I brought up this old developing a home practice series on my recent How did you start Ashtanga at home post and was asked if I planned on updating it, here goes.
Developing a home practice part 28
I'm stuck, can't seem to get passed part 28 of this Developing a home practice series of posts I wanted to bring it up to date and get some closure on it. Part 28 should be about Ramaswami's five week teacher training course as part 27 ended with heading for the airport to attend the course, just can't seem to sit down and write it. Lets put that to one side and move on to part 29.
Developing a home practice part 29
Part 29 would no doubt cover the writing of my Vinyasa Krama Practice Book, should probably write something about that if only for completeness sake and in case anyone else is considering doing something similar but I really can't be bring myself to write about that either. Besides, I have mixed feelings about the book, little embarrassed about it if I'm honest. It seemed like a good idea at the time, try to make Vinyasa Krama more accessible and to bring in some of the excellent tips and hints I'd picked up through the Ashtanga aspect of the blog as well as all the reading I'd done, the dvd's I'd watched etc. but really, what am I doing, five years into my practice writing a practice book.
So lets put part 29 to one side as well and move on to part 30 which can look at how my practice has developed recently, how it is currently as on the whole practice is feeling ....more mature.
Developing a home practice part 30
The two years since Ramaswami's course have been a time of seeking balance between Ashtanga and Vinyasa Krama. Ashtanga because it's the yoga I began with and that daily repetition for three years got under the skin. Besides there's something glorious about Ashtanga, there's something to be said for the repetition of postures in a fixed sequence of subroutines. Vinyasa Krama because on first practicing the approach I found it profound and moving, it seemed to bring about a calm and stillness that stays with me for much of the day.
So I tried lots of variations, practising Ashtanga as Vinyasa Krama, Vinyasa Krama as Ashtanga, Vinyasa Krama in the morning Ashtanga in the evening and then Vinyasa Krama in the morning and Ashtanga in the evening. Separating them out seemed to work best.
The problem, as I understood it at the time, was that Ashtanga represented the early teaching of Krishnamacharya as passed on to Pattabhi Jois and Vinyasa Krama represented the later teaching of Krishnamacharya reflected in Ramaswami and I imagine Desikachar also...and never the twain shall meet.
The big discovery, or realisation, recently was that perhaps there was no early and late Krishnamacharya, not really. Perhaps in the later years he began to focus more on therapy but effectively the essentials of the practice remained consistent.
In Krishnamacharya Yogasanagalu of 1942 we find variations of posture just as we do in his Yoga Makaranda of 1934, also the Black and White documentary footage of 1938. These are very similar to what we find in Ramaswami's representation of Krishnamacharya's later teaching. And yet in Yogasanagalu we also find the postures grouped almost exactly as we find them in the Ashtanga sequences of Pattabhi Jois that we know today. At the same time we find explorations of breath, of kumbhaka, of long stays in postures, all these elements are found in the early and late teaching of Krishnamacharya although not in the Ashtanga of Pattabhi Jois. It may help to consider them options available to us in our practice.
The difference comes about in the development of Pattabhi Jois' Ashtanga. The flexible groups of postures of Yogasanagalu are turned into fixed sequences which while apparently more flexible in the early days of Pattabhi Jois teaching (see interviews with his son, Manju Jois) became seemingly ever more fixed and rigid, as did the pedagogical methodology (late 80's/90's onwards?). Apparently this wmay have been a result of Ashtanga's popularity, the time available for practice became less and so the practice had to be crammed into a shorter time period, the breath got shorter and fewer of them, the series trimmed, full vinyasa dropped. Pranayama too, an essential element of Krishnamacharya's teaching also became ...marginalised.
Choices seem to have been made concerning how best to respond to the demand for the practice but these were not necessarily the only choices, the only answers to the problems and issues that arose. An interesting aside is to look at the work of some of the senior long term teachers of Ashtanga in the West, to look at how they responded to a similar situation and how their response perhaps differs to the direction Mysore has taken (see my post on Ashtanga Workshop reviews for some of these different approaches). But it's still early days, Ashtanga as we tend to think of it today is a young practice.
