Blog - Manchester Ashtanga Yoga

Ashtanga Yoga , The gift that keeps on giving

donna@manchesterashtangayoga.com (Donna McCafferey) — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 14:23:21 GMT

Something to be so grateful for.

I went for a long walk up Kinder Scout Yesterday from Edale, a walk I’ve not done in over 20 years, which is a shame because it is such a lovely walk and although not as spectacularly pretty as the Lake district, the Peak district is just as lovely in a different way and it is right on our doorstep. We really are very blessed!

I also got to thinking just how blessed I was to find my yoga practice all those years ago whilst partying in Goa! It has really served me well over the years and increased my lung capacity for sure and kept me really fit, fitter than I’d imagined to be honest. I’ve not done a hill walk since July when I was last in the lakes, so hiking up a massive hill should have had someone my age out of breath and exhausted, but it didn’t!

Its just like the running that I took up in January, I originally thought that It would kill me at first, but I’ve managed to run consistently long-ish distances from the very start.

As my yoga practice has matured, my breath has slowed down, and I figured that I needed the running for cardio exercise, but although it does give me that extra cardio, I actually think that the Ashtanga system keeps you at a generally top level of fitness, especially when practiced six days a week.

It is a big commitment though and I’ll admit, when I first started my practice I was living on the beach in Goa with nothing else to do with my days. So starting a full on Hardcore (it is though, isn’t it ?) yoga practice was easily managed when all you have to do for the rest of the day is laze around on the beach to recover. Rolf also knew that the hippies in Goa at the time wouldn’t be up for doing anything before 9am, so he did his practice first at home and our classes didn’t start til 9:30am. Plus, we were just off the beach in a shaded palm grove with a lovely view of the sea so it was cool enough to cope with. Perfect really!

So, back in the real world, I understand that keeping up a regular daily practice is difficult, especially when you have to go to work, or you have a house to run and kids to look after, or all three! Its exhausting! Add in a full primary series (or more), plus getting up for a six am start into that mix and it’s going to tell sooner or later.

This is why I’m not super strict with people. It is essentially your practice, and yes there are those series that you are supposed to follow but its fine to just do a half primary one day, or half primary half second, or the other half of primary etc, alternating the days …. If you do chop and change your practice around, make sure that you aren’t constantly favouring certain postures over others because you like/dislike them, or you’d rather skip the hard ones in favour of the fancy ones and you’ll be fine.

If your practice is leaving you exhausted then you need to have a rethink. Go for quality of practice over quantity. Work up to where you feel ok and leave the rest for the following day, or pare it back until you have built up the stamina to do the whole series, with quality of breath and bandha. It doesn’t matter how long you take to get there; you have the rest of your life to add postures.

The Ashtanga sequences are set out in a really intelligent way. They are designed to open the body slowly and steadily for the next posture. We always start with the Surya Namascars, these small sequences of postures I feel, not only warm you up, but also can act as a gauge to how your body is feeling on any different day, I always know when I’m under the weather because Surya Namascar B is exhausting, so I usually don’t go much further on those days.

The standing postures are designed to open your hips and your shoulders, but they only work if we find the foundation and work from there. If you look at them they include lunges to work all of the hip muscles, and arms at strange angles behind your back to open your shoulders. There’s also a couple of twists thrown in there for good measure. Intermediate series begins at the end of the standing postures and involves a lot of postures that need seriously open hips so we need to be working the standing postures properly so that we can be open enough to start this series from there. We need to be feeling the postures in the legs and pressing the feet (and hands) into the floor for the foundation. Obviously you'll have had a firm grounding in Primary Series to build up bandha and strength before you attempt intermediate, or you'll become unstuck!

Therefore, it is important to follow the sequences properly and not rush through them. No matter how fast you make yourself “progress” through these series, Your body will only open when its ready. If you force it beyond its comfortable range of motion you’re just going to hurt yourself. And then you’re back at square one again, or you give up and blame the yoga for your injury. There’s nothing wrong with this yoga, injuries are caused by how it is approached.

This is the beauty of the practice. The primary series takes you quite quickly up to some very fancy ‘peak’ postures in the middle and it would be easy to grow your ego and get caught up in how advanced you are. But each one of those postures is followed by a harder and more advanced posture which you can get stuck on for a long time (especially if you go to Mysore in India where you’ll be stopped forever until you can do the posture). This is great for keeping the ego in check, and is actually very humbling.

