we get to practice together...Mysore style
I got up a little later this morning, began my practice around, what, half past six. A little pranayama, Ramaswami's ten minute tadasana sequence, sury A and B but taken real slow, three to five breaths at each stage at each asana within the sequences. Then on to regular Sury's and full Ashtanga standing sequence but again, taken slow, long deep full breathing, 8 second inhale, 8 second exhale with kumbhaka's.
Standing took an hour, a nice hour.
Decided to do most of Ramaswami's Vinyasa Krama Bow sequence as prep for the first half of 2nd series this morning, up to kapo and Supra vajrasana then some Advanced A backbends and drop backs before my regular version of Ashtanga finishing sequence.
My Kapo has gone awol recently and wanted to get back to heels at least.
Around nine, Just as I was starting the Dhanurasana's M. came down and poked her head in the home shala. Recently she's taken to popping in for a few minutes in the mornings to warm up in frount of the halogen heater (boiler is broken again so no central heating this Christmas).
This morning I had her mat rolled out ready just in case.
The best thing about the holidays of course is that M. doesn't have to commute to London for work, and rather than her occasional mini practice at the foot of the bed she just might come down and do a full practice in the home Shala, and with me.
She has her own Vinyasa Krama routine now, she didn't take to Ashtanga though I tried (makes her agitated supposedly). I give her an extra VK subroutine or couple of postures to try every now and again but most of the time she's too rushed for little more than a short tadasana sequence and a couple of sury's.
So in she comes and I'm laying on my belly of course for dhanurasana but out of the corner of my eye I catch her slow movements, hear her breath settling into it's rhythm.
A moment of pride of course at her pasasana, trying not to smile or let her know that I noticed her bind.
And on it goes, just getting on with practice, my Yoga Makaranda/Vinyasa Krama inspired Ashtanga, her straight Vinyasa Krama.
And then at one point we just happen to synchronise a transition through up and down dog, a moment of silent joy not acknowledged until later, until afterwards....
"(grinning) Did you notice that...?"
"Yes, me too, wondered if you had..."
Being up in headstand and looking back at her in shoulderstand...
It's curious, you don't quite forget that anyone else is in the room with you but every now and again they drift in and out again of focus, into the background of practice
is this what it's like in the shala's, in Mysore?
Kinda pleasant.
And then, at the end, half ten or so, I'm quietly practicing my pranayama and she's sitting just a little ahead of me on her bright yellow prana mat getting on with her own meditation practice.
Perfect morning.
Oh and kapo was better too, a little better.
12 comments:
Yes, the silent connection with other people who have similar experiences of joy and pain and frustration and elation is pretty sweet. That's what I like/miss most about shala practice. An intimacy that is impersonal and yet very deep. Sweet. Happy you had company this morning. Merry Christmas!
Exactly what it's like, yes. There's an almost '6th sense' sensation as everyone draws upon that intangible, compounded source of prana. There is loads of treasure to be discovered in a home practice, but shala 'satsang' is an amazing element too. Any well run shala is a unique & special experience, but the shala in Mysore is the ultimate 'end of the yellow brick road' kind of destination. It's great when you are totally immersed in your own practice, and then suddenly you notice Sharath's unmistakeable, often plastered, toes right under your nose, all too often followed by his stern "goodtt!" as he observes or assists you.
It's quite bizarre that you haven't at least tried it for a month; just shelve your 'doing your own thing' angle, and totally fall in with shala protocol for a month. There is some magic in it. That's why people who are in their second or third decade of practice, still go back there regularly.
And ..... HAPPY XMAS! (what on earth is a 'halogen heater'? Is that a recent invention, I don't remember them from my time in England?)
Me again ....
Why do you do those incredibly long breathing cycles in your asana practice?
I appreciate that the diaphragm is like a huge jelly fish, inflating and deflating, cleaning you inside, and keeping all those internal organs toned. This supports the 'long breath is good' approach, but if you increase the flow rate, but NOT decrease the capacity, you'd get the same benefits, AND you would cover more asana in the same time frame, so better conditioning for the external body too.
Hope it's clear.
Thank you Karen and a Merry Christmas to you too.
