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| Miley Cyrus Marichiyasana D from YogaDork Good, honest, asana. |
Now that I shamelessly have your attention perhaps, here's a curious thing about Marichiyasana D, Krishnamacharya had it in his middle group of asana NOT his Primary group.
Which, if you've been held back until binding said Mari D, might be uncomfortable reading. Manju doesn't agree with being held back here but believes you should carry on with the series while continuing to work on binding. These days, I personally tend to feel that pausing at any point of our practice is rarely a bad thing, until one can stay in utkatasana for five minutes say with long slow steady breathing or ten minutes in paschimottanasana or five minutes a side of the sublime janu sirsasana.....
BTW I love that Ms Cyrus posted this solid, workmanlike, meat n potatoes posture rather than some flighty arm balance currently in Vogue
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| Madonna in..... actually I have no idea what that is. |
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| However, by way of an apology, I do love Madonna's Eka pada Sirsasana, all serene like |
Below is Krishnamacharya's Yogasanagalu (Mysore, 1941) middle group table in full, it will be familiar to Ashtangi's who practice intermediate series, feel free to play 'spot the differences' in comments. The full table is here
Complete asana table from Krishnamacharya's Yogasanagalu, Primary, Middle and Proficient asana groups
Krishnamacharya , unlike his student Pattabhi Jois, seems to have favoured more flexible groups of asana over fixed sequences. Rather than learning one whole series of asana before moving onto the next, it appears that once one became proficient with a posture Krishnamacharya would give you a more challenging variation (Note the intermediate/middle group has Marichiyasana D, E, F and G - see blow for G and also H), this was an approach he continued with in his later teaching, see Ramaswami's Vinyasa Krama based on 30+ years of Krishnamacharya's later teaching in Chennai.
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| LINK: Complete asana table from Krishnamacharya's Yogasanagalu, Primary, Middle and Proficient asana groups |
Which is better fixed series or more flexible groups?
I have to admit that he fixed series Ashtanga approach suited me in the beginning (see the first three years of this blog), I'm not sure I would have developed the discipline, the tapas of practice had I started with Vinyasa Krama,...after a while though, the more flexible approach made more sense to me.... personally and continues to do so, I practice a Krishnamacharya Ashtanga primary/Intermediate series/group framework but with a lot of Vinyasa Krama variation.
I suspect that Krishnamacharya started his young students off with a pretty much fixed practice of Primary group asana. At some point however he would bring out more and more variations and extensions, 'a mountain of Asana ' I believe Pattabhi Jois described it, who jumped at the first chance of bringing order (when asked to produce a four year college syllabus) to what he seems to have seen as chaos (and then even more order with series 3, 4, 5 and 6 thus tidying up the whole week).
There was always order of course 'though the young Pattabhi Jois perhaps failed to notice it (until perhaps he started writing out that syllabus and had little to reorder until Advanced asana), we can see it now in Ramaswami's books, pedagogic sequences made up of subroutine after subroutine designed to learn the relationship between asana, how one asana leads into another. Krishnamacharya asked or suggested that Ramaswami order them this way. Once that relationship is seen or understood however one would only practice the asana as sequences occasionally, choosing instead appropriate asana for that days practice.
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| Asymmetric sequence of asana subroutines from my Vinyasa Krama Practice Book |
Marichiyasana E, F, G and H
