Complicated Yoga

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

I’m not new to yoga per se (I’ve done it to videos over the years) but someone asked me what “style” of yoga I do and I realized i didn’t have an answer. I’m not sure. I assumed I was doing ‘hatha’ yoga but then i read more about yoga in my book ‘journey into power’ which is kind of an ashtanga like yoga that requires you to do certain poses in a certain sequence and to use ujjayi breathing and uddiyana ‘abdominal’ locks while in poses. The author gave good reasons for doing an abdominal lock in every pose but i realize ive never done this. At most i’ve just do ujayi breathing and dhristi.

A lot of my videos either claim to be ‘power’ yoga or ‘restorative’ yoga and I find them incredibly easy to do and follow along with since they never talk about more complicated things such as abdominal locks/bhandas. They barely even go into detail about how how you should breath other than a gentle ujjayi breath. My question is am i doing ‘hatha’ yoga or what? I prefer non complicated yoga but i also wonder if not doing the uddiyana lock and stuff makes my yoga practice suffer.

#2

Journey Into Power is Baron’s book right?
That would typically be referred to as “Power Vinyasa”.
And I suppose it is Hatha yoga but I don’t get into definitions too much. I can explain Purna Yoga fully but I don’t dwell on the definitions of other practice - much.

The concept of bandhas is authentic. The question is whether they should be taught to beginners or those not working with a teacher directly (dvd’s et al). Not applying or engaging the abdominal lock does not make your yoga not yoga. What makes yoga yoga is the way in which it impacts your life.

If, for example, you have been doing Yoga X for ten years and you are still an angry, bitter person with little tollerance for others, then one could very easily question the efficacy of Yoga x and whether it was yoga at all (based on the results). In this way it sounds a bit like religion. We talk a good game but at the end of the day we don’t like our neighbor and advocate bombing some other country. The proof in the yoga pudding is in the eating.

#3

[QUOTE=InnerAthlete;6245]Journey Into Power is Baron’s book right?
That would typically be referred to as “Power Vinyasa”.
And I suppose it is Hatha yoga but I don’t get into definitions too much. I can explain Purna Yoga fully but I don’t dwell on the definitions of other practice - much.

The concept of bandhas is authentic. The question is whether they should be taught to beginners or those not working with a teacher directly (dvd’s et al). Not applying or engaging the abdominal lock does not make your yoga not yoga. What makes yoga yoga is the way in which it impacts your life.

If, for example, you have been doing Yoga X for ten years and you are still an angry, bitter person with little tollerance for others, then one could very easily question the efficacy of Yoga x and whether it was yoga at all (based on the results). In this way it sounds a bit like religion. We talk a good game but at the end of the day we don’t like our neighbor and advocate bombing some other country. The proof in the yoga pudding is in the eating.[/QUOTE]

in that case my yoga practice has been very effective! I no longer get angry over almost anything. I eat 200% better (though still far from perfect). I meditate a lot now. I wake up in the morning and get enough sleep now. I laugh a lot more and have a more positive attitude plus i’m somewhat more flexible albeit not amazingly flexible by any means for some reason. The changes have been mostly internal for me. Externally i’ve “maintained” myself so that i pretty much look exactly the same as i did 10 years ago but i do FEEL a LOT better. I’ve also got over my anxiety disorder through yoga, which is the main reason i took it up in the first place.

Still i wonder, what kind of yoga i should say i do when people ask. Should i just say “Hatha”?

#4

Say “the kind that has transformed my life”.

#5

I’d go with power yoga.

#6

i dunno, rather than saying that you ‘do’ yoga you could say that you ‘practice’ yoga, which has a more ‘eternal’ quality to it. i’d go more with what innerathlete said. yoga is so much more than a type, and it is as individual as each of us.

your question got me thinking about how people use labels to divide rather than unite. for example, when i was growing up i wasn’t ‘christian’, i was ‘catholic’, which separated me from all the ‘protestants’, in turn the protestants separated themselves into ‘baptist’, ‘methodist’, ‘congregationalist’, etc. shiite and suni are both muslims, but look at what those labels are doing in the middle east. they all believe in god right?

so to me, yoga is yoga. i practice yoga. you practice yoga.

#7

thanks everyone. that makes sense to me. I guess it wouldn’t really be accurate to say i do only one style if i’m dabbling in multiple styles, and ‘freestyle’ yoga anyway :slight_smile: