Yoga Gymnastique

From Srivatsa Ramaswami's September 2010 Vinyasa krama Newsletter

'Yoga Gymnastique

Some eight years back I wangled a presenter assignment at a Yoga

Conference in Texas. I was never invited again because, among all the

presenters, I had the dubious distinction of attracting the least

number of participants for every one of my presentations.

During one of the breaks a well known Yoga Teacher in US, came and

sat by my side and inquired about me, about where I was from etc. I

mentioned that I was a student of Pandit Krishnamcahary for 3 decades.

With a quizzical look he asked, “What were you doing for 30 years with

him?', and with a wry smile he said, “Oh you must have been doing your

daily practice at his school”. He left before I could start my long

answer. “How can anyone study Yoga for such a long period when there

are just a half a dozen sequences or just a little over a score of

asanas?” He must have wondered

“Krishnamacharya as I have mentioned earlier was like a many

splendoured diamond each facet brilliant in its own way. He taught

yogasanas following the Vinyasakrama, the art form. He also used

yogasanas, pranayama and meditiation for chikitsa or therapeutic

applications. He taught a vast range of Sanskrit chants from the vedas

and also from smritis. He taught several traditional texts like the

yoga sutras and the sibling philosophies including the several

upanishads, following mainly the Visishtadwaita approach. He taught

vaishnava religious texts as well to a number of his vaishnava

followers. He was a well rounded Yogi and he could make every class

absorbing. There would always be something new and insightful. One

could never get bored in his classes whether it be the asanas,

chanting or textual studies...” I wanted to explain these to my

celebrity friend but he was too busy to stay and listen.

Some research scholars have mentioned that Krishnamacharya's vinyasa

approach to yoga has a considerable dose of physical exercise

systems prevalent at that time in India like the drills and also

gymnastics imported into it. But my experience with Krishnamacharya's

asana practice is somewhat different. It is true that some of the

vinyasas and vinyasa sequences like part of Surya Namaskra, the hand

stands, the jump throughs, jump arounds, push ups (utplutis) may

appear to mimic floor exercises in gymnastics. Perhaps there are some

asanas and vinyasas Sri Krishnamacharya taught that had some

resemblance to drills or gymnastics. But he taught to me almost 1000

vinyasas making up close to 150 asana subroutines. The head stand, the

sarvangasana, padmasana are distinctly different from gymnastics and

each one of them has scores of vinyasas that are uniquely yogic and no

other system seems to have anything like that. Further yoga as a

physical culture is very old. We may not have records because in

ancient times most of instructions were oral and the transmission of

knowledge was from teacher to student and the only way to learn was to

go to a teacher and learn, practice and internalize. Later on a few

texts were written as scripts were developed but they were written in

easily perishable palm leaves—like the Yoga Kuranta-- and barely one

manuscript , no xerox copies, no electronic books were available. So

in these matters we have to rely upon authorities/tradition or as the

vedas would call it “aitihya” or firmly held belief. Even from the

available texts like the puranas one can glean a lot of reference to

yoga practice including asana practice. The Brahma Sutras mention that

a seated asana is a necessity for meditation. Works written hundreds

or even a thousand years back contain sections on Yoga including

asanas. Thirumular, a yogi said to have lived 3000 years back wrote

about several asanas in his Tamil classic Thirumandiram. Puranas,

smritis and several later day upanishads have sections on asana

practice. There is a dhyanasloka pertaining to the Ramayana which

mentions that Sri Rama was in Vajrasana while seated in his flowered

bedecked, jeweled throne. In fact from time immemorial many people in

India, as a religious practice, have been doing sandhya or morning

worship of the sun with specific sun worship mantras and physical

movements and gestures. It includes mantras like the gayatri,

pranayama and many postures like tadasana, uttanasana, utkatakaasana

and danda namaskara and utakatasana are specifically mentioned in the

smritis. So in a way we may say that suryanamaskara with mantras and

the physical exercise has been a very old practice. The word Yoga is

indeed a vedic word. You may check with my book “The Complete book of

Vinyasa Yoga” (here no commercial intended) based on my studies with

my guru and I do not think it in any way resembles a book of

gymnastics. Yogasanas have their own distinct nicety. Gymanstics of

course has its own charm. Gymnastics was one my favourite programs

while watching the Olympics. I do not know if I would enjoy Yoga

Olympiad.

