You can view this post on my new blog!
I am pleased to announce a new installment of the Asana Kitchen. For the next three weeks I will be posting parts 1-3 of the challenging and beautiful Viparita Chakarasana, otherwise known as Tic Tac’s. I would like to thank all of my students who participated in the filming, Joy for editing the epic post, and Claudia who not only asked the question but also filmed herself doing the posture. Sending in a video was a great way for me to directly see what she needed to work on.
I hope you find the instruction helpful!
Hari Om,
David
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Ashtanga Yoga and the Secret of Mula Bandha
Greetings,
I have been working on this piece in my head for months and finally I have completed the article!! I am happy to share it with you and I feel like it is an important and crucial aspect to the practice.
I would also like mention that I have opened up the Ashtanga Yoga School in Philadelphia. If you are ever in the area I invite you to practice with me and the amazing Philadelphia students. You can also read this post on my new blog!!
Hari Om,
David
Part I
Ashtanga Yoga (as in the 8 limbs) begins with Ahimsa, non-harming. Yama is the first limb of the eight limbs and ahimsa is the first Yama. Thus ahimsa can be considered the base, the very foundation and support of the 8 eight limbs. Consider the use of the word ahimsa, the main root himsa, means violence, harm, aggression. When you add the “A” in front of it it becomes ahimsa, the opposite of himsa. The use of the word Ahimsa in this ‘negative’ manner is intentional. For example the first yama could have been ‘peace’ or ‘care’ but instead it is stated as the opposite of non peace. That is because himsa is simply inherent, part of you and me, an automatic, survival response to fear and/or perceived threat.
Often emotionally we start from himsa, we are born with a bent, a tendency to express aggression and violence under certain circumstances. In order to get to peace or empathy, we need to find our way through our aggression by cultivating its opposite. You must adopt a conscious stance or intention that helps you turn your energy around and go ‘against the grain’; to find a different choice, as was practiced by both Gandhi and MLK.
Stated positively Ahimsa means care, extraordinarily high level, genuine, deep, sustained care; the kind of care that begins within your body when you take up a serious, soulful asana practice. Curiously both mula bandha and ahimsa are found together there. They are both foundational, core practices that involve harnessing the powerful energy that exists in the form of deep drives within us. Mula bandha and ahimsa involve redirection of this energy, a causing of this energy to move out of mundane channels, to flow along spiritual channels to draw forth what is real and what has truth within us.
Ahimsa and mula bandha meet as two complimentary allies in your daily practice, in fact with practice you discover they are one and the same practice. In yoga when you enter into the body, you enter into your center, the realm of mula bandha, the root support at the base of the spine. Breathing, moving, and creating your stance, or posture from center gives you a kind of empathy and willingness to be open to your self, leads you to relate to and work to understand anything and everything that occurs within you. This is the basis of ahimsa and the foundation of yoga practice. You find that in order to get a grip on the practice of ahimsa, you must also work on mula bandha and vice versa.
Guruji insisted on the importance of practicing and performing Mula Bandha. He said that mula bandha is a contraction of the anus, gives mind control and must be practiced 24/7. In a recent conference with Sharath Jois (Guruji’s grandson), Sharath related a story about how he asked Guruji about the difficulties he was having with a challenging section of an advanced series postures. This set of postures requires you to alternate between opposing postural patterns (ie extreme extension to flexion etc) without a warm up, without the hand holding type of continuity of first or second or even third series offers. Guruji told Sharath it was only possible to master this sequence by achieving a strong Mula Bandha. This story lit up the point that you practice Mula Bandha to strengthen your base, your center so as to be able to choose more freely both physically and psychologically, and thus not get caught in one kind of pattern or groove. You become oriented and strong in the middle, in your core, and become capable of switching between patterns, even extreme opposites with relative ease. Mula bandha could be defined as ‘the ability to stay rooted and centered with ease and thus to stop and redirect your self as is desired and necessary. Ahimsa requires this same ability, you must learn how to respond creatively to the strong drives within you, neither blindly following their dictates, nor rejecting their power and the directions they may be indicating that you need to explore.
