I've kept a number of blogs in the past, some yoga-centered and some not. And in the yoga blogging in particular, I find it difficult to write about the slow days, the sore days, the frustrating days. So the blog becomes this spotty record of all of the "really on" days, and then it reads like some "best of" collection by a rock band.
So: this week I drove about 3 and a half hours total to my four different classes and had 2 students in one class and all no-shows for the others. Friday's inversion workshop was cancelled on account of no attendance. This is frustrating stuff. The yoga asana week, as you know from last post, has been all sun salutations and occasionally some standing poses. That has felt good, and I've been "on the level" energetically, but I don't enjoy low energy. This morning I did 8 sun salutations and some quiet sitting.
Not really an "on" week yoga speaking, and I'm not going to get into the various life factors and stressy things and so forth that play into this. I think that this is why I have, historically, not written about the off days. There's very little to say without diving into either ranting or dirging or justifications of some kind.
Yesterday, during a day trip to Bloomington, I snuck in a Primary in a park. Well, to be honest, Primary and five poses of Intermediate. The high points were that I did all of the jumpbacks smoothly except one, and also that I bound Pasasana with flat feet, on both sides. Yeehaw! Yes, Saturday is traditionally a day of rest, but if I have a spotty practice week, I regularly take whatever practice time I CAN get, and that frequently includes Saturday. Backbends were painful and all about pulling open the front body and the little nodes of fear and anxiety which build up on off weeks, but that's fine, I knew that such a mode of backbend was coming.
Poses continue to change: in the last few weeks I've seen my Marichyasana A get deeper, and also my Janu Sirsasana C , particularly on the right side where the hip is tighter. And comfort is coming throughout Primary, well, except for backbends, which seem to be a point of CONSTANT wrestling with my emotional ups and downs.
I do not teach tomorrow, or Tuesday. Hah!
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
Light Practice.
This morning, sun salutations, standing poses to Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana and that's it. Ever since Monday night the stress of my non-yoga life here has gotten the better of me, and I really lost the flow of a week's practice with that moon day (traditionally, no practice on full and new moons) in the middle of the week. So it's been either a few sun salutations or a few standing poses on top of them and that's it. No backbends since Tuesday.
That's fine, really; hardly preferable, but I find that I really don't resent stopping a practice when I lose the breath, and I lose the breath pretty easily when I'm all stressed-up about money and some paper submission deadline over the weekend and no students showing up in classes I drive most of an hour to get to, and so forth.
So a good yoga week and a hard life week. These things happen.
Now to finish writing a paper: in a way, now to the REAL yoga.
That's fine, really; hardly preferable, but I find that I really don't resent stopping a practice when I lose the breath, and I lose the breath pretty easily when I'm all stressed-up about money and some paper submission deadline over the weekend and no students showing up in classes I drive most of an hour to get to, and so forth.
So a good yoga week and a hard life week. These things happen.
Now to finish writing a paper: in a way, now to the REAL yoga.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Trapezoid Man
Once again I spent last night in the Intro to 2nd class--which was on hiatus for most of August and the start of this month, so I subbed it for my teacher, and usually did a led Primary Series instead of Intermediate.
It was a bit of a hit-or-miss practice, but with some definitely interesting moments. Pasasana I bound with heels down, going to the right, and had to tiptoe, in order to bind going left (that's par for the course). Face to shin in both sides of Krounchasana . The endurance test in the "baby backbends" remains the five breaths in Dhanurasana after doing the two rounds of "side bow." It's challenging to hang out there for five more!
Ustrasana, however, is getting much more comfortable and really moving out of my lumbar spine, which is very nice of it. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I do with my arms in Laghuvajrasana; last night I got my head to the floor but my shoulders were scrunching up into the back of my head, so I reached forward for the thighs and then couldn't get up out of the pose without reaching the hands back to the calves and using the forearms to press myself up until the quads could engage and take me the rest of the way. I wonder how many yogis climb into that pose and then complain about their arms being too long...
And then the pose I refer to as "trapezoid man". Kapotasana is one of those poses that I thought was impossible; I was certain, particularly after the first half-dozen times I tried it, that I'd spend all of this lifetime stopped right there. But now it seems to be approaching, and after practice, I realize that some time, I'll do it. Usually, as I've said before, I drop my hands back, and walk in and concentrate on pressing the pose out of the lumbar spine. Last night I was able to walk my hands under my head. They say that it's easier to grab your toes/feet/ankles if you rotate the elbows OUTward to the sides, but I find that I get deeper in my floor-walking if I keep the elbows IN. Hmm. It's the same in dropping back into the wheel: I have seen people "cheat it" by standing wider apart and even pointing their feet apart, but if I do that when I drop back, I feel the whole pose in my lower back, and I need to point my toes and move the feet closer together. Perhaps my limbs are all about internal rotation?
I didn't bind the lotus in Supta Vajrasana but it was nice to have a partner helping out. Both rounds of Bakasana were very well-behaved, and I'm getting my straight-arm Bakasana back, which I'm very psyched about (that means the soft-tissue injury in my left hand, from all that arm balancing in SF, is beginning to really heal).
The twists were marvelous, and I'm still in love with Half Lord of the Fishes (this pose). I always want to put a foot behind my head in this class, and even if we run out of time, I'll usually do it anyway, because I like it. I have not had a foot "slip out and over" in Eka Pada Sirsasana A in months. Sure, I want less weight pressing into my neck and eventually I want the leg behind the shoulder so I don't have to press back with my whole torso against it, but I feel pretty straight-spined in the pose, and I love feeling the hip rotate open. The fold forward in that pose (version B) is still challenging; the weight increases, and while I can take the extended foot and hold for five breaths, it's not often comfortable to hold the other shin behind the head. As I've said before, I usually lose the foot in C, but I held it on the left side (that is, left foot behind head). It was so cozy back there that I decided to take the "fancy exit" and press up on the fifth breath into Chakorasana and then swing back and through.
Some people get into Supta Kurmasana from Dwi Pada Sirsasana. I decided to go the other way, and see about getting two feet behind my head from belly-down-on-the-floor. It worked, but not without some argument between the thighs and the shoulders. Both of these poses ask the shoulders to be in front of the thighs (so that the triceps are pressed against the hamstrings). When I pressed myself up into Dwi Pada, my thighs were very nearly slipping past the arms, so in both the balance-on-sit-bones version and then the press-up of Dwi Pada, it was all about "stay there, thighs, stay. Stay, I said." Pretty amusing, really.
I got an adjustment in Yoganidrasana which made the pose easier to hold; I can bind my hands but my spine should be longer in the pose; it tends to curve and then I weeble-wobble to and fro. And then I took on the Tittibhasana sequence, where first you stand on your hands as in the image, and then put the feet down, bind the hands around your back and go for a walk . I can bind my hands around my back like that without too much difficulty; in a night class, I can even do that before a single sun salutation (my hamstrings are long and so are my arms). But at this point in Intermediate, this sequence is a major endurance test. I have never yet taken the "five steps forward, five steps back," even doing it to breath cue (inhale, foot up, exhale, foot down, which makes it easier), without needing to pause after the Titti walk. My quads turn to molten jelly in that sequence.
I don't want it to seem that I just go to this class and rip off half or more of Intermediate: there are extra breaths taken all over the place, "set up" breaths before the Bakasanas, "compass pose" before the Eka Padas, and so on. It's a real exploration, not a serious on-breath-pace led Intermediate. And I never yet have done the full expression of Trapezoid Man, so we don't do the Mysore-style "stop at the pose you can't do" rule either. Modifications of a hundred kinds are given; it's fun and loose, very much a "bring your own determination" thing.
After some recovery I folded forward and clasped my hands for Titti D (or C as some folks call it) and then tried to hold Titti A for five more breaths, swing back into a Bakasana and out, but the Titti was too much and I collapsed in a big sweaty heap of blissful happiness, from the Bakasana. I took a break before kipping up into a Pincha Mayurasana and then did it three times, once to hold, once to explore lowering my right leg into lotus, and once to explore lowering the feet toward my head. That was more than enough Intermediate for one day, so I did three backbends (arms straight but slightly nose-ward of my ears, yet still with big thoracic spine engagement), got a dropback assist (LOVE those!) and then did closing.
This was also the practice where I learned something obvious about jumping back in lotus: after Kukkutasana in Primary, the exit is "release the hands, and then jump back in lotus and undo the legs in the air." I've never been able to do that. I was playing with it last night and had a lightbulb moment: just like in jumpbacks generally, PULL THE KNEES TOWARD THE FACE. So I "abbed the lotus up" toward my face, pressed the floor, leaned forward, and passed it right through my arms. I couldn't undo it, so I kind of flopped into a downward-facing lotus on the floor, but now I "get" how to throw it back.
All in all a marvelous practice. I MISS led classes, where I get to play student. Rawr!!
It was a bit of a hit-or-miss practice, but with some definitely interesting moments. Pasasana I bound with heels down, going to the right, and had to tiptoe, in order to bind going left (that's par for the course). Face to shin in both sides of Krounchasana . The endurance test in the "baby backbends" remains the five breaths in Dhanurasana after doing the two rounds of "side bow." It's challenging to hang out there for five more!
Ustrasana, however, is getting much more comfortable and really moving out of my lumbar spine, which is very nice of it. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I do with my arms in Laghuvajrasana; last night I got my head to the floor but my shoulders were scrunching up into the back of my head, so I reached forward for the thighs and then couldn't get up out of the pose without reaching the hands back to the calves and using the forearms to press myself up until the quads could engage and take me the rest of the way. I wonder how many yogis climb into that pose and then complain about their arms being too long...
And then the pose I refer to as "trapezoid man". Kapotasana is one of those poses that I thought was impossible; I was certain, particularly after the first half-dozen times I tried it, that I'd spend all of this lifetime stopped right there. But now it seems to be approaching, and after practice, I realize that some time, I'll do it. Usually, as I've said before, I drop my hands back, and walk in and concentrate on pressing the pose out of the lumbar spine. Last night I was able to walk my hands under my head. They say that it's easier to grab your toes/feet/ankles if you rotate the elbows OUTward to the sides, but I find that I get deeper in my floor-walking if I keep the elbows IN. Hmm. It's the same in dropping back into the wheel: I have seen people "cheat it" by standing wider apart and even pointing their feet apart, but if I do that when I drop back, I feel the whole pose in my lower back, and I need to point my toes and move the feet closer together. Perhaps my limbs are all about internal rotation?
I didn't bind the lotus in Supta Vajrasana but it was nice to have a partner helping out. Both rounds of Bakasana were very well-behaved, and I'm getting my straight-arm Bakasana back, which I'm very psyched about (that means the soft-tissue injury in my left hand, from all that arm balancing in SF, is beginning to really heal).
The twists were marvelous, and I'm still in love with Half Lord of the Fishes (this pose). I always want to put a foot behind my head in this class, and even if we run out of time, I'll usually do it anyway, because I like it. I have not had a foot "slip out and over" in Eka Pada Sirsasana A in months. Sure, I want less weight pressing into my neck and eventually I want the leg behind the shoulder so I don't have to press back with my whole torso against it, but I feel pretty straight-spined in the pose, and I love feeling the hip rotate open. The fold forward in that pose (version B) is still challenging; the weight increases, and while I can take the extended foot and hold for five breaths, it's not often comfortable to hold the other shin behind the head. As I've said before, I usually lose the foot in C, but I held it on the left side (that is, left foot behind head). It was so cozy back there that I decided to take the "fancy exit" and press up on the fifth breath into Chakorasana and then swing back and through.
