On Meeting K. Pattabhi Jois: Larry’s Story

On Meeting K. Pattabhi Jois: Larry’s Story

When I look at the number of people that come through It’s Yoga, I smile thinking of how it started. I think back to the days when I knew little about yoga and Astanga was as foreign to me as life without it is now. Back then (almost twenty years ago), there was no world wide web so, unlike you, I had to resort to what now seems primitive – I picked a school out of the phone book. Call it serendipity, fate, luck or good karma, but through these very means I was able to find not only a good school but also the teacher who transformed my practice and by extension my life.

One day, when I was but a yoga novice, my teacher announced that K. Pattabhi Jois, the Sanskrit scholar and yoga master who created the Astanga system, was coming to teach at our school. Before he arrived, there was a veritable buzz about him. He had been, so I heard, a practitioner of yoga in various forms since the age of fourteen as well as a dedicated researcher of yoga texts. Sometime in the 1930′s, he had found an ancient manuscript at a Calcutta university, the Yoga Kurunta, from which he developed his own practice and teachings. At sixty-four, he was still as energetic as ever and fully committed to bringing Astanga to communities well beyond his native Mysore, India. After hearing all this, I thought he might be intimidating so I was pleasantly surprised to find him unassuming and generous in all respects. I was immediately taken by the fact that even though he spoke no English, he was ready to teach us the method and wisdom of Astanga. Perhaps because he had a way of moving that manifested the serenity, joy and alertness that the practice brings, he knew he could teach us the system by embodying it.

I noticed immediately that he was both lighthearted and earnest – he laughed often but he also expected a sincere and sustained dedication to the practice. As he learned some limited English, he was also able to share the specifics of his teachings. He made it clear that the transformative effects of Astanga were not to come without a great deal of hard work, patience and pain.

It was hard for me at first to move and breathe according to Astanga. Though at that time I was twenty-nine and full of potential, my body had began to develop aches and lapses of energy. Mine was a life of caffeine and pills I drank to alleviate a little pain here, a little discomfort there. So I was quite stiff when I moved into postures and I often felt as though my body would tear when I went into tight places. Just when I thought I would split open, Pattabhi Jois would call out “five” and I would let go of the posture with much relief. Often I would feel like a spring uncoiling from the inside. This feeling was very unsettling at first, but as I started to get the benefits of the practice, I became ever more willing to face its challenges.

With every practice, I created a heat in my body that oxygenated my blood, nourished my glands and internal organs, cleansed and purified my nervous system. With the deep rhythmic breathing and movement of Astanga, I began to access the most restricted areas of my body and to shed unwanted toxins. I began to experience the heat of the practice as an internal fire that allowed me to quiet my mind and to rest from my attachments. Overtime, I developed such a healthy glow that friends began to ask, “Were you just on vacation? You look different, have you been on a diet?”

But it took pain and patience to open my joints and it hurt, as I found out through Pattabhi Jois, because I was afraid. Whenever I insisted that my body was sore and could flex no more, he’d tell me that I had a fearing mind. “Bad man,” or “bad lady,” he’d say to his students, “body strong, mind weak.” It was such a revelation to me to see my mind as an obstacle rather than as a conduit to my self-realization. Whenever I would arrive at a tight spot or attempt an advanced posture, I would feel a surge of fright invading my body. My mind would say: “you are sure to hurt yourself,” or ” you cannot possibly do that.” At such moments Pattabhi Jois would encourage me to breathe deeply and let the lightness of my body unfold. By constantly practicing how to relax in a moment of tightness and how to let my body attempt what appeared impossible, I began to integrate the practice.