Part II
The need to be able to redirect your energy is true in an asana sense, but more important, it’s true in a psychological sense. When Guruji spoke of Mula Bandha giving ‘mind control’ he meant precisely this, that to apply mula bandha, you have to have enough mental strength to ‘stop’ the patterns of mind that take you away from where you want to go. You have be able to do this as immediately as you are able; with sharp, razor like control that is coupled with receptive, insightful care. Without mula bandha, without inhabiting your center, you won’t have the immovable stance, nor the mental maturity that you need, and so you will frequently and even helplessly watch your self think and behave in ways that are against your innards.
Anger often bursts upon you with a swiftness when it comes, as do other strong emotions. Before you know it you’ve said or done something harmful to your self and/or others. Working with your base, mula bandha allows you to match the energy of those emotions and thus to diffuse or re channel that energy and transform it into something else, something more right, more appropriate to the situation, more creative and personally empowering to you. In part the trick is in the timing; can you catch your self, reflect, let go of the grudge, make a different choice. Can you do it now, or in 10 minutes, or an hour, or a day, (or years later in your head)?
The reasons we waste our energy in harmful and small ways is at least in part based on a fundamental unwillingness to face our pain and fears in timely, sustained ways and with enough commitment and emotional engagement to change ourselves. And we also waste our energy simply because we’ve forgotten how to just be happy, how to celebrate life with ease, and how to be truly joyous as happens when we are involved creatively in our lives or when we just simply stop and breathe and tune in what is here exactly now.
But frequently, rather than really see ourselves moment to moment with our contradiction, weakness, vulnerability, insecurity, and emotional nakedness, we’ll pass up the thrills and joys of now, and instead, we’ll dissipate energy, let our power go down and out of the body somehow. We’ll indulge in something in one way or another whether it’s anger, envy or something that promises immediate happiness. And we’ll convince ourselves that it’s alright this time, and fail to remember how many times and for how many years we’ve let it be ok ‘this time’.
Maya (ignorance, or the veil) lulls us into drowsiness and steals our sense of the passage of time. We can become bafflingly unreflective, meanwhile the life we want floats by, mirage like, our dreams shimmering up ahead hazily out of reach but tantalizing close, close enough and distinct enough to feel real. And yet the years pass and we’re still eating when not hungry, drinking or smoking or shopping or watching tv or computering to forget our pain or how hard it all seems. We’re still pushing away the intimacy we so long for, and finding ourselves caught in our personal round of ‘life drama’s’ ‘that seem to come up one after the other and effectively sap our energies and prevent growth.
Mula bandha’s relationship to ahimsa provides a vital link between the physical practice and the emotional, mental aspects of practice. I don’t only do mula bandha so that I can perfect my ’float’ in jump backs. Those jump backs need to be connected to a greater awakening within myself. Can I bring that same grace and power to my emotional life, to my hidden attitudes about myself, to my behavior in relationships and even to such basic things as my eating patterns. Practicing mula bandha as ahimsa gives you the ability to close the gap between the little you and the you as your unique expression of the Divine Self, the Cosmic Magician, The Trickster, The Beloved, the Secret one, the one with a Thunderous Voice, the one you really wish and yearn to be.
Some examples of redirection of Prana to be able to switch back and forth between these as the need dictates, without ‘stickiness’ and immediately as possible:
anger to forgiveness
envy to appreciation
fear to faith
shouting to listening
craving to contentment
aversion to indifference
superficial to deep
gross to subtle
judgement to empaathy
blue to red, red to blue
scarcity to abundance
taking to giving
peripheral to central
inherent sadness, depression to inherent joy,
will and effort to receptivity, being
Saturday, March 26, 2011
The Doubt in Faith
Hello,
I am back in the US touring and teaching. You can find my updated teaching schedule on my website. You can also read this post on my new blog! www.davidgarrigues.com/blog
Filling and Refilling Yoga’s 5 Jars
(Or Qualities to Cultivate for Progress in Practice)
Sraddha—-FAITH
Virya———ENERGY/STRENGTH
Smrti———MEMORY
Samadhi—-MEDITATION
Prajna——-AWAKENING OF WISDOM OR INSIGHT
Found in Yoga Sutra 1-20, this unique combination of qualities are meant to be cultivated and are the gifts of your practice. They can be thought of as 5 jars that you want to fill and keep filling. Note that these jars can be difficult to fill, can easily become depleted, the contents can get used up without your noticing, and you can also easily neglect to fill them back up.
