Ashtanga yoga (not to be confused with Patanjali's aṣṭāṅgayoga, the eight limbs of yoga) is a style of yoga as exercise popularised by K. Pattabhi Jois during the twentieth century, often promoted as a dynamic form of medieval hatha yoga. Jois claimed to have learnt the system from his teacher Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. The style is energetic, synchronising breath with movements. The individual poses (asanas) are linked by flowing movements called vinyasas.

Jois established his Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in 1948. The current style of teaching is called "Mysore style", after the city in India where the practice was originally taught. Ashtanga yoga has given rise to various spinoff styles of power yoga.

Approach

Traditionally, Ashtanga yoga students memorised a sequence of asanas and practised it together without being led by a teacher. Teacher-led classes were introduced in K. Pattabhi Jois's later years. Such classes are typically taught twice per week in place of Mysore style classes. Teachers guide the practice, adjusting and assisting with postures and leading the group of students through a series of postures all at the same time.

Sequences and series

thumb|[[Eka Pada Galavasana, flying pigeon pose. Ashtanga's advanced (A) Series]]

An Ashtanga yoga practice typically begins with five repetitions of surya namaskara A and B respectively, followed by a standing sequence.

The practitioner then progresses through one of six series of postures, followed by a standard closing sequence.

  1. The intermediate series: Nadishodhana, the nerve purifier (also called the "second series")
  2. The Advanced series: Sthira bhaga, centering of strength

:# Advanced A, or third series

:# Advanced B, or fourth series

:# Advanced C, or fifth series

:# Advanced D, or sixth series

There were originally four series on the ashtanga vinyasa syllabus: primary, intermediate, advanced A, and advanced B. A fifth series was the "Rishi series", which Pattabhi Jois said could be performed once a practitioner had mastered the preceding four series.

Method of instruction

According to Pattabhi Jois's grandson R. Sharath Jois, practitioners should master each pose separately before attempting the others that follow. However, Pattabhi Jois's son Manju Jois disagreed; in his view, students were occasionally allowed to practice the postures in a non-linear format.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, a new generation of ashtanga vinyasa yoga teachers have embraced Sharath's rules, teaching in a linear style without variations. Practice typically takes place in a strict, Mysore-style environment under the guidance of a Sharath-approved teacher. Workshops, detailed alignment instructions and strength-building exercises should not form part of the method, neither for the practitioner nor for the teacher. However, most teachers who claim to have been taught by Sharath do in practice employ the above methods, exercises and postures in their teaching.

Components

Ashtanga vinyasa yoga emphasizes certain key components, namely tristhana ("three places of action or attention", or the more physical aspects of poses) and vinyasa (which Sharath Jois defines as a system of breathing and movement).

Tristhana

Tristhana means the three places of attention or action: breathing system (pranayama), posture (asana), and looking place (drishti). These are considered core concepts for ashtanga yoga practice, encompassing the three levels of purification: the body, nervous system, and the mind. They are supposed to be performed in conjunction with each other. Breathing is ideally even and steady, in terms of the length of the inhalations and exhalations.

Vinyasa

Vinyasas are flowing sequences of movements that connect each asana to the next. Additionally, modern vinyasa yoga coordinates the breath with the vinyasa transition movements between the asanas.

According to Sharath Jois, without citing any medical evidence, the purpose of vinyasas is to purify the blood, heating it in order to clarify and circulate it by the practice of asanas. He goes on to clarify: "[if] your breath strength is possibly ten-second inhalations and exhalations, you do ten; fifteen seconds possible, you do fifteen. One hundred possible, you perform one hundred. Five is possible, you do five".

Various influential figures have discussed the specific process of breathing in ashtanga vinyasa yoga. Pattabhi Jois recommended breathing fully and deeply with the mouth closed, although he did not specifically term this as ujjayi breathing. However, Manju Jois does, referring to a breathing style called dirgha rechaka puraka, meaning long, deep, slow exhalations and inhalations. "It should be dirgha... long, and like music. The sound is very important. You have to do the ujjayi pranayama". He reiterated this notion in a conference in 2013, stating: "You do normal breath, inhalation and exhalation with sound. Ujjayi breath is a type of pranayama. This is just normal breath with free flow".

As far as other types of pranayama are concerned, the consensus is that they should be practised after the asanas have been mastered. Pattabhi Jois originally taught pranayama to those practicing the second series and later changed his mind, teaching pranayama after the third series.