As you move through the series you realise that as the postures become harder, you are constantly thrown back to being a total beginner again. As you go through your life and your practice, you will find that you lose postures and pick them up again, or you just lose some postures altogether, or you have to relearn postures in order to use correct technique instead of just your natural flexibility (if you are naturally flexible of course). This all adds to the longevity of your practice. Three of my teachers are in their sixties and still practicing advanced series daily. I think that you just have to keep persevering. Chipping away at those postures bit by bit, over and over until you get better at them and learn the lesson they are trying to teach you.

Some people will never get beyond Primary series, and that is perfectly fine because the Primary series has so much to teach us and over time you will find that how you approach it changes and you go deeper into the postures. I really struggle to get my leg to stay behind my head. Over the years I've been practicing this posture, I'll go a bit further with it and then tweak my back and then I'm back to the start again. So I'm under no illusion that I'll be doing the advanced series any time soon because there are so many leg behind head postures in those series and my body won't go there at the moment. So I've let it go and am happy with my primary and intermediate practice. It's enough for me. There's no point in trying to get your body into a posture that it doesn't like, it just hurts and I don't like pain !!!

So as I said at the start, I’m very blessed to have found this practice because it has served me so well over the past 23 years. I’m also very blessed to have worked with some of the best Ashtanga teachers in the world. They have taught me all I know about how to teach this practice to others. Their example says it all.

I believe that I stumbled across a wonderful gift on my way to the beach that day, and it’s the gift that keeps on giving! I was a complete beginner, never having done more than one or two classes of yoga in my life before, but I opened my mind and kept going. I was given my practice in the traditional way, one posture at a time, so there was never that much to remember or work on at any time. Over the course of those few months in Goa I built up my practice and took it home with me. The following season I went back and continued to practice with Rolf, slowly improving my practice as I went along. And I have built on that practice over the years and just kept practicing every day, taking Saturdays and moon days as rest days, as I was originally taught. It has become part of my daily morning routine, like cleaning my teeth and I cant imagine my life without it.

I feel incredibly blessed to have this practice in my life.

You can also have a gift that keeps on giving. I am running a daily weekday early morning practice which is online at the moment because of the current situation, but it works incredibly well online as I can see so much more. Please do get in touch to find out how to join us .

Obstacles to yoga practice.

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 16:52:00 GMT

This is my favourite yoga sutra in the first chapter, mainly because of the way it sounds when it is chanted. It’s got a great rhythm to it and for me really stands out. But it’s meaning is also really special, especially at this time of year when we may be feeling a bit tired and jaded, and this year even more so.

Here is the translation: “Disease, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, sensuality, false perception, failure to reach firm ground and slipping from that ground gained. These distractions of the mind stuff are the obstacles (to practice and Samadhi)

It all makes sense really, if you are unwell, you won’t have the energy to practice and a dullness goes with that illness, you know those mornings when you have a brain fog and just can't concentrate!

Doubt creeps in sometimes when you wonder “what am I doing here?” “why am I doing this?” “all these people are far more advanced than I am?” – and yes I have these doubts all the time… you are not alone … It’s perfectly normal, we’ve all been there, It’s your mind trying to stop you from controlling it and doing what is good for you.

Carelessness, when you lose the awareness and get distracted, not really paying attention, it can lead to injury and that becomes an obstacle in itself.

Laziness , no need to say any more! There is a famous saying by Patthabi Jois that goes something along the lines of ‘everyone can do Ashtanga yoga except those who are lazy’ and it is true! Laziness will definitely stop you from stepping on your mat in the morning.

Sensuality , My Yoga Sutras book links all of the previous obstacles together and states that when you have lost interest in reaching the higher consciousness, then the mind has to go somewhere so it tends towards the senses and the sensual enjoyments. Then your practice is difficult to maintain.

False perception, failure to reach firm ground and slipping from ground gained these can all be linked together. On any spiritual path, we begin with an intense interest and see improvement at the start which makes us enjoy the practice and keeps us interested in continuing. But we all reach a plateau, where we just don’t seem to be moving forward. This is where the false perception comes in, “ooh I’m no good at this” “I’m not progressing, therefore this can’t be for me” etc… It is only your perception, if you continue in your practice, you will see the improvements even if only tiny improvements.

