The Seventh Series of Yoga from Mysore, India

I’m sending this post from Mysore, India, on my annual pilgrimage to study with my teacher, Sharath Jois at KPJAYI. This is my eighth trip to Mysore in the last nine years. I love it here. I get to focus on just being a student, and my body gets the chance to recuperate from all of the teaching I do in Toronto. Sunshine every day doesn’t hurt, either.

The first trip I took to India, in 2002, was six months long. I immersed myself in practice, and solidified my intention of following this path. Every year since then I have returned for one or two months at a time—a relatively brief stay compared to my first trip. I would love to be able to stay for longer periods, but my duties at home around family and business require me to limit my time away.

In fact, to practice Ashtanga correctly probably means that I should not spend too much time in Mysore with my teacher. Ashtanga Yoga is “householder yoga.” It is a practice for those with family connections, and social duties, not a practice for monks or renunciates. For Ashtangis, our practice on the mat is a means to help us live better lives off the mat. We limit the formal practice to two hours or so each morning so that we can meet our obligations in the world. Our healthy bodies are only vehicles to help us along this path. In reference to asana practice without higher intentions, Guruji  wrote, “It would be a shame to lose the precious jewel of liberation in the mud of ignorant body building.”

A daily Ashtanga practice can give us so much. Our bodies become vibrantly healthy, and our minds might even become quieter. Ashtanga Yoga can bring us to freedom. But what is the nature of that freedom? When I was younger, I confused freedom with a lack of responsibility. My reasoning was that if I avoided commitments that limited my choices, I would be free to do anything, anytime. This philosophy didn’t bring me closer to freedom, but to nihilism. It took me a long time to realize that responsibility is meaning. When we avoid making and maintaining real connections, we live empty lives.

The Bhagavad Gita states, “One who outwardly performs his social duties but inwardly stays free is a yogi.” We cannot practice detachment by avoiding life. If we haven’t made any real connections, what is there to detach from? Healthy relationships require a lot of work. If we can devote ourselves wholly to the work, without attachment to outcomes, we manifest our higher nature in the service of others.

In Ashtanga there are six progressively more difficult series of asanas. The sixth series, Advanced D, is considered to be so difficult as to be nearly impossible. Yet Guruji and Sharath refer to family as “seventh series”, the most advanced and challenging practice of all.

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