Hi YogiAdam,
I’m following (with no teacher in the flesh) Iyengar’s course in the appendix of “Light on Yoga”. If you read my brief note in your other thread about positive results of the practice, you already know I’m lovin’ it. Particularly do I love how it builds the practioneer up, step by step. It is quite surprising that I have not seen such a consequent concept in any other style. Maybe I’ve missed it, but from what I can see in books and DVDs, you get a course of a set of x Asanas - and that’s it. For example Asthanga Vinysasa: You get the first series and you do it. You cannot do all of it at first, so yes, you don’t start with the whole series on the first day, but the concept is to learn that one series and then to get better over time. When you have mastered the first series, you get to do the second, then the third. Or Bikram: It’s the same set of Asanas for everybody and you “only” get better over time. Or - “even” - Dharma Mittra, whom, as a person I adore the most among the living masters: On his DVDs, he has just the seperation of basic and intermediate. Picking up random DVDs, it’s the same, you get a course and that’s it. You’re supposed to do what’s demonstrated and then improve on it. Once you’re done, I guess you’re supposed to find the next.
Iyengar now adds new Asanas every two weeks (according to the course’s timescale). And you can see how it all works together and how it prepares for the Asanas that follow and how it helps the Asanas you’re already doing. And then he will make major changes to the whole program every few months, he will change the sequence and remove Asanas completely. The course in LoY is 300 (threehundred) weeks long. And I find it quite improbable that many people can keep up with the speed, I am now following the course for 36 weeks and I am in week 13 according to the book, because, particularly without a teacher, I think that a good base is quite important, and it says that one should continue with the Asanas of week 13 if they have not mastered them yet. I might, though, be a little too self-critical, I guess I’m not supposed to do them all like Iyengar does.
So one major reason why I choose Iyengar to follow is just this: A course that is actually life long and complete (he says himself that most students won’t get further than 166 weeks) and that is obviously well thought out and reasonable. Addiction, well, I had my intake of drugs too (99.999% MJ, though) so I agree it is not a completely wrong term, but I’d actually prefer something like “nature”. It becomes one’s nature. In the past two months I noticed how substancual the practice does change the body. And not only change, I don’t really know how to express it… You’re doing things that are (probably?) natural for you to do, but that you do not do anywhere outside this practice. For example the spinal twists, where do you twist your spine outside an Asana-session? Or extreme backward and forward bends? Our artificial lifes just don’t provide options for those movements naturally. So in a way, the practice provides the student with the opportunity to have their body moving according to it’s nature. On the other hand one must say that the posture do not really appear and feel naturally, as it serves no purpose outside the movement itself to stand in some posture.
I have a question about your Iyengar-class: How does the teacher manage the different levels of the students? Does every student do their own sequence or is there one sequence everybody follows? If it is one sequence, could you write down a list of the Asanas? Also: How long do you stay in each Asana or, if you’re a beginner, how long are you supposed to remain? Is there a “too long”?
