Now THERE is a title to live up to.
I've registered for the Ashtanga Yoga Confluence, organized through Tim's place and featuring Tim, Nancy, Eddie, David and Richard. I think the chitchat and storytelling will exceed the coolness of the Mysore classes (in my experience, the more time you have with a teacher, the better the Mysore situation, so senior teachers I've never studied with, isn't really turning me on for Mysore classes, but maybe I'll be happily mistaken). March 1-4, San Diego, registration currently open.
This:
http://freeliz.com/2011/06/04/the-box-an-ashtanga-story-by-norman-blair/
seems to have been making the rounds of late, although I only saw it posted by a friend on our humble Ashtanga Yoga Indiana group on Facebook (you all are welcome to join over there if you want, we take everyone).
Written fairly well without polemic, it's a respectable piece, but it asks, as I see it, some of the SAME OLD QUESTIONS. Can one achieve enlightenment by bending the body, without being caught in attractiveness/personal power/fame and glory/etc etc etc? Or this oldie goldie: Doesn't ashtanga hurt people? Or this one: Aren't ashtanga teachers all dogmatic proto-fascists?
Yes, it doesn't ask any of that as polemically as I just did, and it does offer some mediation (ashtanga helping to heal), but it doesn't really answer these questions in what I see as the easy way to do so.
Why not talk about the other 7 limbs of the 8-limb path? Sure, they get a mention, but most of this is complaints about asana, dogmatic students/teachers, and overenthusiastic adjustments ("one size fits all").
Still, I can't get myself to hate on the piece too much because it is written with a spirit of true inquisitiveness and I'm almost sad for its author, that he's apparently surrounded with such goal-seeking and physicality-for-physicality's sake.
A comment left on the original post in our Facebook group gave me a bit more ire, the essence of it being "yes, my problem with ashtanga is that it IS dogmatic and I wish you had written less passively, because since I am opposed to all dogma, I've chosen the freer vinyasa practice instead."
That comment, itself, is total and utter nonsense topped off with a bit of self-congratulatory arrogance and mediated only by what I hope is the misfortune to have run into a truly ignorant and militant teacher, because such people do us all a disservice.
In any case.
Let me offer my recent practices (and my recent life) in total and overwhelming counterpoint to that commenter's (and that article's) sense of ashtanga as dogmatic and injury-producing.
Today's practice was up to the first side of Virabhadrasana B. Yes, Warrior 2. Now I know what you're thinkin': hey Patrick, um weren't you doing like 2/3 of Intermediate three weeks ago? What gives? The answer, my friends, is that I'm tied up in the right glutes with grief and tension, and when it breaks out, I can't hold the breath and there are tears and catharsis. I don't practice beyond the point when that happens.
But I do continue my pranayama practice (first retention only, so far, until I feel that it becomes easy) and part of what I realize about that, is that now "the yoga" isn't just poses, because my "practice" is more than just doing poses and sweating and then taking rest. By doing a pranayama practice AND an asana practice, "yoga" no longer means just "poses." And this expansion turns to life too, since my life has so profoundly invaded my pose practice. Nothing is private, isolated, kept away. Such broadening helps me never to injure myself because I would have to injure my whole life; there is no line between an asana and everything else that I do. Anger at my kid or my partner shows up in my glutes and my asana practice; am I seriously going to overcrank a knee or a shoulder, then? I think not.
I haven't been able to figure out "what my practice is" since 2007, when I was already doing hunks of Intermediate, but not in the Mysore room. Even when I could stand up from a backbend two years later, I couldn't Kapo to heels and some teachers (MS) said it mattered and some teachers (DS) said it didn't. What to do, what to do, what to do. I sure didn't become dogmatic, because even when I tried that, it just made everything cloudier. Sure, my Kapo improved when I stopped at Kapo for a while, but that retained when I moved up to finishing at Dwi Pada or even doing more of the series than that, but then when I was overtaken by my life (which happens, and you give way to it or else), I kept practicing but couldn't get as far as I'd gotten. What to do? Become dogmatic? How? By not feeding my kid, by not going on vacation, by not spending time with the partner hoping to resurrect the relationship? What level of sacrifice for asana would have been APPROPRIATE? Life is, itself, anti-dogmatic.
People who find ashtanga yoga to be dogmatic aren't busy enough with living. Same with people who find ashtanga yoga to be boring.
I don't even call myself an ashtangi anymore unless I'm having shallow yoga conversation with someone and even then I'll say I practice ashtanga (hey now, going up to Vira B is ashtanga, you don't need to be doing half of 3rd series to say you practice, you dig?).
