If you’re going to maintain an Ashtanga yoga practice over a lifetime, then you have to figure out how to practice on your own. No matter how much you like practicing with your local student community or getting support from your teacher, eventually, something will create a situation where you need to practice at home. I’ve written variations of this post many times over the years. But it is still the question I get most often: How do I practice Ashtanga yoga at home? So I’ll answer it again. First, let me say that over my 20 years of practice, I have mostly practiced at home. It is not always ..read more

As we all start to settle back into something that feels a little more routine, it’s a nice time to take a look at how we might deepen our yoga practice. If you’ve reestablished a consistent practice, what’s next? At its heart, Ashtanga Yoga trains concentration and works on our nervous system. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at the concentration piece. Let’s take a step back from what we think we know about Ashtanga Yoga and break this down a bit. The word Ashtanga means “eight limbs” and it comes from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, which describes eight limbs of Yoga. Two branches summarize ..read more

As we transition from a time of isolation and distancing back to gathering as a community, it’s a good time to give some thought to the balance between alone time and community time in our practice. Having watched many students grow in their practice over the years and speaking from my experience in my own practice, I think the ideal for long-term sustainability of yoga practice is a balance between time spent connecting with others in practice and time spent practicing alone. When I first practiced in a city with a studio that offered Mysore classes, I also worked full time and left the house ..read more

I’ve owned several variations of a small swiss army knife over the years that I use it mainly on backpacking and camping trips. My current one is bright yellow and includes a little knife, folding scissors, a nail file, and a pair of tweezers — all handy things to have on a backpacking trip. Ashtanga yoga is kind of like a swiss army knife, or one those multi-tools with a choice of different knives, and scissors, and screwdrivers, each one of which can be used for multiple purposes. Although the practice sometimes is criticized as being rigid (usually by people who don’t actually do the practi ..read more

The first place that Ashtanga students often get curious about bandhas, even if their teacher has been talking about them for ages, is in the transitions we encounter between postures: the jump through and the lift up, jump back. This is especially true of uddiyana bandha, the “flying up” lock. Sometimes this is because the student has seen, heard, or read that all you need to pick up and jump back is “enough bandha”. I’ve heard it too — teachers and others who flippantly throw out that idea to practitioners without digging any deeper into the concept of bandha. This tends to leave students wi ..read more

Sometime in the late fall 2020, I crossed a milestone that seems worth reflecting on. I don’t remember the month anymore because it’s been too long, but sometime in late fall 2020 I entered my 20th year of continuous Ashtanga practice. And, what came to my mind was some advice I heard years ago from Tim Miller, via one of his students: Think of your practice in terms of decades. Tim found decades to be about the right scale at which to look back and reflect on our practice. I agree with Tim. Decades feels like just about the right time scale to me too. When we initially arrive at our first Ash ..read more

As we head into November, I would usually be posting the holiday schedule for the Mysore room and writing something to encourage you all to keep practicing while on your holiday vacations. But this is not that year. Jonathan referred to this year as ‘the year of not knowing’ — and that might be the best way that I have heard anyone sum up this year! I wish I had better news, but COVID cases continue to rise and we just don’t know what’s coming next. As we wind up this year, though, I will offer a couple thoughts. Everyone has lost something this year. Whether you lost a little or you lost a lo ..read more

It’s quite a time. I just don’t think there are any good adjectives that fit here. I know for me personally, my emotions have run the gamut from one end of the spectrum to the other. While there are new things that have moved in to fill the empty spaces created by this time, for which I am grateful, there is also a big empty hole that would otherwise be filled by teaching Mysore. At six months into this pandemic, that hole hasn’t gotten any smaller. I never set out to teach when I first began practicing Ashtanga. But, as many long-term Ashtangis report, the practice changed my life. So, I made ..read more

The teachers at Ashtanga Yoga Asheville (The Mysore Room) have put together a series of videos sharing some useful techniques to focus on within your home yoga practice. These practices are appropriate for ALL levels of practitioners, from beginners to experienced practitioners. In this post you’ll find our third video on this series: Focus on Feet If you missed our first two videos in this series you can find them HERE and HERE. The post Home Yoga Practices: Focus On Feet appeared first on The Mysore Room - Ashtanga Yoga Asheville ..read more

The teachers at Ashtanga Yoga Asheville (The Mysore Room) have put together a series of videos sharing some useful techniques to focus on within your home yoga practice. These practices are appropriate for ALL levels of practitioners, from beginners to experienced practitioners. In this post you’ll find our second video on this series: Matching Breath to Movement If you missed our first video in this series you can find it HERE. The post Home Yoga Practices: Breath And Movement appeared first on The Mysore Room - Ashtanga Yoga Asheville ..read more