Developing a home Practice Pt 27 Sept 09- Sept 10

It's my day off and I'm putting off practice in the hope that the DVD I ordered a fortnight ago might turn up today. It's the one of Jois leading Primary and 2nd series Ashtanga, filmed in 1993.

Something else I've been putting off is updating my 'Developing a home practice' series. I had a look today as somebody had sent me an email asking how I went about teaching myself Ashtanga at home. I noticed that the last post in the series took things up to September 09, so a year out of date already. I've just spent the last twenty minutes looking through last years posts and am amused to find that I'm pretty much in the same place I was a year ago. Take this post that I titled What happened to Vinyasa Krama? from 6th Oct 2009, it begins

I actually do think I'm still practicing Vinyasa Krama. It's just that the asanas and sub-routines that I've chosen to practice every day are the same as in Ashtanga's Primary and Intermediate series. The daily VK practice routine I was honing was becoming more and more like Ashtanga anyway so why not go the whole nut roast.

See what I mean? I could have written that last week.

Actually I was going to post today on my latest practice approach, switching my Evening VK practice with my morning Ashtanga practice. The idea is to free up more time in the morning for pranyama and meditation. So, an hour in the morning of mostly core vinyasa krama asana (plus a couple of short rotating subroutines) followed by an hour of pranayama and meditation. Then in evening (as soon as I get in from work) Straight forward Ashtanga, Primary on Monday and Friday, Intermediate the rest of the week. So as you can see, still trying to balance the two practices, if I'm being kind to myself, or have my cake and eat it if I'm not.

But back to developing my home practice.

Part 26 ended with me in a Yurt having four days Vinyasa Krama Tuition, basically learning the sequences as they are in Ramaswami's book. I came away from that with a better idea of how the sequences went together, some suggestions of how to go about practicing them and the beginning's of a pranayama practice as well as less resistance to the very notion of chanting.

That was August 09, September I predictably became seduced, once again, by Ashtanga and Lino's full Vinyasa. It somehow opened up Ashtanga's 2nd series to me. I'd never really liked it ( I adored Primary series) but with full vinyasa I began to love the practice, everything seemed to make much more sense. By the time I dropped the full Vinyasa on account of time constraints, I was comfortable with Intermediate, my backbends and dropbacks had improved and I'd even started to look at 3rd series (Nov 09). My argument re Vinyasa Krama was that my ashtanga was a Vinyasa Krama approached Ashtanga with some variations, practiced slowly and with long exhalations.

3rd or Advanced A was a wake up call. As a guy, the beginning of 3rd series didn't appear so challenging. I was strong, arm balances weren't a problem for me and they just caused me to bulk up around the shoulders, something I'd been trying to avoid. It felt showy too and just seemed to feed that side of me that enjoyed the sense of play. I could see myself getting wrapped up in that potentiality of the practice rather than bringing out the more meditative side that I'd aimed at through introducing Vinyasa Krama. Recently, as it happens, I've been bringing a lot of the second half of 3rd into my VK practice and even been using the advanced arm balances for my short 'vigorous' pre pranayama/meditation practice, I've started to see too, that those arm balances can be very meditative taking a lot of focus and attention to do them well, but at the time it was a bit of a turn off.

In February I dropped 3rd and began to practice Vinyasa Krama again in the evenings (Ashtanga Primary and 2nd in the mornings). I began practicing pranayama more seriously and even found myself chanting mantras while cycling in to work. I started to think about attending Ramaswami's summer month long Vinyasa Krama TT course. I applied for it in March and spent the three months before it started preparing, working through all the sequences, learning the pranayama chant and worrying which mat to take. At the same time my ashtanga was improving, practicing both styles together seemed to compliment each other, leg behind head work was coming on, I grabbed my heels from the air in Kapo and was dropping back and coming up much more smoothly.

I chose my mat, managed to get through customs in LA and arrived late on the Sunday for course induction. Monday morning I got up at 5am practiced Primary in a stairwell and at at around 8am walked into my first ever led yoga class. Until that morning my 'public' practice had included two Sunday trips to Ashtanga Yoga London for mysore class and four private Vinyasa krama lessons in a Yurt. I was, I admit, a little apprehensive.

Still no post and DVD, time to practice.

Next: PT 28 Ramaswami's Five week Summer Vinyasa Krama Teacher training course in LA

Developing a home practice Parts 1-26

I received an email this from A. this week asking me how I started and I guess developed my home practice. I was going to direct her to the link to these Developing a home practice posts but it tends to link to the most recent first. This then is an attempt to put it all in the correct order. Bit awkward doing this so let me know if I've screwed up any of the links.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11a Part 11b Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15a Part 15b Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21a Part 21b Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26a Part 26b Part 27

The last of these is from September 09 so need to do a few more to bring my things up to date.

Developing a home practice part 26b. Vinyasa Krama Lessons in a Yurt

Lesson Two of Four

So the first lesson had gone well, pretty much what I'd hoped for, the second lesson was going to be on the Supine sequence, my favourite. The first half of the sequence your laying on your back, a lot of leg to chest variations and desk poses, the second half is all shoulder stand variations, it's a long sequence.