All of my past identities are past identities. I feel like waving off the whole statement "I am." One thing people say about parenting when they are old parents is, "They grow up so fast." Not-yet parents or new parents go on and on and endlessly on about how much love there is and such and how it's a big identity achievement and how it "completes them" but old parents know the truth: "it goes by so fast." Impermanence. It doesn't matter "who it makes you into" or anything like that. It matters that you do it because then you'll someday have done it, have done everything that you've done, and it'll be gone.
I give up identities left and right now, even as my ego more and more desperately grasps for anything, but life itself denies this. Denies dogmatism and grasping. You can grasp, but those glutes will deny you. No, no second for you today. No, no backbends for you today. Too much life. Better to just let go and do the pranayama and look within as you try to pull up the moola bandha. Let go, because you can't keep anything you catch anyway. Life is catch and release. And life releases you and tosses you back in the pond, too.
It is real and truly difficult to live with impermanence, because so much of "I" is based in denying that fact. I can tell there's a happiness and a liberation (not moksha itself, but A liberation) to be had in living in this, but I can't quite "get it" can't grok it, yet.
So I'm going to listen to some Coltrane and make a chocolate Guinness cake instead. Hah!
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
"Food Matters" and Consistency in the Practice
I've decided--after posts on blogs and FB by Karen and Linda (whom you blogreaders know, I bet), to check out the various "food" movies. A short list would include "Food Matters," "Food Inc" and "Earthlings" (yes, I've been warned). There are others. I find that Googling "vegan documentaries" gives a good list.
Now, I'm not vegan and I'm not interested in becoming some slow-foods or raw-foods or whichever else kind of propagandist. But after cutting caffeine in Austin (back on it now, a little morning tea) and reading about the Spam factory in Minnesota where pig brains caused (apparently) autoimmune disease of immigrant workers' nervous systems, and from almost ten years of knowing a vegetarian who was raised by anti-factory-farming people, it's sort of hit a critical mass, and therefore the filmfest.
I know food creates heated argument; I'm really and truly not after that here. "Food Matters": 2008 documentary, lots of talking heads, basically arguing that health can be created, and doesn't need to be medically treated. Vitamins, lifestyle choices, raw food, vegetarianism, etc. The provocative bits are these:
*medical journals are sponsored by drug companies and won't archive mags that talk about nutrition
*cancer can be treated with megadoses of Vitamin C
*health can be managed by individuals (the health care system is broken)
It has a conspiracy theory flavor which is mitigated only by arguing that the health care industry and/or medical doctors *aren't trained* in nutrition and nutritional therapy, but still, "Food Matters" comes off a bit conspiratorial, as if medical institutions are taking money over "real" cures (if we believe that high-dose vitamins can do this). It is nonetheless an argument I keep thinking about.
On cancer: the provocative quote is "change the internal environment that gives rise to the cancer." I liked that. But again the advice is high-dose vitamins and "superfoods" that can be eaten raw (spirulina, et al.) because "cooked food causes an immune system reaction" (that, I found a bit suspicious, but ok). "Food Matters" argues that chemotherapy and radiation are basically carcinogenic. They change cells, kill cells, in a way that is, essentially, toxic. The documentary recommends putting patients on a raw-food, high-fiber diet with high vitamin dosage and does show some compelling before-and-afters of such treatment being effective.
This makes me think of my father's case: an early radiation burn in the treatment of his colon cancer created apparently uncontrollable diarrhea and he had to be put on IV nutrition for weeks. Progressive weakness came with the radiation and the liquid nutrition and long-story-short by the time it was over, he wasn't strong enough to fend off opportunistic pneumonia. Would empowering nutrition--healthful food--have changed this? He wasn't a guy to like fiber or eat many veggies and certainly not to take a multivitamin or that sort of thing. Maybe on a personal level it would never have worked. Still, it sure looks like it would have been a good idea, decades earlier.
************************************
Where does consistency in the practice come from? Regularity, not overshooting for the hard pose, breath and bandhas?
Predictably, I had uneven practice with David and Shelley because I was cranking a lot of grief out of my glutes and hips, where emotional stuff tends to sink anyway. Wednesday and Thursday were the best practice days of both weeks.
But if you read around here, you'll see that I've had spotty practice whenever something emotionally intense happens, and that's been really on-and-off since 2007. Debt, relationship issues, childcare, child sleep insanity, dissertation, all that stuff. But I still have deep practice grooves, followed by shallow spotty ones.
Consistency, I think, relates to these things, it's not just marching through no matter what else you've got going on.
