“Ashtanga,” she said, her eyes closed, trying to place it. “That’s the yoga where you….repeat the same moves all the time, right?”

Ah repetition. The dirty/holy word of the ashtanga yoga world. Yes, you repeat movements. But at the same time, you never repeat anything:

1- There is built in variation within the practice.

My regular practice in its purest prescribed-on-paper-form is not the same everyday. In a six-day week, the first day is second series, days two through five I work through second and some third, and the last day of the week– “just primary.”

2- Repetition leads to anything but.

On days two through five, when my practice is “the same” everyday (Monday through Thursday), it is not the same everyday. There is only constant change. Repetition is, paradoxically– or, perhaps, aptly — the very thing that engenders and also reveals change. In other words, it’s only by attempting the same thing everyday that I have managed to do something different.

Repetition has made me different.

(Repetition is also impossible, like perfect vinyasa.)

A Facebook memory popped up from four years ago– me, doing pincha mayurasana or forearm stand. I cringed watching it: my legs look a little bent, my ribs stick out, my torso is not integrated, the big ol backbend is trying to run the show. I’m like a desconstructed shish kabob. I want to yell at the picture– FIND THE LINE!

My daughter’s voice is there in that video, coaching me: “Mommy, your legs are in the air like the number one.”

If only babe, if only.

My pincha these days is closer to that number 1 and thus light years different. I’ve been doing pincha 4-5 days a week for 4-5 years now and it is a different pose. I’m in the ballpark of that line now (I hope), and these days focus on on weeding out final remnants of the backbend and on feeling and getting comfortable with the control of holding it. By the way– there is also the simple fact that my first year of “repeating this pose” I fell out of it. everyday. for almost a year.

If you aspire to an ashtanga practice you’ve no doubt been smacked by the incontrovertible reality that everyday is different, every hour, every minute, everyday the body and outlook vary, and this changes the practice –whether we like it or not. Once again, constant change. If only I could repeat the rock-star execution of my most recent pose everyday (or in front of other people). But no, it can be easy come, easy go. (Or not so easy. but that in itself is a whole separate post.)

The beauty of ashtanga is that you learn — or, I should say, you show yourself– that there is always more in the here and now than you ever thought. There is no checklist of poses, despite that handy cheat sheet you clung to on your first day– they all evolve, they all grow, the all feed off each other. Just as all the trees in a forest make the forest, each additional pose, each change in your practice or split or added series…simply causes more growth and change and evolution all throughout.

And maybe it’s all just teaching us, as Richard Freeman said, to “look again.”

When I got urdhva kukkutasana (9 months of incremental progress before lifitng my head up), the struggle to do it fueled renewed interest in several “cousin” type postures in primary series. I lifted up from bhujapidasana like I’d suddenly found a twenty dollar bill in the pocket of an old pair of jeans.

Look again.

The only time you’re in trouble is when you look at your practice and think “I got this.”

You want to stay the same? Cease trying. Cease the attempts. Don’t start. Say “Pass.”

You want to get better? You want to evolve? You want to do new, exciting things?

Then you get on your mat and you attempt the same thing everyday:

To practice, to breathe with intention. You hold your feet to the fire. And then you find yourself in the first posture of advanced series, yet floored anew by the depth of inquiry in triangle pose.

There is no “I got this.” There is “no graduation,” as David Garrigues says so well. There is no gold star, no collecting $200. There is no, I balanced upside down in pincha, I’m done! Oh no: There is only the endlessly interesting quest for gold in the breath of wherever you are now.

Who knows where it will lead.

The irony, of course? It takes attempted repetition to find it.