AshtangaNews Ashtanga Yoga Matters (as taught by Sri K Pattabhi Jois)

the BKS Iyengar video

Three very old videos have surfaced on YouTube.com, the main site for video sharing on the internet. Apparently, they were shot in 1938, and MCPetruk, who uploaded them, told me via email that he obtained them as part of the footage from an Iyengar Institute VHS.

Thank you to Dipita for the tip and to MCPetruk for sharing.

Links to the 3 films (one of the actual films is at the end of this post):

• Krishnamacharya in inversions, nauli and various advanced pranayama techniques (4:32)
• BKS Iyengar part 1 (3:11)
• BKS Iyengar part 2 (3:26)

After hearing and reading so much about him,



Krishnamacharya at 50

it is amazing to see Krishnamacharya on film. And what a film it is. In these short 4 minutes, you get a glimpse of a total mastery of the body, the postures and the breathing. The stories about Krishnamacharya stopping his heart become much more believable. His legendary strictness is apparent, too.

I tried to remind myself as I was watching that Krishnamacharya was 50 years old when the film was shot. He does not look a day over 30.



Iyengar in Upward Dog
in the middle of a vinyasa (!)

Iyengar is also very impressive doing what seems to be a modified version of the Advanced A Series of Ashtanga. He is actually doing vinyasas! He must have been around 20 years old during that time, before he decided that vinyasas were “too much jumping”.

Krishnamacharya practicing yoga in 1938

We don’t know who took these photos of India but we like them - a lot. If you know, would you let us know?

(The full set is in the format of a Powerpoint file (1.7MB) and it’s well worth watching; you can download a Powerpoint viewer here.)

Thank you to Lori for forwarding these to us.

What can I add to beauty like this?

Name that building!

Anyone ever get her tea this way? Really?

Peace and warmth
(enough with the smart comments already)

As much as I like finding neat photos of Ashtangis practicing in the shala for AshtangaNews, I recently came across this photo from prolific Ashtanga writer and photographer, Alan Little.

David Swenson workshop in Munich, March 2001

Note the lack of Ashtangis in this photo.

Alan mentions that David Swenson prefers photos not be taken during practice:

There were people attending the workshop, lots, but David doesn’t like anybody to take pictures in class and besides I was busy practicing.

Which is exactly what I always wonder about: if you’re practicing, how can you be taking photos? Nevertheless, I am grateful to all you Ashtangis and photographers who do.

I like this photo and I like Alan’s comment. It’s a neat abstraction of something I take for granted (mats) and the lack of Ashtangis makes me think of what Ashtangis do outside of the studio, about what we take with us when we leave the studio.

Thank you, Alan!

We get so many calls from westerners. They call, “How can I become a teacher?” They write to us, “How can I become a teacher?” You have to become a student first. For a long time. Maybe ten years.

In a recent interview on website, Lime, R. Sharath Rangaswamy - Sri K. Pattabhis Jois’ grandson and the Associate Director of AYRI - emphasized the importance of being a student, not a teacher.

R. Sharath Rangaswamy

R. Sharath also discussed the benefits of Ashtanga, contrasting common ideas in the West with traditional Indian thought on yoga.

Some people think it is only about asana, exercise and practice. Yet still they receive the benefits to their health. Problems will solve. They become concentrated.

Philippe briefly highlighted this article from Lime in his post about Craig Snyder’s thoughts on yoga in the West. I think the contrast between Craig’s, um, Western-style of delivery and Sharath’s is striking. The content of both Ashtangis’ message is similar…but how they express themselves is very different.

Then again, how many of us gave extra weight to Sharath’s words, primarily because he is the grandson of the guru, Sri K. Pattabhis Jois? Ah, the meaning of guru right there.

Guruji in San Francisco, 2006
The Guru’s Joy from Govinda Kai

This is called guru parampara. In Indian culture, you go to a teacher and learn from him, like you in the west go to a school and learn the ABC’s. But we devote everything to this lineage, from the teacher’s guru through to you. It transfers like that.

Thank you to Spiros Antonopoulos for publishing this insightful interview. Spiros gives a clear, concise description of Ashtanga yoga and lots of space for R. Sharath’s own words.

Don’t miss this article. It’s the only interview with Sharath I’ve seen.

[For a little more of Sharath’s words, see our post on the making of his new Primary Series DVD. - Ed.]

The photos in this post are from R. Sharath’s Gallery, which seems to be in process (i.e., more photos will be added, so check back).

Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana at AYRI

Bhujapidasana at AYRI

There’s been a surge in Ashtanga-related products lately, R. Sharath Rangaswamy’s Ashtanga Primary Series practice DVD, Mysore Style, a book of beautiful Ashtangi photographs, and the Guru, the documentary about Sri K. Pattabhis Jois by Robert Wilkins (available on DVD).

And now we have THREE new books:

A detail from
Ashtanga Yoga: Practice & Philosophy

• Ashtanga Yoga: Practice & Philosophy by Gregor Maehle, a teacher based in Perth, Australia. Yoga: Practice & Philosophy “integrates Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali as an organic whole, presenting them as two sides of the one coin”. The book also includes information on “the mythological background and yogic context” of specific postures in the Ashtanga practice, which sounds especially intriguing.
• Ashtanga Yoga by Petri Raisanen, an Ashtanga teacher based in Helsinki, Finland. From the online content page, there’s several sections of the book I would love to read: History of Ashtanga Yoga and Impacts of Poses (the book is currently only available in Swedish and Finnish, though an English version is in process). The website also includes lots of photos from the book, including 85 stunning, clean photos of Petri practicing various Ashtanga postures by photographer, Alexander Berg.
• Ashtanga Yoga As It Is by Matthew Sweeney,
  “the only resource that fully details the primary, intermediate and advanced A and B series of Ashtanga Yoga”. A classic, re-released. Photos along with lots of text about the practice.

Matthew Sweeney’s Classic Book

I’ve gotten hold of Matthew Sweeney’s book so we’ll be reviewing it soon.

I remember the days in the nineties when there were only two or three books on Ashtanga - in a decade! It’s great to see so many high quality publications come forth to spread the knowledge.

And now for some beautiful photos from Petri Raisanan’s book…

Navasana

Setu Bandhasana

Petri Raisanen jumps through

Every now and then, Google will come out with a service which inspires wonder. Last time they did that for me was with Google Earth.

Now they’ve done it again with Trends: a way to compare the world’s interest in different search terms. You can enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched for on Google over time, and which geographic regions have searched for them most often.

So what does that have to do with Ashtanga Yoga?

How about looking at which yoga style is most searched for? Here’s a chart comparing Ashtanga, Bikram, Iyengar, Vinyasa and the relative newcomer, Anusara:

yoga syles the online world is interested in

Google Trends show that Bikram is most popular, and Ashtanga and Iyengar are neck to neck. Anusara only starts to register in 2005. From the regional information, the top 3 countries who search for Ashtanga are Ireland, Singapore and Sweden. At least now you know where to set up your new studio. I wonder where India is though.

How about yoga compared to other types of activities? Here’s the chart of yoga compared to pilates, meditation and stretching:

yoga more popular than pilates

Yoga clearly comes out on top. But you can also see the seasonality in the interest, as both yoga and pilates peak at the beginning of the year. The January Effect with its New Year resolutions, as it is known in yoga studios around the world, is reflected here.

And India appears as the first country for yoga searches (at last!).

Here’s one more. Draw your own conclusions.

Brad is seasonal too

[For an interesting development about this post, see Asteya Redux: A Grumpy Post -Ed.]

Okay, just one valuable prize, but that would be in addition to the good feeling you’d get from helping out with a worthy cause.

Annie Pace, a certified Ashtanga teacher based in Crestone, Colorado (see map), is holding a benefit on June 9 to help fund the building of what sounds likes a really neat shala and retreat space in Crestone called Shakti Sharanam.

Annie’s written a heartfelt letter describing the property and her plans and intentions for Shakti Sharanam.

The future home of
Shakti Sharanam

To help generate funds, she’s holding a drawing on June 9th, 2006 for an Ashtanga weekend intensive for two at Shakti Sharanam (a $900 value). You don’t need to be at the event to contribute, buy raffle tickets (at $25 each) or win!

I was especially impressed with her plans to use straw-bale construction in the buildings. I stayed in a straw-bale house in Sonoma County and it felt very grounded. Plus it was great in the heat, which might be especially nice in those Colorado summers.

Here’s the pdf flyer for the Shakti Sharanam Benefit.

Arjuna, an Ashtanga yoga student & teacher in Germany, has a wonderful website with photos of each posture of Series 1 through 4 (!) plus Surya Namaskara A, Surya Namaskara B, and the Finishing Postures. He even includes details of the vinyasa count for each posture.

Arjuna demonstrates Vishwamitrasana from the 3rd series.

