The inspiration for a Yoga app came from Lyndon’s students who live in various countries. The students requested Lyndon to create a visual guide that would remind them of Lyndon’s Yoga routine so that they could continue practicing the Yoga postures wherever they are in the world.
The free edition of the app has a 12 minute Yoga warm up session conducted by Lyndon and it consists of six postures. The comprehensive Yoga Virtuoso app is a 66 minute Yoga session consisting of 53 postures. It is a complete, self-contained full length Yoga class for beginners, intermediates, Yoga experts, and Yoga teachers. Both free app and the full app have verbal instructions and practical demonstrations from Lyndon. For those who prefer to read about the postures, the instructions are also included in text form.
The Yoga Virtuoso app is very easy to navigate and is very simple and direct. The app is suitable for iPad /iPhone and requires iOS 6.1 and later. The High Definition (HD) videos of the Yoga postures can also be viewed on a HD display or monitor. In addition, once the app is downloaded, there is no need for internet connectivity.
You can now have your personal Yoga instructor with you wherever you are. To download the ‘Yoga Virtuoso with Lyndon’ app visit the Apple app store on your Apple device. Check out Lyndon Mason’s website www.yogavirtuoso.com for more details.