This is also failure to reach firm ground . You hit that initial plateau and if you are not completely committed to your practice this will become an obstacle and cause you to give it up. And falling from ground gained , “oh I could do that posture last week and now I can’t“ It could lead to you becoming disillusioned, and stopping your practice.

These points also come into play when doing any spiritual discipline, meditation is an example for all the same reasons. We always start off with enthusiasm but it doesn’t take much to throw us off course, and before we know it we have given up!

The Ashtanga sequences are full of challenging postures that everyone struggles with. Marichiasana D is one of them! It takes many people a long time to ‘master’ this posture only to find that further along the line you lose it. I have been practicing Ashtanga for 23 years and after initially gaining Marichiasana D in my first year of practice, lost it when I became pregnant 5 years later, only because I had to give it up. It took me a long time to get it back only to lose it again a couple of years ago due to a dodgy knee. Once that was sorted out it’s come back again. I’m sure I’ll lose it again over the next few years of my life.

I have found the same with back bending. It took me a long time to learn the correct technique for dropping back and standing up, after initially rushing into it in a fast dash to second series. Over the last ten years or so I have learned new techniques to optimise my back bending. I think I have learned and relearned how to drop back at least three times now and wish I’d listened to Rolf 20 years ago when he told me to work on the wall, as I’d have learned it correctly from the start.

But this is one of my patterns of behaviour. Rushing ahead to do something in my own way as quickly as possible without taking the time to do it correctly. The practice has helped me to recognise this pattern and I am now better at slowing down and taking the necessary steps to do things with the correct technique. This has followed through into daily life as well – I can now actually follow instructions and recipes!

So, these are the distractions that the mind throws up as obstacles to stop us from gaining control and equanimity.

This next sutra follows on nicely from the one before, giving us the accompaniments to the mental distractions that are the obstacles to practice.

Distress, despair, trembling of the body – ever experienced this in Navasana ? Disturbed inhalation and exhalation, distraction and confusion . In fact, all of the above can be applied to Navasana!! These will all prevent meditation and concentration and this is why I like the Ashtanga method so much. We always practice the same postures, day in, day out, there is no escape. Eventually your body gets used to the postures. I remember starting Primary series. It was hard. I more than likely experienced all of the above states while practicing, but after some years it became easier, it flowed better, there was some grace, my breath became slower and calmer, it became a meditation. Then I began second series! Back to the beginner again. It was so messy! So clunky and no grace whatsoever! But, over time, even though I am still working on some postures, the clunkiness has gone, the flow has arrived and it has also become a meditation and there is a level of flow and grace there…

I know when I first learned about equanimity and being the best version of myself, I thought it would be so hard to do, but it is actually really easy and mainly because it makes you feel so good! I was actually really shocked when I began to look at myself and my actions. I did not like what I saw at all and thought it would be so hard to change, but with the help of firstly, Vipassana meditation and then Ashtanga yoga I am hopefully getting there. It is a constant journey though and you cant let your guard down, the mind will take over if you let it, always finding some reason to make you stop your practice!

If you are not reacting to everything that life throws at you, if you can change your thoughts into positive ones, and if you can cultivate a level of gratitude, then you will be happier. If you can manage to live completely in the moment you will not react, you will act instead, usually from a place of good and you will always do what is the right thing for you and those around you.

What has modern yoga become?

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 13:11:00 GMT

My original teacher used to say, that if you are not fully with your breath and bandha, then you are just doing gymnastics. I think he was right. There is so much more to yoga than just the acrobatic fancy postures that we see everywhere at the moment. Incredibly, the postures or asana, are just a tiny proportion of the bigger picture that is yoga. Yoga was traditionally practiced throughout the ages to bring the practitioner to a higher state of consciousness. This is the purpose of the practice of yoga, to reach liberation, to free the mind of its constant chatter and become at one with the universe in a state of peace. To be able to act instead of react to the challenges that life throws at us.

There are many routes to this goal. Meditation is a common way to achieve this state of mind, and so is postural yoga. But both only work if they are practiced in the way that they were designed to be practiced, with awareness of breath and body, and along with the rest of the eight limbs, or in the case of meditation, along with the rest of the Buddhist precepts. Basic mindfulness or asana will not take you so deep.

