Oh, people will insist that that’s just not true, after all we have Judith Lasatar and Shiva Rae and Patricia Walden and Ana Forrest but they don’t have centers and affiliates named after them the way John Friend and Bikram do. Or language that they’ve trademarked (although that Shiva Rae sure knows how to market her all-American yoga girl stuff!)

So I began to wonder if all the “chest-puffing” I was subjected to in Anusara was just, well, how do I say this to my yogi-brothers- a bit of “breast-envy”?! Women don’t puff their chests cause we’re naturally puffed there- and furthermore my kidneys are puffed cause I got a nice booty too! Sorry, fellows, that you got to work so hard at getting some!

Developing a heightened sense of where your kishkas are may come after many years of yoga practice and study, but that instruction had me puzzled for the rest of the class. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it in an Anusara class either, so I’m guessing it’s part of the language learned by all Anusara instructors.

The instructor was kind enough to come over and place his hand on my back but I still wasn’t able to fulfill his idea of a proper “puff”!

I’ve just spent the past two weeks writing instructions for yoga sequences so I know how difficult it is to choose the words that will help, and not hinder, a yoga student’s understanding of the posture. But when you get into internal organs, most people barely know which side their appendix is on, never mind their spleen, gall bladder or kidneys. And part of this may be because really we need a 3-dimensional point of view to understand their positioning instead of just front and back which is what we’re reduced to in our limited vocabulary.

So although I also frequently call on the organs during final relaxation (more for the sake of naming and creating awareness of their function); I’m not sure what to make of this language, including “lifting the heart” (closest I can see it means “puffing” the chest!) – another popular one in Anusara Yoga. And I won’t even mention (again) the spiraling thighs! I can almost see a whole cartoon animation series illustrating these instructions – but on a human body, I don’t know…

Six Days of Intense Anusara Yoga

• Day 4: Finding Yourself In Someone Else’s World
• Day 5: Who Says?!
  
• Day 6: Puffing My Kidneys
  

Tags: anusara yoga, kidneys, yoga practice, yoga poses

We (and I include the yoga instructor here) arrive with our own histories of injuries, painful or pleasurable body experiences, messages swirling in our heads from the media, lovers, old gym teachers or a track coach, body trainer or medical doctor.

Over time, as we deepen our own intuitive voice through yoga and mediation, these voices diminish, and we trust ourselves to know when to be guided deeper into a yoga pose, or when to rest. This is developing self-authority based on accepting the realization that you know your body best.

I am only writing about this because during the last few days of Anusara Yoga, I experienced many moments of knowing I had to stop myself from trying to do a posture my body was not prepared to do. The teacher cajoles and I want to oblige and sometimes it feels like entering into a new and unfamiliar territory that is actually surprisingly wonderful as I experience strength or courage or stamina beyond what I thought capable. But other times it’s that slight twitch of a muscles that later turns into an ache and sometimes even an injury that will require a chiropractic or acupuncture treatment.

A yoga class that benefits you is one where you develop this ability to listen to your true self – which is the center of your own authority so that when faced with an unfamiliar outside authority, we can still “hear” our own truth.

Six Days of Intense Anusara Yoga

• Day 4: Finding Yourself In Someone Else’s World
• Day 5: Who Says?!
  
• Day 6: Puffing My Kidneys
  

Tags: anusara, yoga practice, yoga postures, meditation

Truthfully? I think the sequences develop from the founder’s personal “world: (call it their obsession or fixation or path). It may be what their body needed and so they develop a whole system or program with that emphasis.

Now I’m sure that Bikram or John Friend would say that they don’t obsess about one set of muscles over another but when you immerse yourself in their yoga programs as intensely as I have, you do feel like you’re entering someone else’s world. And some worlds you want to keep coming back to, others you visit once or twice and that’s enough.

In today’s class, I tried to meet myself in the Anusara body. Those “sparkling” hands, the hyper-extended upper chest and of course, the endless wobbly attempts at holding handstands. While in these handstands I just keep hearing “forceful”, defying gravity, defying standing on your legs. Kind of Super- Hero energy. Despite all the talk about heart openers (which feels about as effective as wearing a Happy Face pin) I felt a lot of effort to prove something, but what? Hmmm—

Six Days of Intense Anusara Yoga

• Day 3: One Size Fits No One
  
• Day 4: Finding Yourself In Someone Else’s World
• Day 5: Who Says?!
  

Tags: anusara, yoga practices, bikram, yoga programs

The yoga teacher is then responsible for choosing the order of the yoga postures and deciding how long students hold the pose and when to allow rest breaks. So if the teacher has something on his mind, you will be the recipient of it.