Some people get into Supta Kurmasana from Dwi Pada Sirsasana. I decided to go the other way, and see about getting two feet behind my head from belly-down-on-the-floor. It worked, but not without some argument between the thighs and the shoulders. Both of these poses ask the shoulders to be in front of the thighs (so that the triceps are pressed against the hamstrings). When I pressed myself up into Dwi Pada, my thighs were very nearly slipping past the arms, so in both the balance-on-sit-bones version and then the press-up of Dwi Pada, it was all about "stay there, thighs, stay. Stay, I said." Pretty amusing, really.
I got an adjustment in Yoganidrasana which made the pose easier to hold; I can bind my hands but my spine should be longer in the pose; it tends to curve and then I weeble-wobble to and fro. And then I took on the Tittibhasana sequence, where first you stand on your hands as in the image, and then put the feet down, bind the hands around your back and go for a walk . I can bind my hands around my back like that without too much difficulty; in a night class, I can even do that before a single sun salutation (my hamstrings are long and so are my arms). But at this point in Intermediate, this sequence is a major endurance test. I have never yet taken the "five steps forward, five steps back," even doing it to breath cue (inhale, foot up, exhale, foot down, which makes it easier), without needing to pause after the Titti walk. My quads turn to molten jelly in that sequence.
I don't want it to seem that I just go to this class and rip off half or more of Intermediate: there are extra breaths taken all over the place, "set up" breaths before the Bakasanas, "compass pose" before the Eka Padas, and so on. It's a real exploration, not a serious on-breath-pace led Intermediate. And I never yet have done the full expression of Trapezoid Man, so we don't do the Mysore-style "stop at the pose you can't do" rule either. Modifications of a hundred kinds are given; it's fun and loose, very much a "bring your own determination" thing.
After some recovery I folded forward and clasped my hands for Titti D (or C as some folks call it) and then tried to hold Titti A for five more breaths, swing back into a Bakasana and out, but the Titti was too much and I collapsed in a big sweaty heap of blissful happiness, from the Bakasana. I took a break before kipping up into a Pincha Mayurasana and then did it three times, once to hold, once to explore lowering my right leg into lotus, and once to explore lowering the feet toward my head. That was more than enough Intermediate for one day, so I did three backbends (arms straight but slightly nose-ward of my ears, yet still with big thoracic spine engagement), got a dropback assist (LOVE those!) and then did closing.
This was also the practice where I learned something obvious about jumping back in lotus: after Kukkutasana in Primary, the exit is "release the hands, and then jump back in lotus and undo the legs in the air." I've never been able to do that. I was playing with it last night and had a lightbulb moment: just like in jumpbacks generally, PULL THE KNEES TOWARD THE FACE. So I "abbed the lotus up" toward my face, pressed the floor, leaned forward, and passed it right through my arms. I couldn't undo it, so I kind of flopped into a downward-facing lotus on the floor, but now I "get" how to throw it back.
All in all a marvelous practice. I MISS led classes, where I get to play student. Rawr!!
Monday, September 24, 2007
Goin' intercostal.
The intercostals are muscles which lie between the ribs; specifically, let's say you're eating ribs at some barbeque place: the meat on those bones is intercostal muscles.
I am sore in both the front and back intercostals. This is not the first time this has happened. These muscles (along, significantly, with the serratus anterior ) are what jumpbacks are made of. The front intercostals get quite a workout when one attempts to reach stability in an inversion such as headstand or, harder, forearm stand. Also, if you try to "take it up" with your feet crossed (press floor with hands, attempt to lift butt off floor), you do this in part with the intercostals. And more sophisticated arm balances (like one-legged bakasana) are all about, among other muscles, these.
The rear intercostals, however: soreness there is new for me. And I think it's related to putting backbends in the thoracic spine (this can be done two ways that I can immediately think of: arms straighter in the wheel, and pressing the chest "forward," so that the head is between the elbows/upper arms; walking the hands "in" also has this effect).
Now you'll say, "wait, those muscles don't stretch in a backbend, they should contract." Yes, true. I feel an intense stretch in the front ribs and belly and an intense contraction through the back ribs, and neither set of muscles is accustomed to this. Thus, the double soreness.
This and that I've been adding some pranayama back into my practice, both before and after: I try for nauli before, and usually take a few retentions-of-breath after. Also, I'm revving up my uddiyana bandha for the inversion workshop (I believe uddiyana is essential for balance in inversions, to say nothing of arm balances). The pranayama also calls for engaging these muscles, as the ribs inflate (and particularly so on retention after exhale).
It's funny to talk to yoga folks about this: "How are ya?" "Well, today I'm sore in the intercostals." "Oh, too much backbending?" "Yep, you bet."
I am sore in both the front and back intercostals. This is not the first time this has happened. These muscles (along, significantly, with the serratus anterior ) are what jumpbacks are made of. The front intercostals get quite a workout when one attempts to reach stability in an inversion such as headstand or, harder, forearm stand. Also, if you try to "take it up" with your feet crossed (press floor with hands, attempt to lift butt off floor), you do this in part with the intercostals. And more sophisticated arm balances (like one-legged bakasana) are all about, among other muscles, these.
The rear intercostals, however: soreness there is new for me. And I think it's related to putting backbends in the thoracic spine (this can be done two ways that I can immediately think of: arms straighter in the wheel, and pressing the chest "forward," so that the head is between the elbows/upper arms; walking the hands "in" also has this effect).
Now you'll say, "wait, those muscles don't stretch in a backbend, they should contract." Yes, true. I feel an intense stretch in the front ribs and belly and an intense contraction through the back ribs, and neither set of muscles is accustomed to this. Thus, the double soreness.
This and that I've been adding some pranayama back into my practice, both before and after: I try for nauli before, and usually take a few retentions-of-breath after. Also, I'm revving up my uddiyana bandha for the inversion workshop (I believe uddiyana is essential for balance in inversions, to say nothing of arm balances). The pranayama also calls for engaging these muscles, as the ribs inflate (and particularly so on retention after exhale).
It's funny to talk to yoga folks about this: "How are ya?" "Well, today I'm sore in the intercostals." "Oh, too much backbending?" "Yep, you bet."
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The band is just fantastic that is really what I think; oh by the way, which one's Pink?
Post-practice this morning, I had a combination of various songs from Pink Floyd's 1975 album Wish You Were Here, and lines from Walt Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric," mixed up in my head. An admirable, if not easily reconciled, mix.
To wit:
"I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul."
It was an odd but marvelous practice: I'd been reading some of Jason's early 2004 stuff and apparently at Tim's place at that time, they did pranayama before asana practice. When I was in SF, Larry taught us nauli (abdominal churning, with intense uddiyana bandha: this isn't something I can teach online, so I'm not going to link anything here) and nauli really did crank up my breath pre-practice. So I went in this morning thinking about breath retention, the building of heat, the sort of "column of steel filled with air" metaphor that I have used to explain uddiyana bandha to myself.
Tangent: I experience uddiyana bandha as flexion of the muscles around the spine. Sort of a reversal of the "Incredible Hulk" move, where you flex the rectus abdominus. In uddiyana, the shoulders move back, the ribs expand, as if a grandparent has told you to "sit up straight" or a drill sergeant has called, "Ten-hut!" But then the shoulders relax and the abs don't engage; the intercostals do (those little muscles between the ribs, which are also (my .02) essential for jump-backs). It's tricky, but I didn't want to go on talking about bandhas without at least some indication of what my muscular/energetic experience of them has been.
End tangent.
Ok then: practice. I went in fast and light. Sun salutations were quick and easy; standing poses had flexibility and depth. Jumpbacks in seated poses were touchless; I often (and particularly when I'm outside on the cotton rug and uneven ground) scrape a foot or touch down a toe in a jumpback, but these were smooth power. After Marichyasana D , however, I did one round of Navasana (boat) and then went right to backbends. In the seated poses, I found myself repeating, "Don't think!" to get myself to stop wondering if I would "miss" a jumpback (and what does that matter?) or if I would bind Mari D on both sides and all of that; pose anxiety. It worked. But then I slowed down the pace when I got to the Marichyasana twists (C and D); I often get tired in the jumps at that point (after having done 20 of them) and the "tone" of my practice often changes somewhat at those poses. Today I bound both Mari D's, felt a certain mellowness kicking in (and usually if I give up a practice early, it comes with ego teeth, not mellowness; it comes with regret and frustration which I have to manage--but not today). I barely paused between the boat and backbends; they were what I wanted to do. Three rounds of the wheel, three hangs back, one garage dropback which didn't feel great in the lumbar spine, and then forward bend, closing series. A marvelous practice. I feel fantastic, and there is no ego-voice yelling at me, and my lumbar spine doesn't feel like bone china, as it sometimes does when I have a backbend-heavy practice.
Ashtanga comes in a set sequence, and as you can see if you read a lot of my posts, I'm unclear on exactly what my "full practice" is or should be. Last week I think I changed it every day. Today's big discovery is that the practice determined itself; I didn't "run out of gas," I didn't get frustrated, I didn't lose the breath, I simply did poses up to the bound twists and then went to closing. And it rocked.
This is different from not confronting fear or "not doing the hard pose" or something like that. I know I can (physically) do everything in Primary, and usually I jump at the chance (no pun intended) to do the arm balance and the massive hip openers that follow Navasana in Primary. Yesterday I expected maybe to run a good way into Intermediate today. But it was the energetics which determined (or maybe were determined by, hard to say) the practice today. It was a good practice not because I DID pose Q or did NOT do pose X, but because I went along with the energy, I followed what Larry might call "the vinyasa," the cosmic vinyasa.
Two cents for Bindi's struggle with negative email: yes, astanga is a traditional practice. Indeed, we DO confront fear, and other negativities. That's part of an astanga practice, I couldn't agree more. Perhaps some folks are confusing this with chasing fear or some idea about "needing" to be in pain to have a "good practice." The term "yoga," in the widest scope, yes, probably means one could sit still and have cosmic union, and that would rock, yes. BUT astanga yoga specifically is an intense physical practice and it is, traditionally, done six days a week, in the early am's. If there's pain, or bad emotions, or something else, or you just have a "body stiff" day, you still practice. Maybe not much, but you do. That might look, to some folks, like a sort of "at gunpoint" yoga, and some people probably DO astanga in that way, and that's unhealthy. BUT that doesn't mean that the whole practice, to say nothing of intelligent discipline, is unhealthy.
To wit:
"I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul."
It was an odd but marvelous practice: I'd been reading some of Jason's early 2004 stuff and apparently at Tim's place at that time, they did pranayama before asana practice. When I was in SF, Larry taught us nauli (abdominal churning, with intense uddiyana bandha: this isn't something I can teach online, so I'm not going to link anything here) and nauli really did crank up my breath pre-practice. So I went in this morning thinking about breath retention, the building of heat, the sort of "column of steel filled with air" metaphor that I have used to explain uddiyana bandha to myself.
Tangent: I experience uddiyana bandha as flexion of the muscles around the spine. Sort of a reversal of the "Incredible Hulk" move, where you flex the rectus abdominus. In uddiyana, the shoulders move back, the ribs expand, as if a grandparent has told you to "sit up straight" or a drill sergeant has called, "Ten-hut!" But then the shoulders relax and the abs don't engage; the intercostals do (those little muscles between the ribs, which are also (my .02) essential for jump-backs). It's tricky, but I didn't want to go on talking about bandhas without at least some indication of what my muscular/energetic experience of them has been.
End tangent.
