Class will be live-streamed via Zoom at the following times:

• USA: Friday, February 11 at 7:30 p.m. ET / 4:30 p.m. PT
• India: Saturday, February 12 at 6:00 a.m. IST
• China: Saturday, February 12 at 8:30 a.m. CST
• Japan/Korea: Saturday, February 12 at 9:30 a.m. JST/KST
• Australia: Saturday, February 12 at 11:30 a.m. AEDT

Class size is limited, so sign-ups are on a first-come basis. Click here to sign up and reserve your spot, and follow @livesonima, @sharathjoisr, and @jois.yoga for updates.

This is a traditional counted Ashtanga Yoga Led Primary Series class. Ideally, students should be familiar with the Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series. Class will run for approximately 1 1/2 hours and will be followed by a one-hour conference, including question and answers with Sharathji about the Ashtanga Yoga practice and its philosophy.

“Everyone should practice yoga for their own well-being,” Sharathji says. “Once that happens, the whole planet becomes a spiritual place. The whole planet will become totally different. Everyone will realize their own responsibility in their life toward this planet, toward humanity, so that’s what we have to think about. Yoga will give you that kind of knowledge.”

Sign up now for the Led Primary Class and Conference with Paramaguru Sharath Jois.

The post Paramaguru Sharath Jois Livestream of Led Primary Class and Conference appeared first on Sonima.

Asana is one of the eight limbs of Ashtanga yoga and it’s one of the ways to know the body and senses. Doing asana can help lead one to a higher consciousness because when doing asana many things happen. Your body becomes stronger and more stable and, through proper breathing and vinyasa, the mind becomes calm and more stable. Though twisting and bending your body can be a very fascinating part of your yogic practice, it is primarily intended to be an important part of your overall sadhana, or spiritual practice.

Unfortunately, today too many people are obsessed with doing asana. They think the deeper they bend their bodies, the further it will take them to self-realization. Many times, I see people stretching too much. They twist and turn their bodies and overdo it sometimes, practicing in the morning and then again in the evening. Certainly, the more attention you put toward your practice, the more you know your body. But, oftentimes, we try to go too far too fast, thinking we’ll reach somewhere better faster. This approach is a sure way to damage not only your body, but also your senses and even to your organs. Doing too much asana will never take you closer to spirituality or self-realization, but it can take you away from it.

Part of the reason people are obsessed with doing asana is because there is a lot of talk and self-promotion online. Someone knows how to do this pose or that pose so they post a picture and even describe how to do it. People also focus on too much asana because, let’s say, someone is giving a big lecture on handstand or back-bending, so many students go to that workshop. Teaching handstand is not even close to yoga. To experience yoga, it’s not necessary to mimic the way someone else has learned to do a pose. This is where people miss the main point of what they should teach.

Too much talking is happening in yoga and not enough experience. If someone is giving a lecture and it’s very precise, you are not going to experience yoga. Someone in a workshop or class can put you into a posture and try to explain the energy is flowing like this or that, but we all have different structures and body types. A guru will not teach you the technique to experience yoga. He or she will teach you how to experience yoga naturally in your own body, how to be comfortable in a pose, which takes far more time than a weekend and goes far beyond what can be taught in a workshop.

Related: The Deepening of Practice Over Time

A teacher or guru understands first the experience of yoga. Before this, he or she can never understand someone else’s body and spirit. A guru is someone who tries to give postures so that it helps the student. If you keep on giving lecture without experiencing, it’s impossible to guide anyone into yoga. Everyone has to experience the posture for his or her selves and it will be different than their guru’s experience. The method of doing is the same, but the experience that one needs requires a certain appreciation and intelligence.

Yoga is a natural process, but you have to understand how yoga happens. If you follow a certain mindset and discipline, devotion, dedication, then changes will happen. The transformation becomes spiritual, your mind and everything goes toward divinity. You start looking at yourself. You go on a self-realization quest and avoid certain things that disturb your mind and don’t allow you to grow spiritually. If you have a desire to learn about spirituality, then you adopt a method and the experience flows naturally. For that, you need a method. No one can force it on you or force you to do it.

Instead of working on handstands, students should work on the fundamentals of yoga, the yama and niyamas. Instead of doing acrobatics, they must find this higher consciousness and make it stronger within them. To practice yoga, first we have to understand and correct our fundamentals. To strengthen our fundamentals, we must adopt a method. Asana is a way to strengthen our fundamentals and will lead us toward spirituality and a higher level in our own practice. But with asana, you should do it cleverly, with consciousness, and not just thinking intellectually or by mimicking someone else’s experience.

