January 2010

Friends and fellow yogis,

Like most yoga practitioners, it seems I always have at least one on-going struggle in my asana practice: a pose I can’t quite express to its fullest, a balance I am struggling to master or an injury that may be preventing me from practicing to my maximum ability. We all hit these walls in our yoga practice. Sometimes they are due to limited flexibility, or lack of strength. Though it is often frustrating to accept “my hamstrings are too tight” or “I’m not strong enough,” this is really all part of the experience.

For the past few months, I have been working on the Ashtanga Primary Series, which is a sequence of 72 poses set forth and shared with westerners by Sri K. Patthabi Jois, and purported to be the physical yoga of Patanjali, the author the philosophical text upon which yoga is based. There are three series in Ashtanga yoga, though the Third, or Advanced, series is often broken down into three separate series. Ashtanga yoga is similar to the style of vinyasa flow that I teach, but the order of the poses always stays the same and the number or breaths in each pose is specified.

One hallmark of Ashtanga yoga is the vinyasa out of seated poses. This is where you must lift your legs and hind end off of the floor, swing them behind you, and jump to chaturanga. Sounds pretty simple, right? I wish. It requires a significant amount of practice and a great deal of core strength to get your butt high enough to allow yourself sufficient time to jump back. If you have been to my class recently, I have been including the hip lift with blocks to promote this type of core strength; though achieving a full jump back takes years of daily practice. It’s taken me two years to get up and through with blocks on a good day!

It is important to remember that no asana (yoga posture) is static. Each pose is a moving, ever changing expression, shifting as we breathe. This is also true over the long-term. Just because you can’t execute a specific pose today doesn’t mean that it won’t ever happen. There are so many things I never thought I’d be able to do that I now do regularly. It’s all about practice and repetition. You are probably thinking about something right now that is either the current bane of your yogic existence or a pose you NEVER thought you would practice and now execute routinely. As for me, I am trying to remember that yoga is a lifelong practice and that one day, I will successfully pick up and jump back!

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is that the ultimate goal of yoga as a discipline is to be present in every moment of your life. This concept is a reoccurring theme in my classes and has slowly developed from something that happened naturally on my yoga mat to something I aim to achieve in my day-to-day affairs. In fact, the concept of living in “the now” is outlined in pada, or chapter, 1.1 of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the philosophical text on which yoga is based. This pada states “Now begins an exposition of the sacred art of yoga.” Though Patanjali is stating that he will now give a detailed explanation of the yoga and steps with which one can calm the mind, the emphasis on “now” (even though this text was written over 2,000 years ago in Sanskrit) bolsters the idea of the presence we attempt to achieve through the practice of yoga.
The concept of “now” is something to remember on our yoga mats. Just because we are not practicing something “now” doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Our asana practice is constantly changing, as are our lives. The translation of being present on the yoga mat to being present in your own life is truly a gift. Being able to live in the present rather than dwelling on the past or dreading the future has helped me to accept whatever version of a seated vinyasa I might be doing on a given day, and has allowed me to live a more happy, healthy, stress-free life.
Namaste!