I may have changed the title of this blog from Ashtanga Jump back, to Ashanga Vinyasa Krama to Krishnamacharya's 'Original' Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga to.... what is it currently, Slow Ashtanga but one thing that has remained constant is that I've always kept '.....at home' tagged on the end, This is a home practice blog.
Delighted then to see this post from a senior, long term and indeed Certified Ashtanga teacher, David Garrigues, recognising, even perhaps encouraging home practice. Thank you for this David and also Joanne Darlington for designing the poster.
"Greetings,
I know that many of you who follow me are home practitioners and so I made this poster to help you maintain a strong home practice. I hope it helps!
David
Poster designed by @ladyhawkzuzu
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| designed by Joanna Darlington |
Is there a bigger version of this poster anywhere?
Home practice can come to us all.
In my case it's a personal choice that I relish, for many though there is no choice, nowhere to practice nearby or maybe you move house, far away from the shala, or your teacher's ambitions lead them elsewhere, perhaps we become teachers ourselves setting up our own shala having to practice alone at home before opening up.
Sharath himself of course practices home alone before opening the shala, just as his Grandfather Pattabhi Jois did for many years, as Krishnamacharya did, as Iyengar did.....
David: Also, you aren't going to believe it, but practicing alone, by myself, does inspire me in its own way. It is a very different inspiration than attending a class with a teacher. But, as I often point out to many students who have a home practice, the sacred texts say that yoga is to be practiced alone. I take that to heart because I have to, and it does suit me.I can tell you this: you wouldn't want me as your student. Ha! All joking aside, I do genuinely like practicing by myself. I find that important things happen for me when I practice in solitude, without anyone else around. - See more at: http://davidgarrigues.com/articleinspiresme.html#sthash.5INB4FJT.dpuf
About David Garrigues
David Garrigues is the director of the Ashtanga Yoga School of Philadelphia. He is one of a few teachers in the US certified to teach Ashtanga Yoga by the late world renown yoga master Sri K Pattabhi Jois. As an Ashtanga Ambassador he bases his teachings on the idea that 'Anyone can take practice', a core idea in the teachings of Sri K Pattabhi Jois.
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see also perhaps
and
on developing my home practice
Yoga Podcast Episode 2: Anthony Grim Hall-TRANSCRIPT
also these from the blogosphere
How to start a home practice
also these from the blogosphere
How to start a home practice
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Yama and Niyama as support for home practice.
Yama and Niyama as support for home practice.
More and more I'm been thinking that the Yama and Niyama's, the Yoga guidelines for life and practice, can go a long way in helping us to maintain the.... physical, mental, emotional environment for practice (home or otherwise).
Perhaps we need to consider putting some or all of them in place, to lesser and greater degrees, early rather than later, while still in the first flush of excitement for practice so as to offer support later.
The 'letter' below from my Yama Niyama post
Post includes Krishnamacharya on yama/niyama, Ramaswami, Pattabhi Jois...
Every now and again I feel obliged to write a..... confessional post, practice has been good for many years but I know many of readers of the blog struggle at times with their practice, so if and when I do hit a bump in the mat I kinda feel I should share, not really fair not to.
So practice at the moment is a struggle, it's easy to blame the season, the cold, disruption in routine but this practice, after this amount of years, shouldn't be dependent on such things, should it?
It's revealing though. I wrote recently that the practice sets the routine that leads to discipline, that the discipline is tapas and thus preparation for yoga. We might slip occasionally but the presumption is that we just go back to the routine, to the mat, reforge the discipline and off we go again, however many times we may slip.
I'm starting to think I was mistaken or at least missing or rather forgetting a step, two of them in fact, the yamas and niyamas.
It used to be said that you should work on the yamaniyama and then, as they become established, move on to asana and pranayama practice.
Current thinking in the Ashtanga vinyasa tradition is that you begin with asana and as you develop some discipline the yamaniyamas will automatically begin to blossom.
That may be so, but they need tending and it strikes me that if you do tend to them then they may also offer support for your discipline in return.
If you don't tend them however then it can be more disruptive than all the other external factors or rather the external factors are free to reign havoc upon your practice.
So yes, start with Asana and as that practice becomes established, while in the first flush of excitement and fixation on the practice start looking to the yamaniyamas, play with the different descriptions we may find for them and consider how they reflect the ethics of our own cultural traditions, that we could perhaps be paying more attention to.
And then tend them.
That's the practice after we step off the mat, and we say that don't we, that we should carry the practice off of the mat into our daily lives. That doesn't mean popping out back at lunchtime to practice navasana ( although a little pranayama won't go amiss), it means we continue to work with yamaniyamas.
And at the end of the day as we lay in bed my teacher Ramaswami suggested we reflect back on the day in relation to them not to judge but just to notice, tomorrow is another day.
I could have done better recently, with all the disruptions of the year, the parting from loved ones, the restlessness I could have tended them more and perhaps I would have been less restless, practiced more discrimination and that may have offered more supported to my physical practice.
As it it I feel like I'm starting all over again, minimal maintenance practice has been minimal too often this year and hasn't maintained the practice that well. I feel heavy, sluggish, restless, impatient, breath and bandhas have suffered as a result.
And so it's been back to basics, to the sequence, the count, to each breath, each stage of the breath and to bringing yamaniyama back into the time off the mat and with more resolve.
Above see this THIS post
...and yet I also find myself missing practicing here, up there at the frount and over on the right, home from home, Kristina Karitinou's summer shala in Rethymno, Crete
some shala posts