Category Archives: Tradition

Ashtanga Yoga: The Tradition and The Dogma

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A few days ago, while a student was coming up from backbends, I noticed that she was breathless and grimacing.  I asked her what was up.  She said that her previous Ashtanga teacher encouraged her to move through the series of movements quickly.  She described how the rapid movement agitated her. Dropping into a backbend and coming back to standing is traditionally taught: exhale go down, inhale come up, and the movement is repeated three times with no pauses in between. As a teacher of this tradition, I was immediately stuck with a quandary.  Do I ask her to keep the traditional vinyasa count, thus, honoring the tradition but compromising her well-being, or do I offer her an alternative route?

This is a classic situation that comes up in practice, both as a student of the tradition and as a teacher.  Do I uphold the tradition or honor the well-being of my student?  I think it’s obvious that my students’ well-being has to come first over the tradition, but in honoring the tradition, it can become a very slippery slope between letting go completely and gripping with a quality of rigidity.  In many ways, as a teacher and practitioner in and from The West, the dance of honoring tradition and the individual, at the same time, can be a challenging one.  How do we not lose the essence of the tradition and, at the same time, fit the practice to the individual?

‘Correct Method’ / ‘Incorrect Method’

I, personally, have struggled with this question for quite some time, probably since the first day I showed up in Mysore in 1993 and discovered that in order to bind my legs in a lotus posture (padmasasna), I had to dislocate the meniscus.  Each time I believe I have struck the perfect balance, I find that I have either become too rigid in a particular situation or way too ‘wishy-washy.’  Admittedly, I err on the side of ‘wishy-washy.’  Something about my personal makeup hates imposing right and wrong on my students.  And so much of following the tradition is about right and wrong.  There’s a right way to do the sequence and there’s a wrong way.  Throughout the years of being a student of Pattabhi Jois’, I heard the words “correct method” and “incorrect method.”

Yoga That Transcends Duality

And somehow, in my mind, a good and powerful system of yoga should and must transcend all duality.  Yoga is, after all, about the union of those opposing forces, masculine and feminine, right and wrong, evil and righteous.  In the language of The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, we’re balancing and harmonizing the solar and lunar energies within the left and right tubes or nadis of the subtle body that feed the energy vortexes, called chakras, in order to evoke or stimulate the sushumna, the central channel within the subtle body of the spinal column.  This is an energetic code for the experience of the transcendental experience that occurs when masculine and feminine, right and wrong, good and bad have been harmonized.  It’s a way of saying that a deeper, wider, and more profound reality exists beyond the bounds of duality.  In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali says that posture should be “steady and comfortable.” (2:46) “It results with relaxation of effort and the meeting with the infinite.”

Fighting through a posture just because the tradition demands us to do it in a particular way takes us further and further away from the essence of yoga.  And I think that this is where, as teachers and practitioners of any system that comes from a different culture–whether it is yoga or Zen— we need to maintain a critical eye.  It doesn’t behoove us or our students to fall into the trap of saying, “because that’s just the way it is.”  It’s simply the way it is as determined by the elite within the system that we’re in, whether it is the charismatic teacher or the agreement of the masses within the system.

Drawing the Line: Tradition vs. Individual Needs

But here’s where the dance gets interesting.  Where do we draw the line between honoring the system our teacher shares with us and yet remain flexible enough to honor our individuality?  I remember having this same conversation with an Orthodox Jew over a meal many years ago.  I asked her why she followed all 613 commandments with such stringency.  Her deadpan response was: “What am I going to do, follow 400 and then drop the other 213?  That’s a slippery slope.  Who am I decide?  That’s in Ha Shem’s [trans. The Name, which is code for God] hands.”     If we were to follow the Ashtanga tradition with the same stringency, then  men could only have sex during the nighttime. Not only that, if “the breath is felt to be moving through the surya nadi [the right nostril], then that is to be regarded as the daytime, and during that period, copulation and the like are not to occur.” (p. 10, Yoga Mala, P. Jois)

Yoga Practice As a Metaphor

The problem, as I see it, is that we’re facing the issue of a literal reading, as opposed to a metaphorical reading of “the practice.” Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, says that myth and the ritual that accompanies it: “ denotes something transcendent…so that you always feel accord with the universal being.”  Myth uses metaphor to denote one kind of object or idea but used in place of another to suggest a likeness. When we fall into the trap of reading myth or ritual and its accompanying symbols literally, we miss the deeper, wider, and higher spiritual implications that they have the potential to put us in touch with.  All ritual–including the practice of Ashtanga Yoga with its precise vinyasas, victorious breathing (ujayi), internal locks (bandhas), and gazing points (dristis)—are pointing to an inner experience, to fields of consciousness that reflect our inner most being.  However, in the practice of Ashtanga, we often mistake the literal for the metaphorical; the form for the formless; the act for the way of being that that act is pointing to.