When the fundamentals are correct and strong, then yoga happens naturally. If you do it forcefully by trying to replicate other people’s fashion or approach, it will never happen. You can never will yoga to happen. It’s a natural process. When you adopt a method, only then you can experience certain things that you have not experienced within yourself. You experience something that makes you feel blissful and that happens only naturally.

You can realize and understand many things through asana practice when you do it consciously. But doing it again and again and again, and overdoing it, will damage your senses and your body. It will give you lots of injuries. These things will happen if you don’t do it in a proper manner.

>>Don’t miss your chance to practice with the Ashtanga yoga master when he visits the U.S. this spring! Paramaguru Sharath Jois will be teaching six-day workshops across the country in April and May. Sign up for a location near you today!

Photograph by Danielle Tsi

The post Sharath Jois on Why Too Much Asana Is Never Good appeared first on Sonima.

We see the same problems all over society: Many people are so stressed out, they can’t enjoy this life. Instead, life is like a misery to them. They don’t know how to be calm and, therefore, they make themselves, and others, unhappy.

This can be risky because experiencing stress for long periods of time can lead to mental instability and weakness, which can create serious health problems in the future. Of course, in life, there are things that happen and it’s impossible not to worry. For example, if you’re affected by a natural disaster, you will be greatly disturbed; but regardless of how stress enters your life, if external activities disturb you all the time, eventually you will put too much stress on your nervous system.

Stressful situations can arise in places that don’t even exist in our physical world, but are coming from the digital world. This adds more pressure and tension and, as a result, people become even more distracted and pulled in different directions. At times, people react and post things [on social media] that they might not normally say in person. They become angry and very critical. These people may even call themselves “yogis,” but they aren’t because they are distracted by too many dramas instead of utilizing the time to see inwardly.

Yoga is an inwardly seeking path, but, unfortunately, people in yoga sometimes get sidetracked into seeking attention. These people want, desire and expect attention, and online it becomes even greater. They post constantly about themselves: “I did this. I did this so well. I just got a new asana; I. I. I…” is present inside these people all the time. But yoga is not about the “I.” The more attention you want and receive, the more distraction will come. In yoga, you don’t need any attention for the spiritual process to happen within you. It happens silently. Many people do not understand this.

There are many people, however, who seek true yoga because they feel their approach to life hasn’t worked. It has become harder to manage themselves and their lives. They seek something better, something positive, that can help them obtain a sense of calm and happiness. This is why many people also seek places like ashrams. They want to gain peace within themselves in a supportive environment away from their regular life and away from online chaos. With time spent in ashrams, people, oftentimes, come to better experience yoga, not only through their physical health, but also the mental and spiritual health as well.

For people who work and have a family, it’s difficult to spend time at an ashram. However, a local yoga shala can help calm the mind and improve focus. It depends on the spiritual development of the teacher, of course. A good yoga teacher will show you that yoga is a journey inward. It’s not an external journey.

From the beginning, the goal of yoga is to focus on the inward journey and to choose one method that is right for you—one that you believe you can grow within that method. The most important thing is to choose a method, be it Iyengar, Ashtanga, or another. If it’s too physical, then choose a method that carries only a little bit of asana and has more philosophy.

Regardless of the method, when yoga is approached without the chatter, in a silent and humble manner, the more effective yoga will happen within you. This is called Pratyahara, one of the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga. If this path never becomes an inner journey, it never becomes inward seeking and you will never understand what yoga is. Until you see inwardly, you will not see the truth of what yoga is by drawing your senses inside, and you will always see and experience suffering.

Related: Stay Present in Distracting Situations

As students develop and begin their sadhana, they go to satsangs, or lectures. They read and acquire knowledge to better manage themselves. It is important to also consider how social media is used in our lives, and to what degree, because when we become affected by what is happening externally, we lose many things internally. In fact, a true yogi, no matter what happens externally, will not be bothered at all, and they won’t react to posts meant to disturb. The Upanishad and Vedas both say, once the external influences stop, then peace comes. In other words, when you see inwardly, everything becomes more peaceful.

