Physical adjustments are intrinsic to the practice of AVY (Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga) to enable progress of our students”. .
I haven’t found that to be the case. I was only adjusted a couple of times in twelve years of practice of Primary to Advance series Ashtanga ( although I did take Manju’s Adjustments TT). I don't think I've ever physically adjusted M. in her seven years of Primary series practice and I’m married to her.
Would she have ‘progressed’ beyond Primary series if I had? What does ‘progress’ even mean here, that she could practice ever more advanced asana? They are not something she has ever shown any interest in.
My own ‘yoga’ practice has ‘progressed’ more in the return to focus on just a handful of Primary asana, practiced as mudra, closer to Krishnamacharya’s Mysore instruction ( see Yoga Makaranda Mysore 1934. Google ‘grimmly Proficient Primary)
As for M. her breathing is long and slow and she has always followed her asana practice with pranayama and a Sit. She treads lightly on the earth and is the kindest person I know.
A friend just mentioned that this is something I would have blogged about in the past.
In my one extended ( three month) stay in a shala I declined physical adjustments from the Certified teacher myself but would hear the screams in the Shala while someone else was adjusted in Kapotasana, say, followed by a weak and breathless “Thank you”.
I know many enjoy physical adjustments and consider them beneficial and can even be annoyed if they don’t receive them, they are certainly prevalent in Shala Ashtanga. In home Ashtanga they are absent as is the presence of a teacher, clearly physical adjustments are NOT intrinsic.
I’ve been invited to teach again recently but really, what would I teach? Choose a handful of ‘Primary’ asana that you know already and feel comfortable in, stay in them longer, breathe more slowly, perhaps allow the natural kumbhaka to lengthen...or not. Follow your practice with the most simple pranayama, and a Sit, reflect on the Yama/Niyama of your own tradition. Tread lightly, be kinder. Three sentences. You don’t need to go to a workshop or intensive or pay your hard earned cash, stay home, practice instead.
4d
grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
Note: While I haven’t received many physical adjustments I have found some verbal adjustments beneficial as well as picking up certain verbal and written cues from teachers and other practitioners that have made my asana safer, more comfortable. I recommend #simonborgolivier and his ‘84 key asana’ online course for a safer more comfortable practice.
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suthernyogipdx's profile picture
suthernyogipdx
@simonsynergy
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newoldtraditions's profile picture
newoldtraditions
Part of the adjustment debate has to do with a fundamental disconnect and misunderstanding western yoga practitioners have in appreciating what the asana are/were even for. The asanas in K's understanding function as medicine, almost like a prescription. You put your leg this way because it effects you in this way. So putting people "into a posture" is meant to give them the medicinal effects of that posture. We may disagree, but that's where they coming from. In the west peeps are still bent (even subconsciously) on this idea of "process" into a posture, or that postures are gestures to be "expressed." The climb to the top is as important as the apex and all that. This doesn't show up ANYWHERE that I know of in asana texts. Asanas were medicine. Head to knees does this. Heal in abdomen does that. Peeps need to read how K and PJ taught the Indian students. They were sent from their doctors. Not to do primary. But to do certain postures.
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grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
@newoldtraditions Indeed, this is very clear of course in his later teaching but we see it even in Yoga Makaranda back in Mysore in 1934, (health) benefits for every asana he mentions. I remember too writing a post that questioned the benefits of advanced postures ('Hey Krishnamacharya, is their any point to putting my leg behind my head') and answering it by Krishnamacharya suggesting several 'advanced' asana related to chakra. However, as well as any health benefits I read Krishnamacharya as presenting his asana in Yoga Makaranda somewhat as Mudra. He may not have taught them to the boys of the palace that way but I suspect he did to his private students in the side rooms, those who weren't sent to him by their physician. We see this mudra like approach too in his son T.K.Sribhashyam's presentation of his father's teaching, which seems to have been based on how Krishnamacharya taught his son 1956-58.
