Tuesday, May 31, 2011

15) Completed my 100th Ashtanga Vinyasa Practice at Home

I completed my formal 100th Ashtanga Vinyasa Practice at home on Fri 20 May 2011 . Though my informal introduction to Ashtanga started in year 2004 itself but the enthusiasm did not last long at that time as I was more keen on strengthening my Sivananda Style of Yoga practice especially after I finished my Advanced Yoga Teachers training in 2004 .

After 2004 it was in July 2010 that I restarted exploration to Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and started doing it in bits and pieces watching you tube videos etc and I took the formal step of Learning Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga from Louise Ellis in Sept/Oct 2010 in Rishikesh .So I consider the month of Oct 2010   to be my starting point  of  formal Initiation to Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga .For more details about this refer my earlier blogs about how I came to Ashtanga Vinyasa practice .Though I used to record my daily Ashtanga Practice , it was never done in a very formal way and hence from Nov 1 , 2010 onwards I started to formally document my Ashtanga Vinyasa Practice and from Nov 2010- May 2011 i.e nearly after 7 months I have completed 100 Ashtanga Vinyasa Practice sessions .I am not daily practicing Ashtanga and my current Yoga Practice is a combination Of Ashtanga Vinyasa , Sivananda Style Hatha Yoga , Iyengar Style Hatha Yoga and Pranayama practice and I intend to keep it like that for some more months before I do a complete Ashtanga Vinyasa Practice .
My Ashtanga Vinaysa Practice so far :
In the first 100 practice sessions , my ashtanga vinyasa practice was of the following format :
Surya Namaskar A-5 , B-5
All standing sequences
Sitting poses up to Navasan ( I used to do Vinyasas only between postures but not between sides )
Conluding postures .
Savasan

In the above schedule I used to do Manadatory Surya Namaskar and all the standing poses and also do the concluding poses . Sitting poses I did not do much and even when I did ,I did not do the Vinyasa in between sides and just did between the poses .

Reason for going slow in my ashtanga Vinyasa practice :
When I started my Ashtanga Vinyasa practice under Louse Ellis in Oct 2010 I was yet to fully recover from my severe ankle injury that I had in April 2010 and as Ashtanga Vinyasa practice involved lot of jumps I was very keen not to aggravate my ankle injury and  hence went slow .Also since I came from the Sivananda Style of Classical Hatha Yoga which was totally different to the way Ashtnaga Vinyasa Yoga was practiced I had a tough time coming to terms with these changes .By the way I wish to point out that I still love the Sivananda Style of Hatha Yoga practice and I still keep in touch with it as I find it very relaxing and sometimes I do it in evening to have a more relaxed sleep at night.

Future of my Ashtanga Vinyasa Practice :
I have no blue print or time frame for my Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga practice .I just want to enjoy my daily practice without injuring myself and I am following my own route of building my own Ashtanga Vinyasa practice which differs slightly from the way  it is being currently followed at AYRI .This is my own research in to Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and while I do keep Guruji's/Sharath's  class format as the standard refernce I am willing to have my own approach to master the primay series first and then the other series .So things like going to Mysore to practice in the shala under gudiance of Sharath , getting Ashtanga Certification from AYRI etc etc are not on my current agenda . Might be it will change after few months and I am open to any changes that comes its way.

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