This is the only site we know of that has a systematic listing of photos of the 3rd and 4th series. Note that Arjuna says:

However, because I only did the primary and intermediate series under Pattabhis guidance, when I practice the advanced series I use the counting and method I have learned from some senior students of Pattabhi Jois.

The official site AYRI.org has photos of the Primary Series, but they are all on one page so:

• You cannot link to a unique posture directly to illustrate a posture name
• No transitions are shown

Vasisthasana

Arjuna has also posted PDF files with these photos by section, along with other useful information, like suggested adjustments (also with photos).

Warning: don’t try those advanced series at at home. There’s a reason why this stuff is only taught under the close supervision of an authorized teacher.

Arjuna leaves us with an interesting thought:

The “most traditional” form of Ashtanga Yoga still differs quite a bit from teacher to teacher.
Maybe Ashtanga Yoga is like yeast. If you put a bit of curd in milk, the yeast will transform the milk into curd. You can take your curd to any country, put it into milk and it will happen. - But the curd will always taste a bit different. The yeast is the same, but the milk changes. Likewise, Ashtanga Yoga has a different flavour everywhere, but it is still Ashtanga Yoga.

Leave it to America to take something which is literally thousands of years old and alter it into a commercial entity in just several short decades.

Craig Snyder wrote a piece called the Circus of Yoga on his new blog, thecraigsnyder.com (thanks to SoulJerky for the tip). Craig is a photographer of the skateboard culture, but, as is apparent from his writing, he knows a lot about yoga.

Alan “Ollie” Gelfand
by Craig B. Snyder

Snyder’s inspiration for the title of his post was a cover of Yoga International magazine that referred to a story about how yoga had been incorporated into Cirque du Soleil.

Craig took this thought a little further and offered an often critical overview about how yoga has been transformed in the West - particularly Florida, where he lives - over the past decades.

Snyder feels that yoga has been reinterpreted by the West, and that the quality of teachers is at the root of the fact that students are often misled about the intended benefits of yoga practice.

This is similar to the thoughts expressed by R. Sharath Rangaswamy in a recent interview in Lime, that you have to know yoga to teach yoga.

Sharath adds that it may take ten years to become a yoga teacher, in contrast with some yoga teacher training courses, which give teacher certificates after a weekend. Here’s the extreme of that genre: an online certificate you can buy for $50…

I think that if you look for it, there are plenty of places in the west where you can find yoga which follows the original tradition. This is especially true of yoga styles like Iyengar and Ashtanga which try to stay close to their roots.

Coming back to Snyder’s post, he lays down what he believes to be the meaning of yoga:

Yoga is many things, but it is not one. Yoga is not exercise, but contains exercise. Yoga is not a religion, but contains an awareness of religion - whether it is your preferred religion or someone else’s, or even none at all. Yoga is not about being a contortionist with the body, but being a contortionist with the mind. It is about settling the differences with the mind that get us into so much trouble. It is simply about loving yourself, something which many people find difficult to do.

Yoga (and meditation) is many things, but it is not one - it is about becoming one. A unified, living being, who lives without duality in their life, who lives without the chaos and confusion that creates harm to ourselves as well as others.

But yoga is not the answer, it is merely a way to discover the answer.

These thoughts resonated with me. An inspiring article well worth a read.

Yogabeans is an excellent new resource for Ashtangis. The site guides users through the Ashtanga sequence, posture by posture. Since Yogabeans is so new, it currently illustrates only the first few postures of the Primary Series. A new posture is added every couple of weeks.

The writer, Elastigirl, from Santa Barbara, California, has done an great job of providing photos and written guidance through the sequence. With quality this high, I hope Elastigirl continues for the rest of the Series!

I think Yogabeans could be an important resource for Ashtangis everywhere, and especially those Ashtangis who also happen to be plastic action figures. I applaud Elastigirl’s inclusiveness.

Yogabeans starts right at the beginning
Sir Rascus of Lego Knights Kingdom in Samasthiti

Here is a small sample of Yogabeans, including quotes lifted from the site:

“Rascus has his visor up, all four corners of his big, flat feet grounded into the floor, and he seems pretty confident that he’s the best looking guy in the shala this morning.”

“…Now, keep your focus inward. In this position your drishti, or point of focus, should be your third eye. That’s in the middle of your forehead. Nightcrawler, I know you’re a mutant, do you have an extra eyeball anywhere on your body?”

Marge Simpson teaching triangle to the Hulk, Batman and a Power Ranger

Elastigirl

Thank you, Elastigirl!