| What really is the point in studying asana with Sharath? Posted: 14 Oct 2020 05:56 PM PDT So I pay attention to any asana demonstration or teaching I've seen on video from Sharath. It's rarely impressive, and I don't mean that I expect to be "impressed" by the physicality, I just expect to register something that is going on beneath the physical. Furthermore, his teaching falls into the same category. Some examples of un-nerving things I've seen: - A video of someone with an artificial leg doing Marichyasana B. Their ankle was sickling horribly on their other leg. I thought it was particularly callous, though not intentionally so, to celebrate someone who can still practice asana despite injury and yet renege on the responsibility you have to not open them up to additional injury.
- A video of a led class doing shoulderstand. It was utterly alarming! These were people who could manage a whole series in a led class and yet their shoulderstands were various forms of banana shaped disasters. It's ridiculous that you could stand there and allow people to practice shoulderstand like that. Who gives a damn if they can do eka pada sirsasana if their basic shoulderstand is so unbalanced?
- Watching Sharath practice parvatasana/baddha guliasana, quite recently, while seated. You can see that as he lifts his arms, he leads with the lower ribs and actually gets very little extension when the arms are over the head. He's a "rib flarer" which is not a good habit. It suggests tightness either in the shoulders or upper back which he is moving "around" in the easiest way rather than perceiving it.
The latter is the most concerning. Watching Sharath's asana - pretty much any of it - and you can see someone keenly aware of how to make shapes with his body and breathe appropriately while doing it. But he is always moving ahead of his perception and awareness. It's like he's practiced for decades without developing perception in his body, or without actually examining the asana. Someone needs to slow him down, get him to feel what is happening rather than just going into habitual movements .
It seems this has crossed over to his teaching as well. I see no point in learning asana from him in person. Yeah, you might learn how to make shapes with your body, but you won't learn to develop direct perception of what is going on while you practice asana.
Unfortunately some people have swallowed his deal completely. The blog posts I've read justifying his teaching methods are so hand wringingly desperate that I fear for the state of the writer. I thought Covid-19 might reset a lot of things in the world, but I don't think it will change the Mysore hoards, just delay them. Give it a year and people will be piling back there just as keenly as ever before. submitted by /u/wehavedrunksoma [link] [comments] |
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