This will help develop a proper foundation, which is essential to spiritual seeking. When people get easily persuaded or distracted, it’s largely because there are no proper fundamentals in them. These people have never understood the principles of yoga. If you don’t understand the principals of yoga and don’t have a strong foundation, you will suffer your whole life. After posting how you feel, or how you look, or what you like and don’t like, at the end of the day, everyone has to manage themselves without the care or attention of anyone else. Only they can manage themselves.

Related: Sharath Jois on How a Local Shala Offers More Than a Workout

This is the research, the subtle part of yoga. It’s simple and you feel very good after listening to a guru or a teacher. It’s a form of therapy that leaves you more inspired than spending an hour on social media, which only increases your cravings for attention.

As a seeker in today’s world, I recommend switching off your cell phone. Try to go to an ashram or nearby shala, where you’re connected. Stick to your daily practice and try to gain as much yogic knowledge as possible. Knowledge comes through experience. Once you experience yoga yourself, once you take it to a certain level in a spiritual path, you can experience many things, things which you have not experienced in your whole life, things you didn’t even know existed because you are too much attached to external activities.

Photography by Agathe Padovani

The post Sharath Jois on Keeping the External World From Interfering with Your Spiritual Path appeared first on Sonima.

The student-teacher relationship is well defined in India’s ancient texts and, oftentimes, before we engage in any teachings, we chant the mantra found in the Upanishads:

Om sahana vavatu, sahanau bhunaktu
Saha veeryam karavaa vahai
Tejasvi naa vadhee tamastu maa vidvishaa vahai
Om Shaanti Shaanti Shaantihi

Translation:

May he protect us both (the teacher and the student).
May he nourish us both.
May we both work together with great energy.
May our study be enlightening and fruitful.
May we not hate each other.
Om Peace, Peace, Peace.

Sahana means together and, in this chant, we ask the teacher, together with the student, to maintain a certain calmness or tolerance toward each other. After many years of practice and sadhana, the teacher has certain knowledge, and for a student to grasp that knowledge his or her involvement is very important. It’s as simple as if the teacher offers community service, then his or her students should try to help this effort. This mutual understanding, support, and tolerance must be there for the knowledge to exchange hands.

Though we do physical asana at a yoga shala, it is far different from working out at a gym. In gyms, you pay money, you work out, and there is no connection. This is not the same for yoga. Yoga implies that there is a connection between the student and teacher. At a shala, the teacher monitors your practice and postures with which you need help; students also learn from other students. Maybe they are more advanced than you, more focused, or more disciplined, but together, with the teacher, everyone is creating good energy, which you practice in a shala.

In many respects, a yoga shala is not unlike a temple, or a place of worship where we go to get connected, detach from material things, and dedicate our efforts to a practice. At temples and churches, the priests have devoted their lives to spirituality. They get up early every day to do puja, and they develop a certain type of environment that worshipers feel as soon as they enter. In this sacred place, people can forget their troubles at home, at work, and in their social life. They can be themselves and feel closer to the divine. You can pray at home, but it’s stronger when you go to a temple. Yoga is similar.

Related: Sharath Jois on the Importance of Having a Yoga Teacher

With a good teacher, we can surrender to learning and a positive energy flows within us. When I say surrender, I’m suggesting that students be open to the teachings, otherwise, you will be blocked. Without any particular agenda, you should try to learn from a teacher. If a student thinks he knows everything, or more than the teacher, then the energy will not flow from teacher to student. Yoga is a seeking path; you seek and learn new things all the time. It’s not about saying, “I know everything.” In fact, “I” should be deleted from yoga. If you are this kind of person, then your ego will block your spiritual progress.

One of the first ways people experience change is by following simple disciplines. Yoga isn’t dominated by one interpretation, but to experience true yoga there are consistent yogic principles, or disciplines, found throughout the great bodies of Vedic texts that people should follow.

A shala that has certain disciplines, or principles, helps facilitate discipline within you. A very basic example is that when you go to a shala for daily practice, you’ll get a time slot or a window of time to start and stop practice. Let’s say your time is 7 a.m.. So you get up at 6 a.m. and take a bath. You start to watch what you eat the night before, and when you’re eating. Yoga becomes more than just bending the body. Your overall health begins to improve because your life has become more principled. It happens slowly over time, but it’s these disciplines that will guide you on your spiritual journey.

