The Yoga Studio in New Delhi

Since I started my home ashtanga yoga practice in late October of last year, I have only been following video classes and reading yoga books. For the first time, I am going to ashtanga yoga classes in Delhi, and hopefully this will help me when I travel to Mysore for more classes.

This is the sixth day I have been going to yoga classes at theyogastudio of Seema Sondhi in New Delhi.  So far, they have been terrific, and the advice of the teachers are really invaluable as you do your poses.  I believe that if you really want to improve, you really need a teacher to help you out.

Today, for the first time ever, I was able to bind in the Marichyasana C with the help of Seema. That felt really great! On the right side with your right knee bent, and left leg extended with toes pointing up, you  have to really twist to the right,  internally rotate your left shoulder, then at some point bend your elbow and reach around your bent knee for your other arm. I don't know how it happened but suddenly I was in the pose. I couldn't quite reach with the other side but hopefully it will come.  We tried out a few poses in the second series like some additional backbends, camel pose then ended with the closing sequence without the headstand. 

Actually, yesterday, I was also able to hold the headstand with my knees bent above my pelvis for about 5 counts, longer than I ever did before. One of the yoga students came up to me after the class and told me I was almost there and that I just needed to engage my bandhas or sort of pull in my stomach and tuck in my seatbones once i am in the tuck position before the headstand and that my legs will then directly go up.

I really enjoy the classes here. They are pretty much at a level where I can follow along then just do some modifications suggested by the teacher, or try to challenge myself and attempt to do the more advanced poses.  Before coming to India a week and a half ago, the inner side of my knees were always hurting.  They actually hurt less now.  I have been trying to stretch my quadriceps and hamstrings as much as possible as I have read that that could be the cause of my knee problems. I hope that after a few more days of yoga here, my knee problems will go away.

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.

Sirsasana aka Headstand

Today was a breakthrough for me! I finally did an almost headstand! 

I was following Kino's ashtanga yoga video and at the point where the headstand was coming up, I listened very carefully to her instructions.  First to the headstand preparation -- kneeling down, I plant my elbows stably right in front of my knees. I clasp on opposite elbows to measure the right distance between them.  I intertwine the fingers of my opposite hands together, and all of this should now be in a triangle form in front of my face.  I look down at the floor, put weight on my arms and feeling my deltoids working and my shoulders strong, I straighten my legs up and walk them in as far as I can.  At this point I am still looking at the floor. Then when I can walk in no further, I finally put my head between the intertwined fingers of my hands with the crown of my head touching the mat, the back of my head cradled by my fingers.  I walk in my legs some more until I feel my pelvis is straight up and right over my head, again testing the stability of my arms and shoulders by putting weight on them (and not the top of my head).  Then slowly I bring up first one knee bent and close to my chest, then the other knee bent and close to my chest, then ever so slowly slowly, remembering to tighten my core, I bring up both my legs and try to slowly slowly straighten them up and boom ... an almost headstand after a year of trying and falling and headstands against the wall or being held up by others.  There is hope! 

After again being unable to get myself up into headstand, I approached my teacher yesterday after class and dejectedly asked him how i can ever do a headstand and he said it was all about the strength of the core and to have patience.  As Kino always quotes from her teacher Sri K. Pattabhi Jois -- practice, practice and all is coming...  I should work on my core, my practice and my patience, and hopefully, all should come.

Starting an ashtanga yoga practice

Once I decided on pursuing the ashtanga yoga path, I needed to actually do the practice and understand what I was doing.  

I watched and marvelled at the youtube videos of Sri Pattabhi Jois conducting led primary and intermediate series classes.  I followed the videos of Kino MacGregor on myyogaonline and her nice little tips on her youtube channel:  http://www.youtube.com/user/KinoYoga.  I watched other ashtanga yoga videos that I could find on youtube.

I also started assembling my reading list including, for a start, the following:

Yoga Mala of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (available on http://www.gutenberg.org/)
Hatha Yoga Pradipika
Bhagavad Gita

Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha

I got three books from Amazon to help me start in my practice, as follows:

The Power of Ashtanga Yoga by Kino MacGregor
Ashtanga Yoga: Practice and Philosopy by Gregor Maehle
Ashtanga Yoga, The Practice Manual by David Swenson

I read tons of blogs and advice on starting an ashtanga yoga practice. Most helpful were the blogs of:

http://earthyogi.blogspot.de/
http://grimmly2007.blogspot.co.uk/
http://suzanneelsafty.com/

I also got myself a yoga mat and mat towel. And yes, I also read and researched on the best one and settled on the Manduka mat.  Although the iconic Black Mat is still deemed the best, I decided it may be a bit too heavy for me so I settled first for the Prolite so I could also bring it to yoga class.   I also got the Equa mat towel and hand towel. I tried them for a bit but I think just using the mat is okay for me, for now, as I do not sweat that much.  It is still a bit slippery when I sweat a bit but getting more grippy as I use it more.  To use the mat towel on top of the mat, you have to sprinkle some water on it first so you won't slip, although it makes the jumping through much smoother.  Not that I can do the jump through yet, but my attempts to do the jump through and jump back are much smoother.  Without the towel, my feet somehow always catch on the mat, and I have a little burn due to that.

