i got to the shala early today. my energy was good. i gave an effort to the breath but it was not entirely there (not until about the middle of the practice). i practiced intermediate. i may not remember the step by step sequence of my story today, but here it goes. around Supta Vajrasana, Teacher asked me if i practiced intermediate at home. i said yes and that i had done so this week. he said that i come to the shala on Sundays, but time after time, there is struggle in my poses; my face is reddened and i'm not breathing in particular in the chest opening poses. he does not know where to help me. a few weeks ago he asked me the same question, if i practiced intermediate at home, i said, not i was practicing third series and smiled while saying so. that's because that week my practice involved poses of third series.
i explained that my practice is about an hour and a half and i do a running group of poses, half of the practice. one day i might do the first half of the series, the next day i might do the next half of the series. i don't remember if at that point he said, "that is not ashtanga". but this would certainly be a reasonable time to say so. he said other teachers would have me doing primary. i continued practicing my wobbly, imperfect practice, including my wuz Pincha Mayurasana at the wall, my cheating Karandavasana on a 3 point headstand, my 45 second aloft Mayurasana, my inexistent headstand with the Pincha base, which confuses me. my Urdvha Danurasana where, honestly, the breath was not strong.
what does this mean? it makes me reflect that if don't do ashtanga, therefore i am not an ashtangi. i use the poses i learned from ashtanga to create a garland of poses when practicing yoga at home. i have been writing here maybe for 2 years. about a year ago, i stopped labeling my posts ashtanga because of an internal controversy i felt of whether i was following an orthodox ashtanga method or a liberal ashtanga method. i must be a liberal. i prefer to do my wobbly, imperfect intermediate than injure myself with a perfect primary. after class i mentioned that my practice is stronger if i practice in the shala more often and that maybe on Fridays i could come and do primary, but it tends to injure me. he asked me to think about what he said, that my breath is not present in chest opening asanas. i promised to concentrate more on the breath this week. this week is my turn to do 3rd series poses.
i hope i'm not sounding whiny writing about this. this is not a rant. i'm trying to be like a detached reporter journaling on my experience with yoga today. but my mind is trying to comprehend the implication of the message and why it was given. on the base level, it was given because it is true that my practice reflects where i am after 8 or 9 years of practice. a teacher new to me is looking at me where i am at the moment. he is not aware of how i was 3 years ago or 7 years ago doing the same poses. he cannot see the context that would show that i had improved in some of those poses from the point in which i began. he has the unfortunate challenge of having a student that is working about 12 hours per day, having to carry good nutrition practices, challenged by difficulties with practicing at home - whether it is sleepiness, eating too close to practice time, not eating before practice time and thus not having energy, having a distracted mind, etc. i think all of these things need to be taken into consideration - the whole person, and why a person is at their level in their practice at the moment. i tried to ask myself, is there something wrong with my body? does it not have the strength to do this practice. but if i didn't practice, it would not be healthy.
my observation of the other students in the group is that they are younger than me by about 15 to 20 years, and mostly doing primary, with one of them advancing to intermediate. from their perspective, they must be asking him why am i allowed to do intermediate, considering also that i don't do certain elemental ones correctly. so i'm not a poster child for yoga for them. i also see that there is a lot of emphasis here on getting dropbacks and coming to standing from Urdhva Danurasana. i must be really liberal from an orthodox perspective, that my obsession is not with coming to standing in UD and dropping back to the floor, then coming up. it would be nice if i could do that, but it's more important for me in my life to start Third Series now. if it took me four years to do full lotus, and after eight years i can almost get into Dwi Pada by myself, but need help to get the right leg behind the head, it might be another 4 years before i can do Dwi Pada by myself. an i'm not even talking about when i will get to my toes in Kapotasana. that is a project in itself. but i don't want to obsess about it. i want to have started Third series now, so that 12 years from now i'm actually doing it correctly or as wobbly as my intermediate practice is now. and i guess it would be very difficult to do a single third series pose in this shala, given the message i received today.
i think another cybershalamate faced issues like this in his shala, besides that he had physical reasons why he could not do certain poses. he did not want to disrupt his teacher's stance. he enventually went to do a different type of yoga, then practicing at home his own set of poses. so what are my choices in a city where there are few teachers of the system i learned? i could choose to practice primary when i am at the shala. i could attempt to go once during the week to do primary and then on Sunday to do intermediate. going during the week will have to wait until the new shala location is established. it will not be easy - bike to metro, fold bike, take train, change to other train, arrive, bike to shala, practice, repeat in reverse, go to work a full day. that is three hours of traveling to go do yoga. it's tiring to think about that. this all feels like when my teacher in San Francisco told me i was doing intermediate wrong and asked me to go back to primary and she would add an intermediate pose each week. it sounded like a plan, but it didn't work exactly like that, since a lot of changes took place in the ashtanga scene then that sent us practitioners in a diaspora around town, and she left for India for three months then. i sincerely cannot say today what i will do. i either shuck it, eat humble pie and go do primary when i'm at the shala, maybe doing a few poses of intermediate following that, practice at home only, find a different type of yoga to practice here. i'm not sure. i don't know if it will offend Teacher and his students if i continue to do my intermediate there. but i certainly do not plan to practice primary daily. i would only do that on a yoga holiday where i would be obligated to do so by a teacher.
