Why and how are you practicing yoga? An ayurvedic point of view.

It is worth to take a closer look at your intention which you bring to the mat, before you start your yoga-practice. Are you practicing to entertain your mind with your body? Even when you deny this attitude, because you have intellectual understanding of the traditional teachings of yoga as unity of body and mind, ask yourself the following questions and observe your mind before, during and after your practice. Does your body has to serve your ideas of how it should look like, how you want to shape your outer appearance? Are you only feeling good about your yoga-practice when you are exhausted and sweaty afterwards? Are you measuring the effects of your practice and the amount of time you are investing with the number of difficult asanas you were performing and the muscular changes you can observe? I don’t want to say here that there is something wrong with the attitude that you want to feel good after your class. Also I am not judging certain styles of yoga, which are physical challenging. I am just pointing out that according to the traditional view the positive effects of a good yogapractice are not only to be experienced directly after a practice, but will have to be proofed on the long run- not only in terms of physical changes, but when you look at your whole life. Yoga is one part of a complex holistic science of life in general and was originally designed to transform your whole state of being in order to experience yourself as an expression of the divine cosmos. This is not a religious idea, but a journey that leads you to a state of perfect health, perfect balance of body and mind and to the elimination of suffering in your life. A good yogapractice should serve your lifebalance on the long run, and the aim is not to use the body to accomplish what your mind is celebrating in a particular moment, but to overcome this dualistic mechanical view of yourself. Ayurvedic knowledge for a better understanding of what is good for you. To gain a better understanding about how yoga can serve your health on the long run, it is worth to take a closer look at the 5000-year-old ayurvedic science, which can be seen as the mother ground out of which yoga was born and developed as a personal practice. Especially the doshas play an important role when you want to find out the best way to practice for you as an individual being, with a certain age, living in a certain place, being immersed in certain other life-activities. So what are the doshas in a nutshell? All manifestations of life contain three different energies: Vata (Air/Space), Pitta (Fire/Water), Kapha (Earth/Water). The unique combination of these elements forms your individual constitution. Most people have a dominance of one or two of the Doshas, the perfect balance would be if all of them are present in equal proportion – what usually is not the case for any living being. This is just the most brief and simple explanation of a very sophisticated and complex system. I do not want to get too much in detail here. The main point is that it is important to know your dosha constitution in order to find out what is the best way to practice for you at a certain time in your life, to achieve the balance and perfect health Yoga and Ayurveda are aiming for. Coming back to my initial take off and looking at your practice-intention with an understanding of the doshas, you need to know, that according to this system “like always attracts like” (Rod Stryker). You feel most attracted to things, people, food, lifestyles, which are containing the same elements as your nature. For example when you are a pitta/vata type, you will most likely want to engage in a very physical style of yoga with lots of vinyasas, advanced asanas, backbends, inversions and energetically focusing on the upper chakras. You are drawn to competition, have difficulties to concentrate over longer periods of time, and need to feel change and development immediately, otherwise you will loose your interest and discipline very easily. This is only a very rough and generalized description of a certain type, which is more differentiated in each individual, according to the proportion of the doshas and the one, which is dominating. For example are Vata dominated persons more concerned about movement & creativity, Pitta dominated persons more about strength & competition and there are a number of other differentiations. But to follow my argumentation this is not necessary to be known here in detail. The point I want to make is: If you follow your passion and attraction in your yoga practice without taking care of balancing these tendencies through counter practices, or life-traits like food, the time you wake up and go to bed, how and with whom you spend your leisure time, etc., your dosha will get out of control on the long run and you will suffer from the consequences. You will not necessarily notice that on the mat in the first place, but in other areas of your life. The imbalance of the above described type can manifest as insomnia, digestive problems, aggression, addictive behavior, depression, impatience. The more your dosha gets out of balance it will also cause suffering during the practice when your joints get dry and inflexible, your muscles and tissues are inflamed and lower back and hip problems might appear. If you follow the ayurvedic system, the hardcore physical vinyasa classes which are kind of standard in modern yoga studios in the western world would be only suiting the kapha dosha, which is not dominant in our hemisphere, especially not under yoga students. Most of the western people are a having a vata or pitta dominance with the tendency of an imbalance of one of these types. This is something most of us vata/pitta types do not want to hear: the better practice for your mental and physical health would be the opposite of what you like: A grounding slow forwardbend focused practice, emphasizing the contact to the earth, introspective and enhancing the letting go and relaxation aspect, focusing more on the lower parts of your body. This sounds not as sexy as the type of practice mentioned above and is also not featured in yoga magazines, Instagram accounts or widely offered in big yoga studios, which build their business on “like attracts like” and put on their schedule what is attractive for most of their students. No wonder, that many yoga practitioners end up in physiotherapy with all different kinds of pain coming from practicing in a way, which is not serving their health but their egos or the ego of their teachers. That is the reason why in former times yoga mostly was taught from teacher to one student and not in group classes, beautiful described in the book of T.K.V. Desikachar – The heart of yoga. His father Krishnamacharya who is somehow ironically also named as the father of modern yoga never gave the same practice to the same people, but always first looked at their condition, prescribing them the yoga techniques, which they really needed to maintain their health on the long run. This teacher died with the age of 100 years. Of course, it is better to practice in a group class than not to practice at all. But coming back to my initial thoughts you should always be aware of your intention and your current condition and choose the particular style, teacher and asanas you are performing wisely. What discriminates a yoga teacher from a very skilled yoga teacher is his or her ability to see, who is coming to their classes and the flexibility and knowledge to adapt their teaching to the needs of this particular group in the present moment. If the teacher is just following his or her own agenda or the agenda of a schedule, all responsibility is handed over to you, what might implicate that you need to perform certain poses or vinyasas in a different way than the rest of the class. This can be extra challenging for your ego but see this as your practice and not your ability to move along with a large number of people or to impress the teacher with your performance. My motivation of writing this to you is not coming from an intention to lecture you the traditional view of yoga, or show you that I have better understanding of what is good for you. I am writing this because I gained my insights painfully through own experience- as a student now suffering from the effects of imbalanced practice and as a teacher who is dealing with the problem that you want to be attractive for your students but knowing that their attraction must be intelligently directed into a practice, which they often wouldn’t choose on their own. If you liked the ideas presented in this text and want to learn more about this in detail, check out these resources: https://www.amazon.de/Heart-Yoga-Developing-PersonalPractice/dp/089281764X/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&qid=1617896382&refinements=p_lbr_books _authors_browse-bin%3AT.+K.+V.+Desikachar&s=books&sr=1-3 https://www.amazon.de/DavidFrawley/e/B000AQ1DFK?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_18&qid=1617896502&sr=8-18 https://www.parayoga.com