Why this obsession with Jump Back. Letter to Japan

I've had a lot of visitors to this blog from Japan the last couple of days thanks to a link from miwamiwa's blog http://everydayashtanga.blog116.fc2.com/. Very happy about this as I lived in Japan for six years, in Osaka and Kyoto. I came back to the UK five years ago but still consider Japan a second home and still hope to return to live there again in the future. Nice to know there's a thriving Ashtanga scene.

On miwamiwa's blog I believe she was discussing the different perspective on Ashtanga from Japan in particular in this case and in the West. I don't think she was being critical, in a negative sense, when she commented on the apparent focus on the physical aspect in the west and on the meditative in Japan. Interesting, as this debate tends to come up a lot, more in the sense of the physical and/or spiritual focus in the west and in India, in particular, as representative of the East. I don't think the spiritual and meditative are necessarily interchangeable here.

Miwa uses blogs as indicators and my blog among others as an example of the focus on the physical and/or on asana and in my case a seeming obsession with the Jump Back in particular. Though she says she enjoys my blog and isn't critical of this I wanted to respond both for myself and for anyone who finds the Jump Back important aspect of practice to them.

I started this blog to focus on one aspect of ashtanga, the Jump back. I've had to resist the urge to comment on other aspects of practice or to get involved in other discussions surrounding Ashtanga (especially hard at times as I come from a philosophical background). I've started and deleted several blogs that went off topic. And perhaps it has become a bit of an obsession in the process of writing about my progress several times a week.

However, I focused on the Jump Back because I felt it was important despite what many teachers say. I still believe it's one of the most important aspects of practice if not the defining aspect of Ashtanga. The Jump Back and Jump Through link the Asana, it's what makes Ashtanga a flowing practice. When the practice flows we're able to focus more on the breath and on the meditative aspect Miwa mentions, rather than focusing on the breath in just the one asana as in other styles of yoga. The whole Ashtanga practice becomes one long meditation. I used to practice Vippasana meditation as well as Ashtanga, now my practice has become an extended Vipasanna meditation. An hour to an hour and a half rather than the 20-40 minutes I used to practice Vipasanna or indeed Zen in the past. As random thoughts enter my mind in practice I try to treat them as I would in Vipassana. This all becomes more effective with a flowing transition between asana.

If you look back to my June and July videos this is when I latch on to a style of Jump Back that begins to flow more and allowed me to focus more on the practice as a whole. The developments since then have been to improve that flow and to achieve a lighter more, graceful practice. It's all abut the breath, the rhythm and flow. If we focus on the asana and we all do at times. isn't it because the asana we struggle with interrupt the flow. Yes there's the sense of triumph and achievement when we begin to get them but we're Ashtangi's, it's the practice as a whole we focus on and every morning (or afternoon) and never really the individual asana, though we might give one or another more attention for awhile. And the practice IS a meditation, what else could it be.
It still amazes me what we do. Getting up in the dark, cold winter mornings six days a week and going through our practice. Whether we practice at home or at a Shala, despite the occasional wandering drishti or monkey mind, for an hour and a half we absorb ourselves in the practice, in the breath. This is meditative and can't help but affect/effect us on a spiritual and indeed moral level. It's a discipline we impose on ourselves so of course it has those aspects. There is no essential difference between Ashtanga PRACTICE in the East and West, how could there be. The different perspectives we may have only surround the practice and dissolve when we step on the mat.