Ashtanga is a traditional yoga style originating in Mysore, India, that couldn’t be more relevant today. In an ever faster paced, more demanding, distracted and divided world, the practice invites us to slow down, reconnect to ourselves and find stillness and wholeness. It can serve as an incredibly powerful tool for healing, transformation and liberation, and foster deeper connections with ourselves, others and the world around us.
The practice: the power of repetition
Ashtanga is an athletic, dynamic and challenging yoga style. It consists of a fixed series of postures. These are held for five breaths, and linked together by flowing transitions (vinyasas). The practice is designed progressively, with each posture preparing you for the next in terms of strength and flexibility. The power of the practice is in its repetitive nature. You keep repeating the poses in the same order. Only when you master them to a certain degree, you move on to the next.
This helps to develop muscle memory and turn the practice into a moving meditation, as you don’t have to think about what pose comes next. It allows you to gain a deep, kinesthetic understanding of the movements and postures, and to gradually work your way in towards the more subtle layers. Over time, it even enables you to repattern certain unhelpful ingrained habits, like breathing, posture, movement and mental patterns. As you become more aware of these on the mat, you gain the ability to recognize and adjust them in your daily life. This will make you breathe better, move better and feel better.
The series: a never-ending journey
The complete ashtanga system comprises no less than six series, increasing in difficulty: the primary, intermediate, and the advanced series A, B, C and D. It may take many years to learn and fully integrate each sequence. Every series starts with sun salutations and standing poses and ends with backbending and finishing poses.
- The primary series (yoga chikitsa or yoga therapy) is the foundation of the practice. It focuses mainly on forward folding, plus twisting, hip opening and some backbending. It is designed to prepare and open up your body, improving strength, flexibility, stamina and overall health.
- The intermediate series (nadi shodana or nerve cleansing) focuses primarily on deep backbends, together with deep hip opening and inversions. After having opened the hips sufficiently in the primary series, the intermediate primarily targets the spine, purifying and strengthening the nervous system.
- Together, the primary and intermediate series form the base for the advanced series (sthira bhaga, or sublime serenity). They consist of four stages: A, B, C and D. They are only taught to advanced practitioners and increase strength and steadiness.
The series are neither always linear nor set in stone, but meant to provide a framework. They help to prevent us from doing only what is easy and comfortable (our default by nature). To build resilience. And to challenge our beliefs of what we are capable of. That being said, the goal is not in itself to make complex shapes and get to the sixth series – which hardly anyone does. It is about the inner work you do by means of the poses and the internal awareness you create by doing so. The series are just the vehicle, not the end goal.
The method: synchronizing movement and breath
When practising ashtanga, we’re not simply performing the postures (asanas), as that would result in a merely physical workout. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. It is by bringing our attention inwards, though, that the yoga can do its magic of working the spiritual through the physical.
The method consists of three interrelated, subtle inner techniques, or places of attention (tristana), that we try to focus on while moving in and out of the postures. They are deep, steady and audible breathing (ujjayi), core engagement (bandhas) and gazing point (drishti). It is by learning to integrate these techniques into a holistic, somatic practice, that you start to develop a profound mind-body connection and that transformation on a physical, mental, emotional, energetical and spiritual level starts to happen – on and off the mat.
Knowing oneself comes from attending with compassionate curiosity to what is happening within.
– Gabor Maté
The benefits of ashtanga: health and happiness
Practising ashtanga consistently and over time can improve your life in ways you may never have imagined possible. There are the more obvious benefits you start noticing after a while. Like becoming stronger and more flexible, and building more stamina and endurance. But the real transformation starts to happen when you begin to learn to regulate your nervous system and develop more interoceptive awareness.
Balancing the nervous system and inhabiting your body
By deepening and slowing down your breathing, you stimulate the parasympathetic ‘rest and digest’ system (as opposed to the sympathetic ‘fight or flight’ system). By doing so regularly, especially when overstimulated, your nervous system will get more balanced, which yields enormous health benefits. Balancing your nervous system improves your immune system, metabolism and hormonal balance. It reduces stress, anxiety, excessive tension and pain. It makes you sleep better and gives you a sense of vitality and well-being. And it enables you, over time, to release stored tension and emotional luggage.
Balancing the nervous system and becoming more aware of your body also help to calm down your mind and to regulate your emotions. Through practising consistently, you will experience less racing thoughts, deeper focus and concentration and more calmness, groundedness and equanimity.
yogaś citta vrtti nirodhah
– Yoga Sutra 1.2
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Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind
Finally, the practice allows you to better inhabit your body. When in fight or flight regularly, we tend to be more in our (thinking) heads and less in our (feeling) bodies. In a way, we’re disconnected from ourselves. By restoring the balance, we can bridge the gap between mind and body. This will improve our sense of wholeness, connection and awareness. The more unity in our mental and physical states, the less internal conflict we’ll experience and the more we’ll be able to live from the inside out.
As such, having a dedicated practice is immensely therapeutic. It literally enables you – through small, consistent changes – to align with yourself. To connect to your deepest core. To tap into your inner strength, truth, and resources. And to become who you essentially are. A practice for life indeed.
samtosādanuttamah sukhalābhah
– Yoga Sutra 2.42
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From contentment, unsurpassed happiness is attained.