Showing posts with label ashtanga interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ashtanga interview. Show all posts

Dec 5, 2024

1994 Interview with Pattabhi Jois: Practice Makes Perfect

1994 Interview with Pattabhi Jois: Practice Makes Perfect

an Interview with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois


by Sandra Anderson, Yoga International, Jan-Feb 1994



Happiness on the face, light in the eyes, a healthy body-these are the signs of a yogī, according to the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā, the classic Saṁskṛt text on haṭha yoga. Such a description fits K. Pattabhi Jois, who at the age of 78 has the straight spine and smooth face of a much younger man. He laughs easily, beaming when we are introduced in a steamy New York studio, and asks if I would take yoga with him. According to the Pradīpikā, haṭha yoga is taught for the attainment of rāja yoga, also known as aṣṭāṅga yoga, the complete, eight-limbed path to self-realization, but few emphasize the importance of attaining perfection in posture and breathing as a means of achieving the other limbs as clearly as Jois does.




Born in 1915 in southern India, K. Pattabhi Jois met his guru, Krishnamacharya, who was also B.K.S. Iyengar’s teacher, while still a young boy. He has been teaching yoga since 1937, and students from all over the world come to study with him in his home in Mysore, India. He has visited the United States several times, and although this is his first visit to New York, most of the students in this morning’s class seem to know the sequence he teaches.




It’s hot. The windows are closed, and the already humid air is thick with the labored breathing of 35 sweating bodies. The students groan and sigh. For some, the sequence appears to unfold effortlessly, but still their bodies glisten with sweat. Jois is everywhere encouraging - a hand here, a foot there, a joke wherever it is most needed. He calls out the sequence of postures in a strong deep voice, using their Sanskrit names.




There’s no laziness here: only determined hard work and a grace born of strength and flexibility, as the class moves from one posture to the next, pausing only to hold the pose, and linking the postures with a spine-flexing sequence reminiscent of the sun salutation and similarly coordinated with the breath. “Exhale, catvāri (caturaṅga daṇḍāsana), inhale, pañca (ūrdhva mukha śvānāsana).” Jois establishes discipline but tempers it with gentle humor and affection, as he teases students, verbally and physically, into places they didn’t realize they could reach.




And if the coaxing, the energy in the room, and the peer pressure aren’t enough, there’s the heat. In spite of the mats, there’s hardly a dry spot left on the crowded hardwood floor at the end of this rigorous two-hour session. The sequence of postures continuously flowing with the breath is designed to stoke the fire of purification - to cleanse the nervous and circulatory systems with discipline and good old-fashioned sweat. “Practice, practice, practice,” Jois says later, addressing a small group of students gathered in a loft in Soho. He spoke at length about the method he uses, emphasizing that he has added nothing new to the original teachings of his teacher and the Yoga Sūtra.




Where did you learn yoga? 

From my guru, Krishnamacharya. I started studying with him in 1927, when I was 12 years old. First he taught me āsana and prāṇāyāma. Later I studied Saṁskṛt and advaita philosophy at the Sanskrit College in Mysore and began teaching yoga there in 1937. I became a professor and taught Saṁskṛt and philosophy at the College for 36 years. I first taught in America in Encinitas, California, in 1975. Now I’m going all over America. I will teach anyone who wants the perfect yoga method - aṣṭāṅga yoga - just as my guru taught me.




Do you also teach your Western students Sanskrit? 

No, only āsana and prāṇāyāma. You need Saṁskṛt to understand the yoga method, but many people, even though they would like to learn Sanskrit, say they have no time. It is very important to understand yoga philosophy: without philosophy, practice is not good, and yoga practice is the starting place for yoga philosophy. Mixing both is actually the best.




What method do you use to teach āsana and prāṇāyāma? 

I teach only aṣṭāṅga yoga, the original method given in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra. Aṣṭāṅga means “eight-step” yoga: yama, niyama, āsana, prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi. The Yoga Sūtra says “Tasmin sati śvāsa pra śvāsayor gati vicchedaḥ prāṇāyāmaḥ (2.49).” First you perfect āsana, and then you practice prāṇāyāma: you control the inhalation and the exhalation, you regulate the breath, you retain and restrain the breath. After āsana is perfected, then prāṇāyāma can be perfected. That is the yoga method.