My Guru had mentioned on a couple of occasions that physical yoga had

been the core system of physical exercises in India. It had

technically influenced several ancient systems like wrestling,

archery, fencing etc., very physically demanding disciplines,

requiring a high degree of strength, dexterity and focus. Yoga is

called a sarvanga sadhana as it is helpful for all parts of the body,

including the internal organs. There were other indigenous circus-like

practices such as malcam, kazhakkoothu where they use ropes or poles

and do routines very similar to asanas. He had also mentioned that

almost all the physical systems of the world, including gymnastics,

had borrowed heavily from Yoga, because the asana portion of Yoga was

the most ancient and developed physical culture system. Therefore it

could be that there were a few similarities between asanas and some

obscure gymnastic systems in different parts of the world at different

times. Then one has to investigate the origin of those obscure

systems, whether they were older than Yoga, or if they themselves

borrowed from ancient yoga practices. My Guru himself was a passionate

researcher. He would always be looking for works on yoga and other

systems. He even would advise us to go to different agraharams (small

cluster of homes of scholars in certain villages) and look for works

on Yoga available with such scholars. He would say that we should

visit the hundreds of temples in India, especially South India, and

observe the sculptures and idols all over the temples for study of

yoga postures. And because of the oral tradition and relying on

degradable palm leaves, Yoga itself had a checkered progression, in

the limelight during some time in history and obscure at some other

times. Then it becomes a futile exercise to try to determine which

among the physical exercise regimens came first, the seed or the tree

or the better known example of the chicken and the egg.

There are distinct differences between the yoga I learned from Sri

Krishnamacharya for a long period of time and some of the aerobic

exercises like gymnastics. In the vinyasa krama asana practice, the

breathing is synchronized with the movements at the rate of anywhere

between 5 to 10 seconds for inhalation and exhalation thereby reducing

the breath rate to about 3 to 5 per minute, whereas in contemporary

aerobic exercises including gymnastics and gym workouts, the breath

rate increases to much beyond the normal breathing rate of about 15 or

so. This alone makes yoga practice of Sri Krishnamacharya distinctly

different from other drills. The variety of movements in Vinyasa

asana practice is said to be designed to exercise all parts of the

body including the internal organs. We do not find deep movement,

synchronized breathing, and the significantly profound exercises like

the bandhas-- which are an integral part of Sri Krishnamacharya's

asana practice-- in other forms of physical exercises, especially

gymnastics. Look at the 30's videos, the bandhas of my Guru, They are

not a gymnast's cup of chai.

When I was young, some exercises were very popular. They were outside

the pale of yogasanas. One was known as “dandal”, which would look

very much like a repetitive movement between caturanga dandasana and

the plank or a simpler version of urdhwa mukha swanasana. The other

was known as, if I remember right, 'bhaski'. It involved standing up

and doing repeated squats. The first one, 'dandal' looks very

similar to part of Surya namaskara. Baski resembles a very popular

ritual that is done by thousands even today and is known as

“toppukaranam” in Tamil and “dorbhyam karanam” in Sanskrit. One holds

the lobes of the opposite ears with one's hands and squats usually in

front of the idol of Lord Ganesha. It could be 12 times or 108 times.

It is both a good physical exercise and a loving devotional practice

to the charming Lord Ganesha. Are these physical drills, yoga

exercises or devotional practices? Which came first? God knows, Lord

Ganesa knows.

Then there is the question of whether Suryanamaskara is old, from the

vedic times. The Surya namaskara can be considered from two views; one

is the mantra portion the other is vyayama or the physical part.

