i just booked my ticket to mysore, leaving bangkok on june 7 and coming back on august 29th. nok air, a thai-based discount airline, just started offering service from bkk< ->bangalore for around $200 which is a huge savings off the $500 price on thai airlines. my only other trip to india was 2.5 years ago, and lately i’ve been thinking about how different this one will probably be (then again i could be totally wrong).

when i first went, i had been practicing about 7 years but my primary series still needed work. at first they stopped me soon after navasana, and then slowly gave me all of primary series over the two months i was there. back then i didn’t really know anyone else there, i rented an apt by myself (and spent a lot of time alone), read, studied sanskrit, ended up deciding to leave LA and move to bangkok … lots of other things really.

this time around, my practice is in a much different space, but i still could get stopped early. i think one thing a good teacher can feel is when to hold strong students back if they are too attached to the practice. students who are constantly wanting and grasping for new poses, probably have more to learn from not getting them.

i’ve also rented a three bedroom house, my mom, step-dad and many friends from bkk will be visiting, so i’lll often have people around … what i’ve been thinking about most lately is where things are with the shala.

when i was first there guruji, sharath, saraswathi and manju were all teaching together. now guruji is sick and will likely not be teaching the whole time i am there and sharath will be taking off the month of july to recover from a back injury … i’ve been thinking about how this practice is so much stronger than any one person. that even though guruji may never teach again, that there are others who will teach. guruji claims no ownership or patents over the ashtanga system. in fact he makes it clear that he is just teaching what his guru taught and it is a system that is thousands of years old. guruji’s karma allowed him to be our teacher, and my karma allowed me to be his student. there was a point where i lamented the fact that i met him so late in his life and that i only had a few times to study with him, but that’s where my karma dumped me. lately much more so than lamenting, i’ve felt really thankful to have found the practice. guruji loves to say “do your parctice and all is coming” which doesn’t mean mountains of gold will flow if you practice ashtanga, rather (i think) it means that dedication to the traditional ashtanga practice will leave you feeling that you have everything you need already

when i think about how this practice will continue, i also think about the importance of keeping it very traditional and the detachment from the ego that requires. this is a very old system, guruji has fine-tuned some things but really hasn’t changed much.

in ashtanga yoga practice and philosophy gregor maehle has the following to say about the importance of a traditional practice. rishi vamana is the man credited with developing the ashtanga system many thousand years ago. pattabhi jois discovered this system written on old scrolls and popularized it, but aside from some minor changes he didn’t create any of it.

The surrender of the illusion of free will is reflected in the vinyasa system by acceptance of the original system as expounded by Rishi Vamana. Of course it is easy to make up your own sequences of asanas, and possibly commercial success and fame will result. But then we run the rish of falling for the ego, which says I am the doer and the creator. We are only pure consciousness - the seer, the witness, the self - which as the Samkhya Karika says, plays no active part in this world.

That does not mean that we can not adapt the practice for some time if difficulties are to be met or yoga therapy needs to be practised. We need to return to the originally system whenever possible, though. Rishi Vamana’s system leads through outer structure and limitation to inner freedom. If we constantly practise self-made sequences, we create inner limitation though outer freedom.

The rishis of old did not conceive the ancient arts and sciences by trial and error. The method they employed is samyama, which combines concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana) and absorption (samadhi). In that way, deep knowledge of how things really are can be gained. Patanjali himself explains in the Yoga Sutras how he gained his knowledge. Knowledge of the mine, he says, is gained by doing samyama [combined application of dharana, dhyana and objective samadhi] of the heart.