Reflections from Manju Jois’s course

For the past week, I have been participating in a yoga course taught by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois’s son Manju. I am one of those yoga practitioners who does not subscribe to a particular teacher or guru but I am pretty adamant about practicing only in the Jois tradition and am not really interested in experimenting with other styles of yoga. In addition, I don’t really enjoy detailed analysis of rules, technique or pronunciation so take what I heard Manju say with this in the back of your mind.

The first thing I heard was his recommendation to practice but not to expect anything because expectations lead to disappointment. If you do the yoga practice like it is meant to be done, good things will happen and your life will change. Do not rid yourself with guilt on the days you don’t feel like yoga as you should really enjoy it rather than force yourself to do it. Nothing good will result from force, do some pranayama instead.

If you practice, you will gradually start making different choices in your life. Do not force yourself to become, for example, a vegetarian just because you think it is what you should do but let your body tell you what it wants to eat. In general, we should care about our bodies, love ourselves and with this self-love, we will need less ego-soothing from others. Don’t judge or have other people judge you, it is not in yoga to judge.

Manju was also talking how having too many gurus and teachers leads to confusion as people want to leave their mark onto the tradition and create their own rules. He asked us not to listen to all these people but rather practice and get our own experience. It is also easy to become lost in translation and we don’t have to take onboard the whole Indian tradition and belief systems to practice yoga. Or in fact, I think he said we should not because our culture is different. Yoga in itself is simple and can be practiced everywhere.

In addition to practicing, we have been learning adjustments for the primary series. My key takeaway from these is actually not a technique, or a different count or asana detail but rather the Nike feeling: relax and just do it. It may sound a bit risky and of course I don’t mean do everything with everyone as we should really be open to people’s bodies and energies, but basically just help people relax and try things out. A lot of the adjustments we have learned will actually help especially newcomers to a particular asana to get the feeling of the asana, or the playfulness of the vinyasa. Like backbends, it is really not so serious, right? We can do so much more if we just relax.

One concrete thing I have gotten from this course is pranayama which now seems to naturally fall into a place in my practice. Maybe I am now ready for it. For the rest of the limbs, will continue practice☺