This is not necessarily intended as a criticism of the direction Pattabhi Jois and Sharath took the practice in the 90's and into the new millennium, how do you respond to hundreds upon hundreds of Ashtangai's wanting to practice in Mysore every month as opposed to, what, eight or twelve in the 80's, do you turn them away or welcome them and adapt the practice accordingly. It's quite lovely (but possibly impractical) that nobody gets turned away from AYRI.
For me then, this realisation, that there was a consistency in Krishnamacharya's teaching allowed me to find more effectively the Vinyasa Krama in Ashtanga. Ashtanga IS a Vinyasa Krama practice. It's possible to follow the sequence, which contains mini subroutines similar to those found in Vinyasa krama, and approach the sequence in a more flexible way, while retaining the integrity of the framework of the Ashtanga series.
The secret is the breath. This is a breathing practice and the key direction is to inhale and exhale fully to the ends of the breath, to make the breath steady and smooth. Pattabhi Jois talked of taking ten to fifteen seconds for an inhalation and an equal amount for the exhalation. This is the same as we find in Krishnamacharya's early writing and in Ramaswami's Vinyasa Krama.
This is our measure, a slow, steady, smooth, full breath. In the beginning this may take five seconds for the inhalation and exhalation, with more experience it may take eight to ten. This is the one element we should perhaps never compromise, we breath fully, to the end of the inhale, the end of the exhale, that's the point of this breathing practice.
The length of the breath will govern how much time is available to us for practice, it will make for a slower practice which may mean we need to cut postures and both Krishnamacharya and Pattabhi Jois gave guidelines for this, a minimum practice. If time is short we cut the series in half and move to finishing. The one thing we should never do is sacrifice the breath, that much should be clear and upon reflection appears quite obvious.
I've come to feel quite strongly that something else we shouldn't neglect once we have gained some reasonable proficiency in the asana is pranayama and the other limbs of the Ashtanga approach. Even if only fifteen minutes a day, pranayama should I believe become part of our practice, almost from the beginning, as should an exploration of pratyahara and some meditative element whether sitting and focusing on an object, chanting or the study of relevant texts, this is surely the tradition and the lineage we make claims too.
And come to think of it, just as asana may be considered preparation for pranayama, pranayama may perhaps be considered preparation for deepening asana.
This then is the direction my own practice has begun to take, the Ashtanga sequence shortened if necessary allowing for exploration of the breath within the asana just as Krishnamacharya taught in his early works.
I practice Ashtanga in this way in the morning followed by pranayama and a short meditation and in the evening a couple of Vinyasa Krama subroutines, again followed by pranayama, pratyahara and usually seated meditation.
Recently I've been exploring different approaches to pranayama to complement that which I was taught by Ramaswami, and thanks to Aranya's commentary on the Yoga sutras, exploring approaches to meditation within the yoga tradition rather than subcontracting my meditation practice out to Zen or Vipassna/Mindfullness as I have done in the past. The Italians, with regard to food, say that certain ingredients 'marry', as in they work because they come from the same local. This is something I'm exploring in my practice, a yoga approach to meditation to accompany the other ingredients/limbs..... save that for part 31 perhaps.
Last week I attending Richard Freeman 5 day intensive in London. Here is a teacher who studied with Pattabhi Jois over a number of years, who teaches Ashtanga and yet entreats you to slow your practice down, to lengthen and explore the breath, the asana, as you practice. His teaching includes variation, flexibility and he is a strong advocate of pranayama.
Tuesday ( my day off) I had my first post workshop solo home practice and it took two hours forty-five minutes. Standing alone took an hour. The breath was long allowing for a full expression of the asana and yet the sequence still flowed along nicely. The breath was steady, my heartbeat regular a wonderful practice that felt consistent with Ashtanga as well as with Vinyasa Krama. Time constrains may mean I'll have to practice half the sequence one day the other half the next to allow for Pranayama etc. but that feels an appropriate compromise.
Update.
Wednesdays practice took two hours, I broke my Primary after navasana and moved on to finishing to allow for full expression in the finishing postures. Thgursday I'll practice standing, paschimmotanasana, Janu Sirsasana and then pick it up where I left off this morning at buja pidasana.
