Is Ashtanga Yoga for Me?
YES! Ashtanga yoga is for everyone! Whatever your ability or capability. Every yoga pose can be modified and simplified, which makes it accessible for everyone. Ashtanga Yoga typically follows a set series of postures and it can take time to learn these poses off by heart, but ultimately it’s all very much about the journey. By learning and practicing Ashtanga Yoga or even any style of yoga, we learn about our body. We gain a deeper understanding of our body and its intricacies. We gain a heightened awareness of our bodies and it is with this awareness, that we can go further than we think our body is currently capable of doing.
Ashtanga Yoga can be hugely beneficial to our mind and body, especially if……
You have pain in your body or are recovering from an injury
As all yoga postures can be modified and simplified, it’s important to continue to strengthen the rest of your body, even if you’re resting a part of your body that’s been injured. We lose strength much more quickly than we lose flexibility. So resting and not exercising after a broken arm for 6 weeks, can have a huge impact on the rest of your body. It’s important to continue to build strength whilst looking after an injury. Depending on what the injury is of course. Obviously if the doctor has advised complete bedrest, then that’s fair enough. But if you’re looking after a broken leg, arm, wrist, etc. then why not continue to build and maintain strength throughout the rest of the body. You’ll feel better for it too.
You want to gain strength and flexibility
Ashtanga yoga is really great for both of these. Ideally you want to gain a balance between the two. Did you know, the stronger you get, the less flexible you become? Just look at body builders. Huge muscular arms but they often, can’t straighten their arms, or take them above their head very easily. Likewise, naturally flexible people, are often weak in muscular strength, as they’ve never needed to use their muscles to get into many yoga postures and therefore, haven’t engaged the muscles required to advance further. Therefore, they have less or very little strength. As you get into your yoga practice more, you’ll notice that you get into some poses more than others. Once you explore more and find a short-term focus, you may find that you then have difficulties with certain poses. For example as you build upper body strength, which will help you with Sun Salutations, vinyasas and arm balances, you may then lose some flexibility to then bind in some poses. Finding a balance between strength and flexibility is a challenge but very important to progress.
You are suffering with stress or anxiety
Yoga is a great way to help your mental state of mind. It can help you to switch off and feel like you’ve cleared the mind. It leaves you feeling calm and in a more positive state of mind. You’ll feel more energised and productive too. At the end, in savasana, you’ll feel relaxed and at ease. This is all thanks to the power of the breath. Breathing deep is encouraged in yoga and in Ashtanga yoga there is a specific breath that we focus on. This is called the ‘victorious breath’ or ujjayi breath in Sanskrit. To start with, just breathing deep is important and slowly you will start to learn to use the Ashtanga breath throughout the practice. This is all part of helping to destress and clear the mind. Another element that really helps to benefit clearing the mind, is the focus elements. For example, once you get into the practice, there’s the breath the to focus on, the posture itself and its alignment, the gaze point as a focus and also focusing on going deeper in the pose too. All in all, there’s so many things to focus on, that you should now not have room to focus or think about anything else.