Each person will have a different relationship to the qualities and jars. Sometimes one or two of the jars will seem very large compared to the others. These larger jars will be easier to fill up, easier to keep a ready supply of, and will take longer to deplete. Other jars will be very small, difficult to fill, hard to keep stocked and to replenish. It can be challenging to get an accurate sense of exactly what your relationship to each one is at a given time. For example do I have a big jar of faith that is easy to re-fill, how much faith (vs doubt) about Spirituality and/or my individual path do I really have? How easy is it for me to trust the inner work I’m doing and trust that this personal work is connected to something important, something larger then my ego, something that will lead to healing and wisdom within me and extend to the world around me? The difference between what I believe consciously and what I believe unconsciously might make accurate awareness elusive and therefore thwart my sincere attempts to acquire any given quality.
To make an accurate accessment about my ready supply of these five qualities I need to be able to observe myself carefully and without judgement. If I struggle wtih doubt often, then I need to know that about my self. I need to know that the faith jar will be challenging to fill up and might get depleted easily. But the tricky part is I may also not feel ready to fully face and accept my small doubts nor my large doubt. Here’s a little story that illustrates some of my struggles with faith vs doubt.
Recently I was really chewing on the idea of faith in practice. I felt sorry for a student of mine who is very rational and very skeptical of anything he can’t see. He asked me if he can keep practicing if he doesn’t buy into any of the Hindu underpinnings that are present in Yoga. He dismisses reincarnation, God, prayer, and approaches his study from a perspective of philosophical inquiry with it’s high regard for skepticism and reliance on rational thought. But its not as simple as that because he also doesn’t at all feel like practice is merely physical and finds the idea of practice as a glorified gym workout singularly distasteful. He states plainly that he doesn’t do Yoga for merely physical reasons. Listening to his struggle, I felt so blessed for my seeming ease wtih FAITH. I thought that somehow there’s part of me that simply ‘knows’ that there is a purpose each of us has to fulfill–that our consciousness is meant to be used for realizing the ‘ truth’ or ‘goodness’ of everything, of the Source.
I thought I was done considering the possibility of, ‘What if I believe there is nothing inherently spiritual about people or things? What if I deeply question whether there is any purpose, any grand truth? What if this is all random, meaningless, and there is no ultimate realization or meaning or something that existence is leading to?’
I was mulling all this over when I saw a low budget sign in front of a fire station. This sign had removable letters so that the firemen could post different messages frequently to keep passersby interested. The message on this day read:
SMALL DOUBT SMALL FAITH
GREAT DOUBT GREAT FAITH
Wow!! Revelation—-Faith does not mean blind faith, easy faith. This caused me to really look within, to see the small ways that I lack faith, to see how frequently and largely I doubt both Spirituality in a collective sense and my own personal relationship to my faith. When I really dig down inside I see that faith is something I have wrestled out of my doubt–one practice at a time–something I’ve agonized over and continue to agonize over especially when it’s time to apply my faith. When you look within I imagine you’ll find your supply of faith is contained in a jar you lovingly fill as you pour energy, unstintingly into your practice. Its a freeing and powerful realization that having doubt, large or small, is not necessarily a sign of a lack of faith. It could be quite the reverse–and that could explain why my student so clearly knows that practice is so much more than physical and yet he is not going to pray to Ganesh or take a set of beliefs such as those of reincarnation that don’t fit for him.
Furthermore when you really consider your practice and your relationship to any of these five qualities, you will likely see that, in the long term, none of these jars are easy to fill, nor to keep filled. If you think one of them comes easily, it may behoove you to look again, and see if there is more depth to explore.
Each quality has to be artfully chiseled as a stone mason does when she patiently, one hammer stroke at a time, fashions a figure out of stone. Your ability to meditate (samadhi) to become entirely mentally absorbed in what is unfolding within you will be hewn painstakingly out of your practice. Prajna-wisdom born from deep within your body will also come, hard won, from your practice. Indeed you fashion your energy, insight, faith, concentration, and your memory out of the long string of daily practices performed lovingly with great patience and care.