Evenings
Interesting exploring Vinyasa Krama in the context of Richard's approach to Ashtanga. Staying longer in postures, including variations and repeats as well as slowing the breath characterise Vinyasa Krama practice but it's been interesting exploring that time in the postures to look at rotation and counter rotation, the mechanics of the postures and on the breath to direct the attention to ideas of prana and apana, a rich seam here. Love the thought of Richard's five weeks intensive in boulder to have the time to explore a greater range of postures and then apply that to the Vinyasa Krama subroutines and sequences.
Update
A few weeks later and I'm practicing much the same, slower practice, working on lengthening the breath, keeping Richard Freeman's workshop in mind. Slowing the breath this way makes a full series difficult so I tend to shorten standing and base my practice on the first part of primary extending it into some of 2nd and advanced series via the leg behind head work or start with 2nd series backbends and extend that in a similar way. I try to add an extra posture here and there to cover most of the primary and second series postures in a week that I tend to skip. I also make sure to include key asana paschimottanasana, maha mudra and badha konasana, Shoulderstand and headstand and usually baddha padmasana.
This of course is very much in keeping with Vinyasa Krama where the subroutines, in Asymmetric for example, extend through all the Ashtanga series.
I'm also trying to balance the above with Krishnamacharya's Yoga Makaranda (part II) recently released by AG Mohan. See this post.
http://grimmly2007.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/krishnamacharyas-yoga-makaranda-part-2.html
Update 1/12/12
Most recent Current practice post
http://grimmly2007.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/current-practice-original-ashtanga.html
Part 31
....is probably this post on mantra meditation
Developing a home practice part 28
I'm stuck, can't seem to get passed part 28 of this Developing a home practice series of posts I wanted to bring it up to date and get some closure on it. Part 28 should be about Ramaswami's five week teacher training course as part 27 ended with heading for the airport to attend the course, just can't seem to sit down and write it. Lets put that to one side and move on to part 29.
Developing a home practice part 29
Part 29 would no doubt cover the writing of my Vinyasa Krama Practice Book, should probably write something about that if only for completeness sake and in case anyone else is considering doing something similar but I really can't be bring myself to write about that either. Besides, I have mixed feelings about the book, little embarrassed about it if I'm honest. It seemed like a good idea at the time, try to make Vinyasa Krama more accessible and to bring in some of the excellent tips and hints I'd picked up through the Ashtanga aspect of the blog as well as all the reading I'd done, the dvd's I'd watched etc. but really, what am I doing, five years into my practice writing a practice book.
So lets put part 29 to one side as well and move on to part 30 which can look at how my practice has developed recently, how it is currently as on the whole practice is feeling ....more mature.
Developing a home practice part 30
The two years since Ramaswami's course have been a time of seeking balance between Ashtanga and Vinyasa Krama. Ashtanga because it's the yoga I began with and that daily repetition for three years got under the skin. Besides there's something glorious about Ashtanga, there's something to be said for the repetition of postures in a fixed sequence of subroutines. Vinyasa Krama because on first practicing the approach I found it profound and moving, it seemed to bring about a calm and stillness that stays with me for much of the day.
So I tried lots of variations, practising Ashtanga as Vinyasa Krama, Vinyasa Krama as Ashtanga, Vinyasa Krama in the morning Ashtanga in the evening and then Vinyasa Krama in the morning and Ashtanga in the evening. Separating them out seemed to work best.
The problem, as I understood it at the time, was that Ashtanga represented the early teaching of Krishnamacharya as passed on to Pattabhi Jois and Vinyasa Krama represented the later teaching of Krishnamacharya reflected in Ramaswami and I imagine Desikachar also...and never the twain shall meet.
The big discovery, or realisation, recently was that perhaps there was no early and late Krishnamacharya, not really. Perhaps in the later years he began to focus more on therapy but effectively the essentials of the practice remained consistent.
In Krishnamacharya Yogasanagalu of 1942 we find variations of posture just as we do in his Yoga Makaranda of 1934, also the Black and White documentary footage of 1938. These are very similar to what we find in Ramaswami's representation of Krishnamacharya's later teaching. And yet in Yogasanagalu we also find the postures grouped almost exactly as we find them in the Ashtanga sequences of Pattabhi Jois that we know today. At the same time we find explorations of breath, of kumbhaka, of long stays in postures, all these elements are found in the early and late teaching of Krishnamacharya although not in the Ashtanga of Pattabhi Jois. It may help to consider them options available to us in our practice.