Certainly Suryanamaskara mantras are from the vedas. In fact there is

a complete chapter of Suryanamaskra mantras from the veda which takes

about an hour to chant. Again the other important Surya mantra,

Gayatri, is also a vedic mantra. The vedas exhort using Gayatri as a

mantra to worship the sun daily. Worship of the sun is considered a

daily obligatory duty for the orthodox in India. We have a procedure

called Sandhya vandana which is supposed to be done thrice a day, but

definitely once a day. This Sandhya procedure is a kind of a worship

ritual, towards the end of which one prostrates towards the Sun. While

the gayatri japa portion is done sitting in a yogic posture after

required number of pranayama, the upasthana or the second part is done

standing. Towards the conclusion the worshipper of the sun has to do a

namaskara, a prostration. So from the standing position, usually one

bends forward, half squats, places the palms on the floor, takes the

legs back by jumping or taking one leg after the other and does an

saashtanga namaskara or the danda namaskara (prostration). One has to

go through these steps (from standing to prostration) and if the steps

are properly organized we get the surya namaskara vyayama, a sequence,

a vinyasakrama. So, since one has to do sandhya daily and has to do

the namaskara startig from standing and since the sandhya is

mentioned as an obligatory duty, it will be correct to say that

suryanamaskara, both the mantra portion and physical namaskara

portion, are from the vedic times. The actual steps may vary but the

physical namaskara to the sun is a procedure practiced from ancient

vedic times. Further In India you can see many people who do not

practice yoga or the formal ritualistic sandhyavandana, standing on

the terrace or on the beach, facing East early in the morning, and

doing prostrations a few times, returning to the standing position

every time. They do not call it Yoga but suryanamaskara. Some of the

present day yoga enthusiasts however do the suryanamaskara, probably

at night, in any direction or directionless, do not use the mantras or

the devotional bhavana associated with it, but as a mere workout.

I had chanted the suyanamaskara mantra almost on every Sunday with my

Guru for several years. Namarupa also published my article on Sandhya

vandana with pictures of the steps some time back. I also have the one

hour long Suryanamaskara mantra chant from the Yajur Veda (which I

learned from Sri Krishnamacharya) recorded in mid 80s and the cds are

still made available in India.

Sri Krishnamacharya's range of teaching was sweeping. I have mentioned

about the asana teaching, his chikitsa krama and vinyasa krama. His

chanting of vedas was beautiful and very engaging. I do not

know of any yoga teacher during his times who could chant as well as

he could from memory. He earned the title “Veda Kesari”, or Lion of Vedas. He was a Sanskrit scholar, a Sanskrit Pandit. He taught the vedanta philosophy, the prastana trayas, the upanishads, the Brahma sutra and the Bhagavad Gita in the visishtadvaita tradition. He was given the title “Vedanta Vageesa”. He was also quite familiar with the advaitic interpretation. He once said while doing the sutra on Anandamaya “Anandamaya abhyasat” in which the two interpretations, advaita and visistadwaita differ from each other, “If you want I can teach you the advaitic interpretation, but advaita may be intellectually challenging but does not give the emotional satisfaction one gets from the visishtadvaitic approach”. He also taught us several important upanishads. I studied with him several upanishad vidyas from the major upanishads, like Brahadaranyaka, Chandogya, Taittiriya, Kaushitaki and others. Some of the vidyas he taught include Pancha kosa Vidya, panchagni, pranava, madhu, Sandilya, Dahara Pratardana and many others. Once I asked him why if the goal is the same, understanding Brahman the ultimate Reality, then there are so many upanishads, why so many vidyas. He would say that pupils have different questions about the ultimate reality and these vidyas take you from the known to the unknown. Supposing fifty people, strangers from different places go to an unknown country, Pineland, and take a picture with the leader of the country Mr Pineman. Every one sends home a copy of the picture by e mail. The way they would point to the unknown leader, Mr Pineman to those back home would be to start from the known. The known entity in the picture will be the one who sends the picture. He may tell his son/daughter, ”the leader is three rows in front and eight to the right of me. Another person would start first by asking his kid to identify him/her first in the picture and may say the leader is three rows behind and five seats to the left. Likewise all the various vidyas of the upanishads try to help the aspirants to realize the ultimate truth, starting from a known tatwa. I had the privilege of studying several upanishd vidyas from my Guru Sri Krishnamacharya.

