I've mentioned this before, we tend to stop blogging just when we should start blogging. 

Disillusioned by much of the practice we loved and practiced with such dedication, we avoid writing about about said disillusionment. The result being that new practitioner's only get the 'cool aid). I guess that's fine, new practitioner's, in the fresh flush of practice intoxication, are unlikely to read anything negative or questioning anyway.

This practice, why do we continue doing it, is it just habit?

It turned us into gods, trim and magnificent, flexible pretzel shiva's. You remember that movie, 'Once we were warriors'? Well, Once we were YOGI's....., except we weren't. Practicing day in day out we grew flexible and some of us, with forgiving bodies, could do pretty much any yoga pose we tried, damn but we hit our peak a couple of years before Instagram.

How did we end up here.

Second series for teachers,Advanced series for demonstration.

Physical adjustments are intrinsic to the practice of AVY (Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga) to enable progress of our students”. .

I haven’t found that to be the case. I was only adjusted a couple of times in twelve years of practice of Primary to Advance series Ashtanga ( although I did take Manju’s Adjustments TT). I don't think I've ever physically adjusted M. in her seven years of Primary series practice and I’m married to her.
Would she have ‘progressed’ beyond Primary series if I had? What does ‘progress’ even mean here, that she could practice ever more advanced asana? They are not something she has ever shown any interest in.
My own ‘yoga’ practice has ‘progressed’ more in the return to focus on just a handful of Primary asana, practiced as mudra, closer to Krishnamacharya’s Mysore instruction ( see Yoga Makaranda Mysore 1934. Google ‘grimmly Proficient Primary)
As for M. her breathing is long and slow and she has always followed her asana practice with pranayama and a Sit. She treads lightly on the earth and is the kindest person I know.
A friend just mentioned that this is something I would have blogged about in the past.
In my one extended ( three month) stay in a shala I declined physical adjustments from the Certified teacher myself but would hear the screams in the Shala while someone else was adjusted in Kapotasana, say, followed by a weak and breathless “Thank you”.
I know many enjoy physical adjustments and consider them beneficial and can even be annoyed if they don’t receive them, they are certainly prevalent in Shala Ashtanga. In home Ashtanga they are absent as is the presence of a teacher, clearly physical adjustments are NOT intrinsic.
I’ve been invited to teach again recently but really, what would I teach? Choose a handful of ‘Primary’ asana that you know already and feel comfortable in, stay in them longer, breathe more slowly, perhaps allow the natural kumbhaka to lengthen...or not. Follow your practice with the most simple pranayama, and a Sit, reflect on the Yama/Niyama of your own tradition. Tread lightly, be kinder. Three sentences. You don’t need to go to a workshop or intensive or pay your hard earned cash, stay home, practice instead.
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grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
Note: While I haven’t received many physical adjustments I have found some verbal adjustments beneficial as well as picking up certain verbal and written cues from teachers and other practitioners that have made my asana safer, more comfortable. I recommend #simonborgolivier and his ‘84 key asana’ online course for a safer more comfortable practice.
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suthernyogipdx's profile picture
suthernyogipdx
@simonsynergy
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newoldtraditions's profile picture
newoldtraditions
Part of the adjustment debate has to do with a fundamental disconnect and misunderstanding western yoga practitioners have in appreciating what the asana are/were even for. The asanas in K's understanding function as medicine, almost like a prescription. You put your leg this way because it effects you in this way. So putting people "into a posture" is meant to give them the medicinal effects of that posture. We may disagree, but that's where they coming from. In the west peeps are still bent (even subconsciously) on this idea of "process" into a posture, or that postures are gestures to be "expressed." The climb to the top is as important as the apex and all that. This doesn't show up ANYWHERE that I know of in asana texts. Asanas were medicine. Head to knees does this. Heal in abdomen does that. Peeps need to read how K and PJ taught the Indian students. They were sent from their doctors. Not to do primary. But to do certain postures.
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grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
@newoldtraditions Indeed, this is very clear of course in his later teaching but we see it even in Yoga Makaranda back in Mysore in 1934, (health) benefits for every asana he mentions. I remember too writing a post that questioned the benefits of advanced postures ('Hey Krishnamacharya, is their any point to putting my leg behind my head') and answering it by Krishnamacharya suggesting several 'advanced' asana related to chakra. However, as well as any health benefits I read Krishnamacharya as presenting his asana in Yoga Makaranda somewhat as Mudra. He may not have taught them to the boys of the palace that way but I suspect he did to his private students in the side rooms, those who weren't sent to him by their physician. We see this mudra like approach too in his son T.K.Sribhashyam's presentation of his father's teaching, which seems to have been based on how Krishnamacharya taught his son 1956-58.
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grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
@newoldtraditions Krishnamacharya was well aware, from texts as well as no doubt from his own teachers, of the traditional benefits associated with the different asana. Ramaswami mentions how he first met Krishnamacharya when he came to treat his younger brother. But for me, when I read his instruction in makaranda, despite the benefits tacked on at the end, I see Krishnamacharya communing with god. he may have used as asana to train boys and to heal the sick but in his own practice of asana I see, in Heideggerian terms, Lichtung -a clearing.
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newoldtraditions's profile picture
newoldtraditions
@grimmly2016 yes and yes. Love it.
grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
Note 2: These photos are from eight years or so ago, I should photograph them again, I suspect they look a little... softer now. I see something similar in Krishnamacharya's early photos and those when he was in his 80s. Where Krishnamacharya's early photos are somewhat hard, tight...., stiff even, there is a softness, a lightness to the later asana photos, a gentleness.
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jeanmarieyoga's profile picture
jeanmarieyoga
Hi!! Sometimes I wonder if I’ve been gifted the best teachers all the places Ive moved because I’ve mostly@experienced getting assisted only as needed (getting up from@karanda for example, deepen song dwi pada ) but none of those things feel extreme because it’s just giving me the extra hand I don’t have myself at home. I think the beauty of a good teacher inAshtanga mysore room is that each student gets mini private lessons. Nor adjustments per se but private moments of teaching where you get verbal feedback on where your weight is or maybe you could try this or that
Today I got physically assisted in the two postures mentioned above and maybe a down dog or forward fold, but otherwise it was a lot of the latter teaching and it was amazing to get that
Ashtanga teachers like this (@sammy_j2 ) and @davidgarriguesyoga really taught me how to be a good teacher in vinyasa world and give people the tools@to help themselves progress without me picking them up and doing it for them. Not that teachers never assist me physically it’s just that overall that’s a really small part of the amazing help and instruction I get in the room.
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grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
@jeanmarieyoga I’m not intending to dismiss teachers here JM just question the idea that adjustments are intrinsic, necessary, belonging naturally, they don’t ‘belong naturally’ to my home practice ( except as a truism in that we are always adjusting ourselves). My favorite adjustment/assist that I learned from Manju was just standing next to somebody trying to bind so they don’t fall over. And I remember Kristina Karitanou tell me to bring my Bharadvajrasana alive and that it wasn’t a rest pose : ) So I hear what you’re saying. Where I was questioning myself teaching it was in the sense of a workshop or ‘intensive’ or a ‘training’. I certainly see the benefit of holding a room for those who have nowhere to practice or prefer the support of a teacher and community, something I’m occasionally tempted to offer here in Japan.
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sammy_j2's profile picture
sammy_j2
@jeanmarieyoga 🙏🔥🙏 stay at it girl!
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jeanmarieyoga's profile picture
jeanmarieyoga
@grimmly2016 I agree I dont like the idea@of automatic assists. The practice is self tailored and assistance should be tailored as well I think?

grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
Note 3: For those uncomfortable with the asana as ‘clearing’ in which to ‘commune with god’ suggestion of how Krishnamacharya approached asana practice in Yoga Makaranda.
I’m suggesting here, asana as poetry, in the Heideggerian sense. The work of the asana as mudra opens up perhaps a clearing, here poetry is not in the the sense of a literary form but rather as revealing, truth disclosing. For Krishnamacharya that may be a clearing in which to encounter God but it might just as well be a clearing to experience the absence of God, an overcoming of the subject/object dichotomy and/or to experience sufficiency ( samhadhi).
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davidvandergaag.yoga's profile picture
davidvandergaag.yoga
Yes! Totally pointless and very injury-dangerous...I been adjusted when I started ashtanga and went to teachers and workshops. I used to like it, because they seem like some magical answer to getting further in the series (that's what you want, right?). Then I got an injury from an adjustment and later also injured myself trying to push to far in a pose. All being done from a mindset given to me by teachers trying to push deeper. Then slowly I started realising they didn't help me in any way to do an asana myself, so I stopped going to any class and workshop and just do self practice. And I can now without any effort go as far and deep in asana as they were pushing me. It really feels the adjustments are just there to serve the impatient. Can't get into a pose? Take another 5 years to practice. Don't want wait that long? I will push you there! 😉. In my view there is a huge difference between strong adjustments and small corrections though. Small corrections might be told or with a soft touch, lenghtening spine, open chest, straightening neck, relaxing face, pointing out the direction someone has to move. I think you could teach all those things. And also your main lesson, teach people to slow down. Go for it if you want it, I think you would have loads of great lessons to share!!
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@davidvandergaag.yoga When you see in the videos how Jois cranked people into postures who probably shouldn’t have been doing Second let alone Third series, it’s not surprising this thread persists in the practice. Thankfully good sense and good teachers who put Mysore behind them, or at least to one side, prevailed and a good Ashtanga city seems offer a choice between the different approaches. Of course if you’re outside such cities then you’re at the mercy of whatever room and ego you’re stuck with unless you embrace home practice and you own common sense.
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bimswinter's profile picture
bimswinter
I love this. I’m attending a Mysore programme at the moment, but I personally got so much from the silence and space of my own practice. Knowing it’s always there is a great comfort. 💛
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visualjacq's profile picture
visualjacq
@grimmly2016 I appreciate this post very much, thank you. Your thoughts are in keeping with my response to those who teach Astanga Vinyasa Yoga in the style of Jois, particularly as there is little (if no) historical precedents for strong physical adjustments prior to this method. In fact, all premodern textual evidence supports your approach—find a guru, learn a few techniques, practice them alone in a hut the size of 2 tatami mats (squared). May I ask who you are responding to in the initial quote? (i.e. “Physical adjustments are intrinsic to the practice of AVY...”). Love the idea of absorption as poetry.
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nelumbo_yoga's profile picture
nelumbo_yoga
💕💕💕💕
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samsilversidesyoga's profile picture
samsilversidesyoga
I completely agree, and I also love it when Manju squishes me or stands on my back in supta kūrmāsana hahaha but he is a little guy 🤣