Yoga was to teach me how to trust my body, my intuition, my feelings and to operate from them. This was a lesson riddled with fright. To trust my intuitive sense, to foster it, to keep it healthy, tuned in and alive – this was the lesson I encountered and one which I was to extend beyond my daily practice. Yoga was not to be just a physical experience, but a method of bringing life and vitality to all my being, a way of bringing awareness to the inner parts of myself. This lesson ran so contrary to anything else I had ever learned, that I was afraid, at first. As I continued to practice and learn from the sweet and gentle old man, however, I became less and less fearful. The fact that he laughed a lot also helped. For him, there was joy in experiencing the mind, body, breath connection and he inspired us to follow his lead.

At the same time, he constantly expressed the need to have a six day a week practice. Repetition, he taught us, was the key to Astanga. Our bodies and minds could flex, expand, grow strong and calm if we could keep them in a constant state of movement and breathing. Taking more than three days off from practice, he stressed, would make the body regress into tightness and make the mind more susceptible to the burden of preoccupations. Our practices, he assured us, did not have to be perfect. It did not matter if we could not flex as far as he did for the function of our postures was far more important than our forms. The calming effects of our breathing and the release of tension in our body were the essence of the practice and not the perfection of our poses. So he urged us to keep our practices constant and focused.

The more Pattabhi Jois spent time with us, the more we looked at him as a spiritual leader. Some of us were eager to ask him questions regarding our human potential. But he knew that people need to explore their potential for themselves and so with his smile he would say “all is coming, all is coming.” It has taken me twenty years to begin to understand what that means for me, in my own experience.

And the other Story: Astanga as Practiced at It’s Yoga

At It’s Yoga there is a beautiful picture of Pattabhi Jois which every student sees. Everytime a student comes to class, s/he signs in at the main desk above which hangs a sepia color print of a young lean man standing erect, smiling; he is now eighty-four and still teaching Astanga. I have put this photograph there with the deeply felt respect and gratitude I will always have for Pattabhi Jois. And yet I know, that the Astanga I teach at It’s Yoga departs, in some ways, from his method.

When Pattabhi Jois first came to the United States, there were many who thought Astanga was too rigorous, too radical and potentially hurtful. Before him, people commonly associated yoga as a soft and passive practice, more in par with the Iyengar method. With Astanga, Pattabhi Jois revolutionized this conception of yoga; in his vision, yoga became a moving meditation which starts slow, builds to a rigorous pace and then cools down towards stillness of the body and mind.

Throughout it, the body is challenged into postures of strength, balance and flexibility with deep and even breathing serving as the primary focus. These basic tenets of Pattabhi Jois’ teachings are the pillar concepts of It’s Yoga. But the intensity of the traditional Astanga system has been modified at It’s Yoga so that more people can access the practice.

Astanga, as practiced in Pattabhi Jois’ home in Mysore, India comprises four different series which are categorized in order of difficulty. As their name indicates, the primary series are the most basic level of Astanga: they are the poses from which the more advanced postures of the second third and fourth series build. In Mysore, one must become completely adept at the first series in order to attempt any of the more advanced poses. At It’s Yoga, we have broken with this tradition; we offer classes that mix the primary with the advanced poses because we do not believe in hierarchizing the practice in the manner of Mysore. We believe instead that students ought to have a chance to experience the practice at its fullest range.

I have witnessed beginning students successfully attempt advanced postures in part because we do not introduce the poses as such. We do not announce the difficulty of the poses; rather, we present them alongside possible variations which students can attempt should they not be able to fully hold a pose. We stress the importance of deep and constant breathing since we believe that through their breaths, students of all levels can move through Astanga at its primary and more advance series. They may not be able to hold every posture perfectly, but by attempting they can expand the range of movement in their bodies and their conception of what is possible.

At it’s Yoga we want to adapt Astanga to the life styles and time schedules of the West. People’s work schedules, family responsibilities, diet and levels of innate flexibility in our community here in San Francisco, and for that matter anywhere on this side of the hemisphere, differ significantly from those of the peoples of Mysore. With this in mind, we have modified Astanga to suit our specific needs. The traditional expectation that a student should practice the primary series six days out of a week for two hours at a time until s/he has mastered it well enough to move to the next series, is not one that we hold for our students. We know that people may want Ashtanga as part of their lives but that submitting to the same routine for extensive periods of time may not be possible or desirable. Hence, we have devised shorter, speeder routines like our Rocket One and Rocket Two in which students are able to experience Astanga for relatively short periods of time (forty-five minutes to an hour) in a concentrated fashion which allows them to build the bodily heat and internal fire that are the keys to the practice.