He also taught many of the sibling philosophies so that one's

understanding of Yoga and Vedanta will be on firm grounds. He taught

Samkhya philosophy by explaining the Samkhya karika with the

commentary of Gaudapada. He also taught Yoga Sutra in considerable

detail. He had obtained the titles “Yogacharya” and “Samkhya

Siromani”. He also was an expert in another profound philosophy called

Nyaya and had been conferred the title “Nyayacharya”. He also taught

smaller or easier works like Tarka Sangraha to introduce the difficult

Nyaya philosophy.

His religious studies were outstanding. He was such an expert in the

Vaishnava philosophy, that he was in consideration to head a well

known Vaishnava Mutt. He was truly a devotional person. As he

practiced yoga he performed his daily puja with great devotion. He had

several students who studied the Vaishnava religion in considerable

detail. He could quote from the epics, Ramayana, Mahabharata and

several other puranas like Vishnu Purana, Bhagavata Purana etc.

I do not know of any person who was so well versed in the sastras and

also at the same time an outstanding practising Yogi. Sri

Krishnamacharya is well known, it is almost exclusively due to his

yogasana teachings. But his scholarship and teachings were enormous. I

feel a bit sad when he is portrayed as a hata yoga teacher who

plagiarized some exercises from gymnastics and called it yoga to make

a living, and nothing more. Maybe there is some common ground between

these two different physical disciplines. I continue to remain in awe

of his enormous scholarship, practice and teachings and kindness

towards his students. He was a teacher who would uplift you, a true

Acharya. When you study with him, you get an unmistakable feeling that

his only goal in life was to transmit the traditional knowledge and

make it accessible to the student. He was a unique Yogi, a unique

teacher, a unique individual. Twenty years after his passing away, I

remember him everyday, while practicing, studying or teaching;

sometimes in dreams-- fondly'.

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miscellaneous

Certain days in the month are considered “anadhyayana” days. Some

people ask if Yoga should not be done on these anadhyayana days.

During my studies with my teacher he did not specify any days when we

should not practice Yoga. Anadhyayana is usually associated with study

of the vedas and anadhyayana days are days one should not study the

vedas, presumably with the teacher. In short we may say that the veda

pathasala or veda schools would be closed on these days. I started

learning veda chanting (with my father) when I was about 10 years old

and I had a teacher who would come to our house at about 5 in the

morning to teach vedic chanting. But he would not come on these

“anadhyayana” days. The smritis say that vedas should be chanted daily

(vedam nityam adhiyetaam). So we may say that the prohibition is with

respect to studying, perhaps new lessons but not chanting the portions

already learned (swadhyaya). On anadhyayana days like the new moon

day, one may refrain from learning with a teacher new vedic lessons,

but may chant what one has already learnt. It is a moot question if

this restriction applies to yogasana learning and certainly does not

appear to apply to home yogasana practice

“The outer mind does not know what the inner mind needs. The outer

mind is excited about doing hours of alluring asana practice, but how

come the inner mind feels very comfortable and serene with an hour 's

practice of what appears to the outer mind as insipid, unexciting,

monotonous, unvarying yoga practices like pranayama, meditation and

chanting? No, no, the outer mind does not know what the inner mind

wants.”

