Personal yoga classes are perfect for everyone. If you wish more attention from the teacher in any aspect of yoga, like alignment in asanas, learning the pranayama, exercise sequences, concentration and so on, then the personal class is for you.

I teach yoga teachers and normal people as well. The yoga teacher can increase the knowledge about correct alignment in asanas and deepen the knowledge about true yoga, not fitness yoga.

Many people, coming to the yoga classes really need yoga therapy. What does yoga therapy mean?

The ancient texts about yoga do not know any yoga therapy or vinyasa yoga and so on. All this is modern products for Western people, which is good selling on the yoga market. We always need to remember the real purpose of Yoga. This is Moksha – freedom from material conditionality. To achieve this, our soul is going from life to life, releasing from all attachments. And this is impossible without deep yoga practice. Yoga as a Sadhana, not a fitness.  Sadhana means spiritual practice.

The physical body is the first barrier.

Maharishi Patanjali in his yoga sutras said: seat comfortably and do Yoga. There is no variety of asanas in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. You can find only 5 or 6 asanas in his sutras and all of them are seating!

Seat comfortably and do Yoga

Yoga – is a condition, a condition beyond the world, beyond the body and mind. It’s exiting from all bounds into transcendency. The other words, Yoga is a Samadhi. And if you try to seat and meditate you will meet very huge barer – pain!

Pain in the back, legs, neck…everywhere. You wanted to feel something amazing, but you inherited only pain. And this pain is filling all your being.

When Western people started interested in yoga and came to India for practice, they absolutely couldn't seat for a long time with their crossed legs. Why? Lifestyle! If you could learn a little an Indian culture, you will see, that normal Indian people (not only yogis) use this posture to eat, to do something. This is their tradition.

Western people spend a lot of time sitting with the computer in a bad posture and lead absolutely low mobile lifestyle. Bad food, alcohol, a seating job, and lack of physical exercises and your body will be like a clot of pain. The energy level of those people is too poor. That’s why we have so many asanas and pranayama, focused on just purifying the body and supporting the body in harmonized healthy condition. However, the other side of this tendency is forgetting the true meaning of Yoga and making yoga materialistical.

 Yoga and Bhoga.

These are two different antipodes. Yoga – is a unity and leaving the world to realize transcendence. Bhoga is a pleasure of material objects and attachment to the material being. The modern yoga is a Bhoga.

If you come to India and be lucky enough to meet real yogis in the Himalayan Mountains, not in yoga centres, where yoga is selling.  You will see, that many of them absolutely do not do asanas. 

Because real Yoga is a Samadhi.

But the reality of material Western people's life is much different. We really need to practice asanas to help the body to become healthier, at least the body must not prevent us to practice internal spiritual practices.

Do you remember the famous founder of Yoga therapy B. K. S. Iyengar?

B.K.S. Iyengar was born into a poor family in India. He was the 11th of 13 children.

Iyengar's hometown, Bellur, was in the grip of the influenza pandemic at the time of his birth, and an attack of that disease left the young boy sickly and weak for many years. Throughout his childhood, he struggled with malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and general malnutrition. "My arms were thin, my legs were spindly, and my stomach protruded in an ungainly manner," he wrote. "My head used to hang down, and I had to lift it with great effort.

When he met his teacher, Iyengar's body was so weak and rigid that, leaning forward, he could not even reach his knees with his fingers. The teacher's opinion was unequivocal: “In this life, you will not do yoga. You are anadhikarin (not the chosen one)." But even the guru can make mistakes...

Iyengar taught and practised yoga for over seventy years and was considered one of the world's foremost contemporary yoga masters.

Anna Sustrinsh

International Yoga Alliance Certificate, India

Traditional Indian Yoga

47A Maude Avenue, Glenroy, Vic, Australia

Tel: 0469 193 562

email: yogasadhana.1008@gmail.com