Many people go to ashrams to help adopt discipline and listen to lectures, or satsangs, from a swami or a spiritual leader. They go to get good thoughts and when you get good thoughts, your actions will also be good. In this respect, a shala is also like an ashram. Teachers in ashrams have dedicated their lives to the practice. They wake up very early and dedicate themselves to their students. They want their students to experience the good that they’ve experienced.

When you find the right yoga environment, it draws you in. Automatically, your mind, body, and soul want to return to practice. How the space is cultivated is dependent upon the teacher; if there’s gossiping and talking nonsense, then that kind of culture will manifest, and there will be little transformation. If a teacher creates a spiritual environment with spiritual talks and thoughts, then a student’s mind will transform in many ways. Which also doesn’t happen sitting at home alone.

Photography by Tom Rosenthal

The post Sharath Jois on How a Local Shala Offers More Than a Workout appeared first on Sonima.

Usually, I teach for five to six months straight, but this past season, I wanted to take a break to be with my family and help my children with their education. Many students told me that the past two months went by so fast. Some were crying when they left. They didn’t want to leave. They wanted to stay and study, but they have family and work to return to. They wanted to know when the shala will be open again so they can take holiday from their work to come back. But a part of yoga is to live a balanced, steady life, and not spend too much time away from home.

When students come to Mysore, they don’t have the usual demands of their life back home. For many, it’s nice to come to the source and learn. At home, they have their job and family and it’s difficult for them to give complete attention toward their yoga practice. In Mysore, if they choose, they can concentrate completely on yoga.

Mysore is very simple. Nothing is fancy in Mysore. No matter how fancy your life is in your country or how complicated it is, once you come to Mysore and learn in the shala, everything is simple. The teachings are simple, very effective, but simple. It’s about experiencing your yoga practice in an environment where you can relax.

In Mysore, students spend time together. They learn yoga, practice together, sightsee, and lunch together. It’s learning, but they also enjoy their time. All these things rejuvenate them. They go back refreshed to their country, but they always miss it here. In Mysore, they feel like they are part of a family.

It’s the same when I travel to teach. Every year, I get many requests to teach students in their hometown. I have been traveling for many years now, teaching yoga, and trying to reach as many places as I can. Not everyone can come to India to study yoga, so when I travel, I try to give them the experience of how authentic yoga is in Mysore. I’ve gone to places where there was no Aṣṭāṅga yoga, where students had never experienced the authentic yoga that we teach in Mysore. I always try to encourage them to learn more. The energy is very good when students visit me on tour and are willing to learn. Maybe one day they will visit Mysore, but until then I will try to go to them.

Related: My Life as an Ashtanga Student in Mysore: Heard on “The Yoga Trail”

In many ways, traveling recharges me. Whether I’m teaching, traveling or taking time off, I try to keep in harmony with family, work and sādhana. When making my plans to travel, I consider my practice, my meals, and my sleep routine. (Trouble sleeping? Try this 90-second solution to sleep better tonight!) When taking time off, I consider my students and how to recharge so I can teach them. When teaching, I try to enjoy everyday life with my wife and children. For my own sādhana, balancing these things is essential to contributing my best efforts toward anything I do.

Very soon, I will begin traveling again. In April, I’ll be in Thailand and China. Then I’m home to teach in Mysore for June, July and August. In the September, we have a tour going to Spain and Portugal—two countries I’ve never visited before. Once I taught in Santiago, Chile, but this will be my first time to a Spanish-European speaking or Portuguese speaking country. In October, we are doing a yatra in Northern India in Rishikesh, and then I go to Japan, the Philippines, and Bali. When I travel and meet new people, it’s inspiring. Maybe they have just started doing this yoga and when they practice with me, they get a certain energy. Hopefully, it leads them on a path of transformation.

Photography by Leslie Hendry

The post Sharath Jois on Taking Time Off appeared first on Sonima.

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Once I started practicing yoga around the age of 18, I learned the opening prayer. The 8th century Indian theologian Shankaracharya contributed to the ancient shloka, or prayer, that is not only chanted for yoga practice, but can be done by anyone. Before our practice every day, we chant it to pray to the guru so that his or her blessings and great spiritual knowledge guide us stage-by-stage on how to get rid of the obstacles on our spiritual journey.

To understand how important chanting this prayer is in Aṣṭāṅga yoga, you must first know the meaning of saṃsāra halāhala mohasantyai. Saṃsāra, is a Sanskrit term that broadly means the whole of society and the cyclical nature of the world. Disturbances that arise here are the obstacles that impede our growth.