When I reflect on almost twenty years of practice, it seems to me that there have been periods of time when I’ve gotten stuck in the literal. I have, at times, been lured by the trajectory of progressing from the primary series, to intermediate, and then, eventually to the advanced series. Early on as a neophyte practitioner, I’d even hoped that as I advanced along the series, somehow life would take on a new shine, that samadhi was right around the corner.  But this approach led to nothing more than physical feats that contortionists from Cirque du Soleil do much better than I ever could.

The Trap of Focusing on ‘Correct Method’ and ‘Incorrect Method’

Really, what I discovered was that “correct method” and “incorrect method” really missed the point and only calcified and petrified aspects of my psyche that needed the light of consciousness.  After all, as a young man of nineteen years old, I came to the practice with the hopes of being more connected to something greater, to overcome feelings of smallness, fear, and grief.  But as I progressed along the path laid out for me, instead of becoming more spacious, more connected, my orientation became focused on doing it “correctly.”  I got stuck in a myopic vision of the path of yoga being about attainment of some image of perfection.  In essence, my practice became another place where I had to struggle.

Oh, and what a mistake that was because it lead me away from the essence of the practice.  I mistook the tools at my disposal–like the postures (asanas) or the internal locks (bandhas)–as the path.  In other words, instead of using these points of focus as metaphors that pointed to more profound states of consciousness, I read them literally and used them to be “good,” so that my teachers and the community of yogis would recognize and like me. In addition, my practice, at times, became purely physical.

What Mula Bandha Can Show Us

If, for example, I performed the root lock (mula bandha) throughout the practice, I told myself that I would be able to jump back and jump through with greater ease. Indeed, the engagement of the core muscles does increase strength and agility.  But that literal reading kept that act of yoga simply a bodily feat.  Mula bandha, can also be read metaphorically.  Its magic isn’t just in the physical mastery of it.  Its magic also lies in where it points consciousness. Given that it is at the base of the body, it points us in the direction of the earth, the part of us that is earth element.  Engaging mula bandha might remind the yogi to be connected to the earth no matter how contorted life becomes.  In addition, mula bandha might encourage us that while consciousness has a propensity to disconnect, that the path of the yogi is to stay in form, to use the body as a tool to experience both inner and outer fields of consciousness.  Mula bandha itself might be a meditation into the root of our being, who we are at the most base level: the part of us that is simply a tube eating, digesting, and defecating.

The essence of what I am saying is that as teachers and practitioners of this method, when we get too literal with the practice, we miss the deeper inquiry that the practice offers us.  If it becomes about progressing along the series, doing it “correctly”, only doing it the way it’s done in Mysore, etc. then the depth and breadth that is the promise of yoga might never be tasted or known.  Honestly, having been down that road, I can say with certainty, there is no pot of gold at the end of the primary, intermediate or advanced series, nor is there any great boon from doing it “correctly” or even “traditionally.”

Why Do You Practice?

I like what Cambell says about what we’re after in life.  “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” (Campbell, J, The Power of Myth, 1998, episode 2, chapter 4, PBS television series, Mystic Fire Video) Some may dispute this, but I, personally, sense that the essence of practice is to access this aliveness.  Nobody and no system has a better clue about how to do that than we, personally.  It helps to try out lots of different tools and stick to the systems and teachers that offer them, but in the end, each of us has to become the final arbiter.  We have to have the courage to ask ourselves, does this resonate?  Is it bringing me closer to truth?  Is it deepening my consciousness?  And if the answer is, “no,” and it doesn’t jibe with the tradition or the teacher, we have to be courageous enough to stand on our own and to continue to seek and discover an access points that do.

The So-Called Tradition of Ashtanga

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I have noticed that as the Mysore-style Ashtanga method becomes more popular over the years, the individual connection between teacher and student is disintegrating. The practice, which was originally designed to be individualized, has become increasingly supplanted by a one-size-fits-all approach.

This is a natural outgrowth as more and more people both learn and are touched by the method. The unfortunate thing is that it misses the point of the Mysore-style methodology, which by its nature honors each student’s constitution, body, emotions, personal development, culture, etc. The problem is that as yoga becomes increasingly popular, the practice is morphing into something that alienates the practitioner from his or her own wisdom. In the Ashtanga world this change is being called “traditional” ; however, I want to posit the notion that there is nothing traditional about it; in fact, it is an unfortunate and new result of the popularity of yoga. And if we continue to alienate our student’s innate wisdom from the practice, Mysore-style yoga will become a practice for only the select few.

