I made my way to the exciting town of Norman, Oklahoma to attend a weekend workshop with David Williams.  I wasn’t sure what to expect…but I wanted to attend the workshop to hear about the early days of Ashtanga.  So far, I have not been disappointed.  It has been interesting to hear about how Pattabhi Jois taught in the ‘early’ days.  I was actually quite taken aback by one of David’s comments where he said that the Ashtanga sequence changed significantly as Pattabhi Jois got older and “senile” (his word, not mine).  Interesting.

    Here are some quick bulletpoints from last night’s class.  Thought I’d write them down before I forgot.

• Yoga should be pain-free.  If you’re feeling any pain, you’re doing it wrong.
• The breath and the bhandas are the primary focus, not the postures.
• Bare Minimum Daily Practice = 3 Sun Salutation As + 3 Sun Salutation Bs + Final Lotus Postures.   This is the daily practice to strive for.  David’s practices usually last about an hour a day.   There’s nothing wrong with not practicing the full sequence every day…as long as you do the bare minimum.
• Chin locks in forward bends.  The crown of the head should be pointed toward the feet.
• In Sun Salutations, the palms stay grounded on the floor (i.e. no coming up on fingertips) in Uttanasana B.
• Uttanasana A:  Beginning students should not bend their knees, but rather grab behind the ankles/legs to fold forward.  This helps lengthen the hamstrings.  Beginning students can bend the knees in Uttanasana B because the palms are supposed to be on the floor here.
• Upward Facing Dog: David keeps his knees on the floor here.  The focus is more on the backbend.  I kind of like this version.  Also, for the transition to Downward Facing Dog, he flexes the feet and bends the knees instead of rolling over the toes.  This is a nice variation for students that have problems rolling over the feet.
• Samasthitih:  David made a comment about students that keep their hands in prayer position here.  He insists that hands and arms should remain at the side.
• There was no Parivritta Parshvakonasanain the standing series.  I’d heard this is a newer posture, so I wasn’t surprised it was left out.
• Prasarita Padottanasanas:  Hands stayed at the waist when standing up between these postures.  Sometimes during the inhales, I’ve seen people move the arms to a “T”.  Also, he repeated “B” after “D”.  Kind of nice.
• For beginners, the seated sequence begins directly after Parshvottanasana.  This is because the later standing poses are actually more difficult.  So, students would learn the seated postures (David didn’t say how many) and then after that they would learn the rest of the standing series.  I think this is a great approach because, as David noted, many students become discouraged when they try to do these difficult standing poses.  So why not hold off on them until students become more familiar with the sequence?
• Dandasana:  David said that one of the reasons the gaze is down toward the navel is to bring the focus to the breath and bhandas.  If you’re activating your bhandas then the belly shouldn’t be extending out during the inhales.  Good point!  I hadn’t thought of that before.
• Pashchimottanasana: Instead of clasping the opposite wrist in the third version, he just interlaces the fingertips.  I actually like this better as it helps evenly stretch my upper back.  Also, you use chin lock here.  If you’re folded all the way forward, you don’t rest your elbows on the floor.  They should still hover about an inch up.
• Practicing During Your Period:  Apparently some of the early American women ashtanga practitioners conducted an experiment by practicing during their periods for six months and then not practicing during their periods for six months. They ended up preferring not practicing ashtanga during their periods because activating the bhandas interfered with the blood flow.  But, he said, women should do what feels right to them.

That’s about all for now.  I’ll put it all together a little bit later.  But, as I said, I wanted to get it all written down before I forgot.  There was some discussion of bowel movements….but who wants to read about that?  Also, David went over some really nice spinal stretching exercises that he does before practice.  I’ll go over those later. 

Image From: http://www.ashtangayogi.com/Images/barindexnew1.jpg

   I always enjoy attending David Swenson’s ashtanga workshops.  Sometimes they’re kind of cheesy, and he does tend to repeat himself.  But, he always has interesting stories to tell.  Plus, it’s inspiring to listen to someone that has been practicing since way back in the early 1970s…and is still practicing today.

“Yoga is a solitary journey.  You have your own personal relationship with the yoga.”

“Yoga has given me a strength – an internal strength that I don’t believe I would’ve had, had I not been doing yoga.”

