Tag Archives: Ashtanga

Lineage of yoga created by K. Pattabhi Jois, requires mastery of series of postures

Another DC yoga studio bites the dust

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My friend and ded­i­cated Ash­tangi Don­a­van Wil­son sent me a mes­sage today:

David Ingalls is shut­ting down AYC (Ash­tanga Yoga Cen­ter, for those not in the know). The doors close on May 31. The stu­dio space near Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity is too expen­sive. Keith Moore (long-​​time AYC teacher) found another loca­tion. The new loca­tion is unof­fi­cially in the MacArthur Boule­vard area (DC). The ten­ta­tive new name is the Ash­tanga Yoga Stu­dio. Moore has not signed a lease. How­ever, the odds pretty good to solid­ify this new loca­tion. All of this (new space and loca­tion) is up in the air. AYC clos­ing is not.

What a bum­mer! And to think, I have not had a chance to take a class there — though I do have until the end of May. What did in AYC was what made it a con­ve­nient place to prac­tice yoga — it was right next to the Amer­i­can University/​Tenlyetown Metro sta­tion, right across from Whole­Food. You could fit in a Mysore class before pick­ing up a bagel and head­ing to work. But eco­nom­i­cally, the rent got too high at that prime loca­tion. Let’s hope that all the instruc­tors and stu­dents find an appro­pri­ate space for their practice.

I should also under­score that the AYC web­site dis­tin­guished itself for exquis­ite pho­tog­ra­phy of yogis and yogi­nis absorbed in their prac­tice. As some­one who has dab­bled in that dark art, I know how dif­fi­cult it is to cap­ture the instance, but when you do, it’s magic.

Post­script: I should also note that DC is not the only place where yoga stu­dios can become unvi­able com­mer­cially: In New York City, Om Yoga will shut down at the end of June because the lease was not renewed. Om Yoga was founded and run by Cyndi Lee, a high-​​profile yoga instruc­tor and pio­neer in fus­ing yoga with Bud­dhism. The owner of the build­ing did not want a ygoa stu­dio on the premises.

A yoga addict proves she was feeding her ego

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New York Times A Yoga Devo­tee Finds a New Guru in a Per­sonal Trainer starts out with a con­fes­sion that said far more than a sim­ple state­ment of fact.

I was an addict of ash­tanga yoga for a decade. It made me strong. It made me feel supe­rior to peo­ple who went to the gym. What it did not make me was skinny.

Ash­tanga yoga is essen­tially the mother of vinyasa, the sweaty kind — a set series of daily poses you do abet­ted by a teacher “adjust­ing” you by, say, sit­ting on your back. There’s no music and lit­tle talk­ing. It is widely believed to have been cre­ated for ado­les­cent boys and tends to attract for­mer drug addicts and Type A per­son­al­i­ties; I’m the latter

The author, Deb­o­rah Schoen­e­man, then chron­i­cles her jour­ney through the yoga world in New York City and Los Ange­les and her grad­u­ally shift of other exer­cise meth­ods. And how she was able to get the flab out of her arms and fit in a size 6, in between name drop­ping (“Gwyneth Pal­trow and Madonna”). She cuts her yoga down to one ses­sion a week for “med­i­ta­tion, stretch­ing and com­mu­nity.” She ended the artilce saying:

I left her that day feel­ing the way yoga is sup­posed to make you feel: enlight­ened. If not par­tic­u­larly lighter.

Come again?  Schoen­e­man mis­rep­re­sents yoga in so many ways, it’s no won­der Hindu purists are wor­ried about what Amer­ica is doing to yoga. For that mat­ter, I am wor­ried about what the New York Times’s agenda is with this kind of mes­sage. After all, it was pub­lished in the Fash­ion and Style section.

Giving American yoga a bad name

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USATo­day West­ern influ­ence turns yoga on its head in Mum­bai: The vet­eran writer Gail Sheehy writes about how Amer­i­can yoga is feed­ing back into Indian cul­ture and sub­vert­ing the tra­di­tional dis­ci­pline, but she gets some­thing wrong:

Power yoga, an aer­o­bic devi­a­tion, was launched in 1995 by an Amer­i­can woman, Beryl Ben­der Birch. It ignores the orig­i­nal con­cept of yoga, which was to be done in silence so the mind can develop aware­ness of the body.