Unlike led classes, the Mysore-style allows for a relationship to arise between the student and the teacher in such a way that the practice can be made to fit the student, as opposed to the other way around. In led classes, generally speaking, it is difficult for the teacher to work much on an individual basis with the student because he or she has to ensure the flow of the class as a whole. Mysore-style, however, is the equivalent of a private master class with the support of group energy. In other words, a student has the opportunity to be inspired both by the intensity of the class and the direction and support of the teacher. When a student finds his or her yoga home, indeed, it is like coming home. Both the relationship with the teacher and the class as a whole cradles and supports them in achieving yoga, however the student chooses to define that word.

Breakthroughs

Over the years, I have noticed within the Ashtanga world that yoga has increasingly become defined as the mastery of asanas as opposed to the achievement of yoga. The goal of yoga has become the need to bind the hands in marichyasana d in order to progress through primary series or stand up from a back bend in order to move to intermediate series. Frankly speaking, milestones like this are not helpful. Many, many individuals will never be able to bind in marichyasana d because constitutionally they just cannot. What often happens is that people will compromise their knees in order to get into the posture. So marichyasana d becomes the source of a medial meniscus tear. Likewise in an effort to stand up from back bends, students often injure their backs. The result of trying to master asanas is often a long-standing injury from repetitive strain. As Pattabhi Jois used to say, “Health will result from good yoga, ill-health will result from bad yoga.” Clearly, this is bad yoga.

The myth generated amongst practitioners of this method that if we push through pain, we are likely to have a breakthrough known amongst so-called ‘aficionados’of this method as an “opening.” When someone says “opening” they mean the ability to complete a posture that they could not previously complete because something opened up or let go. Most so-called ‘openings’ that I have seen over the years are repetitive strain injuries caused by a blatant disregard for the body’s signals that what they’re doing is painful. I have to admit that I stand in contrast to most so-called ‘traditional’ practitioners when I admit that, generally speaking, I don’t believe in openings. I have wanted to over the years. There have been many, many times when I have told myself and my students that the pain they’re experiencing is just an opening, but I have seen enough ‘openings’ to know that the idea is wishful thinking.

The first time I visited Mysore, in 1993, I saw a friend from New Zealand get injured in janu sirsasana c. His visit to Mysore was shortened from a three-month stay to one-month because his lateral collateral ligament had been totally ruptured. What struck me about that particular incident was that my friend had been complaining of pain in his knee. Various prominent practitioners and member of the community had advised him to keep pushing forward, that he would eventually have a breakthrough. Essentially, he was discouraged from recognizing his own pain receptors telling him that his knee was in danger.

Ashtanga is a rigorous practice and injuries do take place sometimes that are deleterious, but to overlay the problem with a false statement, like “oh, it’s just an opening” is like putting ice cream on top of crap and saying that the whole thing is ice cream, so eat it up. That’s the problem when we disregard our own common sense in place of tradition. I am not saying that it isn’t useful to look at the experience of pain and injury as an opportunity to grow or develop in a inner way. Our injuries can be some of our best teachers. What I am saying is that pain is usually an indicator that there is something wrong. It is the body’s intelligence speaking. In all the years I have been practicing and teaching, I have rarely seen the notion of breakthroughs pan out

Tradition

We all want certainty. We somehow think that if we align ourselves with a lineage that is thousands of years old, that its wisdom will keep us warm on a cold night. After all, if we look at our modern lives in reference to more traditional cultures, we can see that in many ways we are lonelier, more isolated, and have a greater propensity toward feelings of meaninglessness . I think it’s natural to want to align oneself with the  old and great traditions in order to feel a part of something greater.

Unfortunately, more often than not, we see individuals clinging to traditions that are foreign or “other” who may in some sense find a connection but often are, likewise, cut-off from themselves. One of our students told me that when she discovered yoga and its teachings, that she was so enamored by the truth of the words that she heard and the practice, that she decided to park her old, lonely self at the door in order to embrace the teachings fully. Through our discussions together, she discovered that what she had done is cut herself off from sides of herself, wisdom and intelligence that had been cultivated for years before her introduction to the practice. And by parking her lonely self at the door, she cut off from those sides of herself that needed tending to. Since making that decision, she felt very satisfied when reading about, discussing, or practicing yoga, but her parked problems kept nagging her. Eventually through probing, she came to discover that the true test of the practice was to use them on those parts of herself that felt lonely and isolated as a way to discover the their actual power.

