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Advanced Ashtanga Yoga Practitioner - original source http://www.burrenyoga.com/

I wont lie. I began attending the Ashtanga class at my yoga studio because I had heard it was a workout (see above). If you’re a yogi, I know this sounds blasphemous. Any true Asthanga practitioner will tell you that the practice can, and should, be so much more – a purification of the mind and central nervous system, a detoxification of the blood and massage of the internal organs, an awakening of one’s energy channels…blah blah blah. [Or so I thought.]

All I knew was that Ashtanga had been described to me as a “vigorous” form of yoga designed to produce a “purifying sweat.”

I began my Ashtanga practice for reasons much less noble than what I later learned many practitioners believe: that Ashtanga is “the path of internal purification for revealing the Universal Self.” Not me. I was motivated by a strong sense of vanity and a dislike of jogging.

Class opened with a Sanskrit chant:

vande gurūṇāṁ caraṇāravinde saṁdarśitasvātmasukhāvabodhe
niḥ śreyase jāṅ̇galikāyamāne saṁsāra hālāhala mohaśāntyai
ābāhu puruṣākāraṁ śaṅ̇khacakrāsi dhāriṇam
sahasra śirasaṁ śvetam praṇamāmi patañjalim

Which, I later learned, roughly translates to:

I bow to the lotus feet of the gurus,
The awakening happiness of one’s own self revealed,
Beyond better, acting like the jungle physician,
Pacifying delusion, the poison of samsara.
Taking the form of a man to the shoulders,
Holding a conch, a discus, and a sword,
One thousand heads white,
To Patanjali, I salute.

Have I scared you off yet? Don’t go. Ashtanga Yoga follows a strict set of philosophies, which I will attempt to study and chronicle in this ongoing series, but the beauty of attending class is that each session is what you want it to be. Just as you are welcomed to subscribe to the philosophies of Ashtanga, you are welcome not to.

If the above chant seems a little abstract, well, that’s because it is. But, the more I begin to explore the philosophies of Ashtanga, the clearer it becomes, and the more fascinated I get. I’ll attempt to dissect the above mantra (10th grade English style) in context of the philosophy and postures for one of the upcoming posts in this series.

First Class

At my first class, I did not chant. But I did sweat. A lot. After chanting come the vinyasas. A Vinyasa is a sequence of postures (essentially a sun salutation) designed to warm and awaken the body. You will perform dozens of vinyasas in your average Ashtanga class, and most open with at least eight repetitions of the sequence.

What that really means is that within the first ten minutes I was sweating bullets. After the vinyasas we began to move through the Ashtanga Primary Series, which is a strict set of postures that, traditionally, do not vary from class to class. Each posture is designed to complement the one before and after it, so the resulting practice becomes one of a deep exploration of the body.

Uh oh. Yoga speak. What I mean to say is that each posture leads into the next, meaning that your muscles become increasingly warm and flexible, allowing you to move into poses you might never have thought possible. Perhaps your blood is even thinning. (We’ll get to that in another post).

Goals

In this series I will attempt to study the Ashtanga philosophies alongside the asanas (postures). I hope to serve as both an informational and personal/anecdotal resource on Ashtanga Yoga. I am a new student of the practice myself, so please feel free to comment, correct or collaborate!

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