Why do I practice Ashtanga Yoga

kapotasana

Here is the simple, but complex reason. Yoga is many different things to many different people.There are many styles of yoga to choose from.  We tend to  gravitate towards a practice based on our tempraments  to a guidebook that makes sense to us to  further our  personal discovery. Ashtanga yoga, by some is described as intense, invigorating ,demanding-all of that can be true at times, but lately as I get more comfortable in certain poses and I begin to experience what is thought of  as circular breath , I find  that simple but eloquent self truths are emerging,things that should be obvious to me, but are refound and seem as though they are discovered for the very first time.Here are some recent examples of the past few days..There is the famous "valley of  Kapotasana ."Here,our world is literally turned topsy, turvy, the breath gets thready, for me there is a sense of submersion,tightness, constriction of breath. Of late, I am taking deeper calmer breaths and have focused more on an even type of  breathing,  less panic, burgeoning  curiosity about the panic, some early  steadiness,it feels somehow that my limbs move more freely, less congestion, less fear.All that is hopeful, rewarding, but a more profound simpler experience occured this morning. I was starting out my practice as I usually do with the surya namaskaras.When I was in downdog, my teacher softly said,"you keep moving your hands". This was true- I had noticed it myself as well. I also sligthly moved my feet as I pulled up to downdog from chaturanga{staff pose}.She, my teacher suggested ,not moving, that wherever,however I jump into any pose, just stay there and breathe, no readjusting to some goal that I imagined felt or was somehow better than where "I had  landed myself" . I found this daunting, challenging, that I was impatient to find the perfect distance between my hands and feet, so everything else would flow perfectly in its place. I felt a sadness  rising in me , almost tearing , when I realized that I was the one who jumped into this space, that I needed to learn to explore where I took myself just as it is, no extra movements or changes, only exploration for I ened up in this  present moment by my  own action , intention and design. When I finished my practice today I was contemlpative, thinking of all the many situations, places, relationships that"I" orchestrated," landed myself into", I am thinking about how I arrived in  these places, and now that I am where I have taken myself, to stop fidgetting and move  more deeply explore the possibilities of where I am right now, where I  put myself and if it does not suit me to be where I placed myself,where I landed myself , after some exploration, curiosity , think about how to adjust myself  with subtleness and possibley learn about not yet lived explorations, intentions and experiences......