When I started yoga, I remember there being a sort of strict division between Ashtanga and Iyengar practitioners. Somehow for the Iyengar yogis, we had it all wrong. We lacked alignment and precision, and every one of us was prone to injury. And we thought they had it all wrong. Their practice was totally boring, static, and mental. As Ashtanga has become increasingly popular in the last few years, I have seen this division between practitioners within the method itself that is similar, either you’re traditional or you aren’t. This idea of being ‘traditional’ is a new creation. It simply didn’t exist until recently. Not that the method wasn’t exact. Indeed, it was, but because the room in Mysore was so small, each individual was tended to in a unique way. Many of Guruji’s old students, including myself, will tell you that he would tell one person one thing about a particular asana or about the method as a whole and then absolutely contradict himself with someone else.

This idea that somehow the method is monolithic, ancient, perfect, and precise is something we wish were true but isn’t. Pattabhi Jois said that he received the teachings exactly as he taught them from his teacher, Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who learned the method from his teacher, Rama Mohan Brahmachari, and so on. The idea is that at no time was the system tainted, but, instead, it was passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years in pristine form. The system is linked to a source text no longer in existence called the Yoga Korunta, which was supposedly written by a sage named Vamana Rishi and was imparted from Rama Mohan Brahmachari to Krishnamacharya. At some point the text was written on palm leaves, which were in the safe keeping of Pattabhi Jois, as the legend goes, but somehow insects destroyed the text. All of this description creates the myth that somehow the practice has some profound history and its transmission has been untainted from time immemorial.

But in purusing the notion of tradition a bit further, I came across The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace by N.E. Sjoman. Sjoman makes the following compelling argument: the yoga system taught by Krishnamacharya comes from a merging of gymnastics with yoga. The author drew his conclusions by mining the royal library in Mysore, where Krishnamacharya taught during the time he taught Pattabhi Jois. Krishnamacharya was appointed to the Mysore Palace in the early 1930s to teach yoga to the Arasu boys, the maternal relatives of the royal family. Through the patronage of Nalvadi Krishanarja Woodeyar, he opened a yoga shala or yoga school which continued until 1950. The author makes a very compelling argument that Krishnamacharya not only developed the Ashtanga system as taught by Pattabhi Jois during his tenure in Mysore, but that he drew on elements of gymnastics and Indian wrestling.

So, not only is it a misnomer that somehow the system has been perfectly sustained for thousands of years, it is easily argued that the system was created in the 1930s to some degree or another and has sources outside of the yoga tradition. And in the bit of history we have of Ashtanga from the vantage of point of long-time Western practitioners, one can see that the system has been changed to one degree or another since 1973. Postures have been added and subtracted. The length or duration of holding postures has been changed. Even sequences have been changed. Third series today is only a fraction of the old Advanced A series and its sequencing has changed somewhat. Students who completed first were moved on to second without the barrier of getting up from backbends. Pranayama was taught after completing primary series initially. Then eventually, it was taught after completing intermediate series. Now, supposedly, it is taught after completing Third series. To say that the practice has sanctity through historicity just is not true. It is a living, changing phenomena.

The New Tradition

And as the method is being passed to the next generation of practitioners, it continues to mold and change. So to say that there is a ‘traditional’ way to practice doesn’t actually mean that there is this vast history that supports it. Instead, what traditional means is what is currently being taught in Mysore at the given moment. Pattabhi Jois’ family, essentially determines the ‘traditional’ nature of things. And as the torch has been passed on to his Jois’ grandson, Sharath, he currently determines what, in fact, is traditional.

The notion of standing up from backbends in order to progress to intermediate series was created by Sharath. This is just one so-called ‘tradition’ that has recently been added to the practice in order to manage the influx of students coming to Mysore. So many people show up in Mysore today that it is increasingly impossible for the teacher to give much individual instruction. In order to counter this, every Friday and Sunday, led classes are given. Led classes, generally did not exist before Pattabhi Jois moved from his yoga shala in Lakshmipuram to his shala in Gokulam. In addition, more focus is being played on backbends than ever before. Essentially the tradition is going through another metamorphosis and is being influenced by the influx of people attracted to the power of yoga.

That being said, tradition is based upon agreement. When that agreement lacks discrimination the risk of damage can be great. I write this because the practice and community have meant so much to me. I hate to see Ashtanga Yoga go in this direction. What lead me to the practice, in the first place, was the fact that individuality was honored. Each of us who maintains the practice has a stake in maintaining its authenticity and longevity. My personal stake is that as Ashtanga continue to develop that it continues to honor the individual rather continuing to evolve  into a one-size-fits-all method in the name of tradition.