What The Heck Is Ash­tanga Yoga?

Ash­tanga is one of the most pop­u­lar branches in the yoga fam­ily tree, prac­ticed all around the world. It’s often called “astanga yoga” and some­times “power yoga”. What­ever you call it, ash­tanga yoga is not rec­om­mended for begin­ners to exer­cise pro­grams or those with some flex­i­bil­ity prob­lems. Before you con­sider begin­ning any exer­cise pro­gram (espe­cially ash­tanga yoga), please talk to your doc­tor first so you don’t wind up hurt­ing your­self. And please don’t use this arti­cle in the place of your doctor’s advice.

The Basics

Ash­tanga yoga classes can be gru­el­ing because they are set at a very fast pace. You are pur­pose­fully made to sweat buck­ets in the belief that it will purify both your body and your mind. You are also sup­posed to syn­chro­nize your breath­ing with these pos­tures. You really need instruc­tion in order to get the gen­eral idea. This branch of yoga is nearly impos­si­ble to describe in words.

Ash­tanga yoga is rec­om­mended for younger peo­ple. Although you can see peo­ple well into their senior years per­form­ing the jaw-dropping con­tor­tions and hand­stands, it is only because they started when they were young.

Fun For Spectators

You have to really enjoy ash­tanga yoga in order to put up with some of the poses that you have to go into and some­how get your­self out of. This is one of the most visu­ally spec­tac­u­lar branches of yoga for spec­ta­tors. They go through their own series of posi­tions with winces and gasps when they look at an ash­tanga yoga class or instruc­tional video.

Although ash­tanga yoga begins with man­tas, rhyth­mic breath­ing and warm-up poses, it is the more spec­tac­u­lar con­tor­tions done at rel­a­tively fast speeds which is its hall­mark. Poses include lean­ing back­wards until your body forms an arch; going into a lotus posi­tion and lift­ing your­self off the ground with your hands and bend­ing between your legs to touch the top of your head on the ground. Ouch!

Per­haps one of the rea­sons ash­tanga yoga has caught on well in Amer­ica as it suits the national tem­pera­ment and pen­chant to get a lot of things done. This is the the­ory of author Car­rie Schei­der in her book, “Amer­i­can Yoga”. Amer­i­cans idea of exer­cise includes very ath­letic moves and a lot of sweat. This is done with or with­out Hindu mantras and teach­ings, some­times using Bible verses to make Amer­i­cans feel more comfortable.

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