Ok then: practice. I went in fast and light. Sun salutations were quick and easy; standing poses had flexibility and depth. Jumpbacks in seated poses were touchless; I often (and particularly when I'm outside on the cotton rug and uneven ground) scrape a foot or touch down a toe in a jumpback, but these were smooth power. After Marichyasana D , however, I did one round of Navasana (boat) and then went right to backbends. In the seated poses, I found myself repeating, "Don't think!" to get myself to stop wondering if I would "miss" a jumpback (and what does that matter?) or if I would bind Mari D on both sides and all of that; pose anxiety. It worked. But then I slowed down the pace when I got to the Marichyasana twists (C and D); I often get tired in the jumps at that point (after having done 20 of them) and the "tone" of my practice often changes somewhat at those poses. Today I bound both Mari D's, felt a certain mellowness kicking in (and usually if I give up a practice early, it comes with ego teeth, not mellowness; it comes with regret and frustration which I have to manage--but not today). I barely paused between the boat and backbends; they were what I wanted to do. Three rounds of the wheel, three hangs back, one garage dropback which didn't feel great in the lumbar spine, and then forward bend, closing series. A marvelous practice. I feel fantastic, and there is no ego-voice yelling at me, and my lumbar spine doesn't feel like bone china, as it sometimes does when I have a backbend-heavy practice.
Ashtanga comes in a set sequence, and as you can see if you read a lot of my posts, I'm unclear on exactly what my "full practice" is or should be. Last week I think I changed it every day. Today's big discovery is that the practice determined itself; I didn't "run out of gas," I didn't get frustrated, I didn't lose the breath, I simply did poses up to the bound twists and then went to closing. And it rocked.
This is different from not confronting fear or "not doing the hard pose" or something like that. I know I can (physically) do everything in Primary, and usually I jump at the chance (no pun intended) to do the arm balance and the massive hip openers that follow Navasana in Primary. Yesterday I expected maybe to run a good way into Intermediate today. But it was the energetics which determined (or maybe were determined by, hard to say) the practice today. It was a good practice not because I DID pose Q or did NOT do pose X, but because I went along with the energy, I followed what Larry might call "the vinyasa," the cosmic vinyasa.
Two cents for Bindi's struggle with negative email: yes, astanga is a traditional practice. Indeed, we DO confront fear, and other negativities. That's part of an astanga practice, I couldn't agree more. Perhaps some folks are confusing this with chasing fear or some idea about "needing" to be in pain to have a "good practice." The term "yoga," in the widest scope, yes, probably means one could sit still and have cosmic union, and that would rock, yes. BUT astanga yoga specifically is an intense physical practice and it is, traditionally, done six days a week, in the early am's. If there's pain, or bad emotions, or something else, or you just have a "body stiff" day, you still practice. Maybe not much, but you do. That might look, to some folks, like a sort of "at gunpoint" yoga, and some people probably DO astanga in that way, and that's unhealthy. BUT that doesn't mean that the whole practice, to say nothing of intelligent discipline, is unhealthy.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Thoughts on "officially" teaching Ashtanga
Inspired by the last handful of posts over on Bindi's blog , I present some free rambling.
There are two types of "official" Ashtanga teachers: the authorized and the certified. These labels are given by Pattabhi Jois and family, and are earned through time in Mysore, India, practicing at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute. There is no other way to earn one of these titles. However: as Bindi argued in a recent post, apparently there are teachers who either spend some time in Mysore and exaggerate how much time or how important that is (I don't have a specific example), and/or there are teachers who get authorization and then go their own way, and found their own "power yoga" school or what have you (I can think of examples, but since this discussion has a sort of perjorative and/or ranting flavor, and I'm not interested in doing that, I won't "name names").
Now there are (or at least seem to be) well-loved authorized and certified teachers. Tim Miller, for example, is certified, and the WWW is FULL of positive comments about him in all regards. Clayton Horton, with whom I spent many Mysore-style mornings in May, is authorized and I find him to be totally straight-up in all ways.
This is also not to say that non-authorized teachers, or teachers who have never gone to Mysore to hang with the Jois family, can't rock the planet. My teachers here and in Bloomington (back in the day) got their training from people widely regarded as senior teachers: David Swenson and Richard Freeman (RF is certified by the family; DS says he's not interested in the label).
So what's this all about? Well for one (and thanks Lisa) it's good, I think, to have a voice saying that authorization by the Jois family does NOT necessarily a good teacher or a traditional Ashtanga teacher make. And with that comes the converse: authorization is not also REQUIRED in order to create a talented or "official" Ashtanga teacher.
I, for example, am nothing close to authorized. Last I heard, one was required to spend a year in Mysore before even any consideration of the label will be taken up, and you're not allowed to (well, you're discouraged from) ask/ing about it. I know that as time passes and I find the proper level between my students' ability and my own teaching (both of which are pretty fluid right now) I'm spacing things that I've seen in Clayton's teaching, and I'm probably already doing stuff that's non-traditional, although I've tried to absorb as much of the traditional flavor as possible. I know that in led Primary I don't do a traditional count; I've never taken a traditionally counted Ashtanga class (although the one Swenson led when he was here was probably close).
I wonder sometimes if people see my "teaching resume" and ask themselves, "three years, and this dude is going to teach me?" It's a way of asking myself if I'm "ready" for teaching yoga to people. My answer of course is "yep, I'm ready" (if I thought otherwise, I wouldn't teach). For one, I've taught academic classes for ten years, all through grad school. For two, this practice loves me and I love it. Everywhere I go, even to Larry's place in SF, people tell me "wow dude you've got some far out practice" or words to that effect. I'm not going to claim any superlatives for myself here: yes, I practice regularly; yes, I seem to be able to do some far out poses; yes, I'll talk for hours at a time to whoever will listen to me, about Ashtanga yoga.
I like teaching people things (film, yoga, you name it) and yes, I've got a far out practice. I like sharing it: the tradition (as well as I understand it), the sequence, the purifying sweat, the in-some-cases continuous work toward whatever it is: jumpbacks, steady breathing, Marichyasana B , or something else.
Y'all come.
There are two types of "official" Ashtanga teachers: the authorized and the certified. These labels are given by Pattabhi Jois and family, and are earned through time in Mysore, India, practicing at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute. There is no other way to earn one of these titles. However: as Bindi argued in a recent post, apparently there are teachers who either spend some time in Mysore and exaggerate how much time or how important that is (I don't have a specific example), and/or there are teachers who get authorization and then go their own way, and found their own "power yoga" school or what have you (I can think of examples, but since this discussion has a sort of perjorative and/or ranting flavor, and I'm not interested in doing that, I won't "name names").
Now there are (or at least seem to be) well-loved authorized and certified teachers. Tim Miller, for example, is certified, and the WWW is FULL of positive comments about him in all regards. Clayton Horton, with whom I spent many Mysore-style mornings in May, is authorized and I find him to be totally straight-up in all ways.
This is also not to say that non-authorized teachers, or teachers who have never gone to Mysore to hang with the Jois family, can't rock the planet. My teachers here and in Bloomington (back in the day) got their training from people widely regarded as senior teachers: David Swenson and Richard Freeman (RF is certified by the family; DS says he's not interested in the label).
So what's this all about? Well for one (and thanks Lisa) it's good, I think, to have a voice saying that authorization by the Jois family does NOT necessarily a good teacher or a traditional Ashtanga teacher make. And with that comes the converse: authorization is not also REQUIRED in order to create a talented or "official" Ashtanga teacher.
I, for example, am nothing close to authorized. Last I heard, one was required to spend a year in Mysore before even any consideration of the label will be taken up, and you're not allowed to (well, you're discouraged from) ask/ing about it. I know that as time passes and I find the proper level between my students' ability and my own teaching (both of which are pretty fluid right now) I'm spacing things that I've seen in Clayton's teaching, and I'm probably already doing stuff that's non-traditional, although I've tried to absorb as much of the traditional flavor as possible. I know that in led Primary I don't do a traditional count; I've never taken a traditionally counted Ashtanga class (although the one Swenson led when he was here was probably close).
I wonder sometimes if people see my "teaching resume" and ask themselves, "three years, and this dude is going to teach me?" It's a way of asking myself if I'm "ready" for teaching yoga to people. My answer of course is "yep, I'm ready" (if I thought otherwise, I wouldn't teach). For one, I've taught academic classes for ten years, all through grad school. For two, this practice loves me and I love it. Everywhere I go, even to Larry's place in SF, people tell me "wow dude you've got some far out practice" or words to that effect. I'm not going to claim any superlatives for myself here: yes, I practice regularly; yes, I seem to be able to do some far out poses; yes, I'll talk for hours at a time to whoever will listen to me, about Ashtanga yoga.
I like teaching people things (film, yoga, you name it) and yes, I've got a far out practice. I like sharing it: the tradition (as well as I understand it), the sequence, the purifying sweat, the in-some-cases continuous work toward whatever it is: jumpbacks, steady breathing, Marichyasana B , or something else.
Y'all come.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Inversion Workshop--next Friday!
I don't know how many local peeks these pages get, but to all you Indy and area yogis out there:
I'm leading an Inversion Workshop next week at this studio in Zionsville and we're going to cover forearm stands, handstands, shoulderstands and headstands. That includes modifications, full expressions and fear management, as well as props and using the wall (and learning how not to use the wall). Feet-leaving-the-floor will not be required, so this is open to practitioners ranging from the curious to the fearful to the well-experienced, and everyone in between.
Workshop specifics: Friday the 28 September, 6-8 pm, $25.
As they say: y'all come!
Here is a Mapquest map: Hecker's Fitness is located in the Wessel Building (just past the Dairy Queen if you come in from 334), in the back.
I'm leading an Inversion Workshop next week at this studio in Zionsville and we're going to cover forearm stands, handstands, shoulderstands and headstands. That includes modifications, full expressions and fear management, as well as props and using the wall (and learning how not to use the wall). Feet-leaving-the-floor will not be required, so this is open to practitioners ranging from the curious to the fearful to the well-experienced, and everyone in between.
Workshop specifics: Friday the 28 September, 6-8 pm, $25.
As they say: y'all come!
Here is a Mapquest map: Hecker's Fitness is located in the Wessel Building (just past the Dairy Queen if you come in from 334), in the back.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
This heroic practice
Some time ago, there was a quote from Tim Miller--posted I think on Vanessa's blog --about "we must be heroes every day to do this heroic practice." If I do even a Primary series practice, it takes me about 80 minutes, minimum. If I add a pack of poses from Intermediate, I'm on the mat for 2 hours. So this yoga practice can be a real live time commitment: as one of my Mysore students put it, "I'm gonna have to start making a place for this stuff in my life, right?" Yep.
Since Monday's encounter with Intermediate , I've added more of it than usual, just to experiment. Yes, that's not "traditional," but I've only spent one month of the now 37 months of my Ashtanga practice, with a traditional authorized teacher. Experiments call. For example, yesterday's practice saw me work up to Kapotasana (and my hands don't yet reach my feet, but I feel that I understand the mechanics of the pose: drop back, straighten arms, walk in, when hands touch feet, drop elbows). After that pose, I decided that I wanted some more counterposes rather than going straight to backbends (because doing Intermediate's backbends, followed by the wheel, followed by working on dropbacks into the wheel, is a HECK OF A LOT of backbends). So I did this:
Supta Vajrasana with no partner (because I didn't have one) and without binding the lotus (because my left wrist has been giving me some nonsense about that)
Bakasana both pressing up from the floor and jumping from down dog (Bakasana "B"). I taught myself how to jump into this pose last summer, in another experiment. I found a big field of grass, warmed up and jumped probably 25-30 times until I found the balance and the counter-balance.
Bharadvajasana a half lotus twist, which feels great after all that backbending. Even my right hip (which some days forbids lotus unless I'm really warmed up) was willing to cooperate.
