Donna
I practice the Mysore style of Ashtanga yoga.
Mysore is like a personal workshop that takes
place within a group setting. You memorize
sequences of poses at your own pace and practice
them with a community of other people in the
same room, and the teacher is there to work with
you individually when you need it. Unlike many
other forms of yoga, there’s no music playing and
you do the same poses in the same order six days
a week, every week, every month, every year.
It took me four years just to learn all of the
poses in the primary sequence. I have some old
shoulder injuries, and you really need to open up
your shoulders before you get to more advanced
positions, like handstands. But some days I am
surprised to find that I can do a pose I couldn’t
do before. There’s a seated pose where you
twist and wrap your arm around your bent knee
and grasp your hands behind your back, and I
was stuck on that one for a long time. But one
day my shoulder was so open that I just reached
around with no effort. I thought, “Wow, what
happened?”
When you’re in a room with people working
at their own pace, you see other students doing
some really “wow” poses: drop-backs, where you
stand and bend backward until your hands touch
the ground, or Crocodile, where you hop forward
and back in Chaturanga, a yoga push-up position.
But everyone has their own body, and the reason
they can do those advanced poses is because of
the work they’ve done, the other poses they’ve
practiced to get there.
The people in class cheer each other on when
someone has been working on a pose and finally
gets it. Sometimes the teacher will give you a
high five. He says, “Wanting to get into a pose
too badly might get in the way of your doing it.
You just have to let it happen, and when you are
least expecting it, it does.”RECLINING SIDE HAND-TO-BIG-TOE POSE