Bring back the Research in Ashtanga Yoga

In my opinion as an Ashtanga Yoga practitioner and teacher, the Ashtanga system has largely become far too dogmatic in it’s teaching style and institutionalised by it’s teaching method.

What was once called the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga Reasearch Intstitute, where Mr Jois was actively changing and developing the sequencing and applying different techniques to different students. This changed at some point where the research I would say stopped, and more rules and conditions were applied to the practice room.

Listening to practitioners who visited Mysore back in the earlier years of westerners travelling to India to learn this system, there appeared to be a more researched based approach to the system seeing students more individually. This is how I believe the sytem should be taught where the system is adapted to the student, rather than the student being ‘forced’ through the one size fits all modern approach to Ashtanga Yoga.

Square pegs through round holes does not work

As a practitioner who practiced this system in a ‘strict’ methodology for many years, largely what I experienced and witnessed was teachers injuryng students in certain positions and students forcing themselves into Asana’s thier bodies were not ready for due to Dogmatism as they were not allowed to do anything outside of the series.

There is a belief that authenticity in Ashtanga Yoga is based on how strict someone is to the set sequence of the method. In my experience of witnessing this, it is belief only and not something based on real world experience. Authenticity does not come from how strict someone is.

As I have experienced in my own body, fellow practitioners over the years and my own students I came to the conclusion that for most people to work through the system in an holistic way without injury, the system must be adapted to westerners bodies. Most practitioners have full time jobs, families, previous injuries and modern western bodies which means tight hips, shoulders and often students will sit for most of the day in some kind of sedentary job. Modern living for most of us.

This means thier bodies need more help to open and to be able to practice the more complex Asana’s of Primary Series safely.

If the system was perfect as it is, then I would not be writing this blog post. This has come from my years of real world experience that the system in itself is largely flawed for modern western bodies and requires adaptation as it was done in the past. Developing and evolving is part of critical thinking and learning from what does work, and what doesn’t. Assessing things in this way is the job of a competent teacher to use thier skill sets they have developed over the years so they can solve problems within thier students mobility restrictions.

We need to see our students individually so the system can work for them. Not just focing an ideology on them.

Pragmatism bests dogmstism every time.

My feeling is that as more people started to visit Mysore to practice with the Jois family, more rules and conditions were applied to deal with the thousands of people coming to visit each year. This makes sense to some extent, as it solves a problem, but it becomes much less about seeing your stuents individually and much more about controlling a large group of people.

As with most institutions, as they become too big and ‘bloated’ there is much more ‘red tape’, rules, restrictions and the teaching processes of what the intention was originally designed to do, becomes much more about following the rules and that you are a ‘good’ practitioner / teacher / employee if you do so.

This unfortunately is where people become institutionalised. People gradually become less able to think and act independently, because of having lived for a long time under the rules of an institution.

This as I have stated previosly is what I beleive has happed over the years to the teaching methodology to come out of Mysore India from the Jois family and thier students. Rules and conditions, over seeing students individually and adapting as a competent teacher sees fit.

I personally made a decision to not teach the system in this way and to see my students individually so the system works for them instead of forcing what I knew to be injurious and harmful so I could call myself more ‘authentic / traditional’.

The goal of Yoga is to liberate people , open thier bodies and thier minds and to spread love and good energy. Not apply a dogmatic ideology onto people.

I recorded a podcast specifically on this topic which you can link to below:

As I have developed different ways to progress my students through Primary Series in a more holistic way I have captured these additions into a video library that you can practice with as part of The Better Mobility Guide.

Using the The Better Mobility Guide as a tool along side your Ashtanga practice you will learn better ways to open your body for the more complex movements of Primary Series.