Half Lord of the Fishes (Ardha Matsyendrasana) which is a wonderful stretch for that tight hip (it's really the glutes which are tight).
Finally, before backbends, I did these:
Eka Pada Sirsasana A , B , and C . These also developed as part of an experiment a year ago. Once I began to make friends with Kurmasana I began to wonder how far beyond that it really WAS to put a foot behind my head. Now I can often stick A (without the leg slipping out from behind) and B (although I have to press hard against the leg to keep it there) and I almost always lose the behind-headness in C.
I have also experimented with the Tittibhasana sequence (but that's another story) and from the Rocket, I've learned how to do forearm stand (Pincha Mayurasana) .
But this morning I was sore all over from that practice, and I'm not often sore from a yoga practice, this was something to rediscover. So today I turned down the "hero volume" and did Primary, Pasasana, half a dozen backbends and my dropback practice (against the wall of my garage). The most useful front-body opening seems to happen in the tight wheel I drop into using the garage to help me get down there. I can feel something pull open in the lower, LOWER belly and even into the quads. They say that eventually that stops happening, and the wheel gets comfortable. We'll see!
Since Monday's encounter with Intermediate , I've added more of it than usual, just to experiment. Yes, that's not "traditional," but I've only spent one month of the now 37 months of my Ashtanga practice, with a traditional authorized teacher. Experiments call. For example, yesterday's practice saw me work up to Kapotasana (and my hands don't yet reach my feet, but I feel that I understand the mechanics of the pose: drop back, straighten arms, walk in, when hands touch feet, drop elbows). After that pose, I decided that I wanted some more counterposes rather than going straight to backbends (because doing Intermediate's backbends, followed by the wheel, followed by working on dropbacks into the wheel, is a HECK OF A LOT of backbends). So I did this:
Supta Vajrasana with no partner (because I didn't have one) and without binding the lotus (because my left wrist has been giving me some nonsense about that)
Bakasana both pressing up from the floor and jumping from down dog (Bakasana "B"). I taught myself how to jump into this pose last summer, in another experiment. I found a big field of grass, warmed up and jumped probably 25-30 times until I found the balance and the counter-balance.
Bharadvajasana a half lotus twist, which feels great after all that backbending. Even my right hip (which some days forbids lotus unless I'm really warmed up) was willing to cooperate.
Half Lord of the Fishes (Ardha Matsyendrasana) which is a wonderful stretch for that tight hip (it's really the glutes which are tight).
Finally, before backbends, I did these:
Eka Pada Sirsasana A , B , and C . These also developed as part of an experiment a year ago. Once I began to make friends with Kurmasana I began to wonder how far beyond that it really WAS to put a foot behind my head. Now I can often stick A (without the leg slipping out from behind) and B (although I have to press hard against the leg to keep it there) and I almost always lose the behind-headness in C.
I have also experimented with the Tittibhasana sequence (but that's another story) and from the Rocket, I've learned how to do forearm stand (Pincha Mayurasana) .
But this morning I was sore all over from that practice, and I'm not often sore from a yoga practice, this was something to rediscover. So today I turned down the "hero volume" and did Primary, Pasasana, half a dozen backbends and my dropback practice (against the wall of my garage). The most useful front-body opening seems to happen in the tight wheel I drop into using the garage to help me get down there. I can feel something pull open in the lower, LOWER belly and even into the quads. They say that eventually that stops happening, and the wheel gets comfortable. We'll see!
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Is there anything to this?
I have heard it said that an asana practice, particularly an intense one, can release toxins into the body, as areas where one keeps stress or other toxic business are released.
Yesterday morning I did 4 rounds of 3 wheels at the end of practice (gradually opening the front body, and it took 10-15 minutes, it wasn't just a macho march through 12 backbends), and then yesterday evening did an "Intro to Second" class and got wrestled into Dwi Pada Sirsasana (both ankles crossed behind head). It was all fun, all good, and I took another four rounds of the wheel, but then later that night what feels like allergy symptoms (post-nasal drip, sore throat, etc) kicked in.
My hips are where I keep my stress (lower belly, front hips, upper quads, psoas muscle, to be specific) and so, could a day of 16 backbends cause these symptoms or should I just vacuum my place instead? What do you think?
Yesterday morning I did 4 rounds of 3 wheels at the end of practice (gradually opening the front body, and it took 10-15 minutes, it wasn't just a macho march through 12 backbends), and then yesterday evening did an "Intro to Second" class and got wrestled into Dwi Pada Sirsasana (both ankles crossed behind head). It was all fun, all good, and I took another four rounds of the wheel, but then later that night what feels like allergy symptoms (post-nasal drip, sore throat, etc) kicked in.
My hips are where I keep my stress (lower belly, front hips, upper quads, psoas muscle, to be specific) and so, could a day of 16 backbends cause these symptoms or should I just vacuum my place instead? What do you think?
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Two cents on vinyasa/ashtanga/yoga
Hi folks,
sorry about the pause in posting, my wireless card bit the dust and I'm waiting on the arrival of a new one...
once upon a time in a 75-minute Ashtanga class a student asked me, "Well what's the difference between ashtanga and vinyasa flow anyway?" I didn't have a good answer at that point, particularly because the poses we were doing in 75 minutes were, really, pretty much like any other vinyasa class taught at that studio.
now, from Larry, I can say, "Ashtanga is a science of sequencing poses according to breath, bandhas and dristi (gazing point)." Another go-to answer is that ashtanga poses occur in a set order which, classically, is not deviated from (note that since the 1930s, various changes to the sequences have occurred; Pattabhi Jois has been reputed to say, "Series not changing, students forgetting!" about this, haha!).
David Swenson, when he was in town in mid-August, said that it's not incorrect to say that almost all "vinyasa this and that" yoga (flow, hot flow, vinyasa flow, vinyasa yoga, power yoga, whatever your studio calls it) comes in one way or another from ashtanga sequences. Ashtanga has been taught in India since the 1930s, and the earliest of the power yogas/vinyasa yogas (I'm thinking of folks like Baron Baptiste and Beryl Bender Birch), as far as I can tell, appears in the 1980s. This is not to say that there has never, on the planet, been a vinyasa yoga that isn't ashtanga, and also it is not to say that inventive and cool stuff cannot be done with a vinyasa yoga class (look, for example, at Shiva Rea's stuff or Andrey Lappa's stuff).
This is to say that much Western and specifically American vinyasa/power yoga in one way or another can be tracked back to ashtanga sequences. Check out the primary for a minute: sun salutations, standing poses (revolved and not), hand-to-big-toe balances, half-lotus poses both seated and standing, about a dozen seated poses including twists, internal rotation of the thigh and external rotation of the thigh, navasana (the boat), an arm balance, intense hip openers, bandha-builders (like when you roll up from your back, hands to big toes, and balance on your sit bones) and then a pack of backbends, inversions, and various cooling poses, all capped off by "uplifting," where you suspend your full/half/no-lotus off the ground for up to 100 breaths. That's a lot of asana, and I didn't even mention the vinyasa between poses, the full expressions of which are jumping your legs and body through your arms as you move from seated to chaturanga dandasana (the low push-up), updog, downdog and then back to seated. There are about 50 of those in a full Primary series.
Ok, so maybe the various vinyasa flows and power yogas can be tracked back to this. The all-important follow-up question is, "Well which one is BETTER, then?" Better? What is this "better" of which you speak? Do you see this tendency? Come on, even I have it. If you put two things in a room together, the tendency is to choose between them. "Do you do ashtanga OR vinyasa flow?" And my favorite (kidding) verion of this is the identity game, where you BECOME one practice and have to put down members of the other "team." Check this out: "Are you an ashtangi or do you do vinyasa flow?"
I do both ashtanga and vinyasa flow classes. Sure, my home practice is ashtanga and I teach an ashtanga-flavored vinyasa sequence (the Rocket), but I enjoy a vinyasa flow class here and again (there are some I don't care for, but that's instructor-specific; I've lost my will to play the "either-or" game above).
To follow up a thread from a recent blog posting out there, what about when students in an ashtanga class do something "vinyasa" from another class they've taken? Well, it depends on what they do and who is teaching how traditional a sequence (this is my two cents).
In the Rocket, I invite students to press up into tripod headstand from a standing wide angle pose (Prasarita Padottanasana A, to be precise) because that's what the Rocket likes. We also add side splits and front splits into that sequence. In my Mysore-style ashtanga class, I don't invite that because it's not part of the sequence and I want to follow the tradition as I've seen it taught and experienced it first-hand. There is no "better than/worse than" to be done here. In the same way that the Rocket is clearly derived from classical Ashtanga practice but is not inferior to it (why would one be interested in putting down any given sequence? what kind of use of energy is that? to quote Swenson here: if you change the ashtanga sequence, and don't call your change "ashtanga," great, do whatever you want), vinyasa sequences are also not inferior to Primary. Still, if I see someone pop a headstand in my Mysore-style class I'll probably want to encourage that student to stay targeted on bandhas/breath/dristi rather than the extra "fun" of the vinyasa flow move.
Ashtanga sequences are set; there are days when I'm not sure I'm down for the specific rigor of my home practice. But there are days I love and adore knowing what comes next without having to brainstorm a sequence or wait for the next pose to announce itself. Ashtanga is like looking in the same mirror every day: what am I all about TODAY? Vinyasa flow classes have a bit more carnival to their mirror. Challenge-wise (and again this is my two cents) I find that vinyasa classes demand a bit more fluidity from me: is the next pose going to be one I like, or not? How long are we going to hold this bound angle variation? Ashtanga practice comes with easy sections and difficult sections and I know what's coming when, so it's very much a matter of how much or little focus I've got on my energy in the "now." Sometimes a crazy hard pose is easy because I've got focus and energy and I do a modified version that suits my "today" rather than shooting for a full expression that doesn't (or maybe the full expression comes when I wasn't expecting it; that's how energy works). This also happens in vinyasa flow classes, but the management of "now" is more fluid: half-moon pose! and I have to do one sort of mind-body energy arrangment and sensing, to see how I feel about it, and then later, bakasana! and i have to do ANOTHER mind-body arrangement, check in with variations or not, and then whatever happens happens.
I was reading something not long ago about "Buddha mind" and whether the Buddha is the subject or the object of causation, and the wise man said, "The one with Buddha Mind is one with causation." This echoes something I've discovered about ashtanga and vinyasa flow: when I'm practicing, on very "on" energy days, I AM practicing. The way that someone once saw an American Indian rain dance, and said, "They ARE raining." The whole idea of "moving meditation." In Ashtanga's set poses, it is movement from one to the next, like riding a well-loved roller coaster: here comes that big drop again, how will you react? In vinyasa flow, it is movement from one to something else, which you discover moment to moment, a bit like highway driving. Will someone cut you off? How will you react? Will you make this green light or not; how will you react?
sorry about the pause in posting, my wireless card bit the dust and I'm waiting on the arrival of a new one...
once upon a time in a 75-minute Ashtanga class a student asked me, "Well what's the difference between ashtanga and vinyasa flow anyway?" I didn't have a good answer at that point, particularly because the poses we were doing in 75 minutes were, really, pretty much like any other vinyasa class taught at that studio.
now, from Larry, I can say, "Ashtanga is a science of sequencing poses according to breath, bandhas and dristi (gazing point)." Another go-to answer is that ashtanga poses occur in a set order which, classically, is not deviated from (note that since the 1930s, various changes to the sequences have occurred; Pattabhi Jois has been reputed to say, "Series not changing, students forgetting!" about this, haha!).