Photo: Beryl Bender Birch signs a book after class
Con­tinue read­ing →

First quarter 2011 yoga events

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Some big names are com­ing to the DC area in the first three months of 2011. For more details (sched­ule, costs, require­ments), go to the web­site of the host­ing yoga stu­dio. I don’t mean to down­play other work­shops and events that are tak­ing place dur­ing the first quar­ter, but when high-​​profile instruc­tors pass through the DC area, it’s worth­while to spot­light them. You will notice that March 10-​​14 is shap­ing up to be week-​​long over­dose of qual­ity yoga. I will update this list as more infor­ma­tion becomes available.

Jan­u­ary

  • Stu­dioDC Yoga Cen­ter: The Pur­suit of Happy Hips: The­ory and Vinyasa (3 hours) and Super­flow Surf Yoga : A trans­for­ma­tive + unique move­ment prac­tice (2 Hours) with Eoin Finn,  Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 22

Feb­ru­ary

March

Although I was not plan­ning to men­tion events beyond March, I wanted to high­light two events: Stu­dioDC Yoga Cen­ter – For­rest Yoga Mas­ter Classes with Ana For­est, May 18-​​19 and Wil­low Street Yoga – Yoga of Ful­fill­ment: Yoga & the Path of Des­tiny with Rod Stryker, April 9-​​13, which is an yoga immer­sion course.

Kino MacGregor: Passion on the Mat  –  Part IV

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Final install­ment of Don­a­van Wilson’s inter­view with Kino Mac­Gre­gor. Pho­tos are pro­vided from Kino MacGregor’s web­site. Con­tact Don­a­van at dwilson95 AT gmail_​com.

The Amer­i­can Yoga Scene

Photo: portrait of Kino MacGregor with resting student in background

Kino Mac­Gre­gor headshot

“I loved how many peo­ple are doing yoga today,” com­mented Kino as she offered her per­spec­tive on the direc­tion of Amer­i­can yoga. “I think it’s great. What is really inspir­ing is how ded­i­cated peo­ple are, not only in the U.S. but all over the world and how many peo­ple are get­ting turned on to it. The most inspi­ra­tional thing about the Amer­i­can Yoga com­mu­nity is its embrace of yoga as lifestyle,” she said. “Also, what else that is excit­ing is the gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren born into Yoga fam­i­lies and who have the expo­sure to a lifestyle com­mit­ted to inner peace at an early age.” Con­tinue read­ing →

Getting back on the track

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I missed vinyasa class tonight because of a heavy work­load and a boss who’s trav­el­ing tomor­row. When I got home, I had a choice: either watch the Trudie Styler DVD to write the review or go run­ning. I choose run­ning. I put in nearly two miles at a slow trod.

I used to run a lot until my knee injury and surgery. A few weeks ago, at the gym work­ing on the sta­tion­ary bike and ellip­ti­cal trainer, I felt an impulse and jumped on the tread­mill just to see what it was like, maybe just a quick walk­ing pace. I did not feel any­thing bad. I stepped up the speed. At the end of 15 min­utes, I was trot­ting along with­out any pain or com­pli­ca­tions. The fol­low­ing day, I felt no adverse con­se­quences. I started jog­ging again, gin­gerly, at the gym and at a high school track near my house, first with a mile, then, adding a quar­ter of a mile grad­u­ally, until I am up to two miles now.

When I was recov­er­ing from my surgery, I focused on get­ting back to yoga because the dis­ci­pline had a rip­ple effect through­out my life. I ruled out run­ning because I did not want to over­stress my knees. But run­ning had never been the cause of my injury: it was actu­ally yoga, an over-​​aggressive moment when I put too much weight over my bent knee.