Saṃsāra provides many attractions and distractions, good and bad, but, mostly, it increases the fluctuations of the mind. We get drawn to material things and situations that make us happy for a while, but then, ultimately, they disturb our thoughts, which can lead to sadness and even depression. It’s an endless cycle. This is what is referred to in the opening chant as halāhala, or poison, and it affects our sādhana. If the mind is not stable, it is impossible to grow in our spiritual journey.

We start the opening chant with vande gurunam caranaravinde to give respect to the guru so that he can guide us through this saṃsāra. The guru has gone through this process and has found a solution through yoga practice of how to gain certain steadiness in the mind and how to judge things.

Before social media and the digital world, our connections involved mainly family, school, work, and community. The effects of saṃsāra were a result of those environments alone. In India when I was a kid, if I wanted to know anything that happened in America, it took time for news to travel, and, back then, it was mainly through newspapers. There was a communication gap for weeks, sometimes months.

Now, through technology, we can view the whole of humanity if we try, whenever we want. As the world becomes closer, the saṃsāra becomes vast. Through our communication devices (i.e., smart phones and computers), straight away, we know what happens in the farthest reaches of the world, and oftentimes, about things that we don’t need to know. We react, form opinions, and have feelings for things that are not remotely close to us. We see how people don’t like other people or their religious practices, ideologies, politics, and belief systems. The result is that we confront more people, more attractions, and more saṃsāra. Greater saṃsāra increases unwanted thoughts coming to our minds, reaching further into our psyches, and this creates unwanted suffering and more poisons.

Related: Connecting to the Seed of Spiritual Knowledge through Yoga

Every living thing has a right to live peacefully in this world. Plants, insects, birds, animals, humans all have the same right. We have the right to live in a society that is happy and healthy; a pure society with no poison where everyone should be able to pursue their spiritual journey and do what they want in their personal practice.

A spiritual journey is personal; it shouldn’t be driven by a society. A spiritual journey or practice is not born of one religion. It is not religious; you have to understand that. Spiritual practice is for gaining higher consciousness. Many religions divide people, but spiritual practice makes us come together. This is why we pray in the opening chant to the guru to rid saṃsāra of the halāhala. We pray to rid society of these evils to obtain mukti, or moksha, the freedom from ignorance, to put an end to the poison, and start our spiritual journey.

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So how do you create saṃsāra that is a harmonious place where we can coexist with all living things? Where we can live up to our maximum best self? How do we eradicate the poisons from ourselves so that there is no negativity in society? How do we strengthen our mind, thoughts, and action?

Just like a spiritual journey is personal, so are the answers to these question. “Nih sreyase jangalikayamane” states that we must be like the jungle doctor, or snake charmer, jangalikaya, who removes the poison of the snake in the jungle of saṃsāra. We too must try to remove the poison, and disturbances, in our own lives. It’s a thought process. We have to focus on ourselves. If you think negatively, you start misunderstanding that everything in life is negative, and then your mind becomes negative. This is a big challenge, but it does not mean that you should separate yourself from people in this world. There are different kinds of people (both positive and negative) and we have to coexist with everyone. We must learn to mingle. We have to find a solution where everyone stays harmoniously and healthy.

In practicing yoga, we will learn many things through our own sādhana. Over time, the practice calms the nervous system and the mind gets trained not to get distracted and to allay the negativity. When the mind is pure, and steady, and stable, then our actions will be pure, and steady, and stable.

This is why we pray so that our guru can guide us how to lead a life that’s more peaceful and harmonious, where we respect others, and others respect us. Once we live in that kind of environment, then our spiritual journey will reach the highest level.

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At the beginning of a new year, we should all pray for the year to come. Our new year in Kannada, Ugadi, comes in the spring, and we always pray that the past is the past, and let us start a new beginning with good thoughts with good intentions, peacefully. We always start like this, but, unfortunately, the decision we make at the start of the year often gets caught in saṃsāra later in the year and, therefore, our thoughts may go in a different direction.

This is why it’s very important that we practice yoga and begin our practice praying that our whole lives will be very positive. Through our daily practice, we fortify the oaths that we make, they stay with us for the whole year, and the year passes in a positive way.

We are many people with different practices and religions living in this saṃsāra. If we want to coexist and live happily, we have to respect each others’ practices as personal journeys and rid the world of samsara. This is received from our guru’s knowledge and blessing and this is how we will live harmoniously.