David Swenson, when he was in town in mid-August, said that it's not incorrect to say that almost all "vinyasa this and that" yoga (flow, hot flow, vinyasa flow, vinyasa yoga, power yoga, whatever your studio calls it) comes in one way or another from ashtanga sequences. Ashtanga has been taught in India since the 1930s, and the earliest of the power yogas/vinyasa yogas (I'm thinking of folks like Baron Baptiste and Beryl Bender Birch), as far as I can tell, appears in the 1980s. This is not to say that there has never, on the planet, been a vinyasa yoga that isn't ashtanga, and also it is not to say that inventive and cool stuff cannot be done with a vinyasa yoga class (look, for example, at Shiva Rea's stuff or Andrey Lappa's stuff).
This is to say that much Western and specifically American vinyasa/power yoga in one way or another can be tracked back to ashtanga sequences. Check out the primary for a minute: sun salutations, standing poses (revolved and not), hand-to-big-toe balances, half-lotus poses both seated and standing, about a dozen seated poses including twists, internal rotation of the thigh and external rotation of the thigh, navasana (the boat), an arm balance, intense hip openers, bandha-builders (like when you roll up from your back, hands to big toes, and balance on your sit bones) and then a pack of backbends, inversions, and various cooling poses, all capped off by "uplifting," where you suspend your full/half/no-lotus off the ground for up to 100 breaths. That's a lot of asana, and I didn't even mention the vinyasa between poses, the full expressions of which are jumping your legs and body through your arms as you move from seated to chaturanga dandasana (the low push-up), updog, downdog and then back to seated. There are about 50 of those in a full Primary series.
Ok, so maybe the various vinyasa flows and power yogas can be tracked back to this. The all-important follow-up question is, "Well which one is BETTER, then?" Better? What is this "better" of which you speak? Do you see this tendency? Come on, even I have it. If you put two things in a room together, the tendency is to choose between them. "Do you do ashtanga OR vinyasa flow?" And my favorite (kidding) verion of this is the identity game, where you BECOME one practice and have to put down members of the other "team." Check this out: "Are you an ashtangi or do you do vinyasa flow?"
I do both ashtanga and vinyasa flow classes. Sure, my home practice is ashtanga and I teach an ashtanga-flavored vinyasa sequence (the Rocket), but I enjoy a vinyasa flow class here and again (there are some I don't care for, but that's instructor-specific; I've lost my will to play the "either-or" game above).
To follow up a thread from a recent blog posting out there, what about when students in an ashtanga class do something "vinyasa" from another class they've taken? Well, it depends on what they do and who is teaching how traditional a sequence (this is my two cents).
In the Rocket, I invite students to press up into tripod headstand from a standing wide angle pose (Prasarita Padottanasana A, to be precise) because that's what the Rocket likes. We also add side splits and front splits into that sequence. In my Mysore-style ashtanga class, I don't invite that because it's not part of the sequence and I want to follow the tradition as I've seen it taught and experienced it first-hand. There is no "better than/worse than" to be done here. In the same way that the Rocket is clearly derived from classical Ashtanga practice but is not inferior to it (why would one be interested in putting down any given sequence? what kind of use of energy is that? to quote Swenson here: if you change the ashtanga sequence, and don't call your change "ashtanga," great, do whatever you want), vinyasa sequences are also not inferior to Primary. Still, if I see someone pop a headstand in my Mysore-style class I'll probably want to encourage that student to stay targeted on bandhas/breath/dristi rather than the extra "fun" of the vinyasa flow move.
Ashtanga sequences are set; there are days when I'm not sure I'm down for the specific rigor of my home practice. But there are days I love and adore knowing what comes next without having to brainstorm a sequence or wait for the next pose to announce itself. Ashtanga is like looking in the same mirror every day: what am I all about TODAY? Vinyasa flow classes have a bit more carnival to their mirror. Challenge-wise (and again this is my two cents) I find that vinyasa classes demand a bit more fluidity from me: is the next pose going to be one I like, or not? How long are we going to hold this bound angle variation? Ashtanga practice comes with easy sections and difficult sections and I know what's coming when, so it's very much a matter of how much or little focus I've got on my energy in the "now." Sometimes a crazy hard pose is easy because I've got focus and energy and I do a modified version that suits my "today" rather than shooting for a full expression that doesn't (or maybe the full expression comes when I wasn't expecting it; that's how energy works). This also happens in vinyasa flow classes, but the management of "now" is more fluid: half-moon pose! and I have to do one sort of mind-body energy arrangment and sensing, to see how I feel about it, and then later, bakasana! and i have to do ANOTHER mind-body arrangement, check in with variations or not, and then whatever happens happens.
I was reading something not long ago about "Buddha mind" and whether the Buddha is the subject or the object of causation, and the wise man said, "The one with Buddha Mind is one with causation." This echoes something I've discovered about ashtanga and vinyasa flow: when I'm practicing, on very "on" energy days, I AM practicing. The way that someone once saw an American Indian rain dance, and said, "They ARE raining." The whole idea of "moving meditation." In Ashtanga's set poses, it is movement from one to the next, like riding a well-loved roller coaster: here comes that big drop again, how will you react? In vinyasa flow, it is movement from one to something else, which you discover moment to moment, a bit like highway driving. Will someone cut you off? How will you react? Will you make this green light or not; how will you react?
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Friday, September 7, 2007
The yoga practice "secret" (shhh!)
I have unsolicited advice, and I'm going to point this at building a home practice, but I still do some of these psychological moves with my full practice.
At some point in your yoga practice, I think you either did or will ask this:
"What's the secret to (doing advanced poses, getting a home practice, being a yogi, etc)?"
I'm about to let you in on the official secret about how you do all of that in one easy move. Yes, it's true, you're about to learn the secret handshake of the yoga universe.
(looks side to side in a sly way)
Practice regularly. A regular practice builds everything: more advanced poses, more ease in practice, a home practice, effects in your daily life, yoga aspects that are not simply asana (like meditation, breath work, ethical considerations, etc). Take it from John Scott, who wrote something like this: "water the tree regularly and it grows." Or Pattabhi Jois, who put it in the shortest possible form: "Practice and all is coming."
But what about time? You know, work and life and family or a hundred different things that demand time? What do you do then?
A sun salutation practice can take 20 minutes. It can take less than that. Larry Schultz likes to say that if you're practicing yoga, you're "in the game." Check in every morning: "Am I in the game today?" And then stand up, fold forward, take a downdog, or some other sequence, or a handful of poses, or just sit and concentrate on a single thing for a few minutes. Or go to a sunrise yoga class at your local studio. Make television's promise real: advertising likes to promise you that product X will "take you away" to some random vacation destination. Make your mat (or your floor, or your back yard) your vacation destination.
But what about sequence? What if you don't have a memorized sequence? How do you do a home practice then?
Erich Schiffmann talks about "freeform" yoga. Sit comfortably for a short time and ask poses to come. Maybe they will and maybe they will not. If no poses come, you're still focusing your attention. If poses suggest themselves, take them. More will come as you bend or balance or whatever it is you're doing. Eventually, take pen and paper with you and start writing down what comes naturally.
If you're interested in Ashtanga adventures, memorize the sequences you do in class. Make yourself memorize the movements of Sun Salutation A. Count your own breaths in down dog or triangle or other poses. Instead of receiving the sequence, become the sequence. Speaking for myself, I like it when students know what comes next and go get it.
When should I practice? Is morning better? Should I do inversions first, or last, or when?
If you are building a practice, take practice whenever you're able. Work toward a same-time-of-day practice, but in the early days, which are always a struggle, particularly to do yoga at home, take practice whenever you can. I've practiced at 8 pm before; I've practiced at 5 am. Also as part of the struggle to practice at home, to develop that habit, do poses that are available to you. Do poses you enjoy; when you feel ready for a challenging pose (whatever it is that's challenging), take it. As you develop a home practice routine, take some caution with the feeling that you are obligated to do some pose "first" or that you must do pose X even though you really hate it for whatever reason. Keep the energy positive and, in the beginning, set the bar low.
Set the bar low? What's that about?
If your goal is to get a home practice, you might run into questions about what "counts" as a yoga practice. How much are you supposed to do? What if you can't balance today? Should you practice for an hour, at least? What kind of practice, and how much, COUNTS as practice? You'll encounter these anxieties. So set the "sufficient practice" bar low at the start: make one sun salutation be "enough," maybe. Can you do at least one sun salutation a day for a week at home? Great; then maybe make it three sun salutations. Set your own definition of "enough" and you'll be able to control the questions and anxieties about "I'm ok as a yogi/I'm not ok as a yogi." The more you take charge of your state of mind, the less your state of mind takes charge of you.
Having a home practice--which is really any yoga practice outside a studio--is a big achievement. It's more important--and cooler--to have one at all than to have any particular level of home practice. And regular practice builds everything else.
When I do some funky move in class, like jump into an arm balance, or when I'm demonstrating some Ashtanga pose in public, like putting my arms through a full lotus and putting my hands on my head (http://ashtangayoga.info/asana-vinyasa/primary-series/22a-Gaba-Pindasana.html) people will ask me "How did you get to that level, are you just natively talented or what?" and I will tell them, every time, "Regular practice makes this possible."
Can't touch your toes? A few years ago I couldn't touch my toes either. Happy practicing!
At some point in your yoga practice, I think you either did or will ask this:
"What's the secret to (doing advanced poses, getting a home practice, being a yogi, etc)?"
I'm about to let you in on the official secret about how you do all of that in one easy move. Yes, it's true, you're about to learn the secret handshake of the yoga universe.
(looks side to side in a sly way)
Practice regularly. A regular practice builds everything: more advanced poses, more ease in practice, a home practice, effects in your daily life, yoga aspects that are not simply asana (like meditation, breath work, ethical considerations, etc). Take it from John Scott, who wrote something like this: "water the tree regularly and it grows." Or Pattabhi Jois, who put it in the shortest possible form: "Practice and all is coming."
But what about time? You know, work and life and family or a hundred different things that demand time? What do you do then?
A sun salutation practice can take 20 minutes. It can take less than that. Larry Schultz likes to say that if you're practicing yoga, you're "in the game." Check in every morning: "Am I in the game today?" And then stand up, fold forward, take a downdog, or some other sequence, or a handful of poses, or just sit and concentrate on a single thing for a few minutes. Or go to a sunrise yoga class at your local studio. Make television's promise real: advertising likes to promise you that product X will "take you away" to some random vacation destination. Make your mat (or your floor, or your back yard) your vacation destination.
But what about sequence? What if you don't have a memorized sequence? How do you do a home practice then?
Erich Schiffmann talks about "freeform" yoga. Sit comfortably for a short time and ask poses to come. Maybe they will and maybe they will not. If no poses come, you're still focusing your attention. If poses suggest themselves, take them. More will come as you bend or balance or whatever it is you're doing. Eventually, take pen and paper with you and start writing down what comes naturally.
If you're interested in Ashtanga adventures, memorize the sequences you do in class. Make yourself memorize the movements of Sun Salutation A. Count your own breaths in down dog or triangle or other poses. Instead of receiving the sequence, become the sequence. Speaking for myself, I like it when students know what comes next and go get it.
When should I practice? Is morning better? Should I do inversions first, or last, or when?
If you are building a practice, take practice whenever you're able. Work toward a same-time-of-day practice, but in the early days, which are always a struggle, particularly to do yoga at home, take practice whenever you can. I've practiced at 8 pm before; I've practiced at 5 am. Also as part of the struggle to practice at home, to develop that habit, do poses that are available to you. Do poses you enjoy; when you feel ready for a challenging pose (whatever it is that's challenging), take it. As you develop a home practice routine, take some caution with the feeling that you are obligated to do some pose "first" or that you must do pose X even though you really hate it for whatever reason. Keep the energy positive and, in the beginning, set the bar low.
