Thank you Adam for elaborating on this topic! 🙏🏻 It's quite a complex one that needs a lot of unpacking during the practice to understand skillfully. Vinyasa can help the practitioner to get deeper into the practice but it can also become a robotic movement. Obsessing over technicalities while holding postures can also become distracting but a little pause might help. Knowing when to apply vinyasa and when to surrender into stillness then becomes such a crucial part of practice. In the end, maybe it's all about presence of mind but not letting it get in the way. What a rabbit hole of a topic! Forgive my ramble! 🙏🏻🫠
yes, like anything potent, i think vinyasa has an equal negative potency - which is , as you say, to close down awareness through habituation rather than open it , as is intended. So, then, comes in that ambiguous quality of building ‘intention’ or indeed; a certain energy in the body - which probably can only be a full time project, but vinyasa may help with too (as much as it is also helped by)
Hi Adam avid listener here! I 100% FEEL you on the episode about Sharath. I’d studied with Sharath in the gokulam shala back in 2014-16. I was just a novice back then and was pretty flexible so Sharath forced me quite a lot with the infamous “catching”. My back worsened with each trip and finally one day when he came assisting me with the catching I told him I had a pretty serious case of scoliosis( from years of cello playing)so could I please just catch my ankle instead of my calf /knee but he just smiled and nodded at me and just KEPT GOING at it. During my 3rd month there my back was hurting so much that I could hardly walk, plus my neck and arm were also getting numb. It took me about 1-2 years to heal my spine, and I gradually got back to practicing. Afterwards I started going to other ashtanga yoga shala in Gokulam (and that was when my KYJAYI friends started ostracizing me lol). I started focusing more on my diaphragm and deep breathing; it completely changed my practice and alleviated most of my lower back pain. Last year I felt I was ready for Sharath again so I went back. ( yes the big photos in the SYC threw me off too…) He remembered me immediately and had a big smile on his face when he saw me. But the CATCHING ugh! He insisted on me catching my knees :( But I was in a better shape than I was 10 years ago (thanks to deep diaphragmatic breathing) but I still don’t get this catching thing . His passing also hits me hard and I'm still processing. I missed how me always helped me in supta vajrasana and how he always smiled at me when my hand slipped and encouraged me to try again 😢
i think you put this well. At least it mirrors my own experience somewhat - a person who was seemingly able to forge a direct connection with everyone and seemed to genuinely care about people, and then all this emphasis on catching’. Which probably was the reason I stopped going in the end after assisting (-and having to make people who shouldn’t ‘catch’ do so). Anyway, sadness and confusion aren’t a helpful mix! Thanks for taking time to listen and reply 🙏😊
Other Ashtanga Yogashala can you please write the name please ? I think the injury is big lesson happened to me also . you healed yourself I guess you found the teacher inside your self trying all the diaphragm and deep breathing. I wonder why we go back to places to get hurt again ?
@@passionbonsai88 hi it's the Ashtanga Sadhana Yoga Shala. Vijay is a very patient teacher and very willing to listen. I think we go back to SYC because we genuinely believe in the practice itself. Maybe Sharath wasn't the perfect teacher but he was very passionate about the practice and I think we all feel it. Although I did get injured from all these extreme backbends but it also taught me that somewhere within me I do have the capacity to do it (one day!).
The main problem with vinyasa as opposed to staying longer periods in asanas is that going through asanas too fast doesn’t teach you much about your body and most importantly about the internals. That’s the baby lost with the bath water with astanga vinyasa. And again to say that staying in postures for long periods is too boring for modern people, well it just reinforces all kinds of bad mental and physical habits they have. Combine vinyasa and long stays. Don’t choose one or the other just because one guy from Mysore says so. Traditional yoga means understanding underlying principles and circumstances, and applying accordingly. It’s the opposite to rigid forms. 🙏
Thank you Adam for elaborating on this topic! 🙏🏻 It's quite a complex one that needs a lot of unpacking during the practice to understand skillfully. Vinyasa can help the practitioner to get deeper into the practice but it can also become a robotic movement. Obsessing over technicalities while holding postures can also become distracting but a little pause might help. Knowing when to apply vinyasa and when to surrender into stillness then becomes such a crucial part of practice.
In the end, maybe it's all about presence of mind but not letting it get in the way. What a rabbit hole of a topic! Forgive my ramble! 🙏🏻🫠
yes, like anything potent, i think vinyasa has an equal negative potency - which is , as you say, to close down awareness through habituation rather than open it , as is intended. So, then, comes in that ambiguous quality of building ‘intention’ or indeed; a certain energy in the body - which probably can only be a full time project, but vinyasa may help with too (as much as it is also helped by)
Hi Adam avid listener here! I 100% FEEL you on the episode about Sharath. I’d studied with Sharath in the gokulam shala back in 2014-16. I was just a novice back then and was pretty flexible so Sharath forced me quite a lot with the infamous “catching”. My back worsened with each trip and finally one day when he came assisting me with the catching I told him I had a pretty serious case of scoliosis( from years of cello playing)so could I please just catch my ankle instead of my calf /knee but he just smiled and nodded at me and just KEPT GOING at it. During my 3rd month there my back was hurting so much that I could hardly walk, plus my neck and arm were also getting numb. It took me about 1-2 years to heal my spine, and I gradually got back to practicing. Afterwards I started going to other ashtanga yoga shala in Gokulam (and that was when my KYJAYI friends started ostracizing me lol). I started focusing more on my diaphragm and deep breathing; it completely changed my practice and alleviated most of my lower back pain. Last year I felt I was ready for Sharath again so I went back. ( yes the big photos in the SYC threw me off too…) He remembered me immediately and had a big smile on his face when he saw me. But the CATCHING ugh! He insisted on me catching my knees :( But I was in a better shape than I was 10 years ago (thanks to deep diaphragmatic breathing) but I still don’t get this catching thing . His passing also hits me hard and I'm still processing. I missed how me always helped me in supta vajrasana and how he always smiled at me when my hand slipped and encouraged me to try again 😢
i think you put this well. At least it mirrors my own experience somewhat - a person who was seemingly able to forge a direct connection with everyone and seemed to genuinely care about people, and then all this emphasis on catching’. Which probably was the reason I stopped going in the end after assisting (-and having to make people who shouldn’t ‘catch’ do so). Anyway, sadness and confusion aren’t a helpful mix!
Thanks for taking time to listen and reply 🙏😊
Other Ashtanga Yogashala can you please write the name please ? I think the injury is big lesson happened to me also . you healed yourself I guess you found the teacher inside your self trying all the diaphragm and deep breathing. I wonder why we go back to places to get hurt again ?
@@passionbonsai88 hi it's the Ashtanga Sadhana Yoga Shala. Vijay is a very patient teacher and very willing to listen. I think we go back to SYC because we genuinely believe in the practice itself. Maybe Sharath wasn't the perfect teacher but he was very passionate about the practice and I think we all feel it. Although I did get injured from all these extreme backbends but it also taught me that somewhere within me I do have the capacity to do it (one day!).
The main problem with vinyasa as opposed to staying longer periods in asanas is that going through asanas too fast doesn’t teach you much about your body and most importantly about the internals. That’s the baby lost with the bath water with astanga vinyasa. And again to say that staying in postures for long periods is too boring for modern people, well it just reinforces all kinds of bad mental and physical habits they have. Combine vinyasa and long stays. Don’t choose one or the other just because one guy from Mysore says so. Traditional yoga means understanding underlying principles and circumstances, and applying accordingly. It’s the opposite to rigid forms. 🙏