Not so Bizarre Steve, it's a long way and I need a hell of a good reason to be away from home for a month. I've never been that drawn to shala practice although I can see part of the attraction perhaps, as suggested by this post., so it's less Oz to me. I still content that the ideal yoga practice is a solitary home practice. I actually find it quite bizarre that developing a home practice isn't more encouraged in Ashtanga. Nobody seems to present workshops to liberate practitioners from the shala, visiting once a week or so should be fine once you've gained the basics. That was krishnamacharya's view too supposedly.
I've been tempted to visit Mysore a few times though and I still might if only because I still seem to practice a form of Ashtanga, or rather I hang my practice on pretty much the standard sequence. i still think I should try and make it once.
But really and I'm not trying to be provocative or disrespectful here (especially on Christmas morning), why go to Sharath? There are a lot of Ashtanga teachers I'm tempted to try and learn from, Manju in particular, but Sharath isn't anywhere on my list.
I'm not bothered about new postures ( been there done that having practiced most of Advanced B and gone back to Primary and 2nd). To improve the ones I do tend to practice these days I'm more tempted to explore some Iyengar teachers this year or take a Richard Freeman workshop again or his intensive.
Backbends? walking in and grabbing my ankles ( find that obsession in Mysore a little bizarre too and am not the only one), I've got as far as my heels on my own, could work on it some more but think it's excessive, happy with my dropbacks as they are.
Discipline? I practice intensely twice a day and have done so for five years and on my own, my discipline is pretty good.
Pranayama? Nope
Breathing? Again no, would have to speed my breathing up for Mysore and breathe less fully (or do half a series of three breaths a posture which might be the work around).
re the long. slow full, deep breathing, that's what Krishnamacharya taught, 10 seconds each for inhale and exhale is what Jois insisted upon several times and at different stages of his teaching ( I quote the interviews elsewhere) although straight after saying ten seconds inhale ten seconds exhale he'd then race his students through a demo with inhalation and exhalation at two possibly three seconds.
Krishnamacharya continued to teach that way all his life, Ramaswami teaches long slow full breathing, Mohan, Desikachar too. Iyengar also I believe.
I was taught that way by Ramaswami and when I found it in the Ashtanga texts too I tried it in my Ashtanga and like it, wouldn't want to practice any other way now.
I don't believe Ashtangi's breath fully in their practice, try it yourself now, sitting there, a deep 8-10 second inhalation and the same exhalation, now try to do the same quickly, as deeply, as fully, in 2-3 seconds. And both Krishnamacharya and Jois say breath slowly nowhere do they say sharp intakes of breath, it's always deep and full. Still don't understand how it came about.
I practice enough asana, plenty in fact, more than most Ashtangi's (one of Ramaswami's criticisms of the other styles is that they don't practice more of a range of asana).
Besides K. says everyone doesn't need to learn all the asana, Jois said just Primary was plenty for our whole lives, 2nd just for teachers and Advanced only for showing off, demo's).
That said I'm sure Mysore is good for tightening up ones practice but then I could probably do that by visiting Hamish and AYL for a month. I used to do a month of Sharath's dvd/CD to tighten it up but now find it too quick.
but Mysore is Mysore and Krishnamacharya walked the streets and made that old movie in the hills, would like to find that spot and practice there. And I get that it's quite something to practice with others so intense about their own practice that they travelled all that way. I might turn up there quietly one day and not mention it until i came back
Could no doubt go back to faster breathing for a month or so.
Merry Christmas to you Steve, hope the presents ( re fb status) were what you wanted.
But of course that's just the direction my own exploration of my own practice has taken. I present the argument for longer slower breathing, for adapting the practice, for practicing at home but am happy to present the alternative arguments. I don't expect everyone to decide to practice half primary so they can do ten second inhalations but perhaps readers might be tempted to think about their breath again and explore slowing it down and see if it works for them...or not. It's our practice, what works for each one of us.
We have guidelines of course, different models of the practice from teachers spanning Pattabhi Jois's years teaching and the directions they have taken their own teaching. We have Sharath reflection SKPJ's later years, we have Krishnamacharya's texts at the time he was teaching the young Pattabhi Jois ( who said remember, that he was only teaching what Krishnamacharya taught him). But perhaps most importantly we have our own response to that framework as we explore develop it on our mats...we call that practice...coffee drunk, time for mine.
