Guest guest Posted May 18, 2000 Report Share Posted May 18, 2000 In a message dated 5/17/00 9:21:55 AM Pacific Daylight Time, hluthar writes: << Hi Lilliana. I am familiar with Iyengar. Lot of people love him but I find his Hatha Yoga style to be overly physical which makes inexperienced people or older people more prone to injury if they are not careful. When I taught Yoga a few decades ago, I discouraged the students from pushing too hard and too fast. I read most of the books on Hatha Yoga and Pranayama in the 1960s and 1970s and a very few in the early 1980s. Someone had mentioned Theos Bernard to me as being an author who based his book on personal experience of pranayama. This is pretty rare. It piqued my interest since I had not heard of him. There are so many books on these things that one cannot read them all. The main thing in this line of course is simply practice. There is no substitute for that. Harsha >> l'm afraid that l may be a living example of the truth of what Harsha says here. l started hatha when l was in my early 40's. l'd been quite a jock in my younger years, and as usual, l was ready to become a star.))) My teacher was lyengar and didn't really say much about injuries, altho l shoulda paid more attention to the fact that she often wore a neck brace!! There was all this talk about "good" pain that came when muscles were properly stretched. Within 6 mos l'd injured my back for the first time in my life, screwed up my knees and damaged my hamstrings. Well, that was it for hatha .... on to meditation where l could screw myself up further by unleashing my k.))) A few years after this Larry Payne visited our town for a weekend workshop. Larry is a wonderful guy and very prominent as a teacher in California of the style of Desikachar as received from his father and lyengar's original teacher Krishnamacharya. This style is much gentler and more flexible. My old guru Chetanananda was also very critical of lyengar, feeling that he didn't completely understand the teachings. l'm not saying anyone's right or wrong -- l haven't really done hatha for 14 yrs now and don't care anymore -- just presenting my experience and what some of my teachers have said. jerry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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