Set the bar low? What's that about?
If your goal is to get a home practice, you might run into questions about what "counts" as a yoga practice. How much are you supposed to do? What if you can't balance today? Should you practice for an hour, at least? What kind of practice, and how much, COUNTS as practice? You'll encounter these anxieties. So set the "sufficient practice" bar low at the start: make one sun salutation be "enough," maybe. Can you do at least one sun salutation a day for a week at home? Great; then maybe make it three sun salutations. Set your own definition of "enough" and you'll be able to control the questions and anxieties about "I'm ok as a yogi/I'm not ok as a yogi." The more you take charge of your state of mind, the less your state of mind takes charge of you.
Having a home practice--which is really any yoga practice outside a studio--is a big achievement. It's more important--and cooler--to have one at all than to have any particular level of home practice. And regular practice builds everything else.
When I do some funky move in class, like jump into an arm balance, or when I'm demonstrating some Ashtanga pose in public, like putting my arms through a full lotus and putting my hands on my head (http://ashtangayoga.info/asana-vinyasa/primary-series/22a-Gaba-Pindasana.html) people will ask me "How did you get to that level, are you just natively talented or what?" and I will tell them, every time, "Regular practice makes this possible."
Can't touch your toes? A few years ago I couldn't touch my toes either. Happy practicing!
Thursday, September 6, 2007
The Intermediate Series and I
When we last left our dynamic duo, they were in the perilous clutches of...
The Intermediate series! As I'm sure you can see, I'm a well-trained student of media. No doubt much of my writing will be infused with references to both recent and dated movies and TV. So is my speech and so is my teaching (both in the classroom and the studio). Anyway, to it:
My full practice is all of the Primary series and up to either (depending on the day) Laghuvajrasana (http://ashtangayoga.info/asana-vinyasa/intermediate-series/08a-Laghu-Vajrasana.html) or Kapotasana (http://ashtangayoga.info/asana-vinyasa/intermediate-series/09c-Kapotasana-A.html) in the Intermediate series, which is about ten poses in. However, when I was in San Francisco doing Mysore-style classes, I was told that, "second is usually introduced when a student can drop back and stand up from a backbend." What's my deal, then?
Yes, I am still working both on the drop-back from standing into a backbend, as well as standing up from the backbend. By traditional standards, I should be working on Primary and then my backbends and not touching Intermediate until I've mastered the drop and the stand.
Here is the situation: I learned Primary by going to led classes, not to Mysore-style classes. So I did not learn the series in the "one pose at a time, student stops when s/he cannot do a pose or be assisted into it" school. I learned Primary by doing and/or modifying poses all the way through, every time. Gradually, various poses opened, endurance developed, strength came, and I would skip or modify whatever I could not do and I'd continue through the whole series. As part of this way of learning Primary, there were not separate teacher-guided backbends at the end of practice, the way there are in Mysore-style rooms.
Before I went to San Francisco, I'd been assisted into a dropback from standing into Urdhva Dhanurasana ( http://ashtangayoga.info/asana-vinyasa/primary-series/31a-Urdhva-Dhanurasana.html) maybe five times, at most. I didn't know that one did a whole backbend sequence and was guided into a drop-back, or any of that. In San Francisco I learned that one awaits the teacher when one reaches the end of practice, and there are at least three guided drop-backs, even if you are already dropping back and standing up.
Naturally, since I'm not a born back-bender and had not practiced these movements, I didn't master them within the month I was there, so my entire Mysore-style experience was Primary and drop-backs and then see you next time. And that was fine, I didn't have some next-pose-now hunger that demanded that I be given pose Q because my ego demands, blah blah blah.
But I'd started doing Intermediate poses months before that, in part because I wanted to experiment and in part because I didn't come from a rigorous traditional practice. And sure, I found that I could do some of those poses with relative ease, and that impressed other people, and it became this big ego-filled self-love fest about "I'm so advanced" and so forth. I think every Ashtangi has a round or two of that at some point.
So now that I have seen a traditional practice and attempt to keep up a traditional practice at home (because my teaching schedule conflicts with that of my teachers here, so it's either home practice or nothing, really), I continue to do my about-ten Intermediate poses. Why? Isn't that "criminal"? Isn't it "non-Mysore"?
Traditionally speaking, yes, that's true. But I know that the next time I walk into someone's Mysore-style room, I'll do Primary and my backbends and that'll be it. When I'm in a traditional practice room, I will practice traditionally until someone says to me, "take Pasasana" (the first pose of Intermediate). But when I am practicing at home, I will continue to do Intermediate for these reasons:
1) Dropbacks are a delayed part of my practice; it's not like I've been working on them for three years and can't do them. I've only been attempting them for a couple months, in earnest. Imagine that you're doing Full Primary but you've somehow never been introduced to Marichyasana D (the half-lotus twist). When you're introduced to it, are you going to give up all of the poses you know you can do, which are beyond it in the sequence? Or are you going to maybe modify/attempt/get or not the pose and do what you are accustomed to calling your "full practice"? Traditionally, you'd act one way. Non-traditionally, maybe you'd act another.
2) Intermediate's backbends feel good for my practice. It feels balanced to include them, after doing Primary's what, twelve forward bends (at least) for three years? I love arching back and feeling my abdominals gradually stretch open, and I love engaging the quadriceps in those backbends, I really enjoy bending in the other direction for a change. There is something to a standing backbend which brings a different intensity from pressing up into Urdhva Dhanurasana from the floor. The openings, the engagements, the whole psychology, are different things. Sure, I could probably just go right to backbends after Primary, but I like the buildup of Intermediate's "baby backbends" before that. I like the emphasis on front opening versus lumbar bend, thinking with my uddiyana bandha, throat chakra wide, shoulders back, feeling something in the lateral hips finally pulling open. I also believe that the dropback and the Intermediate backbends help to develop each other; there is a synergy there. All told, that's probably the main reason why I keep the Intermediate poses.
3) To be honest, I believe that if I'd been doing a dropback practice from the beginning of my Ashtanga practice, I'd have that movement down by now. This is the most whiny and ego-driven of my reasons, but again, to be honest, it's in there. And I could be wrong, the dropback might be something I never master (to say nothing of the return to standing).
All in all, I am of the same "two minds" about this that I am about "tradition vs. yoga criminal" where The Rocket is concerned. And I deal with it the same way: when I'm in a traditional Ashtanga context, I'll behave traditionally and I'll love that. When I'm not, I probably won't, and I'm fine with that too.
The Intermediate series! As I'm sure you can see, I'm a well-trained student of media. No doubt much of my writing will be infused with references to both recent and dated movies and TV. So is my speech and so is my teaching (both in the classroom and the studio). Anyway, to it:
My full practice is all of the Primary series and up to either (depending on the day) Laghuvajrasana (http://ashtangayoga.info/asana-vinyasa/intermediate-series/08a-Laghu-Vajrasana.html) or Kapotasana (http://ashtangayoga.info/asana-vinyasa/intermediate-series/09c-Kapotasana-A.html) in the Intermediate series, which is about ten poses in. However, when I was in San Francisco doing Mysore-style classes, I was told that, "second is usually introduced when a student can drop back and stand up from a backbend." What's my deal, then?
Yes, I am still working both on the drop-back from standing into a backbend, as well as standing up from the backbend. By traditional standards, I should be working on Primary and then my backbends and not touching Intermediate until I've mastered the drop and the stand.
Here is the situation: I learned Primary by going to led classes, not to Mysore-style classes. So I did not learn the series in the "one pose at a time, student stops when s/he cannot do a pose or be assisted into it" school. I learned Primary by doing and/or modifying poses all the way through, every time. Gradually, various poses opened, endurance developed, strength came, and I would skip or modify whatever I could not do and I'd continue through the whole series. As part of this way of learning Primary, there were not separate teacher-guided backbends at the end of practice, the way there are in Mysore-style rooms.
Before I went to San Francisco, I'd been assisted into a dropback from standing into Urdhva Dhanurasana ( http://ashtangayoga.info/asana-vinyasa/primary-series/31a-Urdhva-Dhanurasana.html) maybe five times, at most. I didn't know that one did a whole backbend sequence and was guided into a drop-back, or any of that. In San Francisco I learned that one awaits the teacher when one reaches the end of practice, and there are at least three guided drop-backs, even if you are already dropping back and standing up.
Naturally, since I'm not a born back-bender and had not practiced these movements, I didn't master them within the month I was there, so my entire Mysore-style experience was Primary and drop-backs and then see you next time. And that was fine, I didn't have some next-pose-now hunger that demanded that I be given pose Q because my ego demands, blah blah blah.
But I'd started doing Intermediate poses months before that, in part because I wanted to experiment and in part because I didn't come from a rigorous traditional practice. And sure, I found that I could do some of those poses with relative ease, and that impressed other people, and it became this big ego-filled self-love fest about "I'm so advanced" and so forth. I think every Ashtangi has a round or two of that at some point.
So now that I have seen a traditional practice and attempt to keep up a traditional practice at home (because my teaching schedule conflicts with that of my teachers here, so it's either home practice or nothing, really), I continue to do my about-ten Intermediate poses. Why? Isn't that "criminal"? Isn't it "non-Mysore"?
Traditionally speaking, yes, that's true. But I know that the next time I walk into someone's Mysore-style room, I'll do Primary and my backbends and that'll be it. When I'm in a traditional practice room, I will practice traditionally until someone says to me, "take Pasasana" (the first pose of Intermediate). But when I am practicing at home, I will continue to do Intermediate for these reasons:
1) Dropbacks are a delayed part of my practice; it's not like I've been working on them for three years and can't do them. I've only been attempting them for a couple months, in earnest. Imagine that you're doing Full Primary but you've somehow never been introduced to Marichyasana D (the half-lotus twist). When you're introduced to it, are you going to give up all of the poses you know you can do, which are beyond it in the sequence? Or are you going to maybe modify/attempt/get or not the pose and do what you are accustomed to calling your "full practice"? Traditionally, you'd act one way. Non-traditionally, maybe you'd act another.
2) Intermediate's backbends feel good for my practice. It feels balanced to include them, after doing Primary's what, twelve forward bends (at least) for three years? I love arching back and feeling my abdominals gradually stretch open, and I love engaging the quadriceps in those backbends, I really enjoy bending in the other direction for a change. There is something to a standing backbend which brings a different intensity from pressing up into Urdhva Dhanurasana from the floor. The openings, the engagements, the whole psychology, are different things. Sure, I could probably just go right to backbends after Primary, but I like the buildup of Intermediate's "baby backbends" before that. I like the emphasis on front opening versus lumbar bend, thinking with my uddiyana bandha, throat chakra wide, shoulders back, feeling something in the lateral hips finally pulling open. I also believe that the dropback and the Intermediate backbends help to develop each other; there is a synergy there. All told, that's probably the main reason why I keep the Intermediate poses.
3) To be honest, I believe that if I'd been doing a dropback practice from the beginning of my Ashtanga practice, I'd have that movement down by now. This is the most whiny and ego-driven of my reasons, but again, to be honest, it's in there. And I could be wrong, the dropback might be something I never master (to say nothing of the return to standing).
All in all, I am of the same "two minds" about this that I am about "tradition vs. yoga criminal" where The Rocket is concerned. And I deal with it the same way: when I'm in a traditional Ashtanga context, I'll behave traditionally and I'll love that. When I'm not, I probably won't, and I'm fine with that too.