What is perfect āsana, and how do you perfect āsana?

 “Sthira sukham āsanam (YS 2.46).” Perfect āsana means you can sit for three hours with steadiness and happiness, with no trouble. After you take the legs out of the āsana, the body is still happy. In the method I teach, there are many āsanas, and they work with blood circulation, the breathing system, and the focus of the eyes (to develop concentration). In this method you must be completely flexible and keep the three parts of the body - head, neck, and trunk - in a straight line. If the spinal cord bends, the breathing system is affected. If you want to practice the correct breathing system, you must have a straight spine.




From the mūlādhāra [the chakra at the base of the spine] 72,000 nādīs [channels through which prāṇa travels in the subtle body originate (see correction about nādīs). The nervous system grows from here. All these nādīs are dirty and need cleaning. With the yoga method, you use āsana and the breathing system to clean the nādīs every day. You purify the nādīs by sitting in the right posture and practicing every day, inhaling and exhaling, until finally, after a long time, your whole body is strong and your nervous system is perfectly cured. When the nervous system is perfect, the body is strong.




Once all the nādīs are clean, prāṇa enters the central nādī, called suṣumnā. For this to happen, you must completely control the anus. You must carefully practice the bandhas - mūlabandha, uḍḍiyāna bandha, and the others - during āsana and prāṇāyāma practice. If you practice the method I teach, automatically the bandhas will come. This is the original teaching, the aṣṭāṅga yoga method. I’ve not added anything else. These modern teachings, I don’t know … I’m an old man!




This method is physically quite demanding. How do you teach someone who is in bad shape physically?

 Bad shape is not impossible to work with. The yoga text says that yoga practice makes you lean but strong like an elephant. You have a yogic face. A yogic face is always a smiling face. It means you hear nāda, the internal sound, and your eyes are clear. Then you see clearly, and you control bindu [the vital energy sometimes interpreted as sexual energy]. The inner fire unfolds, and the body is free of disease.




There are three types of disease: body disease, mind disease, and nervous system disease. When the mind is diseased, the whole body is diseased. The yoga scriptures say “Manayeva manuṣāṇāṁ karaṇaṁ bandha mokṣayoḥ (this verse may be transliterated incorrectly),” the mind is the cause of both bondage and liberation. If the mind is sick and sad, the whole body gets sick, and all is finished. So first you must give medicine to the mind. Mind medicine: that is yoga.




What exactly would mind medicine be? 

Yoga practice and the correct breathing system. Practice, practice, practice. That’s it. Practice so the nervous system is perfect and the blood circulation is good, which is very important. With good blood circulation, you don’t get heart trouble. Controlling the bindu, not wasting your bindu, is also very important. A person is alive by containing the bindu; when the bindu is completely gone, you are a dead man. That’s what the scriptures say. By practicing every day, the blood becomes purified, and the mind gradually comes under your control. This is the yogic method. “Yogaś citta vṛtti nirodhaḥ (YS: I.2).” This means that yoga is control over the [movements] of the mind.




We’ve been talking mostly about yoga practice as āsana and prāṇāyāma. How important are the first two limbs of ashtanga yoga, the yamas and niyamas? 

They are very difficult. If you have a weak mind and a weak body, you have weak principles. The yamas have five limbs: ahiṁsā [nonviolence], satya [truthfulness], asteya [non-stealing], brahmacharya [continence], and aparigraha [non-possessiveness]. Ahiṁsā is impossible; also telling the truth is very difficult. The scriptures say speak that truth which is sweet; don’t speak truth which hurts. But don’t lie, no matter how sweet it sounds. Very difficult. You tell only the sweet truth because he who speaks the unpleasant truth is a dead man.




So, a weak mind means a weak body. That’s why you build a good foundation with āsana and prāṇāyāma, so your body and mind and nervous system are all working; then you work on ahiṁsā, satya, and the other yamas and niyamas.