Photography by Danielle Tsi

The post Sharath Jois on the Essence of the Opening Prayer appeared first on Sonima.

The world rarely sees a good politician. That doesn’t mean there are no good politicians; just that it is not common. In the past, there were many good kings, or maharajas as they are called in India. In that time, there were no politicians per se. The family chose the rulers. The good kings kept a tradition of governing by maintaining the objective to make decisions for the greater good of the people and not simply for their own personal gain. The ruling family also supported this.

In today’s world, where there are more things to own and exotic experiences to have, perhaps the rulers of the past would have succumbed to greed, too, and been less philanthropic. But when there were good rulers, everything was for the citizens of the country.

If leaders do not seek the truth for altruistic reasons then how can the people they represent be inspired to seek the truth? Leaders are representatives of the people by the people, but today, they only want to expose right or wrong to gain more power. We are not born hating or thinking bad things. Yet, some people yearn for power. They strategize to claim power, and when they are willing to fight for it, it can destroy them inside. In this line of work, eventually, one gets marked as bad. Is this really good for anyone?

Do we need more good politicians? Do we need more good leaders?

Not everything can be done by a politician. Citizens have their own responsibilities. To create a proper society, leaders and citizens both have a responsibility. In the U.S., there are a lot of self-made people, but they don’t understand the first thing about themselves. Most people have not grown up in search of consciousness. Most people and most societies don’t want to know clarity. Or if they do, they don’t know how to start looking. Many people are scared with this basic premise because they are not honest with themselves or others.

What yoga does is give them clarity. Once a leader has clarity, what they have to deliver to the people benefits the people. This is called transformation. All politicians and people need a transformation. To gain this, we don’t need more politicians, we need more spiritual teachers and consciousness seekers. We need more yoga done the proper way with a proper teacher.

Related: The Importance of Bhāvanā in Attaining the Purpose of Yoga

The post Sharath Jois on What Makes a Good Leader appeared first on Sonima.

The Primary Series in Aṣṭāṅga yoga is called Yoga Chikitsa, which means yoga therapy. It is designed to bring stability within us. Yet, students now want to put handstands in between the vinyasas. We need to be challenged, they say. Non-Aṣṭāṅga teachers take postures from the Aṣṭāṅga series, not knowing from where they came or for what is their purpose. In a led class, they will show a student, who is not prepared, postures that require many years of practice to gain strength. Many students and teachers still do not understand the breath and how it affects the body before, during, or after their āsana practice. This does not create stability. In fact, this creates a very unstable understanding of yoga.

Many students and teachers have no sense of what yoga is really about or how it can affect the body. They come to āsana to stretch and bend their body in a way that’s not holistic. It is just exercise and talk. Āsana affects our bodies both internally and externally, which impacts our mind and how we live our life. To do Aṣṭāṅga yoga correctly is to do āsana with a focus on the body as well as the mind. It is a completely holistic approach that affects everything in your life. It is a lifestyle. We have to understand this when approaching yoga.

Related: The Therapeutic Nature of the Aṣṭāṅga Yoga Primary Series

Many people are inspired to do or teach yoga. They have the energy. But even when you have the energy, you have to know how to utilize it in a proper way. That’s difficult for many to understand. When we see āsana, it’s not simply a set of postures. We are doing a posture to understand certain greater things, like the healthy functioning of internal organs, our central nervous systems, or unconscious states. When a student begins yoga, he or she probably doesn’t know handstand or back-bending. Even if they are strong and can do handstand, or they are flexible and can bend back and touch the floor, it’s not advised that they do so.

You might take your first yoga class to get in shape, but regardless of your initial intention, everyone yearns for honesty at some point. If a student begins yoga with a humbleness that he or she sustains, then he or she will learn far more about themselves to use for a greater good for the rest of their life.

For instance, the adult yoga student already knows how to walk and run, so why does he want to prove he can run through yoga? Like a small child, in yoga, we grow stage-by-stage and level-by-level. Students feel that the surya namaskaras, A’s and B’s, are very difficult at first, but over a period time, they strengthen both physically and mentally. Only then do they progress to higher āsanas through the guidance of a guru or teacher.

To practice yoga is to bring strength to your entire life. If you practice correctly, you will automatically transform. You’ll be able to judge what is right and what is wrong. How you absorb and use it is very important. Not only how, but also from who you learn is very important. Otherwise, it’s just talk.

