Liz asked…
Posted in ashtanga yoga, Uncategorized on 12/02/2009 05:31 am by karen“What’s the goal? Is the goal to be able to say, ‘I can do any posture you throw my way’ or is it to find peace within our minds and bodies no matter if that’s 3rd series or just the standing sequence?”
I vote for a still mind no matter what the pose.
I think stopping students [when they get to a pose they cannot do in the sequence -- and by "do," I mean physically and psychically] is a way to get people to chill and be present, rather than always galloping forward. I don’t think teachers have magical insight, but I do think they are experienced practitioners who can offer something of a mirror. I like to learn from their experience. And I like to “put down” my idea that I’m running the world for a little while and be a student. (In “real life,” I get stuck in thinking I know more than I actually do. That illusion — and the impulse to sustain it — is a HUGE pain in the ass. I think it’s probably my biggest problem in life.)
12/02/2009 at 6:07 am
There are different strategies! Chris claims to be a traditionalist, but he’s really an old-fashioned kind in terms of teaching. They used to push people through the series rather quickly, and the will throw absolutely as much at a student as he thinks they can handle. In that way, you’re not worrying about the specifics of each pose so much because you’ve got SO MUCH to get to.
That’s how he was with me anyway, when he got me as a new toy in a particularly formative stage. I think he’s mellowed out a bit, and of course at the moment he’s not really teaching much at all
12/02/2009 at 6:07 am
I meant “he will” not “the will”…
12/02/2009 at 8:52 am
I have NO idea what is the right way to teach…I appreciated being held back in Primary…and I sensed before I got to my very first Mysore session that this would be the ONLY way that I would ever be able to learn all of Primary. But I am totally not sure that this makes sense after Primary, or at least after Kapotasana. Yeah, I think it may very well make sense UP through Kapotasana. After that, all of the poses are simply intensified versions of poses already mastered. So, it doesn’t make that much sense to me not to just exhuberantly practice them along with their “predecessor” or “seed” poses. Like, why not do Eka Pada after Supta Kurmasana? Why not do a bunch of twists before Pasasana – I sometimes do a run of twists before it, including Ardha Matsyandrasana and my off-balance attempt at Purna Matsyandrasana. Makes Pasasana feel easy! And even better, I am ALMOST flat footed in Pasasana now…I attribute this to the deep backbends that I do before it.
I also save all my backbends for the end….so no matter what I am practicing, I do all the Second Series backbends in a row before Full Wheel.
This makes perfect sense to me. While learning Primary though, this would not have made sense at all, and focusing on backbending at all would have thrown me for a loop.
12/02/2009 at 9:40 am
“The impulse to sustain the illusion”, well put… believe me it is not just your huge pain in the a… it is mine too, I am sooo human! I would love to be able to do all the poses… but at the end of the day, the real true inside dweller knows that, as you say, it is all about a still mind… it is the first sutra after all
12/02/2009 at 10:19 am
Karen,
You always state things so clearly. Thanks!
12/02/2009 at 10:24 am
The clarity of my writing is another way I sustain the illusion that I know more than I do. Don’t be fooled!!
12/02/2009 at 12:16 pm
I pretty much lean towards the still mind in whatever pose view too, or at least focussed breath which may or may not be the same thing.
But aren’t we putting ye olde cart before ye olde horse. The still mind is supposed to be later isn’t it, after the Pranayama and in readiness for the meditation. If you have a still mind in your Sury’s already you might as well skip the whole thing and jump in your lotus. Isn’t the whole argument for Yoga that most aren’t supposed to be able to go straight to Jana yoga and need Hatha first.
Never really taken that argument on board, I meditated before I started to do yoga and still prefer to separate my ‘serious’ meditation from the fifteen minutes I do after my practice.
You meditate Karen, do you find the same thing, a completely different quality to your post practice meditation than from your Zen practice. how would you compare the two i wonder.
12/02/2009 at 2:09 pm
Haha! Cart/horse. Okay, I may get in trouble with the zen police AND the Ashtanga police here.
I don’t think of asana practice as a lead-in to meditation. Asana practice is asana practice: it happens daily as a way (I hope!) to keep the cycle of meditation/awareness going — practice as a reminder; practice as practice. I could do it cutting wood or carrying water, right?
Ideally, if the dailiness is adhered to, I can start the suryas with a still mind and end with a still mind and get through the day (as if!) with a still mind. Or at least make my best attempt.
The padmasana at the end of my practice is another asana in the series. How it’s different from zazen is that it (like other asana) has a formal physical shape (whether “correct” shape or not is immaterial). Yes, zazen has suggested physical shapes, but that’s more about expediency than deepening. At least that’s been my experience.
Zazen is easier ’cause I’m physically still; Zazen is harder ’cause I’m physically still. Ashtanga is easier ’cause I’m physically moving; Ashtanga is harder ’cause I’m physically moving.
Are they the same or different? Just do it!
And thus ends our moment of zen.
12/02/2009 at 4:33 pm
hi Karen
i talk more than i practice and like to whine. but in the end i seek a still mind. off to meditate now. i will give Guanyin your regards when i visit her home. 
(that said, i like Manju’s approach as described by Grimmly – that it’s OK to go forward and experiment with advanced poses and then come back to the poses that were challenges.)
hugs
Arturo
12/02/2009 at 8:49 pm
“still mind” for me is not like staring at a flame, but not fussing in a posture, or freaking out, or panicking, or thinking about the next pose or dinner, or whatever. It’s bringing my attention back to breath and not the guy who is about to fall on me. I can do primary that way and most of 2nd. Kapo, I fear, will always bring on some emotion, so I’m giving that one a pass.
I’m with Karen- Ashtanga for me is just asana and not meditation, though I’ve heard it’s supposed to be. I’m not there yet. I see others doing it and it looks very meditative. Unlike Karen, I don’t have a meditation practice. for shame. One day.
12/03/2009 at 1:49 am
Loved the Zen interlude Karen. just tried a search on your blog for japan and nothing really came up, have you ever been? If not you just HAVE to go, you’d love it. i lived there for six years or so and spent three in Kyoto. In fact I was married in the oldest Shinto shrine in Kyoto. It doesn’t have to be an expensive trip, and is a very easy country to be in. but the temples Karen, thousand of them in kyoto (including shrines). Half an hour from the center of the city and your up a mountain and a thousand years back in time.
Loved the cutting wood/carrying water bit, i find it uncanny how similar i find the practice to the couple of hour practice i used to do on my sax. the scales, the pattens , the breath, getting in a zone and of course in my case improvising : )
Quick word to YC. I agree makes perfect sense mixing things around, according to Manju, Guruji did the same if it helped someone nail a pose and Krishnamacharya certainly seems to have encouraged it. I think there are many Ashtanga’s and half the time we end up talking about a different one or mixing them up in the same post or comment (I’m just as guilty of that). There’s the formal fixed in stone (for now) Ashtanga sequences and how it’s authorized to be taught, then the historical Ashtanga (lots of them) the spirit of Ashtanga, public practice Ashtanga Private practice ashtanga…..
I sometimes wonder what it would be like if we walked into Gurui’s Shala say five years ago and the whole western encounter had never have happened. Wonder what we would have found and how different it might have been, or if it would have been pretty much the same.
Damn, three tangents, sorry.