Increasingly, in the modern world, we all want a quick fix, to become thin, to become calm, to de-stress. We are all short of time and space to properly look after ourselves. We see pictures in magazines or on social media of people doing yoga or meditation, on the beach or in a beautiful space, and they all look beautiful and slim and healthy and well. And we all want a slice of that. We want to be healthy and well. We want to be calm and peaceful and stress free. We want to live the dream!

Yoga is offered everywhere in handy time saving packages of 45 minutes, 1 hour classes. Perfect if you have a busy life so that you can fit in a class after work, before going home for your evening meal. It is offered as a fitness regime to get a “yoga body”. It is offered in gyms and studios with loud music to accompany it so that you can barely hear what the teacher is telling you to do, let alone your breath. How can you focus inwards when you are struggling to hear the teacher over the loud music?

The classes are often really fast paced so that you do not have time to catch your breath, and emphasis is put on hand stands and complex arm balances, which are not even possible for everyone. Each class is packed with postures to ‘open your hips’ or ‘open up your spine’ or ‘work your core’. The emphasis is on extreme flexibility and sweating. Teachers competing to see who has the best beats to accompany their class. Often you see people straining and stretching their bodies far beyond their capability in order to meet the demands of the posture, moving so fast from one posture to the next that their body is actually in fight or flight mode. They are struggling to catch their breath. The exact opposite of what yoga should be about.

I fear that the essence of yoga is being lost. This beautiful practice, designed to take us to a higher state of being is now just becoming a part of the rat race. A circus, complete with acrobats.

What we don’t realise is that to actually reach that space of peace or higher consciousness takes years of dedication to your practice. Of finding your practice and sticking to it. Of rolling out your mat every day, even when you don’t feel like it. Of looking inwards at yourself and realising your patterns of behaviour and deciding to change those patterns to better ones.

What we don’t realise at first is that once you embark on this journey it will completely change your life. You will find that you change your diet, you change your lifestyle, you become a really cheap date because you cannot tolerate alcohol and it’s after effects anymore! But the reward is that you are so much happier and content with life.

Yeah of course we all have our moments when the world steps in and knocks us off balance but we find that we can recover more quickly and regain our balance. This is what liberation looks like. This is what yoga is about, retaining that equilibrium, keeping your equanimity whatever life throws at you. And believe me, life is really chucking stuff at us at the moment. Life is really sending stuff to try us, to knock us off our balance and cause us to react rather than act.

Yoga is needed more than ever at the moment, but real yoga. The kind where you go inwards and look at yourself. The yoga where you concentrate on your breath and become aware of your body while you do your postures, even if you are just sitting in meditation. This is the yoga that will change your life. This is the yoga that will keep you balanced and allow you to act rather than react to the situations that life throws at you.

Daily practice really works, whether it is a stillness seated meditation or whether it is a full on asana practice. However, it only works when practiced regularly.

The yoga sutras tell us this in sutra 1.14

Over time, doing this practice helps us to become a better person. It makes us become more positive and accepting of life’s difficulties and keeps us more balanced. But just going through the motions of the asana will not work alone. We need to add awareness and concentration on breath. This is what will have the life changing effects. This is what makes the yoga happen. And it doesn’t happen over night either! You have to work at it. You have to be prepared to put in the time for yourself, to really look inwards at yourself, which is never easy. This is about changing you, about liberating you.

So, the next time you go to your yoga class, see if you can find your breath, and focus in on it. Here’s a challenge, see if you can focus on your breath for the whole of the class. See if you can really let go in savasana at the end, and see how that makes you feel. Enjoy your practice, relax into the postures and feel the difference.

Should Ashtanga really be Just for super flexible, young and skinny people or should it be for every body?

Sat, 03 Oct 2020 17:23:00 GMT

I find this to be a really sad indictment of the Ashtanga community. It illustrates perfectly how and why Ashtanga has such a bad reputation, and why some people will never go near an Ashtanga class or have been put off by the teachers at the classes they have been to. This is really sad, because the practice itself is suitable for any body and any age or ability of practitioner. When taught by sensitive and inclusive teachers who realise its not all about the “perfect” asana, it is a beautiful practice which will transform your life.

