Developing a Home practice part 21b, Approaching Intermediate

Last week, in this series, I re posted a post from December 08 that asked 'When to begin Intermediate'. I was given a bit of a hard time in the comments section following the original post for even considering it. The argument being that poses should only be given by a teacher. Or even if you didn't have a teacher then there were certain requirements, gateway poses, that you had to be able to do before you could move on to 2nd. It was stressed that I should be able to come up from Urdhva Dhanurasana, for instance, before I even considered moving on.

Funny, but I didn't realise that I had taken these comments to heart because I just looked at the following January and the whole month is pretty much devoted to coming up from Urdhva Dhanurasana.

I'm always surprised by how insistent some practitioners are that you have to practice in the correct way in the correct order, only moving on when given permission to do so. It's as if, how to practice as well as what to practice, is all set down in stone somewhere. This from David Williams
'I returned to India and I came up to Mysore and I started learning. I was with Nancy Gilgoff and we stayed in Mysore for four months. I learned first series, second series, and half of third series, plus the pranayama....'
'....At the time Guruji spoke very little English. So, the way I would learn was I would come early and watch somebody else doing the practice and memorize the postures that were ahead of me. I set a discipline of tryin to learn eight postures a day and this is how I managed to learn the first two and half of the third series at this time.'

David Williams - Maui 2001 Interviews Friday, 30 November 2007

No mention here of Guruji hitting him over the head with a stick for trying Kapo. If you read some of those old interviews you get the feeling that the method for transmitting the practice was evolving constantly. Full vinyasa up to the 80's and then a shift to half. People being moved along more quickly until the size of classes forced a reapproachment and students became held back longer. But we don't have to go back to the 70's and 80's, how often to we come across this expression "this is how it's being practiced in Mysore now".

There's a defensiveness that I really don't understand, what are people afraid of? I can understand that AYRI wants to keep some control of how the practice is taught, preserved. I hate the idea of just anyone being able to set themselves up as an Ashtanga teacher, as much as anyone else. I actually find it uncomfortable that some young practitioner can practice for a couple of years, go to Mysore a few times, and become authorised to teach, to TEACH. Great you can do the poses but to teach, the psychology involved in that, maturity required, well it gives me pause. I used to teach teachers how to teach, it's not that easy, more to it than just communicating poses.

But then in the end I practice at home and that gives me a lot of freedom to develop my practice as I see fit. I happen to call it Ashtanga and feel secure in that, you can call it what you want. If I went to a Shala I would feel obliged to paractice in accordance with the house rules.

I approached 2nd pretty much in the same way I'd approached Primary. I had Swensons book and DVD, and I worked through the whole series a couple of times following the Video, taking some of David's variations from the book where the poses were too difficult. I'd done that a couple of times in and around December 08 and then threw myself ,with purpose, into 2nd in January.

I started to practice in the evenings. With the time constraints of having to go to work I was struggling with practicing Intermediate in the morning. It was all too disjointed, I was struggling with poses, taking several attempts and still trying to work too many things out. This was fine, and fun, on my day off or Sunday but on a work day it was frustrating and unsatisfying.

Evenings worked well but I began to miss Primary. There was still no flow to my Intermediate and I was struggling with the transitions. I started to practice Primary in the morning and Intermediate in the evenings. This evolved into practicing Primary on mornings when I had to go to work and intermediate on my day off and Sunday. In the evenings I would do a shortened standing followed by Intermediate up to Kapo or Bakasana and work on dropbacks.

Looking back on it now I think that the way the Intermediate is being taught in the Shala's makes more sense. While I think Tim Miller's style of teaching Primary altogether (so I hear) is ideal, I think the method of adding on poses in 2nd is probably the best way of going about it. I just jumped straight into 2nd and my practice became ragged. I lost all the flow that I had in Primary it was no longer a meditation.

If I was to do it again, I would start adding on the Intermediate poses up to Kapo over a month or two until it became comfortable and smooth and stick with that for a month or so. Then I would just start adding poses the criteria being that your familiar with them enough to be able to move into the next with some degree of flow. Maybe Split at Karandavasana. I think a variation of a pose is fine, I really don't feel that you should be held back at a pose for months if not years, it's not Iyenga for Christ sake. The pose will come, you'll bind a little more deeply in the Mari's, get a bit further back and closer to your toes in your Kapo. over time.

I made the split to Intermediate and it becoming my main practice last week. I practice all of Intermediate now, Sunday to Thursday, with Primary on Friday and resting Saturday. I have a bit of a flow going, coming up in Karanda is inconsistent and my Supta Urdhva Pada Vajrasana is still a bit of a joke. Every pose needs work, but it feels a nice practice now. It's taken six months to get to this point, I think if I'd added poses in the manner above rather than trying to switch to it all in one go it would have been a more enjoyable process.

Next : Dropbacks, Coming up, Kapo, Dwi pada and Karandavasana Intermediate transitions.