Stan's Ashtanga Yoga Shala

To speak of the quiet breath practice of Ashtanga Yoga feels almost to disrupt it: a wind across the surface of still water. But why have words at all if not to share something inexplicably lovely?

Greenwich Yoga is perched over the dam of a refurbished old mill. Early this morning, before the hedge fund capital of the world springs awake, the only sounds I hear are the hum of my breath, a quiet roar of water coming over the dam, and my inelegant jump-backs to chaturanga dandasana.

Stan Woodman has just started offering Ashtanga as Sri K. Pattabhi Jois teaches it in Mysore, India. It is a rare opportunity. Last week I enrolled, and today I was the only student in the room.

Unlike so many of the wonderful yoga styles available, in Ashtanga there is no music to engage the mind, or to coax one through a particularly difficult asana sequence. There is growth through the Primary Series as one gets stronger and more flexible, but as the sequence is the same every morning, there is no drama of "What cool thing is next?" Just quiet movement, quiet breath, and a warm room.

Stan stood to the side, reminded me of the standing sequence he began teaching me last week, helped me align my slight scoliosis a few times, and told me that eventually my toes will actually glide back to chaturanga. He also agreed, when I asked, that I had miscounted my breaths.

I found myself miscounting when I remembered that my teacher was watching or when I worried whether I had counted correctly. My earliest challenge then is to drop the worry, drop the ego when I forget the sequence, and to stay present in the breath.

Mitchel Bleier is teaching Anusara yoga at Saraswati's Yoga Joint in Norwalk. He talked about the breath in a class recently. He noted that we cannot, of our own volition, simply stop breathing. It is as though the universe is breathing us, and not, in fact, the other way around. He said that we might even understand that the universe has actually chosen us to breathe into.

I love teachers like Mitchel. They help me understand the challenging Eastern ideas in yoga. But how divine to walk up to the waterfall and let it all drop away to a sea of quiet breathing.