Dogmatism and the Truth about Ashtanga Yoga
You may have studied with teachers that tell you that they (or their teacher,
respectively) are the ones that know the truth about Ashtanga yoga, the only ones that
know it and that everything others teach is heresy. You don´t have to believe this,
really.
Here is our humble truth about Ashtanga yoga:
Everything that is being taught as Ashtanga yoga today is always just an interpretation
of the original, not the original (this is also true for all those who claim that what they
teach is "definitive", "authentic", "traditional", "pure" etc. and even for T.
Krishnamacharya and K.P. Jois!). According to all that we know, Ashtanga yoga had been
developed gradually a long time ago as a system to maintain health, then passed on
orally and finally put down in writing by Vamana Rishi in the "Yoga Korunta" ("Yoga
Groups"). And eventually the art of Ashtanga yoga was unlearnt and it was not taught
anymore until the rediscovery of Vamana Rishi´s manuscript by Tirumalai
Krishnamacharya who had been sent out by his teacher Rama Mohan Brahmachari of
Varanasi (Benares) to search for it. The history of yoga is rich with such incidents ....
In ancient India, such manuscripts were written on palm leaves, that is, carved with a
needle into a palm leaf that was not more than two inches wide. Apparently, T.
Krishnamacharya took notes from a damaged copy of this manuscript that he had found
in a library in Kolkata (Calcutta) and passed these notes (not the manuscript which is
lost - "Ants were eating it!") to K.P. Jois. A copy of these notes was still hanging in the
house of K.P. Jois in Mysore in the early 1970s. It did not contain illustrations. These
would be impossible to store on a palm leaf manuscript.
Our own interpretation is that Ashtanga yoga has two major goals:
We find that it is more promising to use your own wits and experience to develop a
practice that is helpful for the individual rather that degrading yourself and your
students to the mental state of a German Shepherd through blind obedience.
You may have studied with teachers that tell you that they (or their teacher,
respectively) are the ones that know the truth about Ashtanga yoga, the only ones that
know it and that everything others teach is heresy. You don´t have to believe this,
really.
Here is our humble truth about Ashtanga yoga:
Everything that is being taught as Ashtanga yoga today is always just an interpretation
of the original, not the original (this is also true for all those who claim that what they
teach is "definitive", "authentic", "traditional", "pure" etc. and even for T.
Krishnamacharya and K.P. Jois!). According to all that we know, Ashtanga yoga had been
developed gradually a long time ago as a system to maintain health, then passed on
orally and finally put down in writing by Vamana Rishi in the "Yoga Korunta" ("Yoga
Groups"). And eventually the art of Ashtanga yoga was unlearnt and it was not taught
anymore until the rediscovery of Vamana Rishi´s manuscript by Tirumalai
Krishnamacharya who had been sent out by his teacher Rama Mohan Brahmachari of
Varanasi (Benares) to search for it. The history of yoga is rich with such incidents ....
In ancient India, such manuscripts were written on palm leaves, that is, carved with a
needle into a palm leaf that was not more than two inches wide. Apparently, T.
Krishnamacharya took notes from a damaged copy of this manuscript that he had found
in a library in Kolkata (Calcutta) and passed these notes (not the manuscript which is
lost - "Ants were eating it!") to K.P. Jois. A copy of these notes was still hanging in the
house of K.P. Jois in Mysore in the early 1970s. It did not contain illustrations. These
would be impossible to store on a palm leaf manuscript.
- Nobody that is alive today has seen the source of the Ashtanga yoga system,
Vamana Rishi´s "Yoga Korunta", in the original
- Nobody that saw it could be sure to have reproduced the Ashtanga yoga system
from it in its entirety and correctly
- So, nobody knows how Ashtanga yoga "really" is in detail or what an asana is
"really" supposed to look like! All you can do is make an honest effort, but nobody
will ever be able to determine whether your interpretation is "right", least of all the
charlatans who know only one interpretation and declare it alone for the right one!
It is recommended that you steer clear of this.
Our own interpretation is that Ashtanga yoga has two major goals:
- One goal is to release blocks and tension in the body whose removal is beneficial
for health and well-being and allows the practitioners to sit motionlessly in
meditation for a long time. According to our understanding, the series were
designed in correlation with the medicine of those days to bring the muscles,
skeleton, organs and the nerve channels (back) to the state in which they best
function (the Primary and Intermediate Series are named "Disease Therapy" and
"Nerve Cleansing", respectively!). The practice of yoga ought to be beneficial for
the health, not harmful. Therefore, it is “monkey business” to torment your body
with asanas for which it is just not (yet) ready.
- And the other goal is to reach a mental state that is only to a limited extent linked
to the physical posture. It is, amongst others, a matter of keeping the mind busy
forcing it to focus on "the here and the now". If we need a spectacular posture for
this, one which to achieve challenges us completely, then so be it. If we do not
need this but have to focus an entire life long on controlling the breath when we
bring our chest closer to our knees, then we take a different path towards the same
end. But perhaps we may reach the goal sooner than someone born with a
hyperflexible body to whom every new asana is just another arabesque:
- "A stiff body has a good potential for learning Yoga. A flexible body is
usually more caught up in Bhoga (pleasure)."
Saraswathi Rangaswamy
We find that it is more promising to use your own wits and experience to develop a
practice that is helpful for the individual rather that degrading yourself and your
students to the mental state of a German Shepherd through blind obedience.
An ancient palm leaf manuscript,
similar to the "Yoga Korunta"
similar to the "Yoga Korunta"