I have yet to find my ashtanga yoga teacher, but that will be in a few months when I begin in Mysore.

Hooked on ashtanga

About a month and a half ago, my husband mentioned that he was going to India to do research for a month. I immediately said that I would go with him and that I would do yoga in India.

I had been regularly going to vinyasa yoga classes for about a year and really loved it. My teacher was great and with the help of his adjustments I could already do things that I never thought I could do before.  The class was dynamic, fast-paced, strenuous and challenging. I sweated a lot in the class. This was the kind of yoga I wanted and  I thought that going to India would enrich my yoga experience for of course, where is the source of yoga, except India!

When I had this idea, I started looking up places where I could take yoga classes. I found a list of the top yoga schools, basically the following: Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandira in Chennai, Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhanawartai in Trivandum, and Pharmath Niketan in Rishikesh.  At this point, the schools and types of yoga were quite unknown to me, and I just knew that there was hatha yoga, then the vinyasa yoga that I was doing.  As we were first going to Delhi, I ended up with the idea of going to Rishikesh as it was only about 250 kms from Delhi and seemed an interesting place -- where the Beatles went to an ashram, up near the Himalayas.  It also seemed to be a big yoga place with lots of yoga classes and teacher trainings.  I thought that maybe I could do a teacher training class for 200 hours or one month. I searched for places that had "vinyasa yoga" as their specialty, and finally ended up with several possibilities -- Rishikesh yoga peeth, Taatvayoga, Arhanta Yoga. I kept looking at these places, and thinking about what I really wanted and where I should go.

I don't know exactly how I ended up with the idea of ashtanga yoga. Maybe it was when I asked my sister about the teacher training she did (in Thailand with Paul Dallaghan).  Maybe it was after seeing the videos on youtube of the ashtanga yoga practice. Maybe it was all the Kino MacGregor ashtanga videos that I watched and followed on myyogaonline (which I had a membership with).  I suddenly had the idea that maybe it was ashtanga yoga that I wanted to focus on, not really knowing much about it.  I read more and learned that the center of this style of yoga was in Mysore.  Later, I thought that if I were to study ashtanga yoga, it might as well be at the source, and from then on everything fell into place.

In late October, I looked up the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute and found that all their classes were booked from November to February the next year! I could try for March but I needed to send in my application early -- in November.  Thus, exactly on November 1, early in the morning, I sent in my application to study at the shala with Sharath Jois.  I checked their website after a few days and it said that all the March classes were now fully booked!  I sent my application just in time it seems, as after 2 weeks a reply came back that I could enrol but since I was a beginner, I had to study with Saraswathi (I had indicated that I wanted to study with Sharath).  I replied that I really was not a complete beginner as I had done "yoga" a few years and focused on vinyasa yoga for the past year.  The answer I got was that "... though you practice other styles or teach other styles of yoga, here we will take you as a beginner."  Chastened, I wrote back that I would attend the beginner yoga with Saraswathi.

With that plan of attending a month of yoga in Mysore, I began my ashtanga yoga training in earnest. I collected everything I could read about it, read a lot of ashtanga yoga blogs, and started almost a daily practice following ashtanga yoga videos on youtube and myyogaonline. The first 2 weeks of the practice -- practically everything hurt.  I drank ibuprofen or paracetamol, or rubbed some liniment on aching limbs.  I iced my back, my shoulders, my knees, my legs and could hardly do any other exercise the rest of the day.  The next two weeks were a little better -- I cut back the medicines but continued the icing for the inflammation. Now, after a little more than a month, I do not even have to ice as much!

I did a video of myself in November and realized how much I still had to improve and learn. I looked absolutely nothing like the youtube ashtanga videos I saw!!! They were videos of strong, lithe and fit men and women, easily pushing into handstands and placing their limbs in impossible poses. Could I ever do that, I thought to myself?!? But I also read somewhere that Pattabhi Jois said "practice, practice, practice and all is coming" and that yoga can be done by everyone -- the old, the young, the infirm -- all one needed was focus and practice.

And in fact maybe that is true, a year ago when I started I could not even push into a plank, let alone lower myself to a chatturanga dandasana.  Pushing up into a wheel position was for me out of the question. Now I can actually follow a one hour ashtanga yoga class, with 5 suryanamaskar A and 5 suryanamasker B, do some of the primary series and closing sequences, without significant aching, and in fact, the funny thing is I feel much more energized. In fact, I couldn't believe that some of the aches and pains are now gone. Could the yoga have cured it?  I also read that the master said that the suryanamaskar is a healing practice and again it seems true.

I seem to be now totally and completely hooked on ashtanga.  With a little less than 3 months more to get ready for Mysore, I have been doing as much practice as I can -- meaning that apart from my regular vinyasa yoga and hatha yoga day, I do at least 3 more days of the ashtanga yoga practice (keeping Saturdays as rest day per the ashtanga yoga practice).  I feel I am improving in tiny little increments. I just keep in mind that " practice, practice and all is coming."  I totally have an absolutely long long way to go!