The difference comes about in the development of Pattabhi Jois' Ashtanga. The flexible groups of postures of Yogasanagalu are turned into fixed sequences which while apparently more flexible in the early days of Pattabhi Jois teaching (see interviews with his son, Manju Jois) became seemingly ever more fixed and rigid, as did the pedagogical methodology (late 80's/90's onwards?). Apparently this wmay have been a result of Ashtanga's popularity, the time available for practice became less and so the practice had to be crammed into a shorter time period, the breath got shorter and fewer of them, the series trimmed, full vinyasa dropped. Pranayama too, an essential element of Krishnamacharya's teaching also became ...marginalised.
Choices seem to have been made concerning how best to respond to the demand for the practice but these were not necessarily the only choices, the only answers to the problems and issues that arose. An interesting aside is to look at the work of some of the senior long term teachers of Ashtanga in the West, to look at how they responded to a similar situation and how their response perhaps differs to the direction Mysore has taken (see my post on Ashtanga Workshop reviews for some of these different approaches). But it's still early days, Ashtanga as we tend to think of it today is a young practice.
This is not necessarily intended as a criticism of the direction Pattabhi Jois and Sharath took the practice in the 90's and into the new millennium, how do you respond to hundreds upon hundreds of Ashtangai's wanting to practice in Mysore every month as opposed to, what, eight or twelve in the 80's, do you turn them away or welcome them and adapt the practice accordingly. It's quite lovely (but possibly impractical) that nobody gets turned away from AYRI.
For me then, this realisation, that there was a consistency in Krishnamacharya's teaching allowed me to find more effectively the Vinyasa Krama in Ashtanga. Ashtanga IS a Vinyasa Krama practice. It's possible to follow the sequence, which contains mini subroutines similar to those found in Vinyasa krama, and approach the sequence in a more flexible way, while retaining the integrity of the framework of the Ashtanga series.
The secret is the breath. This is a breathing practice and the key direction is to inhale and exhale fully to the ends of the breath, to make the breath steady and smooth. Pattabhi Jois talked of taking ten to fifteen seconds for an inhalation and an equal amount for the exhalation. This is the same as we find in Krishnamacharya's early writing and in Ramaswami's Vinyasa Krama.
This is our measure, a slow, steady, smooth, full breath. In the beginning this may take five seconds for the inhalation and exhalation, with more experience it may take eight to ten. This is the one element we should perhaps never compromise, we breath fully, to the end of the inhale, the end of the exhale, that's the point of this breathing practice.
The length of the breath will govern how much time is available to us for practice, it will make for a slower practice which may mean we need to cut postures and both Krishnamacharya and Pattabhi Jois gave guidelines for this, a minimum practice. If time is short we cut the series in half and move to finishing. The one thing we should never do is sacrifice the breath, that much should be clear and upon reflection appears quite obvious.
I've come to feel quite strongly that something else we shouldn't neglect once we have gained some reasonable proficiency in the asana is pranayama and the other limbs of the Ashtanga approach. Even if only fifteen minutes a day, pranayama should I believe become part of our practice, almost from the beginning, as should an exploration of pratyahara and some meditative element whether sitting and focusing on an object, chanting or the study of relevant texts, this is surely the tradition and the lineage we make claims too.
And come to think of it, just as asana may be considered preparation for pranayama, pranayama may perhaps be considered preparation for deepening asana.
This then is the direction my own practice has begun to take, the Ashtanga sequence shortened if necessary allowing for exploration of the breath within the asana just as Krishnamacharya taught in his early works.
I practice Ashtanga in this way in the morning followed by pranayama and a short meditation and in the evening a couple of Vinyasa Krama subroutines, again followed by pranayama, pratyahara and usually seated meditation.
Recently I've been exploring different approaches to pranayama to complement that which I was taught by Ramaswami, and thanks to Aranya's commentary on the Yoga sutras, exploring approaches to meditation within the yoga tradition rather than subcontracting my meditation practice out to Zen or Vipassna/Mindfullness as I have done in the past. The Italians, with regard to food, say that certain ingredients 'marry', as in they work because they come from the same local. This is something I'm exploring in my practice, a yoga approach to meditation to accompany the other ingredients/limbs..... save that for part 31 perhaps.
