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| Iyengar 1977 |
Nice video of Iyengar stressing that he, Pattabhi Jois, Desikachar are all part of the same tree, all come from the same root, I.E. Krishnamacharya's teaching... they may have branched off but ..."don't think of the branch but of how the branches touch".
2:00 "Do you mean to say I haven't done Ashtanga yoga, jumpings? Do you mean to say I have not done in my life? I've done forty years. I've done forty years, not one day, not two days. But what I did... Pattabhi Jois took where my guruji (Krishnamacharya) stopped and he continued that. I said... I threw (?) over what my Guruji taught, is that the end? So what I learnt was, from the movement..., I'm the only teacher of myself..., I said Jumpings is the 'yoga of motion', Vinyasa yoga is the yoga of motion, mine is the 'yoga of action'. I don't want motion, so people not excited by the motion because the external mind gets the vibration but I want the internal mind to get the vibration not the external mind. So that is the jump I made from Krishnamacharya's teaching. So please don't say Iyengar is different, Krishnamacha..., viniyoga is different, Pattabhi's is different..., they are all the same. Root is the same but only it has branched off. So I'm saying please don't think of a branch but how the branches touch".
3:30 Why I left Ashtanga Yoga?
4:00 Why/how he came to alignment... " I'm the one using alignment"
He also talks about how he used to teach Ashtanga or rather 'jumpings', the 'yoga of motion' up until the 70s (See the second video clip from '77), even 80s.
Four and a half minutes in he has one of his teachers in Trikonasana and slips into the vinyasa count "ekam, dve, trini...., you know it, I also know it, it's not that I've forgotten.. I also know it...it's because I still come from the same root".
4:55 Length of exhalation, matching the breath to the exhalation.
Iyengar teaching a 'jumping' class in 1977
Full movie here http://youtu.be/Ki9qos7dWTg
Also, a link to one of the Iyengar sections from the old 1934 black and white footage
http://youtu.be/LUvOuik-g4c
It's curious to me having spent so much time with Krishnamacharya's 1934 book Yoga Makaranda, that Iyengar focusses on the 'motion' aspect of Krishnamacharya's teaching as if that was the main element of the teaching back in the 30s. He goes so far as to talk about this 'motion' speaking to the external mind rather than the internal mind.
And yet for me, Krishnamacharya's Yoga Makaranda is ALL about the internal mind. The movement focusses attention on the breath, the asana is a container for the breath or rather for the space between the breath, the kumbhaka (breath retention), the space in which, for Krishnamacharya, we see god (or the self/absence of self).
Perhaps it's not surprising, teaching a large class of young boys in the 1930's, he was unlikely to have them stay in postures for long periods or focus on slowing the breath and introducing kumbhakas , better to have them jump about, to move from one posture to the next, keep their attention.
Did he try to teach it once, to have the kids slow their breath, to retain it, did he notice a lot of fidgeting, a lot of wayward, bored drishti....
Krishnamacharya's son TK Sribhashyam does talk about how Krishnamacharya would have the kids stand in an asana and then chant a mantra (an example in the movie breath of gods), the mantra would keep their attention but it would be chanted during a kumbhaka, one way perhaps to introduce kumbhaka into their practice and yet keep the attention.
Is this why Kumbhaka never made it into Iyengar and Pattabhi Joi's Ashtanga, because it was never an element of those large classes they attended, despite the fact it was the main focus of Krishnamacharya's writing at that time. And yet, didn't Krishnamacharya have Pattabhi Jois come to him privately, wouldn't he have taught his longest, perhaps most advanced student kumbhaka, the 'ideal approach to practice' that he presented in his first book (Yoga Makaranda). The book was in Kanada, Pattabhi Jois' own language, surely he had a copy on his desk when he wrote Yoga Mala.
But then Krishnamacharya was also teaching what we now call Vinyasa Krama and 'Vinyoga' back in the 30s, in private one-to-one sessions with students of different ages and fitness (we also see elements of that in Krishnamacharya's inversions in the 1938 footage), that approach seemingly didn't get picked up on by Pattabhi Jois and Iyengar in their main presentation either. Pattabhi Jois did mention however that his teaching exam was Krishnamacharya giving him a patient and saying 'heal him'.
Look to where the branches touch....
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4 comments:
Interesting videos, Grimmly. Did you get what he was trying to convey in that first video with that metaphor of the raw apple versus the ripe apple (at least, that was how I heard it)? Can't help but wonder if that was a backhanded way of saying, "Yes, we all come from the same root, but my branch bears sweeter and more delicious fruit..."
Well Nobel, he says we have to go to the finest point, and this is where I was, and this is what I'm teaching now based on my experience of a great many number of years.
That was pretty much my take on what he was saying too Noble, perhaps a ripening....as in evolution, maybe he saw his work as a completion of what Krishnamacharya was doing. I think personally he was closer to the mark with the different branches idea
Great footage. Thanks for sharing these various recordings. It's funny how we've divided these various teachers into their respective categories. I wonder if this urge comes, in part, because we are exposed to these teachings in a particular time in history where there is a strong sense of not belonging, of disconnection, and ultimately, the break up religious and familial ties. In the grand scheme of things each of these teachers is just teaching yoga, but in the current space, the teaching we are associated with becomes like a badge of affiliation. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's nice to belong and to be connected to a group of people who share common values.
At the same time, the divisions and judgments we place of "the other team" are mere creations that help us feel self satisfied in having chosen the team we are in. And by finding fault in the other group, we attempt to elevate our choice. We might say something like, "Pattabhi Jois maintained Krishnamacharya's teaching in an unsullied and authentic way while Iyengar Yoga is just BKS Iyengar's twist on yoga, a creation of his exaggerated ego." But in the end, I wonder if it is as Iyengar says, just different branches of the same root, and while he says that root is Krishnamacharya, I think the root is a little deeper than that.
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