Love your practice for it is the path of enquiry,
love the first step as much as the last.
Maybe it doesn't matter how fast or how slow we practice, or perhaps what we practice. More importantly, do we practice (something) everyday, has practice become a routine, the routine a discipline (tapas). Have we become dedicated to the practice such that other aspects of our daily lives support it (EG. bringing in other limbs, yama/niyama or reflection on our own cultural ethical traditions). Developing routine and dedication, we can spend a long time here, years even and may need to keep coming back to routine to re enforce dedication. Is dedication leading to devotion, devotion to a path of self knowledge, whatever that knowledge/realisation may end up being. Yoga is radical enquiry (in the form of direct experience), we can't prejudge what we may find, the surrender is in being prepared to accept whatever we discern to be true and devotion ( to the enquiry/practice) an end perhaps in itself.
My experience is that the Ashtanga approach is excellent for engendering...
Routine - Discipline - Dedication... and perhaps Devotion - Surrender
The argument goes that as we practice (routine) and as our practice becomes ever more sufficient for us ( dedication) we become less attached to the, lets call them sensory objects of the world. This is preparation for yoga, routine and a disciplined practice can help in this loosening of attachments.
As our practice, perhaps with the assistance of other limbs, deepens, as we become more reflective we may notice how the constructed, re enforced, propped up self can seem to drop back/away somewhat, become less dominant. A realisation arises that perhaps what I had hitherto experienced as self may not be quite what I had thought.
What then? Is there still awareness, consciousness, who is aware, what conscious.... Devotion to this line of enquiry is devotion to knowledge, yoga can develop a keen tool of enquiry, Ekagrata one pointedness.
If the old texts are... insightful, perhaps as the constructed self drops away, what is left is (to employ the Samkhya model but are any of these pervious models still sufficient for us ) purusha, awareness, just awareness. I say 'just' but for the shastras purusha is universal awareness, other terms for this depending on ones inclination/preference are Lord, Creator ( as in that which creates), God.
Devotion to practice then is profound love for the path of enquiry which may lead to greater knowledge and understanding of self and/or of god.
Love is surrender in that we seek not to own ( to project ) but to know (through direct experience).
In this line of thinking, devotion to practice, whatever form the practice takes for you is an end and sufficient in itself
Love your practice for it is the path of enquiry, love the first step as much as the last.
***
Link to Actual speed version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9joBgtyPphA) : (see below).
So this is Oscar Montero and I practcing at Yoga Centro Victoria, Leon, Spain last year.
Oscar is practicing Vinyasa Krama I'm running through Krishnamacharya's primary group asana in Ashtanga order but with perhaps longer, slower breathing and short kumbhaka (breath retention) on the appropriate inhalation or exhalation ( rough guide: if the head is up hold the breath in after inhalation, if the head is down hold breath out after exhalation).
Problems with the camera so we lost the standing sequence, video comes in at paschimottanasana and camera stops after about twenty minutes ( here speeded up to five minutes).
Because it's a slower practice I tend to practice half an ashtanga series each morning, one day the first half of primary, next day the second half, day after that the first half of 2nd series or middle group asana.
This is arguably the approach to asana Krishnamacharya presents in his 1934 book Yoga Makaranda (but put in the order of his second 1941 book Yogasanagalu - close to current Ashtanga).
This was at the time he was teaching the young Pattabhi Jois in Mysore.
Did Krishnamachaya actually get to teach this way, did he want to teach this way, was this his own approach to practice, how he was taught by his teacher perhaps.
The main difference with this and his later teaching is that later the vinyasa to and from standing tended to be more implied.
The sequence never seems to have been fixed, more groups of asana.
First the speeded up version then the actual speed version.
Appendix : More on Purusha
And today, how would we seed to elucidate the fulfilment of our enquiries, which model(s) would we, or those on our behalf, construct, in what world view would it be embedded, what language would we struggle to employ, how would we seek to support, justify, explain our experience.
Here's what the ancients ( or perhaps not so ancients ) came up with, does it still speak to us, resonate?
