Present-Day Pretzel Practice

Dear Yogis.

Isn’t it funny that yoga teachers (like me) repeat ad nauseam that yoga is about meditation... yet classes are all about the postures! We site the Bhagavad Gita as the foundation stone of practice which describes yoga’s goal as to connect with the supreme. Even Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, also a bible for yogis, has no idea how hard Rotated Side Angle Posture is or what to do with an Uddiyana Bandha! So how did yoga move from wanting us to merge our conscious with the divine to our present-day pretzel practice? 

Major teachers BKS Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Desikachar and Indra Devi had a teacher in common in Mysore –Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. He was the yoga innovator but attributed his interpretations to a revelation he got from the sage Nathamuni who lived in the 9th century AD. The revelation was of a text called The Yoga Rahasya, the sage’s work on ‘the secrets of yoga’. 

This was a smart PR move. Krishnamacharya taught athletic yoga at the Mysore Palace in the 1920s and 30s when India was going through a fitness and strength phase. He combined yoga with body-building culture and European gymnastics and calisthenics. (Yoga Body by Mark Singleton is a brilliant read on this.) The pranayama and cleansing rituals, meditation and chanting took a back seat, as did the magic and the mind-boggling physical feats like slowing breath, being buried and dug up alive. Step forward body-centred, athletic, fitness and health yoga with divine sanction! 

Desikachar, Son of Krishnamacharya, said of his father while he was still learning from him: he is still discovering new postures, he varies and modifies postures according to individual requirements, he uses supports or aids, he explored the use of breath in postures, he linked asanas like words in a sentence and, lastly, 'he has conceived the idea of vinyasa'. 'He also put forward the idea that asana is svadhyaya; that is to say, it allows us to understand something about ourselves'. 

That’s our yoga! 

Zoom Classes 

Hopefully the 3.3 Richter Scale shaker spun your chakras this week in class! Thank you for turning on your lights this week. I’m happy to see you and not teach into the dark! I’m having a lovely time meeting your babies, children/grandchildren, cats and dogs. I really love teaching online. If you’ve come on yoga retreat with me, you’ll have met my Mum! You might meet her online too. Last Monday she had forgotten where I was and was looking for me! Ahhhh! I’m getting her a reclining chair to make her a special corner in the studio. 

Yoga in the news 

The Guardian has: 'I'd be the only black person at yoga': meet the fitness trailblazers diversifying the wellness industry. Five trailblazers talk about what they’re doing to help break down barriers. 

The Philadelphia Inquirer has:Marian S. Garfinkel, associate professor and advocate of yoga for healing, dies at 88. ‘Ms. Garfinkel was the lead author of a study, “Evaluation of a yoga-based regimen for treatment of osteoarthritis of the hands,” in the Journal of Rheumatology. And in 1998, she was the lead author of a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing how yoga could be used to treat carpal tunnel syndrome’. 

The Telegraph has:How yoga can help with your post-lockdown sleep recovery. A survey by researchers at King’s College London has suggested that half the UK population has struggled with sleep since lockdown. “Your body is designed to tighten against threat, to protect you. The problem is that this tensed-up and protective state can easily become chronic, and long after highly stressful events have passed, your body can carry a lot of unnecessary tension... This can affect not only your musculature but also your body’s hormonal functioning. In other words, tension sabotages your sleep by ‘breaking’ the mechanisms of relaxation”. “Yoga helps you become more resilient, to centre yourself, and digest all your concerns”. 

It’s warm this weekend. Have a lovely time.