“I have attained the highest, the spiritual realization, the hidden

treasure in my heart. I move back and forth between samadhi (shyama)

and waking state (sabala) with consummate ease. I am like a glorious

full moon just coming out of an eclipse; like a horse that shrugs off

the loose hair, I toss away the sins (karma bundle) and attain

freedom.” Chandogya Upanishad

Bringing under control the breath (pavana) by pranayama and then the

senses (indriyas) by pratyahara, one should meditate on the auspicious

principle (subhasraya)-- Vishnu Purana

The world talks in admiration of one who helps even those who had

harmed him/her. "What is great in I-scratch- your- back, you- scratch-

mine kind of help?"--adopted from a Sanskrit proverb

“The help a father can render to his son/offspring is to educate him/

her so well that he/she would be in the forefront in an assembly of

scholars” Tirukural, a 4th century Tamil classic

The best way to repay the debt of an offspring to one's parent is to

make the whole world exclaim in admiration “What good karmas the

parent should have done to beget such an exemplary

offspring”..Tirukkural a 4th century Tamil classic

The best Gurudakshina a student can offer to the teacher is to make

the teacher's teachings known to the world (by practice, adherence and

teaching). A Sanskrit saying.

The relationship (bondage) between a wife and husband is considered

very sacred. The relationship between a parent and offspring, teacher

and student and the devotee and the deity are all considered very

special. Any attempt to create a rift in these relationships is

considered 'no-good karma'.

The one in this human being and one in the sun yonder, are one and the

same -..One who realizes this oneness (of the soul), never fears,

never feels sorrow.-Taittiriya Upanishad

If you wish, you may forward to anyone interested,reproduce or quote

in your blogs or share with others.

With best wishes

Sincerely

Srivatsa Ramaswami

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Other Vinyasa Krama News from the Sept. 2010 newsletter

The month between Aug 15 to Sep 15th is known as Shravana, or we may

say veda month. On the full moon day during this month many in India

who have been initiated into vedic studies do a ceremony restarting

the vedic studies and also chant a “Kamokarshit..” mantra 108 times.

It is a mantra asking for forgiveness for the various misdeeds

violating the yamas/dharmas of the vedas, due to desire (kama) and

anger (manyu), The following day one sits down and does 1008 japa of

the famous Gayatri, after doing 10 times of mantra pranayama. In the

north on the full moon day sisters tie a rakhi around the wrist of

their brothers, strengthening the bondage between the siblings. Aug

25th, 1008 Gaytri Japa with the preliminaries and rituals took about

90 mts. (“We meditate on the orb of the sun, the luster of the Lord.

May It kindle/sparkle our intellect” –gayatri mantra). On 24th,

shravan day, I chanted a chapter from the Yajur veda, Pravargya

Brahmana which took about 75 mts.

Between September 17th and 26th I will be teaching at Suddha

Weixler's Chicago Yoga Center. There is a weekend program on Yoga

Sutras Ch I and II, a week long Core Vinyasa asana program and a week

end of asana, pranayama and meditation, the three pronged yoga

sadhana. Here is the link

http://www.yogamind.com/workshop-ramaswami_TT10.shtml

LMU is registering for the December retreat in India (New Delhi and

Rishikesh). Here is the link

http://registration.xenegrade.com/lmuextension/courseDisplay.cfm?schID=724

Anthony Hall has created a blog Vinyasa Krama Yoga, with his videos of

many asana sub-sequences from my book “Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga”.

Thank you very much Tony for your energy, effort, expertise and

focus. Here is the link

http://vinyasakramayoga.blogspot.com/

I have written earlier requesting the scores of participants to my

various programs to make a video of at least one subroutine showing

the slow long fine breathing and the sedate, controlled pace at which

vinyasakrama is done and load it on to You Tube or somewhere and send

me the link. You may perhaps even use a cell phone to record it—may be

you could ask your spouse or friend to do a favour of recording a

short video for you.

Madhu Berber has started a Vinyasa Krama Yoga School, called Kaivalya

nMaui, in Hawaii. I wish him well.

I have confirmed programs to do; a 200 hr Vinyasakrama yoga Teacher

Training Program (regd with Yoga Alliance) in June July 2011 at LMU

and a one week program at Esalen Institue in May 2011.

If you want to send a message or comment please send it to

info@vinyasakrama.com and not use the reply tab.