Ashtanga Myth: Ashtanga is hard. “Ashtanga is hard.” This is one of the myths about the practice that I enjoy disassembling and dissolving. It’s a often a myth spread by those who don’t actually do the practice or by those who haven’t experienced Ashtanga in the traditional little-by-little way of learning. Actually, Ashtanga is about cultivating ease and equanimity. Really, …
What is Satya? Last time on Yoga Blog: We learned Ashtanga means “eight limbs” and yoga is not just moving and twisting. The first of those eight limbs is Yama and the first Yama is ahimsa. Which means non-harming. Feel free to reread the ahimsa post or read it for the first time. You could also find a copy of …
What Does it Mean to be Rooted? If you’ve practiced yoga for awhile then you’ve, no doubt, noticed that yoga practice and life cease to be two separate things. Yoga seeps into life and life seeps into yoga. And this is the intended direction. Practice should support both a more “ease-full” and stable life. Yoga practice on the mat is …
The Rituals That Support Yoga Practice In maintaining a consistent Ashtanga asana practice over time, I’ve developed rituals around food, movement, relationships, media consumption, and sleep, that support practice. One of the first steps in forming rituals has been observing variation in the quality of breath, bandha, and concentration while practicing and formulating hypotheses about cause and effect. Every day …
Ahimsa and Ashtanga Yoga Ashtanga Yoga: one eighth asana (the positions we put the body in) and not necessarily series one through six. What? Clap, get up and dance. Yoga is not just an Indian workout. It’s a special way to live. We’ll get to asana, don’t worry, it’s number three of this eight branched path. Eight Limbs of Ashtanga …
What is the Ashtanga practice method? How do we practice? …And why? If you go to Mysore, India and practice with Sharath Jois, the lineage holder of the Ashtanga practice, you will spend most of each month doing Mysore style self-paced practice. One day each week, plus two moon days each month, will be for rest -no practice. Only one …
“Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to”, said the Cheshire Cat. How we go in yoga has, as the Cheshire Cat said, a lot to do with where we want to get to. We might just say that we want …
Breathing in Ashtanga Unites the Gross and the Subtle The integration of breath with movement unites the physical and subtler mental dimensions of the Ashtanga practice. Excess tension and the struggle to find balance or ground in postures often lead to difficulties in breathing. These difficulties include periods of holding the breath followed by labored breathing, tremulous breathing, and the …
A love of the different and the far away, a desire of “I want to be able to do that”, and a convenient location to the Sorcerer’s Tower — the tabletop gaming store I frequented — would find me in the “Hong Kong Action” section at the movie rental hotspot Groovy Movies A-Go-Go. Past the counter-culture magazines, past the more …
Science and Yoga: Where Do They Meet? Last week, I was fortunate to be able to attend the Science and Yoga Conference hosted by certified Ashtanga teacher Eddie Stern. The conference brought together eight brilliant minds who have been researching at the intersection between science and yoga. You can read through a list and bios of the speakers here. You can …