And today, how would we seed to elucidate the fulfilment of our enquiries, which model(s) would we, or those on our behalf, construct, in what world view would it be embedded, what language would we struggle to employ, how would we seek to support, justify, explain our experience.
Here's what the ancients ( or perhaps not so ancients ) came up with, does it still speak to us, resonate?
The Purusha sutra : A text on transcendence and immanence
The Primeval man ( Purusha)
The Rig Veda X.90 and the White Yajur Veda Ch.31
Purusha is explained in the Nirukta as one resting within the body (puri-shaya) or one pervading (filling) the cosmos.
Thousand heads has the Purusha,
So too He has thousand eyes and thousand feet;
Pervading earth on all sides (spanning 10 directions)
and heart measuring ten fingers (spanning 10 senses).
He yet exceeds all, within and without. …1
Purusha verily is all this that exists (in this creation),
What had been (in past creations) or would be (in future creations).
He exceeds the body that grows with food.
Indeed, the Lord of Immortality He is! …2
Such (aforesaid) is His pre-eminence,
Greater still stands the Purusha.
A quarter of Him is all beings that could have been;
Three quarters of Him sits immortal in heaven. …3
‘A quarter’ could be explained as the first quarter (waking state) of the Mandukya Upanishad.
With immortal three quarters, Purusha sits above.
His one quarter alone manifests here again and again.
He pervades all spaces and becomes all beings
That eat and eat not (i.e. worldly and liberated ones). …4
‘Three quarters’ possibly refer to the three immutables: Brahma (Universal Consciousness), Jīva (limited individual) and Prakriti (Nature).
From Him (or His Prakriti), Virāt [Hiranyagarbha] emerged,
Still Purusha is the sovereign
For He exceeds His creations.
Next, appeared the creations, both terrestrial and corporeal. …5
The Yajña that gods performed with offerings of Purusha [He being all this];
Spring was its purified butter, summer its fagots, autumn its oblation. …6
Contemplating First-born Purusha (primeval source) in heart or sacrifice,
Gods, Rishis and perfected ones (sādhyas) venerated Him as Yajña (= Venerable). …7
From Venerable Purusha invoked by all,
There appeared the edible foods.
He created animals and birds
And what are domestic and wild. …8
From Venerable Purusha invoked by all,
Issued forth the Rik and Sāma hymns.
From Him issued the Atharva hymns,
So too from Him issued the Yajus hymns. …9
Rik, Sāma and Yajus also signify the speech, life-breath and mind. (YV 36.1)
From Him were born the horses (or energy)
And also cattle with two rows of teeth (or senses behaving dually).
From Him were born the cows,
From Him were the sheep and goats born. …10
In what ways was conceived the stated Purusha!
What formed His mouth, the arms, the thighs? What to call His feet? …11
Brahmin (priest) was His mouth; arms were made the warrior (kshatriya);
His thighs are the merchants; from feet were born the menial workers. …12
From His mind, the Moon was born; from His eye, the Sun;
From His mouth, Indra and Agni were born;
From His breath, the Wind (Vāyu). …13
From His navel, the space (mid-region) emerged;
From His head, the heavens emerged;
From His feet, the Earth; from His ears, the directions;
Thus the worlds were conceived. …14
Seven are the boundaries, and twenty-one are the fuel-sticks:
In the Yajña with Purusha as its subject,
Spread out by the gods [in the beginning]. …15
With Yajña (offerings of Purusha),
The gods worshipped the Yajña Purusha
(Venerable One manifesting all and still exceeding);
These verily became the primary dicta (dharmas)
[like Brahmacharya, or treating all as Brahma (Purusha)].
Those gods became eminent ones and attained the highest heaven (nāka)
Where former gods and perfected ones together inhabit. …16
I know this Purusha of gigantic dimensions,
Golden like our celestial Sun, in striking contrast to darkness (tamas);
Knowing Him alone, one can surpass death;
Alternative course there exists none. (YV 31.18)
from here http://www.analyticalyoga.com/purusha.html
*
a couple of other version with the sanskrit
here
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/purusha_sukta.htm
and here
http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/invoc/in_pura.html