Yesterday I did a difficult Intermediate through Bharadvajasana (weird place to stop, perhaps, but Ardha Matsyendrasana was too much in the glutes) and had challenging backbends as well. Today I did up to Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana (figured I'd add it back in) and the side-swing work in the glutes was so much that I couldn't do it, and even in Pasasana, felt vomitously ill in the glutes and outer hips. So that was that. BUT I had much more brilliant backbends. What the hell?
I think that consistent practice comes from feeling these places out as they start to give signals. "Ahhh it's going to be a tight glutes day, feel that electricity over there" even in sun salutations. I know I can do this, I've done it dozens of times, but I want to get the whole practice in, so I reluctantly modify and then I get the white-shock treatment in the hips and somehow I pretend that's suprising.
This is living in the ego, that wants to "get the pose." And it makes practice hard and then the next day it's not something I look forward to unless I'm in an edge-play state of mind for weeks (which does happen) and then it's ok but only because I know that THAT's going to be my consistent practice. In March-April 2010 I was cranking as hard as I could into Kapo A and B and I got to straight arms and saw my feet and so on. The first adjustment in Kapo, the first Wednesday, with D and S, I got that deep, but I never got there again in the two weeks.
If I try to do that now--with things arranged as they are, childcare, relationship, parent grief--I think I'd probably break something. This is fine. The practice flexes; I'm pretty sure that consistency comes with MODIFYING WHERE NECESSARY (yes ego, you're going to have to surrender, again, a little more, sorry) to maintain the given practice or number of poses or whatever.
I called my practice "Intermediate to Karandavasana" but I haven't even gotten to Krounchasana in two practices this week. If it's consistency that I value (and some days it is and some it isn't, but my ego cries loudly if I don't do "all of practice" which is also something I don't necessarily need to obey every day), then I'm going to have to chill out some poses when/as they need it.
Some days there are suprises: poses are easier late in practice (hi backbends) when I've chilled out earlier. But some days if I slow down and take care (hi Marichyasanas) I can't re-pick-up the energy. These too, these sort of waves in the practice energy, can be sensed, can be known about. Then consistency can be built on the height or shallowness of the wave.
And suddenly this takes on a very Sutras flavor: self-knowledge, focus, not confusing oneself with THAT pose or IF you did that sequence. Abandon achievement. The practice of yoga asana becomes suspiciously like life, with its ambiguity and its unknownness (and yet it can be known, a bit...).
What these inconsistent practices have provided (and particularly in the Austin room) is the idea that I NEVER KNOW what I'm going to do on the mat. Oh, I have a plan, I have a sequence, but who knows when/if I'll have to modify what, or what pose will prove impossible, or what pose will suddenly show up. But as I practice, I will know. Feeling and moving provides the knowledge because IT IS the experience.
And while I see how that would have been frustrating even at the start of this year (because I like certainty), now it's liberating: what am I going to do (oh no!)? I'm going to breathe and make some shapes. If they feel good, I will make other shapes, and then more shapes. If they don't feel good, I will change the shapes a bit and/or make fewer shapes. This is what I will do. But it requires the ego to surrender, to live in the unknown, in short to become alive, to be part of life rather than the judge of all.
Now, I'm not vegan and I'm not interested in becoming some slow-foods or raw-foods or whichever else kind of propagandist. But after cutting caffeine in Austin (back on it now, a little morning tea) and reading about the Spam factory in Minnesota where pig brains caused (apparently) autoimmune disease of immigrant workers' nervous systems, and from almost ten years of knowing a vegetarian who was raised by anti-factory-farming people, it's sort of hit a critical mass, and therefore the filmfest.
I know food creates heated argument; I'm really and truly not after that here. "Food Matters": 2008 documentary, lots of talking heads, basically arguing that health can be created, and doesn't need to be medically treated. Vitamins, lifestyle choices, raw food, vegetarianism, etc. The provocative bits are these:
*medical journals are sponsored by drug companies and won't archive mags that talk about nutrition
*cancer can be treated with megadoses of Vitamin C
*health can be managed by individuals (the health care system is broken)
It has a conspiracy theory flavor which is mitigated only by arguing that the health care industry and/or medical doctors *aren't trained* in nutrition and nutritional therapy, but still, "Food Matters" comes off a bit conspiratorial, as if medical institutions are taking money over "real" cures (if we believe that high-dose vitamins can do this). It is nonetheless an argument I keep thinking about.
