It just occurred to me after reading around on here that despite "being an Ashtangi," I have never, here read that again,
NEVER ONCE
been "given a pose." I learned Primary all at once, as a series where the hard poses were modified. When I was doing Mysore-style in SF, Clayton let me do all of Primary and then we worked on dropbacks/standups. I was never "given" any of Primary (as I'd gotten it all myself; that was pretty cool) and I was also never "given" any of Intermediate. I've seen poses given, but I've never received one. Far out.
Heck, I even "give" poses in my one afternoon Mysore-style class; that is HILARIOUS. I don't formally "give" them, really, or at least I don't sense my authority in that way, but I do tell folks when to move to backbends and I do my best to encourage, bend, twist and otherwise move people into poses.
I'm not worried about whether or not I "count" as an Ashtangi, regarding all of this. I count, first because that's how I would describe my practice, and second because I maintain as much of the tradition, what might be called the subculture, as possible (as much as I remember, transmitted from SKPJ to CH thence to me).
But wow, I've never had what might be considered "THE" experience of a long-term ashtanga practice. Far, far out.
3 comments:
Dear Clayton,
Do you to a remote transmission service of the ashtanga practice? If so, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind emailing me the next pose?
:)
(Last time I "got" a pose, it actually was by email.)
You remind me of Iyengar off alone in Pune, sourcing the practice right out of his own body with Krishnamacharya in his imagination and some serious personal tapas to drive it forward. Pretty heroic, actually.
Being given the next pose is fun if:
(1) your self esteem does not depend on where you are in the series,
(2) you trust and respect your teacher, and
(3) your teacher is unambigious about what he or she would like to see before moving you on.
It can be an affirmation of "practice practice practice and all is coming."
But it can also lead to mental chatter such as:
"why am I paying $$$ for being ignored"
"I can't believe Student X is now ahead of me when I was so ahead of him"
"if can't balance in pincha by the end of the year I'm going to kill myself"
Haha! Rick has it figured out and is right on. The whole thing has ENORMOUS ego-messing potential -- either A) pumping it up in a way that feels fun at first but turns out in the end to be a huge kick in the ass as you try to deflate the huge balloon head that gums up your practice, or B) crushing it if you get caught in the spiral of hell that Nick captures in his final chitta vrtti.
Pose-giving: perhaps the most brilliant blessing-and-curse aspect of the whole system.
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