What kind of yoga should I start with?

Starting up this blog again, now from Buenos Aires, I will give it a broader spectrum, including tango and other major themes of my life. There will still be yoga-related posts, and lots of people around me show a great interest for yoga.

Banking colleagues at Nordea have asked me for advice on where to start taking classes in Copenhagen. They tend to look for yoga that and keeps your body in good health and that relaxes their minds after stressful days at the office. The tango crowd also takes interest in yoga, as a means to improve body awareness, balance and focus.

I always recommend the aspiring yogi to try a few different styles and teachers. To give you an idea of what you may encounter, here's a brief summary of important yoga styles.

Hatha Yoga is a broad term that basically includes all yoga practices where you work the body (with the aim to "unite opposite patterns"). This is what people in general think of when they talk about yoga. In Hatha Yoga we practice postures (asana), breathing techniques (pranayama), mediation and cleansing techniques. So all classes that you might take in studios will most likely be forms of Hatha Yoga, although they often bear different labels: "Vinyasa", "Power Yoga", "Yin Yoga", "Ashtanga Yoga", etc.

Confusingly, many studios have classes specifically labelled "Hatha Yoga", and here the term is used in a more narrow sense; it means that you will do asana, and take some time to explain how to do the postures well. These sessions sometimes include pranayama and meditation.

Asana - the postures - is the dominant yogic practice in yoga studios. This emphasis has grown dramatically throughout the 20th century. In traditional yoga, asana played a much smaller part, and was more or less a preparation for being able to sit comfortably in meditation. For many Westerners, asana is the most accessible entry point to yoga, and the first classes I took myself were all about asana.

Asana session, Anusara Yoga in Chiang Mai, Thailand 2010

"Iyengar Yoga" is a very widespread form of Hatha Yoga, developed by B.K.S Iyengar, where explanations can be extremely detailed. It will make you do a very healthy yoga for your body, although some find these classes to be quite slow.

Vinyasa is when breath is synchronized with body movements. Classes labelled "Hatha Yoga" usually include some of this, but in a "Vinyasa" labelled class there is often a much stronger focus on the breath leading each movement. In many Vinyasa classes, the teacher will assume that you already know the postures and won't explain them carefully.

Some Vinyasa classes can be very physically demanding, and especially so the "Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga" classes, developed by Sri Patthabi Jois and one of the largest Hatha Yoga styles today. It is often simply called "Ashtanga Yoga" and although originally meant for teenage boys in India, it has become very popular in the West, giving you a great workout and promoting discipline.

Ashtanga Yoga is actually much older than Jois' contribution, and here's also room for confusion. Ashtanga means "eight limbs" and in this yoga utilizes a set of eight different methods for enlightenment. Asana is one, pranayama another, but there's also e.g. yama, which are moral rules of conduct where ahimsa, "not to cause any suffering", is the principal one. This traditional Ashtanga Yoga is also known as Raja Yoga, the royal yogic path, and was outlined by the sage Patanjali in the Yoga Sutra, one of the main scriptures of yogic philosophy.

"Anusara Yoga" is the Hatha Yoga style that I'm mostly into. Just like Iyengar Yoga it has a strong focus on good alignment in postures, to make sure that the practice is safe and efficient. In Anusara we are also cultivating "heart qualities". These are good qualities in ourselves, such as "courage", "kindness", "sensitivity" or "gratitude", which we want to develop further in the sessions, but also off the yoga mat.

Besides Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga, I should also mention the 3 other major yogic paths:

• Karma Yoga, the yoga of action
• Jnana Yoga, the yoga of the intellect
• Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of love and devotion.

Enough for one post, but if you encounter other terms that you would like an explanation for, add a comment about it, and I'll get back on that.
Last but not least: If you want to try yoga, the teacher matters much more than the class labels. Choose someone that inspires you to develop a physical, mental or devotional practice.

Anatomy Self-Studies: Books and Tools

After lots of yoga workshops this summer, I have started to realize that anatomy is something you will not learn just from taking yoga classes. Just the basic knowledge of the 206 bones in our body, the muscles to move them around,  the cardiac and smooth muscles,  the connective tissue, the lungs and different modes of breathing, the reflexes… I need to spend some serious study time on this!

To my great satisfaction, I’ve found several nice books and tools to assist my hard working hippocampus.

For the names of bones, muscles and ligaments I’m using Netter’s Musculoskeletal Flash Cards. I realize of course that it will be a different thing to identify it all on real bodies, but at least it is a good start.

H. David Coulter’s Anatomy for Hatha Yoga is a well-known best-seller with a scientific approach, where you are guided through the bodily functions that are of special interest for Hatha Yoga. I thought it would be more of a reference where you could look up specific details, but it turns out that you can very well enjoy reading through the whole book, and there's lots of practical exercises.

Anatomy of Movement by Blandine Calais-Germain is even more accessible though, rich with illustrations and straight to the point in captions and the few paragraphs of text. Probably very much used by both yoga and dance instructors. I know that there is a supplemetary book with exercises, but I do not have it (yet).

My friend Ellinor recently studied anatomy with yin yoga instructor Paul Grilley. She borrowed me his Anatomy for Yoga DVD, where he shows in a very pedagogical way the consequences of natural variations between the bodies of different yoga students. If it is compression rather than tension that stops you from going deeper into a pose, it will not matter how much you effort you put into it: your particular body is not built to go there.

