Modes of Practice

Details on postures, format, and a book list

So, following from my last post, what precisely is it that I am doing differently now?

To start, I wanted to create a format for sequences to address some of the problems that I was having, such as consistency of both quality of practice and consistency of energy. I also wanted to be careful that I addressed how my nervous system and body communicated to create balance and a sense of relaxation that wasn’t due to fatigue but was a clear and deep relaxation. I wanted the sequence and postures to follow a slow ramp up, and a gradual ramping down—imagine the shape of a bell curve but without the statistical meaning (normal probability distribution)—and a neutral enough start that even if I was tired, or had been working or traveling a lot, I could begin easy and allow my energy to either pick up or have a good place to stop. I also wanted it to be something that I could teach to people as a blueprint for developing nervous system calm and balance.

So, for example, here is one format that I played around with throughout last year, and became the basis for the Yoga Asana Sangraha class:

·      Lying down postures to link breath and movement,

·      Five directions of the spine to open the lung channels, legs, and back muscles,

·      Variations on Sun Salutations,

·      Standing asanas that are equal in strength and flexibility,

·      Forward bending asanas,

·      Inversions,

·      Back bending asanas,

·      Twists,

·      Rest.

Here is the rationale:

1. Breathing while lying down allows you to sense how the breath naturally moves the body without gravity working against you. When we sit up straight and try to breathe consciously, the muscles of the body contract and so the breathing can become constrained. Slow and light breathing at the start of practice allows the nervous system to become receptive to what comes next. These are slow and small movements, so rather than starting with big movements as I was used to doing, I switched to slow and subtle to start.

2. The five directions of the spine are several postures and movements found in Hatha Yoga traditions. They open the lung channels as well as strengthen the posterior chain of the back and hamstrings. Once you get to this point, your body has moved in several directions to open the front, back, and side channels and organs of the body, and you can begin bigger movements that are found in the Sun Salutations and standing asanas.

3. Following this comes standing asanas, similar to what you will see in a variety of yoga traditions. I start with a twisted trikonasana with the toes pointed forward, which seems to be a great entryway into all of the other standing asanas. I learned this during my MSc course at Vivekananda Yoga University; it looks like a stretch you’d see as a sports warm-up, and it works awesomely well. In the standing poses that normally are done to stretch, I try to do versions where you strengthen as well, such as parsvakonasana with only the fingertips on the floor, which forces your legs to do most of the work.

4. Next come forward bends to calm the parasympathetic nervous system.

5. After that comes inversions, which are calming and are essentially forward bends, but upside down. Inversions after forward bends add another layer of absorption, or a heightening of the inward movement of awareness that forward bends give. The reversal of gravity is a reprieve for the legs which are constantly pumping blood back up to the heart for a large part of the day.

6. Then come gentle backbends to stimulate the sympathetic nervous system but in a controlled way. These are not huge backbends but are backbends that use a combination of engaging the posterior chain of back muscles equal to the amount of stretching of the spine.

7. I counter-pose backbends not with more forward bends, but with planks and other postures that bring the spine into a neutral position or emulate a natural position of the spine in a supportive position (which a plank does).

8. The final poses are twists, often lying down. Twists are grounding and organize information flows from the right to left hemisphere of the brain so that when we finish practice with relaxed twists, we are consolidating the information that our body has received from all of the preceding postures and breathing, and is prepared now for an alert, restful, relaxation.  

There are several books on Hatha Yoga that I drew inspiration from over the past couple of years, along with the elements that arose from personal experimentation. You will find elements from each of these teachers and texts in the Yoga Asana Sangraha classes, among others:

The Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali, Swami Hariharananda Aranya.

Yoga Makaranda, Sri TK Krishnamacharya.

Yoga Therapy, A Guide to the Therapeutic Use of Yoga and Ayurveda for Health and Fitness, AG and Indra Mohan.

Classical Hatha Yoga, Swami Rajarshi Muni.

Kundalini Yoga Parampara: The Living Tradition of Kundalini Yoga, Reinhard Gammanthaler.

Kumbhaka Paddati of Raghuvira, The Science of Pranayama, Dr. M.L. Gharote and Parimal Devnath

Back Rx, Dr. Vijay Vad

Yoga: Breathing Practices, Pranayama, Sithilikarana & Asanas, Kriyas, Mudras, Bandhas, Om & Cyclic Meditations & Yoga Counselling, Dr. R. Nagarathna and Dr. HR Nagendra.

Emergence of Yoga, TK Sribhashyam (this is an excellent and unique book).

Reading, studying, and practicing the different techniques in each of these books expanded my movement and breath vocabulary, and tuned me into the asanas and pranayamas that I needed to be doing to achieve the outcomes I was looking for. I learned some very cool things, and ultimately, the Yoga Asana Sangraha classes have emerged from this experimentation. There are some postures that I spontaneously did during my morning practices that later I saw in a book—for example, some of the poses that you find in sukshma vyayama, popularized and created by Dhirendra Brahmachari—and others. By paying attention, and remaining quiet and receptive, we are following in the footsteps of the Rishis and Yogis who heard and received all of the various Yogic practices by doing that same thing.

Several of these books came to me from my old friend, who was one of my first Yoga teachers, Robert Moses, with whom I started Namarupa Magazine (as well as the Yoga Education Collective, along with Harshvardan Jhaveri). We have maintained an ongoing dialogue about Yoga and Vedanta for over 30 years. As Father Adam Bucko has said, spirituality is a community endeavor. We can learn a lot in isolation, but we grow with spiritual friends through sharing and dialogue.

Here is an example of one of my drawings of sequences from 2019. This was a class in a science conference setting, with people who were new to yoga, and was our fourth day of practice.

Here are a few random pages from my journals where I am thinking philosophical ideas through with drawings:

And here is an example of poses that we are using as preparatory positions to prepare for pranayama:

From asana practices to kushti, or Hindu wrestling, there are shared practices across the Indic traditions. People on occasion try to draw similarities between what I am doing now to Srivatsa Ramaswami or TKV Desikachar who, though both students of Sri Krishnamacharya, have categorized vinyasa krama practices in different ways from each other, which shows again that no matter what, students present the things they have learned the way that they understand them, and have, hopefully, made them work for themselves. However, I am not drawing from Srivatsa Ramaswami or TKV Desikachar’s teachings of asana or pranayama practice, and I do not consider what I do a vinyasa krama practice. I have developed something based on principles primarily related to the functioning of how the nervous system communicates through brain-body connections, and the outcomes that we can have through encouraging signaling to occur in different ways, depending on the outcomes we are looking for.

A good dictum to follow is to teach what you practice; in this case, I consider it more to be that I am sharing what I currently practice, and hopefully, some you find some benefits, too.

You can find a sample of the current Yoga Asana Sangraha classes here if you would like to try any.