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grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
@newoldtraditions Krishnamacharya was well aware, from texts as well as no doubt from his own teachers, of the traditional benefits associated with the different asana. Ramaswami mentions how he first met Krishnamacharya when he came to treat his younger brother. But for me, when I read his instruction in makaranda, despite the benefits tacked on at the end, I see Krishnamacharya communing with god. he may have used as asana to train boys and to heal the sick but in his own practice of asana I see, in Heideggerian terms, Lichtung -a clearing.
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newoldtraditions's profile picture
newoldtraditions
@grimmly2016 yes and yes. Love it.
grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
Note 2: These photos are from eight years or so ago, I should photograph them again, I suspect they look a little... softer now. I see something similar in Krishnamacharya's early photos and those when he was in his 80s. Where Krishnamacharya's early photos are somewhat hard, tight...., stiff even, there is a softness, a lightness to the later asana photos, a gentleness.
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jeanmarieyoga's profile picture
jeanmarieyoga
Hi!! Sometimes I wonder if I’ve been gifted the best teachers all the places Ive moved because I’ve mostly@experienced getting assisted only as needed (getting up from@karanda for example, deepen song dwi pada ) but none of those things feel extreme because it’s just giving me the extra hand I don’t have myself at home. I think the beauty of a good teacher inAshtanga mysore room is that each student gets mini private lessons. Nor adjustments per se but private moments of teaching where you get verbal feedback on where your weight is or maybe you could try this or that
Today I got physically assisted in the two postures mentioned above and maybe a down dog or forward fold, but otherwise it was a lot of the latter teaching and it was amazing to get that
Ashtanga teachers like this (@sammy_j2 ) and @davidgarriguesyoga really taught me how to be a good teacher in vinyasa world and give people the tools@to help themselves progress without me picking them up and doing it for them. Not that teachers never assist me physically it’s just that overall that’s a really small part of the amazing help and instruction I get in the room.
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grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
@jeanmarieyoga I’m not intending to dismiss teachers here JM just question the idea that adjustments are intrinsic, necessary, belonging naturally, they don’t ‘belong naturally’ to my home practice ( except as a truism in that we are always adjusting ourselves). My favorite adjustment/assist that I learned from Manju was just standing next to somebody trying to bind so they don’t fall over. And I remember Kristina Karitanou tell me to bring my Bharadvajrasana alive and that it wasn’t a rest pose : ) So I hear what you’re saying. Where I was questioning myself teaching it was in the sense of a workshop or ‘intensive’ or a ‘training’. I certainly see the benefit of holding a room for those who have nowhere to practice or prefer the support of a teacher and community, something I’m occasionally tempted to offer here in Japan.
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sammy_j2's profile picture
sammy_j2
@jeanmarieyoga 🙏🔥🙏 stay at it girl!
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jeanmarieyoga's profile picture
jeanmarieyoga
@grimmly2016 I agree I dont like the idea@of automatic assists. The practice is self tailored and assistance should be tailored as well I think?
grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
Note 3: For those uncomfortable with the asana as ‘clearing’ in which to ‘commune with god’ suggestion of how Krishnamacharya approached asana practice in Yoga Makaranda.
I’m suggesting here, asana as poetry, in the Heideggerian sense. The work of the asana as mudra opens up perhaps a clearing, here poetry is not in the the sense of a literary form but rather as revealing, truth disclosing. For Krishnamacharya that may be a clearing in which to encounter God but it might just as well be a clearing to experience the absence of God, an overcoming of the subject/object dichotomy and/or to experience sufficiency ( samhadhi).
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davidvandergaag.yoga's profile picture
davidvandergaag.yoga
Yes! Totally pointless and very injury-dangerous...I been adjusted when I started ashtanga and went to teachers and workshops. I used to like it, because they seem like some magical answer to getting further in the series (that's what you want, right?). Then I got an injury from an adjustment and later also injured myself trying to push to far in a pose. All being done from a mindset given to me by teachers trying to push deeper. Then slowly I started realising they didn't help me in any way to do an asana myself, so I stopped going to any class and workshop and just do self practice. And I can now without any effort go as far and deep in asana as they were pushing me. It really feels the adjustments are just there to serve the impatient. Can't get into a pose? Take another 5 years to practice. Don't want wait that long? I will push you there! 😉. In my view there is a huge difference between strong adjustments and small corrections though. Small corrections might be told or with a soft touch, lenghtening spine, open chest, straightening neck, relaxing face, pointing out the direction someone has to move. I think you could teach all those things. And also your main lesson, teach people to slow down. Go for it if you want it, I think you would have loads of great lessons to share!!