The post Sharath Jois On the Systematic Nature of Aṣṭāṅga Yoga appeared first on Sonima.

Likewise, many yoga philosophers say yoga is within you. The supreme is within you. Therefore, the state of yoga is to realize the supreme inside you. So how do we connect to the supreme soul?

Most people are caught up in so many delusions, which won’t allow them to understand their inner purity. I love children because just to see a child or to carry a child is like carrying the divine. He or she is untouched by anything. There is no greed, no envy. But as we grow into adults, we become consumed with delusions and this inhibits our pathway to samadhi, the final limb of the eight-limbed Aṣṭāṅga method.

Related: The Eight Limbs of Yoga Explained

Ancient texts have identified six poisons, or arishadvargas, that we must rid ourselves before we can see the divine. They are kaama (lust), krodha (anger), moha (attachment), lobha (greed), matsarya (jealousy) and mada (pride). We are not born with these things, but over a period of time, we get influenced by all of them, and they stay within us. Greed comes, lust comes, anger comes. In fact, these poisons can consistently grow within us. This is not good. This is not healthy. A person might be physically healthy, but mentally, he or she is not healthy. This is why āsana is only one part of the Aṣṭāṅga method. A healthy body cannot realize the divine if the mind is not healthy.

Aṣṭāṅga yoga is a method to understand your inner self. Through the eight limbs, we can rid ourselves of the six poisons. He or she who tries to get rid of all these things, we call them a sādhaka. A sādhaka is more than a practitioner. He or she is focused on how to eliminate the six enemies within. This effort, when undertaken, is called sādhanā. Sadhana is the state of the yogi. A sādhaka lives differently because he is striving to a higher level of being. Through dedication and devotion to his goal, his perception changes, his views change, his thoughts also change—everything will change within him as he goes to higher levels. Yoga liberates us from the poisons within ourselves. The purification happens in the body as well as the mind.

A yogi is untouched by poisons. This is the purpose of doing yoga and this is the state of a yogi. We must always put more effort towards this through dedication and devotion to experience clarity within ourselves. It doesn’t matter where you are. If you come to Mysore and you don’t see me, you’ll think yoga doesn’t happen. Then you’ll start blaming me. “I went to Mysore, you were not there, and yoga didn’t happen,” you might say. But yoga is within you. The supreme is within you and all of us.

Photography by Jesse Gordon

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I remember a student asked me about sleep. If you sleep too much then you become very lazy and your body becomes unhealthy. We are not lions who sleep 20 hours. Six to seven hours is good. This is common sense, but it is also mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita, which is a sacred Vedic text, “Yuktāhāra-vihārasya, yukta-ceṣṭasya karmasu, yukta-svapnāvabodhasya, yogo bhavati duḥkha-hā.” [This translates to: “One who is regulated in habits of eating, sleeping, recreation and work can mitigate all material pains by practicing the yoga system. ”]

One should regulate food intake, too, by not eating too much and not eating too little. The body needs only a certain amount of food to keep it nourished. If you go to India, you might order a thali, which is a platter with several small dishes laid out around rice with chapatti. If you eat this three times a day you will die; it’s too much food.

Related: Sharath Jois U.S. Tour Report: A Journey to Stanford to Start a Yoga Revolution

Bhagavad Gita says to regulate not only food and sleep, but also to manage work and recreation. Eight hours of work is enough. You can’t work 20 hours. You can’t be at a festival for 20 hours. If you do too much of any of these, your yoga will suffer.

So yogis should be very careful with what they do, how much they do, how much they sleep, how much they eat, how much they work. This is called tapas, which can mean how you dedicate or organize your life. Upsetting your body’s rhythm will disturb your own sadhana and practice. Good habits are very important. If you habitually eat one day at 8 o’clock and the next day at midnight it will upset your body. Try to eat your food at the same time each day. Keep your sleep habits the same. If you keep on the same schedule, your body stays balanced, and you better focus your energies.

A student asked me about drinking alcohol. Why do you, or does anyone, drink alcohol, to relax, to feel differently, to lose your senses? It’s like external ecstasy. You give up on finding this sensation naturally so you go for something external. It’s common sense if you have alcohol over time you damage your body and organs. It’s like ahimsa, you are doing ahimsa to yourself. Because your mind is very weak, you are attracted to something external. You can’t control yourself. You crave this external help. Four months back, I quit coffee. Alcohol is a higher addiction, but coffee is also an addiction. My body craved it. I felt shaky. But I had a strong mind. I never had coffee after I quit.