What about the other limbs of ashtanga yoga? Do you teach a method of meditation? 

Meditation is dhyāna, the seventh step in the aṣṭāṅga system. After one step is perfect, then you take the next step. For dhyāna, you must sit with a straight back with your eyes closed and focus on the bridge of the nostrils. If you don’t do this, you’re not centered. If the eyes open and close, so does the mind.




Yoga is 95 percent practical. Only 5 percent is theory. Without practice, it doesn’t work; there is no benefit. So you have to practice, following the right method, following the steps one by one. Then it’s possible.




The term vinyāsa is used to describe what you teach. What does it mean?

 Vinyāsa means “breathing system.” Without vinyāsa, don’t do āsana. When vinyāsa is perfect, the mind is under control. That’s the main thing controlling the mind. That’s the method Patañjali described. The scriptures say that prāṇa and apāna are made equal by keeping the ratio of inhalation and exhalation equal and by following the breath in the nostrils with the mind. If you practice this way, gradually mind comes under control.




Do you teach prāṇāyāma in the sitting postures also? 

Yes. When padmāsana [the lotus sitting posture] is perfect, then you control your anus with mūla bandha, and also use the chin lock, jālandhara bandha. There are many types of prāṇāyāma, but the most important one is kevala kumbhaka, when the fluctuations of the breath - the inhalation and exhalation - are controlled and automatically stop. For this you must practice. Practice, practice, practice. When you practice, new ways of thinking, new thoughts, come in your mind. Lectures sound good; you give a good lecture and everyone says you’re so great, but lectures are 99-1/2 percent not practical. For many years you must practice āsana and prāṇāyāma. The scriptures say “Practicing a long time with respect and without interruption brings perfection.” One year, two years, ten years … your entire life long, you practice.




After āsana and prāṇāyāma are perfect, pratyāhāra, sense control [the fifth limb of ashtanga yoga], follows. The first four limbs are external exercises: yama, niyama, āsana, prāṇāyāma. The last four are internal, and they automatically follow when the first four are mastered. Pratyāhāra means that anywhere you look, you see God. Good mind control gives that capacity, so that when you look, everything you see is Ātman (the God within). Then for you the world is colored by God. Whatever you see, you identify it with your Ātman. The scriptures say that a true yogī’s mind is so absorbed in the lotus feet of the Lord that nothing distracts him, no matter what happens in the external world.




What is your parting advice for those who have a desire to pursue yoga? 

Yoga is possible for anybody who really wants it. Yoga is universal. Yoga is not mine. But don’t approach yoga with a business mind-looking for worldly gain. If you want to be near God, turn your mind toward God, and practice yoga. As the scriptures say “without yoga practice, how can knowledge give you mokṣa [liberation]?”

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Dec 4, 2024

Who Owns Yoga? LA Yoga Article 2010

Who Owns Yoga? 


By Leslie Hendry|March 31st, 2010

 

Thoughts On An Endless Question 


 
“No one owns Yoga,” said Sharath Rangaswamy, the grandson of the late Ashtanga Yoga guru, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois.

Sharath paused comfortably, sanguinely sitting in lotus. He looked around the room, and then continued, “You don’t own it. I don’t own it. No one owns it.”

We had gathered at Ashtanga Yoga New York and Sri Ganesha Temple in New York City in May, 2010, during Sharath’s world tour. During the silence that followed this pronouncement I glanced at a fellow Yoga practitioner, who earlier that morning was elaborating on her apartment in Mysore, India, the city where Ashtanga Yoga practitioners go to practice for months at a time. This acquaintance commented on her balcony furniture, her new ceiling fan, her oven, her volunteering, her recent training at the yogashala, her relationship to the yogashala, her friends there, her tuk tuk driver. All was hers. The result of the conversation seemed less of an exchange of experience and more of a list that eclipsed my own experience of India. I surely didn’t have all the coveted things that this person had when I was there. Mulling Sharath’s statement around in my head, I wondered if this type of dominion was what he meant.

Who Owns Yoga?