Sharath Jois later produced a series of videos teaching alternate nostril breathing to beginners. This pranayama practice was never taught to beginners by his grandfather and it is one of the many changes Sharath has made to the ashtanga yoga method of instruction.

Sharath Jois says: "Without bandhas, breathing will not be correct, and the asanas will give no benefit".

{| class="wikitable"

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! Sanskrit !! Translation

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| vande gurūṇāṁ caraṇāravinde<br/>saṁdarśita-svātma-sukhāvabodhe<br/>niḥśreyase jāṅ̇galikāyamāne<br/>saṁsāra-hālāhala-mohaśāntyai<br/><br/> ābāhu puruṣākāraṁ<br/>śaṅ̇kha-cakrāsi-dhāriṇam<br/>sahasra-śirasaṁ śvetam<br/>praṇamāmi patañjalim || I bow to the lotus feet of the gurus,<br/>The awakening happiness of one's own-self revealed,<br/>Beyond better, acting like the jungle physician,<br/>Pacifying delusion, the poison of Samsara.<br/><br/>Taking the form of a man to the shoulders,<br/>Holding a conch, a discus, and a sword,<br/>One thousand heads white,<br/>To Patanjali, I salute.

|}

and closes with the "mangala mantra" (Lokaksema): This text was said to have been imparted to Krishnamacharya in the early 1900s by his Guru, Yogeshwara Ramamohana Brahmachari. Jois insists that the text described all of the asanas and vinyasas of the sequences of the ashtanga system. However, Krishnamacharya said that the text had been eaten by ants so it is impossible to verify his assertions. Additionally, it is unusual that the text is not mentioned as a source in either of the books by Krishnamacharya, Yoga Makaranda (1934) and Yogāsanagalu (c. 1941).

According to Manju Jois, the sequences of ashtanga yoga were created by Krishnamcharya. There is some evidence to support this in Yoga Makaranda, which lists nearly all the postures of the Pattabhi Jois primary series and several postures from the intermediate and advanced series, described with reference to vinyasa.

There is evidence that the ashtanga yoga series incorporates exercises used by Indian wrestlers and British gymnasts. Research by the scholar-practitioner Mark Singleton details documentary evidence that physical journals in the early 20th century were full of the postural shapes that were very similar to Krishnamacharya's asana system. It was Jois's belief that asana, the third limb, must be practiced first, and only after that could one master the other seven limbs. However, the name ashtanga in Jois's usage may, as yoga scholar Mark Singleton suggests, derive from the old name of surya namaskar in the system of dand gymnastic exercises, which was named ashtang dand after one of the original postures in the sequence, ashtanga namaskara (now replaced by chaturanga dandasana), in which eight body parts all touch the ground, rather than Patanjali's yoga. Some of the differences include the addition or subtraction of postures in the sequences, and specific practice prescriptions to specific people.

Several changes to the practice have been made since its inception. Nancy Gilgoff, an early student, describes many differences in the way she was taught ashtanga to the way it is taught now.

Beryl Bender Birch created what Yoga Journal calls "the original power yoga" in 1995.

Bryan Kest, who studied ashtanga yoga under K. Pattabhi Jois, and Baron Baptiste, a Bikram yoga enthusiast, separately put their own spins on the style and provided its branding. Neither Baptiste's power yoga nor Kest's power yoga are synonymous with ashtanga yoga. In 1995, Pattabhi Jois wrote a letter to Yoga Journal expressing his disappointment at the association between his ashtanga yoga and the newly coined power yoga, referring to it as "ignorant bodybuilding".

Risk of injury

In an article published by The Economist, it was reported that "a good number of Mr Jois's students seemed constantly to be limping around with injured knees or backs because they had received his "adjustments", yanking them into Lotus, the splits, or a backbend". Tim Miller, one of Jois's students, indicates that "the adjustments were fairly ferocious". Injuries related to Jois's ashtanga yoga have been the subject of discussion in a Huffington Post article.

In 2008, yoga researchers in Europe published a survey of practitioners of ashtanga yoga that indicated that 62 percent of respondents had suffered at least one injury that lasted longer than one month. However, the survey lacked a control group (of similar people not subject to the treatment, such as people who had practised a different form of yoga), which limited its validity.

References

Sources

Further reading

  • Ashtanga Yoga - Understanding the Method, Interview with Manju Pattabhi Jois, in English and German (2009)
  • Sharath Yoga Centre