On cancer: the provocative quote is "change the internal environment that gives rise to the cancer." I liked that. But again the advice is high-dose vitamins and "superfoods" that can be eaten raw (spirulina, et al.) because "cooked food causes an immune system reaction" (that, I found a bit suspicious, but ok). "Food Matters" argues that chemotherapy and radiation are basically carcinogenic. They change cells, kill cells, in a way that is, essentially, toxic. The documentary recommends putting patients on a raw-food, high-fiber diet with high vitamin dosage and does show some compelling before-and-afters of such treatment being effective.
This makes me think of my father's case: an early radiation burn in the treatment of his colon cancer created apparently uncontrollable diarrhea and he had to be put on IV nutrition for weeks. Progressive weakness came with the radiation and the liquid nutrition and long-story-short by the time it was over, he wasn't strong enough to fend off opportunistic pneumonia. Would empowering nutrition--healthful food--have changed this? He wasn't a guy to like fiber or eat many veggies and certainly not to take a multivitamin or that sort of thing. Maybe on a personal level it would never have worked. Still, it sure looks like it would have been a good idea, decades earlier.
************************************
Where does consistency in the practice come from? Regularity, not overshooting for the hard pose, breath and bandhas?
Predictably, I had uneven practice with David and Shelley because I was cranking a lot of grief out of my glutes and hips, where emotional stuff tends to sink anyway. Wednesday and Thursday were the best practice days of both weeks.
But if you read around here, you'll see that I've had spotty practice whenever something emotionally intense happens, and that's been really on-and-off since 2007. Debt, relationship issues, childcare, child sleep insanity, dissertation, all that stuff. But I still have deep practice grooves, followed by shallow spotty ones.
Consistency, I think, relates to these things, it's not just marching through no matter what else you've got going on.
Yesterday I did a difficult Intermediate through Bharadvajasana (weird place to stop, perhaps, but Ardha Matsyendrasana was too much in the glutes) and had challenging backbends as well. Today I did up to Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana (figured I'd add it back in) and the side-swing work in the glutes was so much that I couldn't do it, and even in Pasasana, felt vomitously ill in the glutes and outer hips. So that was that. BUT I had much more brilliant backbends. What the hell?
I think that consistent practice comes from feeling these places out as they start to give signals. "Ahhh it's going to be a tight glutes day, feel that electricity over there" even in sun salutations. I know I can do this, I've done it dozens of times, but I want to get the whole practice in, so I reluctantly modify and then I get the white-shock treatment in the hips and somehow I pretend that's suprising.
This is living in the ego, that wants to "get the pose." And it makes practice hard and then the next day it's not something I look forward to unless I'm in an edge-play state of mind for weeks (which does happen) and then it's ok but only because I know that THAT's going to be my consistent practice. In March-April 2010 I was cranking as hard as I could into Kapo A and B and I got to straight arms and saw my feet and so on. The first adjustment in Kapo, the first Wednesday, with D and S, I got that deep, but I never got there again in the two weeks.
If I try to do that now--with things arranged as they are, childcare, relationship, parent grief--I think I'd probably break something. This is fine. The practice flexes; I'm pretty sure that consistency comes with MODIFYING WHERE NECESSARY (yes ego, you're going to have to surrender, again, a little more, sorry) to maintain the given practice or number of poses or whatever.
I called my practice "Intermediate to Karandavasana" but I haven't even gotten to Krounchasana in two practices this week. If it's consistency that I value (and some days it is and some it isn't, but my ego cries loudly if I don't do "all of practice" which is also something I don't necessarily need to obey every day), then I'm going to have to chill out some poses when/as they need it.
Some days there are suprises: poses are easier late in practice (hi backbends) when I've chilled out earlier. But some days if I slow down and take care (hi Marichyasanas) I can't re-pick-up the energy. These too, these sort of waves in the practice energy, can be sensed, can be known about. Then consistency can be built on the height or shallowness of the wave.
And suddenly this takes on a very Sutras flavor: self-knowledge, focus, not confusing oneself with THAT pose or IF you did that sequence. Abandon achievement. The practice of yoga asana becomes suspiciously like life, with its ambiguity and its unknownness (and yet it can be known, a bit...).
What these inconsistent practices have provided (and particularly in the Austin room) is the idea that I NEVER KNOW what I'm going to do on the mat. Oh, I have a plan, I have a sequence, but who knows when/if I'll have to modify what, or what pose will prove impossible, or what pose will suddenly show up. But as I practice, I will know. Feeling and moving provides the knowledge because IT IS the experience.
