REFORMATION OF AN ASHTANGA ZEALOT In this article I describe my history with Ashtanga Yoga, how my approach changed over the decades, some of the problems that I encountered, their solution and how this has influenced my teaching. How I came to Ashtanga: Initially I was only interested in the meditation and philosophy aspects of yoga and practiced and studied those for many years. I came to asana only once I realized that the vitality of my body had peaked. I tried out various yogas such as Satyananda and Iyengar but found them either not intense enough or too static. Meanwhile when travelling through India I heard that somebody was teaching Ashtanga Yoga, the apparently original yoga of Patanjali. I travelled to Mysore and interviewed the then teacher and meanwhile deceased K Pattabhi Jois, who confirmed that this was in fact the Patanjali yoga. Encouraged by this confirmation I set to work with great zeal, although initially surprised by just how much effort and vigor I had to invest into the practice. For many years I practiced asana for three or more hours per day. For quite a while I even did two asana practices per day. How I succeeded with Ashtanga: After I accepted just how much energy I had to put into it my body changed radically and quickly. I then hit it big time with Ashtanga. To this day and this is decades afterwards I have to credit Ashtanga with giving me a body that is capable of sitting in Padmasana and Siddhasana for seemingly endless sessions of pranayama and yogic meditation. But let’s not get ahead in our story. Boosted by physical prowess I turned into an Ashtanga zealot, with a strong fundamentalist tinge. To get my teacher authorization in India I had worked for many years very hard and tenaciously to complete the Intermediate Series of asanas. After I had achieved that goal I intended to enforce that standard by whatever means necessary. For this reason for a long time I only accepted apprentices that either had completed or were on the way to completing the Intermediate Series of asanas. I had lengthy discussions with my co-trainer and wife Monica (also an authorized teacher in this method) about this issue. She argued that physical proficiency should not be the only measure to assess readiness to become a teacher whereas my line of argument was to uphold the standard. First doubts: What makes a good teacher? While for many years I did not accept any apprentices that didn’t fit those criteria, I nevertheless started to critically assess whether there was any link between physical proficiency and ability to master challenging postures on one hand and the ability to teach yoga with its many aspects on the other. In the end I had to admit that there was very little connection. Most of my physically promising students did not go on to become great teachers. On the other hand there were many students at whom due to their physical limitations I initially sneered at, who went on to become excellent teachers. This is comparable to many other arts in life where the great trainers are not necessary the ones that are gifted in a particular discipline. To be gifted can mean that you do not have to enquire deeply into what’s necessary to succeed since you can just do what’s required. On the other hand if you are not gifted this can provoke a deep inquiry into what needs to be done to succeed. This in turn can lead to the capacity to convey that to other students who are also not gifted. That vast majority of our students will not be of the gifted variety. As teachers we need to learn to cater to those. The only area of teaching where it comes in handy to be an advanced asana practitioner is when you are teaching advanced postures. Looking back over decades of yoga experience this, however, takes less than 0.1% of my entire teaching activity, in other words it is a negligible part of the whole bandwidth of yoga teaching. I critically examined my trainees to find out what made some great teachers and others not and found that apart from immersion in all limbs of yoga (and not just asana) what played a role was continued theoretical study of the subject, the ability to communicate and finally and most importantly a feeling of self-love and self- acceptance in which atmosphere the student can heal and experience the same. This final and most important aspect of yoga teaching can be learned through spiritual practice (i.e. practice of the higher limbs) but it cannot be gained simply through asana. On the contrary I found cases in which a great, strong and powerful asana practice was actually driven by self-loathing and the need for self-punishment. Some practitioners force themselves to attain such a coveted practice simply because they found themselves unworthy of love, that is the opposite of self-acceptance. To heal such practitioners it would be necessary to instill into them that they are okay as they are. But what is being sold to them instead is the myth that they will be accepted as okay once they have achieved prowess in asana. More doubts: It’s not your practice it’s your genetic make-up. Looking back over a life that has been predominantly spent with yoga I have to say that contemporary Ashtanga places too much emphasis on the body and asana. I probably have seen tens of thousands of students and the outcome of this observation is that the most important contributor to your ability to perform fancy postures is not how much you practice, or how many years you practice or how intensely or how devotedly. I consider all of this a modern myth. The number one denominator is simple your genetic make-up, whether you got the right parents, the right shape of joints and bones, length of ligaments and muscle tension. Yes, you can alter things to a certain extent but if I see a new student entering the room I usually can tell within an hour how far they will make it in asana practice. To pretend that everybody if they just practiced enough could master all these postures is fooling them and creating a thirst within them that can probably never be quenched. How I changed: In the meantime I had two bad accidents, which meant that for quite a while I had to walk with the help of a stick. During that time I had to significantly modify my own practice. I asked myself what would my yoga be if my body was left, for example, quadriplegic. What would I do if I could not be an Ashtanga zealot anymore? Hang myself by means of my twisted yoga mat? Or was there more? What was this yoga about if we take the capable body away? For full article go to chintamaniyoga/asana/reformation-of-an-ashtanga-zealot/
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 04:08:45 +0000
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