The Ashtanga Primary Series is a phenomenal yoga practice.  It deepens your connection to the breath, opens up the back of the body as well as the hips and it focuses and calms the mind.  It’s a powerful journey of self-discovery.  As stated in the ancient text, the Baghvad Gita:

“Yoga is a journey of the Self, through the Self, to the Self!”

If you regularly practice traditional Mysore-style Ashtanga yoga, you will really start getting to know and understand yourself – I can vouch for that from personal experience.

But there’s one small issue that I’d like to discuss because I’ve done a lot of self-practice this year; I’ve been a very ‘good’ Ashtangi, practicing only the Primary Series, the same poses from the first series in the same order, six days a week, with commitment and devotion to the original method (strict discipline of the Sargent Major kind).

And here’s the issue: on a purely anatomical level, the Primary Series needs some serious balance.  If you have really tight hips and the back of your body is well developed and strong then yes the Primary Series is just what you need because it will open you up like a daisy during sunrise.  But if, like me, you have ridiculously flexible hips – the kind that let you pop into full lotus without even warming up and induce disgusted envy from the average Western yogi – then you need to be exceedingly careful.

With a high level of joint-flexibility you need to ensure you have a correspondingly high level of strength in the muscles that support and stabilize these joints.  Otherwise, you may find (like I have) that your incredibly flexible hips are not as secure and comfortable as they should be and can sometimes even ‘slip’ out of place, which is f*!k me painful!

The main stabilizing muscles for the hips are the piriformis, gluteus maximus, medius and minimus and your deep core muscles.  Needless to say I did not have a correspondingly high level of strength in my hip stabilizers, especially when it came to anything to do with my sweet little tush.  In fact, as far as my personal family of glute muscles went, it turned out I was flat-out weak and underdeveloped.

The wise yogi Patanjali stated in his yoga sutra 2:46:

“Sthira Sukha Asanam”

This sutra is commonly translated to mean that we should aim for steadiness (Sthira) and ease (Sukha) in each asana (or that the yoga posture should be stable and comfortable).

Note the words STABLE and STEADY. 

These two physical states come from developing sufficient strength in the body, not in excess (nobody needs to look like Arnold Shwarzeneggar back in the day) but enough to be secure and grounded in both body and mind.  After all this is mainly yoga we’re talking about and yoga is all about balance.

Just to be clear, I don’t actually blame the Ashtanga Primary Series for my problems with my hips – they were down to my individual body-type and my lack of awareness in where my body’s strengths/weaknesses lay.  As a matter of fact, the practice is what shed light on this whole issue for me in the first place through a pulled muscle in my groin (but that’s for another blog-post!).

My issue with the Ashtanga Primary Series is that it needs a discerning, intelligent person to do it safely (ideally under the guidance of an experienced teacher) in order to reap the benefits of this amazingly transformative practice.  If these things are present then I have in fact, very little issue with the yoga routine that has been a solid anchor in my life this past year.

That being said, unless the back of your body is literally made of iron then I believe it is always a good idea to balance the effects of the Ashtanga Primary Series with some additional exercises, perhaps ten minutes four evenings a week just doing lunges, squatting or back-bending.  And if you are unusually flexible in any part of the body, then remember that without some extra strength to match this mobility, joints are destined to cause problems as the ligaments, tendons and even bones end up taking the brunt of weight bearing activities.

So to repeat the beginning of this blog post, the Ashtanga Primary Series is a phenomenal yoga practice.  But it’s time to bring some balance into my body and by balance, I of course mean getting me some bootilicious buns of steel, the kind someone as bootilicious as Beyonce would be proud of.  I’m off to do some squats now!

Peace and love,

Ellie