Ashtanga, Not Ancient Asceticism

Dear Yogis. 

I wrote last week about the knee injury I have and the posture that caused it. Perhaps it isn't surprising that after a year of lock-down, no cycling, inevitable loss of muscle mass, injury spies an opportunity. I remember David Swenson saying that yoga injuries come along because Ashtanga is an athletic endeavour undertaken by Alpha-types who like to push themselves as though they are athletes. Teacher Tim Miller proved the point by describing a posture whereby you put the soles of your feet flat on your abdomen (see picture). He wanted to make it better, more extreme, higher up and further out, and more than was asked of him.  

There’s a muddled history of pain in yoga. The ancients would practice forms of asceticism that were painful to the body in order to prove devotion. More recently, teachers could force a posture on an unwilling body while calling for devotion to the practice. Tim Millar said that Guruji, Patabhi Jois, forced him into backbends with such strong adjustments that: “I would hear a loud buzzing noise and everything in the room would get dark, as if I was about to lose consciousness”. It wasn’t uncommon to go to Mysore, the Mecca of the Ashanga world, and be wounded by a teacher’.  

I remember the No Pain No Gain attitude in Bikram yoga. In my first class the teacher shouted: ‘Your arms should hurt, your back should hurt, your legs should hurt, everything should hurt’. I heard in my first Bikram class that if you pass out it’s OK, it’s just your ego wanting attention. 

C’mon! This is rubbish. You might experience emotional pain in yoga. You might find yourself in tears at the end of a class. You might find that you can cope with difficult life situations because of your yoga practice. At no point should the physical practice wound you. There are so many reasons to practice yoga: to stretch, to have fun, to have ‘me time’, to meditate, to give the body some balance and elasticity, for injury prevention, to keep the spine young, to support a sport. Pick any or all of those reasons.  

Zoom Classes  

Join the class today at 4.30 today for a safe practice. Your home has so many props to make yoga easier and safer. If you’re practicing next to a bed or sofa, you have something to hold on to for trickier postures. You have the wall for balancing postures. Any of those can be used for squat pose to put your back against. You might have a small stool/foot stool to do standing forward folds if you can’t reach the floor. A rolled up bath towel for a small bolster. A hand towel for a belt. Come and have a go. 

Yoga in the news  

NBC News has: White women co-opted pandemic yoga. Now, South Asian instructors are taking it back. While many associate the start of yoga in the U.S. with the hippie movement of the 1960s, it was actually introduced much earlier. Actress Greta Garbo and her contemporaries learned yoga from Russian instructor Eugenie Peterson, who travelled to India in her 20s, changed her name to Indra Devi and brought yoga to Hollywood in the 1940s. 

The Daily Mail has: How subtle desk YOGA can help you boss your job. 'When I first started, I really just wanted to become good at yoga, which I first thought was about mastering difficult poses and balances and handstands, but while I did the course I realised I was bringing so many techniques from the mat into my everyday life at work’. 

SwimSwam has: Strengthen Your Self-Talk In a Skillful Way With Yoga. Self-talk is a person’s inner voice that interprets their experiences. It is tied to a person’s sense of self and serves at least two functions; instructional and motivational... It is estimated that we have around 60,000 thoughts each day... Why is negative self-talk so dangerous? Neuroscientist Rick Hanson puts it in simple terms, “The mind is like Velcro for negative thoughts and Teflon for positive ones.” 

The Independent has: 8 best kids yoga mats to encourage your little yogi. Some sweet present ideas should you need them. 

Have a sunny weekend.