3d3 likesReply
@davidvandergaag.yoga When you see in the videos how Jois cranked people into postures who probably shouldn’t have been doing Second let alone Third series, it’s not surprising this thread persists in the practice. Thankfully good sense and good teachers who put Mysore behind them, or at least to one side, prevailed and a good Ashtanga city seems offer a choice between the different approaches. Of course if you’re outside such cities then you’re at the mercy of whatever room and ego you’re stuck with unless you embrace home practice and you own common sense.
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bimswinter's profile picture
bimswinter
I love this. I’m attending a Mysore programme at the moment, but I personally got so much from the silence and space of my own practice. Knowing it’s always there is a great comfort. 💛
3d2 likesReply
visualjacq's profile picture
visualjacq
@grimmly2016 I appreciate this post very much, thank you. Your thoughts are in keeping with my response to those who teach Astanga Vinyasa Yoga in the style of Jois, particularly as there is little (if no) historical precedents for strong physical adjustments prior to this method. In fact, all premodern textual evidence supports your approach—find a guru, learn a few techniques, practice them alone in a hut the size of 2 tatami mats (squared). May I ask who you are responding to in the initial quote? (i.e. “Physical adjustments are intrinsic to the practice of AVY...”). Love the idea of absorption as poetry.
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nelumbo_yoga
💕💕💕💕
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samsilversidesyoga's profile picture
samsilversidesyoga
I completely agree, and I also love it when Manju squishes me or stands on my back in supta kūrmāsana hahaha but he is a little guy 🤣
I haven’t found that to be the case. I was only adjusted a couple of times in twelve years of practice of Primary to Advance series Ashtanga ( although I did take Manju’s Adjustments TT). I don't think I've ever physically adjusted M. in her seven years of Primary series practice and I’m married to her.
Would she have ‘progressed’ beyond Primary series if I had? What does ‘progress’ even mean here, that she could practice ever more advanced asana? They are not something she has ever shown any interest in.
My own ‘yoga’ practice has ‘progressed’ more in the return to focus on just a handful of Primary asana, practiced as mudra, closer to Krishnamacharya’s Mysore instruction ( see Yoga Makaranda Mysore 1934. Google ‘grimmly Proficient Primary)
As for M. her breathing is long and slow and she has always followed her asana practice with pranayama and a Sit. She treads lightly on the earth and is the kindest person I know.
A friend just mentioned that this is something I would have blogged about in the past.
In my one extended ( three month) stay in a shala I declined physical adjustments from the Certified teacher myself but would hear the screams in the Shala while someone else was adjusted in Kapotasana, say, followed by a weak and breathless “Thank you”.
I know many enjoy physical adjustments and consider them beneficial and can even be annoyed if they don’t receive them, they are certainly prevalent in Shala Ashtanga. In home Ashtanga they are absent as is the presence of a teacher, clearly physical adjustments are NOT intrinsic.
I’ve been invited to teach again recently but really, what would I teach? Choose a handful of ‘Primary’ asana that you know already and feel comfortable in, stay in them longer, breathe more slowly, perhaps allow the natural kumbhaka to lengthen...or not. Follow your practice with the most simple pranayama, and a Sit, reflect on the Yama/Niyama of your own tradition. Tread lightly, be kinder. Three sentences. You don’t need to go to a workshop or intensive or pay your hard earned cash, stay home, practice instead.
4d
grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
Note: While I haven’t received many physical adjustments I have found some verbal adjustments beneficial as well as picking up certain verbal and written cues from teachers and other practitioners that have made my asana safer, more comfortable. I recommend #simonborgolivier and his ‘84 key asana’ online course for a safer more comfortable practice.