In closing here’s a little poem that speaks to the challenge of filling and refilling the jars:
How soon do you forget what you just learned in practice? Almost immediately
How soon does doubt replace faith? Almost immediately
How soon is meditation replaced by distraction and scatteredness? Almost immediately
How soon is the bright fire you kindled during practice diminished to a faint glow in the hearth? Almost immediately
How soon is the wisdom you gain, even the deep wisdom covered by ignorance? Almost immediately
There it is, But
I and you begin again
Almost Immediately
I am back in the US touring and teaching. You can find my updated teaching schedule on my website. You can also read this post on my new blog! www.davidgarrigues.com/blog
Filling and Refilling Yoga’s 5 Jars
(Or Qualities to Cultivate for Progress in Practice)
Sraddha—-FAITH
Virya———ENERGY/STRENGTH
Smrti———MEMORY
Samadhi—-MEDITATION
Prajna——-AWAKENING OF WISDOM OR INSIGHT
Found in Yoga Sutra 1-20, this unique combination of qualities are meant to be cultivated and are the gifts of your practice. They can be thought of as 5 jars that you want to fill and keep filling. Note that these jars can be difficult to fill, can easily become depleted, the contents can get used up without your noticing, and you can also easily neglect to fill them back up.
Each person will have a different relationship to the qualities and jars. Sometimes one or two of the jars will seem very large compared to the others. These larger jars will be easier to fill up, easier to keep a ready supply of, and will take longer to deplete. Other jars will be very small, difficult to fill, hard to keep stocked and to replenish. It can be challenging to get an accurate sense of exactly what your relationship to each one is at a given time. For example do I have a big jar of faith that is easy to re-fill, how much faith (vs doubt) about Spirituality and/or my individual path do I really have? How easy is it for me to trust the inner work I’m doing and trust that this personal work is connected to something important, something larger then my ego, something that will lead to healing and wisdom within me and extend to the world around me? The difference between what I believe consciously and what I believe unconsciously might make accurate awareness elusive and therefore thwart my sincere attempts to acquire any given quality.
To make an accurate accessment about my ready supply of these five qualities I need to be able to observe myself carefully and without judgement. If I struggle wtih doubt often, then I need to know that about my self. I need to know that the faith jar will be challenging to fill up and might get depleted easily. But the tricky part is I may also not feel ready to fully face and accept my small doubts nor my large doubt. Here’s a little story that illustrates some of my struggles with faith vs doubt.
Recently I was really chewing on the idea of faith in practice. I felt sorry for a student of mine who is very rational and very skeptical of anything he can’t see. He asked me if he can keep practicing if he doesn’t buy into any of the Hindu underpinnings that are present in Yoga. He dismisses reincarnation, God, prayer, and approaches his study from a perspective of philosophical inquiry with it’s high regard for skepticism and reliance on rational thought. But its not as simple as that because he also doesn’t at all feel like practice is merely physical and finds the idea of practice as a glorified gym workout singularly distasteful. He states plainly that he doesn’t do Yoga for merely physical reasons. Listening to his struggle, I felt so blessed for my seeming ease wtih FAITH. I thought that somehow there’s part of me that simply ‘knows’ that there is a purpose each of us has to fulfill–that our consciousness is meant to be used for realizing the ‘ truth’ or ‘goodness’ of everything, of the Source.
I thought I was done considering the possibility of, ‘What if I believe there is nothing inherently spiritual about people or things? What if I deeply question whether there is any purpose, any grand truth? What if this is all random, meaningless, and there is no ultimate realization or meaning or something that existence is leading to?’
I was mulling all this over when I saw a low budget sign in front of a fire station. This sign had removable letters so that the firemen could post different messages frequently to keep passersby interested. The message on this day read:
SMALL DOUBT SMALL FAITH
GREAT DOUBT GREAT FAITH
Wow!! Revelation—-Faith does not mean blind faith, easy faith. This caused me to really look within, to see the small ways that I lack faith, to see how frequently and largely I doubt both Spirituality in a collective sense and my own personal relationship to my faith. When I really dig down inside I see that faith is something I have wrestled out of my doubt–one practice at a time–something I’ve agonized over and continue to agonize over especially when it’s time to apply my faith. When you look within I imagine you’ll find your supply of faith is contained in a jar you lovingly fill as you pour energy, unstintingly into your practice. Its a freeing and powerful realization that having doubt, large or small, is not necessarily a sign of a lack of faith. It could be quite the reverse–and that could explain why my student so clearly knows that practice is so much more than physical and yet he is not going to pray to Ganesh or take a set of beliefs such as those of reincarnation that don’t fit for him.
