Practicing at home

I have been practicing at home quite regularly for the past two and a half months and I really can see the difference from when I started.  Where before, I could hardly focus on anything else except doing the poses and exhaustedly and breathlessly getting through the video, I can now actually calmly think also about the breath and the gaze!  I can also somehow focus now a bit on trying to make the asanas flow more nicely into each other through the use of the breath. Vinyasa is the term used to describe the flow emerging from the union of the posture and the breath.

The three most important things -- the posture (asanas), the breath (the ujjayi breath), the gaze (drishti).  The other thing one must think about are the bandhas or the locks. The most important being the mulabandha, the root lock (described to be the muscle you contract when you tighten your ass), which should always be activated.  I try to always keep this bandha activated as well as the uddiyana bandha, located just below the navel.

I still do not do the practice on my own, but always follow videos of the practice, my preferred one being Kino MacGregor's Introduction to Ashtanga Yoga (90 minutes) on myyogaonline.com.  It starts with the traditional opening chant, 5 suryanamaskara A and 5 suryanamaskara B, goes on to the standing sequences and a portion of the primary series (up to Marichyasana D), then skipping some parts (Navasana up to Setu Bandhasana), and continuing on to the backbend (Urdhva Dhanurasana and Pashimottanasana), ending with the Closing Sequence, and the closing chant.  I really like her video as she walks you through each part with a nice, gentle and precise narrative and gives you tips on how to modify the poses if the correct pose is still not available to you. Together with her words of encouragement and references to her experience (i.e. it took me 3 years to do the jump back correctly), I feel the ashtanga yoga practice is a reachable goal, with practice and persistence.

I still am trying to remember the correct sequence of the asanas, as well as their names before I attempt the primary series on my own.  Some of the basic things I focus on when doing the suryanamaskara:
Adho mukha svanasana (Downward facing dog) -- The drishti should be the navel, but I still can not do that so I stare at my toes.  You need to suck in your stomach, pull up your knees, make sure your fingers are spread wide apart with equal pressure, heels down.
Urdhva mukha svanasana (Upward facing dog) - The drishti should be the third eye.  Shoulders must be down and back, arms by the hips, chest open, head looking up, legs activated and a little above the mat.
Chaturanga dandasana (four-limbed staff pose) - The drishti is the nose. Chest must be open, shoulders must be back and sort of squeezing the center of your spine, your core very strong and belly sucked in, forearms and upper arms at right angles in the elbows.

A nice reference online for the asanas is http://www.yogadancer.com/Asana.shtml.