Returning to practice REDUX

I was asked for an invitation to this blog this week. I'd closed the blog down a year or two ago and apart from a couple of people doing PhD research, there were no readers of the blog. At first, I intend to say no and even wrote the email but for some reason, it wouldn't send. I made the mistake of mentioning this to M. and she gave me a hard time about not letting somebody who had requested information access it. Frankly, I couldn't remember why I had felt so strongly about disappearing from the web completely anyway. Especially, as it's seemingly near impossible to erase yourself from the web. The blog was still appearing on some ripoff site and there were the odd photos and interviews floating around that I couldn't remove. 

The guy who contacted me mentioned that he was nearing 50 and had found my blog useful in the past.

Well now I'm nearing 60, with a few months more to go, and perhaps a post on my practice at this point in my life wouldn't go amiss.

My last post like this was in 2019. I called that "Returning to practice" and logged some reflections day by day and week by week. I'd like to try something similar if only for my own interest.

My practice has been up and down over the last few years. It would start to come back and then there would be another OA (osteoarthritis) attack or the ganglion cyst on my wrist would play up or, more recently, my knee blowing up the size of a melon. The practice would go on hold or get switched from Ashtanga to Vinyasa Krama or Shibrasham's approach in Remergemce of yoga or at one point last year, qigong and taichi. But as the body started to recover and some form of regular practice resumed I'd find myself edging back towards Ashtanga, however, limited.

So this post then is journaling the latest 'return' to practice.

31st January 2023

Day One - Tuesday

For the last few months, I've been focussing on my Japanese in the mornings. I've been tardy with the practice since before Christmas. A little practice here, a little there. I've put on some weight (83.5kg - My practice weight for years was 77.7). My body is stiffer than I ever remember it. My knees have seized up, my hamstring has lost flexibility, knees are painful. It was one thing to lose most of Seated but to find I'd also lost most of standing too was rather disturbing.

So a simplified practice.

Ten minutes of Vinyasa Krama Tadasana

Ten minutes of Simon Borg-Olivier's spinal series

Five sun salutations A, two of B.

A humbling Ashtanga standing sequence

Ardha badha is bindable but not bendable.

Paschimotanasana doesn't have much forward bend in it so I focussed more on Dandasana with some Vinyasa Krama arm movements

Tirang Mucha is uncomfortable, some cramping.

Janu sirsasana, the left knee doesn't want to sit flat. No forward bend so settled for Maha Mudra instead.