And while I see how that would have been frustrating even at the start of this year (because I like certainty), now it's liberating: what am I going to do (oh no!)? I'm going to breathe and make some shapes. If they feel good, I will make other shapes, and then more shapes. If they don't feel good, I will change the shapes a bit and/or make fewer shapes. This is what I will do. But it requires the ego to surrender, to live in the unknown, in short to become alive, to be part of life rather than the judge of all.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Something I first put on FB: "Keep it alive, keep it messy"
This single post seems to have been VERY popular on Facebook, shared and copied by at least six people that I'm aware of. I think that's largely because it is seen as saying, "take it easy, you don't have to get the advanced series, and even if you do, you don't have to do those poses 100 percent correctly."
It doesn't say that, in those words; David was really emphasizing doing asana practice here not for its own sake but for "the rest of the day" and thus his question, "what does it help you do in the rest of your life?" The line about the "protractor" also amused a lot of people.
In addition, I'm going to repost the "what I learned about asana" list that I also posted on FB. Ok, here we go. Happy reading!
*****************************************************
"KEEP IT MESSY"
Yesterday DS was talking about advanced poses, and again said that in the early days they got bucketfuls, whatever poses you wanted. This is also in part because there wasn't authorization/certification in the old days (from which the Tim Miller story about, "Guruji can I get any kind of license to teach this?" comes). In DS' biography as he tells it, he went to Mysore in the late 70s, learned all the way through the Advanced B (basically learned the whole syllabus, and I've forgotten to mention here that the studio has the David Williams poster, showing every pose in the old syllabus for ashtanga yoga, and it's pretty fabulous) and then came back to Texas and just freaked out from the energy and went on a 12-year search for everything, having written Guruji a letter asking about the meaning of life and where to find God and such and so on. Heavy stuff to throw on a guy who's 22. So he reappeared in front of Guruji 12 years later, and in an assisted backbend, K Pattabhi Jois recognized him, and Swenson does this great impression, eyes wide, voice high like Guruji's was in suprise: "Daaaaviiiiid Swennnnnsonnnn!" Awesome. Matt Sweeney told us a like story about practicing next to Dominic Corigliano. Apparently Dominic had been away from the practice for some time, and Guruji was "hassling him" in every pose of Advanced A, as if he remembered not just who Dominic was, but of what poses he was capable.
Doesn't matter who you talk to from the teachers who consider K Pattabhi Jois their teacher--take Swenson, Tim Miller, Kino MacGregor, others--they all have this giant reservoir of love for SKPJ. It becomes very obvious in the storytelling, the comic impressions, the lessons relayed. Good stuff.
Swenson said, "You know, I don't care if my hands never see my ankles again in this life." I really liked that. Shelley had told us a story about the two of them getting side-by-side mats in Mysore, and how watching David now struggle with the Advanced A (her exact story was that DS was turning white, pink, green and other colors in Viparita Shalabhasana on the way to Ganda Bherundasana) was a result of a lot of traveling, of being in his 50s now, and of hefting a lot of people up and down and over and around in poses. They really shifted the discussion from "which series" to "how does the yoga manifest in your life," they've hit that note a couple times. I think this is both important to them as teachers and also an answer to a lot of conference questions from us about classical Mysore practice and advanced poses and such (see my earlier note on this, for example).
"How does it affect the rest of your day--does it make you a better parent, or a better banker or auto mechanic or whatever you do?" That was David's question back to us. "Keep it messy, keep it alive," he said, talking about how in the old days nobody cared how or if the pose was messy. "You don't need to get out a protractor to measure the lines," he told us, specifically using Yoga Journal cover poses as an example. Poses can be sloppy in Dave and Shelley's room; vinyasa can be imperfect. ALIVE. Exactly. Keep it alive. DS said to us that the yoga should be a thing you can enjoy, and you can make it into whatever you want: ashtanga doesn't need to be a hard bike ride uphill. It can feel like your grandmother's house with the smell of fresh-baked whatever. It can be--and make it--as pleasant as you want.
The slideshow last night was part David telling his story (which I've borrowed from above, the 12-year break) and then two early films of David in high school, doing the Intermediate sequence (parts of it) on a bedsheet in the back yard and his mom crosses through the frame with a cup of coffee, just hangin out watching her son do stuff. He told us a story about he and Doug being hassled by cops as they practiced yoga in the park in the early 70s, because some neighbor had called and said that these young men with long hair were "doin some devil worship or somethin." The cops came up with guns to the two yoga practitioners, asking, "What're you boys doin' here?" and as Doug told it a couple years ago, they said, "Ummmmm.....breathing?" Anyway, the slideshow was dedicated really to DS' and Shelley's time in India, a sort of retrospective on SKPJ as they knew him, with a lot of India photos. They used to have a house there by "the park," which DS said is a well-known location to ashtanga practitioners: there are cows in the park and guys with huge truckloads of coconut shells and all other sorts of business.
