And what if it's old, Ashtanga, what if it's really old.

And what if it's old, Ashtanga, what if it's really old.

Not just Patanjali Ashtanga but our own Ashtanga, the Ashtanga we practice every morning, Pattabhi Jois' Ashtanga, Manju's Ashtanga, Sharath's Ashtanga, 

and why not, your Ashtanga, 

my Ashtanga.

What if Patanjali was practising like this every morning way back when... and it was in that post practice glow, there amongst the sweat on the cow dung rinsed floor, that he composed his sutras,

What if an edit came to mind in Utthita parshvashita...

OK, so perhaps the asana aren't exactly the same as Patanajali had in mind, or 

the sequence that Yajnavalkya practiced, 

or the vinyasa of Gorakhnath...

Did Gorakhnath even practice vinyasa?

Did Svātmārāma?

And if the 84 asana of Srinivasayogi are not our 84 asana....

Should we worry about that?

No really, I'm interested, do you worry about that...

does that affect your practice, 

your breath?

Does it affect mine?

What if this Ashtanga practice, this discipline was not exactly, not quite what Krishnamacharya intended.

What if Pattabhi Jois, in a moment of youthful brilliance, sketched it all out on a napkin one afternoon over chai...

or worked through the night, through night after night,  floor littered with screwed up balls of paper

lists and lists of  combinations 

of asana.

Manju exhausted, limbs aching called in from playing outside for yet another vinyasa.

And what if Sharath, in turn, 

"lift here"

" But in Yoga Mala..."

"No, this is better....more benefit".

What if this Ashtanga we practice is merely decades old, a few years old, a week old, how it is practiced today, this very morning..

in Mysore

in Lisbon, 

in your shala, 

in your own practice space  wherever that might be.

What if it isn't old at all but new and fresh with every long slow inhalation

and equally long and full exhalation.

What if it just works.

What then?