The habit of claiming mine to something in which we are intimately involved is part of our lovely friend “Ego.” Strong attachments can lead to wanting to own and covet more of what we love. We identify with those things we love and the attachment deepens. We fall in love with Yoga because it makes us feel good, stretches us, relaxes us, de-stresses us. We buy into the accoutrements of Yoga: the mat, the rug, the clothes, the trips, the workshops, the experiences. We identify as yogis and yoginis. But wait.

“We are not yogis or yoginis,” Sharath said, to a ripple of giggles at this gentle Indian’s speaking of the word yogini.

Now I was further confused. What was he saying?

Sharath’s entire life has been about Yoga in one way or another. He grew up in a Yoga lineage. His grandfather studied under Sri T. Krishnamacharya, whose students include many of today’s most influential teachers: B.K.S. Iyengar, the late Indra Devi, Srivatsa Ramaswami, A.G. Mohan, and Krishnamacharya’s sons T.K. Srinivasan, T.K.V. Desikachar and T.K. Sribhashyam, along with the late Pattabhi Jois. Sharath’s mother, Saraswati, and uncle, Manju, are longtime Ashtanga Yoga teachers, having learned from their father. This family’s life is imbued in Yoga. I sensed this wasn’t about dominion the way my Western mind thought of it as; there must be something more.

I recalled the copyright debate regarding the Bikram style of Yoga. In 2003, Bikram Choudhury, an Indian-born Yoga entrepreneur, whose following includes celebrities, star athletes and supermodels, obtained a copyright on a sequence of 26 Yoga postures, also known as hot Yoga, practiced at a room temperature of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. How unyogic, people cried. Yoga has been around for 5,000 years, and has been shared with the rest of the world. How can anyone claim ownership? Yet it is our Western system, the U.S. to be exact, where Bikram obtained the copyright to protect the commercial value of his registered property. In 2005, a group called Open Source Yoga challenged Bikram’s copyright ultimately settling the case, but not settling the question.

When I spoke with Bikram he recalled a conversation with one of his students, Janet Reno, the former White House Counsel under the Clinton Administration, who said, “When in Rome, do as the Romans.” Yet with the U.S. case, the Indian government awoke to a usurping of a cultural treasure. Asana, or Yoga poses, have been around for thousands of years, they cried. To copyright something that has been in the public trust of another country seemed completely unfounded. India has now galvanized to better protect Yoga poses and other national treasures. But if Bikram Choudhury can trademark Yoga and is, therefore, protected from others teaching it, and therefore profiting from, Bikram Yoga, how can we say no one owns Yoga?

We don’t walk out our door, Yoga mat in hand, to buy Yoga at a store as if it were a consumer good. We pay for a class, a transaction that compensates the teacher – someone who has dedicated his or her life to Yoga – for their time and knowledge. Was owning Yoga a question of legalities? Profit? I sensed Sharath’s cautionary words were directed towards a modern interpretation of Yoga. He was trying to tell us something, but to contemplate this I had to delve deeper.

Traditionally, Yoga in India was practiced by renunciates, generally men, who eschewed the life of a householder, a householder being someone who would marry and support his family and in many cases extended family, in order to study Yoga. Yoga in this form was to inherit or adopt a lifestyle or path involving the spiritual study of Yoga philosophy. These Yogis studied the Vedas in religious fashion in an attempt to cease the life/death/life cycle. In fact, in the Vedas, instruction on the physical elements of Yoga is minute compared to the voluminous historical texts written on Yoga as the path to enlightenment.

Westerners, on the other hand, have gravitated to the physical practice of Yoga like wildfire. Every day a new yogashala, or studio, opens somewhere in the U.S., gym memberships have the advantage of Yoga classes and Yoga is a billion dollar industry. As a culture who values physical appearance and empirical evidence, we are lured by the results of Yoga, how it makes us feel and look. Most of our Yoga introductions are through a class performing consecutive postures. Some people look at Yoga for a work out substitute, some add Yoga to their regimen to stretch, others begin in an effort to reduce stress. Few are introduced to Yoga in a Vedic theory class.

