Ashtanga Bonfire For Vanity

Dear Yogis,

Did you know that you’re not supposed to drink water during Ashtanga practice? It made me laugh this week that a yogi who never drinks in class, or pauses in any way before Savasana, drank copiously. Well! If you’ve just tumbled out of your Peloton class, that’s understandable. However, it recalled a yogi who stopped every three-to-five minutes for a drink. It made me wonder why the prop was needed; what in the mind was so strong that practice had to stop so often.

Drinking is forbidden in Ashtanga practice and some teachers are incredibly strict about it. The point is to purify and heal the body; ‘Yoga Chikitsa’, Ashtanga’s introductory series, means ‘Yoga Therapy’. The constant movement with long, drawn-out breaths builds heat in the body which helps stretch the muscles, oil the joints, bring healing to the body and burn impurities. That’s the therapy.

And what are these impurities? Knowing the ancient yogis as we do, we can guess that they were on a spiritual quest. They sought transformation worthy of the deities and so sought to burn their samskaras - imprints from previous births, inexplicable behaviours and karmic patterns. That’s what the fire is for – a bonfire for vanity. ‘Impurities’ is not a useful word until you think about what you can chuck onto your bonfire: negativity, self-limiting behaviour, bad habits, laziness, complacency, a distracted mind, anything that stops you from being the best version of yourself.

The internal fire we create in our practice is called ‘Tapas’. Fire is hugely significant in yoga and in Hinduism to symbolise purity and sacrifice. That’s why teachers might get annoyed if you constantly extinguish your fire!

Training

Lock down is giving us wonderful opportunities to practice anywhere in the world. This week, I’m going to Maui (11 hours behind BST) to practice with Nancy Gilgoff. David Williams was her partner in the 70s and the two of them brought Ashtanga Vinyassa out of Mysore and to the US by sponsoring K. Pattabhi Jois’ to visit the U.S. in 1975. If you are at all interested in Ashtanga, it’s worth noting the names of the people who discovered Mysore in the 70s and brought it to us. Try to practice with them.

Zoom Classes

I know that some of you can’t wait to get back to class. It seems that all of us in the class, online or otherwise, have a unique connection… we participate in healing, growing, and becoming more self-aware together. I don’t feel the loss of our connection online. The energy of a class has the potential to give you a lift all the way through until your next class.  

Join us! Book an evening class here: goodtimesyoga.co.uk/book-online. It’s PayPal but let me know if you would prefer my bank details. No problem. Classes are a fiver or £12 for the week or a donation of your choice or, if you fancy private classes, £30.

Yoga in the news

The Metro Has: Sweaty Betty ditches ‘insensitive’ Sanskrit names for yoga gymwear. Thanks to BLM, ‘we’ve made the decision to rename some of our products where Sanskrit words were used in the wrong context. Our previous names included Brahma, the name of a Hindu God and Namaste, a sacred greeting. Separated from their sacred foundations, this felt insensitive and we felt it was inappropriate to sell products using these culturally important words’.

Marketing Week has: In a virtual marketplace, only the strongest brands will survive. Entertaining article about the writer's wife's online yoga experience, the bewildering choice of teachers that comes with ‘the death of distance’ and the future for her regular private yoga teacher who may be in for a big pay day or a big fall now that yoga customers have ‘enormous bargaining power’ and more famous alternatives.