Add your Article
- Healthy Lifestyle
- How can Aloe Vera benefit my clients and business
- The fad diets don't work
- CORE MUSCLES & CORE STABILITY
Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga
By Mark Freeth Published: 26/04/2009
He reportedly stumbled across an ancient manuscript, the 'Yoga Korunta' (yoga puppet), which, when deciphered, revealed a yoga very different from it's many cousins.
Drawing on gymnastic influences, Krishnamacharya developed a strong, dynamic, aerobic and fast moving form, which was more explosive than the traditional, gentle, meditative form of 'yoga' - often referred to as 'hatha'. Relying on a powerful breathing technique, the engagement of the abdominal and perenial muscles and linking the postures with a continual, flowing movement, it's not long before practitioners build up an intense heat and subsequent, oily sweat, literally de-toxing as they go. The marriage of breath and movement is the essence of 'vinyasa' and the key to the practice.
Perhaps it was this more 'physical' approach that drew Westerners to the form in the early 1970s when one of Krishnamacharya's students, Sri K.Pattabhi Jois (who added his own interpretation to the form), first agreed to teach ashtanga vinyasa to non-Indians. Western souls on the road to Asian enlightenment found themselves drawn to a yoga that not only offered insights into the 'inner self', but a mighty work-out to boot!
Through Jois's teachings, the word continued to spread around the world. Thus, the West's adoption of the form was sealed. Suddenly, here was a huge cross-section of the public sampling a potential life-enhancing discipline.
Of course, the stamina building, body-sculpting and flexibility improving qualities of ashtanga vinyasa are only three dimensions of this multi-faceted form. Not only is it life-long, non-dogmatic, non-competitive discipline, the philosophy behind it is all-embracing, advocating a benevolent attitude and promoting a gentle peace of mind.
Ashtanga' literally translates as 'eight-limbed', referring to the eight righteous paths one should strive to follow throughout one's life. In a climate where more and more people are investigating the 'alternative' and the 'complementary', and where the health of the body, as well as that of the spirit and mind, is, once again, high on the list of people's priorities, ashtanga vinyasa addresses it all. Not only is it a complete and far-reaching discipline in its own right, it is the perfect compliment to any other form of exercise, sport or practice.