So our Yoga path begins.

Pattabhi Jois said, “Practice, practice and all things coming.”

The founder of the Shri K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute, Pattabhi Jois, left his house as a young man after a Yoga demonstration he saw in Hassan, Karnataka, in 1927. He was immediately drawn to the teachings of his guru Krishnamacharya. In unconventional fashion of the times, he was not renouncing life as a householder but embarking on a study that would endure throughout his life. Through Norman Allen, the first Westerner to travel to India to study with him, Pattabhi Jois introduced his own guru’s teachings of physical asana practice to the West. Over the years, he made many trips back, teaching Ashtanga to rooms packed with devotees. Yet during his lifetime, Pattabhi Jois did not book lecture tours on the subject, he did not focus on the exact, precise alignment of every posture in class, instead, he focused on the practice: the continuous flow of breath and movement, and most importantly, devotion.

"Practice is the foundation for the actual understanding of philosophy. Unless things become practical and we can come to experience it, for what use is it? Yoga hinam katham moksam bhavati druvam (which means, without practical experience how can the pursuit of liberation ever be possible?)” [From an interview of Pattahbi Jois in Namarupa Magazine titled “3 Gurus,” Autumn, 2004.]

Whether intentional or not, Pattabhi Jois and many of his contemporaries bridged East and West not by theory but through practical, physical asana. Yet, Pattabhi Jois insisted “Yoga is not physical, very wrong.” It is not the “ultimate benefit of Yoga.” [Namarupa Magazine, 2004]]

It’s hard to deny that Yoga isn’t physical. What is then, the ultimate benefit and how do we understand it? As though searching for the Holy Grail, I ventured to one of the most physically challenging well-known Yoga schools in Los Angeles to see for myself if there was anything beyond sweating.

“I was the first to bring Hatha Yoga into the states for medical purposes,” Bikram told me after sweating through his entertaining class. As the only Yoga teacher to be accredited by the State of California Board of Secondary Education, and with his charismatic teaching approach, imbued wirth cursing and irreverence, I witnessed his unique approach to packing “Bikram’s torture chamber,” as he described it through his Brittany Spears-style headset. He had just returned from a trip to Hawaii to speak to the members of the Pentagon about Yoga and world peace. Not to mention that Bikram Yoga is featured in the January 2010 issue of O Magazine, the mother of all marketers.

Svelte bodies abound Bikram’s school, some practicing in bathing suits, gearing up for an hour and a half of intense sweaty heat, I felt I was part of an NFL summer training camp. Trying to introduce my knee to my forehead in dandayamana-janushirasana, Bikram called out to the class of one hundred students, “Leslie, what are you doing?” “I don’t know,” I thought, as my quivering standing leg fought my will not to lose the posture. I’d been introduced to him before class, so my name was fresh, but others were tested with monikers such as, “Blue Shirt” or “Hey Chinese.” Anyone on the street would’ve thought those were fighting words, but no one stormed out of the room, egos unchecked.

In Bikram’s book, Bikram Yoga, he explains that through Yoga, unhappy societies, like the U.S., can learn from the failures of older cultures, like India, by focusing priorities on “humanity, Spirutalism, and love…we can seek to promote the continued evolution of all life. The ultimate destination of human life is mental happiness and peace through the realization of love.”

Although I heard nothing like this stated in his class, I did see the attraction many had to his tough love approach. The unassailable fact is that most Yoga in the West is physical, some schools to the nth degree, yet people return to practice and sweat out their demons.

Through the physical practice, muscles are strengthened and limbs are stretched, but as Yoga practitioners become devoted to the physical practice their relationship with Yoga inevitably grows in tandem and takes on incremental meaning and effect. The practice becomes far from simply physical. What Pattabhi Jois and other gurus have known, is that through the practice the mind is opening, the mind is balancing, the mind is calming. A union forms, a dedication, a devotion to make space for Yoga takes place. It is believed as asana practice develops we purify internally. “When Yoga is performed in the right way, over a long period of time, the nervous system is purified, and so is the mind.” [Pattabhi Jois, Namarupa Magazine, 2004]. Jois continues, “pratyahara, dharana and dhyana naturally becomes more established and then greater clarity of mind and increased receptivity of self is brought about.”