For some of us, life is filled with the routine of the everyday. It is the tedium of the nine-to-five, the repetition of long commutes, and the consistency of the office which renders some of us tired at the end of our days. At It’s Yoga, we offer a different approach to Astanga everyday so as to break with routine and allow people a chance to shed tiredness from their bodies. Monday through Sunday we have classes that offer Astanga in its shorter versions as well as those that follow tradition more closely. Even within a particular class, we will often change the sequence of postures to ensure that our bodies are exposed to variety and that our minds do not get stuck on particular routines. Ultimately, we want students to remain alert and fully present in their practices and to this end we emphasize the fact that yoga is about change. We believe Astanga can change the health of our bodies, that it can, depending on our level of commitment, transform our being in the physical and the more abstract levels. Such change comes, we know, from keeping our practices constant but varied at the same time.

We know too that people’s approaches to Astanga will depend on their lifestyles. While at Mysore students are expected to discipline their diets and sleep schedules to rigorous routines, students at It’s Yoga can come to class when they can and continue to enjoy their particular tastes – the glass of wine, the long late meal, etc. What we expect from our students is not monastic discipline but a commitment to their selves. This means simply that they practice according to the most essential teachings of Pattabhi Jois: sincerely and constantly. When we finish a practice, I often tell students “come back and do it again,” for I believe that repetition breeds success. The more you can practice the more you can find out for yourself what Astanga can mean to you. Perhaps a constant practice will simply allow your body to feel stronger and more flexible and your mind to be calmer and clearer. It may give you the peace and yoga glow of your own that will keep you coming. On the other hand, it might induce you to modify aspects of your lifestyle to suit your yoga better – maybe you will watch what you eat more or opt to come to the more traditional classes or build a self-directed practice. At It’s Yoga you can do whatever you like. Even move as you like. In class I often say, “take a break whenever you like,” and welcome whatever modifications students feel are necessary for their own bodies. After all, no one knows the limits and possibilities of a student’s body better than him/herself.

Again, we break with tradition, for at Mysore, the teacher constantly and literally pushes students into postures. Adjusting a student in Mysore can mean a slight push into a posture, a slight correction of one’s form but it can also mean that the teacher forces the student into a posture. Though this is done through the student’s breath, it can be nerve racking and potentially dangerous for the student. At It’s Yoga we encourage students to move at their own pace through their limitations. We believe this discourages a dependence on the physical teacher and allows students to discover themselves and to cultivate the teacher in each one of them.

Astanga is not, after all, a yoga that idolizes its principal teacher. While other yogas are named for their creators – Iyengar, for example – Astanga is not and this is because in its essential form, Astanga is not about Pattabhi Jois but about how each student integrates the practice. We, at It’s Yoga want to keep it that way. We constantly encourage the cultivation of mula bandha – the root lock we activate when we contract the perineum – because it increases flexibility and stimulates the heat that allows us to stretch beyond our limitations. Mula bandha brings awareness to the center of our body, which grounds us in the core of our being and allows us to move without injury. It ignites our cosmic energy – the kundalini – which brings us vitality and lightness of being. At It’s Yoga we are dedicated to the cultivation of this cosmic energy in each of our students rather than to the creation of a teacher cult.

Teachers at It’s Yoga are facilitators to Astanga rather than authorities. They have learned the practice and as such they can introduce and guide students through it. Ultimately their guidance should allow students to discover their own power and potential in the same way that Pattabhi Jois’ teachings facilitated my own self-realization. Astanga as practiced at It’s Yoga is always about the student and it is deeply rooted in the realities of our community. We cultivate our commitment to ourselves because we know this brings us to the higher Self inside of us. We know that once we recognize this Self, we can see the teacher inside of us and in everyone around us. So for me, those who practice Astanga at It’s Yoga are not really my students, they are all my fellow teachers, at whatever level they practice.