And what is the perfect Asana? Do you base it on how your teacher looks in the posture? Or how their teacher looked? Or do you base it on how Patthabi Jois or Sharath does the posture or on how Iyengar or Krishmacharya did them. Maybe you base it on the person on the mat next to you or that woman you saw on Instagram….

My first teacher, Rolf never demonstrated how to do the postures, he just talked us through them or manipulated our bodies into them. I never saw him demonstrate any postures. If you go to his website now there are only two very old pictures of him doing asana and they were taken in the shala while he was doing his practice, certainly no posing for photos. I like this approach, as every body is made differently. Some people are naturally more flexible than others. Body proportions also help or hinder ability to get into certain postures, the way your pelvis naturally tilts, injuries etc … it goes on, nothing is right, nothing is wrong. We should be feeling how the posture works in our own bodies, is it comfortable and can you get a full deep breath? If not, then you need to wind back a little until it does feel comfortable and you can breathe fully. Otherwise you are just torturing yourself for no reason and that isn’t yoga. Therefore, I believe that the practice should be made to fit each individual body, not the other way round, fitting the body into the practice by any means –eg. fasting and forcing your way into the postures.

Personally, I feel incredibly blessed to have practiced with senior teachers, with decades of their own practice behind them, who care more about awareness, breath and bandha than flexibility and being able to bind in postures. I have never been in a class where I felt judged because of my flexibility or body size. The communities I have practiced with have all been more interested in their own practice, rather than comparing to others in the group. This culture obviously comes down to the nurturing of the teacher.

However, I did meet one visiting teacher once who suggested that the reason I have never been able to bind in Supta Kurmasana on my own was because “some people overeat”! This was at a workshop, in a room full of mainly skinny women, and I am by no means overweight. I was horrified, as he knew nothing about my practice, or my eating habits! He had just flown in from Mysore though, and I think that amongst some of that community there is an unhealthy obsession with being very thin so that you can more quickly bind in postures and move on to the next one, and the next series…. There seems to be a competition for collecting postures and moving on to the advanced series, which obviously isn’t what yoga is about.

This whole idea that you have to be really thin and flexible to do Ashtanga totally goes against the grain for me, as Ashtanga has helped me to recover from an eating disorder, by showing me the need for food to fuel your body. For me, it is not possible to do this practice and not fuel your body. It demands calories for energy and if you don’t eat properly you cannot have the energy for a full practice, as well as getting on with all of the other demands that life places on you. Then your practice slides, you become disillusioned, and you lose the essence of what yoga is about. It then becomes a tool with which to beat yourself up instead of the healing practice, designed to take you to a higher consciousness which it is supposed to be.

Yoga is not about getting the perfect posture or getting through the next series, or being able to bind in Marichi D or supta kurmasana, or getting your leg behind your head or catching your heels in Kapotasana. Yoga is not about being thin and flexible. Yoga is not about taking pictures of perfect advanced postures on a beautiful beach. Yoga is not about the latest fashions in expensive leggings, and don’t get me wrong, I’m a total consumer when it comes to nice leggings that fit well, but this is a work very much in progress! Yoga is about raising your level of consciousness, about changing ingrained patterns of behaviour, and learning new and better ones. It’s about learning to act in situations rather that react. It is also a lifetimes work. There is no quick fix, especially when it comes to Ashtanga! The asanas are primarily a way of keeping the body fit and healthy so that you are able to sit for long periods of time in meditation.

I hope that my Ashtanga classes are inclusive of everyone, and that no one has ever felt like they are being judged because of their body type. I really believe that whatever your age or levels of fitness and flexibility, this amazing transformative practice can be modified to suit you, so that you too can use it to heal your body and raise your consciousness

Maintaining a Home practice

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 18:36:00 GMT

In this time of Corona Virus all of the studios and gyms are closed, most likely for the foreseeable future and you will have found that a lot of yoga classes have gone online. This is great in that you can now have your favourite yoga teachers beamed directly into your living room!

This has been an ideal time to foster a home practice. But you need a good space to practice. The Upanishads state that it should be, “In a hidden, wind free, sheltered spot which is flat, clean, free from stones, fire and sand, by quiet flowing waters and the like, agreeable to the mind but not oppressive to the eye, there he should practice yoga.”