As Yoga helps our minds to calm and our bodies to strengthen, the benefits become more and more patent; the dedication deepens and a devotion to an inner calmness widens. In Ashtanga and other forms of Yoga, practitioners follow their dristi, breathe ujjaya breath, suck up the bandhas, sweat and stretch. Our relationship to Yoga grows, and hence the union between the small self (who we are) and the big self, (how we transcend) develops. We stretch internally through our minds and our soul. We adjust to this practice, our eating habits change, sleep patterns change, our health changes, we approach life with a greater receptivity to something more internally profound. We venture off the mat and read and inquire into this Yoga that adds so much to our lives.

So our Yoga path progresses.

Inside Bikram’s office, photographs filled with family, his guru, and a restaurant wall of celebrities, he sat back with his legs resting on top of his desk like an oilman, still in his teaching attire, a small black sash of shorts. As one of the most well-known Yoga teachers in the country, I asked Bikram what he thought his role was in defining Yoga. “I get them on the right track, mind and body. They learn. People go off into different directions in life; I get them back on the right track.”

Bikram started practicing Yoga at the age of four with Bishnu Charan Ghosh, brother of Paramahansa Yogananda (author of Autobiography of a Yogi, founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles). At the age of thirteen, he won the National India Yoga Competition and was undefeated for three years. It is true he has benefited enormously creating Bikram Yoga, which he claims is simply Hatha Yoga done under his creative sequence. But when asked, now that you franchised Bikram Yoga, can you tell me, “Who owns Yoga,” he furrowed his brow and blasted a response, “Who owns Yoga? No one owns Yoga. Yoga is everything, air, God, love.”

“Do your teachers teach this?” I asked.

“Of course, everyday.”

The Sanskrit root of Yoga is yug = to join, harness, yoke, junction, connection. Some believe Yoga is a union within our selves, a union to the higher self, a higher power, some say, to God, and, to which, is universal. It is part of a collective public domain accessible by all individuals around the world and capable of being shared by all, at any time. Everyone has the ability to tap into the higher self, whether it be through Yoga, church, community work, helping others, love, or reverence towards mankind. “Self realization is your birthright, in this lifetime,” said James Butkevich, long-time student of Pattabhi Jois and teacher of Ashtanga Yoga. “No one owns that. With enthusiastic hard work, sweat, self-discipline, and the love of everything that’s good, it is possible.”

Claiming rights to a physical set of asana or postures might be possible, but owning the path to liberation is a much different proposition.

If one defines Yoga as a means to discovering this inner light, then copyright is irrelevant. Yoga transcends commercial boundaries because the practice is not simply an asana sequence or a business. Everyday, Yoga teachers around the globe use various postures to assist their students on their own Yoga path. In many schools of Yoga, teachers create and teach, a sequence learned from their teachers, and their teachers’ teachers. They place their thumbprint on any given class. Under their tutelage, the student will learn, experience, and ultimately benefit from the practice of Yoga. At each step, the practice, perhaps starting out physical, becomes far from quantifying.

So our Yoga practice deepens.

As it deepens, more questions arise and we search for answers. Sometimes the questions spring unexpectedly from our teachers, like Sharath’s statement, which cause us to dig deeper into our own understandings. The answers found might be varied and depend on where one is on their own Yoga path. Yet how we learn and interpret Yoga’s heritage, and hence the visceral potential of Yoga, will depend largely on the lineage of each given teacher and/or school.

The ineluctable draw of Yoga continues to become more and more mainstream. How will teachers and therefore students learn about their Yoga heritage? How will our culture continue to make it our own? What spin, modifications, trends, and changes will we make? Will the legal system become more involved and will legislative trends appearing in different states continue to increase? Will courts and laws define Yoga as a sport or religion or something else? Will we have a governing Yoga body that is more tha a voluntary registry? Will Yoga become qualified for the Olympics as the USA Yoga Federation is striving to accomomplish? Changes are inevitable, but perhaps as the hundreds of people around the world flocking to Yoga increases, so will a truer understanding of the nature and tradition of Yoga passed down through the Vedas and ancient texts. This is in the hands our teachers, and therefore in all of us. For Yoga is not something to be owned, but something to be loved and shared, interpreted and taught as in the original intentions written in the Vedas.

