My Yoga Journey

I love Ashtanga yoga. It's hard work, but it's also a beautiful sequence of asanas. And most important of all, it keeps me grounded, healthy and happy.

I was first introduced to Ashtanga in 2002. For the next five years, I was pretty much a "weekend Ashtangi", attending led primary classes on Saturdays and Sundays. I enjoyed the practice, but found it difficult to find the time for practice during the weekdays. But last year, I moved to a new city and found a yoga shala within 10 minutes' walk from my apartment and office, and started going to mysore class 2-3 times a week. More recently, I've been attending mysore class 5 times a week. About two months ago, my teacher started me on second series, and I'm now up to Kapotasana.

So why blog? Now that I'm practising more intensively, I also spend more time thinking about the asanas (especially the ones that I find particularly challenging), and looking for ways to do them better. I came across the blogs of many other like-minded ashtangis (btw, there are some really good tips out there on how others have conquered poses) and thought it would be neat to be part of this ashtangi blogger community.

I marvel at people who practice 6 days a week practice. 5 days a week is as much as I can handle right now. I practice on Days 1-3, take Day 4 off (my body is really sore at this point), resume practice on Days 5-6, and Day 7 is my teacher's day off so there is no mysore class. Perhaps it's a matter of building up strength and stamina over time, but for now I'm happy with this frequency.

Since adding second series up to kapotasana on top of primary series, I've been feeling more tired from the practice. I think it's largely due to the rather intense back-bends. I still feel great after the practice, but my body feels a lot more "worked" and requires more sleep to recover. I spoke to my teacher about this, and she suggested that I skip the vinyasas between the right and left side of each seated pose (but keep the vinyasa when moving from say Marichasana A to Marichasana B). I'm also making a more conscious effort to relax when working on the backbends (I think some of the tiredness might've stemmed from backbend anxiety). Both measures seem to be alleviating the tiredness.