Ashtanga and Stoic Endurance PLUS Guest post : Ashtanga and related Indian physical disciplines

Thank you to Andres for this interesting letter that he gave me permission to put up as a guest post.

But first this...

For all the ins and outs of this discussion I've been most struck by the idea of 'training'. We know that in the 30s Krishnamacharya was teaching both a slower Vinyasa Krama approach to asana as well as the Ashtanga vinyasa approach that Pattabhi Jois has continued with some modification (no kumbhaka, relatively fixed sequences). It was this sense of 'training' perhaps the Krishnamacharya employed with the boys of the Mysore palace  that is often most striking about modern Ashtanga. 

Recently I asked a VERY long term Ashtanga practitioner and meditator about the practice, one word in particular stands out in his answer, "endurance", 'the practice is about endurance'.

OK, if it had been anyone else I might have dismissed that as a truism, of course the practice is about endurance....and stamina, it's a long sequence and just when you get a handle on it you start adding on another sequence and then another. Here in Kristina's shala there are practitioner's coming in almost two hours before me to practice all of Primary as well as 2nd series up to Pinca Mayurasana and still end up in savasana around the same time as me...and I breathe pretty slowly through my 2nd.

But this man has practiced a long time, a very long time and had many years to meditate on it, if this is the word he's come up with then it deserves some reflection.

Endurance....., I'm in Crete, Greece, no surprise then that the Stoics come to mind. The stoics were all about endurance, inspired partly by Socrates perhaps and his refusal to flee Athens and endure his own trial the Stoics accepted fate and all it threw at them, in fact they not only accepted fate, they were devoted to it. Stoic practice was a devotional practice, it was a discipline. 



And aren't we stoical in our approach to our practice, Krishna's children act(ing) through our practice without attachment, how is Marchiyasana D today, how, Kapo, how Karanda. Tomorrow a friend and Ashtanga practitioner will be coming to the studio, he's broken his ankle, wearing a cast but will still practice with modifications, what else is that but stoic. Often it appears that it's the practice that we are devoted to, it may even seem that way to ourselves but perhaps it's rather that the devotion is in the practicing of the practice the act of prayer rather than the prayer itself.

So endurance leads us to the Stoics which leads us to devotion and perhaps to Ishvarapranidhana

Our friend Wikipedia and its etymology section is perhaps useful here

Īśvara-Praṇidhāna (ईश्वर-प्रणिधान) represents surrender to, and love for, the divinity within the individual in Hinduism and Yoga.

Etymology and meaning
In its simplest form, the word is a combination of the words (sometimes hyphenated), Īśvara, meaning Lord, Controller, God, Supreme Being or Life Force, and pra-ṇi-dhā-na, meaning "attention to, love for, surrender to, faith in," or "reunion with.""Attentiveness" and "Surrender" are both close English approximations.[1] A close literal English translation of "Īśvara-praṇidhāna" would give "Attentiveness to God" or "Surrender to God." As one of the final or "supreme" stages of many forms of Yoga, the "surrender" aspect of Ishvara-Pranidhana is often used to describe the step, whereas "attentiveness" describes the practice. Both are used interchangeably. Note the similarity to the literal meaning of Islam—submission or surrender to God. A close Christian term would be the Love of God.

There's that word surrender that I'm always so uncomfortable with, surrender in the stoic sense though I find less problematic, in this sense there is a radical acceptance not to god necessarily but to the workings of god, the myriad causes resulting from the first cause ( Some interesting comparisons between the stoic employment of Zeus here with Ishvara).

So in our practice we are perhaps practising endurance, training, preparing, ourselves to endure (not even going to touch on the interesting New Testament Greet idea of endurance as patience, surely another aspect of our practice - or perhaps should be) and we do this through keeping the practice challenging and by accepting our practice as it is that day, that moment, offering ourselves up to to the practice, surrendering ourselves to it and doing so with devotion.

Now about those Epicureans......

UPDATE: just remembered my old friend and fellow blogger Noble wrote a post on Ashtanga and the Stoics, just found it http://yogadragonden.blogspot.gr/2013/07/stoic-philosophy-yoga-and-how-not-to.html

You can probably tell that I'm just playing with the ideas above chewing on the cud of endurance, more to come perhaps until then, here's Andre's letter and links


Hi Anthony,