Intermediate series today and then I'm going to try to "keep it sloppy and alive" all week with the Intermediate because it felt good to do it on Thursday. Later I'll write about how the first adjustment in Kapotasana that I got here (Wednesday morning) turned fear and anxiety into more positive stuff even though I did not get the full expression.
*****************************************************
POSE STUFF
This is a combination of workshop information, adjustments seen and adjustments received. It's probably not complete, but it might give you ideas when you're practicing:
****
Utkatasana and Virabhadrasana I in Suryanamaskar B: you want the shoulders externally rotated. If you're in a spacious room, coming up wide to the side does this. In a crowded room, raise your arms PALMS UP and it'll happen. This takes much, much less muscle energy to hold than cranking the arms up there straight from heart center.
****
Padangusthasana, et al. (forward bends): send the shoulders down, and lean into the toes (actually Kino MacGregor was the first person to tell me to lean into the toes).
****
Parsvakonasana: press the knee against the arm, and swing the top hand not up and over but under and down and then up (basically swing it from your side down to the floor and then up over your head; same external rotation as above).
****
Parivrtta Parsvakonasana: grab the forward leg and twist against it, work the elbow down.
****
Prasarita D: pull up, don't let the wrists hang on the floor.
****
Utthita Hasta Padang'a: curl the toes around the fingers, grab the hip with the other hand.
****
Virabha B: open toward the wall you face. Knees apart. Tailbone sinks. Then turn your head to the front hand.
****
Dandasana: arms straight. This means you energize the posture. Try it.
****
Janu Sirsasana all: it's a slight twist. Chest centered over front leg; don't just hook the side ribs over it.
****
Mari A: reach Forward not Up. Bent leg is totally straight upright, not leaning to side.
****
Mari C: when wrapping the leg, get broad across the shoulders and SIT UP; this increasing breathing space radically.
****
Kurmasana: the key to lifting the heels is legs over SHOULDERS not over elbows.
****
Supta Kurmasana: find ways to broaden the collarbones (like grabbing the ankles of a teacher who stands behind you and who then walks back slightly to pull the chest/shoulders down and broad). No hand clasp will occur until and unless the legs are Over The Shoulders.
****
Upavistha: the feet are Upright, not rolling in. Also look out for that in Kurmasana AND Bhujapidasana: the legs do not "flop open" externally.
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Ubhaya and Urdhva Mukha Paschimo: the feet are pointed, not flexed. In 2007 in the first one, they were flexed. No longer.
****
Setu Bandhasana: it is about extending the legs, NOT raising the hips off the floor.
****
Matsyasana: arms are straight now. If you do this in lotus, this makes the pose much bigger in the lumbar spine than the thoracic. Get ready to feel a backbend.
****
Sirsasana: it's legal to tuck the chin as the legs come over for Urdhva Dandasana. Makes it easier. I have also consistently been told to "make my elbows closer" to the point that the triangle base is very isosceles and not equilateral at all.
****
Krounchasana: it's half Tiriang Mukha and half Urdhva Mukha Paschimo. Look at the foot and try to bring shin to chest.
****
Ustrasana, et al. (backbends): a string attached to your chest takes it UPWARD. Only when you go upward do you go backward.
****
Laghuvajrasana: keep thinking UP, UP, UP; even as you lower, imagine that you are LIFTING IT.
****
Kapotasana: try to land the hands as close to your feet as you can. You can hang or walk, either's good, but hands as close to feet as possible.
****
Supta Vajrasana: the exit is CHEST UP, not lower back lifting.
****
Bakasana: the feet stay TOGETHER. In Mysore, this is entered from a Pasasana position (tight low squat). Even in B, try to jump with FEET TOUCHING.
****
Eka Pada Sirsasana: it might be useful to look at the foot as it goes over your head. Look sideways, don't duck.
****
Pincha Mayurasana: to keep from flipping over, keep one leg on "either side" as you jump up. One leg goes over your head, and you jump the other one up but keep it on your chest side. Sort of jumping into a short forearm split. Then raise BOTH legs to center, one from each direction. Tangentially, I taught myself to bunny hop (2 feet at once) into this after a workshop. Walk in as much as you can, bend legs, shoot them both up, hips over shoulders. When you get the hips over the shoulders, you can feel yourself stick the inversion. Then extend the legs and its yours. For the proper exit, David says, "Pull your hands back."
