Iyengar yoga

Crushed it at the Iyengar Yoga seminar with Natalia Luzhanskaya in Turkey.

Iyengar is one of the greatest yoga masters in the world, who taught it for over 70 years, systematizing the knowledge for the modern generation. This style stands out for its meticulous attention to asanas, symmetry, unhurried pace, and use of props.

I’m not particularly flexible, and in group classes I never have enough time to properly get into the poses. Here we practiced 2.5–3 hours at dawn and 1.5–2 hours in the afternoon. Stretching, asanas, mantras, shoulder stands and handstands. After — meditations, swimming, walks. We hung out in the village of Cirali, near Antalya. Lived in small cottages right around the studio, in an orange grove on the Mediterranean shore. A pebbly beach, mountains all around, and nothing else. Bliss.

I wanted to stretch before freediving in the fall, and in 16 days and 30 sessions everything straightened out. Just as I was lucky to start freediving with world champions, I got equally lucky with yoga. The group was mostly yoga instructors — new skills were coming from all sides. My shoulders opened up, the knots in my body dissolved, everything became more flexible and stronger. Before, my back would itch during meditation, something would pull in the lower back — all gone.

Brushed up on my Sanskrit, now reading “Yoga Sutra” with commentary. This is the first manual on Yoga, written by its creator presumably 500 years before our era. Sutra — a brief statement conveying meaning as concisely as possible in Buddhism and Hinduism.

Yoga chitta-vritti-nirodha.

Yoga is the cessation (nirodha) of the fluctuations or modifications (vritti) of consciousness (chitta).

The goal of yoga is to achieve self-knowledge and liberation. The sutras teach that a person identifies with illusions, which leads to suffering. Locked in your body, which turns to stone over time, you lose control over it. Being locked in your calcifying mind, you mistake its reactions for your own. The practice of yoga is directed at overcoming this.

The so-called “Diamond Sutra,” “cutting through illusion like a diamond,” had also been nagging at me, and on this round I managed to dig down to its essence, which I’ll tell about later.

— Natalia Luzhanskaya https://www.yoga.ru/prepods/1965/ — Iyengar https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%B9%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%80,%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BB%D1%83%D1%80%D0%9A%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%88%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0%D1%80_%D0%A1%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B0 — Yoga chitta-vritti-nirodha https://yogamaster.ru/stati/320-joga-sutry-patandzhali-joga-chitta-vritti-nirodkha