Intermediate as taught by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
Intermediate has been much on my mind lately, so I’ve been tooling around the interweb for information. I came across this recently (April) posted video of the entire 1993 Yoga Works video of Guruji peacefully teaching some amazing students.
And by “amazing” we mean: Tim Miller, Chuck Miller, Richard Freeman, Eddie Stern, Maty Ezraty and Karen Haberman. A few things to note: Not a lot of sweating the small stuff (although there is a lot of sweating), but Guruji does make some small verbal corrections here and there (oh the shame!). I also watched with headphones–I recommend that. Guruji makes these small little, “hrm” and “humm” and “humrph” noises that are pretty funny to hear. Stay for the last word–it’s worth it. Also: there is a complete absence of drama. Don’t blink or you’ll miss kapotasana–it’s only five breaths long, like all poses. And each practitioner seems to handle poses in very different ways, mentally. You can sense it, really, more than see it. An excellent thing. Hard to believe it has so few views, so I figured it was a must-share.
Posted by Bobbie
No parivritta parsvakonasana!!!
So glad we don’t do supta vajrasana that way anymore! Eek.
My only exposure to Pattabi is through videos like this, so I find it interesting how little he actually seemed to instruct. He just calls out the names of the poses and counts. Part of this is probably the lack of English knowledge, but I wonder if this was how it went in most of his led classes.
Then you see how the people practicing in this video blossomed into their own teaching style. Richard Freeman – the king of unique metaphors, queues and points of reference.
Did Jois even come close to teaching like that? How did these people learn to practice so beautifully when from what I understand, Pattabi didn’t even practice himself? Was it all through adjustments and broken english?
I think I can help you out, Andy. This minimal style was exactly how the senior western teachers learned to teach themselves. I’ve heard them all talk about how that English allowed Guruji to be economical in his instructions. Eddie marvels at this when he talks about Guruji’s teachings. Remember, the classes were very small, and there was a lot of adjustments from the teacher himself, as well as conference time, coffee time. Also: He wrote a book about the practice! (The video also indicates it’s not an instructional video.)
Our teacher Jorgen teaches his led Primary in this way–few instructions. Tim also does a led Primary where he just calls the poses and counts, but practices with the students. Minimalism, I think, is part of the culture. Part of it’s beauty, too.
-B
Awesome, thanks for that clarification.
It’s interesting to realize that Richard is not exactly an Ashtanga purist. He holds true to it, but his method of teaching is very different and more verbally involved than a lot of his peers.
In any case, thank goodness for these youtubes!
This is so neat to see. Thank you for passing along.