Love this.
Just how long does it take you to get through your practice in the mornings? I thought that simply a practice of Ashtanga yoga was quite long but your's is sort of a mixture of two but not skimping or cutting anything. I definitely admire and look to your blog for inspiration.
It depends Brianna, on my days off I'll do it all without cutting and it takes three to four hours but during the week, before work, something has to give. If I want to breathe that slowly and include long stay in the inversions as well as pranayama, meditation, something has to give. I tend to do only half a series, possibly even a third and I'll cut postures out of standing too but practice those I cut our one day the following day, cutting something different. It can work (and well) when your familiar enough with the practice and of course was also encouraged by both Krishnamacharya and jois when time is an issue. I also only tend to take three breaths in a posture which is Ok because my breath's are so long that I stay in the posture for the same amount of time as the regular five.
That said I've started practising Intermediate again over the holidays and am thinking about playing it pretty much by the book next year, trying to lengthen the breath in 2nd series in a similar way I have been doing with primary this year. 2nd series is a little shorter and it's difficult to make the breath as long in many of the postures so I can probably do full 2nd every morning ( with Primary on Friday or perhaps my day off so I can do the full series). A year of straight (but slow) 2nd might be good for me.
I find that the more I explore my/the practice the more I appreciate Ashtanga's strong structure, the more grounded the Apollonian, the form, the more freedom to express the Dionysian, to 'improvise' (improvise in the sense of delving). I like to think of that strong structure within jazz, the chord structure the scale relationship and yet how within that strong form one is able to delve into that relationship of chord and scale and seek, like Coltrane say, to transcend that language, that form. using the body to transcend the body, the mind to transcend the mind, employing subject/object duality to overcome that duality......
Bit much for this time in the morning?....better to just get on and practice.
I hope to one day get to a point where I can practice for that length of time... or rather to even finish a full primary. Before my pregnancy I was able to go to the halfway point in primary but am finding it difficult to get through the fundamental postures in the series. It's almost depressing, granted I know that I have to work my way through the series again because my body is different. I know I shouldn't be attached to where I was in my practice but it's a bit hard when I step on the mat and hope to get a good hour in but find myself weak and only through the sury's.
That length of time I practice is probably a bit excessive Brianna, 60-90 minutes is plenty, even half an hour if it's nice and focussed practice.
It can be frustrating getting the practice back but also a time to discover the postures anew, find new things in them that perhaps you'd missed because you started to take them for granted. One of the things I found as I went through the different series was how essential and key those standing postures are, now I relish them. Those twists in the triangle postures are the secrets of marichi D and later pasasana ( Iyengar's som and written a book, a 100 pages on Trikonasana alone : ). No forward bend in any of the series is perhaps more important or effective as paschimottanasana and the janu's are still my favourites for opening up the hips.
Practicing 2nd series again this week I'm seeing how far I've let those postures slip but I know they'll come back ( pretty sure anyway and if not that's fine too, primary is all we really need ...perhaps) and as they say what's the rush. And besides who know's, one day you may decide to teach some yoga, you'll be a better teacher for having gone through a pregnancy yourself while practicing and then rebuilding practice afterwards, blog the experience you may be able to use it for teaching notes one day.
re feeling weak in the Sury's. Go back to practicing how you first started them, let your knees rest on the mat every other one perhaps. My teacher Ramaswami recommends mini Savasana's whenever our heart starts to beat faster or our breath becomes a little ragged. Do two or three A's and take a breath then do a couple of B's. You don't HAVE to do five of each, settle for two of each or three of each for now while you build your strength and fitness back up.
Most important thing perhaps is to just enjoy your practice, whatever that practice is today, it'll come back : )
Thank you for the words of encouragement. I guess I'm trying to push for too much too soon. I had never heard of taking a rest in between them only to continue. Of course, it seems practical to do that when one is tired and in need of a rest.
I imagine, my mind is stuck on the "don't move on until you've first mastered where you're at" idea. I'll definitely take my time to re-explore my practice. Maybe I can find something in it that I didn't find last time. A stillness or awareness perhaps.
I'm hoping to find more time to go through your blog because it is so obviously laden with good information. :)
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