Ashtanga yoga

July 15, 2014

WAWADIA Update #10 /// “Lazy people can’t practice”: Thoughts On a Yoga Meme

How would "lazy" apply to the person who has already jumped right in? I only ever hear committed practitioners and teachers quoting it. To me it smacks of an in-group encourashame. I.e., you can be young, old, sick, weak when you start, and as you continue. But once you’ve committed to the system, you really don’t want to be lazy. It sounds like it could be a joke meant to stiffen the resolve of people in doubt. In my work on injuries, I'm very interested in the lag time between when a person first suspects that something is too intense or painful for them in practice, and when they actually stop or alter practice. In between those two points comes a litany of things they are told and learn to tell themselves -- "pain is an opening", "practice requires commitment" etc. -- about the necessity of continuing. It's also in this period that repetitive strain can evolve into chronic injury.
June 15, 2014

WAWADIA update #6 /// “I Was Addicted to Practice”: A Senior Teacher Changes Her Path

Diane wasn't just practicing "addictively", as she says, in order to self-regulate. Her professional attainments and authority as a teacher depended upon that commitment, and upon her students seeing it in action. So regardless of whether her students practiced as hard as her (and many, including her daughter Kathryn, did), the rigour of Diane's practice was a community ideal. She was in the paradoxical position of performing an intensity that inspired others, including me, but was destroying her tissues. Not only did nobody see the pain that she herself was ignoring, the movements that were causing that pain were actually interpreted by others as beautiful or pleasurable, or both.