Yoga With My Friends

Couple years ago I was a yoga teacher. I lead half primary ashtanga yoga classes to my friends. It was a great time, great practice after which we were visiting sauna and later had cold beer.

I cannot influence others to change their attitude towards life, because a lot of people simply like stress in their lives. It makes them feel alive. 

I feel emptiness of the people and their yearning for something better, which makes me so sad. They have no clue, but nothing better will come, they have to enjoy what they have now.

I have a lot of friends and I am thinking to restart ashtanga yoga practice with them.

We practiced together for couple months in 2016 and 2018 and it was a good 50 to 60 minutes practice.

We did 5A, 5B sun salutations, all standing postures, and sitting postures until Navasana, then we moved to closing sequence. We also did a sequence of strengthening poses like holding various planks and dolphin pose for a long time and adding a few stomach crunches.

When I tell people to start doing ashtanga yoga, I always say, they'll feel so good! They'll be so relaxed after the practice and they'll lose the weight etc. 

What I don’t tell them is that most of the times daily ashtanga yoga practice makes them feel tired. It is a hard practice. And it’s called a "practice" for a reason.

Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum

The great thing about ashtanga yoga is that we continue to improve through life, and age has nothing to do with ability in yoga. Indeed, practicing Ashtanga yoga daily into our senior years is a goal to aspire to as it will keep you fit, confident, strong, flexible, mentally and physically balanced, and self-disciplined.

Ashtanga yoga is great for cleaning of our immune system. By daily sweat, we'll start throwing away toxins from our body. In the first six months of the practice, we may be constantly on the verge of sickness. 

In my case, when I started seriously to practice Ashtanga yoga, drinking a cold bottle of water had caused me a throat inflammation. All that will go away in six months.

Daily practice of Ashtanga yoga will take a lot of our free time. We need 90 minutes at least for the practice: 10 minutes to prepare, 60 minutes to perform and 20 minutes after the practice. We also need to change our eating habits, ashtanga yoga is practiced on an empty stomach.

Practicing daily will change our way of thinking. I don't say these things to my friends I just encourage them to practice yoga. This is something they will discover by themselves once they fall in love with Ashtanga yoga. And that’s all that matters.