A laughable marichiyasana A, little to no forward bend,

Ardho matsendrasana for a twist

Gomhukhasana, a little uncomfortable but doable

A back arch than an attempt at baddha konasana, knees didn't want to go down to the mat, god i used to love this posture so much.

Some pranayama in sitting cross legged (six rounds)

A very short Sit.

Day 2 - Wednesday

Pretty much as above other than a full five Sury Bs. A little less stiff, forward bends were marginally improved.

My knees went to the mat in Badha Konasana. I ended up staying there for pranayama and my sit. - I paid for this later as my legs were a little painful at work that day.

Day 3 - Thursday.

As above but again, a little improved, a little more comfortable. My body felt a little more controlled, and standing felt more erect rather than collapsing under the weight of gravity.

I could fold half way in standing ardha baddha

janu sirsasana was back rather than just Maha mudra.

I included a short shoulder stand and headstand. I don't agree with them but still miss them.

Day 4 - Friday.

The Ashtanga Rishi Series

I was asked about this series of posts from a few years ago. I've repaired the links.

A series of posts exploring the 'Ashtanga Rishi Series' mentioned at the end of Nancy Gilgoff's Article (see link below) and outlined in a reply by David Willams on his forum below ( the headings in block capitals are mine.

I'll be starting each of these posts with this same introduction/reminder of the context.

'Originally there were five series: Primary, Intermediate, Advanced A, Advanced B, and the fifth was the “rishi” series.

Nancy Gilgoff 'Yoga as it was'

Ashtanga Rishi Approach

'...Doing a practice of 10 postures for up to 50 breaths is a method of preparing for "advanced series" after one has learned 1st and 2nd. It can be done once or twice a week. One does the "salutations" and then starts going thru the series, holding each posture for as long as comfortably possible. Notice which postures could be held for 50 breaths. The next time you practice this way, the postures which you could hold for 50 are omitted and new ones are added at the end. One gradually works thru the series, dropping and adding asanas, still doing 10 asanas per session. I have gone all the way thru 1st and 2nd this way several times over the years and have found it beneficial.

Ashtanga Rishi Series

'Then, once one has mastered all of the asanas, one can practice "the rishi series", the most advanced practice. One does the 10 postures that one intuits will be the most beneficial and appropriate for that day, holding each posture for up to 50 comfortable breaths'.

http://tinyurl.com/7wq66bs

Ashtanga Rishi Blog post series

Ashtanga Rishi series

Exploring the ashtanga Rishi series/approach

Ashtanga Rishi Approach, first day Paschimottanasana to Janu sirsasana A

Ashtanga Rishi Approach, second day  Janu Sirsasana B to Navasana

Ashtanga Rishi Approach, third day Bhuja pindasana to badha konasana

Ashtanga Rishi Approach, fourth-day Upavishta konasana to Supta bandhasana

Ashtanga Rishi Approach, fifth day Pasasana to Kapotasana

Ashtanga Rishi Approach, sixth-day Supta vajrasana to Ardha Matsyendrasana

Ashtanga Rishi Approach, Seventh Day  Eka pada sirsasana to Tittibhasana C

Ashtanga Rishi Approach, Eighth day to seven headstands

Rishi series made from asana named after Rishi An alternative take on the Rishi series

See also Srivatsa Ramaswami's December 2012 newsletter for more on the Rishis

https://grimmly1997.blogspot.com/2012/12/rishis-srivatsa-ramaswamis-december.html

UPDATE: 25/03/16 It strikes me that there is a flaw to this project, while exploring the longer stays of fifty breaths in primary and intermediate asana I've tended to stick the regular current rate of breath, a couple of seconds inhalation and the same for exhalation. However, Krishnamacharya in his 1934 Mysore book Yoga Makaranda (and also Pattabhi Jois in several interviews) stressed the importance of long slow inhalations and exhalations, 10,15 even 20 seconds for each. Krishnamacharya also stressed the employment of Kumbhaka (retaining the breath in or out). Fifty breaths at 10 seconds each for inhalation and exhalation plus a 5-second kumbhaka equals 25 seconds per breath, that's twenty minutes for one asana., three hours and twenty minutes for 10 asanas practiced in this manner.

However Pattabhi Jois is quoted as saying "up to 50 breaths", so while we may well choose to stay in one asana for twenty minutes taking fifty long slow breaths we might also choose to stay for twenty-five slow breaths bringing the practice of 10 asanas well under two hours.