Furthermore when you really consider your practice and your relationship to any of these five qualities, you will likely see that, in the long term, none of these jars are easy to fill, nor to keep filled. If you think one of them comes easily, it may behoove you to look again, and see if there is more depth to explore.
Each quality has to be artfully chiseled as a stone mason does when she patiently, one hammer stroke at a time, fashions a figure out of stone. Your ability to meditate (samadhi) to become entirely mentally absorbed in what is unfolding within you will be hewn painstakingly out of your practice. Prajna-wisdom born from deep within your body will also come, hard won, from your practice. Indeed you fashion your energy, insight, faith, concentration, and your memory out of the long string of daily practices performed lovingly with great patience and care.
In closing here’s a little poem that speaks to the challenge of filling and refilling the jars:
How soon do you forget what you just learned in practice? Almost immediately
How soon does doubt replace faith? Almost immediately
How soon is meditation replaced by distraction and scatteredness? Almost immediately
How soon is the bright fire you kindled during practice diminished to a faint glow in the hearth? Almost immediately
How soon is the wisdom you gain, even the deep wisdom covered by ignorance? Almost immediately
There it is, But
I and you begin again
Almost Immediately
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Ashtanga Yoga Discussion Room: Reactions and Responses
To view on my new blog!
Greetings!
I'm pleased to offer a new short video discussion on reactions during practice. I speak about how to cultivate the mental power, to sift through various mental states, and how to identify the types of thoughts, emotions or reactions that are worthy of care and attention.
Also, Joy and I have created a new Facebook fan page for David Garrigues Yoga and will be using it as a platform to post daily blog like ideas and thoughts. We invite you to join us and help create a daily community on the Ashtanga Practice.
Greetings!
I'm pleased to offer a new short video discussion on reactions during practice. I speak about how to cultivate the mental power, to sift through various mental states, and how to identify the types of thoughts, emotions or reactions that are worthy of care and attention.
Also, Joy and I have created a new Facebook fan page for David Garrigues Yoga and will be using it as a platform to post daily blog like ideas and thoughts. We invite you to join us and help create a daily community on the Ashtanga Practice.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
from David's Ashtanga Journals: Physical and Mental Edge
To read this post on my new updated BLOG!!
I am constantly writing (in notebooks) about the practice. The writings are usually ideas or drafts for blogs, scripts for videos, or random personal thoughts. Joy loves to flip through them and says she finds a lot of helpful notes. A couple of weeks ago she threw out the idea that I should start posting some of them. Here's one, enjoy! David
"Here's what I say--go for it with all your might and gusto-put everything you have into achieving your asana's but...for christ sake---please play safe, be smart, stay alert to how you are treating your body--Think long term--aligning your edges.
The physical edge is how you push yourself physically--the intensity with which (you) meet your challenges, how much time and energy you put into developing your asana practice. The edge is the risk zone, the zone of discomfort. The physical place where you are not comfortable, where you find yourself wanting to escape somehow--you want to shift positions, move, adjust--where you feel strong sensations within your body--whether forward or backward bending, each person has a place where fear arises, where there are feelings of insecurity or doubt, success or failure is not certain--where things become physically challenging, more strength then you have may be required, or more flexibility-----A significant part of asana practice is to encounter physical hardship, it is by challenging yourself physically that the body becomes firm, strong, and healthy--the strong body enables you to work with your mind. As you develop the capacity to extend your physical edge you become ready to work with more mental aspects of practice--
You begin to work with your mental edge. The mental edge refers to working with expanding your awareness and focusing on your mental challenges. The types of emotional responses that habitually come up for you given circumstances. Just as you develop your physical practice through Yoga, there is a process of developing mental and emotional maturity---The mental edge arises where you have resistance in your emotional response or to how you behave. Pattabhis Jois used to talk about mind control and about strengthening your mind. The mental edge occurs when you feel your self responding to a situation involuntarily, seemingly without your consent--a mood over takes you, all of a sudden you are angry or envious--and you respond in a way that doesn't feel right, but you persist in that response because you don't have the mental strength or emotional maturity to express a more fitting response.