****
Karandavasana: in lowering, think Shoulders Forward, and Look Ahead. But try to get legs to chest Before You Do That.
****
Mayurasana: "think cleavage"!! :D
****
Nakrasana: feet touch. All the way through. It's easier if you keep your arms bent rather than straightening them, even in the jumps.
It doesn't say that, in those words; David was really emphasizing doing asana practice here not for its own sake but for "the rest of the day" and thus his question, "what does it help you do in the rest of your life?" The line about the "protractor" also amused a lot of people.
In addition, I'm going to repost the "what I learned about asana" list that I also posted on FB. Ok, here we go. Happy reading!
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"KEEP IT MESSY"
Yesterday DS was talking about advanced poses, and again said that in the early days they got bucketfuls, whatever poses you wanted. This is also in part because there wasn't authorization/certification in the old days (from which the Tim Miller story about, "Guruji can I get any kind of license to teach this?" comes). In DS' biography as he tells it, he went to Mysore in the late 70s, learned all the way through the Advanced B (basically learned the whole syllabus, and I've forgotten to mention here that the studio has the David Williams poster, showing every pose in the old syllabus for ashtanga yoga, and it's pretty fabulous) and then came back to Texas and just freaked out from the energy and went on a 12-year search for everything, having written Guruji a letter asking about the meaning of life and where to find God and such and so on. Heavy stuff to throw on a guy who's 22. So he reappeared in front of Guruji 12 years later, and in an assisted backbend, K Pattabhi Jois recognized him, and Swenson does this great impression, eyes wide, voice high like Guruji's was in suprise: "Daaaaviiiiid Swennnnnsonnnn!" Awesome. Matt Sweeney told us a like story about practicing next to Dominic Corigliano. Apparently Dominic had been away from the practice for some time, and Guruji was "hassling him" in every pose of Advanced A, as if he remembered not just who Dominic was, but of what poses he was capable.
Doesn't matter who you talk to from the teachers who consider K Pattabhi Jois their teacher--take Swenson, Tim Miller, Kino MacGregor, others--they all have this giant reservoir of love for SKPJ. It becomes very obvious in the storytelling, the comic impressions, the lessons relayed. Good stuff.
Swenson said, "You know, I don't care if my hands never see my ankles again in this life." I really liked that. Shelley had told us a story about the two of them getting side-by-side mats in Mysore, and how watching David now struggle with the Advanced A (her exact story was that DS was turning white, pink, green and other colors in Viparita Shalabhasana on the way to Ganda Bherundasana) was a result of a lot of traveling, of being in his 50s now, and of hefting a lot of people up and down and over and around in poses. They really shifted the discussion from "which series" to "how does the yoga manifest in your life," they've hit that note a couple times. I think this is both important to them as teachers and also an answer to a lot of conference questions from us about classical Mysore practice and advanced poses and such (see my earlier note on this, for example).
"How does it affect the rest of your day--does it make you a better parent, or a better banker or auto mechanic or whatever you do?" That was David's question back to us. "Keep it messy, keep it alive," he said, talking about how in the old days nobody cared how or if the pose was messy. "You don't need to get out a protractor to measure the lines," he told us, specifically using Yoga Journal cover poses as an example. Poses can be sloppy in Dave and Shelley's room; vinyasa can be imperfect. ALIVE. Exactly. Keep it alive. DS said to us that the yoga should be a thing you can enjoy, and you can make it into whatever you want: ashtanga doesn't need to be a hard bike ride uphill. It can feel like your grandmother's house with the smell of fresh-baked whatever. It can be--and make it--as pleasant as you want.
The slideshow last night was part David telling his story (which I've borrowed from above, the 12-year break) and then two early films of David in high school, doing the Intermediate sequence (parts of it) on a bedsheet in the back yard and his mom crosses through the frame with a cup of coffee, just hangin out watching her son do stuff. He told us a story about he and Doug being hassled by cops as they practiced yoga in the park in the early 70s, because some neighbor had called and said that these young men with long hair were "doin some devil worship or somethin." The cops came up with guns to the two yoga practitioners, asking, "What're you boys doin' here?" and as Doug told it a couple years ago, they said, "Ummmmm.....breathing?" Anyway, the slideshow was dedicated really to DS' and Shelley's time in India, a sort of retrospective on SKPJ as they knew him, with a lot of India photos. They used to have a house there by "the park," which DS said is a well-known location to ashtanga practitioners: there are cows in the park and guys with huge truckloads of coconut shells and all other sorts of business.
