Among the modern and popular yoga systems is vinyasa. It is a powerful traditional practice and one of the most effective in hatha yoga. The guardian of its legacy is Sri Pattabhi Jois, who is the head of a yoga school in the South Indian city of Mysore. This practice has rather strict requirements for the health and physical fitness of the adherents. The emphasis is not on plasticity of the body, but on physical strength and general endurance of the body. However, Pattabhi Jois is convinced that relaxing the practice to suit the physical limitations of the practitioners would distort the method, and therefore he does not intend to adapt the system to them. After all, strict adherence to the intended practice is the key to success on the road to beauty and health.
Vinyasa Yoga
This practice is a sequential performance of asanas with special breathing (pranayama), fixation of attention in certain objects-points (drishti), as well as the so-called energy locks (bandhas). During practice, the practitioner’s consciousness is in a meditative state (dhyana). If the exercises are performed correctly, a very high temperature is felt in the body, active sweat glands start their work – this triggers natural processes of purification of the body and rejuvenation of the muscular tissue. Toxins are released, blood circulation improves, the body is filled with power, and the mind gets calm and peace.
Where do you start on the path to health and beauty?
Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga consists of six basic levels in strict order. If you decide to start your practice with the first level, lack of meditation experience is not a problem.
Opponents of the method think that vinyasa is redundant because yoga in general is static and there is no need for jumping around or moving around in a dynamic way.
Nowadays a lot of yoga practices are adapted to the low physical ability of the practitioner. New styles are being introduced, however they are not very useful – they are simply an homage to modernity and a way of keeping up with the latest fashions for a healthier lifestyle. Sri K. Pattabhi Jois is not just skeptical but strongly opposed to such experiments. He firmly believes that yoga must remain unchanged. The guardian of the vinyasa yoga tradition believes that practitioners should first improve their physical health, stamina, and strength of mind, and then come to yoga.
Important: If you are serious about practicing real yoga, you need to soberly assess your capabilities, start training, and lead a healthy lifestyle.
Kundalini Yoga is a relatively young yoga movement founded by Yogi Bhajan in 1969. Yogi Bhajan founded the teachings of Kundalini Yoga and developed them specifically for Western countries. During his trip to Western countries, he was unpleasantly surprised by the huge number of people dependent on various kinds of intoxicants, in other words, suffering from various forms of drug addiction. And this prompted Yogi Bhajan to develop a system of Kundalini Yoga, which allows you to purify the energy channels in the human body. The principle behind the formation of any addiction is the wrong flow of energy in the body. Addiction is a blockage of the energy channel. The energy cannot flow fully up the Sushumna, the central channel, and is usually expelled at the level of the second chakra. This is the principle behind the constant repetition of destructive behaviors, which are called addictions.
So what is kundalini yoga? Kundalini yoga allows one to “awaken” the energy in the human body and make it move intensely through intense breathing and movement exercises. Thanks to this it clears the “corks” in the energy channels and helps to eliminate even the dependence on the injecting drugs.
Kundalini yoga movement became very popular in western countries because its effectiveness in fighting drug addiction was obvious. And in a few years those who quite recently have been in a continuous drug intoxication, began a healthy conscious life and even became teachers of kundalini yoga. And today the statistics is that most of the kundalini yoga teachers are those who just recently had a very close relationship with various kinds of drugs. They know the problem from the inside, so they can most effectively help other people to get rid of it.
The kundalini yoga system is based on the idea of the so-called awakening of the Kundalini energy. This energy is said to be “dormant” in our root chakra and according to the followers of Kundalini yoga, this energy has to be “awakened” by all means in order to become a harmonious, advanced, strong person. How much credibility should be given to such an assertion is debatable.
There is also an alternative opinion that the Kundalini energy is a kind of a reserve of the organism, an untouchable reserve, and when it is necessary or critical, the organism itself will find a way to use it. This explains why people in extreme situations can lift a car with one hand or jump over an abyss.
The organism, realizing the danger and high probability of death, apparently, triggers some inexplicable processes, activating this very reserve of energy. But whether it is worth doing it just for the sake of curiosity or in order to develop some superpowers is still an open question.
Kundalini yoga practices have effects on our body comparable in power to the atomic bomb effect. The teachers themselves say so. The most responsible of them warn students that the effects of practice can be unpredictable. Practicing simply because of the popularity of the movement or for the sake of curiosity – a very doubtful choice.
Yogi Bhangan invented kundalini yoga specifically for dealing with serious problems such as severe drug addiction or complex psychological disorders. However even in this case no one guarantees that the result will be exactly as it was originally intended. Activation of energy flows in the body may lead to unpredictable consequences, and such a radical method can only be used when the problem is really acute. The practice of kundalini yoga for an injecting drug addict may really be the only salvation because his average length of stay from the first dose to death is 3-5 years.
It is important to understand that Kundalini yoga practices have quite powerful but unpredictable effects. For example, a sharp rise in Kundalini energy through the central channel Sushumna can cause a person to have a vertebral displacement. The fact is that the spine is the physical projection of the Sushumna channel, and if there is a sudden, powerful movement of energy in this channel, it can have a detrimental effect on the spine.
Yogi Bhanjan was a follower of Sikhism, an Indian religious current that emerged at the confluence of two world religions – Hinduism and Islam. Therefore in kundalini yoga there are various attributes and rituals of this tradition. Thus, traditional clothes of Sikhs, in particular headdresses are very popular among the followers of kundalini yoga. In order to popularize kundalini yoga in the Western world Yogi Bhanjan founded a large organization “Healthy, Happy, Blessed”.
The practice of kundalini yoga is based on the so-called kriyas. A kriya is a set of exercises that are performed in order to direct a concentrated flow of energy to achieve a certain result. For example, there are kriyas for fears, for anxiety, for envy and so on. On average, the performance of one kriya takes from 30 to 60 minutes.
Yogi Bhanjan himself recommended to achieve a lasting effect each kriya every day for at least forty days. It is important to understand that forty days is the minimum at which the kriya begins to work. However, there is an upper limit: it is believed that if the kriya is performed daily for three years, then it is fully mastered and its effect is fully unfolded and there is no point in continuing to practice it: it can’t give a person anything more.
Kriya is a precise sequence of exercises. Consistency, number of repetitions, intensity, and correctness of performance are all very important. If the kriya is not performed exactly as prescribed, it may become simply useless. That is why it is impossible to learn kundalini yoga without an experienced instructor. Independent practice of kundalini yoga may at best be a waste of time, and at worst lead to unfortunate consequences.
For a greater effect, it is recommended to perform the kriyas twice a day. The first practice should be done in the morning, before sunrise. And only after forty days of daily practice it is possible to see some result. It is important to understand that kundalini yoga practices awaken energy flows in the human body, and the energy consumption at that is enormous. Therefore it is worth to compare the goal which is pursued in the practice and the amount of energy which will be expended. Everyone has a limited amount of energy. Therefore, spending it just for the sake of curiosity is a very dubious thing to do.
