Pinnacle Yoga

THIS IS MOUNT EDGECUMBE

It is located on an island off Sitka Alaska, and I think this is the view from town.

I probably first read about Mount Edgecumbe many decades ago in a poem or essay by Gary Snyder. Maybe it was some other writer, but whoever it felt it was maybe the most magical or mystical mountains in North America.

I often include a mountain meditation in my practice, and it’s often this one. I begin with a mental image of the mountain, feeling expansiveness, then go inside where it’s about solidity.

In yoga meditation we’re often instructed to move down out of the head, into the heart space, and it recently occurred to me that Edgecumbe is the perfect image for that. Wikipedia points out that it looks like Mount Fuji. I think it looks like Mount Fuji with the peak removed, exposing more of the crater. With a blanket of snow around the shoulders and direct access to the crater, the satisfying image helps me move easily into the body.

(I was sure I had posted this weeks ago, but apparently not.)

INTEGRAL YOGA HATHA

Integral Yoga is the system created by Swami Satchidananda, born 1914, and the organization’s headquarters is at Yogaville in Virginia.

My first yoga experience other than some reading in college was like a six-week session in Boston in 1976. I remember a quiet, low-light place and a calm atmosphere, but not much about what we did during classes. We probably did some chanting; otherwise my clearest memory is rubbing the hands together to create heat and then cupping the eyes with the palms. My only other Integral Yoga contact was a weekend at Yogaville about 2011, but as I was at a mindfulness workshop I had little interaction with the IY students.

Like most “older” yoga styles, Integral has a strong devotional component and emphasizes a healthy lifestyle. This twenty-four page booklet in small format (copyright 1979) is a brief introduction to the hatha component, barely touching on ethical or life-style elements.

It covers—
- Eye movements, including the cupping I mentioned.
- Sun salutation.
- Nine asanas—with an emphasis on backbends (no dog pose!).
- Six optional poses plus savasana. Triangle and nataraja are the only standing poses.
- Three pranayamas.
- A few chants.

Being so small, this booklet can only give the barest outline of the Integral Yoga approach to asana, and anyone wanting to go beyond a basic hatha practice would have to look farther. Still, for me it’s interesting to see what they include and what they don’t include.

Richard Hittleman’s INTRODUCTION TO YOGA

I had never heard of Richard Hittleman when I picked up his Introduction to Yoga at a garage sale some years back. It turns out he was a well-known (for the time) television yogi in the 1960’s and 70’s.

According to Wikipedia, Hittleman was a student of the famous master Ramana Maharshi, and his goal was to realize God (=atman) through “meditation and other yoga techniques.”

Introduction to Yoga is a mass-market paperback, copyright 1969, which covers asana and breath techniques. It describes 31 elementary poses and techniques, followed by over twenty intermediate ones, with generous illustrations. Other aspects of yoga are covered in other Hittleman books.

My overall impression of this book is sixties weirdness. The costumes, the style of photography, and the models’ general appearance are from a different time. The female model in particular looks like some alien seductress from Star Trek (did they have such characters on Star Trek?).

More seriously, the asanas themselves are very different, most obviously in the forward bends. Modern approaches tend to avoid rounding the upper back as long as possible. In this book it appears to be all about rounding the back.

In addition, Hittleman’s simple instructions are a world away from the attention to anatomical and physiological detail I am familiar with from Iyengar-style approaches.

This is not to criticize a book and a teacher that undoubtedly helped many people in its day. But things have definitely changed.

An interesting thing to take a look at.

SIVANANDA YOGA TRAINING MANUAL

Swami Sivananda (born 1887) was a generation older than Integral Yoga’s Satchidananda. Sivananda was the younger man’s guru, and judging by their booklets, Integral Yoga is derived from Sivananda’s system.

Something I read probably three decades ago claimed that Sivananda was the most popular style of yoga in the world. I was skeptical, since as far as I could tell it did not have much presence in the United States, and with the development of flow and similar practices in the West I imagine its overall influence has declined. Still, there were and are Sivananda centers throughout the world.

The Sivananda Yoga Training Manual (copyright 1991) is another small booklet, but at 78 pages it provides a complete overview of the system, compared to the Integral Yoga booklet from the last post. One of the most prominent features of the physical practice is that it starts with twelve two-sided rounds of sun salutation.

Apart from a one-off class in San Francisco in about 2003, my experience with Sivananda came in 2004-2005 in Trivandrum, Kerala, where my wife and I attended class for a few weeks and then, when the class ended, hired a private teacher for a few sessions. As a lazy person, I was always intimidated by the sun salutations, but at the time (I was in my mid-fifties) it was not all that challenging, and I admit that there is much to be said for this energetic warm-up.

The book includes:
- “The Five Points of Yoga” (exercise, breathing, relaxation, diet, proper thinking and meditation).
- Descriptions of two pranayamas, sun salutation, and twelve poses.
- Advertisements for Sivananda books, ashrams, centers, and camps.

After the salutations, the asana section begins with inversions: head stand, shoulder stand, and plough (which as far as I know never come so early in an Iyengar-influenced class). My wife told my that our teacher in Trivandrum appeared impressed by my headstand (shout-out to Francois and Open Sky!).
After these inversions the emphasis is on backbends. Savasana is not mentioned as part of an “exercise” practice, and there are only two standing poses.

The book goes into some detail about the asanas. The most surprising thing is the approach to locust. I learned to lift both the legs and the chest off the floor, with the abdomen solidly grounded. In Sivananda, the chest remains on the floor and the entire back bends upward, so that the legs end up being vertical, or even inclined over the head—a configuration which looks totally impossible to me. It’s similar in the Integral booklet.

By the way, these descriptions of the various booklets are just that—not intended to comment on the value of the booklets themselves (you can put a lot more into 78 pages than 24), or the relative value of the approaches. It’s just a little sampling about what is or has been included in the field of yoga.

In 2004 the Sivananda Centre in Trivandrum was in an older, non-descript building. Today, the website shows an upgraded purpose-built contemporary center.

BEGINNER YOGA BOOKS

Over the years I have developed a considerable yoga library. Many of my books are practice guides by people like BKS Iyengar, Donna Farhi, and Judith Lasater, who have been some of my primary influences. In addition to plenty of titles about yoga philosophy and history, along the way I have picked a variety of beginner books from other “kinds” of yoga.

To tell the truth, I have little knowledge of what people are writing about yoga these days, but now that I’ve been involved in yoga for thirty-five years I thought it would be nice to take a look back. Most of these are “pre-history” to me, in the sense that they come from the time before Iyengar yoga, Ashtanga, and power yoga began to have an influence in this country.

Here are four of them.