Other types of yoga?

[Guest guest]

Hello all.<br><br>I am enjoying my Ashtanga yoga

practise, but am feeling a bit of a need to explore yoga

further. Just started a Hatha Yoga class, and adjusting to

the differences from what I am used to (feels strange

to be doing it 'cold'! No ujayyi breathing?). There

is a Kundalini yoga class in a couple of months I am

considering trying as well.<br><br>Have any other Ashtanga

practitioners out there tried other styles of yoga? Does anyone

regularly practise more than one style of yoga? I would be

interested in hearing your comments.

[Guest guest]

I have been complementing my Ashtanga practice

with Iyengar yoga and the alignment and form info I

have been getting has been invaluable.I regularly

practice both styles.Especially for the majority of

Ashtnaga pracitioners who just look at the external form

of a posture and then try to emulate it Iyengar can

be very helpful.It's also kind of dense and you have

to spend some time with it before you understand and

appreciate the instructions.<br><br>PerlGrrl refers to just

starting a Hatha Yoga class but please understand there is

no such thing! Hatha Yoga (Sun and Moon Union)

refers to all the more somatic forms of Yoga.Examples of

that would be Ashtanga

Vinyasa,Iyengar,Sivananda,Bikram etc.All of theses are just different "brand

names" of Hatha Yoga.There is no Indian guru stupid

enough to call his specific Yoga System, Hatha Yoga.It

is the same as calling my martial art Martial Art.So

<br>what you have been practicing is just an eclectic

synthesis of yoga moves by someone or another, a neither

here nor there situation.

[Guest guest]

I too have found Iyengar yoga to be an excellent

complement to astanga vinyasa practice. Iyengar system gave

me the basics of mechanical integrity for each

asana. Not that such mechanics are absent from astanga

vinyasa instruction -- although in some so-called astanga

yoga shalas, they might be! Maybe you could say that

Iyengar teaches the grammar, and Astanga teaches the

composition of yoga prosity (sorry, terrible metaphor, but

i'm pressed for time). <br><br>I've found it really

helpful to explore complementary practice to one's main

practice. I think every system has something of value to

offer. Edward Clark shares ways of doing the sun

salutation from the Sivananda system that I found really

useful, to cite one example.<br><br>I've also had a

couple of Bikram classes, and they were nice for a

change. Perhaps for many people the Bikram way is more

suitable than astanga vinyasa; likewise for the Iyengar

way.

[Guest guest]

To have more than one Guru is like having more

than one wife - many problems arise. This is the sage

and witty advice of Sri Pattabhi Jois. It only

creates confusion and impediments to combine various

"systems." How is the student qualified to choose - simply

by what he or she prefers at any given time - based

on comfort, taste, ego? The Ashtanga Yoga system is

a perfect system in itself. It is being taught by

an experienced adept yogi on the instruction of his

one Guru. It is an internal yoga system - it is not

based merely on the external alingment of Iyengar yoga.

[Guest guest]

Only confusion and impediments? Is this most

people's experience with trying other "brands" of yoga,

that they inevitably fall into confusion and

impediments? What defines a yoga "system" anyway? Don't most

physical bodies work with respect to certain anatomical

and physiological functions, and if this is so, don't

the mechanics of yoga practice apply to most everyone

with a physical body?<br><br>Doesn't the student make

preferential choices everytime he/she gets on the mat? Can the

preferential choices of comfort, taste and ego not be

exclusive of fundamentalistic notions of authority? Doesn't

internal alignment result, at least partially, from

external alignment? Isn't external alignment the reason we

do asanas in the first place? If we "internally

align" ourselves through pranayama, bhanda and dhristi,

does that necessarily mean our postures will be

perfect and we'll be immune from yoga injuries? Find me

the top astanga teachers that think so.<br><br><br>If

the astanga system is perfect in itself, why has it

changed over the years? If Krishnamacharya was Jois's

guru, why did he give Jois a "perfect" system and why

did he steer Iyengar and even his own son to other

variations on hatha yoga? <br><br>So much for playing

devil's advocate. The point I'm trying to make here is

that astanga vinyasa yoga is, like everything else in

this universe, only relatively perfect. The same goes

for the systems of Iyengar as well as the systems of

all other human beings. <br><br>I wish to God that

Guruji, any guruji, did know the perfect plan and had a

teaching that was beyond question. Hey, astanga vinyasa

comes pretty damn close in my estimation! But given

that, I know that most every top astanga teacher has

had the mechanics of his or her practice informed to

some degree by Iyengar yoga.

[Guest guest]

Here are some of my thoughts on astanga compared

to other hatha yoga styles. My main hatha yoga

practice is astanga, which I have been practicing for

three years. <br><br>I attend an iyengar class once a

week, which I find very valuable for identifying and

working on long-standing injuries, stiffnesses and

imbalances in my body. I'm reasonably fit but not

particularly flexible, and I find my iyengar class physically

harder than doing astanga practice. I have also attended

sivananda classes from time to time.<br><br>It clearly

ISN'T true that the heat generated by the astanga

vinyasa system is the only safe way for the body to

become more physically flexible. If that were true then

advanced practitioners of iyengar, sivananda etc. would be

less flexible than astangis and afflicted by constant

injuries. Obviously not the case.<br><br>My personal

experience in my practice - which may or may not be relevant

to anybody else's experience - is that the heat and

flow of astanga are conducive to a meditative frame of

mind and a spititual approach to practice.

<br><br>This is contrary to the widespread opinion that

astanga is somehow less "spiritual" than less physically

dynamic practices. My experience of iyengar classes is

quite the opposite. I find their attention to the

mechanical detail of the body in asanas useful as a form of

physiotherapy, but completely unconducive to any meditative

state of mind.