… more reading.
I finished the first book by the Mohans the other day and now I’m halfway through their second one. They’re so comprehensive, I still can’t understand why they are so underrated. Desikachar’s “The Heart of Yoga” still remains my favourite introductory book on yoga (or my favourite book on yoga, for that matter) but these two are close runners-up.
I have to say some of the ideas shown on the Ayurveda section of “Yoga Therapy” are new to me in that they’re slightly different to the approach taken by some important authors on the subject (Vasand Lad, Robert Svoboda). For example, the Mohans describe Vata Dosha as being formed by air and Pitta Dosha exclusively by fire. All the other sources seem to agree that Vata has space as well as air, and Pitta is a combination of fire and water. I don’t think this makes a big difference in diagnosis or treatment, but it’d be certainly interesting to know the reason behind that apparent simplification.
I’ve also finished reading the first part of “Instructing Hatha Yoga” and I’ve stopped right before the section on asanas. I’ll resume reading once I’ve finished the teacher training but I wanted to cover the introductory sections so I can then go straight to the meat of the book. I didn’t learn anything new, but it served as a nice refreshment on some basic concepts like the mechanics of breathing and the three different styles of learning (visual, auditory and kinesthetic), which I already heard about in the Pilates teacher training. It’s great to have all this information together in one single book and I think it should be listed in the recommended bibliography of all yoga teacher trainings.
I practised yoga on Monday. These days, I’m mostly doing a modified version of Primary Series, skipping some poses and adding some others so, I guess you can’t call me an ashtangi anymore. I still feel I am an ashtangi, though – I just have to add some variations or else I’ll get bored (that, and it’s a bit too late to change the name of the blog, anyway). I planned to practise again on Wednesday or Thursday but that didn’t happen because, despite still being officially on vacation until tomorrow, The Boss asked me to substitute her and I just couldn’t say no. I’ll try later today.
On a different note, I realised the other day that I probably won’t have access to internet during the training. Not that I can’t live without it, but it’d be sad to miss the chance to keep a record of the experience in my blog. I could write something every day, save the entries as drafts and then publish them all once the course has finished, but it sounds somewhat excessive. A weekly summary sounds more sensible but that can only happen if I the schedule allows me for some free time to come back home (I won’t be losing sleeping hours for the sake of a post).
Come to think of it, the course starts in two weeks and I still haven’t received
any information regarding the schedule we’ll follow, equipment needed
(if any), etc. I’m so eager to get started!