What to do but keep stretching your hamstrings while he begins class by chatting about his week. Nothing like unloading his burden by “sharing” it with the class: computer break-ins, sick relative, business is slow, time pressures. Ah well, glad the teacher felt better after that little intro!Today’s yoga instructor was actually very good with the verbal instructions. Clear, simple language while he demonstrated the yoga pose showing hand and foot placement and how to go deeper into the pose. For visual learners, there is nothing like watching a muscle press down to get it into our body. He was confident in his hands-on adjustments which were supportive and instructional.

Then we came to a what looked like a great upper body balancer (without the trauma of a handstand!); Dolphin arms with legs walking up the wall. He showed how it’s done with arms close to wall – and let me describe him physically as a short compact fellow – and we went off to climb our own walls. Now my body is very different from his (in more ways than one!) – my arms and legs are almost freakishly long – so I adjusted the distance accordingly, knowing I need more room for my long-legged climb up the wall.

Picture this: if we were both going into the pose side by side -his arm placement would have to be closer to the wall than mine cause his legs were considerably shorter, right? But he kept telling me to come in closer, where his placement had been, and I kept trying to walk but of course did not have room to straighten my legs fully.

He didn’t get it. I’ve experienced this with other teachers: a blind spot in considering body types and proportions of limbs to torso. It’s geometry as far as I’m concerned but any time we are convinced that the arm placement should be here and not there, we’re not really looking at the student’s body and what they need.

One Yoga Size Does Not Fit All!

Six Days of Intense Anusara Yoga

• Day 2: Anusara Yoga
  
• Day 3: One Size Fits No One
  
• Day 4: Finding Yourself In Someone Else’s World

Tags: anusara yoga, yoga teachers, yoga instruction, handstands

Today’s teacher was obsessed with explaining how to make the sides long by, what looked like to me, a kind of scrunching the shoulders up to her ears. Bizarre, as I watched her demonstrate the “long torso” by lifting her shoulders, both in the Cobra and standing balancers. I’m sure it took her many years to figure out the long torso look but it’s just not translating for us. OK, if I don’t understand what “fill the back with air” means, (and I’ve been around the proverbial yoga block!) then I’m gonna assume the other silent students in the room are also puzzled. (That look of knowing you’re not doing it right but don’t have a clue why).

And I ache at the end of the class - in not necessarily a healthy way - with my wrists still hurting from yesterday and my middle back tweeking after today’s yoga session.

My friend asks me how the Anusara yoga class was when I get home. I shrug my shoulders (making a long torso!)

- OK, just OK and head for a long soak in the tub.

Six Days of Intense Anusara Yoga

• Day 1: A Closer Look at Anusara Yoga
• Day 2: Anusara Yoga
  
• Day 3: One Size Fits No One
  

Tags: anusara yoga, yoga poses, teaching yoga

I was slightly familiar with Anusara Yoga having sampled it at a workshop with the founder John Friend many years ago. And although he seemed a nice enough guy, I didn’t get into the language-specific metaphors that everyone seemed to be grooving on like “spiraling thighs.” Actually I found it very confusing and I suspect that was also true for the Anusara groupies cause I remember that during that class I was adjusted by three different Anusara assistants, each undoing the other’s alignment!

I was surprised to read John Friend’s web site description of the Anusara approach as combining “heart- oriented Tantric principles” with “Universal Principles of Alignment” (with a little trademark symbol after it!). It’s the Tantric claim that had me scratching my head.

Sure enough, Day 1 teacher begins the class with a lecture on this being Tantric because it’s non-dualistic. Oh, I get it they are defining Tantric as Advaita Vedanta. OK, whatever but the class isn’t exactly a free-form joy and bliss session. The warm-up is a vigorous form of your “classical yoga” sun salute. And then we went right into handstands. That’s right, it all came back to me. What I didn’t get in upper body workout in Bikram, I was gonna get in Anusara.

Handstand is not one of my favorites. And I have yet to find a teacher who safely takes you through the steps. Sure enough, in this class, two students collapsed while attempting handstands with what looked like a potentially dangerous landings on the side of their necks. They laughed, the teacher laughed and wondered what went wrong. Gee, maybe students aren’t warmed up, or prepped or spotted enough? Instead we work with class partners (see my rant about working with someone who doesn’t have a clue how to spot you)!

Overall, the teacher provided a good variety but you’d think with all the high falutin- heart- talking metaphors, the directions wouldn’t be so confusing. So while “melting the heart” may be a cool poetic metaphor, it doesn’t help when you’re upside and your wrists are caving in on you.