David Swenson – “Internal Strength” from Omega Institute on Vimeo.

http://www.eomega.org/omega/faculty/viewProfile/9d4e95bed1a115d42c63de2c5672a0e0/

David Swenson began practicing yoga at age 13. His older brother Doug was his first teacher and they practiced hatha yoga from whatever books they could find. David Swenson’s was introduced to Ashtanga Yoga in 1973 by David Williams and Nancy Gilgoff. In 1975, Williams and Gilgoff brought K. Pattabhi Jois to the United States for the first time and David Swenson was inspired to begin studying Ashtanga Yoga directly with Jois. Swenson made his first trip to Jois’ home in Mysore, India in 1977, and learned the full Ashtanga system. Today, Swenson is recognized as one of the world’s foremost practitioners and instructors of Ashtanga Yoga.

This morning before ashtanga, I warmed up to Sadi Nardini’s low back flow.  It was a nice and short sequence.  So nice, that I thought I’d include links to the videos below.  She really stressed the importance of engaging your core muscles throughout the practice.  Once thing that really stood out to me were the transitions from up-dog to down-dog and from down-dog to chaturanga. Going from up-dog to down-dog, I have a tendency to lead with my lower back, or rather my butt.  But she gave a wonderful tip of actually engaging your abdominal muscles and using those muscles to help push you up and back.  It sounds kind of strange, but it actually works — and I really felt it in my abdominal muscles.  The same thing applies from down-dog to chaturanga.  Usually I just transition my weight over my hands and then lower down, without much thought to my core.  But she suggests almost rounding your upper back and tucking in your lower abdominals while moving forward.  This definitely engages the core more.  I think I’m going to incorporate this into my practice this week to see if it changes anything.

     That’s probably my longest blog post title yet.  Below is a video recently uploaded to YouTube by ‘trimedia3′ about Miami Life Center.  In it, Kino MacGregor talks briefly about how yoga is used as a tool to transform your life into one that is more peaceful and centered.  A partial transcript of the video is below.  Enjoy!

At Miami Life Center we believe in the possibility of attainment of real and lasting peace, no matter what your job, your body, your background, or what your ideas may be.  We believe that with dedicated practice, this unification of the body and the mind can come to presence in a single moment and that perhaps is the greatest definition of peace that we can experience.

Yoga is primarily practiced today as a series of postures that are united with breath and movement and presence that help establish a level of health in the body and peace in the mind.  While physical yoga, also known as hatha yoga, is the most popular form of yoga practiced today, it is not the only aspect of this ancient spiritual discipline.  Instead, what you can begin to understand is that yoga is a true science of the body and of the mind that allows you to unite your body, your mind, and your consciousness in a single moment.  Yoga calls you into a deeper presence, a deeper unification with yourself.  Far more than just a physical practice, yoga is the science of healing the body and training the mind so that you can be who you really are.  Excavating the deep hidden layers of yourself.  A more authentic search for yourself so that once you unify with that deeper aspect of your being, you experience and feel more peace in your life.  It is that experience of peace, that experience of transformation that is the heart of a daily yoga practice.

While we may commit ourselves to a daily discipline of yoga practice that includes postures and breathing, what we must never forget is that the yoga path itself is about the awakening of consciousness, the true birth of human spirit that comes to life with every breath, every inhalation, and every exhalation.  The yoga path itself can be understood as the experience of moving from the impossible to the possible, and the possible then becomes easy.  This transformation does not occur in a single moment but is instead a lifelong commitment to living a life of inner peace.  The choice to live a more peaceful life requires strength, dedication, and determination.  Every posture we practice, every breath we dedicate ourselves to while we practice yoga helps establish that commitment to a more peaceful life.  Moment to moment throughout all of the day of our lives, we make a commitment to live a more peaceful life.  The yoga practice helps us develop the strength and character to see that promise that we make to ourselves through to the end.  It is that authentic search for peace that is the heart of yoga.

- Kino MacGregor

 

 ”[T]he spiritual path asks us to make peace with ourselves not by celebrating the physical form, but instead by connecting with who we are underneath the physcal form, then we can let that peace and resolution flow through us our entire lives.”