We started with some some of the On your feet sequence, the side poses we'd missed from the day before and then went into the lead into the Supine sequences. All the vinyasa krama sequences have a lead in of some sort, usually a variation of the Sury namaskara or the Jump through. The Sun salutation is a little different from that in Ashtanga, here each position is held for three breaths instead of an inhale or exhale in Ashtanga. For Supine instead of coming up to standing you jump through to sitting and then lay down. Interestingly in downward dog you have your feet together and the preferred jump through is straight legged, though as with most things in VK it doesn't seem to be dogmatic. I'd learned the straight leg jump through a few months ago but hadn't practiced it that much and had lost it again. I should probably get it back, it's easier (less effort) than the 'half Kino' crossed leg, half handstand that I do and thus less chance of disturbing the breath.

Two things my notes for this lesson stress again and again are bandhas and anchoring. I'm looking at the first page of the Supine sequence now, and notice for the Pond gesture (Tatkamudra), the first pose after the lead in, 'Exhale completely. Anchor your heels, tailbone, arms and back; press down through your palms and draw in the rectum; pull in the lower abdomen in and toward your back. hold the locks for five to ten seconds.' and in the next pose the Belly twist ( Jataraarivritti) 'Anchor your pelvis, especially your tail bone.......'. Anchoring, good thing to hold in mind throughout your practice especially when you think that yoga is all about achieving stability and steadiness, mentally and physically.

We stopped at the shoulder stands leaving that section for the next lesson and moved on to some Pranayama, Kapalabhati. I tend to practice this in my Ashtanga practice just before Utpluthih (did I get that from the John Scott DVD, can't remember) but here it seemed to be practiced much slower. This is the one where you breath sharply and suddenly through your nostrils, kind of like a snort. You automatically draw in the breath in preparation for the next 'snort'. Here we did 3 rounds of 36, the first round with the hands on the knees whether in Lotus or crossed legged, the second with your hands raised and linked palms up and the third with the hands dropped back on to the shoulders with the elbows up (this seems to work best for me for some reason).

One moment in the lesson that amused me, was while laying in Savasana, after Supine. S. started to chant and I had to bite my lip to stop myself from bursting out laughing. It wasn't that I was laughing at S. but rather at myself. Here I was, laying in corpse pose, naked but for a skimpy pair of shorts in a Yurt and someone was sitting cross legged a couple of feet away fully dressed chanting over me...... if my Father could see me now.

As it happens I'd started to become interested in the chanting already having listened to some of Ramaswami's chants on his site http://www.vinyasakrama.com/Chants. I'd downloaded them on to my Itouch and an had been humming along for a couple of weeks. I liked S's chanting and took home a copy of Pam Hoxsey's Yoga Sutras with it's chant sheets in the back that S had lent me as I didn't have lessons the following day . He also lent me one of Ramaswami's other books 'Yoga for the Three stages of life' which may well be one of the best book ever written on Yoga, more on that another time.

Developing a home practice Part 25 Vinyasa Krama and what happened in August?

So August I pretty much took a break from blogging with the intention of focusing on one pointedness in my Intermediate and meditation practise. I wanted to get over the growing dissatisfaction I'd been feeling with my practise and 'learn to love Intermediate'

The first couple weeks went well enough I guess, I was practising Intermediate everyday, meditating everyday and it was going OK. A few times I'd thought about doing a Vinyasa Krama sequence but I'd committed myself to this month of Intermediate so didn't want to go against that. Instead I tried to do a Vinyasa Krama version of Intermediate. Slow it down a little, make the breaths longer deeper, retain the breath and hold the exhale and tried to focus on engaging the bandhas more.

All those jump backs and jump through's started to feel like they were getting in the way though, can you imagine ME getting irritated with jump backs. I was trying to fit a round peg in a square hole , or was it the other way around. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with Ashtanga, with Intermediate even, it was just me, I was in a different place. I took a morning off practise and the following morning I did the Ashtanga standing and finishing but put the Vinyasa Krama Asymmetric seated sequence in the middle. I loved it and did the same the following day but changing the VK sequence and again the next day and the next. It just felt right.

I've heard it said the Vinyasa Krama is a gentle practise but I've not particularly found that myself, I find it very intense more intense than Ashtanga even, the bandhas, the breath, they generate a lot of heat. When you really focus on the breath, on those long deep, slow Ujaii breaths and engaging the bandhas fully on the held exhale it becomes very powerful. Many of the asana in VK are in 2nd, 3rd and even 4th series Ashtanga, but because they are introduced, logically, building on each other I found there were very few asanas that were beyond my flexibility allowing me to get deep into the sequences and these sequences allowed me to get even deeper into the asanas. I was hooked.

