Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga
We have been studying Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga with Mark & Joanne Darby and Shankara Darby. Darby and Joanne have been among the first group of students of Pattabhi Jois in Mysore in the 1970s, where they lived for 4 years. They then continued their practice in India on a regular basis from 2001 to 2009, until Sri K. Pattabhi Jois passed away.

“ When we are attentive to our actions, we are not prisoners of our habits. »
Strength & Sincerity
It is a yoga practice, based on dynamic and stimulating asana sequences to build spiritual strength, which combines the principles of the eight Ashtanga limbs of Patanjali and the development of VINYASA (synchronization of movement on breathing) by T. Krishnamacharya and K. Pattabhi Jois.
The Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga practice is a living tradition with the relationship between teacher and student at the epicenter. At its root, it is a spiritual practice that purifies the heart, body and mind, illuminating one's own divine nature.
To achieve this, we work with 3 places of action and important attention called TRISTANA. These cover three levels of purification: body, nervous system and mind. They are always performed in conjunction with each other. Asanas la posture (Bandhas) purifies, strengthens and gives flexibility to the body. The breathing must be stable, slow and inhabit the whole body, same length on inspiration as on expiration, which helps to purify the nervous system. Dristhi is the direction you look in a posture. There are nine dristhis: the nose, 3rd eye, navel, thumb, hands, feet, top, right side and left side. Dristhi purifies and stabilizes the functioning of the mind. Tristana is the foundation of the practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga. These three tools transform asana (physical) practice from a simple body exercise into a total mind-body experience.
There are 6 Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga series. The first was designed to realign and detoxify the body. The intermediate series has an impact on the purification of the nervous system. Most practitioners get all the benefits of the first two sets, and those who want a Cirque du Soleil job (hahaha) go for the advanced sets. All levels of practice will lead to what you need to understand.
With regular practice, and when the three components (Tristana) are in harmony, synchronized with movement and breathing through the sequences of postures, the yogi (the sadhaka) enters the seventh part of Ashtanga Yoga, meditation (dhyana), then to arrive in a state of yoga. In order to regain his integrity.
An essential aspect of internal purification that Pattabhi Jois teaches concerns the six poisonsthat surround the spiritual heart. In the shastra of yoga it is said that God dwells in our heart in the form of light, but this light is covered by six poisons: kama, krodha, moha, lobha, matsarya and mada. These are desire, anger, delusion, greed, envy and laziness. When the practice of yoga is sustained with great diligence and dedication over a long period of time, the heat generated by it burns off these poisons, and the light of our inner nature is revealed.