Ashtanga Yoga Journey

The beginning …

@mysorepractice

http://mysorepractice.blogspot.com.au

The first time that I heard about yoga was when Madonna released her ‘Ray of light’ album. My actual practice started when I received a call from True Yoga Singapore one afternoon around 2007. I thought just gave it a try to join yoga class. I made an appointment for the evening class. I still could recall that the first trial class was called Gentle yoga. The class was a combination of simple basic yoga asanas. Since I joined the membership and start practicing, I had tried different classes that they offered such as Hatha yoga, Hot yoga (similar to Bikram yoga), Power yoga, Yin yoga, Solar flow and of course Ashtanga yoga.

At first, I found that the Ashtanga led class ‘looked’ interesting because students were jumping back and forth between asanas. I found out that they offered new Ashtanga class for beginner. So I joined the class. My first Ashtanga instructor was called Stanley. He is a certified Ashtanga instructor. At that time, he was the only certified Ashtanga instructor in Singapore. I was lucky to have him as my first Ashtanga instructor.

Before the class started, he taught us the proper alignment for some asanas especially downward and upward facing dog. This is a good start because as a beginner, I know nothing about the correct alignment and have higher risk of getting injured. I have learned a lot from his class. I also join other Ashtanga instructor class. I started from the beginner class, moved on to multi-level led class and then to Mysore class.

In July 2009, I had relocated to Adelaide from Singapore. It was winter at that period of time, and a bit much of adjustment needed for the cold weather. I did not actually practice that much of Ashtanga yoga. It’s hard to warm up my body during winter. Further more, it was my first winter over there. I found that I was still not that warmed up after 5 sets of Surya Namaskarah A and B. My hands and feet were still cold. As a result, I was harder to do asana such as Marichyasana D… However, it was not an excuse. Instead of stop practicing yoga, I chose to do some Yin yoga to maintain my flexibility. I knew that I would lose my strength and stamina but at least I could still maintain and improve my flexibility. I don’t practice Ashtanga every day. I will rest the next day or practice Yin yoga. Personally, I find that it works for me because the passive one (Yin yoga) can balance out the active one (Ashtanga).

I’ve chosen Ashtanga yoga as one of my practice because it can improve my strength and flexibility. I was always weak physically and unable to do push up more than 5 times. After start practicing Ashtanga, push up is not a problem to me anymore. Furthermore, the breathing technique has brought more awareness to my yoga practice. I prefer Ashtanga because it is a fixed sequence practice. Each time I practice, I know which asana that I need to work on based on the previous practice …