What Is Ashtanga Yoga
At its essence, Ashtanga Yoga is a movement meditation.
It is a methodology that is woven together with conscious breathing linked to movement. The teaching on the breath in Ashtanga is “free breathing with sound.”
This begins as an easy breath, one that can feel a bit shallow as one navigates the sequence of postures. Consistent practice brings a deeper and more meditative rhythm to the breath.
In the Ashtanga Yoga system, vinyasa means that with each movement there is only one breath. This element of the Ashtanga system is very often misunderstood. Your breath guides the practice.
Drishti is the gaze. Honoring the Drishti improves concentration. A soft intensional gaze brings structure and ease to the practice.
What does this mean? It is a practice in seeing what is, in whatever direction you are gazing. To see what is. Not your interpretation, idea, opinion, thoughts around it, or story about it. There is only observing what is happening.
With soft focus, (softness brings a willingness to include whatever is arising) no solid edges, we may deepen our concentration. It is also possible that we may not.
This is the practice.
We can’t know what will arise.
Learning to Adapt
Unawareness and an inability to adapt our bodies to the great amount of mental and physical stimulus of modern life creates gripping and misalignment in the dear body.
Ashtanga Yoga practice is asking us to tap into our innate ability to adapt.
Once the vertebrae of the lower spine have become glued from too much sitting or the shoulders have spent years overcompensating for unnatural amounts of pulling forward from working at the computer or other repetitive activities, the body has to work infinitely harder to compensate for the imbalances. The unawareness of the way we carry the body brings physical pain.
Ashtanga Yoga is a methodology.
The element of meditation, which is the primary aim of Ashtanga Yoga, is too often eliminated when we consider our spin to the practice.
Ashtanga Yoga is a form, like chanting or bowing in the Buddhist tradition, meant to be practiced within the framework of the series. This ensures total freedom to move within the context of the form of whatever series in which you are working.
What is being said is this - No side trips, “inhaling, draw the arms overhead.” Straight up. No flourish. No fancy swan diving to exhale and fold forward. Just exhale, fold forward.
In this form, when you are presented with a posture that feels impossible to master, this is an opportunity to observe the way the mind (our thought) searches out comfort, familiarity, right, and wrong, or a reason not to practice.
Ego will evaluate the situation, “why can’t I do Maricyasana D (twisting into a pretzel while in half lotus pose).” This is not an opportunity to execute the pose perfectly or challenge the strength of your body to do more, to add more, or even to get rid of expectation.
This moment of resistance in the body is an opportunity to realize the way the mind is continually attached to trying, resisting, wanting, averting, grasping, and turning away from discomfort. This is where we are faced with the activity of grasping the mind.
The Paradox
The paradox here is that we are encouraged to try to meet the qualifications of the posture. We take a breath and attempt to create beauty and space in the postures each day.
Some days there is space and so much joy in the body from the sweet balance of breath leading us into a forward fold or the expansion of a backbend.
We feel strength in the belly as if fully connected to the very center of who we are. This is called awareness. We listen carefully for the next move. Other days the practice feels heavy and monotonous.
The primary difference between the two is in the quality of attention. The beauty of working with the same series of postures by repeating postures each day is that we get to see that difference in the quality of attention. Mind activity asserts itself in myriad ways.
We are waking up to life in Yoga.