The Bhagavad Gita states that, “In a clean place he should set up a firm seat for himself, with a cloth, deerskin and kusa grass on top.” Other texts talk about practicing yoga on the top of a mountain, at the foot of a tree or in a shrine.

Clearly all of these ancient texts are referring to the ascetic yogins who lived on the outskirts of society and didn’t really have a living room in which to practice. However, the basic premise of all of these ideas is, as stated in the Upanishads, a clean, clear uncluttered space that is pleasing to look at and conducive to allowing you to practice without being interrupted. So not your family dining room at mealtimes then!

That description from the Upanishads takes me back to the yoga space of my first teacher, Rolf Naujokat, in Goa. His practice space, or shala was a clearing at the bottom of Disco Valley in Vagator. Disco valley is a palm grove that leads down a hill to the beach. It was named Disco Valley because there would be full moon parties held there. Rolf had a space on a flat piece of land in a small clearing in the palm trees. The space was regularly smoothed over with fresh cow dung to make a floor, so it was free from stones, fire and sand. Though there was the odd knobbly tree root that appeared when it needed refreshing! The view was of the sea and there was a lovely cooling breeze coming off the beach. It was wonderfully shaded by the trees. A beautiful space to practice yoga, I was so lucky.

Now though we have the option of practicing on a proper floor, in a studio. Even Rolf teaches on his roof now, which is better because it is flat and concrete and the stones and roots often got in the way. And during lockdown, and hopefully beyond, we have the option of creating a beautiful space in our home in which to practice yoga.

So what do you need? Ideally a clean uncluttered space. I share my yoga space with the PlayStation. So it’s a room with a small sofa, a big TV and an old rocking chair which is used for gaming, and can be moved out of the way to create enough space for me to practice in. This space has become my ‘Yoga Studio’ during lockdown so I have had to move a bit of furniture around in order to make it look presentable.

For your home practice, you don’t need to create a yoga studio, just enough space where you can roll out your mat and practice on in the morning. If you are aiming at a morning practice - in order to make yoga a daily habit, then ideally you’ll be able to quickly set the space up either the night before or first thing in the morning. I can’t stress the importance of a clean and uncluttered space! Otherwise you are likely to spend your whole practice looking at what needs cleaning and what needs tidying away, and if you are not careful your mind will get carried away and before you know it you are no longer doing yoga but you’re cleaning and tidying up! It happens! It is good to practice in the same space every day as well, that way you associate this space, and time with your yoga practice and nothing else, so you are more likely to stay focussed on your yoga, and create a morning habit.

What happens if you live in a busy household with partners and children or housemates who can interrupt? Well, that will always happen and I suppose you could choose your time for practice so that the rest of the house isn’t up or around. Early mornings are great for this, no one else is up and so there are no interruptions, except for maybe the cat who wants a space by the heater! Obviously sharing a house with others and not having a special room to dedicate to your yoga, it isn’t always easy, and this is why I practice early morning so that I avoid everyone else and can practice in peace, but I know this isn’t that easy, or for everyone, so you have to do what you can and find a space that works for you.

So, even during Lockdown, there is always a way to keep up your practice and there are so many options out there for online yoga at the moment. Find a class that suits you, and a teacher that resonates with you and roll out your mat in your space and practice.

I am so pleased that even throughout this lockdown, I have managed to keep our morning Mysore community together and we have become stronger, even though we are all physically separate in our homes, we are all practicing together. We may not be physically in the same space but because we all come together every day at the same time in the Virtual practice space, the shared energy of our practice is so strong. It is truly wonderful to experience and be a part of. I feel so blessed to have this time to practice every morning. It has been a wonderful bit of normality in these uncertain times.

It has also fostered a daily Ashtanga practice for everyone who comes which I hope will remain a habit even when the lockdown has ended. The idea of home practice has now been tried and tested and it has worked. So hopefully this habit will continue for everyone into the future. As we have found during this pandemic, it is not always possible to be with your teacher all of the time, and there will be periods where you have a choice either to practice on your own at home or not practice at all. The beauty of Ashtanga Yoga is that it is taught as a self practice for just this reason, so that you can keep up your daily practice, even without a teacher.