-------------------------------
Last week I attending Richard Freeman 5 day intensive in London. Here is a teacher who studied with Pattabhi Jois over a number of years, who teaches Ashtanga and yet entreats you to slow your practice down, to lengthen and explore the breath, the asana, as you practice. His teaching includes variation, flexibility and he is a strong advocate of pranayama.
Tuesday ( my day off) I had my first post workshop solo home practice and it took two hours forty-five minutes. Standing alone took an hour. The breath was long allowing for a full expression of the asana and yet the sequence still flowed along nicely. The breath was steady, my heartbeat regular a wonderful practice that felt consistent with Ashtanga as well as with Vinyasa Krama. Time constrains may mean I'll have to practice half the sequence one day the other half the next to allow for Pranayama etc. but that feels an appropriate compromise.
Update.
Wednesdays practice took two hours, I broke my Primary after navasana and moved on to finishing to allow for full expression in the finishing postures. Thgursday I'll practice standing, paschimmotanasana, Janu Sirsasana and then pick it up where I left off this morning at buja pidasana.
Evenings
Interesting exploring Vinyasa Krama in the context of Richard's approach to Ashtanga. Staying longer in postures, including variations and repeats as well as slowing the breath characterise Vinyasa Krama practice but it's been interesting exploring that time in the postures to look at rotation and counter rotation, the mechanics of the postures and on the breath to direct the attention to ideas of prana and apana, a rich seam here. Love the thought of Richard's five weeks intensive in boulder to have the time to explore a greater range of postures and then apply that to the Vinyasa Krama subroutines and sequences.
Update
A few weeks later and I'm practicing much the same, slower practice, working on lengthening the breath, keeping Richard Freeman's workshop in mind. Slowing the breath this way makes a full series difficult so I tend to shorten standing and base my practice on the first part of primary extending it into some of 2nd and advanced series via the leg behind head work or start with 2nd series backbends and extend that in a similar way. I try to add an extra posture here and there to cover most of the primary and second series postures in a week that I tend to skip. I also make sure to include key asana paschimottanasana, maha mudra and badha konasana, Shoulderstand and headstand and usually baddha padmasana.
This of course is very much in keeping with Vinyasa Krama where the subroutines, in Asymmetric for example, extend through all the Ashtanga series.
I'm also trying to balance the above with Krishnamacharya's Yoga Makaranda (part II) recently released by AG Mohan. See this post.
http://grimmly2007.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/krishnamacharyas-yoga-makaranda-part-2.html
Update 1/12/12
Most recent Current practice post
http://grimmly2007.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/current-practice-original-ashtanga.html
Part 31
....is probably this post on mantra meditation
3 comments:
Thank you.
It seems a good idea to practice only the half of an ashanga sequence at a time with longer stays.
I still can not digest how can be good to always practise the same few asana sequence in ashtanga method. Thank you for the explanation.
I am just learning Richard's online Pranayama course. It is great.
I think it comes down to balance Nadagopa. Vinyasa krama has a vast range of asana but you cant practice everything, you still have to choose which asana to practice and because the breathing is so long and slow you cant' practice so many asana in one practice.
You can keep changing asana every day but one thing that was confirmed for me by Richard was that there was so much to explore within a single posture that it makes sense to practice the same asana again and again and discover everything it has to offer, to get past all the mechanics to be able to focus on the breath and even then beyond the breath perhaps. So i can see the benefit of a fixed sequence yet with some flexibility to explore variations. T
he Ashtanga primary sequence is almost exactly the same primary group that Krishnamacharya presented in his book Yogasangalau (1942), these were postures that he thought were key important postures. i think it works as a basic framework.
of course i also feel that Vinyasa krama can assist Ashtanga by offering preparatory postures for those key asana as well as extensions to make the asana more challenging and take the posture further. Richard Freeman was doing something like that in the workshop i attended last week.
I think the two approaches complement each other.
Thank you for commenting and yes i agree his pranayama course is interesting, I'm liking it a lot more the second and third time practicing along.
It helps a lot. Thank you. I started to reading Krishnamacharya's books.
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