Roughly 150 teachers are authorized in the Ashtanga method taught by Pattabhi Jois. There is no set structure in how Jois gave authorization, but generally speaking, a person must present himself to practice in Mysore over a period of time for a number of years. After practice develops and the aspirant demonstrates an appropriate attitude, devotion towards the practice, and a respect for the tradition of parampara, the succession of teacher and disciple, Jois would then give the authorization. Yet there are more than 1,000 teachers around the world teaching his method. When asked about this, Jois responded, “Let other teacher be there, but I hope their students finally one day get what they deserve.” Just as Jois learned from his guru, he wished for students to learn the lineage from their teachers.

Sharath has now taken the helm of the Ashtanga Yoga tradition. When Sharath spoke in New York it was just weeks before his beloved grandfather died. Reflecting on the statement “No one owns Yoga,” a statement his grandfather often made, it appears timely and also timeless. As we strive to become Yogis and Yoginis, Yoga has taken, and will continue to take, different interpretations as it travels globally into the future. The shepherd of one school of Yoga, Sharath offers clarity. If we cling to Yoga and attach ourselves, or make it someone’s chattel, then we are nowhere near to Yoga’s ultimate benefit. We become less capable of understanding and therefore, experiencing, Yoga’s heritage and therefore its richness, derived not through ownership but through liberation.

A few days ago, I thought about my acquaintance in Mysore who sparked my questioning of Sharath’s statement. Looking on her Facebook page I felt a better understanding of compassion. As Yoga philosophy teacher, Narasimhan, said one day in Mysore, we as Yoga students the world over are yearning to learn something more than what our Western culture affords us. I realized through the process, that I now had more compassion for my fellow Yoga practitioners, but moreover, I found some for myself. For who knows where my friend’s ego stood in her statements, and who was I to jump to conclusions? The next day on the mat, I placed my hands together and chanted the morning prayer. I thanked my teachers, the ones I knew, never knew or whom I have yet to meet, and I specifically thanked my fellow students who also show us the way. I reached into the transforming sky, jumped back and moved forward.

All is coming.

Leslie Hendry is an advanced Ashtanga Yoga practitioner who lives in Los Angeles and is also rooted in India and her native Texas. A former New York attorney, she designed the #3-ranked kids app “Everything Has a Home” and is working on her second book.

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Oct 28, 2014

Interview with Harmony Lichty



Harmony Lichty

Favorite food:  Avocado
Hometown:  Calgary AB Canada
# of trips to India:  12 
Current Location:  Mysore, India
Shala: Ashtanga Yoga Victoria
Established:  2009


What was your first impression of Mysore practice?  
This is the way that Yoga was meant to be practiced.  It is incredible, deep, transformative, independent, and authentic in its approach and methodology.

What inspired you to get started?
Guruji and Sharath.  It was upon hearing stories about Guruji from old students that made me want to come and meet him, and practice with him in Mysore, India.

What did you like about it?
I liked that it was independently directed.  I liked the direct student to teacher relationship.  I liked that it was about uniting the mind and body through the breath, and that I could see and feel something transformative happening within myself. 

What was hard about it?
Practicing daily was very challenging, the discipline that the practice demanded, and the routine of getting up every morning. 

How did you move past those challenges?
Dedication, devotion, drive, and determination.  I found that the benefits far outweighed the difficulties for me, so I was motivated to keep doing it, as I felt such a deeply positive effect on my body and mind through the practice. 

What keeps you inspired?
My annual visits to Mysore keep me inspired.  As well as thinking about Guruji and his devotion to transmitting this practice, and Sharath and his continued dedication to practice and teaching and his lineage. 