Beyond the Teacher Principal, or What Happens When “you get really good”

So what happens when you can do all or most of the poses in the system? Does yoga become boring then? What do you have to work towards? If you loose track of the heart of the practice – if you do not remain connected to your breath – you may very well become bored with Astanga. Any person with a gymnastic disposition can master Astanga at the physical level and then seek something else. The question is, can you keep connected to your cosmic energy? You can do the practice mechanically and look like a great yogi but if you are not moving through your breath and from your center you are not doing yoga.

Boredom is never a problem to those who stay connected to their breath because they are moving into states of intelligence, awareness and consciousness about themselves. They are working towards balance not only in their physical bodies, but also in their mind and feelings. The challenge is not only in how to balance the body’s asymmetries – the fact that one hip may be tighter than the other, the right shoulder weaker than the left one – but also positive and negative thoughts and emotions. I often tell my students to breathe in inspiration for the positive and breathe out the negative. Since we can never be rid of the negative and we cannot always have the positive, we must work for a balance and towards states of contemplation that will allow us the serenity to move with consciousness.

If you lose sense of that as an integral part of yoga you are not only lost but also a danger to yourself. Earlier I mentioned that mula bandha brings awareness to the center of our being, an awareness that allows us to move without injury. Well, if you do not cultivate it as that which ignites your kundalini, your cosmic energy, you may go up on a handstand and instead of landing gently on your elbows you may crash on your face. This is why some people burn out, get bored or what is worse, injured. Then they begin to question why they’re doing Astanga after all.

Often advanced practitioners go to Mysore in order to study with Pattabhi Jois. Sometimes they do so to regain a sense of purpose in their practice. They make pilgrimages for the master and go in search for the “authentic” Astanga. Ironically, what they seek is inside them but they cannot see it, feel it. Often these are the same people who feel “yoga guilt” if they can not practice two hours every day or if they can not advance to the higher series. Some even think of Mysore and the Astanga community as a kind of “yoga cult” which requires that they renounce their habits of eating, sleeping, and being in general. Practitioners in this category have sadly lost their sense of independence and believe that their self-realizations depend on a teacher, a place, a type of life-style. All these factors may greatly contribute to ones growth but they do not guarantee it.

Receiving adjustments from teachers is something that a lot of advanced practitioners seek and this I believe only breeds dependence on the teacher. I received four to five years of adjustments and became dependent on my teacher to move me into certain poses. Some teachers would capitalize on my dependence and then we would have the madness of co- dependency. The teacher would begin to play roles – parent, guardian, what have you, and I would be the kid, the student, the powerless. The worst thing about receiving adjustments is that you often get them from people who have not been properly trained. In the old days, yogis had the time to learn from each other how to touch someone else’s body with intelligence. Now, people are trained fairly quickly – especially here in the West. It takes a great deal of time to learn how one’s own body moves and works so learning how others work can only take a really, really long time. But more importantly, adjustments hide the fact that real change comes from the inside.

So the real challenge for the advanced practitioner is to stay focused on the breath. As we practice we are not trying to gain control of the body or mind. Our moving meditations should not be about forcing our bodies into poses or making our minds think a particular way (or not think at all). Our practices should be about witnessing what is going on internally – in the body and mind. And so, when we meditate, we need to pay attention to what we see with our eyes closed and once we have done that to ask still, what else? What else beyond the immediate clutter of concerns, memories, wishes, fears and hopes do I see? After all, that what else may be the Divine; that what else maybe a visceral, cognitive and spiritual knowing of the fluidity and sanctity in life – and not just your own but Life eternal.

Namaste to each and everyone of you.

Larry Schultz