So tomorrow, Sunday, no work, BIG yoga day. I practice six days a week but as with my day off, not having to worry about getting off to work on Sundays allows me to explore the practice. It was a Sunday the first time I struggled through all of Intermediate and another Sunday that I worked through all of third. Another Sunday I practiced Primary then carried on through all of 2ND to see if it could be done (I'd read they used to do that back in the day)nearly killed me. It was on Sundays that I started exploring Vinyasa Krama and on a Sunday last month that I first practiced Full Vinyasa. I build my practice week around Tuesdays and Sundays. I save the best for those two days.
It takes me two and a quarter hours to practice Full Vinyasa Primary and I've been saving that for Sundays and Tuesdays (my day off) so I could savour it, and that was the plan for tomorrow. Thing is I find I kind of want to practice Intermediate tomorrow. Not SO strange perhaps, except that I practiced Intermediate this morning ...... and on Friday, and also Thursday.
I WANT to practice Intermediate.
Today, at work, thinking about it I started to think that Intermediate was beautiful.
Now it was fun exploring 2ND in the beginning, some great asanas to get to grips with. But I've never enjoyed the series as a whole. It's Primary I've loved, Intermediate, I've just tolerated it for the cool poses and because that's what we Ashtangi's do, move on to a new series just when we become comfortable with the previous one. Even began to hate it, found it disjointed, untidy, not aesthetically pleasing. Looking at Ashtanga, series one to five, I would have marked 2ND down as the runt of the litter.
How can we account for such a sudden change, soft strings and moonlight?
Full Vinyasa!
Now I will admit that Full Vinyasa Primary may be a little much, I'm having fun with it but it takes a hell of a long time and forty odd namaskara, well I can begrudgingly see why Guruji accepted the need to drop it. But Full Vinyasa Intermediate? Perfect. That's how it was designed, that's how it was practiced and for my money that's how it should still be practiced. It just seems to make sense, it feels balanced and balance in Aesthetics (one Aesthetic anyway ) is a synonym for perfect and the beautiful.
Primary you can hurtle through if you want, it works, it swings. You can practice it slowly too, meditatively, it works that way as well, but Intermediate won't be rushed.
Intermediate, it's smart, it's funny (think Titibhasana, Nakrasana) and yes, I think so, beautiful. Once you finally notice all this how can you help but fall head over heels.
I tripped, I'm falling ......don't anyone catch me.
10 comments:
OK I'm a bit late, but I have to comment...
'that's what we Ashtangi's do, move on to a new series just when we become comfortable with the previous one'... dude... were you being ironic? This made me laugh out loud. 'We ashtangis' wait for our teacher to give us the next series pose by pose, we don't just drop primary and start full 2nd one day when we feel like it!! Nothing against you and your practice (can we take a long disclaimer here as a given and save me typing it), it works for you, etc, but it is not the way ashtanga is done. Period.
Also you don't know that Guruji 'begrudgingly' cut out full vinyasa. Maybe he always hated it! We don't know. At the ashtanga yoga RESEARCH institute, he may have found that it was bad for some people's hearts, he may have decided it was more challenging and 'nerve cleansing' to do the backbends through LBH without it, he may have concluded that full vinyasa from karanda through to parighasana, as it is today, is perfection... we don't really know, do we???
PS I love intermediate too, it is stunningly beautiful :)
yes gently ironic. Not said as a criticism, just refering to how we get great on one series and then it gets relegated to once a week Sigh. Don't I remember Owl being really sad to leave 2nd and move on to third or was that you?
And it was me not Guruji I was refering to begrudgingly accepting that full vinyasa Primary is probably a bit much every day.
And yes no need for disclaimers here : )
hi Grimmly
i think that one's self practice of intermediate can be calm and slow, but i think that the way it is taught when led makes it very fast. i used to watch Springy Sitarist really go fast through it in his self practice before his teaching and i think he was following the Indian tempo.
cheers,
Arturo
Hi Arturo, your back, must pop over and see if you've posted any pictures of your travels yet.
It's curious the whole pace thing. Yoga mala is stressing long and steady breaths with full vinyasa which equates with a long slow practice to me. I can kind of see the argument though that a faster pace will help carry you through the challenges of 2nd, it worked for me for awhile, but that seems to be missing the point. The breath, bandhas focus will carry you through 2nd just as well. Another argument might be keeping the heat up I suppose but then that's the job of Ujaii and the bandhas.
Guess it depends on the individual and which Shala you go to.. I'm loving this slower pace, the series is coming alive for me
Eh, I haven't been sad to leave anything, I do full 2nd ( minus headstands of course) every day as a prelude to the real work of 3rd+backbends, handstands etc. Love primary too, once a week is about right.
Sorry if I misread you there. Did you edit the word order??
I do practice at exactly the pace it suits me on the day, sometimes slow and sometimes fast. Except for led (primary once a week, 2nd with Sharath). Led is an exercise in showing you can keep the pace if necessary... the rest of the time I follow my own clock!
No didn't change anything. I think I need or want Primary at least twice a week, one full vinyasa and the other regular. Full V 2nd the rest of the week seems to be working. Funny, a while ago I wanted to skip 2nd and move right on to 3rd, in no rush at all now.
'Led is an exercise in showing you can keep the pace if necessary.' you think?
Susan wanted to ask you about this last night but was in bed with the itouch. You said
'Led is an exercise in showing you can keep the pace if necessary.'
what did you mean by that? Not being critical (there's my own disclaimer) just curious. Interested in the whole idea of the led class and how it came about, it's function and it's effect on the practice.
Well yes, that's the way it seems to me... that's my perception of it.
People begin the practice and get given the poses of primary, work away at them at their own pace every day. No one tells you to slow down or speed up, and at my shala you can repeat or work on a difficult pose as much as you like.
Led once a week ensures you can do it flowingly at a swift pace. We take five long breaths in the posture, but the vinyasas are bang on the count and there's no extra time to get into something... it's inhale jump through, exhale take mari D, one, two, three, four, five. Once a week you don't have your extra time to get in as deep as you might like, but you're learning to go straight in.
Led also insures your vinyasa is correct, meaning you make the right movements on the inhale/exhale. For example, in the prasaritas.
The other thing about led (primary at least) is that people are welcome to stay and attempt it all, even though in their everyday practice they may stop at whichever pose along the way they can't yet do to teacher's satisfaction.
Primary is a set form and we are practising it as close to 'perfect' as possible during led. All the other days you have as much time as you like to work.
The payoff for doing this is you get the group energy BUZZ :)
I like this system.
Think I agree with all that, good to do it on the breath once a week at least. I try to only work on a couple of poses a day so that most of of my practice at least is on the breath, good to practice with a dvd every now and then. And yet the five breaths seem so often rushed on the DVD's and on the led classes I've seen on Youtube.I should of course come to Cary's and see for myself.
Vinyasa on the breath YES, straight into the pose YES but I also want LONG, SLOW inhaling and exhaling....except in the odd couple of poses where three really quick breathes would be plenty.
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