You have the opportunity during Yoga practice to encounter your mental edges. They can be less obvious and thus more difficult to pin point. Your mental response to what you experience in your asana work can help you remove the coverings that obscure your wisdom. To intentionally pay attention to what comes up for you mentally during practice adds an essential dimension to your work and reveals deeper layers of practice."
I am constantly writing (in notebooks) about the practice. The writings are usually ideas or drafts for blogs, scripts for videos, or random personal thoughts. Joy loves to flip through them and says she finds a lot of helpful notes. A couple of weeks ago she threw out the idea that I should start posting some of them. Here's one, enjoy! David
"Here's what I say--go for it with all your might and gusto-put everything you have into achieving your asana's but...for christ sake---please play safe, be smart, stay alert to how you are treating your body--Think long term--aligning your edges.
The physical edge is how you push yourself physically--the intensity with which (you) meet your challenges, how much time and energy you put into developing your asana practice. The edge is the risk zone, the zone of discomfort. The physical place where you are not comfortable, where you find yourself wanting to escape somehow--you want to shift positions, move, adjust--where you feel strong sensations within your body--whether forward or backward bending, each person has a place where fear arises, where there are feelings of insecurity or doubt, success or failure is not certain--where things become physically challenging, more strength then you have may be required, or more flexibility-----A significant part of asana practice is to encounter physical hardship, it is by challenging yourself physically that the body becomes firm, strong, and healthy--the strong body enables you to work with your mind. As you develop the capacity to extend your physical edge you become ready to work with more mental aspects of practice--
You begin to work with your mental edge. The mental edge refers to working with expanding your awareness and focusing on your mental challenges. The types of emotional responses that habitually come up for you given circumstances. Just as you develop your physical practice through Yoga, there is a process of developing mental and emotional maturity---The mental edge arises where you have resistance in your emotional response or to how you behave. Pattabhis Jois used to talk about mind control and about strengthening your mind. The mental edge occurs when you feel your self responding to a situation involuntarily, seemingly without your consent--a mood over takes you, all of a sudden you are angry or envious--and you respond in a way that doesn't feel right, but you persist in that response because you don't have the mental strength or emotional maturity to express a more fitting response.
You have the opportunity during Yoga practice to encounter your mental edges. They can be less obvious and thus more difficult to pin point. Your mental response to what you experience in your asana work can help you remove the coverings that obscure your wisdom. To intentionally pay attention to what comes up for you mentally during practice adds an essential dimension to your work and reveals deeper layers of practice."
Monday, January 24, 2011
Sharath's Conference January 23, 2011
Hello Students,
Joy and I made a video of Sharath’s conference on Sunday. It takes a second to load up but it does work. I have recently updated my workshop schedule for the spring and summer. Please take a look at it and hopefully we will be able to connect!
I also want to remind you that if you follow my blog I have switched over to a new one! So please subscribe it. In a couple of weeks I won't be posting to this blog anymore.
Hari Om,
David
Joy and I made a video of Sharath’s conference on Sunday. It takes a second to load up but it does work. I have recently updated my workshop schedule for the spring and summer. Please take a look at it and hopefully we will be able to connect!
I also want to remind you that if you follow my blog I have switched over to a new one! So please subscribe it. In a couple of weeks I won't be posting to this blog anymore.
Hari Om,
David
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Sharath's Conference January 16th, 2011
Joy: Do we list this under the category of advanced practices?
David: No this is actually very basic classical yoga 101 stuff. Sharath presented this on purpose to the whole group who range from raw beginners to serious veterans. These concepts are fundamental and point to how to purify your body and better inwardly view the practice. I guarantee that most veteran Ashtanga heads have practiced at least some of these kriyas (Neti, Nauli, Trataka, Kapalabhati) as a way of furthering internal cleansing and better understanding their ashtanga practice.
Reflections on Sharath's conference
Sharath spoke about each of the **6 classic yogic cleansing practices (Kriya's-Neti, Nauli, Dhauti, Vasti, Trataka, Kapalabhati see below) and concluded that Ashtanga practice achieves the same benefits and thus largely replaces these practices. However because Sharath took the time to discuss these practices, I conclude that knowledge of these can give you new and valuable ideas for how to think and approach your ashtanga practice.