Yoga has felt especially important to me in these uncertain times and being able to just connect with your breath, and move your body knowing that you are not alone has felt especially comforting. We practice every day, moving through the same familiar sequences of postures that we have always practiced, with our community, and it has felt normal in these deeply abnormal and unsettling times. It has brought some sanity into the chaos that is the world at the moment and feels grounding and safe. And it really sets you up for the day, making you ready to face everything the day throws at you.

Please do join our community if you want to make a home practice habit for yourself. We start at 6:30am every weekday with 12 focussed breaths, followed by the opening mantra and then we move into our practice. If you don’t think you can remember all of the sequence you can use a cheat sheet, but you will be amazed at how much you can remember if you have been attending regular led classes. If you join us regularly you will quickly find that you won’t need the cheat sheet for very long. It is fine to just go up to where you feel happy, no one expects anything from you. It’s your practice. Pets and children are always welcome too and we all meet up after practice on a Friday for a virtual cuppa!

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Manchester Ashtanga Yoga- Our Philosophy

Sat, 18 Apr 2020 14:10:00 GMT

I believe that there is more to Ashtanga yoga than just the sequences of postures. The postures make up only the third Limb.

Ashtanga means eight limbs, Ashtau - 8, Anga - limbs, and the idea is to practice all of the eight limbs when you are on your mat and for the rest of the day.

The first two limbs are the Yamas and Niyamas which are ways to live your life.

The Yamas start with Ahimsa, which roughly translates as kindness, or non harming, to yourself, to others and to animals. Kindness in thought and word, and in the actions that you take in life. Many people practice vegetarianism, but it can go so much farther than this. As with everything it is best to start slowly, and gradually over time, as you get deeper into your practice you will start to give up the things that you feel are not serving you, and once you embrace the principle of ahimsa you find you really can change your life.

You can bring Ahimsa to your mat by being kind to yourself during your practice, by not pushing your body to it’s limits every day and listening to your body, and not working through pain. Pain is your body’s way of telling you there is something wrong, so pay attention and rest when you need to. There is no rush to get more postures, you have the rest of your life, so just do what feels right and chip away slowly at the postures and you will avoid injury and enjoy your practice, and your practice will serve you.

The second Yama is Satya, truthfulness. So being honest, with yourself and others, in words and actions. Again you can bring this to your mat as well as your daily life. Being honest on your mat is being aware of how you feel on any given day and only working as hard as you feel fit to. Every day will be different and you will feel different from day to day, some days you will have the energy for a “full” practice with loads of postures and some days you will just not have the energy, so be honest with yourself, and only do what feels right for you. You should also be honest with the postures and only push your body as far as it will go. Again this will help to avoid injury and you will enjoy your practice.

The third Yama is Asteya , non stealing. It speaks for itself really and goes hand in hand with honesty. It is often referred to as not doing postures that you haven’t been ‘given’ and there is some value in this because the system is intelligently set up so that each posture leads onto the next one and they open your body slowly so that it is ready for the next one. Your teacher knows your body and your practice, and will know when you are ready to move to the next posture.

The fourth Yama is Brahmacharya, or continence, in the past it was aimed at the young men who practiced yoga and was about celibacy, but can be translated for our age as moderation. Everything in moderation, so bringing this to the mat involves dong the practice that suits you on any given day and not forcing your body to do any more than it is capable of.

The final Yama is Aparigraha , not grasping, not being greedy. On the mat this refers to letting go and not striving to get to the “end Stop” of the posture even when it is clearly not working for you; or not striving for the next posture, or series even if you are not ready for it. This inevitably leads to injury. If you practice without striving you will enjoy your practice and feel relaxed afterwards. Off the mat aparigraha refers to moderation in all things, such as food, etc. clearly if you are not greedy or grasping for things that are not in your reach you will be happier.

The Niyamas are more ways to live your life; and start with Saucha, cleanliness, referring to purity of the body. So when this is related to our practice, we can make sure the body is clean before practice. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika has various different kriyas that can be performed before practice to cleanse the body. The most basic one of these is to have a shower which has the added bonus of making the body warm before practice if you have a hot shower in winter.

Other methods of purifying the body are to do Neti, which is done by pouring lukewarm salty water through each nostril, to clean the nasal passageways; very useful for taking deep breaths and especially useful if you have a cold or live in very polluted areas. Another method of purifying your body is to watch what you put into it, such as food and drink. Only eating pure, sattvic food and abstaining from drugs and alcohol, including caffeine. The purer your body is the easier the practice becomes. However, everything in moderation, you are allowed to have fun !