Intermediate series today and then I'm going to try to "keep it sloppy and alive" all week with the Intermediate because it felt good to do it on Thursday. Later I'll write about how the first adjustment in Kapotasana that I got here (Wednesday morning) turned fear and anxiety into more positive stuff even though I did not get the full expression.
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POSE STUFF
This is a combination of workshop information, adjustments seen and adjustments received. It's probably not complete, but it might give you ideas when you're practicing:
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Utkatasana and Virabhadrasana I in Suryanamaskar B: you want the shoulders externally rotated. If you're in a spacious room, coming up wide to the side does this. In a crowded room, raise your arms PALMS UP and it'll happen. This takes much, much less muscle energy to hold than cranking the arms up there straight from heart center.
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Padangusthasana, et al. (forward bends): send the shoulders down, and lean into the toes (actually Kino MacGregor was the first person to tell me to lean into the toes).
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Parsvakonasana: press the knee against the arm, and swing the top hand not up and over but under and down and then up (basically swing it from your side down to the floor and then up over your head; same external rotation as above).
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Parivrtta Parsvakonasana: grab the forward leg and twist against it, work the elbow down.
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Prasarita D: pull up, don't let the wrists hang on the floor.
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Utthita Hasta Padang'a: curl the toes around the fingers, grab the hip with the other hand.
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Virabha B: open toward the wall you face. Knees apart. Tailbone sinks. Then turn your head to the front hand.
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Dandasana: arms straight. This means you energize the posture. Try it.
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Janu Sirsasana all: it's a slight twist. Chest centered over front leg; don't just hook the side ribs over it.
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Mari A: reach Forward not Up. Bent leg is totally straight upright, not leaning to side.
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Mari C: when wrapping the leg, get broad across the shoulders and SIT UP; this increasing breathing space radically.
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Kurmasana: the key to lifting the heels is legs over SHOULDERS not over elbows.
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Supta Kurmasana: find ways to broaden the collarbones (like grabbing the ankles of a teacher who stands behind you and who then walks back slightly to pull the chest/shoulders down and broad). No hand clasp will occur until and unless the legs are Over The Shoulders.
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Upavistha: the feet are Upright, not rolling in. Also look out for that in Kurmasana AND Bhujapidasana: the legs do not "flop open" externally.
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Ubhaya and Urdhva Mukha Paschimo: the feet are pointed, not flexed. In 2007 in the first one, they were flexed. No longer.
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Setu Bandhasana: it is about extending the legs, NOT raising the hips off the floor.
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Matsyasana: arms are straight now. If you do this in lotus, this makes the pose much bigger in the lumbar spine than the thoracic. Get ready to feel a backbend.
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Sirsasana: it's legal to tuck the chin as the legs come over for Urdhva Dandasana. Makes it easier. I have also consistently been told to "make my elbows closer" to the point that the triangle base is very isosceles and not equilateral at all.
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Krounchasana: it's half Tiriang Mukha and half Urdhva Mukha Paschimo. Look at the foot and try to bring shin to chest.
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Ustrasana, et al. (backbends): a string attached to your chest takes it UPWARD. Only when you go upward do you go backward.
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Laghuvajrasana: keep thinking UP, UP, UP; even as you lower, imagine that you are LIFTING IT.
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Kapotasana: try to land the hands as close to your feet as you can. You can hang or walk, either's good, but hands as close to feet as possible.
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Supta Vajrasana: the exit is CHEST UP, not lower back lifting.
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Bakasana: the feet stay TOGETHER. In Mysore, this is entered from a Pasasana position (tight low squat). Even in B, try to jump with FEET TOUCHING.
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Eka Pada Sirsasana: it might be useful to look at the foot as it goes over your head. Look sideways, don't duck.
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Pincha Mayurasana: to keep from flipping over, keep one leg on "either side" as you jump up. One leg goes over your head, and you jump the other one up but keep it on your chest side. Sort of jumping into a short forearm split. Then raise BOTH legs to center, one from each direction. Tangentially, I taught myself to bunny hop (2 feet at once) into this after a workshop. Walk in as much as you can, bend legs, shoot them both up, hips over shoulders. When you get the hips over the shoulders, you can feel yourself stick the inversion. Then extend the legs and its yours. For the proper exit, David says, "Pull your hands back."
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Karandavasana: in lowering, think Shoulders Forward, and Look Ahead. But try to get legs to chest Before You Do That.
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Mayurasana: "think cleavage"!! :D
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Nakrasana: feet touch. All the way through. It's easier if you keep your arms bent rather than straightening them, even in the jumps.
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