The history of ashtanga yoga sounds like the sort of tale J.R.R. Tolkien could have invented. While it is devoid of hobbits and wizards, elves and dwarfs, ashtanga's earliest beginnings include the stuff of legends: the curing of a British Lord; the granting of a wish; training from an old guru living in a cave in Tibet; rites of passage; an ancient unbound text, written in an old language--Sanskrit--on sheets of papyrus, kept in a library in a remote part of Calcutta; and a devoted student who goes in search of the library, visiting it daily to copy the text by hand. In the end, something ancient survives.
There is no one ring--gold and precious--that is taken from deep within a mountain cave and out into the world of men where it threatens to wreck havoc. What emerges instead is a different kind of precious element, what the cave-dwelling Tibetan guru called "a jewel of priceless value" that his student, a young Krishnamacharya--the father of modern yoga--was instructed to take out into the world to share. This jewel, of course, is the art and science of the yoga practice. And share it he did. Thanks to the efforts of a few young intrepid Western seekers who traveled to India in the early 70s to learn this practice directly from the guru teaching in the tradition of Krishnamacharya, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, ashtanga yoga has taken its place in the American conscience. On an individual and cultural level, we may never be the same again.
Last week, I had the opportunity to spend four days in the company of Ashtanga yogi and teacher David Williams. A natural storyteller, Williams shared, in rich detail, everything he experienced and learned first-hand about the origins of this practice. He is the closest thing the West has to a guru in this tradition, and he reminded all of us at the conference--and not too subtly--that the purpose of a daily yoga practice is to feel energized and joyful. It was Williams who traveled to India in the early 70s, as he says, "looking for Yogaland." What he found, ultimately, was Jois, an ashtanga yoga master entrusted with the solemn and sacred duty to preserve this discipline and teach it only to those who exhibited immense dedication and a knowledge of Sanskrit. In other words, this was not a practice to be shared with a young 22-year-old and his girlfriend from the West. But Williams persisted. His sincerity and diligence impressed Jois enough to eventually teach Williams the entire ashtanga system, or what ashtanga practitioners today understand as the six series of this discipline.
More than forty years later, Yogaland is here. I can drive 25 minutes in any direction from my home and find a studio dedicated to teaching some form of the physical practice--the asana--we have learned in the West to identify as yoga. This revolution has been televised. And lucky for us, it has been.
I am grateful to the adventurous youth of the late 60s and early 70s who traveled far from home in an effort to learn more about this natural form of getting high, getting healthy, and getting in touch with who we are and what we were meant to do. We are fortunate that so many teachers followed these youth home to America to establish ashrams and centers and studios and retreats where they could teach others just as eager to learn but unable to make the initial journey. Under Williams' tutelage last week, I learned that yogis are the true alchemists. Forget about turning straw into gold, the real alchemy is about turning tension into vitality. Our breath--our prana--is the ultimate source of energy. With that in mind, I think the lines famously quoted from the poem inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty--"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"--could have just as easily been uttered by a yoga master because, according to Williams, stress is the ultimate source of prana for yogis. Yoga--with its focus on the breath--is intended to get us out of pain, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain. Prana makes healing happen. The result? When we are healthy, we can get our work done. We can turn our attention, our stores of energy toward addressing what we were all meant to do, what the Dalai Lama identified simply as "to be happy and to make others happy."
It is worth remembering that revolutions often awaken something that has existed all along, a dormant, innate knowledge that we have been afraid to bring to the surface of our lives. Afraid because somewhere along the line, we came to believe that we could not possibly have our own answers. Yoga presents an opportunity for us to meet what Lama Surya Das calls our true and precious selves. That is yoga's gift. That is, indeed, why the old Tibetan guru in the cave at Mount Kailash told Krishnamacharya that yoga's value was priceless.
There is no one ring--gold and precious--that is taken from deep within a mountain cave and out into the world of men where it threatens to wreck havoc. What emerges instead is a different kind of precious element, what the cave-dwelling Tibetan guru called "a jewel of priceless value" that his student, a young Krishnamacharya--the father of modern yoga--was instructed to take out into the world to share. This jewel, of course, is the art and science of the yoga practice. And share it he did. Thanks to the efforts of a few young intrepid Western seekers who traveled to India in the early 70s to learn this practice directly from the guru teaching in the tradition of Krishnamacharya, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, ashtanga yoga has taken its place in the American conscience. On an individual and cultural level, we may never be the same again.
Last week, I had the opportunity to spend four days in the company of Ashtanga yogi and teacher David Williams. A natural storyteller, Williams shared, in rich detail, everything he experienced and learned first-hand about the origins of this practice. He is the closest thing the West has to a guru in this tradition, and he reminded all of us at the conference--and not too subtly--that the purpose of a daily yoga practice is to feel energized and joyful. It was Williams who traveled to India in the early 70s, as he says, "looking for Yogaland." What he found, ultimately, was Jois, an ashtanga yoga master entrusted with the solemn and sacred duty to preserve this discipline and teach it only to those who exhibited immense dedication and a knowledge of Sanskrit. In other words, this was not a practice to be shared with a young 22-year-old and his girlfriend from the West. But Williams persisted. His sincerity and diligence impressed Jois enough to eventually teach Williams the entire ashtanga system, or what ashtanga practitioners today understand as the six series of this discipline.
More than forty years later, Yogaland is here. I can drive 25 minutes in any direction from my home and find a studio dedicated to teaching some form of the physical practice--the asana--we have learned in the West to identify as yoga. This revolution has been televised. And lucky for us, it has been.
I am grateful to the adventurous youth of the late 60s and early 70s who traveled far from home in an effort to learn more about this natural form of getting high, getting healthy, and getting in touch with who we are and what we were meant to do. We are fortunate that so many teachers followed these youth home to America to establish ashrams and centers and studios and retreats where they could teach others just as eager to learn but unable to make the initial journey. Under Williams' tutelage last week, I learned that yogis are the true alchemists. Forget about turning straw into gold, the real alchemy is about turning tension into vitality. Our breath--our prana--is the ultimate source of energy. With that in mind, I think the lines famously quoted from the poem inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty--"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"--could have just as easily been uttered by a yoga master because, according to Williams, stress is the ultimate source of prana for yogis. Yoga--with its focus on the breath--is intended to get us out of pain, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain. Prana makes healing happen. The result? When we are healthy, we can get our work done. We can turn our attention, our stores of energy toward addressing what we were all meant to do, what the Dalai Lama identified simply as "to be happy and to make others happy."
It is worth remembering that revolutions often awaken something that has existed all along, a dormant, innate knowledge that we have been afraid to bring to the surface of our lives. Afraid because somewhere along the line, we came to believe that we could not possibly have our own answers. Yoga presents an opportunity for us to meet what Lama Surya Das calls our true and precious selves. That is yoga's gift. That is, indeed, why the old Tibetan guru in the cave at Mount Kailash told Krishnamacharya that yoga's value was priceless.
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