4d5 likesReply
suthernyogipdx's profile picture
suthernyogipdx
@simonsynergy
3dReply
newoldtraditions's profile picture
newoldtraditions
Part of the adjustment debate has to do with a fundamental disconnect and misunderstanding western yoga practitioners have in appreciating what the asana are/were even for. The asanas in K's understanding function as medicine, almost like a prescription. You put your leg this way because it effects you in this way. So putting people "into a posture" is meant to give them the medicinal effects of that posture. We may disagree, but that's where they coming from. In the west peeps are still bent (even subconsciously) on this idea of "process" into a posture, or that postures are gestures to be "expressed." The climb to the top is as important as the apex and all that. This doesn't show up ANYWHERE that I know of in asana texts. Asanas were medicine. Head to knees does this. Heal in abdomen does that. Peeps need to read how K and PJ taught the Indian students. They were sent from their doctors. Not to do primary. But to do certain postures.
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grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
@newoldtraditions Indeed, this is very clear of course in his later teaching but we see it even in Yoga Makaranda back in Mysore in 1934, (health) benefits for every asana he mentions. I remember too writing a post that questioned the benefits of advanced postures ('Hey Krishnamacharya, is their any point to putting my leg behind my head') and answering it by Krishnamacharya suggesting several 'advanced' asana related to chakra. However, as well as any health benefits I read Krishnamacharya as presenting his asana in Yoga Makaranda somewhat as Mudra. He may not have taught them to the boys of the palace that way but I suspect he did to his private students in the side rooms, those who weren't sent to him by their physician. We see this mudra like approach too in his son T.K.Sribhashyam's presentation of his father's teaching, which seems to have been based on how Krishnamacharya taught his son 1956-58.
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grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
@newoldtraditions Krishnamacharya was well aware, from texts as well as no doubt from his own teachers, of the traditional benefits associated with the different asana. Ramaswami mentions how he first met Krishnamacharya when he came to treat his younger brother. But for me, when I read his instruction in makaranda, despite the benefits tacked on at the end, I see Krishnamacharya communing with god. he may have used as asana to train boys and to heal the sick but in his own practice of asana I see, in Heideggerian terms, Lichtung -a clearing.
3d1 likeReply
newoldtraditions's profile picture
newoldtraditions
@grimmly2016 yes and yes. Love it.
grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
Note 2: These photos are from eight years or so ago, I should photograph them again, I suspect they look a little... softer now. I see something similar in Krishnamacharya's early photos and those when he was in his 80s. Where Krishnamacharya's early photos are somewhat hard, tight...., stiff even, there is a softness, a lightness to the later asana photos, a gentleness.
3dReply
jeanmarieyoga's profile picture
jeanmarieyoga
Hi!! Sometimes I wonder if I’ve been gifted the best teachers all the places Ive moved because I’ve mostly@experienced getting assisted only as needed (getting up from@karanda for example, deepen song dwi pada ) but none of those things feel extreme because it’s just giving me the extra hand I don’t have myself at home. I think the beauty of a good teacher inAshtanga mysore room is that each student gets mini private lessons. Nor adjustments per se but private moments of teaching where you get verbal feedback on where your weight is or maybe you could try this or that
Today I got physically assisted in the two postures mentioned above and maybe a down dog or forward fold, but otherwise it was a lot of the latter teaching and it was amazing to get that
Ashtanga teachers like this (@sammy_j2 ) and @davidgarriguesyoga really taught me how to be a good teacher in vinyasa world and give people the tools@to help themselves progress without me picking them up and doing it for them. Not that teachers never assist me physically it’s just that overall that’s a really small part of the amazing help and instruction I get in the room.