What pushed me back to run­ning was my yoga prac­tice: I’ve been doing one or two ses­sions a week of hatha yoga with Mary­lou McNa­mara at Thrive. She’s trained as a Anusara teacher so she works a lot on align­ment — long, repeated holds of fairly sim­ple poses (lunge, War­rior I, II, III). I feel that I am able to access key mus­cles in my shoul­ders, back, core, and hips for the first time, and her instruc­tion helps me focus on those areas. But a hatha class does not get much into aer­o­bic con­di­tion­ing, and I’ve noticed in the vinyasa classes that I’ve been get­ting winded. If I was going to con­tinue going hatha yoga classes, I needed to add some aer­o­bic exer­cise, either at the gym, the yoga stu­dio or elsewhere.

So that’s why I started run­ning again. My short-​​term goal is to get ready for the Brian Kest week­end work­shop at Thrive com­ing up on Octo­ber 23-​​25. He teaches an Ash­tanga, power yoga style that’s going to test my lim­its over four two-​​hour ses­sions. I knew I had to step up conditioning.

Special events in October – a milestone

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Now that Yoga Month has come and gone, we can get on with our reg­u­lar prac­tice. Shiva Rea is com­ing back to the DC area in Octo­ber 9-​​10 at Flow Yoga. This will be one of the largest mega-​​classes this year because Flow will prob­a­bly hold the event in an out­side site to pack as many yogis, shoul­der to shoul­der, into a lim­ited space. Sign up early (if you still can) and go early.

Photo: Brian Kest yoga class at Thrive Yoga - Brian speaking

Ganesha's play­ful­ness matched Brian Kest's humor

I will be look­ing for­ward to the Brian Kest work­shop at Thrive Yoga on Octo­ber 23-25. A lead­ing advo­cate of Ash­tanga yoga on the West Coast, he has been a sym­bolic ben­nch­mark for me. When I started out doing yoga five years ago, I used to watch the free yoga work­outs on my cable ser­vice. For a while, it was one of Brian Kest’s videos. But they were so demand­ing for me that I could never get beyond the open­ing sequence before poop­ing out. The cable ser­vice rotated the video to other yoga instruc­tors so I never got a chance to catch up with Kest’s pace. Of course, it took me a cou­ple of years to just make it through a full vinyasa session.

Now I think I can han­dle it. That’s pretty amaz­ing con­sid­er­ing that I turned 60 last week. And I look at the com­ing decade of my life as even more chal­leng­ing and ful­fill­ing than pre­vi­ous ones because I am a more whole and healthy as a person.

Follow-​​up on the passing of a yoga master

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Catch­ing up on the news about Pat­tabhi Jois’s death, I pulled together more obits from major media: The Econ­o­mist (a good arti­cle), Guardian,Times (UK), Exam­iner (this chain of sub­ur­ban tabloids has a lot of yoga arti­cles because many local edi­tions have inde­pen­dently con­tributed articles.).

Indian news­pa­pers seemed to give less space to his obit than inter­na­tional media: red­iff news Dec­can Her­ald The Hindu with a nod to Chu­ru­muri for the Indian links.

K. Pattabhi Jois has passed away

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A global yoga pio­neer has died, as announced on Shri K. Pat­tabhi Jois Ash­tanga Yoga Insti­tute:

May 18, 2009
Guruji passed away today at 2:30pm (Indian Stan­dard Time). Thank you for all your con­do­lences and prayers. Please kindly refrain from con­tact­ing the fam­ily directly at this time.

Sad news for any­one who has been touched by his work. Below, I am post­ing the best arti­cles and trib­utes that I come across:

Guruji (K. Pattabhi Jois) hospitalized

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The great mas­ter guru Shri K. Pat­tabhi Jois has been hos­pi­tal­ized, accord­ing to the K. Pat­tabhi Jois Ash­tanga Yoga Insti­tute. His son, Sharath, who was a guest teacher in the United States, has been called home so it must be seri­ous. Last year, Pat­tabhi Jois had to post­pone a sched­uled trip to inau­gu­rate a yoga train­ing cen­ter in Florida. He is going to be 94 in July.