Internet Yoga
Hi folks,
I wanted to write a bit about what this blog/site is for, as I see it right now. This is my web presence: I don't have a site of my own beyond this one, so in part, my hope is that this will serve as my home for online inquiries about me, my teaching, when, where, etc. Part of this is for my students, present, past and future.
However, as this is a blog and it's likely going to be largely about yoga, this is also a forum for me to geek out about my own practice, thoughts, musings of all kinds, about yoga or anything else. So in that respect, it's a blog like anyone else's, and will attract, or not, readers of all stripes.
This site might, someday, be one of those "yoga blogs" which are read by other people, and perhaps (gasp!) even have subscribers someday. Speaking of which, there are several yoga blogs which I regularly read and by which this blog is inspired.
People I regularly read include:
Vanessa: http://mindbending.wordpress.com
Lisa aka bindifry: http://astangayogachicago.blogspot.com/
Jason: http://www.leapinglanka.blogspot.com/
and I have also been known to visit:
Okrgr (whose real name I think is John but so few people call him that...):
http://ashtanga.blogspot.com/
and Lauren, aka Yoga Chickie: http://laurencahn.blogspot.com/
This blog is also inspired, in large part, by the blog of one Chris Roche, who runs a fabulous power yoga class at Cityoga (www.cityoga.biz) here in the city:
http://www.chris-roche.blogspot.com/
I will eventually have some pics up on this site (Blogger, I see, is very keen on advertising how pic-friendly it is) and I have a fantasy of posting images of my own practice of Primary--not like the web needs another rendition of the Primary series, but I'm interested in posting, or perhaps just seeing, my own human, uneven, daily-changing practice, even as a reference point for me in the future.
And next post, to address that pesky "why I do some Intermediate poses" question! Stay tuned!
I wanted to write a bit about what this blog/site is for, as I see it right now. This is my web presence: I don't have a site of my own beyond this one, so in part, my hope is that this will serve as my home for online inquiries about me, my teaching, when, where, etc. Part of this is for my students, present, past and future.
However, as this is a blog and it's likely going to be largely about yoga, this is also a forum for me to geek out about my own practice, thoughts, musings of all kinds, about yoga or anything else. So in that respect, it's a blog like anyone else's, and will attract, or not, readers of all stripes.
This site might, someday, be one of those "yoga blogs" which are read by other people, and perhaps (gasp!) even have subscribers someday. Speaking of which, there are several yoga blogs which I regularly read and by which this blog is inspired.
People I regularly read include:
Vanessa: http://mindbending.wordpress.com
Lisa aka bindifry: http://astangayogachicago.blogspot.com/
Jason: http://www.leapinglanka.blogspot.com/
and I have also been known to visit:
Okrgr (whose real name I think is John but so few people call him that...):
http://ashtanga.blogspot.com/
and Lauren, aka Yoga Chickie: http://laurencahn.blogspot.com/
This blog is also inspired, in large part, by the blog of one Chris Roche, who runs a fabulous power yoga class at Cityoga (www.cityoga.biz) here in the city:
http://www.chris-roche.blogspot.com/
I will eventually have some pics up on this site (Blogger, I see, is very keen on advertising how pic-friendly it is) and I have a fantasy of posting images of my own practice of Primary--not like the web needs another rendition of the Primary series, but I'm interested in posting, or perhaps just seeing, my own human, uneven, daily-changing practice, even as a reference point for me in the future.
And next post, to address that pesky "why I do some Intermediate poses" question! Stay tuned!
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
What's your yoga story?
I started practicing yoga in the summer of 2004. I had just moved into another apartment complex in Bloomington Indiana (where I'd lived since moving to the state in 1994), and a number of flyers were posted about "morning yoga" three days a week. The teacher was one of the leasing agents, and classes were free for residents of the complex. Now people had been telling me that I "should do yoga or something" since the mid-1990s, so finally, I decided that I was going to fall in with the trend and find out what the deal was.
My first yoga teacher was Freda Love (yes, the drummer for the Blake Babies and other rock outfits). We practiced on a retractable floor, which for the summer was on top of a swimming pool (in the summer the owner of the complex would swim outside, so as long as it was warm enough for him to do that, yoga was on). The classes were pretty gentle and definitely Kundalini-flavored: we did some mudras, some Kundalini asana (poses), a lot of concentration on breath and different paces of breathing. I was hooked, so after about a month of these I asked Freda about more yoga in town: she said, "well, if you want to sweat, there's an Ashtanga class downtown." I had no idea what that meant, but sure, sweaty yoga? More intense? I'd been climbing walls in a gym for 18 months (http://www.hoosierheights.com/), I was down with some intensity and sweat, sure, bring it on.
My first Ashtanga class was, I think, in July, and on the second floor of a downtown building: they still teach classes there (http://www.ashtangabloomington.com/). In a phrase, it KICKED MY BUTT. First Ashtanga stories are frequently pretty funny: to walk in off the street and have to manage one-breath-one-movement, as well as which movement on which breath ("inhale and put my foot WHERE?") and then gaze at the right place and break into a pouring sweat (two stories up, in an Indiana summer) and to then try to do the Full Primary (because that's what I had wandered into), was a memorable butt-kicker. When I got out of that class, I was soaked through (the kind of soaked where you wring drops of sweat out of your clothes) and I was so high on breath and endorphins that I was hooked again, and I was hooked BIG.
I'd not run into an activity which felt so clearly "bigger" than I was, and when I found out that there is not just Primary series, but FIVE MORE after that (Ashtanga has six series of poses), I knew I'd spend a long time working on this stuff. Maybe I already had: Pattabhi Jois says in his book YOGA MALA (http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Mala-Sri-K-Jois/dp/0865476624) that yogis often are working on yoga practices from past lives (if you buy the idea of past lives).
I found two main yoga teachers in the year after that: Wendy (http://www.healingspirityoga.com/) and Carol (http://www.artofyoga.org/). Within my first year of practice I was getting between one and four led classes in Primary series a week. It's a bummer that I don't have more thorough journals about that period, so that I could see past ideas about my own development, and poses which I thought were impossible and how the yoga was affecting my everyday life and things like that. Holding myself off the floor was the first thing that I "felt like I could do" and arm balances started to come quickly after that. Then forward bending and I became better friends, as my hamstrings re-discovered all of that cross-country running from high school, and finally the hip opening began to develop. There is really no such thing as "finishing" or in a final sense "achieving" a series: practices vary, day to day, and while one day Primary may be smooth and perhaps effortless, the next day or week you might stop halfway through or sooner. Yoga asana practice isn't separate from your life. I began to develop a fairly consistent, steady Primary series between summer 2006 and 2007, and I can "do" everything in Primary now, but there is no being "done" with it.
In September 2006 I signed up for 200 hours of teacher training in San Francisco at It's Yoga (http://www.itsyoga.com/), which would take place in May 2007. This came with some debate about "tradition vs. yoga criminality," which refers to an old thread on this yoga forum: http://p196.ezboard.com/byoga84291. A "yoga criminal," according to this Ashtanga board, is one who changes the sequence of poses, either to make them easier or "more fun" or for whatever reason. So Larry Schultz, the owner of It's Yoga, is definitely a "yoga criminal." And of course the term "criminal" comes with a perjorative sense; my debate was not so much about WHETHER I wanted to be "traditional" or a "yoga criminal" but why there seemed to be a choice between those in the first place. It wasn't as if traditional Ashtanga was a genetic thing, after all. But then again, I never cared for classes that called themselves "Ashtanga-based." So on the one hand I was willing to play the judgment game ("You're not traditional") but on the other hand I didn't want to be subjected to such judgment.
I decided to take up a real, live, traditional-as-I-could-get-it home practice, six days a week, at dawn (in part because in the fall of 2006 I had an 8-5 job which made later practice difficult). Some mornings I did full Primary and even a little Intermediate series; some mornings I sat still in seated meditation with the cat. Many mornings I mixed and matched, but I did faithfully do SOME thing on the mat all of those mornings, all the way into April 2007. That period of hard dedication was really productive, both for my practice and my discipline, and those were also the months where I was finishing my dissertation, so my life was a combination of strict discipline and utter procrastination, without much in between. I finished the dissertation in January, defended it in February, and achieved the PhD in March. In May I went to San Francisco to study yoga for a month.
Why San Francisco? I'd had a love affair with that city since I was 14, and the first time I actually got there was when I was 28. My feeling was that the city was calling me to do something; even walking around it in my late 20s and then early 30s (when I went again, in 2003), the walls of buildings seemed to be whispering something I couldn't hear. There was something to DO in that city, and my early journeys didn't provide it, or maybe I just couldn't decipher the code. In a word, the training ("criminal" or not) was fabulous. I had decided in advance that I would answer my "either tradition or criminal" anxiety by doing BOTH a traditional Mysore-style class AND the Rocket series over at It's Yoga. So many mornings, I woke up at 5:30 am, walked from my room in the Upper Haight down to the Mission, and went to Clayton Horton's Mysore-style room at Yoga Tree Valencia (http://www.yogatreesf.com/) and then found my way downtown to It's Yoga and did teacher training all day. Many days I did a double asana practice, between the Primary in the morning and the Rocket in the afternoon, and some days I did triple. For the record, that's not a safe thing to do: I came back from SF with a really persistent sore left wrist, which only in late August healed enough to not force me to modify whatever practice I chose to do.
But all of that was worth it: my Primary is deeper than it has ever been, and while I never did formally "receive" any Intermediate series from Clayton (because I was, and still am, working on standing up from a backbend), the whole SF experience has solidified my home practice by miles and resolved my "criminal or not" situation. I practice a pretty traditional Ashtanga sequence at home and I teach the Rocket in town, and I see no contradiction there.
Stay tuned for our next entry: "Didn't you say you never got any Intermediate? Well then what are you doing adding it to your practice?" Join us next time, for the answer to this tricky question!
My first yoga teacher was Freda Love (yes, the drummer for the Blake Babies and other rock outfits). We practiced on a retractable floor, which for the summer was on top of a swimming pool (in the summer the owner of the complex would swim outside, so as long as it was warm enough for him to do that, yoga was on). The classes were pretty gentle and definitely Kundalini-flavored: we did some mudras, some Kundalini asana (poses), a lot of concentration on breath and different paces of breathing. I was hooked, so after about a month of these I asked Freda about more yoga in town: she said, "well, if you want to sweat, there's an Ashtanga class downtown." I had no idea what that meant, but sure, sweaty yoga? More intense? I'd been climbing walls in a gym for 18 months (http://www.hoosierheights.com/), I was down with some intensity and sweat, sure, bring it on.
My first Ashtanga class was, I think, in July, and on the second floor of a downtown building: they still teach classes there (http://www.ashtangabloomington.com/). In a phrase, it KICKED MY BUTT. First Ashtanga stories are frequently pretty funny: to walk in off the street and have to manage one-breath-one-movement, as well as which movement on which breath ("inhale and put my foot WHERE?") and then gaze at the right place and break into a pouring sweat (two stories up, in an Indiana summer) and to then try to do the Full Primary (because that's what I had wandered into), was a memorable butt-kicker. When I got out of that class, I was soaked through (the kind of soaked where you wring drops of sweat out of your clothes) and I was so high on breath and endorphins that I was hooked again, and I was hooked BIG.
I'd not run into an activity which felt so clearly "bigger" than I was, and when I found out that there is not just Primary series, but FIVE MORE after that (Ashtanga has six series of poses), I knew I'd spend a long time working on this stuff. Maybe I already had: Pattabhi Jois says in his book YOGA MALA (http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Mala-Sri-K-Jois/dp/0865476624) that yogis often are working on yoga practices from past lives (if you buy the idea of past lives).