That night while massaging my achy wrists, I almost became nostalgic for my days with Bikram!

 Six Days of Intense Anusara Yoga

• Day 1: A Closer Look at Anusara Yoga
• Day 2: Anusara Yoga
  
• Day 3: One Size Fits No One
  

Tags: anusara yoga, teaching yoga, handstands, John Friend

If you’ve been following my YogaHub blog entries, you’ve gotten a good dose of my daily consideration of the benefits and limitations of the Bikram yoga system; from the perspective of someone who is familiar with the yoga poses but new to the Bikram yoga sequence and setting.

I haven’t addressed who Bikram is and why he has acquired a somewhat controversial reputation. A recent YogaHub response posting brings up one of the issues: his legal move to copyright his 26 series of yoga postures.

Having read the court filings in the case Bikram brought against a Northern Californian yoga teacher who taught a similar yoga routine without being part of his Bikram franchise, and having spent many years in performing arts communities where original artistic material is frequently appropriated – I recognize it as a bigger issue than just Bikram claiming ownership of yoga postures.

If I remember correctly, Bikram’s yoga sequence was compared to that of a dance choreographer in that although the dance moves themselves may be well known and available, the actual order of them has been created by him (along with the specific instruction of how classes are to be conducted). And there is something to that.

Most veteran yoga instructors that I know, if they are independent and not tied to an ashram community, have over the years developed their own combinations and adjustments that reflect their unique insights about how yoga works. Most of us, however, don’t go to the great length that Bikram has in claiming and enforcing the use of our interpretations and contributions to the field.

There has always existed in the yoga community a feeling of acknowledging previous teachers and a generous reciprocity of passing along what we know and learn from students and each other. The deeper issue is the question of when yoga is also a business as many of us try to integrate these two aspects of our lives as yoga teachers, yoga studio owners, yoga writers and yoga web sites providers. And perhaps Bikram is just better at it than most of us, but he has rubbed many us the wrong way because he has tried to “claim” a tradition that is by it’s very nature beyond being claimed, systematized, trademarked, or even fully understood.

So, I say, more power to him and at the same time, what a fool — either way, it was a hell of a sweaty ride with Bikram for the past 10 days!

10 Days with Bikram Yoga

• Day 8: Continuity in Your Yoga Practice
• Day 9: Too Hot to Think
• Day 10: 10 Days with Bikram Yoga

Tags: bikram yoga, yoga teacher, yoga poses, yoga studios

I feel spacey, which takes even more effort to concentrate. But I also feel a kind of detachment, like you would on a hot summer day. Except it’s not the sun on my back, it’s the loud blast of a huge metallic heater.

The body has to be convinced to move so the Bikram yoga session feels like one long exercise in willpower, with the body and mind not entirely in sync.If I were in a hammock looking up at the sky, it would be entirely pleasant but getting through 26 Bikram yoga postures in 90 minutes does not feel dreamy. And having just visited the South, I know why you’re suppose to move slower in heat!

- And why you sit still in saunas!

Something is at odds here. Creating more of a battleground feeling rather than finding an organic connection between body and mind.

10 Days with Bikram Yoga

• Day 8: Continuity in Your Yoga Practice
• Day 9: Too Hot to Think
• Day 10: 10 Days with Bikram Yoga

Tags: bikram yoga, teaching yoga, yoga postures

Knowing the importance of regularity in a practice, I’ve always advised my students to focus on developing a steady practice over an intense but sporadic practice.

I am reminded of the wisdom of building a consistent yoga practice during this week of Bikram yoga.Although the Bikram sequence is also physically rigorous, it’s the daily part that has the most profound effect. And I also recognize the brilliance of Bikram’s 10-day for $10 marketing offer- to encourage (very healthy) habit of behaviour – which, once established, will keep you coming back. (But if most people don’t actually do the 10 days, they’re probably only getting the intensity of the workout, which can also discourage people from continuing. Hmm, wonder how successful this offer really is?)

For another take on the yoga habit-forming issue: my sister also recently blogged about her experience of sticking with a 28-day streak of daily yoga at her local Sivananda Center in Chennai.

Read her humorous descriptions of the obstacles and adventures in finally signing up for yoga classes!

10 Days with Bikram Yoga

• Day 7: Effects of Bikram Yoga (for Real)
• Day 8: Continuity in Your Yoga Practice
• Day 9: Too Hot to Think

Tags: bikram, yoga practice, teaching yoga, sivananda