"She"s stuck I"m not Stuck I"m waiting."

Cycle of a Sari from Legs Hernandez on Vimeo.

Wish I could have seen this!

Your story.

All yoga postures are there to help us notice how we are as we act and we can use the practice to change from working/feeling/responding from our own histories to creating new, more helpful patterns, which ultimately gives you choice.

"If we take yoga seriously we will practice it alot. It makes sense, then, that what we practice has a positive effect on the body.

We repeat patterns not to limit us in life, but as the musician practices their scales, we practice basic patterns so we can move freely in life. Working with fundamental patterns in yoga helps to clarify how we move and what habits we have built up.

We need to learn to distribute patterns evenly throughout our bodies. Poorly distributed forces create stresses and strains at joins, which invariably lead to pain of discomfort and increased likelihood of layering protective patterns over causative ones. When we take this approach, yoga becomes an inquiry into the way we engage through our bodies. It helps us to notice when we do unhelpful things, and, once noticed, we can gently set about letting them go." --Peter Blackaby

Working with your own narrative is essential. That is where solutions are. YOUR solutions.
Now take the rest of your life and practice.

Narrative

ˈnarətɪv'

noun

noun: narrative; plural noun: narratives

1. 1.

   a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.

   • the narrated part of a literary work, as distinct from dialogue.

     
     
   • the practice or art of telling stories.

     
     
   • a representation of a particular situation or process in such a way as to reflect or conform to an overarching set of aims or values.

     
     

adjective

adjective: narrative

1. 1.

   in the form of or concerned with narration.

   "a narrative poem"

Daoyintu

The "Guiding and Pulling" Chart (Daoyintu) was found in Mawangdui (Tomb No. 3) It shows forty-four people—men and women, young and old—engaged in a kind of gymnastics believed to heal some diseases and extend life. The chart is considered the ancestor of the exercises called Qigong.

Hug!

Beautiful images of Indra Devi hugging a tree and Krishnamacharya with Yvonne Millerand (thanks Christophe!) sent to me by Ryan Leier.
Thanks Ryan!

Breath Of The Gods

I went to see Breath Of The Gods at the ICA this afternoon. It documents Krishnamacharya's life and teachings as seen through the eyes of the film's director Jan Schmidt-Garre on his search for 'authentic' yoga. His journey leads him from the legendary students and relatives of Krishnamacharya's to the source of modern yoga, at the palace of the Maharaja of Mysore.

It is beautifully shot and worth seeing, if just for the archive footage. I enjoyed the taste of someone elses journey into the vast and varied church of yoga and I came a way with a feeling that we are all, even the most well respected of teachers and Gurus, only human.

 From Robert W. Lovett’s Lateral curvature of the spine and round shoulders, c. 1922 via evencleveland

Persian anatomical manuscript by belgrade18 on Flickr via iswasandwillbe

Elsie de Wolfe

Interior designer Elsie de Wolfe was famous for her morning exercises. She wrote in her 1935 autobiography that her daily regimen at age seventy included yoga, standing on her head, and walking on her hands.

How Old is That Pose?

I recently finished reading Mark Singleton's brilliant book Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. 

It is a well argued, balanced view of the modern history of Yoga Asana and presents challenges on alot of what i've been taught in the past that really made me think. Much like a good recipe book i think this might be something i will be dipping in and out of for some time to come. What i found most appealing is the author does not impose a conclusion as to the rightness or wrongness of how you, I or others interpret the recipe for Yoga. The feeling i was left with is that Yoga (as commonly taught) has as much to do with ancient Indian spirituality and practice as my dad's dahl has to do with Indian traditional food - I still love it though - and loving it with the discipline of knowledge that cultures blend, invent and coalesce traditions is a welcome head clearing freedom! Well worth a read if you want to know more about why we practise the way we do, but if you don't here is an article by Mark Singleton from Yoga Journal that will give you a little taster...

Yoga's Greater Truth

A scholar embarks on a quest to trace the roots of his yoga practice back to their source. What he finds confounds and unsettles him, and, ultimately, provides him with a glimpse of yoga's greater truth.

By Mark Singleton.

The pale winter sunlight shone from the high windows of the Cambridge University library onto a dark leather book cover. In the hall full of silent scholars, I opened it and leafed through picture after picture of men and women in familiar postures. Here was Warrior Pose; there was Downward Dog. On this page the standing balance Utthita Padangusthasana; on the next pages Headstand, Handstand, Supta Virasana, and more—everything you might expect to find in a manual of yoga asana. But this was no yoga book. It was a text describing an early 20th-century Danish system of dynamic exercise called Primitive Gymnastics. Standing in front of my yoga students that evening, I reflected on my discovery. What did it mean that many of the poses I was teaching were identical to those developed by a Scandinavian gymnastics teacher less than a century ago? This gymnast had not been to India and had never received any teaching in asana. And yet his system, with its five-count format, its abdominal "locks," and its dynamic jumps in and out of those oh-so-familiar postures, looked uncannily like the vinyasa yoga system I knew so well.

Time passed, and my curiosity nagged at me, leading me to do further research. I learned that the Danish system was an offshoot of a 19th-century Scandinavian gymnastics tradition that had revolutionized the way Europeans exercised. Systems based on the Scandinavian model sprang up throughout Europe and became the basis for physical training in armies, navies, and many schools. These systems also found their way to India. In the 1920s, according to a survey taken by the Indian YMCA, Primitive Gymnastics was one of the most popular forms of exercise in the whole subcontinent, second only to the original Swedish gymnastics developed by P.H. Ling. That's when I became seriously confused...

to read more click here

Yoga for Americans: Indra Devi

Indra Devi

Indra Devi, or Mataji, was often called "The First Lady of Yoga." In 1937, Krishnamacharya admitted her into his school—making her the first woman chela (pupil) and the first Western woman ever at an Indian ashram—and personally supervised her asana and pranayama training. Towards the end of the year he told her that she must teach.

Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya: The Mysore School

Many modern schools of Hatha Yoga have their origins in the teachings of Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888 - 1989) whose students include many of today’s most influential teachers: B.K.S. Iyengar, the late K. Pattabhi Jois, the late Indra Devi, Srivatsa Ramaswami, A.G. Mohan, and Krishnamacharya’s wife Mrs. Namagririammal, sons T.K. Srinivasan, T.K.V. Desikachar, T.K. Sribhashyam and daughters Srimathi Pundarikavalli, Srimathi T. Alamelu Sheshadri and Srimathi Shubha Mohan Kumar. He was an influential Indian Yoga teacher, healer and scholar.

The second image I've posted is a section of a larger school portrait which is worth a look at if you can find it. It's very representative of the type of yoga he was teaching at the Mysore school . Because many of his students at that time in his life were active boys he developed a vigorous style of yoga aimed at building strength and stamina...very similar to what is known today as Ashtanga.