For example take Neti, Nauli, Dhauti, and Vasti; all of these relate to cleansing the entire digestive tract from mouth to anus. The quality, quantity, breadth, depth and intensity of the asana work we do in ashtanga is equally potent for thorough internal cleansing that includes purifying the digestive tract. This simple fact alone can inspire you to practice and help carry you across challenging times such as when you pass through a phase where you lack motivation to get up and get on the mat. Sharath spoke about how continuing to do this practice can help you look 10 to 15 years younger than your age-- largely due to the digestive fire that results from practice. He even quipped that the answer to the perennial question 'Why do you do Yoga?' is 'to look younger'--what more reason do you need?--ha!
Also, the proper use of Jalandhara, Uddhyana, and Mula bandha's helps your body emulate and thus receive the same benefits as the 4 above mentioned cleansing practices. When you use ujjayi breathing to draw the breath in from the root of the palate, the flow of prana through the nasal passages and sinuses clears these passages, similar to the use of a neti pot. And frequently working with the 'take it up' action of mula bandha during vinyasa transitions can simulate the same sort of drawing up action from your base that vasti asks for. Also as you practice, the continual moderate lift of Uddhyana Bandha coupled with awareness of redirecting apana vayu upwards when inhaling and exhaling can create an equally effective nauli like 'churning' of the abdominal region.
The similiarities between dristi and trataka are obvious; essentially dristi is a form of trataka and the fact that both systems emphasize the value of gazing in practice serves as a reminder that meditation and all inner work are greatly enhanced by cultivating awareness of where and how you orient your self visually. The movements of the spine are intimately connected with how you orient your posture through your eyes and what you see moment to moment. Both meditation and graceful movement have origins in awareness of the integrity of the body's central axis from the base, seat of Mula Bandha, along the length of the spine to the neck and head and finally through eyes in the form of the gaze, the Dristi.
Sharath briefly demonstrated the technique of kalapabhati, suggesting that people try it, and thus somewhat singled it out as a practice that could perhaps add dimension to your breath work and provide something energetically new that straightforward ujjayi might not provide.
Lastly Sharath spoke about what Yoga ultimately is about: 'uncovering the God within'. Each person is Brahman (the 'real, conscious, blissful' Self) but there are enemies within, anger, greed, jealousy, delusion, etc that cover this truth. I find it helpful to sit with the image of covering versus uncovering--yoga practice dissolves the coverings that obscure us and thus helps us uncover our Spirit. We can too easily make the mistake of thinking that the 'positive' coverings, the more superficial, outer pursuits are all there is and not even bother to dig down, go inwards, cross our joyous and challenging waters and sort through our inner enemies, our blindness to our strengths as well to our greed and our anger. And also we can feel like there is something wrong with us for our hunger, our need to search for depth and meaning, something wrong for being 'unhappy' or dissatisfied or having to struggle so much to make progress on our paths. To me Ashtanga or any serious spiritual practice is not necessarily for the 'happy', the well adapted, the contented, the ones who find what they are looking for in getting, spending, or who continue to place more value in pursuits outside of themselves. Ashtanga is for the hungry, the ones who have something gnawing inside, the ones who honestly aren't happy accepting complacent norms. Ashtanga is for those who are alive with intense feelings that there are worlds to discover, worlds that are found by reaching passionately inwards for expression that will contribute to personal and collective healing.
**The Six Cleansing Techniques (Shat Kriya's)
Neti: Using a water pot for nasal passage and sinus clearing.
Nauli: Abdominal churning
Dhauti: Cleansing by swallowing cloth
Vasti: Cleansing through natural colonics
Trataka: Fixed gazing or gazing at a single point.
Kapalabhati: Pranayama through technique. Exhalation active, inhalation passive
I found a swami demonstrating Kapalabhati. The video certainly has its own style. Enjoy!
David: No this is actually very basic classical yoga 101 stuff. Sharath presented this on purpose to the whole group who range from raw beginners to serious veterans. These concepts are fundamental and point to how to purify your body and better inwardly view the practice. I guarantee that most veteran Ashtanga heads have practiced at least some of these kriyas (Neti, Nauli, Trataka, Kapalabhati) as a way of furthering internal cleansing and better understanding their ashtanga practice.