What do you keep with you from your time with Guruji?
I see can still see the sparkle in his eyes, and often I can hear his voice in my mind.  I can sometimes feel the memory of an adjustment he gave me during practice, and I can still feel the warmth of his smile whenever I think of him, and my heart feels very full.  There is a deep love for this practice and for the entire tradition and philosophy of yoga because of my connection to him, and his passion for the Yoga Shastra. 

What do you keep with you from your studies with Sharath?
Sharath has shown me that I am stronger then I originally thought I was.  He somehow sees my capabilities and helps me to believe in them myself. He has a very tough and yet gentle way about how he teaches me, and his guidance and teachings are present in my own practice, as well as in the way I teach students.  I feel his clear direction being transmitted through me when I teach. 
With Guruji (Mysore, India)

How do you balance family, practice, and running your own business?
This is a big challenge for sure, as there are many demands when you have a family, practice, teach, and run a yoga school.  The practice helps me to maintain a sense of calm and balance throughout a very busy and hectic day.  I’m not sure you can balance it every day, all the time, some days I have more emphasis on my family, other days business, but the thread of my practice I try to maintain as consistently as I can throughout it all.  I find that this at least helps to keep me connected to some aspect of myself that is deeper and more true then all the changing external situations that I have to handle on any given day.

What advice do you have for beginners?
Jump in with your whole heart and don’t look back.  Remember this is not a sprint to some finishing point.  Yoga is not a box you can check off on some to-do list.  Yoga is a life-long practice, and something that you will never reach the end of.  When you set out to explore the depths of the infinite within yourself, be prepared to face many challenges and difficulties.  Don’t give up. 

What is your favorite thing about this practice?
As David Swenson once said: “If at first you find this practice easy, don’t worry it will get more difficult; and if at first you find this practice very difficult, don’t worry it will get easier.”  It is so balancing in every way, and there is something for everyone held within it.  There are many secrets and surprises that come up along the way if you just keep going.  I’m always amazed.  

What books do you recommend people read?
Yoga Sutras
Bhagavad Gita
Hatha Pradipika
These are just a few to start off with...

Anything else you'd like to add?
Yoga and specifically Guruji’s tradition of Ashtanga Yoga has given me my life as it is today.  I feel that this practice really saved me, and without it there is a very good chance I might not be alive.  It has given me everything good in my life.  

Prior to learning this practice I struggled with addictions, eating disorders, and in general a huge lack of self-esteem, which resulted in many self-destructive behaviors and choices.  Upon finding this practice I started feeling better about myself, and I began to start living inside my own skin for the first time in as long as I could remember.  

Jeff, Sharath, & Harmony (Mysore, India)
I began to feel more compassion and love towards myself, which was an entirely new experience.  This allowed me to feel my connection to others more deeply, which helped me to make more positive life choices, to forgive myself, and release the past.  

Through this practice I met my now husband, and love of my life, Jeff Lichty.  We traveled the world together, taught together, started a Yoga School together, and had a son, who lights up my whole universe.  For the first time I really know what selfless service means, and the feeling of unconditional love.  

Thus, it is with the deepest gratitude that I dedicate my practice and how I teach to Guruji and his lineage, and will do my best to continue on in a way that would make him both happy and proud.

 About Harmony: 
Harmony Lichty spent many years training as a ballet dancer, and consequently, struggling with eating disorders and addiction. Her search for meaning, spirituality, and a healthier, more balanced lifestyle, brought her to the practice of Ashtanga Yoga. During her years of practice, she also began to study Sanskrit at the University of Calgary, and now holds double degrees in Philosophy and Eastern Religious Studies. In 2002, she traveled to China to research Buddhist Meditation, and practiced in several monasteries. These experiences encouraged her to pursue the path of Ashtanga Yoga in conjunction with a meditation practice. As a teacher, she integrates a deep understanding of movement, body awareness, along with the philosophy of the practice. She encourages students to listen deeply and follow the inner voice that comes from of the heart. Victoria was always a place that held a great deal of magic for Harmony, and it is with immense joy that she lives here now, and is able to share the teachings and practices that have changed her life.

Harmony Lichty and Ashtanga Yoga Victoria
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