In June when I explored Vinyasa Krama briefly, though I loved the sequences, I didn't see how I could turn it into a daily practise and went back to Ashtanga. This time I was determined to find a way to make it my daily practise. I continued to sandwich a VK sequence between an adapted Ashtanga standing and finishing both of which are suited to the VK treatment. When you look at them the standing and finishing are the same Asana sequence of Vinyasa Krama sub-routines. We have Surynamaskara then an Uttanasana sub-routine, a Triangle sub-routine, an on one leg Sub-routine and then a warrior sub-routine. In finishing there's a supine sub-routine, an inverted sub-routine and a lotus sub-routine, you just need to add the VK treatment of breath and bandha.

I had 10 days booked off work already, I found a Vinyasa Krama teacher in the UK and headed off for a week of four 121, 2 hour lessons. I want to go into this in more detail later but for now I just want to say it was the best thing I could have done. In each lesson we would go through a sequence or two of the shorter ones. S. who had been on Ramaswami's 200 hour TT course, would adjust me here and there and point out certain things that Ramaswami had stressed. Some asana he kept me in for a long time, working on slowing down and deepening the breath and engaging the bandhas. Towards the end of the lesson we looked at Pranayama, some chanting and discussed some of the philosophical issues, the sutra's, meditation practise etc.

We discussed developing a daily practise and S. indicated the poses that Ramaswami and his teacher, Krishnamacarya before him, had stressed as being of importance and deserving to be practised every day and remaining in for a considerable time. The evening before my last lesson I came up with a way of building my practise around those key poses (calling them poses here rather than asana because one of them, Maha Mudra is a Mudra rather than an actual asana), that would allow me to explore and learn more fully all the different sequences from Ramaswami's book.

And that's pretty much where I am now. I had planned on practising Ashtanga one day a week but noticed that when I planned out my week I hadn't included it. A couple of weeks ago I couldn't bare the thought of giving up Ashtanga altogether, now it feels like it might be a distraction. Perhaps I'll reintroduce a day in a couple of months.

In a sense Ashtanga IS applied Vinyasa Krama, perhaps we can think of it as EARLY Krishnamacarya. A practise developed by Krishnamacarya and Sri k Patarbhi Jois, that Guruji then went on to develop in his own shala and latter adapt perhaps to the Western influence. Although there's still a focus on the breath in Ashtanga, with the main focus on the flowing from one asana to the next something had to give. The dynamic aspect of Ashtanga demanded that the extended stay in Asanas be sacrificed along with the slow, building up of asanas. The demands of a daily fixed sequence that could be practised in 60-90 minutes meant the sacrifice of hundreds asana both important in their own right and those important as preparatory poses, as well as a diaspora of asana over the different series. And it's a wonderful practise, a piece of genius but not of course for everyone at every stage of their physical and mental lives.

It was that dynamic fixed aspect of Ashtanga that allowed me to develop the discipline to practise every day and helped me go from being unfit and overweight to being in pretty good shape. It appealed to the 'warrior narrative' perhaps. I don't know if encountering Vinyasa Krama two years ago would have had the same effect. I think I would have become confused and frustrated and probably given up.

Again this is something that I hope to develop in another post but a quick mention here. Chanting, who'd have thought it. I never expected to become attracted to chanting, Pranayama yes, always wanted to explore Pranayama and I'm so glad that it's importance is stressed in Vinyasa Krama. I've included 10 minutes of Pranayama as part of my daily practise and have taken to practising it twice a day, but chanting.

In Vinyasa Krama Ramaswami has a version of the sun salutation that included the Sun salutation chant. The idea is that at each stage of the Surynamaskara you retain the breath and chant the three different mantras in your head before moving on to the next element of the salute. He has a sound file of the chant on his website and I managed to put it on my itouch. I couldn't stop listening to it and found myself humming it all day, mumbling little bits of it here and there. I've started learning to chant the yoga sutras, and am loving it which is also making the Sutra's themselves come a little more alive for me. I came across Sankara's treatment of them which appeals to the Heideggarian in me.

Asana

Pranayama

Chanting

Yoga Sutra's.....

And of course meditation. While I was practising Vippassana there felt like a bit of a gulf between my Yoga practise and my meditation practise, two different traditions. I tried to work Vippassana into my practise but it didn't fit so well. A short while ago I started to focus on the samadhi aspect of my meditation and on Jhanas, and lo and behold what do I find in the sutra's but Pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, now they sound very similar to the discussions you find around Jhana.

So it's all coming together, a fuller more integrated practise. feels like a good place to be in.

Developing a Home practice Part 23. Then and Now.

While moving files from the old eMac to the new iMac I came across some old movies hidden away in iPhoto. They were taken a few months after I first started practicing Ashtanga. They are all of either the Standing or finishing sequence suggesting I hadn't yet moved on to seated. I'm guessing Early summer 07, so pretty much two years ago.

I'm a bit embarrassed to post them as I was carrying a lot of weight then and looked clumsy and awkward, but it does go to show that you CAN do this practice even if you are overweight and not at all flexible. It also speaks to the effect of the practice.

I'm guessing Jun 07

Jun 09

Two more