One of the main reasons I have for practicing Vinyasa Krama rather than Ashtanga is that I can explore a group of postures more deeply, bring in more prep poses, stay in the key ones longer and then develop and explore the more advanced options. Yesterday and today I was exploring too many groups, nice for a holiday practice but not everyday.
So back to how I worked it before, a couple of days focusing on back bends but with some good counterposes and then a couple of days of Forward bends/ Leg behind head postures with some drop backs as counters. ( and obviously the usual Standing and finishing postures).
A bit more on the Mingus approach from yesterday. It would be nice to spend six to ten long slow breaths in each and every posture of course and you could do that by practicing less postures but the approach I want to take here is to explore an area of practice more deeply. Yeah I can throw my leg behind my head cold, did Dwi pada sirsasana at work in jeans one afternoon, after lunch too, but I like the idea of opening the hips up as much as possible, all those wonderful Asymmetric postures and then going into the LBH work and developing it into the more advanced versions, same with backbends, that nice Bow sequence build up. So I merely visit the prep poses, 3-5 breaths let them build upon each other and then when I get to the key postures really inhabit them, slow the breathing right down, longer and longer inhalations and exhalations before picking it back up again with a number of counter poses and doing that a few times within a practice.
This song, Goodbye Pork Pie hat, story goes, Mingus and his band were playing a gig when they heard that Lester Young died. The band started to play and this song kind of evolved on stage. Not sure that's true. I also heard that Mingus wrote it as an elegy for Lester a few months after he died, like the former story better. Oh, Lester famously wore a Pork pie hat.
Keep coming back to this idea of practice as a Sax solo, still form and structure but within that, room for improvisation, should develop this. Sequences as keys, subroutines as chords, patterns II-V-I.... OK, perhaps not.
Perhaps that's why I keep coming back to Vinyasa Krama though, Ashtanga's a little too formal, too Apollonian want me some of that Dionysian Jazz. It's just asana for heavens sake, whats wrong with a little, play, a pinch of creativity, a shake of exploration.... always been a place for dance in the devotional.
You get that I'm deliberately leaving that open so you can convince me there's room for dance in Ashtanga too, right?
" I don't think I ever sing the same way twice. I don't think I sing the same tempo twice, one night it's a little slow, then next night a little bit brighter, depending on how I feel". Billie Holiday
First sax solo is Ben Webster then it's my man Lester ( Pres ) next up is Gerry Mulligan on Bari sax then Coleman Hawkins... who isn't playing on this track.
Yoga and the Blues anyone?
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7 comments:
I hate it when practice runs long. VK is mean about that because the more you practice the slower your breath gets, the longer the practice takes. I can't even throw my leg behind my head, cold. Also, have you been reading up on your Birth of Tragedy? Ashtanga as Apollonian? Besides the alliteration, I think you are right. It is crazy organize. VK as the Dionysian, I am not sure about that one--maybe because I put in into the Apollonian structure. Hmmn, I just thought of something: Samkhya is the Apollonian and Vedanta, the Dionysian? One is all about separation the other about unity. Birth of Tragedy is my favorite Nietzsche book.
My Mingus approach does seem a nice way to overcome the practice becoming too long, see how it goes Wednesday when I'm back to work, day off tomorrow so i can indulge in another long practice.
Don't need to reread Nietzsche' Chris, have him tattooed on my spleen : ) Philosophy, just stick with Plato, Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger, don't know why I spent so much time studying everyone else, keep coming back to those guys, everything else just footnotes.
Always liked that Dionysian/Apollonian idea, just a case of finding the right balance of the two. Samkhya and Tantra perhaps, rather than Vedanta?
Dionysiac art, too, wishes to convince us of the eternal delight of existence, but it insists that we look for this delight not in the phenomena but behind them. It makes us realise that everything that is generated must be prepared to face it's painful dissolution . it forces us to gaze into the horror of individual existence, yet without being turned to stone by the vision: a metaphysical solace momentarily lifts us above the whirl of shifting phenomena. for a brief moment we become ourselves, the primal Being, and we experience it's insatiable hunger for existence.
Birth of Tragedy
Come to think of it, should probably forget Plato Kant and Heidegger too and just read and reread Nietzsche, there's some euroyoga for ya.
Re: Apollonian and Dionysian -- when thinking about movement, I'd make a case for VK as Apollonian (more stillness) and Ashtanga as Dionysian (more movement). Those vinaysas moving the prana around seem like dance to me. I find a lot of freedom in movement -- without it, I tend to get stuck in my head: I can *hear* the music, but I don't *embody* it.
Karen, Looking at movement, I agree VK seems more Apollonian but I think VK is more Dionysian (but, I think both are Dionysian) both of them are all about the flow (the flux) VK just has point of stability in the flow and then they collapse back into other poses. Maybe, these brief moment of stillness makes it Apollonian but they do not last--they end and another pose replaces them. Hmmn..Yoga and Heraclitus anybody?
Grimmly, I don't know Hari Krishna seems pretty Dionysian to me, but Tantra is definitely Dionysian.
Out of the stages of yoga, you have yoga as an art form (I forgot the Sanskrit for this) it would be interesting to look at the Apollonian and Dionysian art impulses within yoga as an art form.
Do I give the impression, I wonder, of Vinyasa Krama being static. The linking of breath and movement, that's all Krishnamacharya, whether ashtanga or Vinyasa Krama, you might inhabit some postures longer in VK but they're still dynamic, your still extending, deepening the stretch by way of the breath.
That said I see what your saying, that jumping back and forth in ashtanga has a certain sashaying quality too it, a sway of the hip?
I'm using it in the sense of Appolonian as form and structure, the same postures in the same order, the same count, same length of inhalation and exhalation etc etc.
Vinyasa Krama, though still having structures, sequences, subroutines has a little more freedom to improvise....
In Nietzsche there's a fragile truce between the two sons of Zeus
Of course, despite the strong structure of Ashtanga everyone still seems to find plenty of elbow room to express themselves, no two ashtangi's seem to practice the same.
:-) Ashtanga is impudent. LOL! In my experience, it gives prana some crazy freedom. Can't speak to VK -- perhaps that freedom is a hallmark of Krishnmacharya?
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