Week Distribution

Hello everyone. I would like to see your opinions as to how to distribute a yoga week if you do yoga everyday and already can do most of the advanced poses that require muscular strenght and coordination. For instance , how many times a week do you focus on poses such as arm balances and inversions and how many times a week do you focus more on your stretching poses ? If it were for me I would do the advanced poses very frequently but I’m not sure if by doing so could be strenous for the joints on the long term. So for you practitioners that already can do the headstands and then switching to crow variations (legs extended, side crow, flying crow etc.) , astavakrasana, handstands , rooster pose, raised rooster pose , scorpion pose, firefly, peacock , how many times a week would you focus more on them ? Thanks. :smiley:

This is a question about asana rather than Yoga.
The purpose of the physical practice is to facilitate the practitioner in moving closer to the Self, closer to knowing themselves, and so the answer in the bigger picture would be “whatever facilitates that for the person doing it”.

Sadly, many who do postures don’t have a purpose beyond aggrandizing their own ego. And this is a bit of a slippery slope on two fronts; the first is that an aggrandized ego and yoga can not occupy the same consciousness while the second is that eventually an asana practice lacking a greater purpose will exhaust the doer rather than empowering her/him.

I’ve seen very strong, supple practitioners of asana doing no Yoga whatsoever and doing it regularly while I have also seen very stiff students who effort with great focus/concentration and take their practice off the mat into their living.

Thank you Inner Athlete. I understand that the physical asanas are merely a device to actually attain a no mind state where you are focused solely in the present , in the actual moment , in total awareness with your body , freed from the past and the future which are merely based on the contents and noise of the mind. To become a witness instead of identifying oneself with the ego. What I was trying to get at is that if I enjoy doing the more advanced postures for these purposes wouldn’t that have some sort of strenuous effect on the physical body if done very consistently ? , that is why I wanted a little input as to how some of you practitioners that also have a lot of years of practice distribute the types of asanas in your weekly practice. Thanks again !