with Jennifer Ammann
"The gentlest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing in the world."
--Tao Te Ching
--Tao Te Ching
Ashtanga Yoga: The Heart unto Itself
How ever you look at it, yoga is the space, the energy, the dynamic quality that is created in between two opposites when they are successfully brought into relationship with one another.
Yoga is often confused with religion, which is understandable since it is widely practiced alongside Hinduism in India, Buddhism in Tibet, Islam in the Middle East and Judeo-Christian religions in the West.
The history of yoga, which dates back at least 5,000 years and pre-dates the existence of modern Hinduism, catalogues the evolution of human thought in what is now India. As such, it is a philosophy, a way of life that has altered with the times to integrate the emerging ideas of people as they developed and refined their understanding of what was being transmitted.
Much of yoga practice is referred to in Sanskrit terms, an ancient language of the Indian sub-continent, dating back as early as 1500 BCE. The Sanskrit word “yoga,” literally means “to yoke,” to bring things in opposition together. It can mean bringing together opposing principles in our bodies when striving in a posture ( asana), the unifying of our internal reality with the world outside us, or the union that happens in our relationships with each other. However you lookat it, yoga is the space, the energy, the dynamic quality that is created inbetween two opposites when they are successfully brought into relationship with one another.
Through the shifting of culture, the differing schools of thought, even the migration to other parts of the world, the tradition of yoga endures as it has been passed from student to teacher for thousands of years to the present.
Because of the open nature of how yoga teaches, what comes through in the relationship between teacher and student — that is, two opposites — is the process of yoga itself. In other words, what is traditional is not something that is fixed in time and space, like the color blue or the molecular structure of water, but rather a living, breathing process, just like words on the breath between people. At the same time, without adherence to the external form the teaching is lost. The structure is what grounds us.
Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga first appeared in the United States in the 1980s, when a handful of Westerners began studying with K. Pattabhi Jois, of Mysore, India, the head of this lineage who had learned the system from his teacher, Krishnamacharya, the very same teacher to B.K.S. Iyengar and T.K.V. Desikachar. In the last 10 years Ashtanga yoga has become increasingly popular with Americans.
The word ashtanga literally means “eight limbs,” like a wheel having eight spokes with a common center. The first two limbs, the yamas and the niyamas, address ethical interaction with others and ourselves, respectively; and ultimately these are all facets or expressions of the first yama, ahimsa, which is non-violence. The third limb is asana, or posture, and the other five limbs are pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi, all various stages of meditation.
When you go to an Ashtanga yoga class in Taos, you will primarily get instruction on the third limb, asana. But as all the limbs of Ashtanga have that common center, the idea is that when we practice one limb we are really practicing them all.
For example, while doing trikonasana, triangle pose, we are hopefully practicing non-violence with our bodies and in being mindful, beginning to meditate on what's happening. The postures are connected together in seven different series, proceeding in increasing difficulty. When we practice a series, we link each posture to the next with a vinyasa, a flow of breath and movement that keeps us focused through the transitions.
Trouble invariably arises when we become attached to getting to the next posture, or the next series. All kinds of things then enter the picture, like competition with the person on the sticky mat next to us who was our best friend when we walked into class and rapidly transforms into our greatest enemy. Or, because we can't do something we become irritable and don't want to go back to class.
Fortunately, we're on the right track, because dealing with obstacles is at the root of uniting opposites. Recognizing the particular circumstances of our bodies, minds, and lives as they really are, unique and imperfect, drops us directly into the experience of yoga.
When we get our thinking out of the way we find that yoga is attainable. It is the very practical art of simply standing in samasthitihi on our sticky mat in a room somewhere, listening to the sound of our own breath and the heart unto itself.
Jennifer Ammann has been an avid student of Ashtanga Yoga since 1994, and she has been teaching in Taos since 1999.
Ashtanga Yoga practitioners
Jennifer Ammann
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