I don't normally read e-books. I like the feeling of curling up in bed with an actual book but this one I love. As the name implies, the Yoga Resource Practice Manual, is a go to reference book for yoga teachers and students alike. It features 360 stunning yoga poses with detailed instructions, alignment, safety and anatomy cues for each pose. It also has a video library as well.
Who is this book good for?
Yoga Teachers
- library of peak pose ides for your classes
-succinct language that can be used for cueing students in and out of poses as well as cues for alignment and anatomy
-Provides a library of pose names in Sanskrit and English
-Safety Instructions
-Preparatory poses for difficult asanas
Yoga Practitioners
-A great reference book to help you get deeper into yoga poses
-Provides tips that may help you get over a plateau in difficult yoga poses
-Gives you some great poses to help jazz up your practice
-You will learn more about the poses you already do
-Keeps you safe
This e-book is available for I-pad and computers and is well worth the $24.99. You can also purchase individual sections for $2.99. To get a taste of the book, download the free chapter on twists. Click on the link below to get started.
Today I was reading a great FAQ article from the Ashtanga Yoga Library and the author brought up a really fascinating point. Below is an excerpt:
Mahesh, this is a really reasonable concern. I remember when I first saw a picture of someone practicing ashtanga. I was horrified! I thought to myself "oh, this yoga is only for very advanced athletes who are wildly flexible and strong, etc." It took a long time before I realized that what I was seeing in the picture was not at all what I would be expected to do in my own practice...at least not right away.
My favorite Ashtanga FAQs always include a line about how one should avoid looking at asana stuff on the internet, blogs, youtube, etc. Often we get really enthusiastic about something and want to learn everything we can about it and so we get books, magazines, videos, etc. hoping that exposure to the information will help us get closer to that thing we are enthusiastic about. While this is often helpful -- we do need information in order to know what to do and how to go about doing it -- it can also be very confusing and misleading.
The reality is that You Tube, websites & books all feature ashtangis with perfect poses. To the average person, many full Ashtanga poses look like straight up contortionism. For instance, the biggest pose in Primary series is Supta Kurmasana which is pretty much both legs behind the head while laying on your belly. Most websites and books show this totally daunting variation:
While most people's supta kurmasana looks like this wonderful and totally doable variation:
From Yoga Vermont Instructor Course Blog
It would be so awesome to see a book or website out there that showed these poses represented in different bodies. I love Ashtanga teacher Kino MacGregor and I would follow her around the world like a puppy if I had the money. One day I watched one of her you tube videos where she showed this beautiful girl who was obviously gifted and a yoga pose goddess doing variations of a pose suitable for beginners. Even the beginner versions she showed were a bit too open for a beginner. In fact, the model did a horrible job impersonating a beginner. I could imagine a beginner watching and saying, "if this is a beginner, then there is no possibility for me." I left a comment on the video requesting that she use different body types to make them more accessible and friendly to her viewers. Being that she probably gets about a million comments and e-mails a day, I am sure she didn't see it but wouldn't that be nice?
I was teaching Mysore last week and a fairly new student was moving along using a cheat sheet/practice card. I looked up and noticed that he had skipped about 2 or three poses. When I brought it to his attention, he pointed to the practice card, which I think featured Ashtanga teacher David Swenson, and said, "my body does not do that and it never will so I am just skipping it". I slowly talked him off the ledge and showed him some totally cool and awesome variations that he could do and he was rather pleased with himself afterwards.
Think about all the people, especially beginners, who look at the studio schedule and see, "Ashtanga" then go online to look it up and see this:
Ashtanga Yoga.Info
Here is my question to you, Lets Discus!
In an effort to provide information about Ashtanga and market it, are we actually scaring people away by only showing pictures of people doing the full version of poses?
Do you remember when you were a child? Every day you woke up without a to do list. You were open to what came. The universe provided for you in the form of your parents or some other caregiver. You spent the whole day running and playing and enjoying whatever came up. If you grew up in a decent home, It was a time full of happiness and light.
Then one day you are given things called responsibilities. At first these are even fun. You make a game out of helping mommy clean. You go to school and learn fascinating things like colors, shapes and numbers. As you get older, you are given more and more of these "responsibilities". People start telling you that you must decide what you are going to do with your life and you must work hard towards it. You must decide who you want to be. You must forge an identity.
They tell you that being productive and finding a purpose is what makes us happy. But how can that be? Happiness and freedom were experienced as a child when we had none of those things. Most adults are not all that happy. There are moments of happiness but most of the day is spent doing and being so immersed in activity that we don't really have to feel. As children, we fully enjoyed every activity now we do stuff to get stuff done and there really is not joy in it. So how is being productive making us happy?
There is this idea that the whole world would fall apart if people just did whatever they wanted. There would be mayhem, crime, the economy would collapse or maybe just extreme boredom. If people are still guided by their egos, false sense of self, their past & negative self talk, then, yes, that is what would happen. However, if we realized that what we are is so much bigger than our thoughts and that consciousness still moves through the body, our world would be okay. In animals, we call it instinct. Somehow they still eat, find shelter, have relationships, take care of their young and move throughout their day.
My old Dog Zoe
The Dog Whisperer, Ceaser Milan, often talks about how dogs that run in packs and do not interact with humans, have no psychological problems. They develop those problems by interacting with humans and picking up on their psychosis. That is how powerful the human mind is.
In asylums, you find people so caught up in their psychosis that they don't even realize that there is a world outside of the one they have created in their minds. The reality is that the majority of humans are insane. We are so caught up in our thoughts, that we don't realize they are not true. What makes it so heinous is that it is an accepted insanity and in many ways encouraged. In the asylum, the psychologist diagnosis the problem and comes up with treatments that could possibly heal the patient. Our world wide egoic insanity is harder to stop because the diagnosis has to come from us. There has to be a moment of realization and a driving force to change. For most of us, that is not going to happen.
If we realize our global insanity, the fabric of society will change because most of our lives are about maintaining an identity and greed. Working for a dollar that is not backed by gold and essentially worthless and trying to maintain an image of who we are and what we represent. Nature, which is really what our bodies are in tune with, does not value any of these. That is why we go through periods where we feel out of sync with life. We search for meaning in religion, spirituality,possessions, identity, jobs, titles and other people because we have lost touch with nature and what we intrinsically are. We are so lost that we destroy our own planet and health through industry in the service of greed. This constant need for more, more, more is there because we are trying to fill the huge void our own minds have built.
Our freedom will never come by doing more, and being more. You cannot be more. You are complete already.
Mooji Quotes
We honor activity as a virtue. You are not the doer though action occurs through the body.
What to do, what to say is mind.
The mind cannot intimidate the pure self, only the idea of who we are.
The absence of ego is freedom & pure joy.
Find that which cannot fall away.
Mind can only bring a doubt when there is a possibility of doubt.