The second Niyama is Santosha , or contentedness. On the mat this translates to being happy with where you are and not beating yourself up if you still can’t get that posture or you could do something last week and you can no longer do it today. The body changes every day, so your practice will change too and the wonderful thing about Ashtanga yoga is that we practice the same postures over and over so we get to see how the body changes and how the mind changes towards those postures. If you can be content with where you are on any given day you will enjoy your practice, and of course when taken off the mat if you can be content with your life then you will be happy.

The third Niyama is Tapas , discipline, austerities. Tapas also means to burn, burning away all of the impurities. The practice creates heat to burn away the impurities in the body. The practice itself is a discipline, and an austerity. This is why we practice 6 days a week. We have a day off to rest the body and break the addiction. This self discipline will always stand you in good stead when you are off the mat.

The fourth Niyama is Swadhyaya , translated as self study. On the mat we should be looking inwards with awareness to what is going on in the body, or at least with awareness of the breath. This is the ultimate self study. This is where the real transformation comes from. Off the mat you can put these insights of yourself into practice in how you react to the world and other people. And you can also choose to study some of the sacred books of yoga such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, or the Yoga Sutras, which actually help your practice .

The final Niyama is Ishvara Pranidhara which means surrendering to God. Now, God can mean whatever you believe it to mean; from the wise old man sitting on a cloud, to a woman, to a pantheon of gods, to the Universe, to a greater force for good. The idea is that you surrender yourself in meditation to this greater force and you will achieve Samadhi.

The third Limb, as already discussed, is Asana. This translates as the postures that most yoga practitioners are familiar with. In fact most people start their yoga practice with Asana and then over time the Yamas and Niyamas start to organically just happen.

The postures make up only the third Limb. Over time, and with the popularity of yoga, the other limbs have become forgotten, and Ashtanga yoga has been branded as the fast and challenging ‘hardcore’ athletic practice.

We aim to move away from this way of thinking and bring Ashtanga back to its roots. When taught with care and compassion, this practice can be life changing and suitable for everyone. I strongly believe that this is a practice for life. So most people have literally got decades of practice in front of them, so there is plenty of time to collect more postures. Therefore it is fine to take your time and practice gently without hurting your body. There is no rush. Just chip away at the postures bit by bit and one day they will come.

The fourth Limb is Pranayama which means Breath control. Pranayama is often considered as a practice on its own. However, Ujayi breath is a pranayama so it is already incorporated into the Ashtanga system from the first day! Over time your breath will become more even and long and fine. Eventually you will be able to stay focussed on the breath for longer parts of your practice, and then it becomes a meditation.

The fifth Limb is Pratyahara which means looking inward. We should be looking inward while doing our practice, the drishti is there to help us to concentrate and not look around at other people in the room. Ultimately, by concentrating on breath, bandha, and drishti, and being aware of what the body is doing and feeling, we are looking inwards at ourselves. We need to practice with awareness, of the breath, and of the body.

The sixth limb is Dharana, which translates as concentration. All the other limbs lead us to this concentration. The practice itself, when done with full awareness leads us to a deep concentration.

The seventh Limb is Dhyana , or meditation. Through working with the other limbs, and with perfection of concentration, the practice becomes a moving meditation. We can continue this by sitting in meditation at the end of the Asanas. In fact, the practice of Asana opens your body to make it easier to sit for long periods in meditation.

The eighth limb is Samadhi . Contemplation; absorption; a state of bliss or superconsciousness. This is the main point of Yoga and what we are aiming for when we practice. This is the state of union of mind and body and spirit that Yoga is about. It comes with practice; and it can be fleeting. So do your practice!

These are the eight limbs of Yoga and these are the reasons why we make the shapes on our mat every day. By making these shapes; and incorporating the other limbs; and practicing with awareness, the yoga shines a light on our ways of thinking and habitual reactions to the world around us. By being aware of how we face the different postures, which become more difficult and challenging as we move through them, we become aware of how we react to different situations in our lives; and we learn how to face the postures, and life with equanimity. This is where the true transformation happens. And you thought you were just making fancy shapes!