So you have to strengthen your mind. This Ashtanga practice is to strengthen your mind. What happens if you have alcohol in the night and then come to practice? The hangover is there the next day. You are exhausted, not blissful.

I can live, everyone can live, without these things. And things like too much or too little food, sleep, work, definitely affect your yoga practice. Overindulging or intoxicants disturbs everything. But once a stable mind is there, you can do anything. You can get rid of all the delusions. This is the main thing yoga does. Regular practice is compulsory for everyone. Don’t worry about how much you’re bending or not. Be on the mat. Try to do whatever asanas you can. Try to do the breathing techniques. Padmasana, sirsasana, sarvangasana, these asanas strengthen you mentally and physically. Many habits that don’t work for your mind and body, you can get rid of when you practice yoga, but when you overindulge then your yoga will suffer.

Photography by Tom Rosenthal

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Today, there are so many styles of yoga. People put their surname in front of the word yoga and invent a new style. They hope to get many followers. They create so many videos, but it’s like junk food. It’s tasty, it looks good, but it’s not healthy. People look at these styles as yoga, they try them, and think they are doing yoga, but they are not.

Ashtanga yoga is not a style of yoga. It is a method to explore something far more than handstands. Many people see handstand and leg-behind-the-head and think that is what Ashtanga yoga is. But Ashtanga yoga is a method to experience what yoga is, to understand who we are, how to be more responsible, how to live in this world as better people. Ashtanga yoga is a method.

I’ve said this many times, but students need to be reminded of the fundamentals of Ashtanga yoga: the yamas and niyamas. They are the key ingredients to establishing and practicing yoga. It’s like making a dish from a recipe: You need these ingredients or else it won’t work, and you won’t be doing yoga.

Related: An In-Depth Look at Yamas and Niyamas

The Ashtanga method has eight limbs. The first four are the external pillars: yama, niyama, asana, and pranayama. Yama has sublimbs, which are ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya, aparigraha. The niyama sublimbs are saucha, santosha, tapas, svadhyaya, Ishvara pranidhana. These are all very important ingredients essential for our spiritual journey. If you want to get deeper in your practice, these ingredients are indispensable. Without these ingredients, you will never understand yoga. You will live your entire life missing out and thinking yoga is what flexible people do in photographs and videos like leg-behind-the-head and handstands. It’s attractive, it makes for a nice photo, but it is not yoga.

The remaining four limbs—pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi—are internal practices. Once the first four limbs are established, the other four will automatically happen. You don’t have to try, they will automatically happen. Of course, these are higher, more subtle levels of yoga. To achieve these, you have to get rid of many patterns, attachments, dispositions, many things.

This will be a life-long practice and the real transformation happens once one is educated in all the limbs. Without understanding yoga through proper education, it is impossible to understand what yoga is. Yet what is meant by education here is the practice, putting theory into practice, not necessarily a formal education.

My grandfather, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, used to always say “99% practice, 1% theory,” but oftentimes, people got this wrong. They practiced asana from morning until evening. What he meant was to practice the theory, the yamas and niyamas, all the time. To do this, you don’t sit around and read about it in books, you have to live it. Can you expect to calm the mind by reading citta vritti nirodha (the second sutra of the Yoga Sutras)? Simply reading it, even a thousand times, won’t make it happen, and it will probably do just the opposite. Yoga theory must be put into practice all the time. Only when you apply all the things in your daily life will citta vritti nirodha happen.

For us, however, what is important is to be calm every day, to have a peaceful life everyday. This is what we are focusing on. Someone can be very famous one day and then the next fall out of favor. Asana will come and go, money will come and go, fame will come and go. What we have to do is keep ourselves calm, steady and stable. This is what asana gives us.

How many of you can sit still in one place for long periods of time having control of your mind? To bring the vrittis, or the fluctuations of the mind under control you must have stability found in a practice. This is the method to gain equanimity. Samatvam yoga uchyate. Samtvam is calmness, balance, equanimity. This is what yoga is. It is a lifelong practice of key ingredients for the entirety of your life. The proper fundamentals will help the stability grow, and thus, the yoga to happen. If it can happen to me, it can happen to you. We are not different. It takes a firm, positive outlook. Yoga can happen to anyone when we put in the proper ingredients.

Photography by Julia Lofstrand

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