3d3 likesReply
grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
@jeanmarieyoga I’m not intending to dismiss teachers here JM just question the idea that adjustments are intrinsic, necessary, belonging naturally, they don’t ‘belong naturally’ to my home practice ( except as a truism in that we are always adjusting ourselves). My favorite adjustment/assist that I learned from Manju was just standing next to somebody trying to bind so they don’t fall over. And I remember Kristina Karitanou tell me to bring my Bharadvajrasana alive and that it wasn’t a rest pose : ) So I hear what you’re saying. Where I was questioning myself teaching it was in the sense of a workshop or ‘intensive’ or a ‘training’. I certainly see the benefit of holding a room for those who have nowhere to practice or prefer the support of a teacher and community, something I’m occasionally tempted to offer here in Japan.
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sammy_j2's profile picture
sammy_j2
@jeanmarieyoga 🙏🔥🙏 stay at it girl!
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jeanmarieyoga's profile picture
jeanmarieyoga
@grimmly2016 I agree I dont like the idea@of automatic assists. The practice is self tailored and assistance should be tailored as well I think?
grimmly2016's profile picture
grimmly2016
Note 3: For those uncomfortable with the asana as ‘clearing’ in which to ‘commune with god’ suggestion of how Krishnamacharya approached asana practice in Yoga Makaranda.
I’m suggesting here, asana as poetry, in the Heideggerian sense. The work of the asana as mudra opens up perhaps a clearing, here poetry is not in the the sense of a literary form but rather as revealing, truth disclosing. For Krishnamacharya that may be a clearing in which to encounter God but it might just as well be a clearing to experience the absence of God, an overcoming of the subject/object dichotomy and/or to experience sufficiency ( samhadhi).
3d1 likeReply
davidvandergaag.yoga's profile picture
davidvandergaag.yoga
Yes! Totally pointless and very injury-dangerous...I been adjusted when I started ashtanga and went to teachers and workshops. I used to like it, because they seem like some magical answer to getting further in the series (that's what you want, right?). Then I got an injury from an adjustment and later also injured myself trying to push to far in a pose. All being done from a mindset given to me by teachers trying to push deeper. Then slowly I started realising they didn't help me in any way to do an asana myself, so I stopped going to any class and workshop and just do self practice. And I can now without any effort go as far and deep in asana as they were pushing me. It really feels the adjustments are just there to serve the impatient. Can't get into a pose? Take another 5 years to practice. Don't want wait that long? I will push you there! 😉. In my view there is a huge difference between strong adjustments and small corrections though. Small corrections might be told or with a soft touch, lenghtening spine, open chest, straightening neck, relaxing face, pointing out the direction someone has to move. I think you could teach all those things. And also your main lesson, teach people to slow down. Go for it if you want it, I think you would have loads of great lessons to share!!
3d3 likesReply
@davidvandergaag.yoga When you see in the videos how Jois cranked people into postures who probably shouldn’t have been doing Second let alone Third series, it’s not surprising this thread persists in the practice. Thankfully good sense and good teachers who put Mysore behind them, or at least to one side, prevailed and a good Ashtanga city seems offer a choice between the different approaches. Of course if you’re outside such cities then you’re at the mercy of whatever room and ego you’re stuck with unless you embrace home practice and you own common sense.
3d1 like
bimswinter's profile picture
bimswinter
I love this. I’m attending a Mysore programme at the moment, but I personally got so much from the silence and space of my own practice. Knowing it’s always there is a great comfort. 💛
3d2 likesReply
visualjacq's profile picture
visualjacq
@grimmly2016 I appreciate this post very much, thank you. Your thoughts are in keeping with my response to those who teach Astanga Vinyasa Yoga in the style of Jois, particularly as there is little (if no) historical precedents for strong physical adjustments prior to this method. In fact, all premodern textual evidence supports your approach—find a guru, learn a few techniques, practice them alone in a hut the size of 2 tatami mats (squared). May I ask who you are responding to in the initial quote? (i.e. “Physical adjustments are intrinsic to the practice of AVY...”). Love the idea of absorption as poetry.
3d1 likeReply
nelumbo_yoga's profile picture
nelumbo_yoga
💕💕💕💕
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samsilversidesyoga's profile picture
samsilversidesyoga
I completely agree, and I also love it when Manju squishes me or stands on my back in supta kūrmāsana hahaha but he is a little guy 🤣
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