I found two main yoga teachers in the year after that: Wendy (http://www.healingspirityoga.com/) and Carol (http://www.artofyoga.org/). Within my first year of practice I was getting between one and four led classes in Primary series a week. It's a bummer that I don't have more thorough journals about that period, so that I could see past ideas about my own development, and poses which I thought were impossible and how the yoga was affecting my everyday life and things like that. Holding myself off the floor was the first thing that I "felt like I could do" and arm balances started to come quickly after that. Then forward bending and I became better friends, as my hamstrings re-discovered all of that cross-country running from high school, and finally the hip opening began to develop. There is really no such thing as "finishing" or in a final sense "achieving" a series: practices vary, day to day, and while one day Primary may be smooth and perhaps effortless, the next day or week you might stop halfway through or sooner. Yoga asana practice isn't separate from your life. I began to develop a fairly consistent, steady Primary series between summer 2006 and 2007, and I can "do" everything in Primary now, but there is no being "done" with it.
In September 2006 I signed up for 200 hours of teacher training in San Francisco at It's Yoga (http://www.itsyoga.com/), which would take place in May 2007. This came with some debate about "tradition vs. yoga criminality," which refers to an old thread on this yoga forum: http://p196.ezboard.com/byoga84291. A "yoga criminal," according to this Ashtanga board, is one who changes the sequence of poses, either to make them easier or "more fun" or for whatever reason. So Larry Schultz, the owner of It's Yoga, is definitely a "yoga criminal." And of course the term "criminal" comes with a perjorative sense; my debate was not so much about WHETHER I wanted to be "traditional" or a "yoga criminal" but why there seemed to be a choice between those in the first place. It wasn't as if traditional Ashtanga was a genetic thing, after all. But then again, I never cared for classes that called themselves "Ashtanga-based." So on the one hand I was willing to play the judgment game ("You're not traditional") but on the other hand I didn't want to be subjected to such judgment.
I decided to take up a real, live, traditional-as-I-could-get-it home practice, six days a week, at dawn (in part because in the fall of 2006 I had an 8-5 job which made later practice difficult). Some mornings I did full Primary and even a little Intermediate series; some mornings I sat still in seated meditation with the cat. Many mornings I mixed and matched, but I did faithfully do SOME thing on the mat all of those mornings, all the way into April 2007. That period of hard dedication was really productive, both for my practice and my discipline, and those were also the months where I was finishing my dissertation, so my life was a combination of strict discipline and utter procrastination, without much in between. I finished the dissertation in January, defended it in February, and achieved the PhD in March. In May I went to San Francisco to study yoga for a month.
Why San Francisco? I'd had a love affair with that city since I was 14, and the first time I actually got there was when I was 28. My feeling was that the city was calling me to do something; even walking around it in my late 20s and then early 30s (when I went again, in 2003), the walls of buildings seemed to be whispering something I couldn't hear. There was something to DO in that city, and my early journeys didn't provide it, or maybe I just couldn't decipher the code. In a word, the training ("criminal" or not) was fabulous. I had decided in advance that I would answer my "either tradition or criminal" anxiety by doing BOTH a traditional Mysore-style class AND the Rocket series over at It's Yoga. So many mornings, I woke up at 5:30 am, walked from my room in the Upper Haight down to the Mission, and went to Clayton Horton's Mysore-style room at Yoga Tree Valencia (http://www.yogatreesf.com/) and then found my way downtown to It's Yoga and did teacher training all day. Many days I did a double asana practice, between the Primary in the morning and the Rocket in the afternoon, and some days I did triple. For the record, that's not a safe thing to do: I came back from SF with a really persistent sore left wrist, which only in late August healed enough to not force me to modify whatever practice I chose to do.
But all of that was worth it: my Primary is deeper than it has ever been, and while I never did formally "receive" any Intermediate series from Clayton (because I was, and still am, working on standing up from a backbend), the whole SF experience has solidified my home practice by miles and resolved my "criminal or not" situation. I practice a pretty traditional Ashtanga sequence at home and I teach the Rocket in town, and I see no contradiction there.
Stay tuned for our next entry: "Didn't you say you never got any Intermediate? Well then what are you doing adding it to your practice?" Join us next time, for the answer to this tricky question!
Ashtanga Yoga in Indianapolis
Hello blogosphere!
I am Patrick, and I've been offering classes in Ashtanga yoga since July 2007. Currently I can be found teaching at these times and locations:
Sunday: Mysore-style Ashtanga at Cityoga , 12:30 pm
Wednesday: The Rocket I at Peace Through Yoga Zionsville , 6:00-7:15 pm
Thursday: Modified Primary Series at O2 Spa in Brownsburg ): 6:45-8:00 pm (note that this class online is called simply "Yoga").
Saturday: Modified Primary at O2, at both 8:50 am and 10:30 am
(again, note that online these classes are called "Yoga" and "Intro to Yoga": I offer Modified Primary Series at a level suited to those students who show up)
FAQ
What is Ashtanga yoga?
There are numerous online answers to this question: the official homepages of the practice are this one and that one but also see this marvelous page for more about Ashtanga, as well as Arjuna's site . In brief, Ashtanga yoga is a science of organizing poses according to breath, gazing points and bandhas (a word which is often translated as "energy locks").
What is this thing "the Rocket" that you teach? Is that Ashtanga yoga too?
The Rocket is the home practice of > It's Yoga , where I did 200 hours of teacher training in May 2007. It is not a traditional Ashtanga practice. Technically it is a vinyasa yoga practice, but it is made of Ashtanga poses and does use Ashtanga principles (breath, gazing points and bandhas). The Rocket was created by Larry Schultz, who was the on-tour yoga teacher for the Grateful Dead for three years. It is a fun and energetic practice, but no, it's not traditional Ashtanga (and depending on how traditional your practice is, you might see Larry as a "yoga criminal").
So how about "Mysore-style"? Is that Ashtanga? What's that all about?
Mysore-style is the traditional method by which Ashtanga yoga is taught. Mysore is the city in south India where Sri K Pattabhi Jois lives (the guru of Ashtanga yoga). In a Mysore-style class, students move through the practice at their own pace, depending on how much of the practice they are familiar with and/or have committed to memory. Even a raw beginner can come to a Mysore-style class, learn the opening sequence (sun salutations) and continue to return and develop and Ashtanga practice. This site has a running blog about its Mysore program, as well as the history of growing the program.
Mysore-style practice is typically done 6 days a week (Saturdays and days of the full and new moon off), at or before dawn. My Sunday class runs at 12:30 to invite students to sample Mysore-style; when the class has sufficient interest, I"ll see about opening dawn practices several days a week. There are 6/week established Mysore programs all around Indiana: they are running in Louisville, Chicago and even Columbus Ohio.
What's the difference between Ashtanga and the "Modified Primary Series"?
Ashtanga yoga traditionally comes in "series" of poses. The first of these is called the Primary Series, and that is the class you'll most often see on schedules for yoga studios. The Modified Primary classes are a selection of poses from the Full Primary, which is about 70 poses or so from beginning to end. Full Primary can be a very intense practice and can take over 2 hours to teach, depending on how rigidly the instructor adheres to the pace of the practice as traditionally taught (almost all poses after the sun salutations, up to the closing sequence are held for five breaths). Modified Primary is a shorter practice, an easier practice, and a less intense introduction to Ashtanga than a Full Primary.
Sun salutations? Closing sequence? Where can I actually see these poses in order?
Come to my Mysore-style class or someone else's, or hunt around on this page , or pick up a poster of the Full Primary from Matthew Sweeney's site .
What's your practice like?
I practice six days a week. My full practice is Primary series and the first ten or so poses of the second, or Intermediate, series. Some days that's too much yoga, so I'll do a modified practice or the "Minimum Daily Requirement," which is ten sun salutations and three finishing poses. I've been practicing Ashtanga for just over three years (as of September 2007)--for more, see the followup post to this one, called "What's your yoga story?"
I am Patrick, and I've been offering classes in Ashtanga yoga since July 2007. Currently I can be found teaching at these times and locations:
Sunday: Mysore-style Ashtanga at Cityoga , 12:30 pm
Wednesday: The Rocket I at Peace Through Yoga Zionsville , 6:00-7:15 pm
Thursday: Modified Primary Series at O2 Spa in Brownsburg ): 6:45-8:00 pm (note that this class online is called simply "Yoga").
Saturday: Modified Primary at O2, at both 8:50 am and 10:30 am
(again, note that online these classes are called "Yoga" and "Intro to Yoga": I offer Modified Primary Series at a level suited to those students who show up)
FAQ
What is Ashtanga yoga?
There are numerous online answers to this question: the official homepages of the practice are this one and that one but also see this marvelous page for more about Ashtanga, as well as Arjuna's site . In brief, Ashtanga yoga is a science of organizing poses according to breath, gazing points and bandhas (a word which is often translated as "energy locks").
What is this thing "the Rocket" that you teach? Is that Ashtanga yoga too?
The Rocket is the home practice of > It's Yoga , where I did 200 hours of teacher training in May 2007. It is not a traditional Ashtanga practice. Technically it is a vinyasa yoga practice, but it is made of Ashtanga poses and does use Ashtanga principles (breath, gazing points and bandhas). The Rocket was created by Larry Schultz, who was the on-tour yoga teacher for the Grateful Dead for three years. It is a fun and energetic practice, but no, it's not traditional Ashtanga (and depending on how traditional your practice is, you might see Larry as a "yoga criminal").
So how about "Mysore-style"? Is that Ashtanga? What's that all about?
Mysore-style is the traditional method by which Ashtanga yoga is taught. Mysore is the city in south India where Sri K Pattabhi Jois lives (the guru of Ashtanga yoga). In a Mysore-style class, students move through the practice at their own pace, depending on how much of the practice they are familiar with and/or have committed to memory. Even a raw beginner can come to a Mysore-style class, learn the opening sequence (sun salutations) and continue to return and develop and Ashtanga practice. This site has a running blog about its Mysore program, as well as the history of growing the program.
Mysore-style practice is typically done 6 days a week (Saturdays and days of the full and new moon off), at or before dawn. My Sunday class runs at 12:30 to invite students to sample Mysore-style; when the class has sufficient interest, I"ll see about opening dawn practices several days a week. There are 6/week established Mysore programs all around Indiana: they are running in Louisville, Chicago and even Columbus Ohio.
What's the difference between Ashtanga and the "Modified Primary Series"?
Ashtanga yoga traditionally comes in "series" of poses. The first of these is called the Primary Series, and that is the class you'll most often see on schedules for yoga studios. The Modified Primary classes are a selection of poses from the Full Primary, which is about 70 poses or so from beginning to end. Full Primary can be a very intense practice and can take over 2 hours to teach, depending on how rigidly the instructor adheres to the pace of the practice as traditionally taught (almost all poses after the sun salutations, up to the closing sequence are held for five breaths). Modified Primary is a shorter practice, an easier practice, and a less intense introduction to Ashtanga than a Full Primary.
Sun salutations? Closing sequence? Where can I actually see these poses in order?
Come to my Mysore-style class or someone else's, or hunt around on this page , or pick up a poster of the Full Primary from Matthew Sweeney's site .
What's your practice like?
I practice six days a week. My full practice is Primary series and the first ten or so poses of the second, or Intermediate, series. Some days that's too much yoga, so I'll do a modified practice or the "Minimum Daily Requirement," which is ten sun salutations and three finishing poses. I've been practicing Ashtanga for just over three years (as of September 2007)--for more, see the followup post to this one, called "What's your yoga story?"
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