Q: How Close to Ashtanga Vinyasa is Your Current Practice and Teaching?
A: Well it is and it isn’t. I still have a strong physical practice, which to me means appropriate. What I’m looking for in my asana practice is optimal function, I’m not looking to achieve any asanas, or to make shapes with my body. I’ve done that, and I’m very much over that. I really understand my body in a different way now, through the many movement practices I have done, including contact dance, many many different yoga forms including martial arts and Qi Gong, and all that has been teaching me about what it means to be in this body. What I encourage people to understand these days is how to deeply feel into the flesh, how to deeply get the mind alive in the body again and to feel what is true and appropriate.
The main thing about my teachings of a physical practice these days is creating a vibrant field of awareness through the dimension of the body, and through that, understanding the complete unicity of body as mind, of mind as body, and this whole beautiful world we live in as a scintillating functional form of awareness.
I have scoliosis; I have one femur longer than the other, so some of the symmetrical practices you get in Ashtanga don’t do justice to this body very well. I have to listen to how this body needs to work and how to make this body alive and vibrant. The main thing about my teachings of a physical practice these days is creating a vibrant field of awareness through the dimension of the body, and through that, understanding the complete unicity of body as mind, of mind as body, and this whole beautiful world we live in as a scintillating functional form of awareness.
So in my practice and teaching I use what is appropriate from the Ashtanga method. I think Ashtanga is a profound and beautiful practice and serves a lot of people in a really good way. I learnt a lot of what is good for me and what really doesn’t work for me.
Vinyasa means special placement, and for me, I certainly understand that as a process of moving into and out of, and through the transitional approach to asana. But also as a way of understanding the special placement of the key principle of awareness, and breath and centre of gravity, which help us to transcend the illusion of separateness.
For me yoga asana is very much an awakening practice to shatter the illusion of separateness and really live from place of awakened consciousness.
Join Chris on the weekend of the 21st of April to engage and explore yoga in it's truest form. Contact The Centre to reserve your place 97873494.