Reflections on Sharath's conference
Sharath spoke about each of the **6 classic yogic cleansing practices (Kriya's-Neti, Nauli, Dhauti, Vasti, Trataka, Kapalabhati see below) and concluded that Ashtanga practice achieves the same benefits and thus largely replaces these practices. However because Sharath took the time to discuss these practices, I conclude that knowledge of these can give you new and valuable ideas for how to think and approach your ashtanga practice.
For example take Neti, Nauli, Dhauti, and Vasti; all of these relate to cleansing the entire digestive tract from mouth to anus. The quality, quantity, breadth, depth and intensity of the asana work we do in ashtanga is equally potent for thorough internal cleansing that includes purifying the digestive tract. This simple fact alone can inspire you to practice and help carry you across challenging times such as when you pass through a phase where you lack motivation to get up and get on the mat. Sharath spoke about how continuing to do this practice can help you look 10 to 15 years younger than your age-- largely due to the digestive fire that results from practice. He even quipped that the answer to the perennial question 'Why do you do Yoga?' is 'to look younger'--what more reason do you need?--ha!
Also, the proper use of Jalandhara, Uddhyana, and Mula bandha's helps your body emulate and thus receive the same benefits as the 4 above mentioned cleansing practices. When you use ujjayi breathing to draw the breath in from the root of the palate, the flow of prana through the nasal passages and sinuses clears these passages, similar to the use of a neti pot. And frequently working with the 'take it up' action of mula bandha during vinyasa transitions can simulate the same sort of drawing up action from your base that vasti asks for. Also as you practice, the continual moderate lift of Uddhyana Bandha coupled with awareness of redirecting apana vayu upwards when inhaling and exhaling can create an equally effective nauli like 'churning' of the abdominal region.
The similiarities between dristi and trataka are obvious; essentially dristi is a form of trataka and the fact that both systems emphasize the value of gazing in practice serves as a reminder that meditation and all inner work are greatly enhanced by cultivating awareness of where and how you orient your self visually. The movements of the spine are intimately connected with how you orient your posture through your eyes and what you see moment to moment. Both meditation and graceful movement have origins in awareness of the integrity of the body's central axis from the base, seat of Mula Bandha, along the length of the spine to the neck and head and finally through eyes in the form of the gaze, the Dristi.
Sharath briefly demonstrated the technique of kalapabhati, suggesting that people try it, and thus somewhat singled it out as a practice that could perhaps add dimension to your breath work and provide something energetically new that straightforward ujjayi might not provide.
Lastly Sharath spoke about what Yoga ultimately is about: 'uncovering the God within'. Each person is Brahman (the 'real, conscious, blissful' Self) but there are enemies within, anger, greed, jealousy, delusion, etc that cover this truth. I find it helpful to sit with the image of covering versus uncovering--yoga practice dissolves the coverings that obscure us and thus helps us uncover our Spirit. We can too easily make the mistake of thinking that the 'positive' coverings, the more superficial, outer pursuits are all there is and not even bother to dig down, go inwards, cross our joyous and challenging waters and sort through our inner enemies, our blindness to our strengths as well to our greed and our anger. And also we can feel like there is something wrong with us for our hunger, our need to search for depth and meaning, something wrong for being 'unhappy' or dissatisfied or having to struggle so much to make progress on our paths. To me Ashtanga or any serious spiritual practice is not necessarily for the 'happy', the well adapted, the contented, the ones who find what they are looking for in getting, spending, or who continue to place more value in pursuits outside of themselves. Ashtanga is for the hungry, the ones who have something gnawing inside, the ones who honestly aren't happy accepting complacent norms. Ashtanga is for those who are alive with intense feelings that there are worlds to discover, worlds that are found by reaching passionately inwards for expression that will contribute to personal and collective healing.
**The Six Cleansing Techniques (Shat Kriya's)
Neti: Using a water pot for nasal passage and sinus clearing.
Nauli: Abdominal churning
Dhauti: Cleansing by swallowing cloth
Vasti: Cleansing through natural colonics
Trataka: Fixed gazing or gazing at a single point.
Kapalabhati: Pranayama through technique. Exhalation active, inhalation passive
I found a swami demonstrating Kapalabhati. The video certainly has its own style. Enjoy!
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