For the fun of it, I also got The Anatomy Coloring Book by Wynn Kapit and Lawrence M. Elson. Using a set of 20 coloured pencils, I am hoping to employ a large variety of circuits in my brain to learn more.

Finally, for inspiration, I also got a poster of the muscular system, which is now on display in my living room. The only other decoration I have on the walls of this room is a huge Anusara Yoga syllabus poster - when I bought that one someone actually told me that she also wanted one, but could not find anywhere in her apartment to have it: “… ‘cause you can’t really have that in your living room”. I guess you actually can, and I cannot wait until the bookstore gets a new delivery of posters of the skeletal system!

Yoga Kendra Initiation

At Yoga Kendra studio in Malmö, the yoga is part of a tradition. Before coming to class, there is an introductory weekend, compulsory for everyone, beginners and experienced yogis alike.

Very few postures are performed during this weekend, and it is more like a lecture with Daniel, the founder of Yoga Kendra. Anecdotes of his travels in India and his encounters with yoga masters are mixed with bits and pieces of yoga philosophy and details on what you should and should not do when performing asana.
There is no structure to the lecture, it’s almost a stream of consciousness, where Daniel’s speech flows from one aspect to the other, from practical matters to the highest purposes, from hilarious jokes to solemn serenity.

In the traditional way of learning yoga, the masters wanted their students and disciples to show themselves worthy, often by setting their patience to the test, only sharing yogic knowledge after a lengthy period of trivial tasks. This order made sure that the students would persevere also in their studies of yoga. In a similar fashion, Daniel requires an investment of ten hours, which might seem a lot for anyone who would just like to try a class, but not much compared to the weeks, months and years of the traditional trial.

In fact, the arrangement also acts as a clever way of creating a bond between a yogi and his students to be. During ten hours of constant talking, you have time to express a lot of thoughts and opinions. You have enough time to show who you are, to gain credibility. Everyone at Yoga Kendra knows Daniel - they perhaps even know him better after a weekend than they know e.g. the colleagues that they see every day at work! Daniel in his turn makes sure to learn the name of everyone in the room. The connection is created.

The weekend is sealed with an initiation ceremony, which involves meditation, looking into an eye and getting protection for the third eye. Here’s Martine and I after her initiation last weekend (where I followed the initiation for the third time), our third eyes well hidden.

Eye of the Tiger at Wild Rose

Eye of the Tiger sessions started as a way for Anusara Yoga teachers to meet and practice together, to inspire each other and to explore their limits. No one acted as a teacher in the usual sense of the word. Instead, one of the yogis were guiding the others while also participating fully in the practice himself or herself.

Another version of Eye of the Tiger is where the session is actually lead by a teacher. The teacher will participate, but still have focus on the students and give useful comments and directions when needed. There are no lengthy interruptions for demonstrations, so that a flow is kept throughout the practice, and although this means that most postures have to be well known by the majority of the room, an Eye of the Tiger is a great opportunity to go a bit further.

Jonas held a three-hour Eye of the Tiger workshop at Wild Rose studio in Chiang Mai one week after the Immersions had ended. It is a nice and spacious time frame that allows for a full practice and still leaves some room for further exploration. Strong from two weeks of daily practice and relaxed from one week of massages and saunas in Chiang Mai, I felt like I could have continued for three more hours!

Here's Jonas giving Pooh an assist for baddha konasana with a forward bend.

Super Breakfast Smoothie

Every morning, uncle Jonas makes a smoothie for breakfast. It's a super smoothie. Ingredients vary with what he takes home from the market, but usually there is papaya, passion fruit, banana, fresh coconut water, sometimes mango, dragon fruit, etc. The he adds various nutritional powders, like spirulina, rice protein, hemp protein, cacao and different herb extracts.

The spirulina gives the smoothie a distinctive green colour and all the nutritional powders adds a nice thickness. Served with some nuts and almonds. Great start of the day, and actually not too filling to have half an hour before yoga.

Jazz Night in Chiang Mai

Tuesday night is open mike night at a jazz club in Chiang Mai. Anyone grabbing the mikrophone didn't sound like promising to me, and I cannot say that I had high expectations when going there. It turned out to be great! Cool atmosphere, a mixed crowd and really good music all night long (well, it ended by midnight or so). I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

The Swedish Spike Mat

After yesterday's morning yoga with Jonas I took savasana on a spike mat. I spent maybe half an hour on the mat, and this is the pattern from the spikes against my back:

My uncle's mat is developed in Sweden. Have a look at the official website. This version has remained quite unknown to most, despite the huge recent success of the so called Shakti mat. I cannot say which one is the better mat, but the version I tried feels more hardcore, with it's big spikes that you feel biting good into your skin. It doesn't really hurt that much, it's just that you feel it a lot. You can of course always make it more comfortable with a towel or a t-shirt between the mat and the skin – the important thing is that you get the effects.

So what are the effects? I felt relaxed after my session this morning, relaxed and content. This may be an effect of the supposedly increased production of endorphins and oxytocin. When you first lie on the mat you can feel the spikes a lot, but it only takes seconds before you start to feel the pain-easing effect of the endorphins.

I think that the spike mat is good for your health. Although it is perhaps not obvious why spike marks on your back would be a good thing, I think that just lying down to relax is a very beneficial practice. How often do we do that – lie down and spend 30 minutes relaxing, without falling asleep (or trying to)? On the spike mat you rest in a conscious state, which is a different experience.