If Your Chaturanga is Dead, Maybe the Rest of Your Practice is, Too

Perhaps you’ve been given the impression that chaturanga is beginner territory, arm balance in training pants-land, totally 2010 and so done, so over, so crossed off your yoga pose bucket list, especially since you’ve already completed a four-week intro to yoga class where the whole chaturanga/up dog thing got covered, so now it’s on to bigger, better and more instagramarific asana things, ok?

You’re wrong.

Perhaps I should back up a bit. One of my pet peeves as a vinyasa teacher (who practices ashtanga 99% of the time) is the inevitable appearance of one-legged chaturanga — or the three limbed version of the FOUR-limbed staff pose — when it is not specifically taught or cued. Wait, did I say pet peeve? For me, viewing this amputated version of cetwari (i.e., chaturanga) is like listening to nails on a chalkboard– no, like watching someone put a plastic container in the (GASP) microwave! I want to make it stop! I want to scream at the lovely, strong vinyasa student/offender:

“Not like THAT!” 

But I don’t. I’m a yoga teacher, after all, and it takes just a brief pause for me to remember: This student IS ME.

Yeah, ‘cause in my past few years of ashtanga, I’ve speckled my practice with vinyasa classes out and about, and call me a repressed ashtangi but I am the first girl to whisk one leg up high and grab the big toe in side plank, bind that side angle, take that twist into side crow, for giggles, thank you very much– all the things I never get to do in ashtanga-land—oh, and since the cat was away, I am sure here and there maybe I have partaken in a few one-legged chaturangas.

I get it. You want to have fun. You want to turn things up a notch. So do I.

So what’s my problem?

My problem is with a notion — that may or may not be behind some of these three-limbed chaturangas (I frankly do not presume to know what is in anyone’s mind when they are practicing; as always, I try to speak to what was in my mind when I indulged in this amputated chaturanga variation when it was not specifically cued or taught) — that chaturanga is “done,” so you need something more oomph-y.

“Done?” I want to ask my former, or not so former, three-limbing it out self.

Is chaturanga not challenging enough? Are you over it? Is it so yesterday, so dead in the ground — is there nowhere for you to go within the four-limbed, as in actual, pose? No work for you to do there?

Please, say it ain’t so.

‘Cause it isn’t so.

Look, what do I know, one-legged chaturanga lovers? Well, I’ve got a regular practice– I know that much. When I first began a semi-regular ashtanga practice, which came with the standard– and by that I mean anything BUT standard– Mysore teacher commentary on my personal chaturanga and up dog, I noticed something happening: I got strong, really strong.

With that strength, a world of asana opened up: in the months that followed, my long-hated and feared headstand was born again, strong and confident; then David Garrigues came along, and gave me more grist for my chaturanga and up dog story– there’s gesture and dynamism– and soon, my jump backs and jump throughs start to evolve, even, hey, is that a mini-float happening here? (I am most definitely not naturally floaty)

Can I mark chaturanga off the list now?

I would have, but then every time I saw David over the period of a year and a half there would be ever more on chatturanga and up dog, evolving it forward without losing any of its limbs, making it harder and harder and even harder– not to mention that anatomy training weekend with David Keil, where it turns out, there’s more to know about chaturanga and up dog! Let me not forget David Robson whose torturous (I mean delightful) examination of hands and arms brought more food for thought and last but not least, Peg Mulqueen had to go and turn the world upside down by bringing chaturanga back to samastitihi.

Now I’m beginning to wonder if chaturanga ever ends — If any asana ever does. (I mean for mortals, not the Richard Freemans). So forgive me for saying so, but:

If your chaturanga and up dog are dead, then maybe the rest of your practice is too.

It is so easy– too easy –to look at the poses like flags to capture, rungs on the ladder to be climbed. They become instagram challenge goals, not much different from brass rings like graduating from the right school, passing that all-important test, and making x dollars per year by the time you are ___years old. I find myself in this situation all too often: Surrounded by some yogis talking about their “goals”– usually, handstand, forearm stand, any kind of “stand,” really.

How about just standing up straight?

In my experience, perhaps because of the teachers I have been lucky enough to find—getting another posture is not the end but the beginning. It’s as if the entire practice lives under a penumbra, and as you make your way to each asana each day, the shadows lift more and more each time, till the entire practice glows and pulses with electrifying light. It all begins to make sense. There is no asana to cross off, perhaps, because once you get there, you only find more within where you now are and have been.

I may be working on a “goal” posture myself, but I don’t care, in a way, about achieving it. All I am doing as I work on it, is seeing with new eyes all the glorious work there is to be done in all of the postures and vinyasas that come before it, all the way back to the beginning: Breath. Bandhas. Dristi. Samastitihi. Downward Dog, and yes, you guessed it:

Chaturanga.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This entry was posted in Blog.

2 thoughts on “If Your Chaturanga is Dead, Maybe the Rest of Your Practice is, Too

  1. Lovely post! Even in the fundamentals, there is so much depth to delve into 🙂

  2. thank you Lu. I appreciate your thoughts and support, always! See you tomorrow!

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